Anne Nalder is the founder and CEO of Small Business Association Australia. After 30 years in business, Anne began to see a high failure rate of small businesses and wanted to create a voice for them.
TS: Tell us about your calling to start the Small Business Association.
AN: Over a lengthy period of time, I found that the failure rate of small businesses worried me. I saw
there was no real support system in times of adversity. And I did not think there was a real voice
for small business even though we've got a lot of organisations.
I believed then, and I still do
today, that the role of government is to provide an environment in which small business can
operate. And the role of the small business owner, of course, is to keep up to date with the
latest trends and compliance obligations. So I worked out how I could make a difference.
The SBAA was founded in April 2010. Today, it is a premier organisation in Australia with some
international connections and growing.
TS: You mentioned before about small businesses having to keep up to date with obligations and
the failure rate of small businesses. Do you think there's too much pressure for small
businesses to keep up with those obligations, and then they get overwhelmed?
AN: I’ll tell you what I found, which is common. Generally speaking, and this is in many countries,
not all countries, what I found with Australian small businesses is that when they go into small
business, they're enthusiastic, they want to conquer the world, they want to grow their little
business, they've got a great idea, etc.
But what a lot of them do, and I mean the majority, they go in there without any real investigation or research. They go in boots and all. And a lot of them also go in with very, very little capital. This is one of the major reasons for the failure rates: if you haven't got the capital, you can't meet your obligations as a small business owner.
And sometimes, they go in without a business plan. When I am sitting face to face with a person
who's really keen to go into a small business, I ask the question “So have you written a business
plan?”. Many people will balk at this and say, “Look, it's not necessary”. But it really is.
TS: Could you explain more about that?
AN: You don't have to have a long-winded document, but you can do a few basics like projected sales, or how many things you have to sell before you break even, for example. Where is your market going to
be? Where do you position yourself in the marketplace?
If you were building a house, would you build a house without a plan? Of course not. It is the same thing with a business: you really need a plan and you need to have some finance behind you, because not everything will go the way you want, especially during the first year or two.
TS: If you had to pick the top three digital technology needs that Australian businesses and small
businesses particularly need to adopt to really thrive and survive the next stages of the business
cycle, what would those three be?
AN: Generally speaking, I would say - and research backs me up on this - one of the most important
areas is a website, something we all take for granted. But you'd be surprised what a large
percentage of websites are not, for example, mobile compatible. That’s a very simple thing that
has been a requirement for a while, but they're not.
Another thing with a website is that as a small business owner you need to embrace the
website, not just create it as an afterthought and think, ‘Okay I've got a website’. It needs to be
looked at as the window to their shop, albeit online. So you need to have the very best website
you can afford.
The other thing in Australia would be that business owners need to be ATO compliant because
this is where a lot of them missed out on financial support from the government during the
Coronavirus.
Interested in learning more? Listen to our entire conversation with Anne Nalder at the TradeSquare podcast, TSQ here.
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