09/30/2026
Repost from Small Town Startup 🚀
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I felt this HARD this week watching the conversation around our local theater. For years, I heard people complain that there wasn’t enough to do here. We lost our old theater and bowling alley and people wanted more entertainment and more things for the kids to do. At least that’s what they said on Facebook groups.
Then someone actually did it. After multiple people tried over the years, someone took the enormous risk of restoring a long-empty downtown theater and bringing movies back to our community. Almost immediately, the conversation became about the prices, the movies, the concessions, the schedule and everything they should be doing differently.
I found myself genuinely frustrated reading it. Not because businesses should be immune from criticism but there’s just a big difference between constructive feedback from someone who wants a business to succeed and criticism from someone who had no intention of supporting it anyway.
Other entrepreneurs are watching. They’re watching someone pour their money into the exact thing a community said it wanted, only to be met with a list of reasons people still won’t show up. Then they’re doing the math.
You don’t have to support every business or spend money somewhere that doesn’t work for you. But, if we want more businesses, better businesses and more investment in our small towns, we should probably think about the messages these actions send to the next person considering taking that risk.
