Jim Cramer's Decree: No More Low-Hanging Fruit

The CNBC host says he’s bullish on entrepreneurs—because their creativity trumps any challenge.

- By Jason Feifer

When I look at small, private businesses,” says Jim Cramer, “I love to hear expansion plans. It is so exciting to me to hear expansion plans.” He believes the future will be full of expansion.

Cramer sees business from all sides—as the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, where he covers the public market, as well as a cofounder of TheStreet.com (and onetime co-owner of a restaurant in Brooklyn, which he sold his stake in this year). When he looks at the current environment for entrepreneurs, he sees many hurdles—but also many opportunities to get creative and utilize a raft of new services from big companies that see the benefit of helping small businesses grow. Here, he explains why entrepreneurs have reason to be so optimistic.

You mostly cover public companies, but you say that the real engine of economic growth is small business. Why is that?

When I see a large company trying to get their gross margins up, it tends to not be about expanding their sales. It tends to be about doing more with less. They don’t need as many people as they may have had. But that’s not growth— that’s creating money. With small businesses, the goal is to hire people! If I’ve got one restaurant and it’s doing well, I’m going to put up another restaurant, hire another 20 people—and if I can make more money with 25 people, I’ll hire 25 people.

Many big businesses are now supporting small ones. What’s going on there?