What does the
Local Business Institute do?
Part think tank, part school, part national leadership, part training ground for local leadership, the Institute is home to local leaders from across the country. Through online and on-demand programs, special projects, distance learning, virtual and live conferences, lectures and events, we work to foster local, national and even global conversations around entrepreneurship and local economies. We bring substantial resources to entrepreneurs of all ages and stages.
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At the Local Business Institute, we don’t talk about business as B to B or B to C. We talk about small, local business as H2H—Human to Human—because all small business is humans helping other humans. It’s why we all do what we do.
Our belief in local business goes even deeper. Read more.
YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
Completed Projects
Programs
What Your Balance Sheet Misses
Imagine you're a new business owner, staring at an invoice you don't understand. Another owner spends an hour helping you untangle it. She has her own business to run. But she stays on the phone until you stop panicking. That's the kind of kindness you remember....
Is it Time to Raise Your Prices? Probably.
Let's address the elephant in the room, who is wearing a tiny tariff-shaped hat: your costs went up, and you probably haven't raised your prices enough to cover it. You are in excellent company. In a recent QuickBooks survey, 38% of small businesses have already...
Could Dropping the Dollar Sign Help Customers Spend More?
Small business owners spend plenty of time deciding what to charge. But there is another question worth asking: how are those prices presented? A Cornell restaurant study tested three menu formats: prices with a dollar sign, prices written out in words, and simple...
AI Isn’t Replacing Main Street Jobs. It May Be Helping Create Them.
We’ve all heard (and maybe felt) the panic of Ai replacing workers. And it can. But a new study shows otherwise. For a local business owner, the promise of AI isn’t that a chatbot will run the shop. It’s that a small team might finally get some breathing room—and room...
Shopping Locally-Owned is an Intentional Investment in Community
Shopping locally is more than a transaction. At its heart, it is a choice to keep our everyday spending connected to the people and places that make a community feel like home. When we buy a loaf of bread from a neighborhood bakery, pick up a gift from an independent...
When Small is Really Big
Trump’s New SBA Size Standards Call Big Business “Small” — And Main Street Will Pay From our friends at the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR)—The Small Business Administration (SBA) is proposing to radically overhaul the standards the federal government uses to...
