Your Temporarily Small Business and those 28 million other small U.S. businesses around you supply 120 million Americans with jobs. That’s more than one third of our nation’s population. You contribute $8.5 trillion to our nation’s $17 trillion GDP. Oh, and by the way, 48.7 percent of all new businesses launched in the past decade were started by first generation immigrants.
Lessons?
a) The 18,500 large companies with 500 or more employees make a marvelous competitive frosting on our economic cake. But they, and we, depend on the other 28 million firms to do the rising.

b) The only place we want to be sending our immigrants is down avenues of further opportunity.

And as to wisdom? Here are just a few of the insights that temporarily small business owners have passed our BartsBooks threshold in just the past two weeks:

– I cannot possibly pay my people what they’re worth, so I always make sure to pay them promptly.

– We glance occasionally at the prize, but most of our time is spent negotiating the ground beneath our feet. That’s what will get you there.

– Marketing? We hit a heck of a lot fewer people, and gain a heck of a lot more sales by making personal phone calls to old clients and new ones.

– The key is not how much inventory – but which day – which hour you buy it that makes the profits.

– I cannot think of one job in this whole shop that each one of us does not put his hand to at some time or other.

Wishing the large and the small every success,
– Bart Jackson