Meet The 53 Best Small-Business People Of The Year en-us Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500 Sat, 27 Dec 2014 13:23:23 -0500 Richard Feloni cheap nike clothing for women Mon, 09 Jun 2014 18:59:47 -0400 <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> nike new running shoes cheap nike clothing for women <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> Chuck Blakeman Sun, 18 May 2014 11:13:48 -0400 These awards do not reflect an understanding of what defines a small business. 98% of the nation's businesses have 1-19 employees (includes non-employer firms) - 29.1 million. Only 2% have 20 or more employees, and less than 7/10th of a percent have more than 100. Yet only seven of the fifty-four winners, 12.9%, have 1-19 employees; the majority have 50-1,500 employees and one had absurdly large revenues of $65million. This demonstrates an infatuation with the largest 2% of businesses in America, and is consistent with what the SBA has become in recent years - a promoter of large corporations at the expense of small businesses. As another example, the 98% need loans of $50,000 to $250,000, but those loans are largely no longer available from the SBA. In 2008, the average SBA loan was $182,000 and 24% of them were under $100,000. Today, the average SBA loan is a bloated $547,000, and less than 9% of them are under $100,000. How did this happen? As part of their infatuation with big, over the last six years the SBA embarked on the largest expansion of the definition of "small" in their 61 year history. As a result, tens of thousands of large corporations like those celebrated here were redefined as "small". This allowed the banks and the SBA to give significantly fewer loans in much large amounts to a very few large corporations, and still proclaim they are loaning to "small" businesses. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The SBA is not the friend of small business, but of large corporations. Is $65 million in revenue a small business in anyone's book? Nothing demonstrates how the SBA has lost its way more than this list of "small business" winners. 87% of them are among the largest 2% of businesses in America. It's no surprise they're doing well, because they are also the ones getting all the SBA loans. I was 54th Best Small-Business Person Mon, 12 May 2014 18:35:24 -0400 I fell one place short so I don't get to be in the slide show, but really is there such a wide gulf between 53rd best Small-Business Person and 54th best Small-Business Person? I hate to come across as a whiner but why did they have to limit the slide show to 53, why couldn't they have gone to 54 and included me? Is it such a terrible burden to create one more slide?