Never doubt my devotion to microbusinesses!

Of course, in my opinion, the best news of the week is the research. I’m so excited, I can hardly sit still (which makes it very difficult to type, let me tell you). For the most part, the paper merely demonstrates the places where further research is needed but that’s great.

You see, with this paper, we get to hear from microbusiness owners and they tell us that a lot of what people assume to be true about them isn’t. If further research explores just what is here that needs further clarification, description, documentation and whatnot, there’ll be an avalanche of microbusiness research where before there was almost none.

That’s really exciting!

This week, we have more on the President’s small business proposals and whether they’ll matter to micros. There’s also more on the President’s budget. And, as always, this week’s Policy Matters.

For more information:

• The White House (Official Web Site)
• Microbusiness Research Institute
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• House Small Business Committee

So, this week, I’m doing something a little different. Last week, I interviewed business author Ainslie Waldron while she was here in the States on a book tour. Normally, I’d post that interview separately as a Podcast Special: Unconventional Thinker or something along those lines.

But this time, I decided that since I had written an article for this week’s newsletter from the interview, I’d go ahead and post it as part of the regular podcast.

So, I’d like to hear from you on this one — because it’s a pretty big leap from the 10 minute podcast that you’re used to to a 30 minute podcast that might take longer than your average busy microbusiness owner can spare.

Did you like having this expert interview added in to the regular podcast?

Do you think I should never do this again?

I have an inquiring mind and I want to know.

This week is all about different perspectives on the still limping but soon to recover economy; the mood is captured pretty accurately in the title of this week’s Policy Matters column: Half Empty, Half Full.

For more information:

• National Small Business Association
• Ainslie Waldron, mba
• Government Accountability Office

If you don’t happen to be among those who feel a personal connection to this holiday and the man it is meant to honor, permit me to share the following, written by the late Coretta Scott King and posted to The King Center web site:

We call you to commemorate this Holiday by making your personal commitment to serve humanity with the vibrant spirit of unconditional love that was his greatest strength, and which empowered all of the great victories of his leadership. And with our hearts open to this spirit of unconditional love, we can indeed achieve the Beloved Community of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

May we who follow Martin now pledge to serve humanity, promote his teachings and carry forward his legacy into the 21st Century.

If nothing else, I invite you to reflect (as I do every year) on what courage and generosity of spirit and intelligence and justice, combined with action, can accomplish.

This week’s microbusiness news is slightly truncated; not much is going to be happening in Washington until after the State of the Union address. Not to mention the number of people who are twitching about Massachusetts right now.

So, we have an assessment of microfinance and how it has performed as a source of small business capital throughout the crisis. There’s also the White House talking about what a good job they did last year, because nobody in Washington is shy about tooting their own horns.

And of course, this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• White House Blog: Where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re headed
• MicroTest 2009 Report Summary
• Boston Globe: The end of the office … and the future of work

I don’t know how well that sort of incentive would work. Small employers would no doubt welcome some sort of payroll tax holiday or cut in same. But I also think that smart small business owners won’t hire if the dibs are not in tune and this sort of tax carrot won’t get them to create jobs unless they would have created those jobs anyway.

I’ve said this before: a lot of other things have to be going right before you’re ready to start hiring. Just offering a tax break of some kind isn’t enough, from a business point of view.

This being an election year, it will be interesting to see what the economy does, how slowly or quickly it starts chugging again and when and to what degree the Democrats start to panic.

It’ll also be interesting to see whether the Republicans will be able to campaign on health care reform repeal and be successful if everybody is still kind of preoccupied with the economy.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and for the record, I will be sending out a correction in next week’s newsletters. I mistakenly reported (in the newsletters but not in this podcast) that the Labor Department had announced the loss of 68,000 jobs in December. The correct figure is 85,000 jobs lost last month. I apologize for the error.

For more information:

• Statement: President Obama Announces Proposal to Accelerate Job Growth
• National Federation of Independent Business
• The Conference Board
• Release: NASE Opposes Senate Health Reform Bill

After the story I did and the podcast snippet I recorded about the still-pending nomination for the Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy (along with my confession about my mental aberrations having to do with former NFL tight-end Kellen Winslow), I was honored and tickled pink to field a phone call from Dr. Winslow Sargeant himself.

I just wanted to mention it here because I am very well aware of the fact that he really didn’t have to do that. It gives me a good impression of him.

Now … back to this week’s news.

Best of show for the week is the new nonemployer research, without a doubt. These bits of research on nonemployers might illustrate stuff that many of us think we already know but, as I’ve written before, without the research, we were never able to prove it before.

Now we can, which matters. And now that the easy questions are being answered and some of those in the research world are beginning to notice and care about how little we really know about nonemployers, the fun part (where we start seeing research that illustrates stuff that we didn’t know) will soon start.

Personally, I think that’s a great way to close out a year.

We also have Congressional dancing for you, with the appropriations tango and the economic stimulus cha-cha. Everybody’s dance cards seem to be full but where does that leave us microbusinesses?

For more information:

• Summary: Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010 (PDF)
• Landrieu Praises Passage of Omnibus Appropriations Act …
• SBA Office of Advocacy

I decided to take a break from complaining about politicians for this final podcast of the year, and turn instead to the much more pleasant task of talking about ways and means to spot opportunity that are accessible to the typical microbusiness owner.

And, really, what could be more accessible than watching and listening to our customers. If we have any sense at all, we’re doing that anyway, aren’t we?

I’m talking about turning our hands to trend-watching, a topic about which I had a fun and informative conversation with my good friend, Anita Campbell.

Anita offers us tips on

• how do you spot trends and what can you do about them?
• how early is “too early” to take advantage of new trends?
• what’s the window of opportunity between “fad” and “trend” and “mainstream”?
• … and much, much more!

Give a listen. What with all the planning that is going on among small business owners along about now (or should be), it’s a timely topic.

The regular edition of the Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast will be back next week, on January 4, 2009.

For more information:

• Small Business Trends
• BizSugar.com

However, when I take these little year-end breaks, I generally try not to leave you completely. One of the things I try to make arrangements for is this podcast.

This is the time of year for podcast specials.

This first special is a commentary from yours truly, a little ditty that was originally published over at The Journal Blog on December 11, 2009. Regular Journal Blog readers seemed quite enchanted by the Microbusiness Manifesto. I hope you are, too.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to the fact that I am an old football fan, my brain keeps automatically translating Dr. Winslow Sargeant’s name into Kellen Winslow.

Kellen Winslow, in case you are unfamiliar with him (and I’m talking about the original, not version 2.0, Winslow’s son), was an NFL Hall of Fame calliber tight end with the San Diego Chargers back in the 1970s.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go back and change “Dr. Winslow” to “Dr. Sargeant.” It’s kind of embarrassing.

Getting back to the week’s microbusiness news, I’m disappointed that the Data Accountability and Trust Act was passed by the House without an opportunity for the House Small Business Committee to hold a hearing on the proposal (assuming they would have held one if there’d been the time).

This bill will have massive impacts on small and microbusinesses, which somebody really needs to point out to lawmakers before they pass the legislation.

I’ve always found that complaining about a bill after it has been passed is less than effective.

This week, we also have research on college graduates and mobility (with implications for regional economic development) and, as always, this week’s policy matters.

Oh, and I’m on hiatus (as opposed to vacation) for the rest of the year — although you can expect one or two podcast specials. The next regular edition of the podcast will be webcast on January 4th. Happy holidays!

For more information:

• Data Accountability and Trust Act of 2009 (H.R. 2221)
• House Committee on Energy and Commerce
• SBA Office of Advocacy

There was a lot of that in Washington last week, wasn’t there? Particularly Democrats from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, who saw those jobs numbers come down the pike on Friday and were dying to crow about President Obama’s “successful” economic policies but didn’t dare.

There are still way too many people out of work for anybody to be making happy noises about economic data … unless they are feeling politically suicidal.

It’s mean of me to say this but it was kind of funny to watch.

It is to be hoped that economic development professionals are paying attention to the Aspen Institute research covered in this week’s News Briefs. Student-run MDOs promise to be a reasonably low cost way of bringing microenterprise development and support to communities that may not otherwise have the budget to launch a new program.

That may be especially good news in rural communities that have colleges attached to them. From the research, it appears that it doesn’t even have to be a huge college or university. Perhaps even the local community college will get the job done. It’s certainly worth exploring, I suspect.

Plus, we have a bill introduced by Senate Small Business Committee Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) to actually get rid of a program that bids to lose a bunch of taxpayer money, and this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Study: “Can Student-run Microfinance Organizations Help Address Issues of Scale and Sustainability in the U.S. Domestic Microenterprise Industry?”
• S. 2777, A bill to repeal the American Recovery Capital loan program of the Small Business Administration (THOMAS)

It’s a peculiar thing to be faced with the standard ‘what do we have to be thankful for?’ article to write, when the answer to that question is: ‘not a whole lot.’

Fortunately for you (or for me, or both), I did manage to come up with something from the heartwarming Thanksgiving files for my Policy Matters column. Hope you enjoy it.

Meanwhile, no sooner are we perhaps looking at the light at the end of the health care reform tunnel (sort of) than another issue comes down the pike for high profile Republicans to hyperventilate about.

That would be climate change legislation, the next item from the Obama Administration’s to-do list that is soon to turn the entire Washington-based media back into johnny-one-note.

Here, the stakes for microbusinesses do not appear to be quite so obvious to many people as was the case in the health care reform debate but stakes there definitely are. I’ll be covering more of that as the whole things revs up further and as we hear more from both the National Association for the Self-Employed and the National Small Business Association.

In addition, there’s that Small Business Financing Summit earlier this month and a new National Assessment for the U.S. from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

For more information:

• House Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
• National Association for the Self-Employed
• National Small Business Association
• U.S. Small Business Administration
• Global Entrepreneurship Monitor