6 Reasons Why You Succeed By Supporting Small Businesses
By: Molly Lovelady
It’s time to turn Small Business Saturday into every Saturday.
When you support a small business, you support the American Dream. You support local people and businesses who are tackling their own dreams head on and trying to create their best lives day after day — all while serving you and supporting and employing their communities.
Though these businesses may be small, their impact upon this country is in no way shape or form small. They are the lifeblood of our communities, they are what keep our cities alive and unique, and they make up an overwhelming majority of all businesses in the US (99.9 percent, according to Small Business Trends).
While we’re still in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, small and local businesses now more than ever need some extra love and support from you.
Small Businesses Are Struggling. Let’s Support Them.
As you already know, small businesses have taken the brunt force of the aftermath from the pandemic that is still yet to end.
Millions of small businesses are struggling to still keep afloat in the resulting economic crisis, with multitudes having already closed both permanently and temporarily.
While many have since reopened, many are still teetering on the edge of continuing to stay open and not collapse under the “weight of back rent, unpaid loans, and other expenses,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Not only do small businesses depend on you to survive and to thrive, but spending money on local businesses will benefit your life in a multitude of ways.
- You Create Jobs When You Support Small Businesses:
To create jobs or not to create jobs…that is the question (or is it a no-brainer?).
When you support local businesses, you help everyone stay employed — it’s a win-win- win (win for the small businesses, win for us for being proactive and creating jobs, and win for those job seekers looking to not work at a major corporation)!
So much of the US is fueled by small businesses, and that’s why supporting them is vital.
Here’s a quick list of just how crucial small businesses are in providing jobs:
- Small businesses employ 47.1% of US employees, according to Small Business Trends.
- Small businesses create “1.5 million jobs annually and are responsible for 64 percent of new jobs in the US,” according to the Small Businesses Administration.
- The White House says “small businesses create two-thirds of net new jobs and are responsible for employing nearly half of America’s workers”.
- Last but not least, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council says that from 2000 to 2019, small businesses created almost twice as many net new jobs as large businesses — 10.5 million jobs compared to their larger counterparts who created 5.6 million.
Long story short — there’s an overwhelming amount of statistics that show every decision we make to keep buying local is keeping almost half of our friends and family employed (no pressure) and not borrowing money from us.
2. You Help Our Environment When You Shop Small:
When it comes to showing our planet a little more love and care, shopping at a small business is one of the most down to earth (no pun intended) ways to do this.
When you buy from local businesses versus ordering from the big guys and having things shipped, you drastically reduce the processing, packaging, and transportation waste — you get the picture.
On the other hand, when we order from the big guys and have products shipped to us, it results in an overwhelming amount of waste and pollution. Every year “the US transports and ships $2.2 trillion of products, which is 1.1 billion gallons of fuel and 1 billion metric tons of CO2,” according to SHIFT Workspaces.
It’s simple. By supporting local businesses, you’re helping to take some of this impact off of the planet, including reducing fossil fuel, pollution, and the tons of packaging that ends up in landfills or the ocean.
Buying from closer businesses is a small step that can spur massive results for a planet that’s in dire need of your help.
3. You Choose Community With Character When You Choose Local:
Supporting local businesses means supporting businesses with character in your community and spurring the growth of more. This, in turn, makes your quality of living even better. Think about it — the businesses in your area play a huge role in how happy you are in that area and they directly impact the quality of your life.
Small businesses add a color and vibrancy to your culture and city that nothing else can replace. Without them, it would be a bland scene. Who wants to visit a place where everything is the same as every other place they’ve visited?
As Forbes points out in it’s call to action to support the local businesses, there is usually a “one size fits all” mentality when it comes to large businesses, and they do not offer as much personalized and customized service.
There are also bonuses in supporting small businesses because they more often than not get to really know their customers and offer a different level of service — one that’s above and beyond and that doesn’t view their customers as faceless transactions.
Support local, and you support the essence of your city’s personality.
4. You Support Nonprofits When You Spend at Small Businesses:
When you spend at a local business, your money goes a long way and affects everyone they support as well. Local businesses pour more back into their communities than the big guys. To them, everything is personnel because it’s where they live.
It’s not even close how much more small businesses support nonprofits versus big businesses. For example:
- Sustainable Connections points out that “small businesses donate almost 2.5x more per employee to local charitable causes than large, national competitors,” contributing 250% more than the big guys to charities.
- According to SCORE, “a staggering 75% of small business owners donate on average 6% of their profits to charitable organizations annually,” as well as “48% of small businesses support youth organizations, 42% donate to first responders, and 32% donate food or volunteer in soup kitchens”.
The small local businesses around you are the heartbeat of your community — what flows into them is in turn pumped into everything else around them.
5. You Support Local Economies When You Support Small Businesses:
Small businesses pave the way for prosperous communities, and you pave the way for prosperous small businesses. What you pour into supporting local businesses gets poured back into your local economy.
Here’s a few number ways you help everyone thrive when you invest in local goods and businesses:
- The U.S. Small Business Administration says that small businesses generate 44 percent of U.S. economic activity.
- Sustainable Connections also says, “For every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $68 recirculates and remains in our local economy. Only $43 remains in our community when it’s spent at a national chain”.
- SHIFT Workspaces says it best — “The money we spend locally will generate three and a half times more wealth for the local economy compared to chain-owned businesses”.
It’s simple — when you buy from one local business, you usually end up supporting many. Local businesses tend to support other local businesses. So, if you eat at a local restaurant, you’re probably eating locally sourced meat, produce, and so on!
6. You Support Creativity When You Support Local Businesses:
Shopping at local businesses means that you support their uniqueness and individualism and the variety and different choices of products that they offer that cannot be found elsewhere.
It means that you don’t merely want every option that’s available to you to be a cookie cutter “one size fits all” type deal.
“Buying locally is a whole different experience. Each small business in our community is unique, offering a true connection with customers and a real understanding of their visitors’ needs,” according to the Telegram.
As is put best by Independent We Stand, “You wouldn’t want your house to look like everyone else’s in the US. So why would you want your community to look that way?”
Supporting local businesses is supporting options and saying no to having only the same limited products available everywhere you go. After all, who wants to travel or go on vacation if that place has the same experiences, shops, restaurants and bars as your home base?
Take a chance on the little guys. It’s 100 percent worth it.
Simple Ways You Can Support Local Businesses:
Supporting local businesses doesn’t have to be over the top, excessive, or time-consuming. It can be as simple as spending a few extra dollars a month at a local shop or restaurant.
“If every US family spent an additional $10 per month at a local shop, the result would be an additional $9.3 billion directly returned to the local economy”, according to SHIFT Workspaces.
It’s everyday decisions that we make that may not seem like a big deal to us, but that make or break small businesses.
Easy ways to support local businesses:
- Dine out at a local restaurant once a month.
- Order take-out from a local spot once a month.
- Order gift cards from your favorite local places to use later or gift.
- Tip your serves at local spots generously.
- Buy their merch to show support.
Free ways to support local businesses:
- Tag friends on their social media posts.
- Share or repost their social media posts.
- Refer friends to your favs.
- Sign up for their newsletters.
- Write a raving review.
Join Our Mission:
Refer your favorite businesses at peepwaitlist.com to get them on the waitlist for shoutouts in our newsletter and a gift box with sweet swag. We want to show your fav businesses the love they deserve.
