One big change that’s going to happen in 2009 — change we can really believe in because it’s already happened — is that small business policy will be largely in the hands of women during the 111th Congress.

Three of the top four lawmakers presiding over the Small Business Committees in the House and the Senate will be women: Nydia Velazquez in the House and Mary Landrieu and Olympia Snowe in the Senate.

On top of that, the incoming SBA Administrator is Karen Gordon Mills, another woman.

And I’m wondering to what degree the gender difference will make a difference?

I think it has been pretty well established that women tend to do things differently than men. In practical terms, what will that look like in this particular context?

Over the last few years, small business policy measures have been largely stalled because of partisan sniping, bickering and procedural maneuvers. And, granted, women on Capitol Hill indulge in as much of that stuff as men do (or do they?) when they think the occasion calls for it.

On the other hand, women on Capitol Hill tend to be less ideologically dogmatic and more pragmatic — unless they’re maneuvering to move up in the party hierarchy, of course. And even when they breath partisan fire and brimstone in public appearances, privately they are often less stubborn and more willing to compromise if that’s how to get things done.

So, this will be something else to watch. Will these four women mange to bypass the stupidity that has stopped all sorts of non-controversial small business legislation in its tracks? Or will they do things the way those things have always been done in D.C.? (Somehow, I doubt it.)

And, if they do things differently, will we be able to tell?

Something else to monitor in the coming months of Politics: My Favorite Spectator Sport.

It’s weird what happens around this time in the political season. We talk almost obsessively about the incoming Congress and the incoming Administration but, since they’re all coming in for the first time, none of us really knows what we’re talking about.

I suppose this is what pundits do best: speculate.

That said, there are some more-than-relevant personnel changes we’ll see in the 111th Congress, and that doesn’t include the burning question of whether Norm Coleman will be back on the Small Business Committee or whether he will find himself out of a job when all the counting and litigious jockeying is done.

Listen to the Microbusiness News Briefs podcast: Download audio file (01052009.mp3)

For more information:

President-elect Obama Announces Choices for Transportation, Labor, SBA and USTR Posts
U.S. Department of Commerce
The Conference Board
Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
House Committee on Small Business

Unless, of course, you have the sense to just take a long weekend or a short vacation.

So here we are: it’s the end of the week but the beginning of the year. You have this one day to work — or not — but on Monday, of course, the world gets started all over again.

Which brings us to our January poll: what’s at the top of your to-do list?

Of course, we all have all those things to do but I’m interested in what you are planning to do first, as a priority. There’s lots to think about when making that decision.

There’s the calendar and the fact that it’s a new year. There’s the state of the economy and how it was impacting your business as last year drew to a close. There’s your own business planning and what you have been wanting or meaning to do right after the holidays, regardless of all of the above.

And who knows? Maybe you hadn’t really decided what you’re going to do first. Maybe you’re feeling as disorganized as I am right now. Maybe this will be a good opportunity to force you to make up your mind.

Hey, I live to serve.

Happy New Year!

So, what I have to say to you right now is not especially Janus-like, exactly. Right now, I want to tell you some things I’m hoping for into next year.

That’s as distinct from what I actually think is going to happen.

Last week, Jeff Summers (who seems to just be regularly brilliant — at least, when he talks to me) said this in a comment on one of my posts:

Fundamental changes are happening to the business world as we speak - the unparalleled increase in speed and overwhelming choice. Which means it’s time to rethink (thinking is still relatively free isn’t it?) how we approach the entire gamut of small business issues in order to increase their ability to drive the nation’s economy upward and get us out of this muck and mire as only they can.

I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed that the economy seems to be changing in fundamental ways. Businesses — especially small businesses — are getting smaller. That brings about a whole range of things that need rethinking, as Jeff points out.

I’m also seeing that more and more leaders in the small business space are noticing just how small most small businesses are. That’s new. It wasn’t so very long ago that people used to argue with me about whether microbusinesses matter; now, they talk about the fact that most small businesses are very, very small.

My hope is that soon — very soon — that kind of thinking will spread further and wider. I hope that more and more microbusiness owners will notice that they are microbusiness owners and, more importantly, that they think through what that really means in terms of their day-to-day operations.

I hope that more of the people who make it their business to go to bat for small businesses pay attention to how “small business” is changing early in the 21st century. Advocacy is not so effective if you don’t keep your ear to the ground to know what your chosen folks truly need.

I hope that the stuff on my wish list gets considered, if not acted on.

And I hope that you and I have a very happy and prosperous 2009.

See you next year!

Listen to the Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast: Download audio file (122908-special.mp3)

It’s always fun to talk to Keith, even about such a dry topic as taxes, but it was pretty clear during this conversation that he is feeling just a bit nervous about what that Obama guy and his Democratic friends in Congress are going to do with the tax code. I thought it was pretty significant that this is the first time in any of my interviews with him that he advised microbusiness owners to get active about advocating for advantageous tax policies.

I think that tells its own tale.

For more information:

National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE)

In some ways, though, finding nuggets of gold in the comments is even more fun.

Anita Campbell was commenting via blog post earlier this week about President-elect’s pick to lead the SBA, doing a bit of virtual head-scratching like the rest of us.

But my eye was caught by this insight, in a comment by one Jeffrey Summers:

The SBA needs an evangelist who can put small business issues on the nation’s front burner.

Right on, Mr. Summers. I hope you are often subject to such bursts of brilliance.

You know, that is really what has been lacking in the Small Business Administration, at least as far as what they do for small businesses.

The SBA Administrator ought to know everything there is to know about small businesses (including how very small most of them are). And he or she should consider it to be part of their job to dash around Washington talking up how great they are and making sure that the folks at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue know as much about them as he or she does.

Ignorance is the greatest enemy of small business on Capital Hill and in the White House.

Programs are nice but combating that ignorance needs to be the biggest part of the SBA Administrator’s job.

I’ll grant you that it might seem a bit weird of me to be writing about it on Christmas Eve. That’s what happens when I come across an idea and get so excited about it that my only regret is that I didn’t think of it first.

Michael Shumer of Small-Mart (whose brilliance is already proven just by virtue of the name he gave his blog) points out in a pair of posts that

(a) since we’ve just had a financial markets meltdown, no doubt we’ll be looking for things to fix in the financial system and

(b) since we’re going to be fixing things anyway, maybe we should fix things so that all the money people save (especial retirement savings) isn’t going to capitalize Fortune 500 companies.

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. First, because I have been intrigued with the idea of micro-equity for the longest time. More and more microbusinesses and even nonemployers are incorporating — probably to limit their personal liability. Once incorporated, whether they realize it or not, they have an additional avenue to pursue if they need financing. Except, of course, that neither the equity funding system (as enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission) nor the investors’ mindset is especially receptive to microbusinesses.

Small communities, on the other hand, love their small businesses. Or at least, they do if the small community I live in is anything to judge by. If you talk to people here about economic development, they’ll come back at you with the standard stuff about factories and jobs. But if you drag them past the usual smoke-stack chasing and start talking about supporting new and existing local small businesses, their eyes light up and they get really excited. It’s kind of amazing to watch.

Yeah, I think they might be willing to contribute small amounts toward a community micro-equity fund. It’s an idea worth considering.

Especially since it addresses (or helps, anyway) the perennial problem of the microbusiness: access to capital. And it does so in ways that use local market forces to more equitably distribute capital throughout the marketplace, rather than concentrating it in the economic stratosphere.

All of which is enough to put a smile on my face on this Christmas Eve. Let’s call it a great idea of a holiday present for the nation’s (more than) 25 million (by now) microbusinesses.

What about you? Do you have a microbusiness Christmas wish?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

I’ve been writing about r3 off and on for months now (see, this is why it pays to subscribe to one or another of my newsletters), and even wrote about it over at the American Express OPEN Forum blog earlier this month.

If you missed all the yelling or need to refresh your memory, check out the OPEN Forum post.

Meanwhile, fellow small business blogger Anita Campbell poses an interesting question: why are the regulations in the 2007 Top Ten primarily so narrow? Why aren’t there more regulatory nominations that effect all or most small businesses?

I suggest that this upcoming year, SBA’s Advocacy select rules and regulations that matter to large numbers of small businesses, such as the Alternative Minimum Tax and health insurance deductibility rules. For more, try this small business wish list from the NFIB.

There is a reason for that, and it’s not really a ’special interests’ versus the rest of us issue.

The fact is that there simply are not very many regulations that impact most or all small businesses.

That seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Regulations, we are often told, are killers for small businesses, costing them billions of dollars annually.

And that’s very true.

But regulations, by their very nature, tend to be industry-specific. And many broad regulations, like those promulgated by the Labor Department’s OSHA, don’t kick in until a business reaches a certain size. Which means that most small businesses (i.e., the microbusinesses) don’t have to deal with them because they are too small to have to worry about it — unless they are in an industry that is heavily-regulated, which brings us back to that first point.

(In fact, one reason why many microbusiness owners prefer to stay micro is precisely that: less regulatory pain to deal with.)

So anyway … the bottom line here is that there simply aren’t very many broadly impactful federal regulations. The reason why there was only one regulation in Advocacy’s 2007 Top Ten that was felt in any far reaching way (that was the home office deduction) is because the only rules that are very broadly felt by all small businesses are tax rules.

Even Anita’s suggestions and that NFIB’s wish list don’t consist of anything that could be resolved through this program; all that stuff needs legislative action, not regulatory reform.

As I mentioned in the podcast, a lot has happened since this interview was recorded just a few days after Barack Obama was elected 44th President of the United States.

All things considered, it’s kind of silly to start complaining about him when he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. There are question marks about his choice for SBA Administrator and how in-touch she really is with small businesses (as opposed to entrepreneurial gazelles).

For that matter, I’m wondering how in touch Mr. Obama is when he keeps talking about jobs and wages (as opposed to work and income). In some ways, some of the languages he uses seems to indicate quite a bit of 30-year-old thinking.

More to the point, as I discussed with Kristie, the new Congress will be interesting to watch. “Ever time there’s an election, it’s a whole new ball game,” and since Committee assignments haven’t happened yet, we don’t know what we’re working with yet.

Plenty of time to really start complaining down the road, right?

Listen to this Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast Special: Download audio file (Darien_post-election_interview.mp3)

For more information:

National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE)

If you’re like the small business owners I’ve talked to since the news broke, along about now you may be saying, Who?

Ms. Mills is evidently a venture capital expert, having served as head of MMP Group, a private equity capital investor and advisor firm. She has also been serving on Obama’s SBA transition team.

Perhaps more to the point, from my perspective, is Why?

If I get a chance, I’m planning to call somebody and ask them that very question.

My first reaction is disappointment. After naming so many supremely qualified individuals to various posts in his Cabinet, I’m wondering exactly what the thinking was here. At first glance, it doesn’t appear that this woman could know very much about microbusinesses and, given her background, I worry that she may have a high-growth gazelle bias that will make her as deaf to the rest of us out here as so many others in Washington have always been.

That said, it has always been my practice to give people a chance. I’m not prepared to declare this appointment to be a disaster for microbusinesses. I don’t expect that she knows a thing about them coming into the job but maybe she will be willing to listen and learn. Maybe she will prove to be both accessible and educable, maybe she will be capable of having her horizons expanded.

Maybe she’ll turn out to be somebody for us to love.

(Pause for musical interlude … ) Download audio file (SomebodyToLove.mp3)

Right now, that’s my hope. I’ll sit back, wait and see how she does. She makes all the right noises about small businesses — or, at least, she did during today’s announcement — but there wasn’t anything particularly insightful or even original in her remarks. And we’ve all heard “all the right noises” before, haven’t we?

It’s change but I don’t know that I believe in it yet. We’ll see.