You’re passionate, you care, you get it, you think about your business day and night, but let’s face it, you’ve got a big vision for that business and you probably can’t realize that vision all by yourself.

Your passion and commitment are essential, but it’s your ability to build passion and commitment for that vision in others that is going to be the key to growth.

You need committed and connected staff members. You need committed and loyal customers. You need to create a commitment factory.

Consider a business school that doesn’t have students but clients who own small businesses ranging from landscaping to roofing to metal stamping firms, and are too deeply engaged in the daily grind of their business to think about long term strategy. Entrepreneur Clayton L. Mathile who built a billion dollar pet food business and sold it to Procter & Gamble for $2.3 billion has built such a school to help small business owners deal with the gut-wrenching problems they are faced with on a daily basis, and which traditional universities cannot really help them deal with.

According to the results of the latest SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard, small business owners are even more pessimistic about the economy than they were a couple of months back. They share the sentiment with consumers 67% of whom don’t feel good about the economy. This shows that most small business owners still don’t feel that they’ve left the recession behind irrespective of what economists say. This state of sentiments has received a further blow with consumers drastically cutting down on their spending in July.

In mid-October, President Obama moved to raise the amount of credit extended to small businesses. If Congress approves his plan, the measures would enable community banks to borrow at low rates from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It would also raise loan caps on some Small Business Administration (SBA) programs. To qualify, the banks would have to show how they would increase lending to small enterprises.

Source: Forbes Link Below