Big Leaders

As forecast, the nation’s unemployment rate went over 10 percent last month. Even though it was expected, it wasn’t easy to accept.

Leave it to small business owners to put that development and the whole downturn into perspective and give us hope — and advice — for the future.

Looking out 12 to 24 months, small business owners say their companies will emerge from the recession strong and well positioned for growth over the next two years.

According to new study, The Guardian Life Index: What Matters Most to America’s Small Business Owners, small business owners are confident even in the face of the significant challenges of the economic downturn. The study says this optimism is the result of their passionate, confident focus on three core pillars of business success: their customers, their employees and their own self-dependence.

Overall, 92 percent of small business owners expressed optimism about their enterprises, with 54 percent expecting to maintain business as usual and 38 percent confidently looking forward to expanding their businesses over the next 12 to 24 months.

The Guardian Life Index examined 13 key industry sectors. Optimism varied across these sectors with respect to revenue projections for 2009. Within the financial services/insurance sector, 68 percent of small businesses said they anticipate stable or increased 2009 revenues.

From a regional perspective, the South has the highest percentage of owners (62 percent) who project stable or increased revenues for 2009, followed by the Northeast (61 percent), the Midwest (59 percent) and the West (56 percent).

Texas is the state with the highest percentage of owners (69 percent) who project stable or increased revenues for 2009. That optimism contrasts with California (51 percent), New York (49 percent) and Florida (49 percent).

The study, which was commissioned by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute and fielded in May 2009, used a 21-point scale (from +10 to -10), to measure the positive and negative intensity of responses to issues.

Small business owners in the aggregate build and sustain some 20 million individual small businesses that collectively account for 50 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and 44 percent of the nation’s payroll.

The survey suggest that small business owners are more passionate about their customers, their employees and their own independence than they are about their own personal financial success.

Small business owners did not get us into this economic mess but by their continued allegiance to their own core values, they will probably be who leads us out of it.

Topics Leadership