Our nation began with small shopkeepers, and hardworking farmers. For years, I have had the idea that if I was able to provide one job for me, I was part of the solution. However, the greatest job creation engine on earth continues to be set aside for tired old policies that favor big business. It is actually a psychological problem. Policies and government tax credits favor recruiting a hundred jobs paying low wages, because these jobs are seen as a big boost to a community – “100 Jobs Coming to Spokane.” Headlines like that not only sell papers, but give politicians bragging rights during campaign season.
Compare that with the typical reception the public has to what a hundred micro entrepreneurs do for our community. These individuals, hidden away in home businesses, contribute vital income to their respective families, yet rarely do press conferences announce the jobs they create, because it is not sexy news. Even though these 100 micro businesses are doing the same thing our forefathers and foremothers did — contributing to our economy, and raising children who will take our civilization forward – collectively, they are often not viewed as being on the same scale of enterprise. A hundred jobs are a hundred jobs, so what gives?
The micro entrepreneurs are like those seedlings in the forest that may become really big trees. Those little seedlings often come out of the fire, and many will not make it, due more to a lack of knowledge than a lack of capital, although insufficient financing may still bring down quite a few. It is knowledge and a support network that the micro-entrepreneur needs. I just reported on one of those companies – a sign business that started out with one guy bending neon in a garage and now has grown to a large corporation with manufacturing facilities serving Fortune 500 companies.
I enjoy writing business articles reporting news from large corporations. I have the opportunity to interview large manufacturing executives in several industries, as well as tech company executives. It is a fun job, and I enjoy my writing career in my little micro-business world. I do write about mom-and-pop entrepreneurs, too.
One of the obstacles to increasing entrepreneurship is that larger businesses often prey upon fledging entrepreneurs, as they view these micro business owners as merely potential purchasers for a product or service. It is the big fish eating the small ones, until the pond dies, contributing to the destruction of the community’s economic diversity. A new entrepreneur that is “green” in the sense of not having hands-on experience may find precious resources sucked away by a huge army of highly convincing business-services salesmen.
I have found that often, in a micro business, the strategies for success are very different. In a major startup, a lot of capital is crucial. In a small one-person or two-person business, too much access to capital too early in the startup may destroy it, just as too much fertilizer destroys a young seedling. Ideas are like water. Having less money is better, because it forces an entrepreneur to depend on knowledge first, and capital second. Restrained access to capital is truly the mother of invention! There is usually a cheaper, more efficient way to run a micro business, but if a startup borrows money, or buys expensive business services, they may never know this until it is too late. When predation occurs, many entrepreneurs quickly become weighed down with purchases they should not have made, using money they should have never borrowed.
In the early 1990s, a visionary economic development worker in Astoria, Ore. was awarded a grant to create a “Greenhouse For Business” program through a local community college and I was the program’s first teacher. The project was a brilliant move to transfer that hands-on experience of a micro-entrepreneur to those living in a community that needed to grow micro businesses at that time.
Micro businesses are phenomenal. People keep looking for more big ideas for our economic doldrums, but they focus too much on big business, and miss the beautiful abundant saplings on the forest floor trying to push through those first few years. Spokane is truly blessed to have some programs that promote micro businesses. What we need is for our community leaders to fan the flames of those startups all the more. Think small, Spokane. We have so many untapped resources. Revise your telecommuting and home business ordinances to make it even easier for micro enterprise to flourish here. There are also many people working on figuring out how to raise capital for startups in new ways and I applaud their efforts. Just make sure you leave the door open for micro financing, too.
Microenterprise
