About Us
- The Small Business Forum aims to encourage and equip individuals to successfully start and grow their own businesses.
- The Forum targets those unemployed, people running their own businesses, policymakers, educators, and students of entrepreneurship.
- It should also be of interest to those in salaried employment.
Prologue
- While probably not all, more people may successfully start and run their own businesses than presently realised,
- Even for many of those employed, there is nothing like retirement. You have been employed, now you start working, and normally in self-employment or your own small business,
- Overall, the self-employed are found to have higher life and job satisfaction than those employed.
- A large number of businesses started are capable of growth.
- It is vital to go into business in an area of your interest.
- Financing organisations do not finance a business idea; they finance individuals.
- Growth is not factored midstream. It has to be an integral part of the business creation.
- Start small, with the resources you have or can easily find; start now, think big…. but have a growth plan.
- Businesses introducing new products, markets, or ways have better potential for growth.
- Saving is key to starting your own business. Loan is growth finance, and is recommended when a business can generate sufficient cash flow to meet the loan repayments.
- The key to business creation is skills. the upfront emphasis on finance is the reason so many are unemployed.
- The problem of SMEs is not finance or access to credit, as some seem to think. Finance or resources is the last thing you think about after the market, interest and skills.
- The challenge in management is to identify employees’ strengths and motivate them to improve for the mutual benefit of both the organisation and the workers themselves.
- Delegation is crucial for business growth.
- Technical skills alone may not lead to business creation. It requires entrepreneurial skills.
- Integrity is key to sustainable success in business, and may be described as “The Big I.” It may be defined as “What you do when alone and completely certain that nobody has any chance of ever finding out what you did”.
- Among employees, it is better to have a total incompetent than a person of no integrity. The latter could do more damage to the organisation than the incompetent could ever do.
- Some things are by fate or misfortune; integrity is by choice. It is also by role modelling. Your workers are likely to act with integrity if they observe you doing so.
Unemployment
- Unemployment and poverty are major problems in many parts of the world. Particularly in the developing countries, a large number of youths, many of them well-educated or trained, cannot find jobs and remain poor and vulnerable. Poverty and unemployment are also major barriers to sustainable economic development. They create slow growth and inequality.
- The economy also fails to utilise its labour potential, leading to lower productivity, output and slower economic growth. Increases the government’s burden in welfare programs and may breed social unrest, crime and political instability.
- Small businesses create most jobs worldwide. They create jobs at a lower cost or investment per job than large businesses and foster stronger links with the local economies in the use of local resources, skills and market. They also generate jobs more rapidly, support individual independence and democracy, and entrepreneurship, associated with business creation, is viewed as the way to sustainable job and employment creation, economic growth and development.
- Efforts are therefore made to promote entrepreneurship, particularly for employment and job creation.
- Technical and business courses are offered in schools and institutions to orientate youths towards self-employment. Several public and private sector organisations also provide information and support on business development.
- Whereas some businesses create jobs for their owners only, others create jobs for other people, as well, and promoting entrepreneurship provides opportunities even for those still wanting salaried jobs. Jobs are positions created in new or existing enterprises and pay a salary or wage. Employment includes any work that people do to earn a livelihood., and while growth is what you have, development is how you live, your quality of life.
- Despite the efforts, people have not gone into business in the numbers expected. A significant proportion of the businesses also fail or do not mature as anticipated, while many remain the living dead- businesses that limp along with limited growth or benefits.
- The failure of people to go into business in the numbers expected and the collapse of many of the businesses is attributed to various factors. The most commonly cited are a lack of capital and skills. Many people have a problem raising the financing required to create sustainable enterprises. A large number also lack the skills to start and grow businesses.
- Besides these often talked about skills and capital, a fundamental, underlying cause of people not going into business, in the numbers expected and failure of many of the businesses, is the lack of a common understanding of exactly what entrepreneurship is, and, hence, how best to promote it, or the necessary support to help create and run enterprises.
- Other reasons include a negative view of self-employment, small businesses, and agriculture ―, the dominant sector in many developing economies,― and how entrepreneurship is taught. Many people also do not go into business due to the fear of failure.
- Self-employment, including in small business and agriculture, is often viewed as an option for those who cannot get into their preferred salaried careers., There is also a difference between teaching about entrepreneurship and teaching entrepreneurs. Teaching about produces people who know everything about entrepreneurship but still have an employment mindset. Teaching entrepreneurs produces people who create businesses. The common lecture-based method amounts largely to teaching about entrepreneurship,
- There are also those who may be described as “reluctant retirees.” These are individuals who have left their salaried jobs but, for some reason, still want to work. People work for economic, social, and psychological reasons ― to generate income, be with others, or feel to be useful, contributing members of society ― and for one or more of these reasons, many retirees return to the workforce in crowning job, before final retirement. With the improved healthcare, people are also living longer and retiring when still strong and wanting to be active, while some retirees have useful, at times unique skills, that continue to be required in their communities.
- When they choose to work, retirees, particularly early retirees, are found to prefer self-employment in small businesses, due to the flexible schedule and the independence it offers.
- Even many of those employed would rather be working for themselves. The self-employed are found to have higher job and life satisfaction.
The Book
The Small Business Forum……
The book “Making OWNING A SMALL BUSINESS The Kenyan Dream” aims to encourage and equip individuals to start and grow businesses for income generation and job creation. It can be adopted in many other countries.
. DR. GETHAIGA KIBUKA
Your questions, comments or suggestions are welcome.
thesmallbusinessforum.co.ke. ,YouTube:kibuka@ the small business forum
tiktok: kibuka@thesmallbusinessforum email: drkibuka@thesmallbusinessforum.co.ke
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