With the rise of remote work, more people move to small towns even temporarily to work remotely. Small town businesses have the opportunity to tap remote workers as new customers.

Why remote workers are hard to market to

New residents who work remotely can be hard to find: they aren’t all working at the same place, and because they may see themselves as only temporary residents, they may not participate in the traditional events or organizations in the community.

Here are some suggestions to connect with them:

1. Partner With Other Businesses

One of the best ways to reach remote workers is to partner with other businesses that cater to them. Co-working spaces provide a place for remote workers to network, socialize, and work collaboratively. By partnering with a co-working space, businesses can host events, offer discounts or promotions, or simply use the space as a way to meet and network with remote workers.

Similarly, apartment owners and real estate agents can be great partners for small businesses looking to reach new residents or attract remote workers to their communities. Don’t forget about AirBNB hosts. Many remote workers are transient, and they may be looking for short-term housing while they explore new communities.

An informal co-working event like Jelly can help welcome remote workers to your community. Photo CC by Sheila Scarborough

2. Welcome Remote Workers to Your Community

Small businesses can also market to remote workers by welcoming them to their local communities.

Hosting events, workshops or meetups can be a great way to connect with remote workers and show them what your community has to offer. By providing a welcoming and inclusive environment, small businesses can build relationships with remote workers and foster loyalty.

Participating in existing community events and festivals is also smart. Remote workers often look to local events for chances to socialize and be part of their temporary or newly-full time residence. Small town businesses should already be participating in local events to reach locals and tourists!

3. Be online and market online

Having a social media presence on at least one channel is essential for small businesses looking to reach remote workers. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all great platforms for connecting with potential customers.

Email marketing is also an effective way to stay connected with remote workers. By collecting email addresses through in-store sign-ups or online forms, small businesses can keep remote workers updated on events, promotions, and new products or services.

Want to recruit remote workers to live in your town?

The 3 major factors are incentives, flexible workspaces, and a sense of community.

And here’s how to recruit new residents, remote workers, or remote entrepreneurs by figuring out what makes your town attractive.

Subscribe to Small Biz Survival

If you can work from anywhere, why not work from a small town? Photo by Becky McCray.

Remote work will dominate the future small town workforce

Your current residents

Your current small town residents will increasingly work from home or remotely.

Gallup looked at jobs that could be done remotely and the locations where workers actually did them. Four times as many workers will work remotely going forward, compared to the number in 2019. Up to 24% of all remote-capable jobs primarily will done remotely in 2022 and beyond, and that’s more than the 23% who expect to work primarily on site.

And most people in the workforce like it that way. In a 2022 Axios Harris 100 poll, 84% of millennials say remote work is important vs. 66% of Gen Z, 75% of Gen X and 68% of Boomers.

Your young people

Some of the new people who will be remote workers in the future are actually your own young people. Kids who are using distance learning today are your future remote workforce. They’re learning how to use the technology right now, and they already live here.

Your new residents

You will also see new people moving in who bring their job with them via remote work, or bring their own business with them.

Research from 2015, 2018 and 2021 shows that there is pent up demand for rural living, and way more people prefer living in rural places than urban.

What remote workers need in small towns

We’ve talked before about what makes your town attractive to remote workers.

Since your current residents, young people and future residents will increasingly work remotely, what will they need from their community in order to thrive?

Qatalyst Research Group shared their findings from a review of current programs from big cities and small towns all over the world that attract remote workers. Common tactics included:

• offering financial incentives
• providing coworking spaces
• building a community of remote workers

Those are the supports that remote workers with a choice are looking for, so these are the supports for rural remote workers we’ll talk about in this article:

1. Incentives to live here
2. Places to work
3. A sense of community

Incentives for rural remote workers often center on housing, including land giveaways and cheap building lots. Photo by Becky McCray.

1. Incentives to live here

Your first thought might be big-city style “come live here and we’ll give you thousands of dollars” incentives. That’s not your only option or even your best option for small towns.

Promote incentives for current residents to stay

Don’t just think about luring new people. Think about what rewards your local people to live here.

Start combing lists of benefits any local resident could qualify for. It could be a special program based on income or residency. Or it might be something a local business offers that helps local people. Get creative!

• homebuyer assistance
• weatherization and energy efficiency help for existing houses
• free checking at the local bank
• media services at the library

I’m sure you can brainstorm a longer list from local, regional and state agencies that serve your community. Make sure your local residents know how to tap all that they qualify for.

Create small-town sized incentives to move in.

You’ve heard of small towns offering free or reduced price lots for homebuilding for new residents. Most small towns could also offer reduced city utilities for the first few months.

In some places, you can promote your streamlined permitting process. James Decker pointed out the difference in homebuilding between his town Stamford, Texas, and Austin, Texas: “you can get permitted in like a day.” compared to it taking 100+ days.

You can also promote most of the incentives you found for current residents because they’ll apply for new residents, too.

Entice alumni with “come home” projects:

People who once lived in your town are an easy target for living in your town again. Here are some ways to encourage them to consider a return.

Hold awe inspiring alumni reunions. Cross the year boundaries and combine all the classes. Do this more than once every hundred years. Waynoka, Oklahoma, does it every 5 years.

Include all alums. Private schools, church schools, rural schools, vo-tech schools, schools now closed or consolidated, all the schools you can think of. Remember the colleges, universities, junior colleges, beauty schools, and trade schools. Include the pre-schools.

Develop an outstanding mailing list of alums. Use it wisely to promote your the quality of your town, events and opportunities to return.

Make sure that alumni groups know about the incentives you’ve compiled and mention them regularly.

Workshifting at the RV park. Photo by C.C. Chapman

2. Places to work

Create more flexible workspaces: Third Workplaces

With more people working remotely, more people are working from places that are neither their offices or their homes. Cue the rise of the Third Workplace.

You may remember “third places” as places you hangout that aren’t home and aren’t work. Coffee shops, bars and places like that. “Third workplaces” are places you work that aren’t home and aren’t the office.

One of our favorite trendwatchers, Emergent Research said:

We’re seeing signs that, thanks to the shift to remote work, the paradox of place is breaking down and workers and companies are geographically spreading out.We expect both the trends towards greater use of 3rd places for work and economic de-agglomeration to continue.

Different people will like different kinds of workplaces.

Some people want a noisy coffee shop. Some will like quiet libraries. Some want a more homey place, and others will feel more business-like in an office-style setting. Whatever the feel of the work space you create, there is someone who will love it.

Create appealing co-working spaces

A 2015 co-working study from Emergent Research and partners showed that coworking spaces are human spaces.

“The key finding is while coworking spaces are definitely workspaces, they are also much more,” they said. “They are places where members work, network, learn and socialize together.”

In their research, coworking members reported:

• improving professional success
• learning new skills
• attending events at the coworking space
• feeling happier and less lonely in their work.
• Those are all outcomes you’d love to see from any entrepreneurial program in your town!

Where to find space

You probably have some office space in a local business incubator, belonging to an economic development group, or in a local educational facility that you could re-purpose. Maybe you have a business that just has way more office space than they need. Or there’s an empty building with potential.

The key element is community. I successfully persuaded my friends at the Northwest Oklahoma Small Business Development Center in Alva to convert an under-utilized space for coworking. They had the space, outstanding wifi, desks, chairs and all the extras. What we didn’t have was a ready-made community to connect to it. So it didn’t get as much use as we would have liked, and they ended the experiment. We needed to build the community for it to work.

Connect with local people who work from home, coffee shops, the library or any other alternative space. Begin holding work-together days, like Fridays from 10-2 or something. You don’t need a special space for the meetups. The library, coffee shop, or even one big home office will work for now.

Joel Bennett of Pella, Iowa, helped pioneer a co-working space in his town. You can read his 5 tips for starting small-town co-working and listen to an audio interview with Joel on co-working. Sneak peek: he talks a lot about building community before finding a building.

Informal work space: the low-budget version of co-working

If you don’t have a coworking space in your town now, there are small steps you can take now. Find creative alternative places where remote workers can connect with each other and get some work done.

Where can you find unofficial coworking spaces?

• Start with the public library. They have work areas.
• Maybe a local hotel, motel or bed and breakfast has a workstation or two for guests.
• Whatever organization or business you work for, could you set up a guest workstation in your office? Economic development groups or chambers might be first to volunteer.
• Look for businesses that aren’t using all of their space.
• Maybe an insurance company has some open space up front.
• Maybe an attorney has an extra office they don’t use.
• What about the church fellowship hall or youth center? Would they accept folks for coworking?

As you share your lists of alternative work spots, you’ll be starting to build your remote work community.

Bonus: Nature offices

Working where you have a view of nature makes you more productive. Small towns and rural communities have easy access to nature. Put that together and your town can make nature offices an advantage for your remote workers.

There are plenty of options for creating nature offices.

Start with the public parks. Make sure there’s wifi coverage, then look for picnic tables, shelters or other places someone could plop down a laptop and start working. Add electrical outlet access as a bonus.

Local businesses could set up tiny offices. Those could be in tiny houses, attractive work sheds, or tiny mobile office trailers. Add power and satellite internet access. Put them in natural settings, rural locations or park-like areas in a small town.

Put several tiny offices together for a mini-co-working community with a nature view.

Coworking groups and clubs can provide that sense of community remote workers need. Photo by Sheila Scarborough.

3. A sense of community

Find a co-working group or make one.

Even small towns can support simple co-working groups. Just take your laptops to a local eatery or the library and spend Friday afternoons together. Even 2 or 3 people together can make your week more interactive.

Remote worker and artist Andrea Cook said, “Today’s social revolution is in need of a reality check and the independent professional is in desperate need of true community.”

Andrea helped pioneer Jelly Week events to support co-working and independent workers in her community.

Attend other in-person events in town.

Join the chamber of commerce. Invite friends for networking. Become part of a group. Attend all kinds of performances and events locally just to get out of the house.

More local chambers are actively reaching out to home-based businesses and independent professionals, and that includes remote workers. Some chambers, like the one in Caldwell, Kansas, do report more home-based businesses joining as members, but they don’t participate in events and activities.

Chambers and other organizations can do more to create the projects, events and activities that connect with what remote workers want and need. Start by listening to remote workers to find out what those are.

Practical steps for Zoom Towns and becoming remote work ready

Find more practical steps you can take in our video Remote Work Ready: Zoom Towns. Everything you’ll learn is do-able, affordable and scaled for small towns.

Is your town remote work ready? Get practical steps in SaveYour.Town’s Zoom Towns video

Quality of life can be pretty good for rural remote workers.

The most common thing rural people ask us about remote workers is how to attract them.

To find out what will make your town attractive, let’s look at what attracts people to your town right now. 

Every town has some people moving in every year, and we don’t notice them. We are far more aware of the graduates leaving town, because they hold a ceremony for them every year. There’s no ceremony for new residents, and they don’t all move in at the same time.

One example: Montana 

In 2020, Montana Extension asked community leaders in some of the most remote and challenged rural communities to see if they could find and talk to a new resident in their community.

They all found new residents, no matter how small their town. More than a quarter of these new residents brought their own job as a remote worker or an entrepreneur. That’s pretty amazing considering that these weren’t popular tourist towns or high-amenity outdoor resort areas.

What attracts people now?

Those new residents said they were drawn to their new community by factors you’ll recognize.

They want to raise their kids like they were raised, to be closer to nature, to have a slower pace of life and a lower cost of living.

What do new residents love about small towns?

Being part of a small community and friendly people were the top things they loved about their new towns.

What about your town?

Your town has things that make it attractive to new people. It includes belonging to a community and having the freedom to experiment with your own business. Get together with some other people in your area and compare your lists of what you like about your town.

Find out more

Find more practical steps you can take in our video Remote Work Ready: Zoom Towns. Everything you’ll learn is do-able, affordable and scaled for small towns.

Could you squeeze in an extra desk or two in your business? It could be an extra line of income for you. Photo via Pexels.

With more people working remotely, more people are working from places that are neither their offices or their homes. Cue the rise of the Third Workplace.

You may remember “third places” as places you hangout that aren’t home and aren’t work. Coffee shops, bars and places like that. “Third workplaces” are places you work that aren’t home and aren’t the office.

Since rural places host a lot of professionals working from the field, we’ve long had people who wanted temporary and flexible places to work. What we haven’t had was much supply. Now with more remote work and more entrepreneurship, we expect to see more people looking for places to work. That’s a business opportunity.

Any small town or rural business could potentially create a new line of income from any  space that could be adapted for a third workspace to rent out. 

Adding additional lines of income is one of the Small Town Rules: always have more than one line of income.

All kinds of small town businesses have extra workspace, including the tire store. Photo by Jon Swanson

The larger trend

Of course this is all about remote work, whether it’s current residents or people moving to rural places working online. The pandemic accelerated this, and it’s still going.

• People who may want a change of scene from their home office.
• People may crave more work interaction than they get at home.
• People may want to feel part of the larger business community.
• People who work from an office might benefit from getting away for some focused work.

One of our favorite trendwatchers, Emergent Research said:

We’re seeing signs that, thanks to the shift to remote work, the paradox of place is breaking down and workers and companies are geographically spreading out. We expect both the trends towards greater use of 3rd places for work and economic de-agglomeration to continue.

Have some extra reception space? Even couches or soft seating can be office-like enough for a third workspace. Photo by WOCinTech.

What would you need to set up a workspace?

1. Chairs or places to sit are good.
2. Desks or tables would be nice.
3. Wifi would help.

Pretty much everything else is negotiable.

Even wifi, which feels like an absolute requirement, can be flexible. If your wifi isn’t great, some workers may have a wireless hotspot they can use. (But still, faster and more reliable wifi would be better.)

The basic amenities are chairs and work surfaces, because otherwise remote workers will make do with almost nothing. Photo by Becky McCray.

Even if other co-working places exist in your town, you can still create your own third workspace with your own personality. Different people will like different kinds of workplaces.

Some people want a noisy coffee shop. Some will like quiet libraries. Some want a more homey place, and others will feel more business-like in an office-style setting. Whatever the feel of the work space you create, there is someone who will love it.

Are guest rooms going empty? Those are potential workspaces. Photo by C.C. Chapman.

What businesses could make money from extra workspace?

Coffee shops, cafes and food businesses have long been used as informal workspaces. What if you made a just slightly upgraded workspace for an extra charge?

Business incubators could create office space and co-working space.

Hotels, motels or bed and breakfasts may already offer a workstation or two for guests. Could you expand the workstation to accommodate regular co-working? Could you rent guest rooms as temporary offices?

RV Parks, too. 

Outdoor workspaces including parks, yards, porches and RV parks have income-producing potential. Photo by C.C. Chapman.

Any business with room for an extra desk or office. Maybe an insurance company has some open space in their offices. Maybe an attorney has an extra partners office they only use for storage.

Nonprofit organizations, economic development groups or chambers may have offices or meeting rooms that aren’t in use all the time.

Churches, worship centers, fellowship halls, or youth centers may have classrooms or offices they could share.

If your space is accessible by wheelchairs or people with mobility issues, you can serve more people. Glenda Watson Hyatt who uses a wheelchair brings her own roll-up keyboard that’s easier for her to use when working. Photo by Becky McCray.

Two real life examples: bringing clients in, and The Smoffice

What to look for: empty space or storage space in any businesses’ office

Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING, said they partnered with a design development firm, and the deal included a tiny amount of office space. This worked for them for nine months before they outgrew it.

Samson said there is a big difference between working at home, and working with other people who have ideas, connections, networks, and can invite you to events. We’ll talk more about the benefits of third workplaces, below.

Deep display windows downtown can turn into small offices. Photo courtesy of The Smoffice.

What to look for: deep display windows downtown going empty: The Smoffice

In Durham, North Carolina, a local coffee shop had big display windows up front they weren’t sure how to use. So they turned one into a small office space. They called it The Smoffice, and held a contest to find a tiny entrepreneur that wanted to use it. Everyone benefited from the publicity, and the two businesses actually interacted and helped each other while they were located together.

Deep display windows downtown can turn into small offices. Rendering courtesy of The Smoffice.

Bonus Points: Third workspaces bring side benefits to workers, entrepreneurs and the community

Better workers: When people who usually work from home do some of their work from a co-working space, Emergent Research said that they feel more engaged and motivated, they expand their professional networks and feel more successful.

Better entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs learn best from each other. When they’re in close proximity, they have opportunities to run into each other randomly. They’ll talk to each other, answer questions for each other, come up with ways they might work together or potential customers they might refer to each other.

Better community: When people who work from home or remotely meet at these third workspaces, they’ll start to build connections. That’s an essential part of building community and social capital.

Coworking groups and clubs can form in shared workspaces. that helps build beneficial social capital in your community. Photo by Sheila Scarborough.

Pew Research released a major rural vs urban study, and the headlines missed the best bits.

Pew Research’s new social trends study has shown up in a lot of news stories with widely varying headlines. Pew themselves titled it “Americans Are Less Likely Than Before COVID-19 To Want To Live in Cities, More Likely To Prefer Suburbs.”

There’s a lot more interesting rural conclusions to be drawn from this new data comparing people’s living preferences from 2018 to 2021. Most of the positive trends for rural places are being overlooked in the headlines. 

Way more people prefer rural than prefer urban

Right in the very first chart, there are several headline-worthy points that are worth noticing about where people would prefer to live.

More people prefer rural than urban, and the gap is increasing.

More people said they preferred to live in a rural place than an urban place. The gap was 13 percentage points in 2018, and the gap increased to 16 percentage points in 2021. The preference for rural over urban holds true in all age groups except the youngest, ages 18 to 29 in this study.

Way more people prefer rural than actually live in rural areas now.

While 35% say they prefer rural, around 17% of the total US population lives in rural places. Allowing for differences in the definitions of rural, and the survey question’s exclusion of those with no preference, it seems likely that a lot more people prefer rural than live rural right now. This implies there’s pent up demand for rural living. 

This aligns with previous studies of the number of people who would live rural if they had their choice. In 2018, Gallup asked people where they preferred to live, offering six different levels of urbanization to ruralization. Rural came out on top for all age groups, except for 18-29 year olds, where rural came in a surprising second out of the six choices. Trulia research in 2015 showed 7% more people wanted to live in rural places than did at the time.

From 2015 to 2018 to 2021 from three different research groups, that’s been a consistent finding: more people would prefer to live in rural places if they had a choice.

City people want to move to the suburbs. Suburbanites want to move to rural. Rural people want to stay put.

Only 25% of rural people who want to move say they would move to a different type of community if they could, compared to 35% of suburban and 43% of urban people. The percentage of urban people who said they wanted to move showed a big increase, from 37% in 2018 to 43% in 2021.

Rural people are most likely to say that if they moved, they’d stay in the same community type: 47% of rural people who want to move would stay rural, compared to 37% of suburbanites who’d stay in the suburbs and only 28% of urbanites who would stay urban.

43% of suburbanites and 23% of urbanites who want to move said they would like to move to rural places.

The pandemic didn’t increase preference for rural living, but it did increase motivation.

Daily Yonder pointed out that the number who preferred rural areas didn’t increase with the pandemic, despite apparent increases in the number of people moving into rural communities. People didn’t have to suddenly develop a preference for rural places, because the preference was already there.

What the pandemic changed was some people’s motivation to move because of perceived risk and some people’s ability to move with the rapid adoption of remote work. That’s what changed the demand and sent some rural real estate prices higher.

Rural vs. Urban challenges: city people feel worse

You may know that we run the Survey of Rural Challenges every other year, and I’m very interested in what people say their challenges are. Here’s what Pew found about challenges.

More urban people rated the pandemic effects as major.

Many more city people said the health and economic effects of the pandemic were major problems in their community than rural or suburban people. There was a 10 percentage point difference in each measure.

Urban and rural people are equally pessimistic about how long it will take to get back to normal, and suburban residents are a shade more optimistic there.

Urban people worried more about housing and drug abuse.

On most of the challenges the Pew survey listed, it appears that urban residents were more concerned about it than rural or suburban people.

Housing was a major problem to 63% of urban, but only 46% of suburban and 40% of rural people.

Drug addiction was a major problem in their area for 49% of urban, but only 40% of rural, 29% of suburban people.

Despite the differences, these percentages show a LOT of people facing major challenges.

Rural people were more likely to say access to doctors and hospitals and high speed internet access were major problems in their communities.

On healthcare, 22% of rural people rated it a major problem, but only 20% or fewer for urban and suburban people.

For high speed internet, it was 26% of rural people calling it a major problem in their communities versus 20% or fewer for urban and suburban.

Rural to urban, we want the same things in a community

What people said they consider important in a community hasn’t changed much compared to 2018. 

Most of the factors people wanted in their community scored similarly among rural, suburban and urban people.  We have these in common. 

The number one ranked factor is a community that is a good place to raise children. Rural-favoring factors that showed an increase in support between 2018 and 2021 included a community with access to recreational and outdoor activities and a place with a strong sense of community.

This also aligns with what rural people said in a 2021 Montana Extension survey. They selected some of the most remote and challenged rural communities to go find and talk to a few newcomers in their town. New residents said they were pulled to their new community because they want to raise their kids like they were raised, to be closer to nature, to have a slower pace of life and a lower cost of living. Being part of a small community and friendly people were the top things they loved about their new towns. 

Positive rural trends

Overall, the Pew Research study brought out some positive points for rural places to consider and largely agreed with previous studies of rural preferences. Society may realign significantly as work is increasingly decoupled from place.

Read the whole study at Pew: Americans Are Less Likely Than Before COVID-19 To Want To Live in Cities, More Likely To Prefer Suburbs

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or by email.

Top photo: Happiness mural in Colfax, Washington (population 2800) photo by Sarah McKnight.

Graphs: Pew Research

These upper floor murals were painted by the community members of Webster City, Iowa. It’s part of the bonus trend from this article. Photo by Michael Hansen, used by permission.

Who knows what trends will affect small and rural communities in 2022 and beyond?

Not many trends pieces cover rural places. These trends are specifically about rural and small towns.

I’ve been following rural trends and writing about them since 2009. My trends reports have been commissioned or quoted by Main Street America, Emergent Research, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, Farm Bureau’s Rural Community Building, Small Business Trends and the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Foundation.

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. These are larger scale trends that will be in play for years, not super micro trends that are already obvious or so small they’re subject to change next week.

Top 5 Rural and Small Town Trends for 2022 and beyond

1. New residents arriving.

After saying for years that remote work would bring more people to choose a rural residence, here we are: Zoom Towns!

The real trend isn’t an explosive exodus from major tech and population centers, but the more subtle diffusion of opportunities to a broader swath of places.

We’re seeing the convergence of multiple factors:

• a pandemic that forced a major adoption of remote work
• pent up demand for rural living
• improving rural broadband
• the great resignation and re-evaluation of life choices
• climate and disasters shifting relocation decisions
• increased rural tourism through the boom in road trips

Bonus trend: People are eager to belong.

With more people relocating, expect an increase in deliberate community building, reaching across polarizing divides.

Watch for projects in:

• Neighboring
• Beautification
• Belonging

2. Natural environment regenerating.

The shift from simple awareness or protection of the environment to deliberately trying to make things around you better.

Innovative farmers and ranchers are being better stewards, improving the land and environment with each successive season.

Indigenous People and Native Tribes are gaining control of more of their traditional lands, fostering regeneration and advocating environmental policy improvements.

Natural resources are changing, and new sustainable natural resources booms are coming that make sense in rural places including:

• timber and lignin
• mushroom and other natural fiber materials
• dirt, clay and earthen buildings
• renewable and greener energy

3. Leadership and power shifting.

Much like the surge in new residents, the shift in leadership started a long time ago. In 2015, we developed our Idea Friendly Method to help you understand and adapt to the shift from the formal to informal, from centralized to community, from control to chaos.

Awareness of the change is finally percolating up, even to the World Economic Forum. And it’s also percolating down, to the level of local organizations and officials in small towns.

Watch for:

• Less emphasis on joining boards or committees to talk about change
• More emphasis on joining activities you enjoy to take action

4. Rural healthcare reimagined.

Pressured by financial crises, closures and staff shortages before the pandemic, rural health care is due for reimagining. Between improving telemedicine and rapid advances in smart everything, will we still need general hospitals in small towns in 10 years? Do we really need them now? We’re already seeing rural communities come up with innovative answers that improve health care without focusing so much on the building.

Keep an eye on:

• Community involvement in health care facilities and futures
• Smart use of technology to improve people’s health

5. Economic barriers falling.

Equitable economic development is the buzzword of the moment in grants, programs and planning. For small towns, it’s really about making entrepreneurship easier for more people and creating a fairer economy.

Small towns are the testing grounds for the future, and rural people innovate. Want to be resilient in the next big crisis? Tap our innovative spirit.

Focus now on developing:

• Local supply chain
• Small makers
• Artisans
• Tiny manufacturers

Free video report:

Watch Deb Brown and me present these trends more in depth at SaveYour.Town: 2022 Rural Trends.

Watch the free video

This article cited by:

• Forbes – Research and Insights on Why Millennials and Gen Z Will Drive Small Town Entrepreneurship by Bernhard Schroeder
• Mendimi – Pse Millennials dhe Gen Z do të nxisin sipërmarrjen e qyteteve të vogla? Albania
• Bank of I.D.E.A.S. by Peter Kenyon, Community and Economic Development Matters Newsletter, April 13, 2022, Australia
• Wetzel-Tyler Chamber of Commerce newsletter

How small towns can attract and support remote workers

What successful towns do to attract remote workers:

• offering financial incentives
• providing coworking spaces
• building a community of remote workers

Providing co-working and alternative workspaces

One of two top ideas for small towns is to provide places to do remote work. This doesn’t have to mean a formal coworking space. Small towns can start by identifying and sharing alternative workspaces from within the community.

If you don’t have a coworking space in your town now, there are small steps you can take now. Find creative alternative places where remote workers can connect with each other and get some work done.

Where can you find unofficial coworking spaces?

• Start with the public library. They have work areas.
• Maybe a local hotel, motel or bed and breakfast has a workstation or two for guests.
• Whatever organization or business you work for, could you set up a guest workstation in your office? Economic development groups or chambers might be first to volunteer.
• Look for businesses that aren’t using all of their space.
• Maybe an insurance company has some open space up front.
• Maybe an attorney has an extra office they don’t use.
• What about the church fellowship hall or youth center? Would they accept folks for coworking?

As you share your lists of alternative work spots, you’ll be starting to build your remote work community.

Make more of the internet service you already have by improving public wifi coverage

Rural internet is exceptionally variable. Even places that look like they are served on coverage maps may in fact be dead spots. Just crossing the street in a small town can mean the difference between 30mbps and 3mbps service.

That makes public wifi even more important to supporting remote workers. Here’s how to improve the coverage of public wifi in your rural community right now.

1. Find out where free public wifi is available now. This can be as easy as driving around town with a wifi finder app or even the list of available networks on your phone.

2. Let people know about the wifi you found. Make big, consistent, simple and easy to read signs. Everywhere you find public wifi, ask them to post one of the signs.

3. Pursue more wifi. Encourage businesses of all kinds to add guest wifi. Encourage your local government to get involved. Does your local telecom offer any free wifi spots? Give them a push to start.

In places where you find wifi is locked down, ask if they can open it or provide a second network for guest access. Many routers make adding a guest network as easy as checking a box in settings.

More tips for Zoom Towns: Remote Work Ready

These tips are part of the Zoom Towns: Remote Work Ready video from SaveYour.Town. Co-founders Becky McCray (hey, that’s me!) and Deb Brown lead you through a 31 minute video. You’ll learn to position your small town for the future of remote work, without breaking your budget.

Learn More: Zoom Towns video 

Cited in:

Balancing Act: Preserving Historic Fabric and Enhancing Economic Vitality in Towns in the Metropolitan Periphery, Planning Practice & Research, John Accordino & Sarin Adhikari, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2021.1995970

The COVID-19 quarantine has crushed so many small businesses and the economy at large. It’s truly been the worst financial crisis unfurling in this country since the 1930s. And while some measures are in place to help this not reach that level of despair, many people are finding themselves out of a job.

But is there a silver lining? Heck yes!

“Work From Home” Will Invite More People to Experience Small Town Life

The whole “work from home” part of quarantine has shown a lot of employers and employees a path to choosing where they want to live. In a system that no longer requires “butt in chair” management, why would someone choose some of the big cities out there? Would you rather look out on some fields or forests, or listen to cars honking all night long?

But when some of these folks come to a small town setting, they’ll get exposed (maybe for the first time) to the power of a small town localized community. Maybe they won’t be able to visit the opera every weekend and maybe the little grocery store doesn’t have a big selection of quinoa (how many quinoa choices do we need?), but the sense that everyone is working together and everyone knows each other is a very alluring opportunity.

This Will Drive More Small Business Opportunities

The easy example is that delivery businesses thrive when city types show up at a small town. People are used to convenience living, and if those services don’t quite exist in the small town setting, you can step in and fill a gap.

Another way to serve this relocation migration that may come 3/4 of the way into 2020 or maybe at the start of 2021 is to find and adapt coworking spaces, even if they’re more “six feet apart” than they would have been a few months ago. These spaces will need great wifi, space to spread out and work, and a little kitchen space. Not a lot of investment really.

Small Town Sourcing

The other BIG opportunity is that right now several call centers are being pulled back from other countries and re-sourced to small US towns. So are software development jobs (you can learn several languages for free online and those jobs pay around 80K to start). Someone has to house these people. Someone has to prepare all the wiring and materials. Someone has to feed and do other services for them.

Big cities were the way to go for a while. Then suburbs (ugh). Small towns were “unsexy” for some time.* But it’s the right time to show off the power of the small town brand and how you can help grow the world not that far from your front porch.

*Editor’s note: We disagree, but who’s counting?

As Carlos Moreno points out, “they” are never coming to save us. Small towns are on our own playing economic self defense. Photo by Becky McCray.

Not everyone who says they’ll help your town is telling you the truth. 

If you want a resilient small town economy and prosperity for the people in your town, I have some self-defense ideas for you. 

Focus more on your own people, less on attraction. 

1. Stop paying people to bring business to your town that will drain resources out. Forget about retail attraction. Skip trying to attract outside entrepreneurs. Never, ever give incentives of any kind to chain businesses. Never even read the corporate site selection RFP list. 
   1. Instead, support your own local entrepreneurs. Cut down the barriers to entry so even a one square foot business idea is valued, encouraged and possible. Create more shared spaces. 
2. Stop fretting about what will bring people to town. Tourism comes after. Recruitment is best seen as being attractive. 
   1. Instead, focus relentlessly on being such a great place for your own people that others can’t help wanting to be part of it. 
   2. Be open to people’s own ideas and dreams. The town you want to live in is the town you could be building together. 
   3. Eschew formality, regulation and red tape. No one is attracted to the moribund. 
3. Stop letting the same ten people dominate your leadership. When you–without even thinking about it–expect people to have plenty of resources in order to participate, you miss out on some of your best people.
   1. Instead, reach out to everyone in town, every single one. Give people small but meaningful ways to participate.
   2. Actively connect to diverse people including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. You need innovative ideas to survive, and you’ll find more innovative ideas when you bring together people who don’t all share the same backgrounds and all think the same.
   3. Involve people with disabilities and people with less financial resources by giving even smaller but still meaningful ways to participate. Not everyone can do the same things or afford the same things. Everyone has gifts to share.

Focus more on trying ideas in small ways, less on paying others to pick ideas for you. 

1. If you can test an idea with duct tape and cardboard, you don’t need a feasibility report. 
2. Never pay for predictions. A professional guess is still a guess. 
   1. Instead, your own people can and will run experiments once you get out of their way. 
   2. Crowd source the answers you need by testing tons of different ideas.
   3. Tiny failures are almost free, high quality evidence of what doesn’t work. Big failures are evidence you didn’t experiment small enough.

Focus more on local investing, less on creating profits for outside people 

1. Create a local investment team to take these actions: 
   1. Buy up rent houses, so outside real estate investors won’t destroy their value for profit. 
   2. Loan money to local businesses in tiny amounts that big banks can never touch. Loans under $50k are economically infeasible for banks, but arguably the most important for your would be tiny businesses.
   3. Fund community projects with a bias toward tiny individual informal experiments, and away from existing formal organizations. 
2. Move your money to local banks and credit unions. Run a campaign to get more people to join you. 
3. Drive out payday lenders. 

You probably know that I don’t normally cast my opinion in such strong language.

While I was working on videos to help small towns recover, I couldn’t get away from the bad economic decisions we see town officials make over and over.

And I wanted to help you avoid some of those.

What I want most is for your town and your people to prosper. I want you all to build a town together that you are happy to live in. I want you to create something so amazing together that other people want to join you. I want you thrive together.

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Rural people may be the remote workforce urban employers are looking for. Photo via picnoi 

Brother released their small business trends for 2019, and two struck me as particularly good for small towns and rural businesses.

Remote workforces will continue to rise

Brother says: “2018 was a pivotal year for remote working and as we head into 2019 that is not going to slow down. Good talent is becoming increasingly difficult to find and sometimes business owners are not able to find the right people for the job where they are. Hiring remote workers that are the best fit for the business will not only improve your business, but also significantly cut down costs on things like office space.”

Small town implications: We are the remote workforce! 

To be ready, we need more and better training for modern technology talents. LinkedIn points to 2019 needs in AI, machine learning, blockchain, and data science, but also emphasizes the need for soft skills like time management.

The other big factor: BROADBAND. You can’t be the remote workforce unless you can work over broadband.

Side-hustles will become the main-hustle and there will be a surge in self-employment

Brother says: “With millennials making up much of today’s workforce, the modern workplace is shifting drastically. The millennial workforce places a heavy emphasis on personal satisfaction, so striking out on their own is rewarding. Self-employment brings a sense of increased control over your work-life balance, the work you are doing and overall happiness. This year, we will see a spike in the number of home offices and self-employed workers.”

Small town implications: Entrepreneur development is rural economic development

Old school rural economic developers may still cling to recruiting businesses or chasing after chain stores, but modern rural economic developers are entrepreneur developers. Rural areas have long had higher self-employment, and we can expect that to continue. If you want your small town to prosper, help your local entrepreneurs to prosper. 

What trends are you watching in rural business?

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