Small Business, Big Impact

National Small Business Week is May 3-9, 2020. Yes, I know it’s only March but celebrating something as important as our local small business community takes a little planning. And we wanna get it right. Small businesses make up over 90% of the Denton Chamber’s membership and 99% of America’s workforce. Ninety-nine percent of everyone, with a job in this country, is a part of a small business.

Small businesses drive our economy. Look at these statistics from the Small Business Administration’s website:

  • Small businesses comprise:

    • 99.9% of all firms

    • 99.7% of all firms with paid employees

    • 97.5% of exporting firms (280,229 small exporters)

    • 33.3% of known export value ($429.3 billion out of $1.3 trillion)

    • 47.3% of private sector employees (60 million out of 126.8 million employees)

    • 40.7% of private-sector payroll

  • From 2000 to 2018, small businesses created 9.6 million net new jobs while large businesses created 5.2 million. Thus, they accounted for 64.9% of net new job creation in the period.

  • The most common source of capital to finance business expansion is personal and family savings (21.9% of small firms), followed by business profits and assets (5.7%), business loans from financial institutions (4.5%), and business credit cards from banks (3.3%).

Small businesses support our sports teams and civic clubs. Small businesses know our lunch order and how we take our coffee. And for every $100 spent in small businesses, about $68 return back into the local economy. Google these questions: Are small businesses greener? (Yes.)  Are small businesses driving innovation? (Yes.)

Small businesses are a part of a dream that’s coming true. Many stay small. Some get big, but they started SMALL.

Still with me? Partner with us and help us celebrate small business in Denton! We have a few fun things planned for National Small Business Week, and publicly recognizing the best of Denton, over lunch of course, is one of them. Nominate your favorite small business for an award HERE. Or FIVE of your favorite small businesses, HERE. Sponsor an award and hand it to the winner yourself. Or forward this to someone you know who is almost as passionate as we are about keeping Denton’s economy vibrant.

This Chamber, your Denton Chamber, is committed to economic growth in Denton. We get really busy working for our members and we don’t often take the time to say “thank you” for the daily heavy lift. We don’t always celebrate the contribution our small businesses make to our economy. We are working to gather as many partners as we can, in pursuit of making Denton the best place to do business in North Texas. Denton’s small business community is worthy of celebrating and National Small Business Week is the perfect time to do it.  I hope you’ll join us in this effort.

Erica Pangburn, IOM

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