President Obama Congratulates Beatrice Hair at Rose Garden Celebration.

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As President Barack Obama urged Congress to pass a $30 billion small business jobs package while also honoring the Small Business Association’s (SBA) business persons of the year in the White House Rose Garden, Salisbury business owner Beatrice Hair sat in the front row.

“This is an issue that involves putting our government on the side of the small-business owners who create most of the jobs in this country,” Obama said Tuesday.

Hair, the 2010 North Carolina Small Business Person of the Year and founder of Salisbury Tutoring Academy, is celebrating her accomplishment all week in Washington, D.C. during National Small Business Week.

“The Small Business Association has rolled out the red carpet,” Hair said. Meeting Obama and hearing him speak, was “unbelievable,” she said.

“It was surreal to actually be sitting there,” she said. “He encouraged us that we are the people that run the small businesses, and that he was there to honor us.”

Hair was one of about 12 people who Obama shook hands with, and the only one he got a photo with.

“I was awestruck,” she said. “You can see a person on TV. But when you’re literally there, it’s close contact. I could see everything he was about as a person, and the strength in which he was conveying his message.”

Hair said Obama stressed that America’s economy was counting on the small business owners.

“He taught us the economy is riding on people like us to take risks, which has been the across-the-board message,” she said.

Sunday night, upon her arrival to the week-long event, the SBA welcomed all 2010 business persons by flashing their businesses on large screens, along with a banner with her name and business.

Hair said the reception Sunday and events since have been filled with many different people, “who are just excited about their work.”

“Hundreds of people here are actually passionate about what they do,” she said. “It’s very refreshing and inspirational. I feel like I’ve just made lifelong friends here.”

Hair has also met several congressmen and senators, and was interviewed by a local television station, with the reporter asking her what it was like to start a business from scratch.

“I feel really proud to be a North Carolinian.”

During a gathering party in the same room where the president holds events such as the inaugural ball, Hair and other business people received a special message from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“She was videotaped in China telling us to keep doing what we’re doing, share your ideas and take your business global,” Hair said.

She said her students back in Salisbury were anxious to hear the stories about her trip, and for her return.

Her biggest thanks for the entire experience goes to the University of Phoenix, she said.

“They customized my master’s degree for me so that I could get my master’s while I was working,” she said, noting that the University of Phoenix customized her online learning just as she does for Salisbury Tutoring Academy students.

“This is like an unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime, breathtaking experience,” she said.

Hair was nominated for the North Carolina Small Businessperson of the Year award by Jenifer Flatley of the University of Phoenix Alumni Association.