My Thoughts on This: I recall a conversation I had some 30 years ago with another financial advisor. We were at some conference somewhere and I was roomed with someone from Philadelphia. We had just finished a presentation that dealt with a financial strategy for small business owners.

He said he has several small business owner clients that he wanted to share the idae with. From out of nowhere, I asked him about those folks and how he defined a “small business”. His response was “about 300 – 400 employees”, which floored me since in Gainesville at the time, I defined a small business as a company with perhaps as many as 20 employees. No wonder I didn’t qualify for all the awards he had received.

By Joyce M. Rosenberg

NEW YORK (AP) — In 2013, small business owners will contend with many of the same issues that made it hard to run their companies over the last 12 months.

They’re also heading into the new year with a lot of uncertainty. It’s unlikely that negotiations in Congress will resolve all of lawmakers’ disagreements over tax and budget issues that affect small businesses. And there are still many questions about the implications of the health care law for small companies.

That points to continued caution — and perhaps slow hiring — among the nation’s small companies.

“Uncertainty is the bane of every small business,” says Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland. “Their only rational response is to pull in their horns and slow down.”

Small businesses aren’t likely to get much encouragement from the economy. It’s expected to grow by no more than 3 percent in 2013, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s a moderate pace, better than the 1.7 percent that the economy grew during the first three quarters of 2012. But it’s also far from robust.

Here’s a look at some of the issues facing small businesses in the coming year:

TAXES

Lawmakers are still haggling over …