KEEPING UP TO DATE

It takes a community….

When most business owners started their business, it was a big dream and a small team. For many of us, the dream was always to have a team around us to help us turn the dream into reality. But for some the soloist life feels unencumbered. Sometimes we think of the team as our employees or perhaps our business partners. But the truth is… It takes a community to grow a successful business.

We start our business because we have a passion and a skill which will make life easier for someone else. What we do will remove a pain point in their life or business (or maybe even both!) That doesn’t prepare you for everything you need to know to be successful. There will be knowledge gaps, skills gaps, or time gaps that we will need chosen partners to assist with.

Impact HR has a community of experts around us. They help with the areas where expertise is essential to avoid future problems. Our accountant and his team, our lawyer, our website team, our insurance broker, our IT support and cyber security just to name a few, are important parts of the community that allow Impact HR to focus on our clients and be great at what we are really experts in. And we offer the same in return for many others.

But there are more groups and teams that I rely on.  Our friends and family are our biggest cheer squads. There are business networking groups and associations we rely on for support and education and the pep talks that are occasionally needed.

Our communities should grow and change as our business grows. You might need to inhouse an area that had previously in outsourced or outsource for the first time because instead of something being a rare need, it is becoming more frequent or more risky to do it yourself.

During NSW small business month, I’m encouraging you to give a shout out to your broader community and say THANK YOU! We need each other to contribute more than one third (half a billion dollars) to the national GDP and provide jobs to more than 5.1 million people. There are 2.5 million small businesses in Australia and the number continues to grow, as does our contribution.

THANK YOU for being part of my community!