Destination Wyoming Main Street: Four towns, four days, and 1,200 miles
In late April and early May, I’ll be taking my longest-ever speaking road tour – four towns, four days, and 1,200 miles to talk to business owners and community leaders in the small cities and towns spread across Wyoming. The state has plenty of nationally-known tourist destinations, such as Yellowstone, Devil’s Tower, and Jackson Hole, and Wyoming Main Street wants to help towns attract travelers to come off the interstate for more than just a pitstop on their way to those vacations.
Linda Klinck, the Program Manager for Wyoming Main Street, wants me to help the businesses in those small towns add more tourists and visitors to the local shoppers to help them succeed: “We don’t have the density. We are so spread out in such small communities. But here’s what we do have: millions and millions and millions of tourists coming through the State each year. I’m challenging the communities to become a Destination and get the people off the highways. The businesses have to be ready for them. You’ve got to provide them the experience they’re hoping to get when they get there.”
Linda and I first met nearly 20 years ago, when I spoke at her state’s Main Street downtown conference in Indiana. Then, Linda was part of the group in Logansport Indiana who sent a group of business owners through our Community Reinvention Program, where a group of business owners and a Community Leader all attend my Destination BootCamp, and they then enter a 4-month training program to help them successfully launch their new Destination Business goals. She saw how this helped her hometown of Logansport. Then, in 2015, Linda moved West and started leading Wyoming Main Street, and that’s when we reconnected again.
Wyoming Main Street is hosting and sponsoring these four workshops, and I’ll be posting the exact times, venue locations, and the cost to attend each Destination workshop in the coming weeks. For now, put these dates and cities on your calendar for my workshops:
- On April 30: I’ll be in the southwest corner of Wyoming in the city of Evanston, and then,
- On May 1, I’m in downtown Laramie, then,
- On May 2, my workshop’s in Wheatland, and finally,
- On May 3, I’ll be ending the speaking tour in northeast Wyoming in the city of Gillette.
Any business owner or community leader, even if you’re outside of the state of Wyoming, can attend the workshop and participate in the learning.
I love speaking trips like this one. Towns and small cities like these are crucial to our country’s well-being. The business owners in these communities are dedicated to a good life, they work hard, and they are proud of their businesses, homes, and the lives they have there. They deserve to succeed and there are tools and techniques that owners aren’t using that can help them tap the potential of their businesses, and I’m looking forward to helping them during these four days in this beautiful state.
Come stop by and learn something with me during my Wyoming Road-Trip.
Until next week,
Jon