Action Coaching: A different kind of stimulus … (Part 2)

We’ve  talked about a different kind of “job stimulus” … one based on small business leading any type of jobs-led recovery.

What I find interesting is so little value is placed on the innovative nature of small business to lead any recovery and to create jobs.

So while Washington and its policy makers struggle to figure out the true costs of all of its new found forays into the marketplace … the existing and would-be entrepreneur is struggling to figure out the costs to their own bottom-line, knowing the costs of any new policy will take some time to be absorbed.

Capital and capital formation loves certainty.

The uncertainty alone of a new pricing scheme from health care to the value of the dollar as a benchmark currency is enough to keep those would-be entrepreneurs who on the margin off the field of play …

For real recovery to take place, those are the players we need in the game.

While it’s too soon to tell if new capital is truly on strike, I hear sobering stories from those owners who by all rights have “made it.”

They are successful, they run companies with $50 million to $200 million in revenues, and they are all looking for their way out.

The exit strategy for many of them is planned before 2012 and the end of this decade’s marginal tax cuts.

One owner in Las Vegas says his decision to retire early and sail the world is strengthened every day by the bad policy decisions issuing forth out of Washington.

His shop, which does tens of millions in revenues a year, employs 18 people – 18 jobs that will be shuttered when his business voluntarily closes its doors next year.

While more coverage is generated in the media weeklies by the “ripple effect” of jobs lost than the “ripple effect” of jobs created or gained, the prevailing political class unfortunately sees “business” as an endless resource of revenues that exist only to fund endless claims and entitlements.

That’s too bad.

For the past three decades, American small business has given this country the proverbial “golden egg” of technology, innovation, job creation and best practices, leading the world in ideas, new products and results.

It’s a shame that the biggest beneficiary of small business growth in the past fifty years (and an entity that collected record-breaking tax revenues during the past decade) is actively (however mistakenly) looking to cut-off and seemingly kill-off this vital national resource.

Jodie Shaw