Wise Towns Will Spur Young Entrepreneurs

Are you listening, community leaders? 
A response to findings on a major survey of rural teens, reporting that many rural youth hope to own and operate their own businesses.

From The Daily Yonder: The time to listen to, encourage and educate these young people is now. The future of small towns will require helping entrepreneurial young people learn the skills and find the resources they'll need to succeed with local businesses.


It's also time to call on parents, too.  You are an integral part of shaping your child's thoughts on the community they live in.

As someone who grew up in a place where I believed you go to school, you graduate and then you go away so you can have a successful life, I challenge those in rural Nebraska to BREAK THAT MOLD.

My ideas to grow this state are simply this: Mentor our youth, invest in and energize our emerging leaders, believe in the viability of our communities ourselves, and encourage proactive, creative and innovative thinking, and REAL civil discourse about our future. “This isn’t way we’ve done it before,” should not be in our vocabulary when we’re discussing our future.

This is all well and good, but we really need to just do it and KNOW that it can be done, there are amazing examples right here in Nebraska.  Freak out about how you're going to do it later and never accept the status quo.


Read the full article: Wise Towns Will Spur Young Entrepreneurs | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

A great piece on Columbus, NE How a Small Town Can Compete | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

My perspective as a relocator: Why Breaking the Mold Worked For Me