In 1925, President Calvin Collidge was credited with saying, “The business of America is business.” Silent Cal wasn’t always silent apparently, and this quote has remained in our popular lexicon now for almost a century. In 1953, the secretary of defense (and former General Motors president) Charles Erwin Wilson was purported to have said a more controversial statement: “What’s good for GM is good for America.”
Like a lot of famous quotes from history, some paraphrasing for simplification may have happened over time (for example, Humphrey Bogart never actually says the words “Play it again, Sam” in “Casablanca”). But are these statements true, and if so are they still relevant today? And what does that have to do with the Biddeford-Saco region? Allow me to frustratingly not answer those questions in a straightforward manner, but instead go on a roundabout tangent first, as columnists are prone to do.
It’s an impossible challenge to try to visualize the entire complex economy that we live in. Start with a local business that you know or work for or frequent from time to time. For illustration purposes, I’ll use Dizzy Birds, the local rotisserie-style restaurant that serves up delicious homestyle food on Main Street in Biddeford. Think about everything it took for owners Tom and Barb Peacock to launch the business, fit out the space, develop the menu and supplier base, hire and train the staff, and perform the million other tasks required in running a food preparation business every day. It takes a ton of investment in time, labor, and money to be an entrepreneur launching a new business, or to keep an existing business moving forward profitably. But that huge effort at Dizzy Birds has produced an income stream hopefully for the owners along with 12 jobs that local residents fill working there.
Now think about our entire local area, not just one business. If you multiply the effort of that one entrepreneur times a factor of say 1,500, that’s roughly what you have here in Bid/Saco — well over 1,500 businesses and 20,000 people employed in a population of more than 40,000 people, all producing income, allowing a standard of living that is ideally increasing every year for everyone, along with taxes that are paid to fund government services, and supporting myriad other local initiatives as well. We have thriving businesses across a wide spectrum of commercial activities, from manufacturing, healthcare, high tech, services, building trades, banking, breweries, etc., the list goes on and on. The cities of Biddeford and Saco are a lot of things: beautiful communities with attractive Main Streets and numerous amenities and a pristine shoreline, just to name a few features. But they are also bustling centers of commercial activity that engage most of us for large chunks of our days.
Then multiply all of that activity again in your head by roughly a factor of say 30. That’s the entirety of the Maine economy and population, 650,000 people working at much more than 100,000 businesses in a state of 1.3 million people. Then multiply that again in your head by another massive factor of approximately 250-fold, and that’s roughly the size of America and our economy. It’s staggering to try to visualize all of that activity and the effort required and the countless transactions and the interconnectedness of us all on such a grand scale.
As someone who’s worked now for almost 35 years in both the private sector as well as at a nonprofit now, I have to say, business isn’t easy. It’s daunting at times, and constantly evolving and shifting, requiring the best of us daily. But unless you happen to be born independently wealthy, for most of us it’s a necessity, so if you can pursue your passions and enjoy what you do in your work life, it makes it so much more rewarding beyond the necessary weekly paycheck. And if you are running your own business, fortunately there are many resources you can tap into that can help.
The federally-funded Small Business Administration has a wealth of free services for businesses. And the related Small Business Development Centers provide free expertise and consulting for businesses. In our own community, New Ventures Maine provides a host of business-related programming and classes. There are many more resources, grant programs, loan opportunities, and so much more, many of them at no or low cost. The Chamber of Commerce is also a potentially helpful resource focused on advancing business success locally.
Back to those initial questions from above. The short answer is yes, there is a ton of truth to those assertions. Business is intrinsically crucial to our modern way of life, and while you might not be shocked that a statement like that is coming from the Chamber of Commerce guy, business growth and success is good for Biddeford and Saco and good for Maine and good for America. Of course it’s obvious too that there’s so much more to life than business, and businesses need to compete within a legal framework that protects rights, our environment, and its employees. But business drives the economy and puts food on the table and pays for a lot of the things we love about life (even if it’s also simultaneously true that the best things in life are free). So I encourage you to Buy Local. Support our business community wherever and whenever you can. Pursue your entrepreneurial dreams. Business around here is not some out-of-state predatory corporate entity as it’s sometimes portrayed as in the media — it’s us! And watch “Casablanca” again if you get the chance, it still holds up as a pretty darn good movie. Here’s looking at you, kid.
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