100. Why We Can't Shame People Into Shopping Local

Our guest on today's episode is Charlie Burch. Charlie owns a website development company called Third Eye Web Strategies, and she and I, um, actually met again on the internet, which is kind of a fun thing that happens to me sometimes. I get to meet really cool people. Um, she followed the podcast and had commented on it, um, in a Facebook group that I, I recommend called Downtown Happy Hour. She is one of the people that said, yeah, you know, I love the website, love the podcast. And so she and I got into a separate conversation. We did a Zoom call. And she had some really specific thoughts about shopping local, and how we can encourage that behavior in people in our communities without always wrapping it in shame. We can't shame people into taking action. And Charlie not only understands that, but she's got some really strong feelings about what's small business owners could do and maybe even should do as we think about how we encourage people to choose us from a place of loyalty instead of a place of just blind obedience or blind following, like we have to do it because they're local. It's a challenging— it's a challenging topic for me, I'm not gonna lie. These are things that would have a hard time saying just looking right in the eyes of the business owners that I support in my role. And yet I definitely think it's something we need to open ourselves up to. You know, how do we help our local businesses get better so that every single day they're earning the business of the patrons that they have versus saying you have to shop with me because I'm here? Uh, it's a fascinating conversation. This one in particular, I would love to hear your, your thoughts about this. Um, does this resonate with you? What, you know, what do you see in your small towns as it relates to shopping local? Is it kind of a stick that we beat people over the heads with, or is it— have you figured out a way to create, um, that real loyalty and allegiance in a way that's more coming from a more inspirational place instead of shame? Would love to hear your stories, but in the meantime, enjoy Charlie and her just very articulate, very thoughtful viewpoint on how we can really support shopping local. Enjoy this chat with Charlie Burch. Well, hey Charlie, welcome to the Growing Small Town Show.

Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. I've had the pleasure of listening to the show, and it's always fun to be on the other side.

So yeah, yeah, I'm super excited about our topic. But first, just for the listener's benefit, it might be kind of nice if you share just, just a bit about what your background is, and then we'll get into this big topic of shopping local. I'm so excited for the topic. It's gonna be awesome.

So I mean, I grew up in a small town that was or is, um, very tourist-centric. It's a summer resort beach town, 7-mile-long sandbar island. Um, and then I went off into the world, lived all over the world, you know, big towns, small towns, big cities, small cities. Um, my, you know, my educational background is in dance and psychology, and my professional background is in online business with a focus on branding and website design. And when we moved back here my husband and I, my then boyfriend, now husband and I moved back to this area in Southern New Jersey about 5 years ago when my dad got sick and I was working remotely with all my coworkers were disparate and I was like, this is kind of lonely and I don't really know anybody here and I want, I looked around and I thought, how can I take some of the skills that I got out in the world that there's a gap here and how can I bring those skills to my community. And so I just started going to networking events saying like, yeah, I can help you with branding. Yeah, I can help you with your website. Yeah, I can help you with social media, which I don't do anymore. And it just kind of snowballed from there. And that was about 6 years ago. Yeah. And so here we are. And now I've really decided to focus my energy on brick and mortar businesses and helping them showcase the amazing in-person experiences that they provide to their communities online, because I think that that's an underserved population. And I think it's also a really important segment of the small business community. I think our society needs to have small businesses to stay in touch with our humanity. Yeah, totally agree. So it's a passion of, you know, a labor of love, if you will, to do that work.

So what's, uh, so, so very, very cool. Um, and I can tell you without question, we, we need that kind of development, that kind of thought process for a lot of the brick and mortars, not just on Main Street in my community, but in all the communities that we serve. Um, what do you think is the biggest challenge maybe to helping? Like, is— do you feel like there's a gap in understanding Do you have to do a lot of education to help them understand what they're missing? Or are, are like, you know what I mean? Because I think that's, that's what it feels like to me, that they just go, I'm a local business. What do I need the internet for? I'm a local business.

Well, you know, so recently I got connected with a gentleman, Gordon, and he runs a website called Ask a Business Expert. And he asked me if I would come on and do an article on website design. And we kind of looked through Google and all the SEO and what's the topic, and we settled on this question of, does my business need a website? Yeah. And, you know, a lot of my colleagues in this digital marketing space would be like, yes, yes, you do, you must have a website. But like, let's be real, people have been building businesses without websites before, and they're going to continue to build. You don't need to have a website. I'm not going to sit on my expert perch and tell you you have to have a website or you're going to be an utter failure. And I'm also not going to tell you that it's silver, you know, a magic bullet that's gonna fix your business, right? But if you're gonna do it, do it in a way that doesn't damage your reputation, right? Do it in a way that reflects your business. And that's, that's the big shift for me actually in working with people, is I used to really bang on the drum, have a website, you need a website. You don't. But if you're going to have one, Do it right. Do it in the same, with the same amount of love and care as you stage your store or you design, you know, your atmosphere of your restaurant or that you interact with your customers in real life. You want your website to be a portal, a snippet, you know, an opportunity for people who might not just happen upon you to dip their toe in the experience of being your customer. And too often what I see in this space is that people view a website as kind of a static transaction billboard, and really instead it's a customer service tool, it's a storytelling, you know, tool, it's a dynamic marketing asset. And the more you know about it and how it works, the more you're able to leverage it in your business. And that's where I feel like a lot of people are not on board. They either don't know how to use the technology because they have decided they don't know how, or they've hired somebody who's implementing this wrong strategy for their business because they're trying to make you an online business, they're trying to make you an e-commerce business, and you're not. And that's a different business model entirely. So like, just don't go there. But before COVID it was a lot of like, why do I need a— to what you're saying, like, why do I need a website? I'm a local business. I have foot traffic, I have word of mouth. That's all true. And a good website will help you with that. A good, a good website is going to make it easier for your word of mouth marketing team to promote you because they have something to reference, you know.

Exactly.

A good website is going to showcase you well on Google Maps and drive more foot traffic to your store. And so that's why I always tell people like, I'm here to help you generate more foot traffic.

Not to become an e-commerce store owner or a business owner.

There's certain businesses, and those are the types of businesses I prefer to work with, that are experience-based, and they're never going to, you know, a retail boutique could say, you know, forget this, I don't want the overhead, I'm gonna have an online boutique, I'm gonna do everything e-commerce, I'm gonna head up, you know, a Poshmark or I'm gonna sell on Etsy, like, you could do that and you'd probably save money and maybe make more, I don't know, but you definitely would save money. But, you know, a restaurant, a yoga studio, a hair salon, you know, a crafting space, those types of tangible sensory businesses aren't appropriate for online. But that doesn't mean they can't leverage the power of the internet to help them promote themselves, grow, stay connected with their audience in between touchpoints.

Right.

And so that, that's become the conversation now of like, everybody kind of gets, oh, COVID happened. Oh, I need a, I need a website.

Yep.

But the idea of what it's for is kind of become the conversation. So yeah.

Well, and we could have a whole podcast just about this topic alone. But today we want to talk about shopping local. So Um, you've talked a bit about, you know, shaping from— you talk about experience-based businesses or creating a, a feel and a high-touch website that basically is a reflection of an in-person experience, right? Like in a brick and mortar. What do consumers want as it relates to shopping local, do you think? And how and where did your— because you have strong feelings about this. And I've shared with you, and we'll talk about it, this is a super touchy subject because I'm an economic— I'm technically in economic development, which means I'm here to support our local business owners, right? That's one of the things that I do in the work that I do. However, the flip side of that is that I'm also here to support the people that live in my community and that just have to shop here, right? So it's not It's not that I only support business owners. I support everybody that chooses my community as theirs. And sometimes, um, then our audience can't see me, but sometimes there's a little bit of butting heads between those two parties. And sometimes it's in the title of a shop local campaign. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, what you've come to understand, what you've come to know, what your, what your point of view is. And we're just going to get right into it because it's fascinating.

Well, so, you know, coming back to my background, I— our town where I grew up, like I said, is 7 miles long, 1 mile wide, sandbar island. It's a summer town. There's lots of things to do in the summer, and the rest of the year there's really not very much going on. And when we moved there, my family had originally— had previously lived in the DC Beltway area. My mom and dad commuted to work. I don't know. An hour plus each way in traffic, and they were just like done with driving. They were done with shopping malls. They were like, we're gonna go to this little island and bike everywhere. And this was, you know, '90, 1990, so a lot of these conversations weren't happening yet. They were working remotely. That wasn't a thing yet, you know. They were—

parents were ahead of them. They were part of the cool town. Yeah, I love it.

So my mom has always been very adamant about supporting local business.. And as a young person, I was kind of like, but I want to go to the mall. Like, I want to go to the Foot Locker that has the coolest new shoes, and I don't want to just shop at this place down the road. But she was always very adamant about we were going to shop on the island, we were going to shop local, like way before, um, that was a conversation that was so much in the mainstream. And what that taught me was one, an appreciation for how important local businesses are to the fabric of our cultural landscape, right? Right. Like the coffee shop where the local photographer shows their photos and the local jewelry maker sells their jewelry and the local farmer sells their strawberries. Like all those things make that shop so unique. And it's the kind of place that now when I run my Airbnb, I'm like, you're in Ocean City for the weekend, you have to go to 4th Street Cafe, right? It's the place, it's the fixture. And without those fixtures, because I've lived in places that don't have those fixtures, it's like, welcome to another generic place that you could care less about, you know? Oh, it's got a Chipotle. Oh, it's got a Target. Oh, it's got a Home Depot. Big whoop-de-doo, right? No one cares. There's nothing unique about it.

Can I just stop you one real, real quick? I don't want you to lose your train of thought. Will you be okay if I interrupt you like this? Yes. Okay, you'll keep, you'll keep your thought. Because it's funny, like when I first came back to Oak— so I'm from this town of 1,800 people— I remember, and I still, I still make the joke all the time, like I have now officially lived for 14 years 70 miles away from the closest Target. And I'm, I've lived to tell you this story, you know, like here I am. And I have, because at the time, at the time, um, you know, I'd gone away to college and like those, those modern-day can be like really big conveniences, the things that we kind of cherish. Like shopping in a Target is still— it's like a thing. They call it a Target run for a reason, right? It's like a thing. It's like a whole thing. It's the experience, it's the coffee, it's the— you know, now they've got Chip and Joanna stuff everywhere, and there's just huge— you tool through there and it's like a thing. Um, but you just said something that I think is so important because Part of this is recognizing as small communities that it doesn't make any sense to bitch, moan, and bemoan the stuff that we do not have and that we never will have. My community will never have a Target. That's— we're not in their footprint, and yet we still talk about it like it matters so much. And so we're talking about how important those niche businesses really are, and I just wanted to point that out because, man, it's, it's common for us to want franchises Right. And there's some, there's some value in that. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to also— there's the intent with this conversation, and isn't, isn't no way to disparage either thing, right? It's just to recognize that we're kind of hardwired to point out what we don't have instead of really looking at what we do. It seems to be a thing.

Well, we are. So what I think I might have left out of my intro is I also have a background in psychology, and part of that is neuroscience. And we are actually really hardwired, right, to notice absence of things.

Yeah.

More than the presence of things, unless the presence is danger, when—

exactly—

absence of safety is what we're noticing.

Exactly right.

Survival, right? And so to your point, you know, as a kid, I wanted to go to the mall. I didn't want to go to the local surf shop. And now I want to live in a town that has a surf shop. Like, I, I've lived in all the kinds of places. I lived in the big city, I lived in the small city. And when I travel, I'm much more inclined to go to a small town with a lot of character than I am to go to a resort. Like, that's my preference. But as somebody now who lives near the town where I grew up Yeah, but not in the town where I grew up. You know, my municipality, the— it doesn't have the place around the businesses. There's no placemaking strategy here. Okay, we have zigzag roads, you have to drive everywhere, you get to the parking lot and there's like 5 stores. And a lot of the stores are from a time— the businesses are from a time when people had to buy local.

Yeah.

And now they don't have to buy local. So like, okay, that's not the right type of business for physical— look, like, certain types of businesses are going to inspire people to shop local, and the types of businesses are going to inspire people to shop local are niche businesses that have experiences built around them. Because yes, Convenience is attractive, but also convenience is not a lifestyle that's full. Convenience is part of a lifestyle, right? Doing this local lifestyle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's come back to that because I want you to finish your— you had said you had started— thought I interrupted— was that your, your mother was deeply like, she embedded in you this shop local. So the first thing you noticed was an appreciation of niche businesses because your mom was like, No, we're not just going to where everything looks the same and everything feels the same, right? So then what else did that—

in that same vein, my mom shopped local to a fault. She was loyal to businesses that didn't earn her business.

Okay, so what did that look like in, in practicality for you? Like, and why did you know the dry cleaner keeps shrinking our clothes?

Why do you keep going to that dry cleaner? Because they're local. And that's where the part— and this is how our conversation started— of, yeah, I truly believe that, yes, and the— on the high level, on this meta level, like, we as a society have to start to understand how interconnected everything is. And then when we only shop from Amazon, when we only drive an hour away to the closest Target to buy how that trickle out of the money affects our at-home. Like, we have to understand that. But as business owners, and this is something that I've had to grapple with over the years, even as not a physically located business, I am not entitled to a successful business.

I want— I'm not— I let that sit. Like, I wanted to jump in so bad, but I let it sit because I really really want people to hear you say this out loud. This, I think, I think when you shared that line with me and I was like, oh, it like hit me in the gut, of course, because it's one of those truths that I think on its face seems pretty obvious, but in practice it doesn't, because this is where we end up supporting local businesses to a fault. And wow, I mean, it honestly makes me feel a little queasy to even think about talking about this out loud, given what I do and where I do it. And Um, but I hope I— okay, so here's my disclaimer. I hope that everybody listening to this, whether you are in my community and I've helped you with your business or you're not, you know, and you're in a, and you're in a town where small businesses matter because they do, they desperately matter. Please hear me that I only engage in conversations with people that are intelligent, that have, um, that have some experience based on the topic and that have a desire to make things better. Okay, so this conversation to me, it isn't— it's almost like we're reverse shaming. We're gonna talk about shaming in just a second. But we can't run around yelling at everybody. We can't shame them into buying local. And I think that's a bit of the flavor and nature of the campaigns as they stand currently. And this truth that nobody's entitled to a successful business. Yes. Is it risky? Yes. Is it your livelihood?

Yes.

Is it blood, sweat, and tears and all of those things? Of course. Yes, yes, yes, and yes to all of those things. It still doesn't mean that you're entitled to success. Okay. And so when we're talking about shopping local, we're talking about consumer attraction, right? But really that's the thing we're not talking about. Instead, we're talking about, well, I'm here and I live in your town. So you should support me.

Yes, the should is a dangerous slippery slope. You know, years ago I did a year-long, basically a mindfulness practice where I said, what would happen if I took should out of my vocabulary?

Yeah, it's amazing.

It's amazing. I must drink water. I want to go to the park and ride my bike. Like, when it's should, it's almost always someone else's voice shaping your behavior, someone else's values shaping your behavior. And what we really need to figure out how to do as people who want to elevate and modernize and move forward our small communities is figure out how to position the main street communities, the businesses that, you know, fill them in as amenities. To the community, right? When you, when you talk about competing, and, and this is, you know, I don't believe that e-commerce is the biggest threat to Main Street.

Oh, interesting, because I think you would say that it is, right?

I think refusal— I think that glorifying the past is a huge threat to Main Street. Romanticizing the past— there's— it's really easy to look back and say, oh, good old days. But one, the good old days were only good for now. Certain group of people. There's a lot of people that it wasn't very good for. And also we're in a different time. You know, people want things to do and places to go and people to do them with. And when you're just selling stuff, you're constantly going to be racing to the bottom. So like, to me, the biggest threat to Main Street is transactional, like being hyper-transactionally focused. And ignoring all the sensory components of, right? Like, so we have to figure out how to position Main Streets as an amenity. The businesses that are there have to figure out how to create experiences around their offerings that can't be replicated online. And we have to do that in a way that is exciting for people and draws them in and is attraction-based.

Right.

Because if you're talking about like, you really got to buy your ChapStick across the street instead of buying your ChapStick on Amazon, like, why should I go out of my way to buy my ChapStick from you if I'm paying a premium for it and I'm paying for gas and I have to find parking? It's a fruitless argument.

Yeah.

But if the person who owns the store that sells the chapstick is really wonderful, and they play up their strengths. And I want to go to, you know, Sally Mae's Market and buy my chapstick from Sally Mae because I love Sally Mae. And I'm like, that is a different type of value.

Yeah. Okay, so basically, like, what we're, what we're talking about is the balance of rationalism and emotionalism. Like, there's both things play a factor in why we choose what we choose. I mean, they just do, right? And so basically, I, like, I experienced this firsthand where I got, I got beat up really hard about a particular choice I made to purchase something not locally. Okay, like this one specific thing because of who I am and what I'm doing and what I say I'm about. I got phone calls, Okay, it was really ugly. And I was so upset and hurt right away because I was just like, oh my gosh, like all the things I'm putting in this building that I've purchased locally. But the truth is, like, since— okay, when this happened to me, and again, I haven't, I haven't talked overly publicly about that situation. It's a handful of people know. And again, it's not about the person. The person was doing what a lot of us do. I mean, honestly, this is kind of a thing. It's why I was like, oh my gosh, Charlie, we've gotta talk about this. Because essentially what this person was suggesting that I do is pay a premium for less convenience, um, more work, more work because it was a building material. Like, so not only were you saying I had to buy a local, but I had to pay more. And then they'll say, well, you should pay more when you're buying it local. I should? How about this? I will. I absolutely will. But you cannot miss the mark on every other thing and still expect me to do that, right? And as, as a person that supports our local businesses, is that— I mean, that's a pretty high bar to set for everybody's behavior. I mean, come on, right? Like, so, so I actually experienced it firsthand, and it was so frustrating to me. Because I went out of my way to try to use this person for that thing. And it all the way around, I could not make it make sense. It wasn't. I mean, it wasn't. It was an easy decision for what we were talking about, let me tell you. And I bought 90% of everything else right here in my small town. I don't know, man, it was so— it was so frustrating because I thought, We have to expect more of our businesses too. And if they, if they don't, if they don't have what we need, like if they're, if they're whining and complaining, and they're kind of taking that like, you should do this with the shaming finger thing, then we need to figure out how to help them understand their role in it too. Right? And that's, I want to be a resource for them. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing to attract people? Right?

Yeah, what I say to people, and in addition to my one-liner of, you know, you're not entitled to a successful business, this additional part is people will work hard to make money, but they are not going to work hard to spend it with you. Oh my goodness, if you don't make it easy and enjoyable, yeah, people are not going to be motivated. They might think they are, They might profess they are, but when it comes down to it, when they're home from work and they kick their shoes off, they're not going to work hard to support you in ways that you don't work hard to support yourself.

Right. And that, that is, that's exactly, that's exactly why I also agree that I don't think e-commerce is the biggest threat. I don't. And in fact, I wish more of us could start to think about e-commerce like Amazon being a convenience factor that tips the scales in small towns' favor. Yeah, I mean, so like, you know, if I couldn't get things shipped to me second day by Amazon that I can't get in my small town, it would be that much more inconvenient to live here, right? That's just a choice, right? That's the truth.

And you know, like, when I think about the things that I buy from Amazon You know, I buy diapers for my son. I buy, you know, some little waterproof timer for my shower for the shampoo I bought from my sister-in-law that's good for my hard water that has to be left in for exactly 5 minutes or my hair comes out greasy. Like, I buy these very specific things that I know no matter how many times I visit the 5 shopping centers in my area, they aren't going to have those things, or they're going to have some version of that thing where I have to make a compromise. And so a few days ago, actually, we had, um, an expert panel on consumer behavior over on Clubhouse in the community that I facilitate over there. And one of the—

we'll link to in the show notes. Yeah, we'll want to make sure we link to all those things. Yep.

So Christopher Gray, who is one of our panelists Paul Jensen. He's a consumer, uh, customer psychology expert. And he was saying, you know, what he tries to do with his customers, which are usually bigger corporations, is try to identify the places— instead of trying to trick people or shame people or coerce people into doing business, it's like, okay, where are the friction points? Where are the places that even if they're doing business with us us already, they're making some kind of compromise in order to do it. And so what we're asking a lot of times right now of our consumers who are at the bottom of the totem pole, by the way, business owners are not the bottom of the totem pole. They are there to serve the community members. The community members are the bottom of the totem pole. They have the least amount of power. They don't have any power over what businesses are in their community until they're like, using their dollars, you know, it's like, anyway, he's saying, you know, where can you reduce the amount of compromise that people have to make in order to do business with you? And I think for me, and I was trying to give an example of this 'cause our moderator was like, I don't understand that. You know, I wanna buy a slide, a toddler-friendly slide for my deck for my son. Well, there's no toy store in my community. So I could go to Target, which I do have, and I could buy it, or I could go on Amazon and buy it, you know. So that's a compromise. Do I want to buy semi-local or do I want to buy from Amazon? I just want to buy my son a slide. But then there's another compromise of like, okay, I want to get a burrito. I could go to Chipotle or I could go to this other local burrito place. Well, I have my son, I'm in COVID, I can't go into the place to pick up the burrito, and Chipotle has a drive-through. So like, I want to shop at the local business, and I get that they have less manpower. I have less manpower. I get that they have less financial dollars to put towards marketing and branding, all these things. I have that same problem. But when you sit down and look at your business and you think here are some places that I know I could create less friction for my customers, an easier experience for them, and you say, meh, that's disrespectful. Like, if you, if, if you're not going to put in the extra time and energy to make it easy for me and your paycheck depends on it, why should I take my paycheck and give it to you and make my life more difficult.

Like, well, and I think, I think it's also— so I love this, and this is, this, it's such an important discussion because I think the goal here is to say, okay, if, if you're, if you're a business owner and you're listening to this and you feel a little pissed off about this conversation, like if it makes you get a little fired up, then, then my goal is to say, okay, here's some, some ways you can think about this because Right. We are not shaming the business owner in this conversation either. We're just trying to help everybody recognize the actual law of economics at play here. Right. This is, this like consumer behavior. That's what this is. And so, so I think along with that conversation of like, where are the friction points? If you can't reduce that friction point, so let's say it's price because we're always, we're almost always in a lot, not always, I shouldn't say, maybe not even almost always, but often. We end up paying more because like I live in a very rural place. So just to get products here, it's just more expensive, right? So prices, and it's an excellent discussion point, right? So it's a point of friction right away. I'm making a compromise because I'm paying a little bit more. So if you can't reduce that barrier or you can't reduce that friction, what other buying factors can you amp up to make the positive experience of those pieces so much more that this becomes not such an issue anymore to me, right? So like you said, like chapstick, the chapstick and Sally Mae. Sally Mae, if she gives my kid, um, a sucker, or if Sally Mae remembers my birthday, or if Sally Mae's just a lovely, endearing woman and I feel good every time I'm in her presence, then I'll pay 20 cents more for that stupid stick of chapstick because I don't that the cost isn't the thing. So we, we all have the opportunity to give our customers something that, that lessens the friction of just running a small business in a small place. Like we have those. So it's, it's recognizing that there's, you know, it's levers, right? That they can pull.

People want inherently without even thinking about it. People are going to do the metabolically least expensive thing. So convenience is attractive.

It always is.

Whether you know it or not, you are going to, out of survival mode, take the path of least resistance. But we also really, in our DNA, we have the need to be seen and heard and feel like we belong. And if you have the urge in your DNA to open, the impulse to open and maintain a physically located business, lean into that, right? Lean all the way into that. Know your customers, ask them their names, get their birthday on checkout. Like, give them, give them that relationship that our world is just starving for. We all just spend hours scrolling, scrolling, scrolling with this illusion of a network, this illusion of connection to people that we haven't talked to in real time since, you know, high school or middle school. Like, I was at the park the other day with my son and I heard, "Hey, Charlie Burch!" And I turned around and I would not have recognized this person. She was also pregnant and I didn't know her when she, you know, when I knew her she wasn't pregnant 'cause we were in 7th grade. But she said, "Oh my God, Charlie!" Charlie Bush. I hadn't seen her since 7th grade, and she recognized me from my voice across the playground.

That's amazing.

I don't know what my— I guess my voice is the same, or it is now that I moved back here. But like, that is just such a testament to how powerful in-person connection is. You want to be a fixture in your community? Be one. Show up in the relationship. Make your business so much more than just a credit card processing machine. Sell bonding. Give people a way to bond with you, and they will come. They will be like, oh, it's Saturday. Oh, I don't have anything to do today. Oh, I want to get out of the house after 2 years on lockdown. Let me go see Pam, right? Maybe Pam can tell me, you know, something cool that I didn't even know I wanted.

Yeah, I could tell you after I just— my family and I, we were in Disney World. And just recently, the move to automated, like, hands-free app ordering for all the things— I couldn't hate it more. I couldn't possibly hate it more, Charlie. I'm telling you, because I like people. I mean, granted, there's plenty of dang people in Disney World. So like, I mean, it's kind of a bad example, but I'm just saying this move to automation in our small communities, we're slower to adopt some of those things anyway. So that's the other thing we should lean into.

Mm-hmm.

Because honestly, more people like it when, when, when I have to scan a QR code to interact with your company. I already feel like I just don't matter. Like, do you care if I scan the stupid code or not? You probably don't. Like, whatever. So I, I mean, I get that there's convenience to that, but let, let the bonus of what you offer be accessed with a QR code. Like, you know, don't, don't make the only way that we interact with you to be that. So that just bothers me at a soul level. But I'm saying like, most of our small town businesses aren't we aren't there yet. So let's choose not to be there, and let's choose to just really lock into the human, the human element of all of this. So, so the other thing I want to ask you about, um, because it's, it's just amazing to talk to you, and we've been talking for a while already, um, but what should— what do you think, like, municipalities, local governments, like those of us that are in economic development, what is our role in ensuring that our small towns have strong local businesses? Like, what, what What can we do? What should we do? Should— what should we do? I just said should.

Well, you know, I think one of the things that I bang the drum for is help them in ways. The other day I put a post on LinkedIn that was basically asking, who in your community is in charge of providing educational support resources to small businesses. I got some Main Street programs, I got some economic development programs, I got chamber programs, but a colleague of mine actually that I had mentioned to you, Justin over at Urali, he's like, in my community, no one. And I've been trying to do this work at a scale for about 2 years now. And it's really interesting that when you start talking to people, every community is organized differently and funding comes from different places. But when I say to people, hey, you know, I offer educational programming for small businesses to help them improve their web presence, the number one question I get is, how do you monetize that? Which leads me to believe there is no culture in place for investing in small business education in the community. Like, these corporations have all that information and our small businesses don't, right? And they're on their own for it, right? Just like they were on their own with a lot of this shutdown. Like, they got the short end of the stick. They got the short end of the stick. And as a community leader, we have to start taking some of that energy we use to court the big energy companies and the hospitals and the universities and start forming some entrepreneurial support programming.

Right.

Because if you want your community to have flavor, you have to feed the channels that will produce the flavor. In my chamber in this area, Atlantic City is my closest. If you look in the chamber directory, it's other chambers, hospitals, energy companies, and casinos. I'm like one of the only small businesses in the whole chamber.

That's, that's crazy.

And none of the events are entrepreneurially oriented. So having entrepreneurial training programs in your community And creating a cohort of business owners who are primed to engage with you and each other before there's a conflict, before they don't like your new sidewalk policy or your, you know, your new thing you're trying to do for parking or lack thereof. Like, build those bonds, get the buy-in by giving them something, helping them with their demands. I think that's really important. But I also think it's important to start to think about that idea of the amenity, because that's a big issue in my community is I look at that shopping center, I look at that shopping center, I look at that shopping center. A lot of the shopping centers that used to be community gathering places, as traditional retail models kind of went out, got filled with offices, got filled with vets clinics, they're not the type of businesses that call people out of their homes and into relationship with each other.

Right.

They're like, oh, let me take my dog to the vet. Oh, yeah, let me take my clothes to the dry cleaner. And we need to— and I know there's a lot of logistics associated with that, but anything your community can do to be very strategic and hardcore about attracting and retaining businesses that sell experiences, that curate gatherings. Like, that is what's going to get people out, and that's what's going to, you know, make one customer somebody else's customer, somebody else's customer too. And that's the type of activity we need to have exciting word of mouth and to have a community. Without a community, it's just a store. It's just a race to the bottom, you know? And as soon as I can get the same experience from your business in your store as I can get on Amazon, I'm going, I'm going to Amazon.

Right. Well, and that's even for, for brick and mortars that like Bath and Body Works. I think about that store, right? Like obviously there's something cool about going in and physically smelling things, but like once you know what your favorite smells are, Why would you set foot in that store?

Especially if the mall you have to walk through to get to that— yeah, I mean, so depressing.

Yeah, so it's just like, that's an example of a store to me where I'm like, like, I will choose— I, I buy a lot of things from specific stores online because I know what I need and I know what I want. And then I— that is, it's just all the convenience factor. Because let's be real, we also need to remember as consumers, if we have busy lives, We're not looking for an experience every time we step out of the door, right? Not, not to check off like the daily things of life. You just want it to be hassle-free as much as humanly possible, right? So I just think this is, I mean, I hope that as people listen to this, it gives it, it makes them just pause a bit thinking about, A, at the be— at, at, at a minimum, think about how do we talk about shopping local? And are we using shaming language? Are we trying to shame people into taking action? Because it doesn't work. It doesn't work with kids. It doesn't work with spouses. It doesn't work with friends. Like, humans don't want to be shamed into things. You can't. And then it doesn't come from a legitimate place of honesty and all of us helping each other get better either, right?

Right.

So that's the first thing is just asking, you know, thinking and being really honest. Like, do we— when we talk about shopping local, There's a lot of education that I think still can take place. I don't always think people understand what a dollar spent at a fully locally owned business, how it circulates, what that recirculation looks like versus a franchise or versus a fully external company. That's education. But it doesn't, again, and this is like a call to arms for local businesses to to really pay attention to where, to where, you know, you can't compete. If you're, if you think your big competitor is Amazon, okay, but then there are things that you have in spades that Amazon doesn't have. Amazon pays for the data that you get just being in the presence with the people that do business with you, right? Like the data collection of these huge companies, they have to mine for it because they don't know their customers. You do.

Yep.

So what could that mean for you? What could you add in? How could you serve differently? Like, there, there's the challenges that people have now with, um, staffing. That's not going to go away anytime soon. And so I know, I know how challenging this is for people, like, to wrap their brains around. Great, now you want me to do more? And to your point, I simply want to say If you don't want to do more, why do you expect me to jump through 10 additional hoops to spend my money with you?

Right. And treat your people well, because you might have customers that love you, and you might have done all the things you're supposed to do to be a modern business. Like, there's this company in town here, they have the cool, you know, modern hipster donuts, and they have the fancy coffees, and they have all the cool new signage, and you know, they're it on Instagram. And if you just talk to somebody who's been there as a customer, they're like, oh, that place is the best. But if you talk to someone who's worked there, they have nothing good to say about the owners because they are so hyper-focused on their image. Eesh. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's really important to be human to your customers, to be human to your employees. Because those are your two main word of mouth things. And then make it easy for your word of mouth people to point back to you by having a presence online that, you know, supports what they're saying, that makes it easy for people to find out when you're open, what you serve, you know, what you're about. Um, it's just— and, and little bits at a time, little bits at a time of things that make a huge difference, you know, just like walk away from this knowing that if your website says not secure at the top, that's like my biggest pet peeve with the small business website. Like, walk, you show up on someone's website and the first thing you see is not secure. Easiest thing in the world to fix. Easiest thing in the world to just not undermine your trust. It's like little things like this and some of it's stuff we don't know. I've heard horror stories about people who have hired the wrong people and they end up with websites, you know, all this stuff. But do just take a step back and think about not how busy you are, how stressed you are, but think about why you started your business and who you want your business to attract. And do the thing where we just treat people the way we want to be treated and Also notice how you experience being a customer, because as a business owner, you're a customer all over the place too. And every time you encounter something in someone else's business that makes you go like, what a pain, or like, God, that's annoying, like, check yourself and use your lived experience, your human experience, to inform how you can humanize your business because people just want to be human. Like, I know we have this AI and this virtual and this metaverse and all this. Yeah, I'm like, please no. Yep, we need— all our world needs is more humanity, right? And we'll be okay.

We're gonna be okay.

Yeah, more humanity. How can I add humanity to my business? Like, that is the high level.

How can I just be a good human serving good humans? Yeah, you know, like, yeah. Because you don't want to serve bad humans. So it's all good. We're just good humans trying to serve good humans. Yeah, it's— I appreciate this so much, Charlie. I do. I appreciate you saying some of the things that, you know, again, I shared a firsthand experience, like when it happened to me, I didn't even know what to do with it. Because I had gone far out of my way, far out of my way to try to make it all work and do it locally. And, and what this person expected of me is just— it's honestly kind of asinine.

Yeah.

And I didn't run that local business down because of it. And I certainly could have. I mean, I certainly, you know, again, and who's to say that somebody else wouldn't have? You know, so it's, it's just recognizing that, um, those kinds of, those kinds of things, whenever we feel like we're pointing fingers at somebody else, again, that's why 4-point-back-at-you, like you've gotta think about what's your role in it. And if you own a business and you catch yourself complaining about customers, you really gotta slow your roll. Seriously. You gotta take a step back and think, okay. Do they owe me or do I owe them? Like you said, you know, this isn't— it's not— you're not a nonprofit. You're asking people to give up their money, their hard-earned money. And so yeah, we have to be better than the competition, even if we're local. That's still a thing.

Yeah. And I think that the biggest mindset shift for a lot of people is that being better than the competition often has almost nothing to do with your pricing.

Exactly.

Dropping your pricing, reducing your margin is not going to put your oxygen mask on, right? Right. Like, right, how can you add value? Like, discounting is not the solution. People will always be able to go somewhere and find something for cheaper, faster. But they're not always going to be able to find something that's, you know, held in an experience that makes them feel seen, heard, valued, known, remembered. Like, those things are so important.

Yep.

So important. Yep.

Thank you so much. I, uh, I look forward to continuing our conversation, um, you know, as we continue to get to know each other. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing your viewpoint. It's so valuable, and I love it because you live in a place that's very different from the place that I live, but it just goes to show how much more alike we actually are than not. And there again, kind of back to humanity. That's what we need more of.

Indeed. Absolutely. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I will— I'll send you over also this article I have here. Perfect. My 10 favorite reasons to shop local.

Awesome. Yeah, we will link to everything in the show notes so everybody can get more of Charlie Burch. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Take care, everyone.