Funny, everybody in government is in favor of small business. Words and phrases like “job creation” get used so much they’re diluted of all meaning.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, you and I are getting into the office early with a large cup of coffee every day, answering phone calls, following up on projects, and while these issues affect us in the long term, we have too much short term–and too much business-specific work–to allow us time to even look into it.

So I was browsing NYTimes.com online Sunday when I caught Robb Mandelbaum’s piece called Obama Talks Up Small Business, Again on his You’re the Boss blog. It seems like a decent piece of journalism, summing up the latest small-business talk from the White House. What struck me about it, though, was not the content but how much I find myself agreeing with this comment, from someone who uses only his first name (Doug) and says he’s a small-business owner. He said:

• This is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. I am WEARY of the fighting–neither party shows it cares about anything but winning and staying in power (or regaining it.).
• As soon as a person brings up Pelosi or Reid or Obama or Limbaugh or Beck or Cheney–that person LOSES the argument by showing they are not an independent thinker but a follower of the hamster wheel of politics that keeps spinning, keeps getting you worked up emotionally, but never gets things done.
• Give American small-business owners the freedom to be entrepreneurs and they will supply America with innovation, jobs and new tax revenue.

I agree.

(Photo credit: Marynchenko Oleksandr/Shutterstock)

Seth Godin suggested this the other day, in Crowded at the Top:

The very best time to launch a new product or service is when the market appears exhausted or depleted. There’s more room at the top and fewer people in a hurry to get there.

He cites four specific markets that seem to fit this general pattern:

The next golden age of journalism, of communications, of fashion, of car design–those are being established now, in a moment when it’s not so crowded at the top.

That makes sense in general, but you have to be careful. Sometimes markets crumble because something else replaces them, or the need dies, or fashions change forever. Think about buggy whips, telegrams, cassette tapes or hula hoops. The underlying needs are still there, but the actual markets have died where they were and been reborn somewhere else.

(Photo credit: Vibrant Image Studio, Dean Pennala/Shutterstock)

It’s not at all unusual, and it’s not as bad as it sounds either. The underlying problem is that growing a company often takes different skills and talents than starting a company.

BusinessWeek.com has a good story on that this week: An Entrepreneur Prepares to Pass the Torch, by Nick Leiber. It’s about Michelle White of Michelle’s Miracle:

It’s a classic dilemma. A first-time entrepreneur creates a thriving company from scratch with the potential to be The Next Big Thing, but her investors thinks she needs an experienced CEO and management team to take it there. They also bet future investors will want to see seasoned leaders in place.

It happens to a lot of people. My favorite example these days is Steve Jobs, who was kicked out of his post at Apple Computer in the 1980s to make way for John Sculley, who ran the company from the late 1980s to the early 90s. Then when Jobs came back to run the company again in the late 1990s, he brought it back from near death to prominence. 

(Photo credit: that photo appears in the businessweek.com story online. You can click it to go to the original.)

Starting Nov. 13, the new movie, “Ten9Eight,” will be shown at select AMC theaters in cities including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In addition to a theater release, Ms. Mazzio is in talks with several companies to show the film next year on television.

There’s an interesting back story by Mickey Meece, a rgular contributor to the Times on subjects of small business and the like. It’s about Mary Mazzio, filmmaker, who has done one film on entrepreneurs already (Lemonade Stories), and was really interested in doing this one.

While “Lemonade Stories” looked at the impact of mothers on entrepreneurs, her new documentary “Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon,” follows a group of students from “Harlem to Compton and all points in between” as they compete in a business plan contest run by the nonprofit group Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

It looks like it could be fun. Here’s the link:

Practically Speaking – ‘Ten9Eight’ Documents the Dreams of Young Entrepreneurs – NYTimes.com

Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke last week announced the formation of its new Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, with the following goals:

• Encouraging Entrepreneurs through Education, Training, and Mentoring
• Improving Access to Capital
• Accelerating Technology Commercialization of Federal R&D
• Strengthening Interagency Collaboration and Coordination
• Providing Data, Research, and Technical Resources for Entrepreneurs
• Exploring Policy Incentives to Support Entrepreneurs and Investors

He also announced joining Twitter as SecLocke, which is an interesting development. Locke told CNN:

“It’s important that the Department of Commerce regularly communicates with American businesses and entrepreneurs to help them translate new ideas into economic growth,” Locke told CNN. “Innovation is going to be the key to our long-term economic growth, and we need to embrace new ways of communicating with small businesses and entrepreneurs.”

So that seems like a good step to take.

I posted here a couple of weeks ago how I don’t think real entrepreneurship sits around waiting for government policies one way or the other. And I’m sticking to that story. Still, at least they’re trying, which seems like a step in the right direction.

(Photo credit: from http://www.commerce.gov/CommerceSecretary/index.htm)

1. The owner is the customer. Meaning that you make a product or service that you want to use. Jantsch says: “You can acquire some measure of knowledge from various research techniques, but nothing beats living, breathing and feeling the same things your prospects do.”
2. The market understands the offering. He mentions this problem: “If your innovation simply solves an incredible problem people don’t yet know they have, you may wind up burning through the money before they get it.”
3. The market already spends money here. John says: “If people are already spending money on a product or service, then two-thirds of your work is done.”
4. It’s an innovation that simplifies. Amen to that.
5. Nothing is precious. This is a tough one. “If you’re in love with your bright, shiny, baby startup and all that it offers, you may become blind to the reality the market suggests.” Keep an open mind, Jantsch says, “talk to your customers, talk to your competitors, talk to your employees and remember nothing is precious but what the numbers prove to be so.”

Here’s the link: 5 Attributes of a Sure Fire Startup: Marketing: Idea Hub: American Express OPEN Forum

I don’t think many people go through any well-defined series of steps. We start businesses because we want to prove something, build something, do something, not do something else, create something–or for some other reason.

I see a lot of startups, but I almost never see startups that began with people vaguely wanting to own their own business or be their own boss and then sifting through menus of business opportunities, choosing one and building a business. I’m sure it happens. But I’m also sure that much more often, the entrepreneur sees the need or the possibility first, then builds the business while pursuing his or her own path.

You grow up, get an education, get a job in something that interests you that might or might not be related to your education. You see something that could be done better. You see something you want to do. You get an opportunity to join somebody else, helping with his or her vision. You find a way to get somebody to pay you to do what you like, instead of something else that you don’t like.

Follow your own path. It’s not a good business or bad business according to the times or the type of business. It’s a matter of whether or not you believe in it and you want to do it.

(Image: Jaqui Martin/Shutterstock)

(An aside: politics ought not to be a team sport. Every politician ought to decide on each issue based on what’s best for the country. But that’s impossibly utopian, I know.)

What’s bugging me, aside from all the obvious politically motivated hooray-for-our-side blathering from both sides, is the people claiming one health-care policy is good or bad for job creation or small business. Everybody, it seems, wants to speak for small business, but what they say is just claiming that whatever it is their team is saying is supposedly good or bad for small business. They’re using talking points. They’re playing for their team.

Here’s a simple truth: Businesses start or don’t start regardless of the government’s health-care policies. People start businesses because they want to, because they believe it’s good for them or for some similar motive. They don’t decide to do it–or not to do it–because of health care.

And more truth: Health-care costs don’t kill companies. People are not hired or fired because of higher or lower health-care costs. Companies that work, companies that succeed, will manage the health-care costs. Companies that fail are just looking for something to blame.

That’s my opinion.

We all know that when applying for a loan and seeking venture capital funds you simply have to have some sort of business plan. But we often forget about one important audience, ourselves. A business plan is not only needed for third parties involved with providing funding to us in one shape or another, a business plan is an important, strategic document to help guide our growth. Like a good road map on a trip, it helps us know where we have been, where we are and where we are going.

That’s from Business Plans Are Not Just for Startups on Ramon’s excellent blog Smallbiztechnology.com. If you don’t follow Ramon there and as ramonray on Twitter, well, you ought to. He’s a true expert in the subject.

(Photo credit: I captured that picture from Ramon’s Twitter profile)

I left anyhow, and I didn’t feel any more at risk on my own than I was with the salary. “You’re only as safe as your billings in this small firm anyhow,” I told them. That turned out to be ominously true. They were out of their jobs within the next two years. All four of them.

I was reminded of this by Steve King’s post Do Small Business Owners Have More Job Security and Personal Time? on Small Business Labs last week. Steve gives us research from Ace Hardware that seems to say this (his words):

So small business owners feel their jobs are more secure and they have more flexibility, independence and personal time. Sounds pretty good–if you make it.

Interesting for entrepreneurs. But remember, with all research like this, consider it food for thought, and stay skeptical.