Brookings: Accelerating Business

What if you found a way to help entrepreneurs and small businesses repopulate a downtown district?  And what if that made your community a place people would travel to from all over the state? Brookings, SD is off to a great start doing just that.  Their city council just passed the Retail Acceleration Grant Program.…

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1 Million Cups in Brookings Review

Imagine inviting local business people to have coffee every Wednesday at nine am and there is one or two speakers that spend six minutes presenting a premise, talking about and then a conversation between the speakers an audience occurs for 20 minutes.  You’ve just imagined what 1 Million Cups is like.  The Children’s Museum in…

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Commercial Revitalization Webinar

On April 29 at 1 pm,Tyler Abens and I will be featured on a National REALTOR webinar.  The webinar will showcase how becoming engaged in community and downtown revitalization efforts can lead to leasing/sales of vacant buildings and other positive impacts on commercial real estate development.  Targeted efforts involving REALTOR® associations, REALTORS® and community organizations…

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New Activities Guide for Webster City

Every year the Chamber partners up with the Daily Freeman Journal and releases the Activities Guide.  It’s a lot of fun for us because we get to find out about everything that is going on around the community.  Now, you can see it right here online!  

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Winter Projects from Houzz

It’s the season of staying at home … dreaming of projects to do during the winter.  Houzz gives us many choices! Dumpster Decorating: Furnishing Your Home With Repurposed Pieces What does all of this have to do with small business?  One of the hottest new trends of architectural salvage, reusing furniture and resale.  We’ve got…

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8th in the Nation

 Webster City, Iowa is officially a Connect Iowa certified Connected community. More than 30 Iowa communities are currently involved in some stage of the Connected program, but Webster City is only the second in the state to achieve the official Connected certification. The occasion was marked with a standing-room only public event Tuesday at Fuller Hall Reception Center in…

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Scary Stats

I was recommended to read The End of Membership As We Know It and told to go to www.xyzuniversity.com to find it.  I found it, ordered and will report on it in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, let me share a few Scary Statistics from their site. A culmination of Scary Stats as presented by XYZ University:…

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Be A Connector

Today I heard from Delore Zimmerman from Praxis Strategy Group.  Delore presented the Enterprising States research that is published by the U.S. Chamber Foundation.  (See this link for the full report and some interactive fun.) You might think this was boring.  On the contrary, anyone that lives in a town and works at or owns a…

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