Small business.
The term may include the word small but there’s nothing insignificant about the SME business arena in the UK.
FSB statistics showed that at the start of 2017 small businesses accounted for 99.3% of all private sector businesses and 99.9% were small or medium-sized (SMEs). SMEs employed 16.1 million people which makes up 60% of all private sector employment in the UK. With the number of businesses per person being higher in southern England than elsewhere in the UK, we really are in the hub of what’s making the UK economy continue to grow.
But why start up your own business in the first place?
Of course if you’re passionate about something, you have a drive to make it a success. When you love what you do, quite simply you don’t mind doing it! This means you’re motivated to get up and work every day, driving the business forward – some people even say it doesn’t feel like “work”. There’s the fact that you’re your own boss – your achievements are down to your own hard work, the hours you put in and the effort you make. It’s all about having choices and making your own decisions, which in itself is incredibly empowering. By controlling your own destiny you shape your business into becoming the dream you originally had, not someone else’s. And one day when it’s grown and become a huge success you will be the one to reap the financial rewards.
You tend to have much more independence and flexibility when you work for yourself too. You can to a degree dictate your own work/life balance, which for many people is a real life goal. You are empowered to not only work with the clients that you love, and build excellent relationships with them, but you can choose the people you’d like to work for you too. Surrounding yourself with clients that you have a fantastic rapport with, and staff who care about your business and want to join you on the journey to success keeps you motivated and focused on the positive impact on your business.
So why doesn’t everyone set up in their own?
Despite all these wonderful benefits there are some reasons why it doesn’t suit everyone. Firstly, there’s naturally the financial risk that setting up on your own entails, with most businesses seeing some time passing before they notice some serious cash flow, which can be as much as two years. This could prove problematic, especially if you have a family to support.
If you’re not a self starter then you might find you just don’t meet the level of activity needed to get the job done – and done well. It can be lonely too – until your cashflow has created enough momentum to take on employees. You’ll find yourself having to be a jack of all trades, taking all aspects of the business on. Think of it as being tea maker, VAT Return filer, doing the admin, chasing payments and running board meetings… some of which you may not particularly enjoy but need to be done. Sometimes these tasks are time consuming and can take you away from the element of the business that you’re passionate about, so good time management is essential.
Running a business can be stressful as everything is your responsibility. You may also find that certainly in the early stages of the business you’re having to work very long hours to get it established. With modern day technology it’s very difficult to leave the office behind at weekends or when you go on holiday – even more so when you’re the business owner.
That said, from a client’s perspective, dealing with a small business often means you get that bespoke, personal level of service that seems to disappear the larger an organisation gets. That attention to detail, knowing a client’s needs and understanding them can get lost when bogged down with processes, or being a very small cog in a very large wheel.
FSTL are proud to be a small business, offering our clients exactly the level of personal service to keep them with us for the last 28 years.