Entrepreneurial

– George A. Cloutier, a graduate of Harvard Business School, is the founder and CEO of American Management Services, one of the nation’s largest turnaround and management services firms specializing in small and mid-sized companies. He is also the author of the bestselling book “Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing”. The opinions expressed are his own. –

Certainly not the Obama Administration and Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) who have repeatedly failed small business at every opportunity with soaring rhetoric, empty promises, and adopting Lilliputian aid programs.

Most of the twenty-nine million small businesses and their fifty million employees’ won’t be celebrating National Small Business Week because they’re fighting the worst economic crisis in recent history. The twenty-five thousand plus small businesses failing every week, and the owners who have lost their life savings and depleted their 401k’s, will not be celebrating either.

There will be no joy in Mudville for 90 percent of the nation’s small businesses who have received no economic stimulus funding or have been denied credit, additional or otherwise, as well as those who have received no benefit from the stimulus or bailout programs. To be fair, some 60,000 small businesses (that’s .0002 of the total) received loans from the SBA last year, leaving only 28,940,000 who have received nothing but platitudes.

The Administration’s record of failure speaks for itself:

Small businesses received only one percent of the bailout. ($800 million. Wow, when by recent accounts the automotive industry received $100 billion and only employs two million people.) Guaranteed loans from the SBA have only reached the levels of 2006 in the face of the worst economic crisis for small business since the Depression. The SBA runs out of loan guarantee authority periodically because of the Administration and Congress’s outright stinginess, while authorizing billions for their big donors on Wall Street and Big Business. The recent job bill is a joke, as to assisting small businesses. Small business can receive up to $5,000 over a year for hiring an un-necessary new worker at $40,000 annually. Spending $40,000 to receive a meager $5,000 won’t motivate most owners to hire a useless non-productive employee. The recently passed healthcare bill is loaded with provisions that will cost small businesses tens of thousands of dollars depending on their size. If a small business under twenty-five employees pays for insurance, it will receive back as tax credits one third of the actual cost. Unfortunately, according to the highly-touted Congressional Budget office only 11 percent of all small businesses will qualify for the program. An additional problem is small businesses which do qualify will not actually receive the tax credit until next year, while the remaining 89 percent of this category can go pound sand.

Once again the logic fails us. Why would a cash-strapped employee spend $10,000 to receive only $3,000 next year as a reimbursement a year later?

- Seth Kravitz is the co-founder and CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based InsuranceAgents.com, which has been named one of Inc.com’s 500 fastest growing companies in the U.S. The views expressed are his own. -

Maybe you saw it coming, maybe it blindsided you, but whatever the cause you may run into a huge challenge millions of business owners have faced: you’re out of money.

A couple times over the course of the last six years my company has hit some pretty significant money problems. Each time we made it through, but it was a struggle.

A new study showed the big U.S. banks have some work to do to if they want to improve their image among small and mid-sized businesses.

The annual report, released by Portfolio.com and based on research conducted by American City Business Journals (ACBJ), surveyed 1,762 business owners, CEOs and presidents of companies with more than one employee and asked them to rank 207 brand-name companies, from the technology, telecom, travel, financial and media sectors, on a set of seven different attributes.

Among banks and financial services firms trust remained the biggest issue for the small business owners polled, said Godfrey Phillips, vice president for research at ACBJ.

- Michael K. McKean is the CEO and director of new product development for the Knowland Group, a leading provider of business development solutions for the global hospitality industry. The views expressed are his own. -

“A-B-C. A-Always B-Be C-Closing…you close or you hit the bricks.”

This may work for Blake in the classic sales film Glengarry Glen Ross, but sales directors today know it’s not always that simple. No one can create the perfect sales office overnight, anymore than someone can wake up one day as a golf professional ready to win the Masters. Building a successful sales team takes skill, patience, and hard work.

But just as any golfer can quickly up their game with a few short lessons from a knowledgeable instructor, so can you improve your team with a few easy steps.

The U.S.’s latest GDP figures show the economy is growing at its fastest pace in years, but small businesses are still reeling.

According to government data, U.S. 2009 fourth-quarter GDP grew at a 5.6-percent clip – the fastest pace since 2003. Government stimulus, greater exports and less-severe reductions in business inventories have been credited with the growth, but data from Sageworks, which compiles financial information on privately-held companies, paints a far bleaker picture for small businesses.

Drew White,  Sageworks’s chief financial officer, said the survey results representing “tens-to-hundreds of thousands” of U.S. privately-held companies, showed a marked decline in 2009 revenues. White said 2009 fourth-quarter sales, by small private businesses with less than $10 million in annual reported revenues, were down 6.4 percent (see the full report). That was a significant decline from the previous year, when 2008 fourth-quarter sales increased 2.4 percent. Pre-recessionary 2007 figures showed an increase of 5 percent. As a barometer, White said a 3-percent growth rate was “reasonable.”

– Christa Rapoport is the chief compliance officer for independent benefits consulting and brokerage firm Corporate Synergies Group, Inc. The views expressed are her own. –

The House of Representatives last night passed the Senate’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), as well as the Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872).

While the final details are being ironed out, now the big question is: what does that mean for small businesses?

The results of a new survey show that nearly 90 percent of women business owners want to grow their companies, but few of them see hiring as a way to do it.

Nell Merlino, the founder and president of Count Me In, a not-for-profit organization that includes 70,000 online members, commissioned the report that polled 250 women small business owners and another 700 non-business owners nationwide. Merlino said the survey shines a light on why women-owned businesses don’t grow at a similar rate to those run by men and why broader societal misconceptions are preventing many women from expanding their businesses.

“There is a perception on the part of the public in general that women are in business to bring in a little money, as opposed to women are in business because they are supporting their families and they want to grow a business,” said Merlino, quoting the study’s findings that just 38 percent of Americans believe women entrepreneurs care about making a lot of money, compared to 63 percent who said male entrepreneurs care about the same.

– By Rosalind Resnick. This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com –

Veronica Rose, founder and CEO of Aurora Electric, a Jamaica, N.Y., electrical contracting company, has spent nearly 20 years successfully bidding on government contracts. One of the first women to obtain a master electrician’s license in a heavily male-dominated industry, Rose has worked on major projects at JFK International Airport and the World Trade Center. Her seven-person firm boasts a customer list that includes General Electric, NBC and Columbia University.

So how much of the $787 billion in stimulus money that the government approved last year has ended up in Aurora Electric’s bank account?

– A. G. “Terry” Newmyer is a serial entrepreneur and the former founding chairman of The Fair Care Foundation, a patient-advocacy group focused on health insurance. The views expressed are his own. –

In recent remarks to business leaders, President Obama declared himself an “ardent believer in the free market.” So, there is at least one person who is an ardent believer in that sentence.

Just this week, I had lunch with a very prominent, sane, and successful Wall Street executive who was CEO of a big-name firm. He left more than a decade ago, during an era when those folks did so with pride rather than with investigations and grand jury subpoenas.

These days everybody is talking about a financial recovery, but a new Wells Fargo and Gallup study shows small business owners remain skittish.

Even with the recent positive news that the jobless rate had dropped from 10 to 9.7 percent, the study – conducted on January 22 – showed virtually no change in small business optimism from the last report in October.

The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index optimism score came in at -16, which was down one point from October 2009 and reflects an overall negative outlook by small business owners on their companies. A zero score would indicate that small business owners have a neutral opinion about their outlook.