During the State of the Union address, I was lying on the living room floor listening to the president talk about the entrepreneurial spirit and the future of the United States of America. I got chills down my spine thinking about how important that statement is to our future.
Our future is now. As Americans, we have capitalism as our financial backbone. Capitalism breeds entrepreneurship.
As people with disabilities we look towards employment and opportunity. Employment for people with disabilities is a constant struggle, as is advancement within one's career. It can be a challenge to get able-bodied people to look at people with disabilities as "unemployable commodity."
To combat this, people with disabilities are on the forefront of entrepreneurship. We build businesses to be able to employ ourselves and help the world around us. There are examples of these businesses all across the United States. Take a look at Linda Erb at OhGoodyGoody.com, who is building a local business website and showing entrepreneurial spirit.
After speaking publicly to Fortune 500 businesses, universities and high school students around the nation about being a person with a disability, I see a great opportunity. A business opportunity. A venture capital funded opportunity. In the spring of 2011, I will be launching my dream just as President Obama described in his 2011 State of the Union when he stated...
the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children.
Because of President Obama's speech and the subsequent press releases about Startup America, I reached out to Startup America as well as all the businesses they listed as partners on their website. I sent a long e-mail explaining myself and my idea. I was very excited about working with these businesses who've publicly said they are interested in entrepreneurship as part of the growth for the United States of America. I waited for a response.
I am still waiting.
Not one of the businesses, and only one nonprofit organization which cannot help me because I don't reside in their state, replied. Startup America did not reply. They have a very pretty website, but must not be investing in manpower.
There are organizations out there willing to be supportive. The USBLN is an organization whose mission is
...the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor force and marketplace; assists in career preparation for and employment of people with disabilities, improves customer experiences for people with disabilities, and promotes the certification and growth of disability-owned business.
They respond when called. So does CSAVR- the Council of State Administrators for Vocational Rehabilitation. Their mission is
effective and efficient national program of public vocational rehabilitation services which empowers individuals with disabilities to achieve employment, economic self-sufficiency, independence...
These two organizations are used to dealing with people, businesses and entrepreneurs. Start-up America should reach out to them to find out how they can partner.
It's very discouraging to realize how naïve I was to think these businesses really do want entrepreneurs to connect. I am what President Obama discussed. So is Linda Erb and many, many others. My idea is what Startup America is about, based on their press releases. It's too bad they don't know it.
Follow John Robinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/getoffyourknees
If you make something, there is the SBA for a loan--provided you have personal assets which they can attach. If you need marketing , accounting or "how to start a small business" assistance, there is SCORE. Since I did not need either of these because my business provides ancillary legal services and I am an accountant, I have always been out there on my own.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce. Build yourself a web site and start linking like crazy. Contact everyone who is a likely prospect for your service.
What not to do? Rely on government or non-profits--unless you are targeting them as clients. You are looking for income, not kind thoughts. You undoubtedly are already working the prerequisite 12 hour days and understand everyone you meet is a prospectove customer, client or contact.
What could government actually do to help us small business owners? Give every small business with fewer than 50 employees a total payroll tax holiday until the U-6 unemployment rate goes down to about 8-9%. Then get out of our way.
The lion's share of hiring in the US is by start-ups with fewer than 10 employees. We will never get the sophisticated tax breaks created for big businesses who make big political contributions. The new health care act doesn't affect us.
Being sole proprietorships, partnerships, LPs and LLCs, we don't pay corporate income tax. Our profits are funnelled directly into our personal 1040s and we pay both the employer and employee portions of the payroll tax on it along with paying a much higher effective tax rate than most "corporations."
Small business is different. Obama is talking to Apple, Facebook, GE and Intel as if they were going to bail out the US economy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Robinson, if he can get his business off the ground, and I are perfect examples of the businesses which will cure America' financial ills. Obama has no clue we even exist.
And you wonder why most small business people are Conservative?
Keep trying! Send more letters, make more phone calls. Sometimes you have to chip away at the iceberg.
The Chinese own YOU, me, all of us, our children, our children's children, because of a titanic trade deficit we can only pare down if we reduce China to rubble with our nuclear warheads.
India, Inc. is gearing up to hire more people who are willing to work for $10 a day so that they can ultimately have 15 MILLION JOBS that used to be in U.S. domestic soil, on top of taking over our own jobs HERE on H1-B and L1 visa rackets. IBM is the second biggest private employer in India with more than 150,000 employees there, and it won't even publish how many workers it has left here in the U.S. because it's downright embarrassed.
Alan Blinder, noted U.S. economist, projected several years ago that eventually 40 million U.S. jobs will be outsourced to other countries. With a raging 15% real unemployme nt nationwide , we're still only less than one-fourth of the way to the bottom of those 40 million outsourced jobs.
What opportunities are out there? How do we compete in a system where U.S. corporation are given INCENTIVES to ship our jobs overseas, and global wage arbitrage cripples us before we even start to blink?
We have leaders on both sides of the aisle who for the life of them cannot recognize reckless globalization if it ate them up whole and defecated them out afterwards.
Demand is low because so many are unemployed and under-employed. So many are unemployed because their jobs have been shipped overseas.
Companies keep shipping jobs overseas in order to keep costs down as they struggle to stay alive because demand is so low.
Am I the only one seeing the chicken and the egg here? Government needs to step in and stop the endless hemorrhraging of U.S. jobs overseas via protectionist extremes if necessary. It has become self-defeating. The CYCLE must be BROKEN.
Since all he needs is a cell phone, a good computer system, a car and the occasional plane ticket his start-up can be funded with a $5,000 limit credit card.
What Robinson needs are clients. This means he will be spending countless hours on the phone and computer, and, if he does not want to waste his time, only contacting people with a possibility of using his services.
It is easy to talk about starting up, planning for a start up, networking with other people who want to start up and researching how to start up. That is NOT "starting up." You have not done that until your E-Mail address and business card are in the hands of people who need what it is you do, and that does not take government assistance.