Companies that employ several to a few hundred workers make up 99 percent of business in the United States and account for half of private sector employment. So for all that General Electric, Caterpillar or Ford Motor talks about building factories and hiring workers, the $18 trillion United States economy will not truly move until the burghers in Toledo and other parts of the country start to invest and add jobs.

The exuberance of small-city executives in Toledo, of course, represents just a small slice of the national economy — an economy whose recovery had already been showing signs of gaining momentum. And their euphoria is being fed by promises, like a tax overhaul, that have not yet been kept.

Still, the views from the Toledo lunch are very much in tune with what business leaders, large and small, have been consistently saying in the months since the election.

Billed as a C.E.O. round table, the event felt more like a boisterous group therapy session as one businessman interrupted another with competing tales of Obama-era regulatory woes.

But all 11 executives agreed: Never in recent years had they been so bullish about their businesses as they were now under a president (and fellow small-business owner, albeit a very rich one) whom they see as one of their own.

Which is why Mr. Korzenik was so excited about the recent surge in the small-business confidence index, as measured by the National Federation of Independent Business, the industry’s trade group.