Microbiz, capital(ism) and the changing economy

Posted on | June 25, 2009 | Comments Off

photo by emdot

photo by emdot

Earlier this week, Emergent Research released the results of some new small business credit research. They found, among other things:

The reality is that the smallest of small businesses – those with five employees or less – often will not qualify for business credit. They’ll need to rely more heavily on relationships with their bankers or seek other sources of funds.

So what else is new?

Anybody besides me notice how often bootstrapping is coming up lately?

Maybe all those small business service provider types working through the Small Business Development Centers and SCORE and the Women’s Business Centers and even the microenterprise development organizations should be teaching small and microbusiness owners the varied and particular skills involved in bootstrapping for business.

It is well known that cash flow issues can kill a business faster than a lot of other things. Instead of scrambling to help small businesses to get loans (and act as if that’s the reason your outfit exists), there are better ways to help us out.

For more on this, check out my article published today over at the OPEN Forum Blog. In it, I spent some time musing about how the economy is changing and how small businesses may need to consider that one of the fundamentals of capitalism — taking other people’s money and using it to make more money — seems to be gone for us for the foreseeable future.

So, I say unto you, my fellow microbusiness owners, cease your lamentations about our lack of access to capital and learn the joys of bootstrapping your way to growth.

It’s harder and it takes longer that way but at least you won’t be subject to the vicissitudes of the credit markets.


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Category: Politics


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Dawn Rivers Baker, microbusiness journalistDawn Rivers Baker, aka The Journal Blogger, is the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal, and the self-proclaimed Socrates of the small business blogosphere. See her official bio to learn more.


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