City among business-friendliest Concord is the place for rat-race-weary entrepreneurs to open a business, at least according to Jack Schultz. In his brand-new book, Boomtown USA, the 7½ Keys to Big Success in Small Towns, Schultz lists Concord among the top 100 rural communities in which to hang your shingle. The book is a how-to guide of sorts for businesspeople who are sick of big-city hassles and want to take their offices with them to the suburbs, er, agurbs. That's the name Schultz has bestowed upon more than 15,800 small communities across the nation. All of these towns and cities have a history of farming, are located outside of major metropolitan areas and have experienced population or job booms in the last decade. "Even though the national media may show rural America is losing population . . . there are some towns in rural America that have tremendous growth potential and are meccas for people who decide to let their work follow them." Schultz, the CEO of an Illinois-based company that finds rural homes for manufacturing and high-tech companies, spent three years crunching data from the 2000 Census looking for the most business-friendly hamlets. The 7½ steps alluded to in the title include adopting a "can-do attitude," raising up strong leaders and building your brand. The half-step is something Schultz calls the "seesaw effect." Oftentimes, the best business plans can be brought down by naysayers, he said. "It takes visionary, forward-looking people to lead a community," he said. "But if the curmudgeons rule the community, it's going to be tough for that community to move forward." Schultz visited many of the communities he wrote about and made phone calls to officials in some others, but Concord wasn't one of them. City leaders were pleasantly surprised when they discovered their fair city among the chosen few. Community Development Director Roger Hawk was eagerly awaiting a copy of the book yesterday. He attributes Concord's success to community involvement. "This city has taken on tough issues head on and had public debate and come up with good decisions," he said. Tim Sink, the president of the Greater Concord Area Chamber of Commerce, agrees that Concord is one of the nation's best-kept secrets and was thrilled with the book's ranking, but cautions that there's room to improve. "It's not always easy," Sink said. "The development process in Concord is not always perfect, but it's good and there's a real effort to improve it." "We are here to work with the community," he said. "We
are the community. They need to tell us what they want to see happen." Concord Monitor
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