Some people start a business to sack the boss. Here in the regions, the labour market is not deep, and many people start a business to provide themselves with a job. In my own case, I’ve found the lifelong urge to go out on my own was not just about escaping from spending my working days on someone else’s agenda. The roles were too narrow for the way I naturally think. I’m a big-picture synthesiser, and being sent back to my silo really grated.
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) just published research bearing on this. They found that 13% of adult Australians aspire to business ownership, and 8% have a side hustle they hope to grow. Over the past two decades, the rate of single-person business formation has increased.
What’s not happening is new businesses that employ people.
CEDA’s diagnosis is about obstacles to business development: “costly access to external finance, insufficient entrepreneurial skills and culture, rising regulatory costs and barriers, and increased market concentration.”
On this basis, entrepreneurs are alive and well, but structural barriers are preventing them from creating new jobs and new industries. This should concern us all, because the next wave of wealth and job creation is not going to come from large, established corporations. It’s successful SMEs that will have the vision and resources to adapt to our times and serve new customers in new ways.
So what about that entrepreneurial itch? A motive is not a business model. Getting free is one thing; building a business that feeds your heart and family is another. We all learn, sooner or later, that if you sack the boss you’ve got to be the boss. Walking my learning journey, and helping others on theirs, has been one of the great and unlooked-for blessings of that path I started when I got myself an ABN in 1998.
This path certainly doesn’t suit everyone. You discover that autonomy comes with a cost. You need to create value, build discipline, manage cashflow. You’ll fall, scrape your knees, get up again. It’s the best education I’ve had, and I don’t regret it for a moment!
We Australians have always been wary of bosses, and we’re the people CEDA is describing. The obstacles to further growth CEDA identifies are not immovable. We can reduce the administrative load, build capability, improve access to finance and risk protection, and open up markets to genuine competition.
Australia has never lacked people willing to have a go, but we have a shortage of businesses that scale. We need to help our natural entrepreneurs build the next generation of successful businesses.
Struggling to move from self-employment to business ownership? We’ll walk with you. Call me, let’s see how we can help.