| Happy Sunday, everyone. Today's a little different than most Sundays with Sisson. I'm not talking about physical health or diet or fitness. Instead, I have a request for all of you. As everyone knows, the economic effects of the pandemic have hit small businesses harder than anyone. Larger companies are doing great. (Even though we aren't "large," Primal Kitchen is part of a large company and our sales have exceeded expectations). That's all well and good, but small businesses form the backbone of the country's economy. They have faces. They have names. They have stories. And when a small business fails, individual people suffer most of all. A large corporation fails? People do lose their jobs, but the C-level individuals tend to get a nice cushion. I'm not here to rail for or against all that. I'm here to ask that you recognize the importance of small businesses. We don't want to lose them. Again, this is a tough situation. Every company employs people, so even if a company is huge that doesn't make them "bad." They're important, too, and I'm not discounting them. I'm just saying that if it weren't for small plucky businesses, you wouldn't get the kind of innovation that allowed something like, I don't know, avocado oil-based mayo to explode onto the market. Small businesses often have "skin in the game" built-in. The owner is the business. In a perfect world, the owner identifies with the business, wants it to do well and do good things in the community, to preserve their reputation and give the employees a livelihood. They can't just scoot away when things get hairy. They take the hit. I recall an anecdote from a frequent visitor to Japan about the incredible diversity of their small businesses. You could have a cafe that took 10 minutes to brew a single cup of $20 coffee, but because they were the best at what they did and there were enough fans to support them, the cafe did well. You could have a store that only sold and repaired grandfather clocks from the 1970s. The presence of niche businesses provides a "flavor" to a civilization that can't really be quantified. Not everything is about "maximizing economic output and efficiency." You can't reduce human happiness and progress to GDP (although that's certainly a part of it). And anyway, those intangibles often end up affecting the balance sheet somewhere down the line in a positive way. So who's out there changing the game in a positive way? Who's innovating? Who can you support with your business? Let me know in the comment section of Weekly Link Love. | 
