Jack Schultz: A Man with 7 1/2 Keys to Small Town Success

by Louise Anderson, International Economic Development Council; Editor, Economic Development America

View Jack Schultz's 7 1/2 Keys to Small Town Success

Boomtown USA has garnered much interest among people concerned about small town vitality. Author Jack Schultz, above left, has become a popular speaker since the book's publication in 2004.

Jack Schultz is the CEO of Agracel, Inc., a firm that specializes in industrial development in small towns. His work led him to wonder about the roots of smalltown health and prosperity. That curiosity, coupled with some research, resulted in 2004 in a popular book, Boomtown USA: The 7 1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns. In it, Schultz attempts to answer a perennial question:What separates the thriving towns from the struggling ones?

Boomtown clearly has struck a nerve. The book is going into its fourth printing, and Schultz has been asked to do more than 200 talks since it published. Boomtown is part toolbox and part pep talk, a kind of self-help tome for towns.With great enthusiasm, Schultz cites example after example of successful strategies from small towns across the country and provides a framework for understanding why those strategies have worked.

It’s a book that will change the mind of even the most hardened cynic about the future of small town America. It advocates looking inward for the keys to success – nurturing vision and optimism, building on existing assets and leveraging leadership.

In this interview with Economic Development America, Schultz talks about some of Boomtown’s keys to success, some surprises he encountered in his research, and shares his recent thinking on the role of entrepreneurship in small town properity.

Leadership and the Effingham experience

Schultz has first-hand experience with the turnaround of a small town in economic crisis – that of his own town of Effingham, Illinois (pop. 12,384 in 2000), located almost smack in the middle of the state.

“In our town in the late 1980s, within about six months, we lost two major manufacturers, we had a third that was looking at moving its production to South Carolina, and a fourth was looking at consolidating one of its three plants. So, out of 4,000 higher-paying manufacturing jobs, we suddenly had 3,000 that were somewhat up in the air,” says Schultz. “The whole economy just dried up. Banks couldn’t make loans; dealers couldn’t sell cars.

“A small group of us got together and decided that we had to do some things.We could no longer be ‘held hostage’ by one of these big companies,” he says.

Effingham undertook a number of initiatives to change its fortunes, including a community planning process and marketing and image-building campaigns. “No companies came to town as a direct result of any of this,” Schultz writes in Boomtown, “but through these efforts the community began to recover its spirit, enthusiasm and optimism.”

After five years, the town attracted what would be the first of several new mid-sized manufacturers, and during the 1990s, Effingham realized a 70 percent increase in new manufacturing jobs. The story doesn’t mean to imply that attracting small manufacturers is the key to success; that’s simply what worked for that town at that time. Success came because community members came together and acted strategically to change the town’s fortunes.

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