Small Business, Big Blind Spot: Training Isn’t Optional, It’s Infrastructure
When we talk about small business in the U.S., we’re not talking about a side story — we’re talking about the main event.
99% of U.S. businesses are small businesses.
They employ nearly half of the private-sector workforce.
They generate around 43% of GDP.
That means the shops on Main Street, the family-owned service companies, the regional firms you see on job boards — they’re not the exception. They are the economy.
But here’s the part nobody likes to talk about: most small and midsize businesses don’t have real training programs. Not because they don’t care — but because they don’t have the budget, bandwidth, or staff to build them.
From my experience, training shows up in three critical turning points inside any company:
Hiring – Teaching leaders and recruiters how to find and bring in the right people.
On the Job – Giving employees the tools and knowledge to do their work well.
Growth – Developing individuals into leaders, and scaling teams for the future.
All three matter. But here’s the hard truth: if you don’t get hiring right, the other two don’t matter much. You can’t coach or grow the wrong hire into being the right one.
When I started out in small and midsize companies, training wasn’t “minimal” — it just didn’t exist. You got a desk, a phone, and a smile that basically said, “Good luck.”
Later, in the corporate world, I finally saw training departments. But most of what they offered boiled down to compliance: don’t harass, don’t break the law, don’t click the phishing email. Important, sure — but not the kind of training that actually helps you succeed in the job or hire someone who will.
And when new systems, automation, or AI tools rolled out? Training was usually a quick virtual walkthrough that left people with more questions than answers.
Most small and midsize businesses simply can’t afford a full-time HR, recruiting, or training department. Payroll and compliance often get outsourced — which is great for staying legal — but compliance isn’t the same thing as development.
The truth is, no matter what industry you’re in, you still need to hire. You still need to rehire when turnover happens. And if you’re lucky enough to grow, you need to scale. Those needs don’t disappear because you’re small.
So the real question is this: who’s teaching small and midsize businesses how to hire for today and tomorrow?
Because it’s not job boards. Their model is profit over placements. You’re one in a million to them, not one in 11. And it’s not outsourced HR either — they’ll keep you compliant, but they won’t build your hiring process.
That gap leaves most businesses reinventing the wheel every time they add headcount.
Training isn’t a luxury. It’s infrastructure. Same as your bank account, your internet, your insurance — you can’t run without it.
And you don’t need a corporate university to get it right. You need practical, real-world guidance built for how hiring and growth actually happen in the U.S. today.
That’s why I built the Recruiter Training Hub: not as theory, not as corporate fluff, but as a resource that gives leaders and recruiters the tools they need to hire the right people, faster — and to stop guessing their way through one of the most important parts of running a business.
The U.S. runs on small businesses. But growth starts with getting the first turning point right: hiring the right people. If that gap keeps getting overlooked, then every other type of training — on the job or for growth — is just playing catch-up.