Obama says business success takes a village. But do owners agree?
Over the weekend President Obama said that small business success is a group effort. But some small business owners disagree, reminding the President that they are the ones who take the risk to launch the business, who do not get paid if something goes wrong.
Costas Tsamas, originally from Greece, talks on the phone in front of his food cart in New York in this June 2012 file photo. Data shows that 18 percent of small business owners in the US are immigrants. President Obama offended some business owners this weekend with comments about who deserves credit for a business's success.
Seth Wenig/AP
In case you missed it over the weekend, President Obama said the following about entrepreneurs: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Now I am the first to say that entrepreneurs do not build a business alone. They need help from employees, customers, investors, suppliers, family members, and the broader community.
That being said, entrepreneurs are the ones who take the risk to launch the business. They are the ones who do not get paid if money is tight. They are the ones who personally guarantee the business’s loans.
NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner nailed it today when he said, “His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs. “I’m sure every small-business owner who took a second mortgage on their home, maxed out their credit cards or borrowed money from their own retirement savings to start their business disagrees strongly with President Obama’s claim.”
Entrepreneurs do not owe any of their success to what politicians do in Washington. They do not owe their good fortune to government.
It is the government that owes its successes to the entrepreneurs who built our once mighty economy through the pursuit of free enterprise.
Amy Payne at the Foundry put it this way: “The slap in the face to hard-working Americans conveyed Obama’s belief that it takes a village—a heavily subsidized village—to create that venture you’re profiting from.”