Greg Brown of W.W. Cannon Named Chairman of NFIB Texas Leadership Council

July 1, 2018

Greg Brown, President of W.W. Cannon, Inc. (Dallas, TX), was named Chairman of the Leadership Council of NFIB Texas. The NFIB (The National Federation of Independent Business) is America’s leading small business association, promoting and protecting the right of its members to own, operate and grow their businesses. The association is “The Voice of Small Business,” and Brown’s ascension to the leadership council of Texas is incredibly prestigious, even more so as Texas continues to become the epicenter for business in the United States.

“Chairman Brown has played a crucial role in being the voice of small business in Texas, tirelessly advocating for tax reform, providing his testimony, and speaking to a number of media outlets to share his story including his latest feature in PBS News Hour,” says a representative from NFIB Texas.

Brown, who has owned W.W. Cannon since 1996, has been involved with NFIB since 2005.

“I’ve been involved with the organization since 2005, most recently on the side of their PAC, and I’ve learned a lot about the process through that,” says Brown. “The best advice I could give any business person is that they should know their state reps and state senators by first name. That’s not hard to do if you get a little involvement, you can meet those people and those people want to meet you because they represent you and your district for your state. That’s local grass roots politics. That’s where everything starts. Everybody hears in the media about national politics, but local state politics is what it’s all about.”

Brown takes leadership of the NFIB as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is being enacted. And while the national spotlight has started to be shown on the impact of business friendly legislation, Texas has been long ahead of the curve, starting, as Brown notes, with local grass roots politics.

“The states where people are moving out of in droves, like California and Illinios, those places, local politics are anti-business and pretty high tax. So where NFIB is always lobbying for lower taxes or reasonable taxes, and they’re lobbying for friendly business laws and in the long run that helps everybody. Everybody needs to have a job.”

Brown has advocated for a more business-friendly approach to taxation and legislation in both his role with the NFIB and as a small business owner.

“I believe that any time you return money back to the tax payer, the tax payer is going to do a better job with it than the federal government is,” he says. “We know for a fact that small businesses pay, per employee, a higher percentage of taxes than large businesses do. So the tax laws are not so in favor of small businesses. This is a step in the right direction of trying to level that playing field and make it where a small business owner isn’t paying an inordinate amount of taxes per employee. There’s still more work to do, just being able to hold onto some more of that money and save it for a rainy day, because let’s face it, once you stay in business for awhile, you figure out that the economy is a sign wave and you better have some money saved for those bad times. If you don’t have those reserves, you won’t be able to make the return when things improve. I look at this as a way that we can hold onto a little more of that money or take a little extra money to invest back into the business where we’re not just paying a tax bill at the end of the year and giving up a large amount of profit that we will need to expand our business, to capitalize our business, or to sunset a year or two down the road.”

Brown takes very seriously his role with the NFIB and understands what an awesome responsibility he holds as the chairman of the leadership council. Together with NFIB’s full-time staff, he looks to continue to pursue a business-friendly agenda that will continue to lift all businesses up and drive the economy forward at an even more rapid pace than we have seen in recent years.

“Where else can I get a voice that will speak for my small business? A voice big enough that will speak for my small business and all small business? It would be pretty hard for a small business owner like me to stand up to state government, let alone the federal government. But the NFIB is a voice for all of us.”