Speaker 1: Something you should go Something you should know is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Genesis gooldirea dot com. That's also something
Speaker 1: you should know. You can put your retirement plan on
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Speaker 1: Excited to have Chris Larsen joined me from Comfort King. Hello, sir,
Speaker 1: how are you good?
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: John? I'm fantastic And we're going to talk today about
Speaker 1: buy local, which is something that I think is a
Speaker 1: really important thing. As a local business owner and you're
Speaker 1: a local business owner, it means a lot to us.
Speaker 1: But this should mean a lot to even people who
Speaker 1: are not business owners. It should mean a lot to
Speaker 1: them because local businesses do a lot for their community,
Speaker 1: don't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I decided to start a business group that
Speaker 2: actually represents small business because we actually don't have a
Speaker 2: voice in South Dakota. Small local businesses don't have a voice.
Speaker 2: We don't have a group that represents us. You know,
Speaker 2: there's other business groups, but they represent big business. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so there's a couple of things I want to
Speaker 2: do with this group. It's free to join right now,
Speaker 2: but eventually if we get an enough members, then we'll
Speaker 2: start doing the dues every year, maybe one hundred bucks
Speaker 2: a year. And what that money will do, it won't
Speaker 2: pay for any salaries. It will pay to advertise the
Speaker 2: concept of buy local. What we want to do is
Speaker 2: educate our fellow citizens in South Dakota why it's important
Speaker 2: to keep it local and to keep our money here. Because,
Speaker 2: you know, I was researching this, there's over two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people in South Dakota that work for a small business.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of people. That's a lot more I
Speaker 2: would have guessed. Now they call small business. I think
Speaker 2: anybody any company under three hundred employees. This group is
Speaker 2: kind of for companies under one hundred, although I will
Speaker 2: make exceptions to certain companies if they want to join.
Speaker 2: Like I've talked to Great Life, talk to companies like
Speaker 2: Lewis Drug. You know that I consider that a local
Speaker 2: company absolutely. And what I think most people who aren't
Speaker 2: in business don't understand is that even though our town
Speaker 2: may be grown, like, people are spending more and more
Speaker 2: money on the internet. Oh and I'm not anti internet.
Speaker 2: This isn't what this is about. You know, it's okay
Speaker 2: to spend money on the internet sometimes, but you should
Speaker 2: try to keep your money local because a lot of
Speaker 2: these businesses you can You can think, if I go
Speaker 2: into Lewis or Shiels or High V I can buy
Speaker 2: every single thing in there on a website. And just
Speaker 2: imagine if everyone did that. And what would our town
Speaker 2: look like if Shields, Lewis, Hive's all just disappeared, Ace Hardware,
Speaker 2: What if they all just disappeared? What would life look like?
Speaker 1: It would be very sad, honestly. Yeah, think of the
Speaker 1: jobs you would be killing. And I'll tell you I
Speaker 1: lived in a small town in Iowa for a short while,
Speaker 1: and during the time I lived in that small town,
Speaker 1: our grocery store closed. They had like a broaster chicken
Speaker 1: thing and they had a fire in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: it burned up and closed. And so now the nearer
Speaker 1: the closest grocery store is twenty miles away. You know
Speaker 1: how much that stinks When you got to drive twenty
Speaker 1: miles for a gallon of milk.
Speaker 2: They call it that a food desert. That's it. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Well, and they rebuilt, thank goodness. It was wonderful that
Speaker 1: they rebuilt. But during the time they were closed I
Speaker 1: had a whole new appreciation for the convenience of having
Speaker 1: a grocery store right up the street. And it's not
Speaker 1: just groceries. If you're working on a project and you
Speaker 1: need this one little thing to finish it, and you're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: now that hardware store that I used to go to
Speaker 1: is gone because people buy stuff on the internet, Well
Speaker 1: I got to wait for it.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm trying to do with this business club
Speaker 2: is to get enough people joined in so that we
Speaker 2: can actually start promoting the idea of buying local and
Speaker 2: why it's healthy for a community. You know, we all
Speaker 2: like living in South Dakota, we like living in Sioux Falls,
Speaker 2: and there's a reason, you know, And so we want
Speaker 2: to keep it healthy. And the employees that work at
Speaker 2: small businesses are usually pretty well paid, and so and
Speaker 2: the people that work for big companies, big organizations like
Speaker 2: the school system and the hospitals and all these governments
Speaker 2: and stuff. A lot of times they don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: about that they should feel obligated in any way to
Speaker 2: buy local, And we want to just kind of educate them, right,
Speaker 2: raise awareness. So it's called buylocal sd dot net nice
Speaker 2: and it's easy to sign up. You just send me
Speaker 2: an email info at buylocal sd dot net nice and
Speaker 2: you're you're a member. And if we get to stage two,
Speaker 2: which I think we will, where we implement dues of
Speaker 2: like I said, not very much money, but you can
Speaker 2: decide to join or bail out then. But right now,
Speaker 2: I'm just kind of testing the water to see if
Speaker 2: there's enough interest by local companies, you know, smaller companies,
Speaker 2: because we really don't have a voice. If you look
Speaker 2: at like the Chamber of Commerce, for example, and you
Speaker 2: look at who's on the board there, and it's it's
Speaker 2: representatives or owners or CEOs of the largest companies in
Speaker 2: the state. They don't think about us.
Speaker 1: They don't have a different they have a different, different needs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're okay with raising sales tax, for example. And
Speaker 2: that's the other aspect of why I started this is
Speaker 2: because I've been paying attention to what's going on in
Speaker 2: our local governments a lot more in the last two years.
Speaker 2: And I've seen, like in this last legislature just a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, they tried to raise the sales tax
Speaker 2: for the whole state. And we know that the mayor
Speaker 2: of Sioux Falls wants to get the power to raise
Speaker 2: the sales tax. So you want he's been trying to
Speaker 2: get the power from the legislature to be able to
Speaker 2: raise city sales tax. Right now, Sue falls at two percent,
Speaker 2: and he'd like to raise that to three is what
Speaker 2: we've heard. And why, well, it's too so they can
Speaker 2: do some project downtown. And look, I like having a
Speaker 2: nice downtown too, But I don't know why we have
Speaker 2: to have so much focus on just downtown Sue Falls.
Speaker 2: It's a big city, yeah, you know, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of different neighborhoods and different communities. Spread aground a bit, yeah,
Speaker 2: spread around a little bit. And by the way, don't
Speaker 2: raise sales tax like I'm a retailer. I'm an unpaid
Speaker 2: tax collector for the state, and you're putting the burden
Speaker 2: on me to collect money from people at the at
Speaker 2: the time of purchase. And by the way, you're also
Speaker 2: raising sales tax on the lowest income people because they
Speaker 2: on the groceries they so it's putting an unfair burden
Speaker 2: just to benefit a few, you know, fortunate companies that
Speaker 2: will make money off this development. And you know, we
Speaker 2: can debate, do we really need a new convention Center
Speaker 2: downtown Sioux Falls. I don't think we do, but that's
Speaker 2: not really what it's about anyway, exactly. So I want
Speaker 2: this group to eventually be able to hire a lobbyist
Speaker 2: that can represent our best interests because we don't have
Speaker 2: that in peer right now. We don't have anyone that
Speaker 2: we can send that can say, hey, I represent a
Speaker 2: group of you know, one hundred or one thousand South
Speaker 2: Dakota businesses who employ you know, thirty thousand.
Speaker 1: Far more than that. There's so many small businesses in
Speaker 1: this community. And if there's a small business owner listening
Speaker 1: that's going, how do I get involved in this? This
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, but my kind of crazy. It's my kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. To Chris, I love this and I'm a supporter.
Speaker 1: I'll be there, tell me what I can do to help, And.
Speaker 2: You don't even have to do anything if you don't
Speaker 2: like we might have meetings once a month, people can
Speaker 2: get together. If you don't want to do that, you
Speaker 2: don't have to a lot of small business owners are
Speaker 2: kind of like I was for most of my thirty years.
Speaker 2: Is I didn't want to go join clubs and do
Speaker 2: stuff with other people because I was working too much.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to go home, so you don't have
Speaker 2: to engage. But we also want to be able to
Speaker 2: open up a community that we can offer mentorship, you know,
Speaker 2: that you can tap into and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I've got this issue. Maybe it's advertising, maybe it's a
Speaker 2: problem with the government, or you just you know, need
Speaker 2: to figure something out. Some of us have some experience,
Speaker 2: you know, I've been I've been retailing and manufacturing for
Speaker 2: thirty years, so I can I see my industry the
Speaker 2: way it's set up, you know, and how the big
Speaker 2: companies think, you know, your Sealy, Serta, Simmons, and honestly,
Speaker 2: they don't really care about the end user. They don't
Speaker 2: care about the customer. And small smaller companies tend to
Speaker 2: care more about the customer. They offer real service down
Speaker 2: the road. And my industry, they're really pushing the box
Speaker 2: bed thing. That's what got me interested in the buy
Speaker 2: local message was that they were my industry is pushing
Speaker 2: the idea of buying a online and you know, that's
Speaker 2: just anti human because what you're doing when you're buying
Speaker 2: a bed in a box or a bet off of
Speaker 2: the internet, you're buying a bed that really didn't have
Speaker 2: any human quality control manufacturing. No humans touched it. It's
Speaker 2: all robots basically. And you know what's the pride in
Speaker 2: that it's something you use a third of your life,
Speaker 2: every day of your life, eight.
Speaker 1: Hours a night hopefully.
Speaker 2: So we're pro people. Yeah, we're pro people.
Speaker 1: If somebody would like to get more information, buy local
Speaker 1: SD dot net. Is that the best place to go.
Speaker 2: That's the website, it's under construction right now, or actually
Speaker 2: waiting for a volunteer. This is a this is a
Speaker 2: volunteer organization.
Speaker 1: So if your small business builds websites, you reach out
Speaker 1: right away. Yeah, so if they want to send an email,
Speaker 1: that's ready to go. Info at buylocal sd dot net.
Speaker 1: Very nice, Chris, thanks for coming in man. I appreciate it. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for helping raise awareness again, Chris Larsen. Buy
Speaker 1: local SD dot net. Something you should know is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Genesis gold Ila dot com. Put your
Speaker 1: retirement plan on the Gold Standard. Get a free Gold
Speaker 1: and Silver guide now at Genesis gooldi ra a dot
Speaker 1: com