Small businesses create social capital. by Bruce Camber, Small Business School

Our working premise: Small business owners are creators of (a) value, (b) new value thresholds, and (c) a de facto value index for every local community, and the byproducts of this process of value creation is both social capital and fiscal capital. This conclusion is based on these questions and answers:

1. How many small business owners in any given designated-market area (DMA)? Answer: Take the actual population of an area, and divide by 12; that is the statistical average for the USA.
2. How many of these small business owners are wealthy? Answer: More than most people imagine. There are indeed "many millionaires next door." Eighty percent of all people earning over $250,000 a year are small business owners.
3. How many small businesses are there in the USA? Answer: Over 24 million who file income taxes as a corporate entity; another estimated 15M to 30M earn secondary income and report it (hopefully) as personal income.
4. How many small business owners are members of public television? Answer: Not enough. But of any group of members, they are the majority. Although the demographics of support for public television suggest that the largest contributors are women over 65 years of age, most of these women are survivors of small business owners.
5. How many small business owners in leadership roles in civic, social, religious, sports ... organizations in your community? Answer: The majority. Although constantly stretched for time, small business owners are the most active segment in social programs of any kind. Some say critically, "They have to be; that's where their customers are." And that is a reality. And that is why it is most important that we discern what is a genuine affection for people and what is exploitive behavior, or what is giving and what is selfish.
6. How many big businesses (over 5000 employees) are there? Answer: Under 2000. And, over one-third of these are family businesses grown very large and these business are not publicly-traded companies. Hard to believe? Just look at the Fortune 1000 and the "employees" column. Technically there are several businesses that fall into the category of "small" (between 1 and 499 employees). The mid-sized businesses in the USA, between 500 and 4999 employees, are estimated to number less than 7500. The federal government considers any business under 500 employees to be small.
7. How many businesses on all our stock exchanges in the USA? Answer: Under 10,000.
8. How much national press does small business receive? Answer: Virtually none.