Would Microbusiness Owners Please Stand Up?

Dawn Rivers Baker

When you run a business, you need to have an idea of what to expect—from your customers, from the marketplace, from yourself.

That's why I make such a big deal about the difference between microbusinesses and everybody else.

Most people define a microbusiness as a firm with fewer than five employees. Another commonly accepted definition includes firms with fewer than 10 employees.

It doesn't matter, really, because that's just an attempt to put numbers on the stuff that makes a microbusiness what it is.

Microbusinesses are defined by their size because their size dictates the way they operate. When your business is that small, you do things differently from larger firms. That's a no-brainer; you have to.

And that's why, if your business is like 9 out of 10 U.S. firms, it's important for you to recognize yourself as a microbusiness owner.

Because if you recognize yourself as the owner of a microbusiness, then you know that most of the advice you read and most of the resources you are said to have and most of the public policy goodies you are said to get are not relevant to you and your business.

The degree to which you decide that something needs to be done about that is up to you. At the very least, knowing yourself as a microbusiness owner means you can stop letting other people decide what you ought to do, need, want.

After all, it's your business.

Dawn Rivers Baker is the award-winning journalist behind The MicroEnterprise Journal, the online business news w eekly that covers politics and policy, the economy, and research for and about microbusinesses. Baker also blogs at The Journal Blog.