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Editorial: Recognizing businesses during Small Business Week
Commentary by Susan Thompson
for South Peace News
It’s Small Business Week, and small businesses certainly deserve to be recognized. All too often, we focus on the biggest companies, the multi-national Wal-Marts of the world. They seem to get the tax breaks, the government help, and most of the recognition.
But it’s small businesses that actually build communities. They are more likely to meet local needs, employ local people, and spend their profits in the same community where they operate rather than pumping them back out to some far-distant corporate office.
Small businesses are also excellent innovators. They can be adaptable, bring forward new ideas, and move quickly to take advantage of opportunity.
Despite the recession, according to an announcement by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on Oct. 7 optimism rose among small businesses in Alberta last month. Business owners expecting their businesses’ performance to be stronger next year now outnumber those expecting it to be weaker.
Starting a small business can actually be a great way to respond to a recession-time layoff from your former job.
For one thing, you’re now free to make your own opportunities. As other businesses fail, new opportunities and niches that might have been too competitive before open up for those willing and able to take them.
For existing small businesses, a recession can still be a good time to restructure and get expenses under control. In boom times it can be all too easy to waste money and go into debt. Recessions remind us to trim back unnecessary expenses and become more efficient in the long-term as a result.
Businesses that can manage to survive as their competition fails can also be well positioned to expand and grow when better times return.
The key is adaptability, being willing to cut rates and offer more and better services.
Of course, it’s never easy. Speaking as a small business owner myself, small businesses probably put more hours and work harder than most.
When you’re the owner, you’re the only one who can make the business thrive. It’s all up to you.
Unfortunately, too often, small businesses face an uphill battle facing high taxes, lack of support, and competition from other companies big enough to come in, drop prices and put them out of business.
There’s no question the brave and hard-working people of small business need to be recognized.
Now let’s go beyond just recognition and do more to support small businesses with policy, because as small businesses thrive, so do our communities.
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