Let’s hear it for the little guys who dream

Behind every great business is a humbler beginning, writes Catherine Harris.

Last year I spent one night a week learning how to set up a business. In truth, I wasn’t planning on starting one but to pass the course I had to invent one, if only in theory.

I was surrounded, however, by people who were deadly serious; people with a good idea, people who were already in business and people who were already well on their way.

They ran forestry or honey companies, were starting a school lunch-making service, made garden pots, were cake-makers or inventors.

Sitting among them, I felt like a bit of a fraud, but I had my reasons for being there. Mostly, I really wanted to expand my understanding of how businesses ticked. The secret sauce that makes some businesses work when others collapse.

For those like me who didn’t grow up in a business-like climate or get a job in the commercial world earlier in life, there’s a sense of mystery that goes with creating and sustaining a living off your own bat.

Abusiness owner has to be a jack of all trades. Employment law, compliance, GST, market research, business plans, health and safety, payroll – all things which may not inspire prose but are crucial just the same.

Then there are the creative reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing. You may be good at something, you may see an opportunity or simply want to be your own boss. You write a vision statement, design a logo, create a customer base. You dream.

It’s my view that people who start their own business are very unsung. It takes some guts to do it, and there are usually big personal stakes involved.

Often it’s a mortgage taken over a house, a reliable income that’s left behind, or hiring a staffer who becomes dependent on your continued success.

Just as well then that business is relatively easy to set up in New Zealand. For a small fee, anyone can register a company name and set up in business.

The media generally only hears about those who do so for

''People who start their own business are very unsung. It takes some guts to do it, and there are usually big personal stakes involved.''

nefarious purposes, or the ones which become outstanding successes.

Occasionally, we hear of those who despite good intentions, made bad decisions, suffered bad luck or whose business dream just wasn’t embraced.

It’s risky, business. Statistics on business failures show that between 30 and 40 per cent of small businesses started in 2010 were not around six years later.

Yet there’s no denying the importance of the little guys. A huge 97 per cent of all our businesses have fewer than 20 staff, and they contribute about a quarter of our GDP.

Seventy per cent of all our businesses are one-person bands.

So anyone who manages to create something from nothing and make it pay its way is a hero in my books.

Here’s to the many, many small business owners who take huge risks and put themselves out there.

They are the nursery from which all the Xeros and Kathmandus and Icebreakers emerge, and even if they never win an award or get into the paper, they are the ones who keep our economy running.

Catherine Harris is a senior Stuff journalist. She did the Te Wananga of Aotearoa certificate of small business management, which is free.