Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Jo Laverty.
ABC Radio Darwin
Subject: Australian Government support for small business,
October Business Month
Jo Laverty
This month has been October Business Month in the Northern Territory and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Bruce Billson, is going to be doing a special presentation tonight. This is something you might be interested in, especially if you own a small business. I spoke to him a little earlier about how he's feeling coming to the Northern Territory.
Bruce Billson
Well, it's an early flight up, so I'm a little bit crusty for tonight's event, but it's going to be very worthwhile. It's part of October Business Month and it's terrific. Charles Darwin Uni, their business and law faculty have brought together a whole bunch of Commonwealth regulators and people that we hope can help enterprising men and women in the Northern Territory.
So it should be great. Good chance to get good information. Whether you're a small or family business, a trusted adviser, come along tonight, it's free to attend, just register. And I suppose, Jo, the simple fact is it's not within my gift to make a business succeed. But we don't want to see any fail because they didn't know about something that might have helped.
Jo Laverty
What are the most common reasons that you see small businesses fail?
Bruce Billson
Well, we do a bunch of things in my office. Overwhelmingly, people might know of our dispute resolution work. And what that involves is a business-to-business dispute. No one can afford going to the Federal Court or waiting two years. So we get involved and try and sort things out quickly.
And what we're seeing at the moment is quite a trend around disputes over payments. Almost like one business having a cash flow challenge that's making its financial situation precarious, then more or less, you know, transmitting that financial difficulty onto someone who's already supplied them goods and services and just wants to be paid. So that's a real area at the moment as we see cost pressures coming into businesses, consumers thinking twice about their spending and margins being squeezed. So it's quite a quite a character building time for small and family businesses, right now.
Jo Laverty
Well, speaking of the time in which we live, what is it like for anyone who does want to pursue a small business in this day and age?
Bruce Billson
I think the headwinds are probably more than in previous decades, and we're seeing that starting to come through in the statistics. Even for young people, I suppose when the labour market is strong and there's opportunities to get a good income where someone else is worrying about paying the bills and making the business viable, that's starting to come through in some of the states where we're seeing only 7% of business owners aged under 30 in Darwin and the Greater Darwin area. Now that's less than half what it was in the 70s.
And we're seeing nearly half of all business owners over the age of 50. So there's something happening there Jo. To your question specifically, it's not that hard to get a business ready to go by registering it and getting all those immediate red tape challenges. What's more challenging is getting the business of the business right. Making sure your compliance is up to date, that you've got proper workplace relations, you're paying your team and your taxes in a timely way.
And there's other burdens and responsibilities that are all part of the big ask of being a business owner - cyber, properly managing people's information, even the technology itself is not everyone's cup of tea but can play a real big part in making the business of running the business a little more streamlined so that you can put your time and energy in to what really matters, and that is the customers.
You know, it doesn't matter how good your business strategy and your systems are and the advice that you get, there's no substitute for customers and finding customers and delighting them and making a dollar, it's a challenging environment right now for that.
Jo Laverty
Look, I'm going to be honest, just those challenges you've outlined there, Bruce, make me feel weary. I used to wonder anyone who's brave enough to go into business these days they’ve got so much to contend with. But you did say some of the demographic changes, which is so interesting. Fewer younger people stepping into the own business territory, but older people are. Is that right?
Bruce Billson
Well, they're hanging in there. And one of the things we've found, Jo, is that for a mature age person, there's actually more mature aged people who are self-employed than are actually employed by somebody else.
So whether there's an ageism or whatever the case may be, or a traditional form of working for someone else doesn't work for mature aged people. And also for a lot of women, juggling multiple life objectives, being your own boss can give you the flexibility and the livelihood that you want.
And we look at bit deeper and we see around Darwin more than a quarter of all of your business owners speak a language other than English in their own homes and you see the migrant population really prominent in the small business community and that's very evident in the north of this vast continent.
Jo Laverty
That’s Small Business Ombudsman Bruce Billson very excited about meeting you at CDU tonight. It's on at 5.30 at CDU’s Waterfront site on Kitchener Drive. If you can't make it in person, there is a live livestream, so go and have a look at the Northern Territory Government's October Business Month website and you'll be able to get more details.