Someone recently asked me what I thought about President Obama’s recent statement, “Business owners did not build their own businesses … Someone else did that.”

I think that is about as crazy as when Congresswoman Pelosi said that extending unemployment benefits is the best way to create jobs.

Or when the liberal Congressman who voted for ObamaCare said that we should not send troops to Guam because the island might tip over.

Or when Obama said in 2009 that his health care plan would lower our health care costs by 3000%. If our costs were lowered by 100%, they would be zero. Lowering costs by 3000% is mathematically impossible.

Or as crazy as when Obama told America that he had been selling his plan in 56 or 57 states and still had one or two more left to hit.

How could he say any of those outrageous statements he has become so well known for, without stopping and saying, “Wait a minute. What in the world did I just say?” The conclusion reached by most business people is:

That he makes these ludicrous statements because he is an economic illiterate. He has never created a company or a job in his life, yet he presides over a $16 trillion economy and makes decisions that impact millions of us who have.

His “off prompter” statement just reiterates his true belief system and lack of understanding about how business works. In a speech to a high school class, he actually told the students that free markets did not work and never had worked. In a Kansas speech, he once opined that there was no such thing as rugged individualism, and in his version of America there wouldn’t be.

I remember when I was building my first Lion and Rose restaurant how nerve-racking it was to plow that much money in to a new concept I had never done before. I had run plenty of restaurants but not created one from scratch or built one like this before.

I thought I had a good plan and hoped I knew what I was doing, but I spent many sleepless nights wondering about it. As my investment passed the $100k, $300k, $500k, $700k marks, my wife and I could only hope people would come in when we opened.

Each milestone in this investment was approached with plenty of trepidation. The cost far exceeded our projections. Many times I seriously wondered what if I build it and no one comes.

Fortunately the first day we opened, we were inundated with people standing shoulder to shoulder in our new pub, as they enjoyed the business I had created. Taking something from just a thought in my head only months before, to a tangible and beautiful business that people chose to frequent was a huge high for me. It was also a good feeling to know that I was providing excellent jobs and careers for so many folks. Jobs that did not exist before I created them.

Then I opened the second Lion and Rose expecting the same reception. I was disappointed. Our second Lion and Rose opened with a fizzle. I lost money there for over two years, but it finally turned around and became one of our best restaurants. That is the way business works: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And sometimes it takes time to win.

Since then, my wife and I have had other successes and failures, as we gambled on new businesses and put up our hard-earned money to build something we could be proud of. One thing that has never happened is for anyone, especially the government, to approach me and offer to share the cost of losses on the businesses that did not succeed.

Unlike those big Obama donors, green energy companies, and unions favored under Obama’s crony economics, small businesses stand on their own.

If a business fails, be assured no one else wants a piece of it. The entire loss is on the shoulders of the small business owner, and that is how we like it. We ask nothing from the government except to be left alone with our earnings.

This is the reality for small business.  And the ability and willingness to take these risks and build something that provides jobs and services or products to people, who need them, represents that rugged individualism that Obama thinks does not exist.

Despite what you think, Obama, rugged individualism is alive and well in these United States, although every day you’re the president it grows more endangered.

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Tags: "Someone else did that.", Allen Tharp, entrepreneurial spirit, Olde England's Lion & Rose, San Antonio Tea Party President, small business owners

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