Get capital when capital isn t available. because i think that s what s coming in 2012. brian hamilton, when brian hecht was talking about how he thinks things are getting a little better, you re shaking your head. well, look. look at the data right now, revenues are up. that s a fact. it s happening right now, guys. it s already tipping. now, what s happening, the attitudes are now catching up to the data. but we ve got to get that data out there. things are not a mess right now. they re not. revenue is up for private companies. about 6% to 7% across the board. across 1400 industries. so it s not all gloom and doom. and we need to get that out there. phil, what do you think your small business owners need the most to keep their optimism up? well, we need customers. i mean if you look at the optimism measures out there, of course the university of michigan index for consumers is the worst we ve seen since 1980. not a great time. and even though we ve had the nfib index go up fo
Let s look at what s actually happening out there. private companies, 27 million of them are growing right now. that s a fact over the last 12 months. so, it s kind of missed in the media picture. we need to know what s happening. according to our data, it s very strong. do you feel like that s going to continue into 2012? it s a great question. over the last 200 years we found for every four years of expansion, we have a down year, right? once those tides start to turn, they usually keep going. we expect a good year, we really do. brian hecht, you have started and sold three businesses. it s in the tech base, which is different than a lot of the other businesses and booming right now. what do you feel as an entrepreneur. 2011 was a messy year, marked by a lot of indecision. a lot of entrepreneurs are
Entrepreneurial community? william dunkelberg is the chief economist for the nfib. brian hamilton is the co-founder and ceo of save work a company that developed software for financial professionals and small businesses. brian hecht is a serial new media entrepreneur and phil town is an investment adviser and best-selling author. great to see all of you. all right, phil, you have been here every year, i think, doing this with us at the end of the year, so i want to start with you, also, because we cited your survey. optimism up three months in a row. in your crystal ball, do you expect this to continue next year? well, i think it will continue. as we look at the basics in the economy, we see that, you know, either we re just getting used to bad news and so we re going to try to ignore it and move forward, or some good things are happening. and i think the latter is the case. so we did see an improvement in the optimism index. and in particular, inside of the index, the ten components