Five Minute Friday: Pink Friday: Support Small First

Foreign. Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, welcome back to the holiday five minute Friday edition. Today is a very special day because it's Pink Friday. And this is the day where globally we see small business owners of all types, not just boutiques, coming together to collaborate and to encourage the mission of shopping small first before the big box stores, before Black Friday, even before Small Business Saturday, which I love. I just hate that it's an afterthought. So I want to team or I want to encourage you today if you haven't yet teamed up with someone to run an event or a promotion or just give shout outs to fellow small business owners online, today's the day to do it. Now I wanted to come today on Pink Friday. I know you're busy, I know it's hard to implement any tip I'm going to give you today. But whether you use this tip today or you come back to it and you use it next week or maybe next year on Pink Friday, I, I want you to have this tip and this piece of content handy. Now let me go back before I got into business at the Boutique Hub. Before we started this company, I worked in economic development and in that I worked with our state legislature, I work with chambers of commerce, small business development centers, economic development, Main street, all of that stuff. And one of the biggest topics that we talked about when, when this was like a measure of our success was local economic impact. This is a number that really makes the world go around in business development. And so when you're telling the story of your business to the media or on Pink Friday or in a social media post, I want you to share with people what is the power of your business's local economic impact. It doesn't matter if you're a storefront or if you are an online business or you have a warehouse in your community, there is a direct correlation between your business being in your community and the local economic economic impact. So I want to give you this formula and I encourage you, please find this number and promote it. When you are talking about who you are and why you're in business and what does it mean to your local community, especially when someone's coming in and asking you for another donation or someone's talking to you about how much they love Sheen and temu. This is a very handy number to have just in case you need to use it. So here's how you calculate your local economic impact. First, I want you to start by adding up a few numbers from your profit and loss statement. I want you to first look at what was the dollar amount total in the last months of payroll that you've paid, including paying yourself, by the way. So you're going to add up your payroll, you're going to add up any rent or lease expenses. You're going to add up any banking fees or anything related to a lease or a mortgage or anything you have with your property. I want you to go in and add up the value of all of the donations you've given, whether they're cash donations or the value of the goods or services that you've donated in the last year. I want you to go in and add up what is the total dollar amount of any local supplies that you bought in the community. So it could be an office fridge, it could be working with a local attorney, it could be your local insurance agent. Really, all the dollars you've spent in your local community, from Walmart to the grocery store to the liquor store, add it all up. And then finally, I want you to add in what did you pay in local sales and property tax. When you get a final number, which is going to be astounding, I promise you, I want you to take that number times seven, because studies show that the average dollar turns in a local community seven times. I'm frightened to know in the future that that number will probably diminish because of the increased demand of shopping on sites like Sheen and teu, which immediately takes those dollars out of your community. And not only that, but out of your state and out of our country, which is very scary when you look at the value of that number, right? All of the dollars you've spent time 7. That is your local economic impact. That is the number that employs police officers, teachers, firemen, any local officials. It builds parks and it builds roads, and it builds opportunity for other small businesses like you to thrive and flourish if you didn't have that opportunity to build local economic impact. Right? A community can't operate, your kids can't go to school. That's the dollar amount that goes back to public education and healthcare and all the other opportunities for, you know, growth in your local community. So calculate that number and I want you to share that number as widely as you can and encourage your local business owner friends to do the same. If you have a great relationship with your local chamber of commerce or economic development corporation, talk to them about that number and see what other resources they have related to it. I guarantee you many of them do, coming from a former EDC executive director myself. All right, that's it. I can't wait to hear your number personally. Please message me. I want to know what your number is. I think it would be so cool to celebrate your number with you. So make sure if we are not friends already. Over on Instagram, it's all the behind the scenes, the boutique hub and family life and being a mom and a CEO all at the same time. It's A.J. alderson. No, my name is not A.J. it's Ashley Jean. It's A. J. Alderson on Instagram. Send me a message with your number. I would love to celebrate it and shout it from the rooftops with you. All right, that's it. You guys have an amazing Pink Friday. I can't wait to see all the photos, all the videos, all the reels that you guys post. I'm going to be out in the community celebrating here as well. That's it. Let's make it an amazing day and I can't wait to hear your feedback. All right, take care, guys. Thanks for listening, guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.