Nov 05, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX News Network) --

Looking out 12 to 24 months, small business owners say their companies will emerge from the recession strong and well positioned for growth over the next two years -- leading the U.S. to economic recovery, according to a new study, The Guardian Life Index: What Matters Most to America's Small Business Owners.

Even in the face of the significant challenges of the economic downturn, the fundamental optimism demonstrated by small business owners is the result of their passionate, confident focus on three core pillars of business success -- their customers, their employees and their own self-dependence, according to the study, which was commissioned by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute and fielded in May 2009. Based on a 21-point scale (from +10 to -10), it measured the positive and negative intensity of responses to a vast battery of issues, providing an in-depth understanding of what matters most to the small business owners who in aggregate build and sustain some 20 million individual small businesses that collectively account for 50 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and 44 percent of the nation's payroll.

"Small business owners are the backbone of the U.S. economy," said K. Rone Baldwin, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. "Their deep, intensely personal focus on customers and employees, coupled with their strong self-reliance and determination bode well for a national economic recovery."

In the Guardian Life Index, customers are small business owners' number one concern. Exemplifying small business owners' deep commitment to customer satisfaction and loyalty are their very positive responses to: "Having customers who appreciate what I do" (5.8), "keeping the customers I have from leaving" (5.6) and "making my customers into friends" (3.9). Positive intensity numbers above three are highly significant, according to the researcher who designed the methodology and conducted the study, John Krubski, a former Yankelovich research executive and futurist.

Small business owners are similarly passionate about their employees. At an intensity level of 5.5, "my employees" ranks nearly as high as customers in importance. Other evidence of the deep commitment small business owners have to their employees is illustrated by their positive responses: "Giving my employees reasons to feel good about being part of our team" (4.3) and "helping others to have income and opportunities" (3.9). At the opposite end of the scale are issues that matter least. Even slightly negative numbers indicate strong passions, according to Krubski. In the study, small business owners reacted very negatively to "cutting back on employee benefits" (-0.1), "reducing the number of employees" (-0.2) or "moving full-time employees to part-time schedules" (-0.9).

Finally, the third pillar for what matters most to small business owners is their personal freedom and independence, as these positive intensity metrics underscore: "personal freedom" (5.3), "being able to make my own decisions" (4.9) and "doing something for a living that I love to do" (4.2).

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