Julia Jamieson's blog

As we head into our 10-year anniversary, Small Business Majority is blazing trails like never before, and our team’s hard work is paying off in spades.

Michaela Hahn-Burriss, Small Business Majority's Ohio Outreach Manager

Picture this: a young woman, Hipatia Lopez, is hosting a holiday party and working furiously to get her festive spread ready in time. Her husband is in the kitchen, frantically whipping up 100 empanadas to serve, a party favorite of the Lopezes’. Lopez enlists the help of her three children to seal 100 empanadas, a task she comes to find as dauntingly time-consuming. Then, inspiration strikes.

There could be bad news on the horizon for small business owners looking forward to joining the new small business marketplaces next year: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is considering yet another delay in expanding the small group market and the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) to small firms with 50-99 employees. This would be disappointing news because expanding the small group market next year will increase the size of the insurance pool, which benefits the healthcare system overall.

Trent Smith, Executive Director of the Franklinton Board of Trade

A littered community can be a real messy affair. It stunts economic growth, repels consumers and tourists and turns the community into an unpleasing eyesore.

Some people are made to be leaders. At the tender age of 25, Ricardo Sibrian has bought into a restaurant franchise and now owns and operates it. He’s lighting his own torch, and looking to carry it forward like the true leader he is.

Sibrian’s Perkos Farm Fresh Café, located in Sacramento, CA, is an all-American diner experience. The man behind the restaurant is a millennial Hispanic entrepreneur, blazing a path toward conquering the restaurant world.

While your typical person may spot a nail salon and think of manis and pedis, Robert Pancoast and Julie Tobias-Pancoast thought of pizza.

The two spent four months planning and constructing in order to transform a derelict nail salon in Walnut Creek, CA into Pancoast Pizza, a pizzeria promising to bring a slice of the East Coast to Californians.

The president’s State of the Union speech last night touched on many of small business owners’ key concerns, particularly increasing consumer demand by strengthening the middle class, closing corporate tax loopholes and ensuring open and fair Internet access for all. What’s more, the president highlighted the importance of small businesses and the middle class—the engine of small business prosperity.

As we enjoy the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, here at Small Business Majority we’re celebrating a very successful 2014. And with a new Congress coming to Washington in January, we’re looking forward to continuing our efforts on the small business front in 2015.  See below for some of our biggest accomplishments from the past year.

As a tool, digital media’s ability to appeal to niche audiences is unparalleled. Susana Baumann is an entrepreneur who capitalized on its power to help an underserved group she herself is a part of: Latina businesswomen.

LatinasInBusiness.us, or LIBizus, is an initiative of LCS Worldwide Language and Multicultural Marketing Communications, a small business Baumann started nearly 20 years ago.