LO1: Understand the scope of small business in the United States.

• There were 25.8 million small businesses in the United States in 2005.
• Half of working Americans have thought about self-employment.
• Every year more than 1 million businesses are started in the United States.
• Getting help increases your chances of business survival.
• The SBA categorizes a business in the U.S. as small if it has fewer than 500 employees.
• The focus in this text is on businesses with 1 to 50 people.
• An entrepreneur (alias self-employed or owner or owner-manager or founder) is someone who owns a business.
• An entrepreneur can create a new business or buy an existing business or a franchise.

LO2: Learn the differences between small businesses and high-growth ventures.

• Small businesses form the economic core and largest segment of the economy.
• Small businesses range from low to moderate in innovativeness and growth rate.
• Small businesses are usually intended to remain small, generally a size that the owner feels comfortable controlling personally.
• High-growth ventures have high innovativeness and growth rates.
• High-growth firms represent only 0.038 percent of all firms.
• Other types of firms are resource constrained (high innovativeness, low growth rate) and ambitious (low innovativeness, high-growth rate).

LO3: Discover the rewards entrepreneurs can achieve through their businesses.

• Nearly all people starting small businesses have flexibility, income, and growth as reasons for starting those businesses.
• Small business owners are less motivated by social reasons (recognition, admiration, power, or family) than the general public.

LO4: Be able to dispel key myths about small businesses.

• Myth 1: There's not enough financing to start businesses. While we all would like more money, the vast majority of people starting small businesses report finding funding is not a problem.
• Myth 2: You need to make something (or something high tech) if you're going to make money. The service economy is growing. Moreover, studies of millionaires show most are in service businesses or professions, not manufacturing.
• Myth 3: 70 percent (or 80 percent or 90 percent) of all businesses fail within two years. Around half go at least four years, and, among firms with employees, the survival rates are even higher.

LO5: Identify actions key to becoming a small business owner.

• The BRIE (boundary, resources, intention, exchange) model describes the actions that need to take place for the business to be created in the earliest stage.
• The more BRIE activities that were pursued, the greater the likelihood of the new business surviving.
• The BRIE checklist gives easy-to-perform actions to help move prospective entrepreneurs from inaction to action.

LO6: Understand how small businesses are important to our economy and your community.

• Small businesses are important because they are the major source of new jobs in our economy.
• Small businesses are also the major source of innovations in society.
• Small businesses offer many benefits to localities including employment, taxes, new revenue inflow, support for other businesses, and visibility.
• Small business is also the major source for new opportunities, such as moving up in the economy and society, the opportunity for customers and businesses large and small to obtain needed goods and services.
• The PICS model describes how entrepreneurship plays out throughout our society though Public, Independent (which includes small business), Corporate, and Social Entrepreneurship.