Small Business Saturday began as a simple idea: spotlight the entrepreneurs who keep our neighborhoods alive. 15 years later, it generates billions in spending and a one-day cultural push to “shop small.” Which is powerful: over 60 million people work for small businesses, and 62 cents of every dollar spent with small businesses stays in the local community: a powerful driver of wealth generation across historically under-recognized groups.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: a lot of this small business shopping has become performative.
One hashtag. One purchase. One day of feeling virtuous about supporting local businesses, followed by 364 days of defaulting to Amazon Prime, algorithmic convenience, and chain-store predictability.
And leaders are often the worst offenders, not because they don’t care, but because they underestimate how much their choices shape norms. People follow what leaders do, not what they announce. When influential people treat small business support as a once-a-year obligation, they model the exact performative behavior that undermines the businesses they claim to champion.
This Small Business Saturday, it’s time to subtract the performance and focus on what actually helps small businesses and the people and communities that they enrich.
The Difference Between Performative and Real Support of Small Business
Performative support is one-dimensional. It’s transactional, private, and self-contained – the equivalent of dropping a dollar in a tip jar, knowing the staff aren’t paid living wages, and walking away feeling virtuous.
Real support is three-dimensional. It extends across three interconnected layers:
ME: You genuinely love the business. You go there because it brings you joy, not guilt. It becomes part of your routines.
WE: Your support is visible. You bring your network into the mix – friends, colleagues, your team. You normalize involvement.
WORLD: Your support aligns with your values. You spend money at businesses that reflect what matters to you – whether that’s sustainability, local ownership, equitable hiring, or cultural preservation.
When support lives in all three dimensions simultaneously, it compounds. It becomes cultural, not transactional.
What Real, Sustained Support of Small Business Looks Like
This shift from performative to real is already happening across sectors. The most effective models share one thing: they build infrastructure around sustained, values-driven support.
Giving Tuesday (Tuesday, December 2 this year) blends corporate systems with grassroots energy, helping individuals and companies direct resources to causes they care about – not just one day a year, but as part of a repeatable practice.
1% for the Planet connects companies with environmental nonprofits, aligning revenue with responsibility. The message is clear: giving shouldn’t be episodic; it should be structural.
And recently, Silver, a global small business support company (full transparency: I coach their team and use their tools in my own work), launched small.news: a media platform that puts small business owners at the center of the story year-round. In an era where trust in large institutions has fallen sharply and local businesses remain among the most trusted players in American life, small.news offers a subtractive alternative to corporate-driven narratives. It’s not capitalizing on one shopping weekend; it’s giving small business owners consistent visibility, voice, and community.
What all these models share is simple: They make doing the right thing easy, repeated, and aligned with real values – not dependent on holiday marketing.
How Leaders Can Move From Performative to Real
If you genuinely want to support small businesses (not just perform support) here’s what to subtract and what to add:
Subtract:
- One-day shopping binges driven by guilt or obligation
- Random purchases just to “check the box”
- Private actions you never talk about
- Support that contradicts your actual patterns the rest of the year
Add ME:
- Identify 3-5 small businesses you truly love
- Visit regularly – become a predictable customer
- Subscribe, preorder, or join memberships where available
Add WE:
- Talk publicly (IRL and on socials) about the businesses you support
- Bring friends, family, or colleagues with you
- Ask inside your company: “How can we make procurement more accessible to small suppliers?”
- Leave reviews, share posts, and amplify their stories
Add WORLD:
- Clarify your priorities: sustainability? women-owned? local sourcing?
- Direct spending accordingly
- Use platforms (including small.news) to find businesses aligned with those values
- Check in quarterly: does your spending match your stated values?
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about intentionality and consistency to multiply your efforts.
Why Leaders Set the Tone
Leaders don’t just buy things: they set norms. Your colleagues and community notice your patterns. Your team sees where your money goes. Your friends observe what you model.
Treating small business support as performative teaches others to do the same.
But integrating it into your actual life (your routines, conversations, and values) creates permission for others to follow. It shows that supporting local businesses isn’t an annual performance; it’s a way of being.
This is the work of trusted leadership: closing the gap between what you say matters and how you live.
A Different Kind of Small Business Saturday
So this year, don’t just shop small on Saturday.
Ask yourself: What would it look like to support small businesses the way I claim to value them?
Not as a one-day obligation or a performance for social media. But as an ongoing practice that reflects who you are and what you care about.
Subtract the box-ticking performance. Round out your efforts in three dimensions. And then watch your choices compound into sustained impact on real people’s lives!
Because small isn’t just about business size. Small is about the daily choices that build culture – in our communities, our companies, and our lives. And small business deserves our attention and spending, all year round.