Our entrepreneurship opportunity • Nebraska Examiner

Older Nebraskans remember radio commentator Paul Harvey. Popular for his “The Rest of the Story.” Mr. Harvey told stories about someone or something, teasing his audience to guess who or what he was talking about. After a commercial break he shared the “rest of the story.”

Entrepreneurship, or the creating and growing of businesses, is core to America’s success. As recently as the decade before the pandemic, growing research indicating America’s entrepreneurship culture was in decay. Calls for revitalizing America’s entrepreneurial spirit sounded. Truth be told, we Americans have an active tradition of cycling between “all is going to the dogs” and “good times are here again.”

The rest of the story is rooted in the dark days of the pandemic. We, like much of the world, were gripped by a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis. Over a 100 million Americans came down with COVID-19 and over 1.2 million died. Economic shutdowns, isolation, jobs lost, and failed businesses occurred. During COVID, working from home became more commonplace, and millions of us reconsidered how we made our living and lived. In the pandemic the roots of an entrepreneurship renewal were planted. Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors decided they did not want to go back to the shop floor or office. They were tired of working for someone else and desired something different than a long commute and having a boss.

In the New York Times dated Oct. 4, 2024, authors Ben Casselman and Sydney Ember penned a story titled “Pandemic Start-Ups Are Thriving, and Helping Fuel the Economy.” In this story the authors cite statistical evidence that something has changed with dramatically higher new business formation rates. Their story also captures insights into why this is happening. For America this is a point-in-time opportunity that warrants our encouragement and support. Entrepreneurship is driving creativity and innovation, and revitalizing and energizing our economy, society and communities.

These cycles of entrepreneurship are not new to America. My pop grew up in the 1920s and 1930s working on the family’s farms, and then as a laborer. That is how most Americans made their living in those times. Upon returning from World War II, serving in the U.S. Army, my father went back to work as a meat cutter and grocery clerk. With a little cash in his pocket, he dreamed of a different life. He got married, started a family, began buying homes, cars and appliances, enabled by becoming a small business owner.

After World War II, with a booming economy, there was a surge in entrepreneurship. Of my dad’s six brothers, all but one became entrepreneurs. None of them became rich, but they raised and educated families, paid taxes, hired folks, ensured their retirements and gave back to their communities.

This pattern is repeating itself across America and Nebraska in 2024. In 2022, the Unicameral Legislature enacted the Nebraska Small Business Assistance Act. The act provides funding for Nebraska-based startup and existing small businesses. The response to the act has been overwhelming, with nearly 3,000 inquiries.

This level of interest far exceeds what we would expect from the normal startup data. Recent analysis by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Bureau of Business Research found over 63% of these small business owners pursued entrepreneurship because they wanted to be their own boss — just like my pop.

The rest of the story is still to be written. Nebraska has a critical choice. Each year state and local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars on traditional economic development focusing on business attraction and real estate development.

If just 10% of this spending was invested in supporting entrepreneurship, we could grow a more diverse, equitable, rooted and resilient economy, one entrepreneur’s dream at a time. Entrepreneurship builds families, communities and stronger state economies.