In our May issue, we spoke with the owners of five promising small businesses about how they were doing in these extremely challenging conditions. All five of the representative entrepreneurs in "Room to Grow" (page 127) were having trouble getting the credit they needed to take their businesses to the next level. Why should we care? Because small businesses created more than 60 percent of the jobs in the last decade, for one thing.  In other words, small businesses are their own stimulus package!  (For more on the role entrepreneurs can and will play in getting us back into growth mode, see Nell Merlino's blog on this site.)

The tone has changed a little in Washington in recent weeks – Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled a plan to get bad loans off bank books and get them lending again. That helped spark a rally on Wall Street. But from what we can tell, the situation hasn’t changed much yet on Main Street. All five of our entrepreneurs are still looking for lenders willing to back their plans.

You’ll be happy to know that most are moving ahead and growing anyway. That’s no surprise. As we pointed out in the article, it’s the American way. Here’s what some of them had to say:

Deb Moore, Accustat: "We have opened a new office in Virginia Beach, VA -- midway between the two offices (Myrtle Beach and Pittsburgh, PA) and not far from DC, where we are trying to work on advising politicians and lobbyists on electronic medical-records adoption. New clients are coming in monthly, which are primarily government and military-related contracts for transcription -- two recent ones for the US Navy and another for drug- and alcohol-treatment centers in North Carolina."
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Lana Antanova, web designer:
"We just landed a huge Samsung account, and are in the running for a few others."
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Jean Pierre Jobin, Xpect Service:
"Business is up 22 percent (by revenue) in the past three months. We're still trying to secure a bank. We've gotten offers for a line of credit, but the cost is 15.5 percent. So we’re still tangled in the issue of securing something more reasonable."
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Scott McCartney, Stout Tools:
“We are still seeking funding to help carry us through 2009.  Michigan Economic Development Corp. and Oakland Co Business Ctr. have been helping us in this area. With a negative cash flow we are not a candidate for bank funding and are waiting to see if any of this stimulus package might help. Our licensing deals are progressing very well and will kick in for 2010.  We moved to a less expensive facility and laid off one more employee last week in the efforts to cut costs.”
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It's our goal here at the magazine to cover the news from YOUR point of view--not that of the Wall Street honchos or government bureaucrats. So keep us posted about what you're seeing--we really want to know.

 Meanwhile send me any new offerings from your own "Reader's Digest Version" files. I'm still obsessed with the perfect one-sentence way to describe the economic crisis we've landed in. Here's a new favorite  from author and humorist Christopher Buckley: "The smartest people in the room were wrong, and the rest were crooked."  Sums it up neatly!