The “Small Business” trap

As a self-employed soloist, you’ve been lumped into a category of business known as a “Small Business”.

Maybe you’ve spotted the terms SMB (Small-Medium Business) or SME (Small-Medium Enterprise) in the wild too.

This is you and it’s partly correct, but be cautious using this as a filter for spotting “things for you” or “people like you”, because it’s unhelpfully become a trap for us soloists.

You might find a training or an event that looks interesting (eg: Marketing for SMBs), but just know that it’s likely to be geared towards a company that categorically does not look like yours.

Here are just two critical points to note, that describe a Small Business/SMB/SME in Australia (based on one source):

• 1-199 employees
• Up to $250 million in turnover

That means your one-person work-from-home practice falls under the same category as companies like King Furniture, 4 Pines Brewing, RedBalloon, most law firms, and probably almost every other company you regularly deal with (other than your bank and mobile provider).

How likely is it that marketing advice, business advice, or any other advice aimed at “SMBs” that includes companies with 100+ staff, hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover, and multiple departments, is going to be useful to someone running their own show?

When you’re looking for business advice, and plan to stay solo (or very small), use the above as a vetting guide. SMB is a catch-all term, and most training and advice – even from the government – is unfortunately just not designed very well to serve us.

“Micro business” is also a category and a far more useful one, but it’s still defined as up to 5 employees.

A solo business is strikingly different to even a 5 person business… let alone a 100-person one.

There are some really, really good advisors for solo operators who tailor their advice specifically for a Company-Of-One… and some maybe not-so-terrible ones too 😛.

Not saying all “Small Business” advice is bad or wrong… just be aware of this when considering that advice.