Photo CC by Joanbrebo

Guest post by Mike Humphrey, Japan

Skiing has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why my parents decided skiing would be our family sport. They were not avid skiers, and we didn’t live in a ski town. Whatever the reason, I was on skis at 3, and my love for the sport began. We would spend every weekend in the winter on the hill.

When I was 15, I became a ski instructor. Skiing is my passion. I love being out on the hill, and I love the mountains.

As I grew older, skiing was still part of my life, but it became a hobby. I went to university and got a job. I started a family, and things were going well. I would ski weekends at our small local hill, but it was slowly being relegated to an afterthought.

That all changed seven years ago when I left my corporate job. It was time for a life choice: continue with my career or make a change. With some savings in our account and dreams of powder turns, I leapt. I left my job and moved our family to a ski town in Japan.

It has been seven years since we moved to the mountains, and it has been filled with joys, challenges, and, of course, skiing. In that time, we have operated two hotels and a restaurant and weathered the storm of Covid. It has been a hell of a ride, and not without its difficulties. Despite the challenges, I would never return to working a corporate job.

Read on to discover the challenges we faced while building a business and our dream life in a small mountain town.

Photo CC by Cookie M

The Challenges of Running a Small Business in a Ski Town

1 – Seasonal Customers

The highs and lows of running a business in a seasonal destination, whether a ski town or a beach destination, are extreme. During the winter, the city’s population triples in size. In the span of 4 months, we get 400,000 tourists visiting our small village of 5,000 people.

The influx of customers is terrific for business but not always for sanity. Imagine the demand for your products skyrocketing for four months and then crashing back to almost zero as soon as the snow starts to melt.

As a business, you need to develop systems and processes to adapt to the extreme shifts in market demand.

Choosing a Business Model

There are generally two models to choose from when you decide what business to run. You can cater to tourists, or you can cater to residents. The best businesses are the ones that can manage to do both.

Catering to Travelers

With this model, you fully embrace the higher-paying tourists. You charge higher prices and focus on optimizing your returns for tourists. During the low times, you minimize your expenses and either shut the business down or drop prices and try to scrape by attracting lower-paying guests.

This is how we operated when we ran our hotel. We were very strategic with our opening dates and only worked during the peak season. During the slow times, we shut down the hotel, went into maintenance mode, and did upgrades.

This worked well when there were lots of guests, but if you have a terrible snow season or a global pandemic, for that matter, you can run through your reserves quite quickly.

Catering to Local Customers

Your goal here is consistent revenue throughout the year. You have to choose your prices to match the local market. Your customer base is smaller during the low season, but during the high season, your revenue jumps drastically.

This is the model we use to run our restaurant. We live and work in the community year-round and provide good food options at reasonable prices regardless of the season.

By establishing relationships with residents and business owners within the community, you can develop a strong clientele that will sustain you throughout the year. Those relationships help you to flourish during the high season when residents recommend your services to travelers in town.

Catering to Locals and Tourists

Matching both markets is a tricky needle to thread, and I haven’t seen many businesses do this successfully. Essentially, you must provide a service that can increase prices during peak times without alienating local customers. The closest we came to this was with the hotel, which had peak and low-time pricing. But this isn’t catering to local businesses; it’s just modifying your pricing to match traveler demand.

Photo provided by Mike Humphrey

2 – Staffing

Ski towns have some unique staffing issues that can be challenging for small businesses to overcome. The small local population combined with the boom and bust market makes staffing one of the most difficult things to deal with.

Staff Training

In a ski town, the money-making window is short, and staff is transitory. We hired 5 – 7 staff during peak season to help run the hotel. They would arrive early to mid-December, 1 – 2 weeks ahead of our first guests.

We rarely had repeat staff, and they had to be fully trained before the Christmas rush. It was trial by fire. You have to get them up to speed in 2 weeks so they can provide the best customer service possible. When the guests do start to arrive, it’s crunch time. You are running at full capacity almost immediately.

It’s the perfect storm. You need to hire the right people and have outstanding training programs and processes in place so they can hit the road running as quickly as possible.

Finding Good Staff is a Challenge

While this may be true for any industry, working in a ski town is appealing because you can ski. There is always a balance between finding a good employee and their desire to hit the hill.

As soon as the ski season starts, it’s too late to hire someone new. You better find the right people at the beginning and make sure they are doing a good job. Having to fire underperforming staff mid-season is a considerable risk.

You have to weigh the negative impact of keeping the employee on versus the risk of being short-staffed.

I have been through both experiences, and it was better to let the person go instead of hanging on.

Here are some tips for finding good staff.

Ask For Recommendations

Ask previous and current employees if they know anyone who would be a good fit. Check with friends and family or other business owners in the area.

Watch Out For Red Flags

Trust is critical; skills can be taught, but trust and work ethic can’t. During the interview process, look for signs that there may be issues. Identify them immediately and be upfront. Don’t move on until you feel entirely comfortable.

Check references. Call them and have an honest conversation. Ask what issues they had with the employee.

Use Contracts To Your Benefit

An employee contract goes a long way to establishing a good relationship with an employee. Reviewing and signing a contract makes your relationship official and keeps your employees committed.

Photo CC by lamoix

Retaining Staff

The boom-bust nature of the ski industry means you can’t always keep staff all year long. The business can’t sustain employees during the low season. You always run a skeleton crew during the off-season and go into maintenance mode.

This means retaining good employees is hard. Expecting people to stick around and barely make enough money to live is unreasonable. Here are some ways to keep staff all year round.

Provide Extended Vacations

Give staff the chance to take time off during the shoulder seasons. They can take the opportunity to travel or go home to see family.

Reduce Staff Living Expenses

Consider alternative living arrangements or provide food through your business.

Collaborate with another business and offer a trade. Provide your services in exchange for cheaper accommodation for your staff.

It’s Hard Work

You have to make hay while the sun shines. For 4 – 5 months, you run flat out. Not only that, it’s playtime as well. You want to be out on the hill as much as you want to run your business. It’s easy to be understaffed and run your employees ragged. It’s a 4-month whirlwind of activity that can be hard to handle.

The critical takeaway is good hiring, training, and processes/systems. Watch for red flags when hiring staff; do not ignore your feelings about people. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some exceptional employees, but I’ve also had some horrible ones. Getting staffing right is crucial to making your small business work in a ski town.

One-on-one Training

When you’re in the thick of things, spending an hour or two with your employees teaching them may feel like a waste of time. But this is time well spent. An hour now could save you 10 – 20 times that time later in the season.

Learn From Other Businesses

We have friends who manage a hostel. They offered to take us through the building to show us how they managed their property. Here are some of the changes we made:

1. We added a self-check-in process for late arrivals
2. Better Signage
3. Better local information Kiosk

Hire an Expert

If you’re unsure how to get better, find someone who has done it before and offer to pay them for their time. Have them watch how you run your business. Then, get them to make recommendations on how to improve.

Lessons Learned

After the season, talk with your employees about how things went. What things did you do well, and what could be improved? What pain points did the employees experience? Your perspective and the perspective of your employees will be different, and it’s essential to record what you learned.

Document

Solid documentation can be a great way to leverage your knowledge and compound your efforts. Keep records of everything you do. I like to use a Google Folder to build up a library of procedures. Whenever I need to use it, I review it and try to improve it. Things to document:

1. Role Descriptions
2. Job Postings
3. Marketing Materials
4. Standard Operating Procedures
5. Annual Schedules
6. Maintenance requirements
7. Licensing renewals

This list will depend heavily on the type of business you run.

Implement

Last but not least, implement. If there is no action or change, then nothing will improve. I like to use project management software like Asana or Wrike to break everything down into manageable tasks. It will eventually get done as long as it’s written down and recorded.

3 – Cashflow Management

Cashflow is king, and managing your finances through a ski town’s boom and bust cycles is tough. Your business depends on tourists arriving at the start of the season to keep it running.

Building a reserve that sustains your business throughout the year is essential. But you also need to balance this against re-investing in your business. Cash sitting on the books doesn’t help your business grow and expand.

4 – Work-Life Balance

Running a business in a ski town is not all fun and games. You must be organized, stay on your toes, and manage your time well. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the pace.

You can use the winter playground if you manage your business well and have the right staff. However, if you don’t, you will run yourself ragged, trying to keep everything afloat.

Final thoughts from a seasonal business

So, if you’re considering launching a business in a ski town, remember these points.

First, be prepared to put in a lot of hard work. It may not seem glamorous, but running a ski town business takes dedication and determination.

Second, be mindful of costs and stay on top of your finances. Knowing what you’re spending and where it’s going can help ensure you stay profitable.

Third, hire and train the right people to help you build a successful business. Finding and building a great team will make your life more enjoyable in the long run.

Finally, take advantage of where you live. Enjoy the mountains, the people, and all a ski town offers. It’s an incredible experience and one you won’t want to miss out on. I have seen too many business owners forget why they started their business and don’t get out and enjoy the lifestyle.

Photo CC by Radek Kucharski

Frequently asked questions: seasonal business

What are the peak seasons for running a business in a ski town?

The peak seasons are typically winter and summer when people come for skiing and summer outdoor activities.

Is it possible to maintain a steady income all year round in a ski town?

This largely depends on your business model. Some businesses are seasonal, while others offer services that are in demand year-round.

How do I attract local customers in addition to tourists?

Offering locals-specific discounts, involving your business in community events, and building a solid local reputation can all help attract local customers.

What challenges should I expect when running a business in a ski town?

Challenges may include:

• Dealing with the seasonal nature of business.
• Maintaining a steady workforce.
• Managing cash flow

How important is fostering relationships with other local businesses in a ski town?

Very important. Strong relationships with other businesses can help you stay informed about local trends, collaborate on joint initiatives, and create a support network.

Any advice on maintaining work-life balance while running a ski town business?

Schedule regular breaks, get involved in local activities, and ensure you take time for yourself and your family. Remember, enjoying your surroundings is part of the ski town experience!

About the author Mike Humphrey

Mike Humphrey is a writer and entrepreneur. He has operated several hotels and restaurants and founded mykhumphrey.com, where he writes articles about business, freelancing, remote work, and living abroad.

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

I watched Jon Stewart’s Political Comedy ‘Irresistible’. The story is set in small-town Wisconsin. The community has recently suffered a devastating loss of their main employer. In response, a failed political consultant from Washington, D.C. lands himself a gig helping a local veteran run for Mayor against the long-time incumbent. The consultant, planning to use this situation for his own political gain, sends out his first press release to the national media titled, Small Town Small Minds. When I saw that headline on the screen I said to my husband, who was half asleep, “Did you see that headline? I can’t believe it said Small Towns Small Minds!” This is where you tell me — it’s just a movie – but why are small towns almost always portrayed as marginal, fragile communities disjoined from the rest of the nation?

In a January 3, 2020, Washington Post article titled, The harmful, popular misconceptions about rural America, Christopher Ingraham, a reporter and resident from small town Minnesota wrote, “There are as many different modes of being an American as there are towns, or families, or individuals living in this country. The mantle of “real American” — and all the scrutiny, assumptions and mythmaking that come with it — is a burden that none of us should have to bear alone, but rather is one that we can all share.”

Bearing the scrutiny that these rural stereotypes bring on us is a complex challenge. It will need collaboration, innovation and hard work. Communities with strong human capital, regional connections and a focus on available assets can create opportunities to solve this long-standing, complex issue.

By taking a step toward action, reaching across differences, engaging with fellow influencers and focusing on local assets YOU can make your town a good place to live and breakdown rural stereotypes. Here’s a list I jump-started for you:

1. Identify existing assets that offer opportunities for growth and develop strategies to support them. Assets might include infrastructure, skills, cultural, people, social, funding, green space and leadership.
2. Engage all residents and organizations to develop a vision for the community’s future. Stakeholder engagement will ensure the vision reflects existing goals and generate public support that can maintain momentum for change through election cycles.
3. Seek outside support and funding that can be applied strategically to the community’s vision. Even in small amounts, these resources can increase local commitment and incentivize private investment.
4. Encourage collaboration within the community and across the region to strengthen jointly held priorities.

We must not let negative language about our small towns persist. So, get engaged in creating solutions to overcome rural stereotypes that blight our public image.

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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Neligh, Nebraska. Photo CC by J. Stephen Conn on Flickr.

There have been too many years of disinterest and disinvestment in rural America and at times I grow weary of defending the value of the rural place I call home to a national audience. I have read multiple articles about the rural underclass and the poverty that plagues our landscape from Bloomberg Business, NY Times, and Wall Street Journal. One of those articles written by Paul Krugman stated,

“once upon a time dispersed agriculture ensured that small cities serving rural hinterlands would survive. But for generations we have lived in an economy in which smaller cities have nothing going for them except historical luck, which eventually tends to run out.”

I need to ask, is your community living in this fairytale and just running on historical luck, like the author suggests? Or, are you investing in your community and taking responsibility for the inherent change that is affecting your future?

We have all heard about the changing rural landscape from a national perspective…population decline, low median household income, high poverty, high unemployment, low wages, dilapidated housing, decaying Main Streets, etc. Yet, according to the 2010 Census research done by Ben Winchester of the University of Minnesota Extension Service,

“People in small towns can stop talking negatively about what things their town has lost or what it used to be like. The changes in the rural Midwest are almost all microcosms of globalization. Rural is changing, not dying,”

When it comes to change, Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near states,

“At the given rate of change, we will experience the equivalent of 20,000 years of change in this century.”

This kind of fast-paced change means we have more choices and less time to make those choices. Today’s rural communities and the people willing to lead them need to be prepared for this environment. From my observation, communities that succeed in the face of change are connected to: data, outside resources, other communities, engaged residents, and global trends. Having insight about this ever-changing knowledge-base makes communities ready to move in a forward direction, quickly.

Here is a story of Neligh, Nebraska. Neligh is a community that refused to begin their story with once upon a time or let themselves slip quietly into obscurity. Since 2012, this community of 1,600 people has seen a colossal reinvestment. Neligh has welcomed 27 new businesses – a 17 percent increase in total businesses – and transitioned 14 businesses to new ownership. Antelope County has seen more than $600 million in capital investment. In a few years, when they complete all the projects in their pipeline, capital investments will clear $1 billion. Neligh didn’t pull up its bootstraps by itself. They asked for help. Their network of partners is long: engaged citizens, local businesses, nonprofits, education community, elected officials and more.

This story may sound like an overwhelming task or a one-of-a-kind success story. However, I am here to tell you that this kind of local development is realistic and beginning to take hold in many small communities because they are investing in themselves! Your community can replicate this type of development when residents like you are willing to be engaged and do the internal work necessary to establish a community development culture, clarify local values, and set priorities. This internal work is then balanced with external forces (e.g. resource providers, peer network, investors, developers, etc.) while seeking regular feedback, support, and advice from empowered community residents.

Let’s invest in rural places and build a community development culture that believes we are not too small to have it all. #Iamrural

Township Supervisor Whitney Hoffman is building bridges and bridging communication gaps in Pennsylvannia.

Note: This is the second guest post by Whitney Hoffman. She’s sharing some thoughts about being ready for and recovering from disasters. -Becky

Guest Post by Whitney Hoffman, Township Supervisor in Kennett Township PA

Small towns across the Country are facing a Communications Crisis.

We’re seeing contracting media markets, where hometown newspapers fold or go digital. TV and radio stations also face intense competition for advertising dollars, and as a result, there are fewer and fewer media outlets that have the time or the interest to report on what’s happening on Main Street or at the local planning commission meeting.

Not only that, busy people are having their attention divided among almost every platform imaginable, and we’re even having people pay less attention to traditional notifications, like mail.

What kind of problems does this communications crisis cause?

Here in Chester County, PA, we sit outside Philadelphia and just north of the Delaware border.  The Philadelphia media market dominates, so much so that Delaware doesn’t even have its own TV station- just an hour on the PBS station, and a few local radio stations. The Delaware paper, the News Journal, used to cover a lot of the news in the local area, but since it was purchased by Gannett, it has become much smaller, thinner, and has substantially fewer resources to report the news than in years past.

When we enacted an emergency services tax increase in our Township last year, we had all the public meetings and the budget meetings covered by reporters. It was reported prominently in the local county newspaper. We sent out email notices of the meetings to everyone who has opted into our email notification list, and we have our agendas posted online. We put notices on our Facebook page. We also record and stream all of our Board of Supervisor meetings on Youtube. We even sent a postcard out to every household, letting them know about the tax increase. Yet it was only when the tax bill came in the mail that people started calling and showing up at public meetings, insisting this was the first they ever heard of it.

We had people taking to a new app called NextDoorNow, complaining about the tax increase and wondering why we didn’t post anything there. Some people wanted to know by text message. Others though a letter versus a postcard would have been better. What we took away from the experience was that there was not just one or two channels of communication now, but many. And for the sake of our staff and our sanity, we needed to make sure we had “official” channels of communication established, where people could get the facts rather than rumors started on numerous online forums.

Communications In a Crisis

When the recent severe storms hit this year, I began to think about how lucky we are to have a variety of communications channels that work, even if none of them seem to reach everybody effectively.  For towns without a Facebook page, community group, email list, or other communication channel, how are displaced people supposed to find out if it’s safe to return home? If the power is restored? What steps to take to secure property or even steps to take if you have to abandon it for a period of time? What is required to show if you need insurance or FEMA support, if all your records and maybe even those of others have been destroyed? Can people rely on the Town’s official webpage for information, or are there other communication channels that will get the word out more effectively?

Bringing Together a Diaspora

When a community is spread out over a large area due to a storm, communications get more difficult. The rumor mill will start to churn immediately, especially if reliable information from authorities is unavailable.

While I could go on at length about how to choose official communications channel(s) for your community, the important point to take away from our experience with the tax increase is that you need to establish official communication channels so people know where to go for reliable information. That will likely be a combination of channels, ranging from email, Facebook groups, Facebook pages, Twitter or other selected channels. You should have those channels and links displayed prominently on your website and social media profiles. And you should remind the public regularly that they can sign up for emails from local government- and then treat these assets like gold.  Don’t use them for advertising, but for important community wide communication. That way, people will gradually learn where they can to go for real, reliable information, even if they have moved away from the area entirely.

That will pay off in spades if there ever is a huge crisis like that facing so many communities devastated by this year’s storms.

Do What Works- even if it’s not “Right”

I went to a meeting of a local business group, and i asked them how they found out what was happening, and how we could communicate better.  Several people said they just followed the posts on my personal Facebook page, as I tend to post updates during storms or when we get word of unexpected road closures, etc. I was both shocked and gratified at the same time. Without my realizing it, people were following and sharing my Facebook posts about the community, and it had become a de facto portal besides our regular Facebook page for communication. Now while that means I have to be a bit careful because more people than I realize are “watching” what I post on Facebook, it also means that they are viewing me as a reliable source for information when they need it most. It’s not the official public communication channel I want to create, but it is one that works.

If you do have a crisis in your community, getting in touch with the local influencers- heads of organizations, groups and the like- and asking them to share important messages could be incredibly important during a crisis or emergency. Putting together a list of these people and updating their contact information yearly would be a great idea, in case it is ever needed.  Many towns already have an emergency preparedness plan, and a list of local organization heads and influencers might be a good addition to this plan.

Communications is Critical

It’s really easy to make assumptions that “everyone” knows something, or that you’ve done all you can to let them know. We found out that people listen to different “channels” depending on many factors- and you can’t count on only one channel to make sure your message is heard.

The truth of it is that there are very few central communication channels any more, and you need to make sure you build a variety of reliable channels so that they’re available when you really need them. Build them now, and you’ll be in a much better position to weather any storm, whether its economic or designed by Mother Nature.

More about Whitney

I was sworn in as a Kennett Township Supervisor in January 2016, and now serve as Vice Chair of the Board as of January 3, 2017. I am the first elected female Supervisor in the history of the Township.

I am currently working as a social media manager for Mingl Marketing and its sister company, Comfort Media Group in Philadelphia, and I also consult as a digital marketing strategist for Epic Marketing in Delaware on a project by project basis.

My consulting business, Hoffman Digital Media, specializes in digital media strategy, content marketing, and management for the web. I work with businesses and organizations to help them hone and develop a social media and 360 degree marketing strategy, ensuring that they can target potential customers online as well as measure the return on investment of marketing dollars. I speak regularly to businesses and community organizations on social media, content strategy, business strategy, technology and digital citizenship issues to groups of all sizes.

Read Whitney’s first post, Planning lessons every small town can learn from disaster 

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Looking down on Kennett Township, PA, from the fire truck bucket. What if a disaster happened here? What would be the best plan while rebuilding?

Note: This week and next week, I’m pleased to share these guest posts by Whitney Hoffman. She’s sharing some thoughts about being ready for and recovering from disasters. -Becky

Guest post by Whitney Hoffman

I’ve been a Township Supervisor in Kennett Township PA for over three years now. We’re located in what some people call an ex-urban area, where suburban and rural meet. We’re known as the Mushroom Capital of the World. Mushroom farms, most family owned, make a $2.5 billion impact on the economy throughout the area.

Our town, Kennett Square, and the surrounding area including our Township have the same problems many small towns all over the country have. How do we keep our town center vibrant, and how do we make sure there are attractive jobs available so our kids have something to come home to after they are grown and go off to school.

It doesn’t take long as a local elected official to learn about the importance of zoning and building codes to shape how businesses thrive or die, and how important having good infrastructure is to the success of your community.

That’s why looking at the devastation of small towns in the latest disasters hit home hard for me. While the emergency responders take care of the initial needs after a storm, the long term responsibility weighs on the people who sit on city councils, planning commissions and zoning hearing boards. The decisions they make about how land is going to be used, reused and what kind of construction will be allowed will affect how their community comes back, and how vulnerable it may be (or not) in future storms.

For example, in our town, we have a number of areas that were zoned for commercial office parks. That’s simply something people don’t need as much of any more, so the question becomes what do you do with old office parks as they gradually empty out, or how to you attract development to undeveloped parcels in that area, that are more reflective of the needs of the community?

Traditionally, the local zoning was for “single use” – businesses went in one section of town, housing in another. But now, people want more livable, walkable communities. That’s why we’ve spent a tremendous amount of time and effort to try to create new code that allows for “Traditional Neighborhood designs”. This means mixed use on a parcel, allowing commercial use with live/work unit apartments above, townhomes and even single family homes, all on the same parcel, even if it’s only about 10 acres.

And it means creating some rules that might even fast-track approvals. So for example, if you want to avoid a lengthy conditional use process, plans to develop a parcel that meets a specific set of criteria, including environmentally friendly aspects like green roofing, LEED certified buildings, water-table friendly stormwater management, etc., get advantages in the approval process.

When I look at the devastation after disasters, as a local official, I feel for everyone in the affected area. But I also see that the elected officials and planning commissions have a unique opportunity to remake and reshape their towns. They can start over, and reshape their town with new codes to make things better than ever. They have an opportunity to look at their community and build something that really works. Maybe that’s adding bike lanes while you are redoing streetscapes. Maybe it’s adding trails and other ways to get around rather than depending only on cars and highways. The key is not to let the temptation of rebuilding it “just like it was” prevent you from designing something better and something that has a longer lifespan.

It’s going to be tough to design the town you want and put in place building codes that ensure the longevity and resilience to any future storms. But it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a mark on the town and design it the way we wish we could. Make it a place people are eager to call home for generations, whether they are returning or decide it’s the perfect new place to put down roots.

You have more of a blank canvas than many people ever get. Make great decisions now. Your community will thank you for generations to come.

More about Whitney

I was sworn in as a Kennett Township Supervisor in January 2016, and now serve as Vice Chair of the Board as of January 3, 2017. I am the first elected female Supervisor in the history of the Township.

I am currently working as a social media manager for Mingl Marketing and its sister company, Comfort Media Group in Philadelphia, and I also consult as a digital marketing strategist for Epic Marketing in Delaware on a project by project basis.

My consulting business, Hoffman Digital Media, specializes in digital media strategy, content marketing, and management for the web. I work with businesses and organizations to help them hone and develop a social media and 360 degree marketing strategy, ensuring that they can target potential customers online as well as measure the return on investment of marketing dollars. I speak regularly to businesses and community organizations on social media, content strategy, business strategy, technology and digital citizenship issues to groups of all sizes.

Read Whitney’s second post, How small towns can cut through the noise to communicate with residents during disasters 

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It won’t be long until these girls are their town’s business leaders and entrepreneurs.

A reader wrote to me about an influx of low-income people into his town, using subsidized housing and other community services. He said a town council member had talked about them as “a drain on resources” and “dead weight.”

I got angry when I read that. But it took me awhile to figure out the real reason.

My reply to the reader was just this:

What if the families with low income are actually your best asset, your potential entrepreneurs, and within a generation will be your business leaders?

And now we get to the real reason I got angry. Because this is my family’s story. My great-grandmother was a teacher who relied on subsidized housing, staying with families in the school district until the community banded together to build a tar paper shack for her to live in with her daughter. On the other side of the family, my grandfather moved his family through a series of run-down, borrowed farmhouses as he tried to recover financially from the great depression and serving in the second world war and the hard times immediately after.

Both of these people worked their way up to being self-sufficient and more, and their children became business and civic leaders in their communities.

Yes, times have changed, and people are different. That doesn’t change my original question:

What if the families with low income are actually your best asset, your potential entrepreneurs, and within a generation will be your business leaders? How would you treat them then?

You help them start that journey today with the Innovative Rural Business Models

Owner, Editor and Author of the Sapulpa Times, Sapulpa, Oklahoma, population 20,000

Angrily, I hit “Send” on the message, certain that I was burning a bridge by doing so, but at this point, I didn’t care.

It was 2015 and I had just spent far too long chasing a deal with a prospective client that went nowhere. Despite literal years of doing favors and having conversations with numerous staff, customers and other interested parties, I had finally gathered enough information to send them a decent proposal, only to receive crickets on the other end. My polite but consistent prodding did not help the situation. I did not get a formal rejection—I got nothing at all. Silence.

Micah Choquette, waiting for news to break in Sapulpa Oklahoma. Photo by Julia Choquette. 

Less than 2 years earlier, I had left a job working for the largest media site in Northeast Oklahoma, where I was doing the best work of my career as a web designer for The Tulsa World. When they were purchased by BH Media in 2013, I made the decision to leave, and we parted ways on great terms.

Even so, I had found at The Tulsa World the intersection of a number of things I loved: The web, design, and journalism. So I eagerly watched for another opportunity to use my skills to do something similar.

In late 2014, the website for my hometown’s local newspaper went down and never came back up. I had been a columnist for them before my days at The Tulsa World, and had kept up a relationship with the folks there, even handling their email administration as a favor to them. The work involved was minimal and I did it purely for the chance to stay in touch.

I emailed the editor and asked for the chance to submit a proposal to give them a brand new website with all the needed functionality to help them provide value to their readers and bring in more revenue. He gave the go-ahead and I got to work. It looked as though those years of doing favors were about to pay off!

Over the next several months, I began having numerous conversations with their staff, their readers and their advertisers. We began exploring what their needs were and how we could use this opportunity to launch them into the digital world in a big way. I met with a team of designers and content producers to ensure that when we did this, we were going to do it really, really well.

Finally, in March of 2015, I had enough to submit a thorough and ready-to-execute proposal. I emailed it over to them and waited with baited breath.

And waited.

And waited.

I checked the address. Did I send it to the right person? Yes. I sent a follow-up email a couple days later. Still nothing.

I reached out to my usual proxies. Had the boss seen the email? Was he mulling it over? Was there something he didn’t like? Something we needed to change or work out? They all assured me he had seen the proposal, but nobody could give me an answer on whether or not he wanted to move forward.

As the days and weeks went by I became increasingly frustrated at his silence. Finally, I could tolerate it no longer and sent a message that told him I’d no longer be pursuing the project and wished them the best.

That final click of the Send button was the point at which I decided to wash my hands of them entirely. There would be no more favors. No more trying to help those that wouldn’t be helped.

But the problem remained: there was no longer an online news presence for the local folks. I really felt an obligation to the community to inform them of what was happening around town, as well as share their stories. So I began to look for another opportunity.

That very day, I turned to a man who had started a Facebook Page writing those types of stories. He was a veteran journalist and publisher who was using his retirement to write feature stories on the happenings in Sapulpa, as well as repost other news and events that folks sent his way.

I asked him if he’d be up for writing his stories for a website so they could be archived and shared around and searched for. He was extremely responsive, and I met him just a little while later to get the details ironed out.

By the way, that conversation? A whole 90 seconds.

Later that summer, he came to me and asked if I’d be willing to run the show on this little adventure we were starting. He was retired, and didn’t want to deal with the headaches of running a news organization, even if it was online-only. I agreed and again, got to work.

A short while later, SapulpaTimes.com was born on August 26th, 2015. There’s been a lot of love and dedication to this project, and a year and a half later, a lot of great things have come out of it:

• We now have four contributing writers, and are able to cover even more territory.
• Our Facebook Page, which was at 3,000 when we launched, now stands at 6,800 and we have growing followings on Twitter and Instagram.
• The community has recognized that we’re here to help them do well, and they contribute to us generously.
• And not the least, we get about 10,000 views a month, roughly 3-5 times the circulation of the newspaper that wouldn’t hire me.

And we are still progressing on this journey! We all take a great deal of satisfaction in seeing our work published to a grateful community. We continue to find new ways to serve, and have a roadmap to carry us for quite awhile.

There are a number of lessons that have been learned in the last couple of years on this venture, some a little harder-learned than others. If you’re looking to find a way to make your passion happen in a way that it will benefit your town, here are a few things to bear in mind.

Look for a way to fill a need that your town already has. This whole ordeal would never have worked as well or as quickly if there hadn’t been a vacuum in the area of online news for my community. With so many directions that I could’ve gone with my skills as web designer and developer, creating Sapulpa Times was the one that made the most sense, and what I was most excited about. Try to find a way to fill a real need that your town has, and once you’ve found it…

Use what you know and what you have. In the world I live in of software engineering, there’s an adage most developers live by: “Shipped is better than perfect.” This means that getting the product finished and out the door is more important than getting it absolutely flawless. Too many people I know are waiting to get all their ducks in a row before they can get started. I’m telling you that if you’re trying to wait for all the conditions to be right, you’re never going to get there! Start now, use what you know and learn what you don’t!

Create and document the processes as early as possible. As you begin to explore this new-fangled idea that your community seems to resonate with, you’re going to find something that you do more than once. Maybe it’s emailing someone with specific information. Maybe it’s answering a certain set of questions for someone who’s interested in your product. Whatever the case may be, as soon as you find yourself doing something more than once, do two things: 1) Create a process to get it done as efficiently and painlessly as possible, and 2) Document that process. Because as soon as you have a repetitive process that will help you get to where you’re going faster, it’s time to move to the next step…

Find other passionate people to help carry the burden. I do not care how small your town is, there is bound to be someone who believes in what you’re doing enough to help you with it, particularly if what you’re doing is to the betterment of the town you both live in. Find and connect with these people, and begin building something larger than you ever could’ve done on your own.

Be consistent and stick with it for the long haul. It’s important to find something you have the passion for, because trust me, there are going to be days you don’t want to keep going. But it’s like John Maxwell says, “Motivation is to get you going, but discipline is to get you growing.” There is very little that you can do consistently that will not begin to produce results at some point. Running a website like Sapulpa Times is a 7-days-a-week job, but I still do it faithfully, because I know that as long as we are continuing to push out content and provide value, we’ll continue to grow and do new, better things, and in turn impact our town that much more.

Guest post by Peggy Sanders

Let’s compare two small towns and how their retail outlets do business. Town A has a population of 3,700 and is on a steady decline shown by a loss of 15% since 2000, and Town B has 990 residents with a 27% increase during the past 16 years. Towns A and B both have an arts community, hard-working, diligent volunteers as well beautiful settings.

What makes one town soar and the other one falter? Two words—attitude and consistency.

Town A has several interesting and fun shops, but a person needs a calendar to know on which days of the week they are open, if they are open. Also needed is the patience to determine store hours; they change from day to day. Considering both towns are a draw to tourists, one would think the shopkeepers would adjust their hours during the season to take advantage of the opportunities, but they are just as lackadaisical as the rest of the year. These same merchants constantly complain about the lack of revenue.

This summer I’ve noticed the same thing as I have in previous summers when I drove through Town A at 8 am and again at 9 am: people are out walking and window shopping. With some stores opening at 10 or 11, or taking an entire day off during the week, the shopkeepers are missing more than the potential income, they are also advertising to the all comers that they don’t care about customers. Word of mouth is the most often used method of advertising and you can bet travelers tell others about both Town A and Town B. Guess which one gets more positive comments and business?

Town B’s shops are all open by at least 9:30, doors thrown wide to invite people in. During the tourism season they are also open on Sundays. The little town has crowds; it is difficult to find a parking space, whereas Town A has the appearance of the town that is open seemingly on a whim, whether locals or visitors like it or not. Parking places are available at any time.

To be fair, Town B is closer to Mt. Rushmore, a huge draw, than is Town A. Here is a news flash for Town A. Instead of complaining that the hordes are gone touring all day and how sad that you are not getting their business, how about opening by 8 am and staying open later, as a welcoming gesture?

As for consistency, I found that even when group reservations are made at a restaurant in Town A two weeks in advance, one cannot depend the restaurant will be open on that day, even when their large outdoor advertising sign says it is open daily. This happened to me this week; the day before the planned event I stopped to give a final head count and was told nicely, “I’m sorry, we are not going to be open tomorrow.”

At that point, attitude and consistency both were sadly lacking. Those are the main differences in Town A and Town B. Which town does yours emulate?

Peggy writes from the family farm in southwest South Dakota. Her internet latchstring is always out through peggy@peggysanders.com 

(C) 2016 by Peggy Sanders. Used on SmallBizSurvival.com by permission.