The Wades have been rewarded for their hard work by rarely having an empty seat in the diner on any given hour between 6:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. seven days a week. Saturday and Sundays usually have a line around the corner, and even in the chilly winter months, customers will sit outside to enjoy their signature “Sunrise Skillet,” sausage gravy and biscuits, stacks of pancakes, or their Cap and Cheese and Ruben sandwiches.

The small-business owner understands people value hard work and the dignity of work because most people work in small businesses. There are a whopping 33,185,550 small businesses in the United States that gainfully employ 61.7 million of us, nearly 50% of private sector employees in this country.

That means the ideal of localism is more prevalent in America than perhaps is understood by the boards that run larger institutions, academia, or media conglomerates, or by government officials.

Larger companies once understood that, back when they were headquartered in places where their products or services were made, but over the past few decades, they have lost that connection as they have grown distant both geographically and culturally from their customers.