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What hours should a retail store be open in a small town?

By Becky McCray

  Setting business hours is a big mess. In our Survey of Rural Challenges, small business owners told us that trying to be open later hours with no success was their number one challenge, two years in a row. When Deb Brown and I did our Q&A session on The Future of Retail, several people asked […]

February 12, 2018 Filed Under: Best of, customer service, entrepreneurship, marketing Tagged With: retail

How independent retailers can trick Alexa, Siri, and Google Home to capture orders from local customers

By Becky McCray

  People are happily using smart voice assistants more than ever. You know their names: Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana. It’s so easy (and fun!) to just say what you want, and your magical assistant orders it for you. Then it shows up at your doorstep, and you’re living in the future! This isn’t great for […]

January 29, 2018 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, marketing, rural, tech, tools Tagged With: retail

The end of year checklist for small businesses

By Becky McCray

  As you wrap up one year and prepare for the next, your business needs to do the same. You have some accounting tasks to reset and some backups to make. Must do Jan 1 These are the ones you can’t easily do later, so you don’t want to put them off. The good news: […]

December 26, 2017 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, organization

Survey of Rural Challenges 2017: What Small Town People See as Their Biggest Challenges and What Topics They Most Want Help With

By Becky McCray

Survey Crew Ahead. Photo by RustyClark on Flickr

  By Becky McCray When you ask small town people what challenges they want help with, the responses provide an interesting insight into rural areas today. SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com conducted a survey among subscribers and visitors to their sites during 2017, receiving 250 individual responses. Participants included 215 from the USA, 25 from Canada, and […]

December 18, 2017 Filed Under: Best of, economic development, entrepreneurship, rural, trends Tagged With: survey, Survey of Rural Challenges

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