Millenial Money

Customers kept reaching out, asking Nabors to add products to her website and encouraging her to do more outreach on social media.

Her online sales grew from around 10 per month to 50 to 100 per day. She reopened her storefront in May and is now looking to expand.

“We were able to actually thrive and grow during the pandemic,” she says.

Local shops hire locally

Businesses need to staff up as they reopen and gradually bring operations back to pre-pandemic levels. That hiring is going to happen locally, says Tom Sullivan, vice president of smallbusiness policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Small businesses have a unique advantage when it comes to hiring: a network of community that is different than Indeed or LinkedIn,” Sullivan says. “We’re going to see more of an emphasis on local hiring than we have ever seen before.”

Nabors is already looking to hire. Her business went from three employees pre-pandemic (two of whom have since relocated) to one employee and a handful of family members in the early months of the pandemic. Now, she has five employees, is shopping for warehouse space and plans to hire 22 new employees.

A rising tide

There’s a saying: a rising tide lifts all boats. It means everyone benefits from a good economy. This happens on a micro level, too.

When a town or neighborhood has a healthy smallbusiness district, property values rise and housing demand increases, says Matt Wagner, chief program officer at the National Main Street Center Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to revitalize historic commercial districts.

Other small-business owners notice, too.

“You get a bandwagon effect, with more entrepreneurs wanting to enter the market,” Wagner says. “A lot of it has to do with having small businesses there, whether it’s a brewery, coffee shop or grocery store. It becomes a neighborhood.”

Small-business districts become a point of pride, a place to show off to friends and family when they visit.

“It’s become an amenity in some ways. It’s like having a robust school system or parks and trails system,” Wagner says. “People may have taken it for granted before, but we see now that it could be gone and that does a lot to your personal quality of life.”