Small Town And Rural Business Is Entering A Renaissance In America

From dusty rural roads to the wide Main Streets of small town America, lights are being turned on in long dark storefronts and barns.  There’s a new breed of entrepreneur.  They buy local when they can and order when they can’t.  These are the people leading a small town and rural business renaissance.  Skyrocketing commercial leases are driving enterprising entrepreneurs to look down the business routes just off the interstate.

It’s not just hipsters opening juice bars and yoga studios.  As rural youth ponder their career prospects, technology allows them to rethink career success.  They have opportunities to bring technology onto the farm.  What first started with large scale farming has led to inspiration on the smaller farms across America.  Farmers are experimenting with rare and commercially valuable crops.  Old barns that once processed wheat bound for big mills are specialty grain mills themselves now.  Played out Dairy farms are growing hops for the growing craft brewing industry.

The challenge for small farms is learning to adapt to an ever changing business landscape.  The greatest unused resources on a family farm are in the heads of those mini humans in the living room writing game mods because they’re bored.  Your teens have a great grasp of technology.  Your kids can teach you what you need to know about computers.  Your wisdom as a farmer fills in the gaps.  Technology helps take some of the fear out of trying a new crop.  A small plot analysis of yield can help you decide if planting that field with quinoa or corn is going to turn a profit next season.

Open source code removes the cost barriers to small operations.  The increasing use of computer recycling is also lowering hardware costs.  Once you understand the basic tech, you can look around and spot ways to cut costs, or add function to your land.  Access to the internet opens up new market ideas for farmers seeking a profitable crop.  Small shops can take advantage of open source code to create globally visible storefronts.

Shop owners can still embrace the idea of greeting customers and explaining their products.  The only change is that sometimes they may find themselves using Translator to wish a regular customer halfway around the world a Happy Birthday via video chat.  Nearly every small business can get by with standard cable internet with plenty of bandwidth to spare.  As broadband expands through the last mile and beyond data infrastructure will be ready by the time your enterprise is ready to make use of it.

These days you can buy a structurally sound rural factory with power, data & a rail spur for a year’s lease cost in a major metro.  The challenge has been fighting the perception that you have to be in a big city to be a success.  If your business ships everything, why do you have to be in a big city?  It’s not like you’re going to get walk in business at your shipping warehouse.  In a numbers game, the savings on the lease alone would allow a business to pay the urban prevailing wage in a rural depressed market.  A single act that buys things money can’t.  As far as the looks go, soap, paint, and plants are cheap.  A location with ideal logistic conditions is priceless.

You shouldn’t just run out and sign the first lease you find either.  Small town and rural business has a pace and flow unique to each location.  It’s important to keep staff size in mind.  You can hire up all the open labor in town, but you run the risk of offending people with too much growth.  You’re going to need a solid training program to cover your initial hires.  Future training needs can be addressed through cooperative education agreements.  These agreements are worked out with the regional community or state colleges.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  Education is a business after all.

It’s important to speak with your trucking and rail brokers.  Your trucking interactions will likely improve by having small town and rural business locations.  These locations are located off toll roads and congested routes.  Routes already traveled by motor carriers.  You’d be surprise how much a trucker’s mood improves when they don’t have to pay tolls or navigate tight city traffic to reach you.  Your rail broker can address the possible changes or upgrades that are required to use your rail spur.  Their industry specific knowledge combined with increased rail use prospects will serve you well.  The community you settle in will also benefit from increased transportation funding.

Your CPA is also a valuable source of information.  There can be some decidedly advantageous tax benefits.  The “goldilocks” condition would be reopening a recently closed business with the benefit of a new technology or processes.  Many communities that need small to medium business to relocate offer rural development grants.  These grants are also open to locals who have a solid business idea.  In fact the origin of those grants are to encourage just that.   Small town and rural business startups benefit from a near family like support system.  It’s just the nature of a small community.

Tax rates tend to be lower in small towns and rural areas.  This is a barrier to large companies who attempt to negotiate taxes to relocate.  A set low tax rate is going to encourage the small employers though.  One and two person operations who produce what they need on a farm or in a shop can benefit immensely in this business climate.  The old rules that governed corporate growth don’t apply in a manufacturing economy.  The hard work you have always done does.

Small towns are a great place to raise kids.  The small population means small class sizes.  Children get more time with exceptionally well qualified teaches.  Most rural districts require teachers to take continuing education through their careers as a condition of funding.

Park spaces tend to be a bit more abstract.  We already know imaginative play encourages creative thought as your child grows.  The health benefits of raising a child in the country have been discussed for decades.  Children raised in the country don’t develop as many allergies as city kids.  Though the exact cause is debated, it’s widely agreed to be environmental.