October 11, 2025
Real Small Businesses Small Business Directory The First 200

The First 200 Businesses

A Community Effort: The First 200 Local Businesses on Locally owned the small business directory!

A Shared Vision

With the vision of local economic empowerment, 200 visionary business owners in North Carolina joined forces to help launch and create locally owned small business directory. This initiative represents a significant step forward in supporting small businesses and fostering community growth.

A Locally-Owned Endeavor

What sets this directory apart is its unique ownership structure. The first 200 businesses to join have become equity partners, owning 20% of the business collectively. This approach ensures that the directory remains truly local, prioritizing the needs and interests of the communities it serves.

The Power of Collaboration

By joining forces, these businesses helped create a powerful directory for small businesses to showcase their offerings, simplify and improve their shopping experiences and truly give small businesses across America a chance. This collaborative effort not only strengthens individual businesses but also enhances the overall economic vitality of the community.

A Bright Future

As the directory continues to grow, it promises to become an essential resource for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and those who want to support small businesses. By supporting these local businesses, we can help ensure a thriving community for generations to come.

“Shopping small, supporting local for stronger communities”

OUR MANTRA at LOCALLY OWNED THE SMALL BUSINESS DIRECTORY

Why a small business directory and not just a business directory?

Four reasons

  1. Supporting the small businesses in our communities.
  2. Corporations have put profit before people and often have other agendas. Blackrock and others have too much influence.
  3. Give small businesses a better way of showing off their products and services
  4. Because it’s the right thing to do with my experience and faith. Using my skills for good is my ethical responsibility.

Small businesses can’t compete with corporations when it comes to brand recognition, marketing budget, low prices, and debt opportunities. We wanted to ensure that we can help small businesses by giving them a platform supporters can visit and know with 100% certainty that they will be shopping at a small business.

Did you know that on average 68% of the money spent at a small business stays in that community? When comparing that with buying from Amazon it drops down to less than 0.5% staying in the local community in most cases.

Our directory competition?

We have a few competitors but when it comes to solely serving small businesses there is none. But we’ll show you a few.

GoogleGoogle showcases anything and anyone. They have over 90% of the directory market share through their search and maps channels but they focus on 3 things when ranking a business – Relevance to the search, Distance of the searcher, and Prominence in a business. We intend to use Google to our advantage whether that’s incorporating Google Maps or customer reviews and we definitely recommend to small businesses that having a strong presence on Google will help you receive customers.

YelpYelp also showcases any and all businesses regardless of size and charge businesses a fortune for things that don’t matter much on customer decisions for example they charge businesses $1 a day just to show their business logo and another $1 a day if you want to show any highlights of your business; add a call to action, control your photo portfolio, remove competitor ads and more. In all you just to add 6 features that guarantee nothing it would cost you nearly $2200 each year that’s not even getting started on paying for ads. We believe Yelp is our primary competition but by building a directory that’s easier to use, more attractive for supporters with twice as many useful features for small business owners to use we will take away small business supporters from them. Did I mention we will only be showcasing small businesses. Also for example franchises like McDonalds, and Starbucks will not count as a small businesses, only the small local restaurants, and coffee shops will be able to feature on the directory. However, we would recommend small businesses feature on Yelp as Google views presence on Yelp as good for rankings and also Apple Maps utilize Yelp for business information. Blackrock owns over 17% of Yelp and Vanguard and State Street own a load of shares too giving them influence over their decision making too. I almost forgot they charge 30% to sell products on their? 30% – I think that’s daylight robbery.

Bing Places – I know most people have never used it, don’t intend to use it and will never use it. However, if you’re a small business add your business to Bing as Google views your presence on Bing and it helps to add your prominence on Google. Bing is Microsoft and honestly I’m not a fan of their tactics or Bill Gates.

Yellow Pages – Most people remember the Yellow Pages from back in the day when the internet wasn’t around. Unfortunately, Yellow Pages showcases all businesses regardless of size, doesn’t have good enough features and hasn’t put enough effort in supporting small businesses and their communities. Thryv who are listed on the NYSE and own Yellow Pages do have some good free tools for small businesses like the Command Center” but being on the stock exchange means that Blackrock own over 6 million shares giving them significant influence over their decision-making.

Chambers of Commerce – I’m not going to talk bad about local chambers because the people that work there are great, I believe they genuinely love their communities and want to do their upmost to help small businesses. The networking opportunities, lunches and other events and celebrations they do are also a great place to meet likeminded people. However, they do need big businesses and their directories are often extremely basic and featureless although the SEO value is worth being a member on its own.

Others – There are others but in my opinion they haven’t got the plan to only serve the best interests of small businesses and their local communities plus they are often created without thinking of what features would benefit small businesses the most.

Why choose Locally-owned the small business directory?

Feature packed – With over 90 features (more than twice as many as Yelp, Google, Yellow Pages, and ten times the amount as Bing).

Never any big businesses – No big businesses will ever feature on locally owned. Our mantra is “Shopping small, supporting local for stronger communities” and we believe that this is the best way to keep money local and create stronger communities.

Owned by the small businesses – The first 200 small businesses that joined received a 20% equity stake and the next 9800 will split 9.8% of the business and then more will be given away to the next allocated small businesses who join. Locally owned is locally owned.

Virtually free to take payments – We want to make it virtually free to take payments. Visa and Mastercard control the game (unless you use crypto but they still get a percent on a lot of occasions through exchanges) and we understand that but McDonalds taking payments and a small business taking payments is completely different. Their processing fee will be a lot less than a small business’ payment processing fee. We want to use our collective power to make it virtually free to take payments for small businesses.

Additional marketing opportunities – We showcase small businesses on socials, billboards, vehicles, branding, murals, and a load of other cool places.

Constantly innovating and listening – We will be constantly innovating for and listening to small businesses and their supporters to ensure we build the directory that people choose first when they need or want to buy anything.

Charity work – 5% of the business income will always go directly towards local charities and charity events.

Without the first 200 businesses joining we wouldn’t have been able to build the directory. Read more about each business below.

  1. Leaning Oak Farm
  2. Appalachian Delivery and Courier
  3. Carolina Dozer
  4. Hannas of Blowing Rock
  5. Good Morning Baby
  6. City Florist & Gifts
  7. The Lost Wombat
  8. The Block
  9. Blue Ridge Reflexology
  10. Appalachian Waste Removal
  11. Adaline’s Sweet Treats
  12. Hero Clash Collectibles

Visit Locally owned the small business directory and buy from any business knowing with 100% certainty that this is a small business in that community.

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