The TrophyHusband-Radical Moderate Begins

As an owner of a small business, I keep hearing from our political leaders that we are the engine that drives the economy. Unfortunately, the policies that we hear have nothing to do with helping small innovative businesses. I am starting this blog in the hope that our voice will be heard, and that we can begin to start a dialogue as to how we, as small business owners, can prosper in a very difficult environment.

As a bit of background, I started an internet trophy company called k2awards about 7 years ago with the idea of making buying trophies easier and cheaper. We have grown to become one of the largest trophy companies in the country by being innovative and reinvesting heavily in the business. Until recently, growth was relatively easy as we surfed the internet wave. Now as the economy softens, we are having to be smarter and more nimble to keep up the growth. In future posts, I plan going into more detail on how the company started, but for now, I hope this serves as context to my comments.

The most egregious example of our political leaders saying nice things about small business and actually acting in the opposite direction is the bailout of Chrysler. Chrysler is an odd company to bailout for lots of reasons. First of all, it has been shedding jobs for many years. Should we not support companies increasing payrolls? Secondly, Chrysler is owned by Cerberus, a private equity monster by name. These owners hardly need a bailout, just check out their homes and incomes over the past decade. Third, while we look for ways to reduce the price of oil, we are asking the car companies to build small cars that noone seems to want to buy. There is absolutely no rationale for it. Finally, we need to invest in the future and not in the past. Perhaps Congress should read the children's book "Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel" (think they can get through that?) to learn the lesson that fighting progress works for a while, but in the end, it is a losing battle. Yes we need a domestic car industry that produces more fuel efficient cars, but propping up Chrysler is not the answer.

Let's invest in small, innovative, growing businesses as Congress says it wants to do, and not in the past.