Today’s myballard.com post about GreenGo is striking in it’s simplicity and power. A wonderful, small mom and pop operation goes on the market not because they can’t get customers or manage employees or find capital, but because of the toll the small business is taking on the family. It’s a familiar story.

As an entrepreneur who has worked in my career with small and growing businesses, this post pains me almost physically. I can feel the hours of thrill to frustration Dylan and Heidi Stockman as they tell their story from excitement of the vision to the realities on the ground.

Running a small business is so damn hard you can feel the stress drip from the proprietors’ faces. You can sense the frustration and non sense of multiple permits, taxation rates for the city, county, state and federal governments. It’s not about being progressive or conservative it’s about creating a customer supplier relationship where the government allows small business to breathe before introducing the chaos of multiple permits, guidelines, rules.

If I do anything in Olympia for small business, it’s to realize that with every new policy, program and rule, there is a real customer on the other side who has to read the reports and figure out how to manage this new regulation in the midst of trying to actually run a business.

Last week the Washington State Labor Council released a report critical of House Democrats stating that we didn’t stand with them in supporting the labor agenda. I can appreciate their view, of course, and it was indeed stressful for them this year. Yet I’m struck by the 8 votes they selected to make their judgements. Four of them are associated with the controversial unemployment insurance issue and vote.

I voted “against” the official state labor position on the UI bill not because it was about Boeing versus the Machinists Union as portrayed by the inside Olympia crowd but because I believed that it was not in the interests of GreenGo Food and the other thousands of small businesses in our district and the tens of thousands statewide.

A lot of organizations claim to represent small business and all elected officials sing their praises as the number one employer in our state and nation. I took tough votes that have given me a 50% voting record with the state labor council and caused some to be upset with me. Yet I can’t and won’t do this job without staying true to what I believe is right for companies like GreenGo Foods. Yes we are a progressive district but no one–including organized labor–defines what that means in today’s world other than the people themselves.

The old fashioned idea that you can only be pro labor or pro business is beyond irrelevant and deeply patronizing for the entrepreneurs of the country building small businesses of all kinds with heart and soul. It’s patronizing to claim you represent working people but remain silent on important financial and business issues linked to running small businesses that make up the majority of employers. Labor needs to engage in building the economy of the 21st Century regardless of big versus small companies, not just the organized workforce. The profoundly important work of building a sustainable business–and doing so with your values and emotional connection to doing good in the world like GreenGo Foods–is a spiritually uplifting challenge. Success and failure is defined in entirely different ways.