According to the U.S. Small Business Administration small business is BIG. Here’s what their website says:

* The 28 million small businesses in America account for 54% of all U.S. sales.
* Small businesses provide 55% of all jobs and 66% of all net new jobs since the 1970s.
* The 600,000 plus franchised small businesses in the U.S. account for 40% of all retail sales and provide jobs for some 8 million people.
* The small business sector in America occupies 30-50% of all commercial space, an estimated 20-34 billion square feet.
* The number of small businesses in the United States has increased 49% since 1982.
* Since 1990, as big business eliminated 4 million jobs, small businesses added 8 million new jobs.

By just about any measurement you care to examine, small business has a big impact in the U.S. I didn’t research the global impact of small business, but I’d imagine it has an equally large, or larger impact in other countries.
Perception Is Not Reality
Yesterday I read that Apple is sitting on over 250 billion in cash! Berkshire Hathaway held their stock holders’ meeting on Saturday (I watch it every year streamed exclusively at Yahoo). It’s very entertaining. Warren Buffett reported they’re sitting on over 90 billion in cash.
Headline grabbing numbers like that focus the attention on major league players, big business. Meanwhile, every morning small business owners are opening their doors, flipping on light switches and starting another day to make their presence felt in the world. Some have no employees. Others have hundreds. Their revenues range from “not nearly enough” to “a whole bunch.” Collectively, there’s no doubt about their impact in the local economy where they reside, or the broader economies they serve.
Because individually they’re not fancy, the perception is that they’re not that important. Or that their work isn’t that significant.
Just yesterday Apple bought a sleep tracking company based in Finland, Beddit. Terms are undisclosed for now, but Beddit is a small business. It’s not Apple’s in house innovation. They bought it by acquiring a small business. Innovation often happens at the hands (and imagination) of a small business owner!
But you don’t care about perception if you’re a small business owner. You already know the reality.
Small Business Owners Make Things Happen. That’s Real.
Whether it’s a local dry cleaning company that does a few hundred thousand dollars annually or a local custom home builder doing a few hundred million dollars annually…small business owners make things happen every day. Partly because they have to and mostly because they want to.
In a world before chain stores and restaurants peppered every community, local businesses ruled Main Street and Maple, along with every other street in town. Gas stations were called “filling stations” and even if they bore a national brand name, the owner was a local guy. That historical DNA hasn’t changed. These were people brave enough, driven enough and crafty enough to make a business come to life. They learned how to operate, make a profit and the most successful ones learned how to grow.
The competition changed. Big business spread nationally, then globally. Small business suffered and thrived, all at the same time. The weak operators fell away. The strong operators just got stronger, finding ways to adapt with speed unmatched by big business.
Nimble. Fast. Adaptable. Those are the strengths of small business. And the competitive edge enjoyed by many small business owners.
Size Matters,