The harsh economy isn't keeping O.C.'s small-businessmen down

It wouldn't have surprised me if Leila Mozaffari and her staff were spending their workdays in stone silence, amusing themselves by watching the hands on the clock inch forward. And when that got old, perhaps twiddling their thumbs or making paper airplanes.

Anything to while away what I imagined might well be long, lonely hours without any clients.

How dare I underestimate the pluck of the American entrepreneur. Or, in some cases, the survival instinct.

Whichever applies, this is not the fallow season at the Orange County Small Business Development Center, which Mozaffari directs from the offices of the Rancho Santiago Community College District in Santa Ana.

"Usually, tough economic times increases our volume of work," Mozaffari said Monday afternoon. "People are more open to advice, more conservative in investing their life savings without doing more homework and vetting their ideas a little more."

In other words, she says, seeking business expertise translates to fewer sleepless nights for people starting up a business or looking for ways to make an existing one better.

Yep, people are still starting businesses these days.

What is it about people's spirit, I ask, that would make them do such a thing in a slumping economy?

"I like to call it passionate resolve," she says. "Passionate means they love doing whatever it is, and resolve means they can endure the ups and downs. It isn't just that they love doing it, it's that they have discipline that goes along with the desire."

She talked about one small business that did home appraisals but suddenly last year had no clientele. No phones ringing, no appointments, no nothing. But the company shifted gears to providing appraisals for homeowners wanting to get their property taxes reassessed.

The center operates under the auspices of the Community College District and is overseen by the Small Business Administration. It also has other business sponsors and, besides consulting in one-on-one sessions, offers training programs.

That's the meat and potatoes of what the center does, but it's the psyches of the clients that interest me these days. Surely, these small-business owners must be going crazy.

It's true, Mozaffari says, that they tend to be "glass-half-full people" but quickly adds that it'd be inaccurate to describe them as impervious to certain realities.