‘People Want To Shop Small’: Co-Founder Of Member Marketplace Inc.

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

Q: What’s the message you would give to people who need to go find a hairdresser, buy a kid’s birthday present, shop for the holidays, or find their mechanic? What’s your message to the listeners when they have that choice to make?

A: I would say, can you shift one purchase? Start with one. And especially if you’re able to get out into your local community and go and visit that small business owner, you actually can see why it matters and why it makes a difference. 

Q: When you think about all the big changes happening in the world… how the economy moves, how politics are happening, how technology is shifting… What’s your biggest concern for small businesses?

A: It’s the opportunity, but it’s also the concern. And there is AI, it’s on everybody’s mind, and small businesses are dabbling in it.

And they’re starting to use it a year or so ago, we started to train small businesses, and it was in creating their content and doing that from there. But it goes back to like chatbots on websites back in the day, AI is going to take over all sorts of different pieces.

And so I think that’s a concern, because every single business owner doesn’t have time to learn all of the things that go into there. And a large corporation has multiple people on staff that are doing just that to counter and get bigger and get bigger and build that algorithm even more, so that it just can push down small businesses even further. So that’s my concern.

Q: Are you seeing anything interesting in small business behavior? Like, are they using the marketplace differently right now than before? Any trends or insights?

A: I met with a chamber last week, and I asked, “What are you seeing from your side?” He said, because they only had a directory beforehand. So it was like a directory, here’s our business, go to their website. And now they have the marketplace that has the directory built into it.

And he said, I’m just, I’m amazed at what people want to share. Like, I’m amazed. He’s like, we actually haven’t really promoted it much yet.

Like the marketplace side, they promote the directory only. And then people kind of find their way over to the marketplace. He goes, I’m just surprised how much people actually want to come and post and share what’s happening.

Q: How can we support you?

A: I want more communities on our platforms. I want to start a community in every single state.

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