EOW Reflections: A glimmer of hope

Everywhere we look small businesses are struggling. The latest confidence index from the ICAEW just before Easter shows it at its lowest level for 2 years. Their report says the first quarter of 2025 has been harrowing due to taxes and tariffs. Firms expect prices to have to go up and sales to slow as a result. It’s not a pretty picture.

The thing about small businesses though is that they are amazingly tough and determined so although the ‘half empty’ part of me says there’s trouble ahead, the ‘half full’ side says we’ve been in dire straits before and things haven’t been as bad as predicted.

On Wednesday I saw a glimmer of hope. I was invited to the HRUC (Harrow, Richmond and Uxbridge College) to hear about a project being worked on by overseas students to help small businesses connect digitally and do more business as a result. The project is being piloted by Local Authorities on high streets in their boroughs. The students are integral to its success. They’re offering personalised help to business owners who otherwise don’t have time to look up and see the possibilities because they’re doing all the roles in their businesses themselves. Chasing overdue payments is one of those roles that’s taking up far too much business time.

The seven students I met come from Botswana, Malaysia, Iran, Nigeria and are studying Cyber Security, Economics, Business and more. They are living away from home for the first time, English isn’t their first language and they are taking on the additional work involved in this project because they want to help small businesses here in the UK thrive.

They have thrown themselves into the project. They are out and about on their high streets talking to people they’ve never met before and who don’t have time to do anything other than run their businesses. They are cutting through and getting results. The bed shop selling orthopaedic mattresses to people with back problems had never met the person running the Yoga and Pilates classes across the street. Now they’re connected, referring customers with bad backs to each other and business is building. Profitable businesses are more resilient in troubled times. The student from Iran recognised the Iranian businesswoman they were in discussion with was struggling to understand some of the terms in English and was able to explain to her in her own language how they could help her. The engagement and gratitude of the business owners has been amazing.

There’s another side to this coin. Those seven students stood in front of a room full of people including local councillors and took three minutes each to talk about what their involvement in the project had done for them. One said “I never imagined I’d have the confidence to stand here and speak in public like this”. Others spoke of their concerns about speaking to strangers, face to face and how the project has helped them overcome that. This benefits all involved.

I was left with an overwhelming conviction that we need much more personalised support for small business. Generic advice isn’t enough. People don’t understand how the advice on websites can be applied to their business. They don’t have time to absorb and apply it. We need more mentoring of people about their businesses in their businesses. We can’t expect people to find the information they need in the plethora of different sources available. How do you find what’s right for you and for your business given the stage it’s at, the sector it’s in and the place it’s serving. Getting our business students out there is part of the answer. Getting people digitally connected with other businesses that can work together in a community is part of the answer. Direct mentoring is part of the answer. We all have a part to play to support our small business through whatever the economy throws at us. They’re the innovators, job creators, supporters of their local communities and economies, they add the social value. We’re here to help you get paid and if we can’t help with other queries we can suggest someone who can.