VERY IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE READ TO THE END FROM NUMBER 1 - 4

When I was growing up, my father owned a small business. And when I say small, I mean small: It was my father and an occasional day laborer. My mother, brothers, and I would help do the silkscreen printing on the drapery fabrics he sold. We were an all-hands-on-deck operation, guided by my father’s belief that if you worked hard and did what you were supposed to do, opportunities would be there for you.

Despite generations of progress on so many other fronts, it’s still too hard to get a business started today. Hard work is no longer enough to guarantee opportunity. Credit is too tough to come by. Too many regulatory and licensing requirements are uneven and uncertain.

And yet, as I travel around the country, I hear signs of optimism. Just yesterday, I sat down with a group of small business owners at Bike Tech in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I met a young man named Brad Magg. He started his first catering business at 15 with a loan from a local bank — they were willing to take a chance on a very young entrepreneur after years of watching him sell baked goods while in elementary school. At 20, Brad decided he wanted to start a restaurant — just as the owner of the local ice cream shop, Goldie’s, was getting ready to retire. He bought the business from Goldie herself (and liked the name so much he kept it). Like many business owners, Brad struggled to make ends meet during the Great Recession, so he sought help from a Small Business Administration program in his town. With support and sheer determination, he was able to save his business. Today Goldie’s Ice Cream Shoppe has grown from one and a half employees to almost 30.

That’s the spirit that got Americans through the Great Recession. And as we come back from the crisis, potential new business owners and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to Des Moines to Brooklyn are ready to seize the moment. All they need are policies that help them get ahead instead of holding them back.

That’s why I want to be a small business president. Throughout this campaign, I’ll be proposing specific ways to help jump-start small business, including:

1. Cutting the red tape that holds back small businesses and entrepreneurs. It should not take longer to start a business in the U.S. than it does in Canada, Korea, or France.

2. Expanding access to capital.Small business owners need access to financing and credit to build, grow, expand, and hire. Lending has recovered since the crisis, but it’s still hard for new firms to get credit. A Federal Reserve Survey found that the current market is especially hard for the smallest firms and startups. And despite the fact that millions more women have opened businesses and become their own boss in recent years, they’re still starting out with about half the financial capital as their male counterparts.
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Great piece