Texas optimism is a force that keeps small businesses alive

(ARA) - Texas small business owners are much more likely than other entrepreneurs nationwide to believe they will expand their business in the next year, according to a recent survey conducted by Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute.

Some business owners will expand into Texas self storage units, enabling them to remain in a location familiar to their customers while still gaining more space. Some will construct additions to their businesses. Others will expand their client base without expanding their physical premises.

Almost 70 percent of Texan entrepreneurs polled toward the end of last year expected their 2009 revenues to exceed their revenues for 2008 - compared to only 60 percent nationally. Why are Texas business owners such optimists?

First of all, Texas has a stronger economy than the rest of the nation. In Entrepreneur magazine's article on 2010 trends, Texas was the only state listed as an economic force unto itself. In any list of economic rankings, Entrepreneur claimed, one of the four "Texaplex" cities - Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin - were sure to have garnered a spot, if not three. The Wall Street Journal's top "youth magnet" cities include Austin and Dallas, and half of the cities listed on the Brookings Institution's list of the strongest metro areas were in Texas. In 2009, Texas cities appeared again and again on lists of best relocation destinations, best real estate markets and cities with the lowest unemployment rates. Entrepreneur magazine itself named Austin one of its "best cities for small business."

Brad Burke, the managing director of Rice University's Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, agrees - the economy in Texas is stronger than in the rest of the country. "Texas has fared this recession better than most other parts of the country," Burke says. "The state has become much more diversified over the last decade."

But there's more to it than a strong economy. Lying behind that economy, driving it, is Texan independence, Texan optimism and Texan refusal to quit just because the going is getting tough. Texan entrepreneurs care far more about personal freedom than they do about making money, according to the Guardian Life survey. Oddly enough, that philosophy is keeping them in business.

Instead of giving up their businesses and looking for regular employment, Texan entrepreneurs are finding ways to reduce their overhead and float through the economic downturn. If they have to, they simply downsize their businesses and work from home, putting their inventory and archives into Texas self-storage units, which are plentiful in all the "Texaplex" cities. Dallas self storage and Houston self storage are particularly strong this year, despite the recession. According to Chance Nelson, who works at an Austin Extra Space Storage facility, between 12 and 15 percent of his customers are small businesses. One of his clients is a gaming company that stores stuffed animals for its game machines. Three or four customers are pharmaceutical salesmen who keep their samples in storage. Some are home building contractors who keep building supplies at Extra Space.

Adrienne Giannone, the CEO of Edge Electronics, is one businesswoman who chose to downsize some offices in order to expand in her other locations. Giannone turned several salespeople in Edge's Texas office into telecommuters and shut that office. "I'd rather keep my people and not spend the money on the bricks and mortar," she told the Associated Press as reported in the Naples News in late 2009.

Courtesy of ARAcontent