Small businesses provide lifeblood of economy

Every day I have one thing on my mind: my business, which happens to be banking.

I am glad there are people who know how to get things done, who I can turn to when I need help with the other stuff and 99 times out of 100, those people own or work for small businesses.

Small businesses continue to represent 99.7 percent of all employers in this country, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Here in Missouri, there are now about a half million small businesses.

In the first six months of 2007, 492 more opened their doors in Springfield and the surrounding area alone, according to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. Those small businesses include educational services companies, information technology consultants and retail stores.

I admire them all. It takes intelligence, guts, hard work and a certain leap of faith to start a business in today’s world.

I really look up to the successful ones, the businesses that will still be here and growing five, 10, even 25 years from now. They’re the ones that, as the Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgi put it, are skilled at “seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

These small businesses are innovators – the small manufacturing company that developed a patented process for using holograms to improve product security. They’re the niche-creators, such as the local women who made a business out of picking up and delivering time-sensitive materials that have been flown into the airport. They’re the forward-thinkers, such as the disabled veteran who expanded his cleaning business by opening a retail store that sells only “green” cleaning products.

While applying their energy in different areas, the successful small-business owners I know have much in common. They are largely self-made men and women who don’t mind getting their hands dirty. They’re patient. They recognize that few small businesses are overnight successes.

They believe in the old-fashioned values of hard work and humility. They don’t cut corners. They believe that anyone can succeed against any odds. They are good people.

Yes, I admire small businesses that work hard and grow into bigger ones. But I also value the many successful small businesses that stay small. These are the true “quiet companies” that fly below the radar, doing everything from administering our payrolls to printing our brochures and business cards.

But their numbers may be dwindling.

For the first six months of this year, in fact, the number of new businesses in the Springfield area is down by about 17 percent compared to the same period last year. And it’s down almost 20 percent from the first six months in 2005 when, according to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, 612 new businesses set up shop in the Springfield area.

Does this trend mean anything? Maybe not. Small businesses are notoriously difficult to track. Some are here and gone without ever becoming a statistic of the people who track these things. But this slight dip in the numbers also isn’t something we should ignore.

As a banker, it’s one of my responsibilities to help small businesses grow – not simply by loaning them the funds they need to add a truck to their fleet, or advising them on the best way to purchase new manufacturing equipment, but also by patronizing them and encouraging my friends and colleagues to do likewise.

In fact, it’s especially important for those of us in big business to support the businesses on Main Street, as well as those on all the little side streets and alleys where small businesses are often tucked away. They’re the ones that have generated 60 percent to 80 percent of net new jobs annually in the last decade. Our jobs, in a very real sense, depend on theirs.

So, yes, I may be a busy guy. But I’m not too busy to say “thank you” to small businesses for all the things they do for us every day – and for all they do in helping the rest of us prosper.

Stoney Roberts is vice president of small-business banking at Commerce Bank in Springfield. He may be reached at stoney.roberts@commercebank.com.