FOR LOCALS AND LOCAL LEADERS

Can one person really change a town?

A town is a lot of people with a lot of opinions. It's fair to wonder whether one person can really shift it.

I believe one person can, and three ideas sit behind everything in No Better Place.

Start with what's in the cupboard

You don't need a goal worked out backwards from the finish. Start with who you are, what you know and who you know, then build forward with whatever's available.

Start cooking with what's in the cupboard.

Keep showing up

One person who stays consistent and committed can shift a whole town over time. It happens through refusing to go away, rather than through volume or aggression.

You don't need everyone to agree. You need to keep showing up.

Hold the tension

Change needs someone to hold the gap between what is and what could be, until the town is ready to step into it.

People who don't get there usually buckle under the weight, or force the pace and lose everyone.

Three years later

Think of a local champion three years after she backed an idea for her town.

It worked. It was slow, and it was hard, but it worked.

The first year was mostly her. Writing, testing, researching, failing at some things, getting a small win, then another. She nearly gave up twice. Both times she went back to the notes she'd made at the start, and remembered why.

The second year, she had a crew. Three people who saw what she saw.

They met fortnightly. They argued about the details and agreed on the direction. They put their own time and a small amount of their own money into making it real.

The third year, other people started noticing, because they could see it.

A young family had moved onto a local property. A new business had opened on the main street, connected to what her crew had started. The school had two more enrolments.

She's still carrying it, but now other people are carrying parts of it with her.

And the town feels different. More alive. More possible.

Nobody gave her permission to do this. Nobody asked her to. She decided this place was worth her energy, and she backed herself.

Her story is an illustration. No real town or person sits behind it.

What it comes down to

You don't need me to get started. That's why I wrote the guide. Everything I know about getting an idea off the ground in a regional town is in its pages.

The principles apply to anything worth building in a regional community: dream big, back yourself, hold the vision, test before you tell, build with evidence, and carry it for a decade.

No better place.

The full guide, No Better Place, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.

You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.