Hi. My name is Isaiah.

When I first heard of shopping local instead of at chains or online, I didn’t get it. I’m a millennial and appreciate efficiency and tech-enabled businesses that make me smile.

And then I joined a business that helps service local merchants in cities. I started my own small business at one point, too. That was enough to get me to at least look for small businesses in town, but mostly cut corners and shop or eat at the places I knew.

It wasn’t until someone explained the economics of shopping local that I finally “got it” enough to think twice every time. When I go out to eat, or shop, or even think of services to help my small business grow, now I think local.

I’d like to share those same economics with you in this first email of a series I’ll send you: Thinking Twice About Going Local.

Here are the Statistics

Over the last ten years, the research group CivicEconomics.com has studied local merchants in 15 different cities in the USA. Their research shows how money flows to metropolises, like Seattle or Dallas, based on the profits of business leaving town forever.

That’s for real: spend a dollar somewhere other than local, and the vast majority of that dollar leaves your community with zero chance of coming back. Spend local, and you build your community.

Local Businesses Reinvest

The simple economics of local work like this: when a local merchant, banker, or business owner turns a profit or has to buy stuff, where do they spend that money? Right back into their local community.

It’s a reinvestment in your city.

So next time you open your wallet, think twice about whether that’s going to buy a muscle car for an executive in New York, or help a local owner grow a small business that reinvests into the local community.