Small Business Matters

Small businesses are the driving force of the nation. With more and more large businesses controlling the market place, franchises off on a scratchy start after their initial 12 months, one might see that it is small businesses that feed a local growing economy, gives youth purpose, direction and self-confidence and helps build a growing community.

Owning your own small business grants you independence and feeds self-motivation. It means you can dictate to yourself when you start work, what products you will carry, what market you deal with and your own mission statement. The rest is up to your customers, and it is a find line to decide and compromise between what products and services you will offer and your opening times.

Small business also keeps an economy thriving. It does this by offering more jobs. There are only so many jobs that a large business or corporation can offer because of limited needs and staffing room, but with more small businesses, more and more jobs become available. More people with jobs means less unemployment. Less unemployment and people earning money means more spending at other locations, and therefore more active marketplaces, more shops and a more prosperous economy, both local and nation-wide. This means more tax is being paid.

Love them or hate them, taxes will be also be a part of society, unless everyone suddenly turns Anarcho-Capitalist. More tax being paid means more funding for your local schools, roads and hospitals. Children will be able to get an education, learn about small business, get motivated to find a business that they love and work for them or start their own. Being part of a business or starting your own and experiencing the ability to make or contribute to making a difference would give one a great sense of accomplishment.

Accomplishment leads to achieving greater and greater things, which might lead one to venture into improving and enhancing existing ideas or introducing new ones. This brings about innovation. Innovation should always be the driving factor in an economy. It is not enough to just enhance an idea or make something just "slightly better" than what was before it, running your own show (i.e.: small business) means that you do not need to ask anyone else's permission to try a new idea. You run the full risk and can see your idea come to fruition, from beginning to end. This also leads to more competition.

Competition drives prices down, forces business owners to streamline their systems, cut the craft, optimise their foundations and re-think strategy. A business repeating it's own processes day after day, year after year, is a boring and dormant one. Dormant businesses die, whereas innovative ones are favourable for thriving.

There are many people out there that have an undiscovered ability. It does not matter how simple or how complex it may seem to others, but anyone willing to show their skills, talents and abilities can start their own small business and use their skills to their advantage, earn a living and not let their talents go to waste. A talent wasted is a life wasted, so everyone should show their great purpose in demonstrating their ability.

Having more small businesses thriving in the market mean less industry consolidation and takes away the control of the many from the few. The more small businesses there are, the less clout and chances of bullying larger corporations have over the market. This means more power to resellers and distributors and better pricing for everyone.

Multiple small businesses which have a common theme could create a consortium to also gain the same kind of buying power that larger corporations have. This helps eliminate the mass volume bias that affects such items as alcohol, cigarettes and stationary. This could lead to better pricing structures that might even discourage the wave of consumer purchasing that being driven to the internet because of ill thought out retail systems that take advantage of their monopoly such as what we have today in several markets.

This would then lead to the manufacturing market returning to Australia as people, consumers and purchasers demand better quality and better quality control from market products as the new hypothetical lower pricing and being able to get it very quickly. Products made locally will practically always get here sooner than something shipping or being flown in from overseas. A heightened manufacturing market in Australia leads to better industry innovation as well as market innovation. This means that the clever people who invent, create and refine will not go overseas and that their talents can be properly utilised on Australian shores. At the moment, innovation and manufacturing are dwindling industries in Australia and we are slowly converting from "the lucky country" to "the bought out country".

Of course, none of this can happen unless three things happen immediately or very soon. Lower taxes on small business, business registration and take a percent off of income tax. Lower insurance. Just because there are people out there that do not like to work and therefore want to see Australia turn into America by suing for the most ridiculous and mundane things, does not mean that the legal system should allow it. But taxes are not the only things that decrease, commercial rents are also hindering small business.

So if retail space cannot be manoeuvred in the right direction, then more and more home-based small businesses will emerge. This in turn means more jobs, a more thriving economy, greater independence for shop owners, less industry consolidation, a greater sense of achievement in the workforce and people that are continually happy and excited about the idea of going to work. A four day work week will would not hurt either.