Around here the ‘focus on local’ is booming

Maybe I had no need to address you over these past five years or so as if you didn’t understand, but maybe I did.

So many of the clients and visitors to Willow Tree and Chelsea are obviously interested enough in the independent option to come check us out. And more and more people are making a point of telling me that they read my articles and that they appreciate them, agree with what I write. I’m sure you can imagine how important that is to any writer. Is anyone reading? Do they keep reading?

Evidently so, but there is no way I can know unless people tell me. I can’t track it like I could if it was a facebook ad or any digital platform, so all I can do is keep writing until your fearless editor Hank Minckiewicz tells me that he’s getting threats.

I don’t know if you thought of this, but the articles I write have the capacity to be seen and read by every resident of Grosse Ile, Trenton, Riverview, Southgate and Wyandotte. It’s a pretty big potential reach, that’s a pretty big audience of people that generally don’t think of the matters I put before them, hoping that any percentage at all might put their automatic spending habits on at least temporary hold as they mull over these ideas.

Because that is what such habits are. Every one of us is on some sort of auto-pilot setting. My job, as I see it, is to encourage a timeout to think about this topic of my readership. It may surprise you, but something less than all of the readers I cited shop at Chelsea and/or Willow Tree, and if any decide to visit my stores, I will consider that to be time well spent.

But as I keep telling you, I get an outsized amount of gratification from hearing that any independent business benefits from my calls (and anyone else’s calls) to be a localist.

The chart here on this page illustrates the general idea, just as I have said so many times. As you drive around and think about it either in your head or in reality, I’ll bet each of my readers could compile a huge list of businesses that are owned, operated, and directed by neighbors in our Downriver community.

Many are friends, relatives, and next-door neighbors; people you know and that are part of your world beyond their business efforts. And, many of them are important to you personally. If they closed up shop for any reason, it would have a negative impact on you and your needs.

So, what seems to be happening more and more is what I advocate for so loudly, and that gives me the most satisfaction: More and more people know the difference between local and national, and more and more people are not just making decisions in favor of local options – they are becoming cheerleaders like me.

It feels really, really good to give ardent, earnest referrals to people for local places, and it feels even better when those people report back to me, echoing my enthusiasm. I love the feeling. But as good as it makes me feel on the direct level, it means so much more to me knowing that business was retained locally.

It takes more than just me, of course, and that’s why it’s exciting to consider that people are seeing this side job as a pretty good gig, championing a region that just plain hops, with countless raving fans and a populace that gets my sort of satisfaction from being a part of.

I know that I am directly responsible for retaining business in the region in which I live and work. I am directly responsible for having an UPward affect on the business community of Downriver.

No, I don’t take credit for it. I just know with every positive word for Local, I make a difference. I do not do this for my fortunes; I do this for the fortunes all around me, creating ripples that get bigger and bigger as more and more money is spent in the trading area.

I am so happy to see businesses that I consider to be cool and unique succeed and thrive. I am so satisfied to consider that as a result, more money is being spent there, and some of that money pays the rent or mortgage for the owner’s home.

I make a difference by shopping there, sure, but not always – even if I don’t shop there, I sing their praises and tell people how wonderful it is to have such places to go, right here in our area.

More and more, I am feeling these sentiments around me.

More people get it. More people put their money where their mouth is, and…more businesses are doing more business, creating more people that spread the world of all things local and independent.

Remember, you don’t have to hate national businesses to participate more fully in the push for local success. I have big reasons for my own attitude, but I’m not asking anyone else to join me on that war front. I’m asking you to love local businesses more, and to really understand how much every dollar spent matters so much more at places that may as well be family, even if they are not YOUR immediate family. I’m suggesting that if all of us thought local first and encouraged everyone else to think and act local first, this region would be even more vibrant.

The energy would be explosive. That’s no exaggeration, and who in their right mind would argue against that?