Episode Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Less People, I’m Jenny Russell. So last episode, we talked about different ways that you can help a rural town, even if you do not live in a rural area. So if you live in a city or maybe you just don’t, you know, don’t live in your hometown, what’s some ways you can help a rural area? Last time, if you haven’t checked it out, we did do the top five reasons or top five ways to be supportive. And then today we’re going to do the next five. So, total of 10 ways to be supportive of a rural area.

Number six on the list, move your job back. If you, a lot of people don’t think there are jobs in rural areas. A lot of times rural areas, small towns hire a little bit differently than a city does. And we talked about that in our last episode as well. But we sometimes see a lot of success in people who go through a community that they want to move to and look at the employers in that community. Sometimes it’s small businesses and sometimes those businesses are looking to retire. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity in succession businesses in rural areas in the coming years as baby boomers retire out. Somebody is going to need to replace those people and a lot of those jobs are pretty solid jobs in these rural communities. Things like plumbers, electricians, construction people, all of those things and even more things.

Our small business owners are keeping those going and have built a career on those, but they may not have a succession plan at all. Go ask a current employer if they offer telecommuting, if there’s a job that you’re interested in, or if they offer any remote options. If they consider just some office hours in scheduled increments so that you can move your job back or help to fill those positions, even if it’s in a part-time interim basis as you are trying to figure out how to get back to a place you want to be or get to a place you want to be. Maybe it’s working part-time until you can get to that place, and then maybe you want to buy the business, or maybe you just want to work part-time in that business and so you can get enough work to start your own business, those type of things. So move your job back.

Number seven, start your own business. If you worked for a company and you have all those skills and now you can potentially use those skills to start something new, figure out how you can start that business in the place you want to be. Is it even possible? And a lot of times it is. Ask your local economic development office or a banker in that community for help and advice.

So Fiber Internet and Fiber to Promise has been around our area for a good 15 years, 20 years. And we actually had fibered premise internet before Kansas City, before some of the metro areas did. And with COVID, before COVID, and especially with COVID, about 37% of jobs now have the ability to work from a remote area, a rural and remote area, or they can work most of their job from that area. Fiber internet has not only changed where we can work, but it’s also changed how we entertain ourselves, which used to be seen as two drawbacks of living in a rural area. And now those qualms and those fears and those questions have been solved by there are fiber to internet. I know not all rural areas have that. I am agreeing with the federal government on this, that it is a commodity. It is something like rural telephone. It needs to be accessible for all rural areas and all people to be competitive in the world. And so I hope that number increases for all rural areas across the United States.

I know when I was trying to start a marketing agency, I thought, can you do that in a small town? I spent a good two, three years researching, figuring out how you find work, and kind of kept my job until I really thought, okay, I can do this, and struck out on my own that way. But it did take a good two, three years researching. I’m a very careful person, so I make sure it’s going to work. So it is possible. So start your own business.

Number eight, find a job. Like I said, look for those online job boards. We are getting a lot better at putting those up from our rural areas. We still have a lot of work to do. We’re not always on Indeed or some of those places, but some of the bigger employers are. A lot of times in these small towns, if there’s still a local newspaper, it might be worth getting a subscription to the local newspaper. That has always been how people have hired around here and still is. So you might find what is the local paper in that area and get a subscription of that. Sometimes there’s an online version even of that. So you don’t have to spend as much money, but you’d get more of a flavor for the community. You get those leads on places hiring that you might be able to find a job with. Also consider checking the websites and social media accounts of economic development agencies or chambers in that area. They often post leads for different jobs.

Check out the rural opportunity zones. That’s number nine. There’s a lot of participating rural opportunity zones in Kansas, especially, and those will help you pay back sometimes up to $15,000 of your student loans. So that is, you know, college prices go higher and higher. That is a great, great deal. That’s something that wasn’t in place when I moved back in, but it’s been really nice. It feels like I was like 40 years old before I finally got my student loans paid off. It just is a really big expense. So a lot of our counties are participating in rural opportunity zones.

Go to that website from the state of Kansas, and that will show you who does provide those rural opportunity zone matches. Sometimes there is a wait list, but as… loans are paid off, then those people go off the list and you can get on the wait list and eventually get on that list. You need to do that within a certain time period of moving back to the region that you want to live in. And it is for the counties that are the smaller counties in the state. So you can look that up on the Kansas State website, State of Kansas website, Department of Commerce, and Rural Opportunity Zones. That’s where you apply to that.

Number 10, support. If you cannot come back, at least do no harm. Be supportive in ways that you can. So be supporting those who do want to make a choice to be rural. I know that sometimes that’s not, that is something in the Rural Power Up and go report that the Office of Rural Prosperity in Kansas did with the Kansas Sampler Foundation a couple of years ago. Power ups are anybody that is 19 to 39 years old that has sorry, I think it’s 21 to 39 years old, that has chosen to be rural by choice. There’s a big difference between somebody who is stuck in a rural area and somebody that is there as a rural by choice person. That usually means, you know, and I think we really want to encourage our youth, move away, find out what the world is like, go find out what your passion is.

If you’re still getting that calling in your heart to come back to a rural area after that, you really know that’s the place you want to be. I don’t necessarily want people to feel like they’re stuck in a place because that doesn’t get them the best viewpoint of the area and it doesn’t make them the happiest. I definitely want people coming back with that spirit that this is a great place because it is. If you’re a rural by choice person, or if you’re not a rural by choice person, support those that are. In that Power Up and Go report, they said that one of the biggest obstacles is actually those people like parents and grandparents that are like, why are you back? Did you fail? And I mean, that’s not reality anymore. Rural people, you can do a lot of things from a rural area now. Just because you choose a rural area does not mean you’re less successful. Rule is not less successful. It’s just different. It has different parameters and different value systems maybe sometimes. And that doesn’t necessarily mean rule is a bad choice. Support those that make that choice, even if it’s not your choice. Validate them for making that choice and support them for what they have chosen.

All right, that is the rest of the top 10 lists on how you can support rule. I hope you’ve enjoyed this list. Give me your thoughts, swipe up, give it a like, give our episode a like, and follow our podcast. That will help us to continue to move up in the rankings and allow other people to be able to find this content. So share it, like it, help us out, and we will see you again on the next episode of Less People.