Regulations affect nearly every aspect of running a business, like zoning, licensing, payroll and tax compliance. It’s natural for business owners to wonder how much influence they really have in shaping those rules. Understanding how small businesses can change regulations is essential for effective engagement.
The short answer: while broad change is difficult, there are still meaningful ways to stay engaged, especially at the local level. At Dunn CPA Firm, we encourage business owners to stay informed and focus on what’s most practical for their business.
Start with What You Can Control
Voting is the most straightforward way to engage with regulations.
Some owners choose to participate in local business groups or industry associations to stay informed and build relationships that support long-term growth.
Practical Ways to Stay Involved
If you’re looking to stay connected to the regulatory environment, here are a few places to start:
- Local chambers of commerce often advocate on behalf of small businesses
- Industry associations can serve as a bridge to policy conversations and offer updates on changing regulations
- City or county-level government involvement can be especially relevant for businesses affected by zoning or location-specific rules
In some cases, these connections can also support your business development efforts—serving both a practical and strategic purpose.
Know Where Your Time Is Best Spent
It’s important to stay realistic about what you can influence. While larger companies may have more resources to advocate for change, small business owners often operate in what we call the “micro” world—the day-to-day decisions that affect your business directly.
Focused Support When You Need It
At Dunn CPA Firm, we help small business owners navigate compliance and plan with the bigger picture in mind. If you’re figuring how how to address a local issue, considering involvement in a business group, or trying to stay ahead of new requirements, we’re here to help you make informed, practical decisions.
Kind of a tricky question.
So I would say vote would be the one main thing you could do, which is part of your civic duty anyway.
The rest of it.
Or I will go into the things that you can do as a small business owner, but honestly, the rest of it.
Could be a real distraction for a small business owner because you just are so small, you don’t have the ability to make that much of an InMail. Now, I will put one caveat in there. Some people get involved in that sort of thing.
From the sales and networking and marketing perspective, they’re doing it to make contacts.
For their order acquisition process. And if that’s what you like to do, then that could be a reason to do it.
I’m not saying this isn’t an important area. It’s a very important area. It’s usually the bigger companies going to be able to impact, make changes happen for their industry a lot easier than you are a small business owner, I’m sorry to say.
How you might do it is.
Your local chamber of commerce might be something. So the organizations that have some influence, you want to be plugged into some of these organizations that have the influence. Small Business Month is a little community that might be able to help and can connect you and what have you.
Local alderman in your local city government.
A lot happens there. And if your business depends on location inside that government, And the regulations are affected or the zoning.
That could be a big one for your real estate developer.
That’s something that you could do yourself and maybe have a big impact.
But it takes a lot of time.
The state legislatures are approachable. You can go down to Jeff City and meet people and they’ll talk to you.
But it might make a little bit of a difference. But it’s probably better to work through a lobbyist, find out who your.
I’ll be or your industry association.
In the lobbyists that they use you may have more luck with. But maybe start with your industry association, their lobbyists. You can meet all those people and meet the legislators as well, maybe through them.
Or with you can do it. It’s just that it takes a lot of time. In small business, owners don’t have a lot.
And so I like to think of it as. And I say this all the time to my clients.
Oh, that’s a really interesting macro problem and how we’d love to fix that.
But we’re not in a macro world. We can’t really affect that. We’re in this little micro world, and that’s the world we can have an impact on. So let’s get it. Let’s get it narrowed down for our meeting, talk about what we can do to affect our little. Micro business.
