Tag Archives: Small Business

Wherein Pino Becomes A Business Owner

Small Business

Posting has been light lately.  In part because I’ve been somewhat busy in life.  Work is ramping up some and the family has been doing some traveling.   However, the large reason blogging has taken a hit is that a good friend and I have started a new small business here in Carolina.

I’ve always wanted to strike out on my own but I’m pretty severely risk averse.  The idea of depending on my own resources for a living to support home and family is horribly frightening.  Which makes this opportunity nice.  We’re able to operate while maintaining our normal day jobs.

It’s hard, to be sure, to do both.  But the security is well worth the extra time.

Some things that I’ve learned:

  1. Working for someone else is a massive benefit.  As an employee there is minimal risk while the owner carries significant non-trivial risk.  Not only in terms of money, but in terms of time and of potential liability; personal and property.
  2. Customer service is not an inherent trait in most people.
  3. The perceived need of a minimum wage is an illusion created by the left.
  4. The unemployment rate doesn’t begin to address the whole picture of who is and who isn’t working.  People are working and making money; on the books or off.

I’m no where near being in danger of transition from the red to the black, but so far the experience has been positive, even if not enjoyable.

Small Businesses Pessimistic

ho ever you might wanna blame for the shenanigans in Washington, the result is not good for small business CEOs, their expectations and, presumably, their staffs:

SAN FRANCISCO, November 30, 2012 – Small business owners as a group are now the most pessimistic they have been since the third quarter of 2010, according to the latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index. The Index fell 28 points to negative 11 (-11) in the post-election survey conducted Nov. 12-16, 2012.

Most interesting to Americans in general is the expectations surrounding jobs:

Likely related to owners’ pessimism, one in five small business owners (21 percent) expects to decrease the number of jobs at their company over the next 12 months – the largest percentage of small businesses expecting to reduce jobs since the inception of the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index in 2003. One in four owners (26 percent) reported a reduction in the number of jobs at their company over the past 12 months, representing the largest percentage since the fourth quarter of 2010.

There is little hope that the situation in Washington is going to work out for the small businessman.  Some of the blame can certainly be attributed to the expectation that republicans would refuse to work with Obama.  However, a significant amount of that pessimism most certainly is attributed to the anti-business attitude that the Obama administration brings to Washington.

Obama’s View Of Government And Business

It’s long been a narrative that Obama doesn’t like the free market.  Titles such as socialist and statist have been thrown at him.  Pages and pages have been written that Obama is a lover of big government, more regulations and higher and higher taxes.  He’s been a target for not understanding how the economy, or even just business, really works.

He’s had to fight the continual drum beat from the right that he’s not friendly to small business and prefers the government to provide.  That’s he’s anti-capitalist and more for ideals of fairness and equality for all.

But I have to ask you, if you owned your own business, worked hard to get it to where it is today, sacrificed soccer games, vacations and new cars.  Set aside the addition to the living room or gave up on the new boat, how do you think you’d feel if you heard this:

You didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.