Microbusiness: In the United States, a small business with five employees or less.

Microbusinesses are typically defined as needing less than $35,000 of seed capital, and generally do not have access to typical avenues of business finance such as corporate credit accounts or commercial banking services.

Micro Businesses comprise 90% plus of  all business in the City of Twentynine Palms. With the exception of the out of town owned corporate stores and the few franchise  fast food outlets, most of the commerce in town is done by microbusinesses.

Consider these numbers from the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Census:

• – 90 percent of all businesses in the U.S. are microbusinesses.
• – 99 percent of all African American-owned firms are microbusinesses.
• – 96.1 percent of women-owned enterprises are microbusinesses.

“If one in three Main Street businesses hired just one employee, this country would be at full employment,”  Connie Evans, president and chief executive officer with the Washington-based Association for Enterprise Opportunity recently said.

Most of the Building Contractors, all artists and crafters, and  most if not all of the Brick and mortar businesses in both the Historic Plaza and the overall downtown area are microbusinesses. This website and even this authors Hot Dog Cart are a microbusinesses.

Art is not just the total cost of pigment and canvas. To value the worth of  information, is not to total up the cost of bandwidth and storage. The worth of War and Peace to society is weighed by neither the  leather bindings  or the number of pages, but the story Leo Tolstoy paints with his words.  So too is the worth of a microbusiness. Whether the microbusiness on occasion is able to help pay the bills of its owner or is able to make the payroll of 5,  microbusiness is what makes up the meat, bones and hide of not only business in 29 Palms but America itself.

Instead of putting impediments and obstacles in the way of microbusiness,  government needs if not to move out of the way, but support microbusiness.

Here is to every dress shop, cafe, art gallery, florist, real estate agency, mechanic and every other micro business whether street vendor, home based or Brick and Mortar, we are the risk takers. Yes we are proud of our accomplishments, but we are better for our defeats.

So the next time someone belittles you and your microbusiness… smile…. then go sell the son of a bitch something.