Real Small Business Leaders Tell It Like It IsReal Small Business Leaders Tell It Like It Is

Amid the government power players and big business representatives at National Small Business Week, 9 small business leaders took the spot light to tell a congressional committee about their businesses and how they're coping with the recession.National Small Business Week is about celebrating small businesses and the important role they play not just in our economy but daily life. This week a who's who of small business punditry and pageantry has held focused on SMBs. From SBA administrator Karen Mills' keynote at the National Small Business Week event on Monday to President Obama welcoming SBA award winners to the White House East Room on Tuesday. Both Mills and Obama underscored the importance of small business to economic recovery, with the President nothing that small business are "the job creators responsible for half of all private sector jobs." And continuing his remarks by saying the award winners, "You're the starting point for the products and brands that have redefined the market. After all, Google started out as a small business, as a research project. Hewlett-Packard began with two guys in a garage. The first Apple computers were built by hand, one at a time. McDonald's started with just one restaurant."

But all that political star power was no match for the stories that 9 small business leaders shared on Capitol Hill Wednesday. In a format that had an unfortunate adversarial structure, 9 small business leaders were called as witnesses to testify before the House Small Business Committee. The chair of the committee, Nydia M. Velzquez (a Democrat representing New York's 12th Congressional District), opened the "Heroes Of Small Business" session by saying, "As Americans reevaluate the old way of doing business, we are increasingly looking to small firms. Men and women like yourselves, who are the real heroes of American industry. Today, we celebrate you," The highlight of this celebration was 9 small owners and leaders representing small businesses of varied type of location took their turn sharing the realities of small business today. And thanks to YouTube, you can catch every bit of it for yourself: Mr. Kirk Farra of In-Synch Systems (Zelienople, PA) Go to a transcript of Farra's testimony (PDF)

Ms. Barbara McClain of McClain Contracting (Andalusia, AL) Go to a transcript of McClain's testimony (PDF)