Be the change you want to see

Did you know you don't have to be a business owner to be a job creator?  It's really about being invested in the community and therefore your local economy.  As a salon business owner, I joined Dane Buy Local.  Really it is about local businesses supporting other local businesses in order to see our local economy thrive for everyone.  I'm not talking about only spending all of your money at the corner store.  But consider the fact that if $100 is spent at a non-locally owned business, $57 of that money leaves our area and therefore our local economy while only $43 of that stays here.  That same $100 spent at a locally owned business retains $68 here within our local economy and only $32 goes elsewhere.  Now imagine if everyone consciously spent $10 more a week within our community than we already do.  $10 a week isn't much but multiply that by 495,959 people in Dane county.  If 68% of the money stays here, that's $3,372,521 a week that would be made available to support the local economy that we didn't have before.

We're not too small to make a difference, even half of that would be a huge boost.  And if people could see the change our $10 could make, imagine what might happen if this caught on in every county in the state?