{"id":5862,"date":"2014-02-04T01:26:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T07:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/?p=5862"},"modified":"2023-12-12T09:55:24","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T15:55:24","slug":"want-to-help-save-your-small-town-start-your-own-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/2014\/02\/want-to-help-save-your-small-town-start-your-own-business.html","title":{"rendered":"Want to help save your small town? Start your own business."},"content":{"rendered":"
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You want to make a difference in your town? Start your own business. Any kind of business! Photo by Becky McCray<\/p><\/div>\n

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People ask all the time how they can help save their small town. I always say, “start your own business.” Here are four reasons why starting your own business is the best thing you can do to help your small town prosper.<\/p>\n

1. When you start a business, you decide what values to put first.<\/h2>\n

“One of the best things you can do to drive societal change is start a successful business,” entrepreneur Fred Keller of Grand Rapids, Michigan said.<\/p>\n

Keller’s business, Cascade Engineering, doesn’t just look for a net profit. It looks at the return on people, the planet, and then profit. It’s the now-famous triple bottom line. The prosperity of his business lets him share the prosperity with his entire community. (More about Fred Keller and his community sharing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

When you start a business, you get to decide what matters. You don’t leave those decisions up to corporate headquarters far away. Your values are more likely to line up with the local values, the things that matter in your place.<\/p>\n

2. More small businesses means more jobs.<\/h2>\n

Many small town leaders worry about the availability of jobs. They obsess over recruiting that one big employer that would provide dozens or hundreds of jobs. That’s exactly backwards, it turns out. Professors Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr in the Harvard Business Review said that “more small firms means more jobs.” They\u00a0found that small, entrepreneurial businesses are highly correlated to regional economic growth and faster employment growth. (Read a summary of Glaeser and Kerr’s HBR article<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

If you never start your business, you will never hire anyone else or create any new jobs. The more of you that start businesses, the more jobs you’ll create. And that’s much more likely than succeeding at recruiting some magical employer from far away while competing against every other town in your region.<\/p>\n

3. Locally-owned small businesses are the key to local prosperity.<\/h2>\n

You may be tempted to think that your new business wouldn’t be important enough, that only the few outstanding successes, the super-star businesses matter. That’s wrong. Your business is one contributor to an overall prosperous town. Let’s look at the total return on local small businesses.<\/p>\n

Charles Tolbert, Baylor University, did the research and found local small businesses were associated with:<\/p>\n