What an exciting time it is for Charlotte County!

Business is booming, as we saw in last week’s paper with Lazy Daisy moving to a bigger space, and the county is flourishing this summer.

The county and its citizens, who give support to businesses when they need it, deserve much of the credit for Charlotte’s economic success. But small-business owners themselves are a big reason that our county prospers.

The owners aren’t big executives who run their businesses from fancy desks outside of the county. They are not that, but they are your everyday neighbors and people who greet you on the street even though you may not know them.

They are the people you see coming in before dawn to open their business. They are the people you can find working nights and weekends to make sure their customers are happy. They are the people who make this county great.

We should try to treat life as those small-business owners do.

We should treat every day as an opportunity for more business and well-being to grow. We should work as hard as we possibly can at our jobs, being passionate about what we do. We should consider those around us as allies that can help us, and vice versa to them.

Business owners in our county set a wonderful example for us to follow; we just have to do it.