In the five-year existence of NY REPORT, we have never gotten involved in political editorial or even small business advocacy. Our mission is to deliver how-to content from experts to help business owners increase revenue, reduce costs and build value, and I never wanted to lose that focus. However, in the current economic situation, it is impossible to stay true to our mission without getting involved.
I am still an optimistic entrepreneur, but I am also really furious. I am not furious about the fact that the economy is bad; economies go up and down in cycles. I understand that the recent — and future — government bailouts are necessary to protect the economy from cratering. But small businesses are paying the bill while many high-level banking and financial services executives who were responsible for making the economic situation much worse have made their money. More specifically, I don’t care if these executives made loans to people that they shouldn’t have or invested in financial instruments that they didn’t understand. I do care that they personally made millions while they helped exacerbate a bad economy and we (via the government) have to bail their companies out. Do you know what happens when small business owners take a big risk and it doesn't work out? We go out of business. In addition, the typical business owner will be personally on the hook for the company’s debt. There is no push from lobbyists to bail us out. Actually, now that I think about it, a small business doesn’t even have to take a risk to go out of business. The deepened recession due to the reasons and perpetrators I mentioned above combined with the nearly frozen debt market can put a good company out of business. Talk about irony.
And the government hasn’t helped. Among other things, it encouraged financial companies to make loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Now, the government is making the situation harder on us by writing new tax proposals (e.g., MTA’s payroll tax hike), increasing enforcement (e.g., state audits to find incremental revenue), and proposing more pro-union rules (e.g., revising the union ballot legislation). This seems counterproductive considering that half the country’s private sector workforce is employed by small business and it is Main Street that will drive the GDP as well as create the most new jobs in 2009.
The media is not helping much either. The truth is bad news sells, and that is what the media is selling us now. By focusing on the bad news, they are making the situation worse by perpetuating fear. Without question, these are tough times, but all news is not bad news. I know plenty of business owners who believe they will continue to grow in 2009. Somehow these stories never make the papers, let alone the front page.
What can you do? There are several advocacy organizations that focus on small business, such as the NFIB and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. Also, as Jim Blasingame said in our December issue, stop watching the talking heads on TV and start calling your customers more often to ask how you can help them. At NY REPORT we will continue to provide expert content to help you protect and grow your business in the magazine (see our January "Success Guide"), at our events, on the Web and with webinars (for the latest listing see www.nyreport.com/events, which is updated frequently).
What do you think?
