How long?  That’s the question we are all asking. How long will this recession last?

And we have the inevitable follow up questions. How bad will it get? Can my business survive? What should I do?

You have the same questions, I’m sure. This is affecting all of us, worldwide, though differently in each local economy.

So what do we do in our uncertainty? We work. We innovate. We do what we can to help each other. That’s how we make it through a recession, even one lasting several years. One step at a time. That’s how we made it through a decade-long Great Depression, and through austere war years that followed. One step at a time.

My corner of the world, Northwest Oklahoma, is rural, with an economy based on agriculture and energy production. So far, our local economy has stayed strong. But we have reasons to worry. Prices for both cattle and crude oil have dropped. Major construction projects in our capital, Oklahoma City, have been delayed or canceled. Soon, we could be facing a much tighter economy.

Each local economy has its own story. I’d love to hear about yours in the comments.

Small business owners are waiting through some serious uncertainty.

National policies will be changing in a few months as the new Congress and new President take over in January. How will their policies affect small business? We can’t even guess. Lots of different ideas are being discussed, but we can’t be sure of what will be passed or how it will get implemented.

We read the news, and we know there are still more potential problems out there. Since we are even more uncertain of the future than normal, we’re kind of holding our breath.

A construction engineer in Oklahoma City told me that many major construction projects in the state are being stopped or put on hold, some at the last minute. An Oklahoma electrical utility company has announced it has delayed plans to work on power lines.

Still, new businesses are opened every day. Every day, people show up at my small business site, looking for the checklist to start a new business or a simplified business plan. A new pizza place just opened in my small town. You probably see new businesses opening around you, as well.

Countless small business owners, including you, work every day to keep things moving. Even when we’re unsure, or facing a tough time, we’re sticking with it.

Take this as a reminder to support your local small businesses. Not just your retail shops, but also your local service providers, small manufacturers, and local food producers.

We may be holding our breath, but are we still moving ahead.

Let me introduce you to a couple of small business owners from my area.

Con Pekrul and his father Hart grew their hobby of winemaking into a full time business. Over the last seven years, together they’ve gone from just making wine, to creating food products, targeting tourists and offering all sorts of locally-made products. Con is highly involved in his local community, and he constantly promotes other small town small businesses. Making the decision to relocate and expand was difficult.

“At the time we thought, can we afford this? Will this work?” Pekrul said. Their accountant said to try it, but she secretly thought they’d fail in six months. They are now starting on their seventh year in that location.

Tommy Hudson just started his business six months ago. He provides large waste container rental and waste disposal in a rural region. Before starting, he put in tons of work researching and preparing. One of his goals was to start a business that would let him move out of the big city, and back to a small town like the one he grew up in.

“It can be done,” Tommy said. “It can be done with limited means. It can be done from a humble background. I am just a guy that had an idea and put a plan together and sought the right advice and enough advice to convince myself really that it could be done.”

Both of these entrepreneurs have built growing small businesses in uncertain economic times, in depressed local economies. And business is good. Con says holiday sales have started off very strong. Tommy says there have been times this summer when he could have used 10 more units to rent out.

All across the country, America is full of stories like these. Small business owners are working hard, monitoring their finances, and learning new ways to succeed. These are the people who will create all the new jobs to rebuild the economy.

All of the new jobs will come from small business? Yes. Another small business person, Zane Safrit, interviewed Bob Graboyes, Senior Health Advisor at the National Federation of Independent Business and economics professor at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Graboyes said 100% of new jobs are created by small business in a recession.

Con and Tommy are up to the challenge.

It’s something of a secret about the US economy; it’s shattered. Not in the sense that it’s broken, but in the sense that it is fragmented, with lots of little pieces.

When you hear news reports that the US stock market is dramatically up or down, they are referring to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That’s made up of 30 stocks of very large publicly traded companies. There are something over 25 million small businesses in the US. So a simple headline just cannot convey the depth of the real story.

What is the real story?

Each region has its own economic indicators. For example, my part of rural Oklahoma looks at petroleum production and wheat crops. We have small banks that stayed careful in their lending, so they remain stable. Our state and local governments do typically seek loans from larger banks and do have investments in the stock market for retirement funds, so they are having some troubles.

Farm commodity prices are dropping, though we expect that to be temporary. If you want to know more about the small town effects, I brought together some research from local newspapers on the financial crisis in small towns.

Some regions are much harder hit. Some had huge increases in house prices, and now they are hurt by their housing prices dropping back down. Some depended on the financial industry. A wave of layoffs in various industries is hurting people all across the country. It certainly looks like we are in for tight credit markets all over, higher unemployment, and other effects I haven’t even considered, I’m sure.

However, I certainly don’t think this economy is going to come close to equaling the Great Depression. I’m taking a cue from my grandmother who survived the Depression and the Dust Bowl; I’m thinking about how today will look after 70 years have passed. I expect we’ll get by.

As the economy of the USA churns through uncertainty, as businesses along our gulf coast are impacted by hurricanes, and as our quadrennial election season tortures us with partisan politics, I want to ask you, what’s your attitude towards failure?

Businesses will fail today due to the economy, due to disaster, due to health issues, due to mistakes, and due to a myriad of other reasons. The question is, what will those business owners do? In the USA, the odds are high that the entrepreneur in question will be back to start another business in the future. It has to do with our attitude towards failure.

I’m a big fan of failure. Why would anyone be a fan of failure? Because failure is a necessary part of learning, of activity, of business. If you are not experiencing any failures, you probably aren’t moving.

Barry Moltz wrote a whole book on failure, called Bounce! He points out that the American attitude towards business failure is perhaps the most tolerant in the world. That’s not much solace in the face of a big failure, as even Moltz admits.

But if you can’t accept the possibility of failing, you’ll never move forward.

Small business owner Rex Hammock said this back in 2000:

Even smart businesses managed by smart individuals and smart investors die. Businesses start and die every day. They always have. They always will. I am old enough – and have been fortunate enough – to have succeeded significantly and failed miserably and frankly, the failures have done more for me than the successes.

After years of relatively slow development, wind power seems to be really picking up in the US.

In western Oklahoma, we’ve built up from one tentative test project to an all out boom in development. A recent public meeting in Enid, Oklahoma, drew more people than they had room for. Hundreds of landowners turned out to listen.

Drive up the Interstate highways of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Iowa or many other Heartland states, and you’ll see the huge turbine blades being trucked to construction sites all over. Small manufacturers all across the mid-west are benefiting from this new industry. The cost to produce and install the turbines is approximately $2 million per megawatt of production capacity. And turbines are on back order.

What’s driving this activity? First, the high price of oil has also brought up natural gas prices, and natural gas is one of the top fuels used to generate electricity. That makes it easier for wind power to compete on price. Second, a production tax credit offered by the federal government has made it more attractive. That tax credit is scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Has it served its purpose? Yes.

Photo by Becky McCray - used with permission

Should it be renewed? That’s up for discussion.

Wind energy leases offer a way to produce extra income from farm and ranch land. Only about 5% of the surface is removed from agriculture, so most of the ground can still be productive. That’s an important side benefit of wind development.

The demand for electricity in the US isn’t going to decline. But there is another hurdle to overcome: our incredibly limiting power grid. Different regions of the USA use slightly different power transmission, and inter-connectivity is a problem. Also, much of the big power infrastructure is either insufficient or outdated. Considering that no matter how we produce our power, we have to transmit it, the US electrical grid is one of our biggest infrastructure needs.

Other innovative alternatives are being implemented all over. But wind power is benefiting from being ready to go at the right time. And from my windy corner of Oklahoma, that’s OK by me.

No one questions that small businesses are a key driver of the American economy. But US small business owners face a critical hurdle: healthcare costs.

The National Federation of Independent Business, quoted by Zane Safrit, has the count.

Of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, more than 28 million are small business owners, employees and their dependents. Under current law they generally do not enjoy the same tax treatment, coverage or pooling options as large businesses and corporations; on average, they pay 18% more for the same healthcare benefits. On top of this, over the last eight years, insurance premiums have increased an alarming 129%.

This problem hits the economy where it hurts: innovation and small business. Because of arcane rules about switching health insurance carriers, especially with pre-existing conditions, many people stick with a less-than-challenging or less-than-motivating job because they must to keep their coverage. And because of the astounding costs of buying individual or small group policies, lots of small businesses just don’t provide any coverage at all.

Jon Swanson shared the story of one small business owner who had to sell out after 15 years. Her husband developed lung cancer, so she was in great need of health insurance. Her small business couldn’t pay to cover her whole family, so she turned to a job that could. Unfortunately, it also means she’s locked into that job. She can’t go anywhere until probably retirement. She’s not working where she can provide her best service; she’s working to try to protect her family.

Why doesn’t US law give small business the same treatment as big business? Well, to be blunt, big business contributes more to political candidates than small business. That’s my opinion. With all the other issues in front of them, I don’t expect our political leaders to make changes any time soon, no matter which presidential candidate is elected. But at least we’ve managed to get them talking about it.

Becky McCray continues her series of observations from the heart of the US.

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Would you believe that small town manufacturing is a bright spot in the US economy? It is.

You’re more likely to hear about plant closures, mass layoffs, and jobs shipped off to countries with cheaper labor. But small town economic development expert Jack Schultz of Agracel, Inc., can cite example after example of small town manufacturers expanding, adding jobs, opening new facilities, and searching for more suppliers. What’s driving this expansion? Exports.

As our older massive manufacturers stagnated and have downsized, smaller manufacturers have sprung up in small towns. These modern manufacturers have seized the opportunity of the lower dollar to export a huge range of goods at more attractive prices.

In American Manufacturing – Booming!, Schultz lists the manufacturing expansions his firm is working with. They include companies in food processing, ag equipment, animal feed, furniture, metal fabrication, machinery, medical equipment, printing and building accessories. Small businesses added more jobs in May than the overall economy lost, according to the ADP Small Business Report, which monitors businesses with fewer than 50 workers.

Even as the nationwide US economy fluctuates, expect small town manufacturing in the US to continue to expand. I’ll take that as good news.

I’m really delighted to welcome Becky McCray to the blog as a regular contributor with her Small Business Letter from America. I’m sure, like me, you’ll enjoy her contributions, and unique perspective on small business.

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We small business owners just can’t make up our minds in America. Though we’re constantly hit with negative economic news, first one survey says small business owners are optimistic, then the next says we’re worried.

Here’s what I mean. Yesterday’s Administaff’s survey shows that we think our small businesses are growing even faster than we expected. That’s immediately followed by a survey from the National Association of Self-Employed that says we’re worried about even being able to pay our home mortgages. Those are just two examples out of dozens of recent surveys of the mood of small business people, with plenty of conflicting results.

Some where between our worry and our optimism, business goes on. We keep trying new things, seeing if we can improve our customers’ lives. Some businesses will fail this year, and some new ones will start. As small business owners, we are a bit different. We don’t wait for just the right timing. Our business is how we make our living. We can’t just sit out the rough economic patches.  All we can control is our attitude and our actions.

A very successful business in my home town of Alva, Oklahoma, has a small sign up that says, "I don’t care who throws the recession, this business does not plan to attend." They’ve had it up for years; decades, actually. They have survived since our town’s pioneer days, and continue to thrive in the face of competition from the huge retail chain. The current owner of that business told me that when he bought it nearly 50 years ago, his business plan was simple. He had to succeed to feed his family. So he did. That’s a pretty simple plan. His business continues to innovate. Even though he could have retired years ago, the owner continues to take training and learn new skills for his customers. He can’t control the economy, but he does all he can to succeed.

So even though we aren’t sure what is coming next, small business people are moving forward. That’s what we do.