Entries for November 2007

Small-business people may have plenty of reasons to complain about their jobs—the long hours, the tight credit, the unreliable help—but their salaries, it seems, aren't one of them. According to a survey released yesterday by Salary.com, the national median salary this year for a small-business CEO overseeing a company with an average of 92 employees was $233,500. The top execs at companies that have grown to 500 employees make an average of $500,000.

The Salary.com survey used data from 2,237 businesses in a range of industries and locations. Other findings of note:

• CEOs in finance, construction, and real estate tend to make even more than their peers. Small-biz owners in the rental and leasing industry, for example, brought in an average of $320,000 this year. (The average salary for their assistants? $46,100.)

• The more their companies earn, not surprisingly, the more CEOs take home. CEOs of businesses with $25 million to $35 million in revenue earned 113 percent of the national median salary (about $263,000). For owners with more than $50 million in revenue, the number jumped to 159 percent (about $371,000).

Small-biz owners may have their struggles—and as the election season heats up, you can count on hearing about them—but chances are, they're making more than your lawyer.

Pop quiz: How many of the 10.4 million American businesses owned by women generate more than $1 million a year in sales?

The answer isn't as big as you might expect: Only 3 percent of female-owned businesses—or about 300,000 companies total—have made the jump from start-ups into successful, midsize companies, according to a survey by American Express.

Why is this? The poll, billed as the first ever to focus exclusively on more than 1,100 women who are committed to growing their firms to the million-dollar level, offers insight into what makes entrepreneurs tick—and identifies some of the biggest challenges facing women who start their own businesses.

No matter what the Donald may say, no one thinks it's easy to start a business. From finding early-stage financing to working out the kinks of product development to picking a steady management team, an entrepreneur's dilemmas come fast and furious—and from every conceivable direction. A series of new studies in the Journal of Business Venturing offers some guidance for small-biz owners buried by an avalanche of choices: