61,000 jobs were added during the month of May by small companies. That's companies with less than 50 employees.
18,000 jobs were eliminated by companies with more than 500 employees.
Small business is driving this economy, that's who.
WASHINGTON, D.C.--New research released today from the National Federation of Independent Business, sponsored by Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), shows the top concerns among small business owners are business costs, particularly those that are difficult to control such as health insurance costs, energy costs and inflation.
More than 56 percent say [the cost of health insurance] is a "critical problem." Other cost issues in the top 10 include the cost of fuels and electricity, supplies, inventories and worker's compensation insurance. National Federation of Independent Business
Do you agree?
Small businesses are disproportionately burdened by healthcare costs. Of the 47 million Americans without health insurance[1] , more than 28 million are small business owners, employees and their dependents[2]. Under current law they generally do not enjoy the same tax treatment, coverage or pooling options as large businesses and corporations; on average, they pay 18 percent more for the same healthcare benefits. On top of this, over the last eight years, insurance premiums have increased an alarming 129 percent.
As if all the other challenges of a small business weren't enough...
Can you do it? Can you condense your elevator pitch down to 2 words. One to describe what you do; one to describe why you're different.
Skip Reardon at Be Excellent tells you why you should.
Scott Allen offers some great advice and 2 great resources for selling to Fortune 500 companies.
For one thing, you've only got 500 prospects, give or take, not 500,000 or 500 million. For another, while they rarely pay quickly, they also rarely pay slowly, and any entrepreneur who's been in business a while knows what a pain collecting from small businesses or individual consumers can be.
Scott's right.
On the other hand, the allure of landing a Fortune 500 account can blind you to the risk of your small company's slavery to their needs. I know I've read of more than a few companies whose existence was put at risk by the loss of just one account, one very BIG account.
Still, landing a Fortune 500 account can open so many doors of opportunity from the size of the account and its revenues for your company, to the recognition they bring to your company, that you should take a run at 'em on a regular basis.
What IS the natural size of your company? Can you sustain it? Are you happy with it? What if that size (employees, sales, product, outlets, customers...) remains the same for a few years? Will you drive yourself crazy? Can you talk about it with your neighbors, colleagues, peers?
And likewise, what if your company continues to grow? Will it be the same company, can you keep the same mission and culture? What's the price you pay for this growth?
From Noise to Signal blog comes some thoughts on Finding the Natural Size of Your Company.
Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth.
Don’t let growth be your primary yardstick of success. You only get to celebrate breaking 5 million dollars in revenue once, taking Fridays off will make every single week a better one. Stop making excuses for why you can’t do this or that in the name of growth. Just Do It.
Eric Shannon's penned some thoughts at the noise-to-signal blog (great blog) on How "Why Startups Fail" Fail or The Myth of Startup Failure. It's worth the read. Here's two points I loved:
2. The market outpaces the startup's ability to execute.
Things generally move pretty slowly. Consumers move even slower, and consumer loyalty is built through great experiences over time not through early availability. First mover or early advantage is overrated. Google was late to search, Flickr was late to photosharing, Facebook was late to social software....Take your time, build something valuable, and then go to market.
4. The market takes too long to develop.
If the market takes too long to develop, there is no market… it doesn’t exist.
Some more:
If the entrepreneur finds themselves in a situation they can’t control it’s almost certainly because they put themselves in that position —
“It’s not just how fast you run the race that matters. It’s how fast the race is run. When it comes to startups, speed wins.” That’s just ridiculous.
Thanks, Eric.
From home-improvement contractors to waiters to salespeople, those who are paid at least in part with commissions, bonuses or tips have been battered by the slowdown.
Many [businesses and local-governments] are cutting back to four-day workweeks, with employees generally working four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour days.
More people are riding the nation's buses and trains, breaking records for the first quarter of the year. Transit operators expect the increase to be greater in the second quarter as gasoline prices soar.
More than 500,000 small businesses will be created globally in next five years, spending $517 billion U.S. on technology. - Small Business Plugged Into Technology
Opportunity knocks.
In the meantme, though: Bankruptcies on rise.
More businesses filed for bankruptcy in April, 2008, than in any month since new bankruptcy laws took effect in 2005...
I'm not the only one who says this. (But reminders of the obvious are always important.) Relationships are key to the success of small business. Relationships, the ties that bind, are where a small business can outshine a large corporate brand. Small businesses have a huge advantage in keeping that personal touch alive with their customers AND their employees. And as more industries go into commodity-hell, and as we face a possible recession, that advantage will be key.
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