Entrepreneurs: Modern Day Heroes
Our visit to Infusioncon
Shaunna and I and our web master, Steve Rio, spent two days last week attending a conference for small business put on by another small business, Infusionsoft.
As many of you loyal readers know, I spent 15 years working for IBM so when it comes to conferences, I’ve been wowed by the best. Year Beginning Kickoffs, 100% Clubs, Golden Circles; these were over-the-top extravaganzas with great speakers, top notch entertainment and produced with a “cost is no object” mindset.
The 2-day InfusionCon conference was amazing … a full-scale production, just like the old IBM, but held in celebration of Entrepreneurs. It cost nothing to attend. The agenda was full of high-spirited, excited, energetic, optimistic entrepreneurs who were there to share their knowledge and experience for the benefit of all the attendees. Oh sure, there was selling going on … but not in your face, spammy, obnoxious selling … there was a delicious flavor of mutual value creation. I’ve never attended such a rich networking experience … it was amazing.
So, why am I telling you about this? Well, it has to do with this crummy economy we’ve all been dealing with for the past 2 years and the role small business owners have been playing during that time. At this conference were almost 1,000 people absolutely committed to achieving their goals in spite of a bad economy. There was no whining or complaining about how tough it is out there. There wasn’t a single person asking for the government to bail them out. There were simply a thousand people looking for ways to help each other, achieve their own dreams and goals and have a lot of fun in the process.
The Small Business Environment in America
The week of February 22nd was National Entrepreneurship Week. According to the Census Bureau and the Small Business Administration, about 60 million Americans worked for small businesses in 2006. This is about 51 percent of the private, nonfarm U.S. workforce. In Canada the percentage is about the same.
This is what Dan Danner, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business said in a statement in recognition of National Entrepreneurship Week:
“Entrepreneurs are so critical in a free-market society. These risk takers are the individuals who identify possibilities and turn their ideas into advancements in our society. Entrepreneurs are innovators. They are small business owners, and they are job creators. In difficult economic times, we depend on entrepreneurs and small business owners to lift us out of a recession. This is why it’s imperative that we support and promote entrepreneurship. To do this, our federal, state and local governments need to remove barriers for entrepreneurs, instead of adding to the costs and risks of starting and running a business.”
What Dan was saying is that Entrepreneurs are the unsung heroes of this recession. Some have been unable to withstand the downturn and others have had to make major adjustments. But most have soldiered on absolutely intent on finding new customers, servicing the heck out of the old ones and dynamically changing their business to take the most advantage of the opportunities they find.
So, how important are small businesses to the U.S. economy? They:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domes¬tic product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and pro¬duced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
A Look At The Numbers
And, look at the share of net new jobs that small businesses create.
Firms with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent (or 14.5 million) of the 22.5 million net new jobs (gains minus losses) between 1993 and the third quarter of 2008. Continuing firms accounted for 68 percent of net new jobs, and the other 32 percent reflect net new jobs from firm births minus those lost in firm closures (1993 to 2007).
And, on a diversity note, here is the role of women, minority, and veteran entrepreneurs in our economy. These numbers are a bit older but remember 2001 was our last big recession.
Of the 23 million nonfarm businesses in 2002, women owned 6.5 million businesses, generating $940.8 billion in revenues, employing 7.1 million workers, and paying $173.7 billion in payroll. Another 2.7 million firms were owned equally by both women and men. Also in 2002, minorities owned 4.1 million firms that generated $694 billion in revenues and employed 4.8 million people. Hispanic Americans owned 6.6 percent of all U.S. businesses; African Americans, 5 percent; Asian Americans, 4.6 percent; American Indians or Alaska Natives, 0.8 percent; and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders, 0.1 percent. Veterans made up 14 percent of all owners in 2002, and 7 percent of them were service-disabled.
Okay, here’s what I wanted to say: We’re blessed in North America to have a huge number of people willing to risk a whole bunch and work their tails off for the “American Dream” … let’s honor them with our loyalty and our patronage.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 and CHI Research, 2003 ; U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employ¬ment Dynamics.
image courtesy of sanjoselibrary
