From the other side

Today I got to spend some time with a business owner that I respect and asked him generally how work was going. His response began to give me a new perspective and one that I'm not sure many of us (at least I know I haven't) have considered before.

Often I complain about not being able to find a job and the whole job market being tough. What I don't realize is that it is tough for business owners too. I can't speak for the large companies, but this entrepreneur showed me how tough it is for him.

He explained to me how the economy has not really come back in his industry and how they are fighting to maintain clients and get new ones. With everything being so crazy it has forced rates industry wide to drop to the lowest he has seen in over 30 years. This means that he has had to let some people go and had to move offices to help keep costs down. Hearing how hard it was for him to have these conversations with people, some of which have worked for him for upwards of 20 years, made me start to realize how hard our economic times have been on business owners. He owns a medium size company, but they are fighting to weather the recession and come out on the other side. I might complain about not finding a job, but he has the livelihood of dozens of people depended on him and I can't imagine the hard decisions he has had to make in hopes of keeping them employed for years to come.

I hope that as things really do start to turn around that he has the chance to hire these people back and to expand and grow the company to be able to weather these sorts of storms better in the future. There are some corporations (ExxonMobile, WalMart, Coke, etc.) who have taken a hit but are not on the brink of going out of business. But too often I forget the small and medium size businesses that look at the landscape in front of them and wonder if they will still be here in 2012. I pray that the economy turns around soon and allows them to experience some relief and celebrate the fact that they survived with their employees (and hopefully those they've hired back).