"Micro" Businesses Remain Happy, Poised for Growth

These hard working people are actually a sub-group of the
small business community, commonly referred to as “micro businesses.”
They are the small of the small, with typically less than 10 employees and most
commonly are self-employed or sole proprietors. Like their small business
brethren, they also have little desire to grow and are happy staying small, but
they have some varying attitudes about their business and how they run them.
Overall they are very optimistic, happy to be running their own ventures and
love being their own boss. But they also
are wary of a failing economy and because of their desire to succeed, are
working extremely hard. In many ways
they are forced to because in the end, their success depends solely on their
ability to deliver, not anyone else.
Vistaprint recently released a quarterly “Happiness
Index” related to micro business owners, showing that they are still happy
or extremely happy running their own business (consistently at 77% for two
quarters). While this isn’t necessarily surprising, some of the additional
results are; including 76% thinking that the national economy is not making a
recovery, 85% working at least one weekend a month (or more) in their business,
and just a shade under 50% not taking a vacation from their business this past
summer.
Swinging back to the positive side, 68% are on track to make
as much or more revenue than they did last year, while another 50% have more
customers than they did last year. (Although this is down 7% from last quarter,
according to the numbers.) The numbers
overall are still up, but many are lagging from the previous three month
span.
Another hot debate has been how much small businesses are
adopting social media for use in their business marketing. It’s clear that the
major platforms like Facebook are
starting to cater to the small business community and in many ways
succeeding. According to this survey,
Facebook remains the most popular social network for micro businesses, with 48%
using it. LinkedIn, by comparison,
garners just 7%. Other surveys have also
found that small
businesses are flocking to Facebook.
Finally, because everyone loves a good smartphone
face-off, it appears that the Android phone platform is winning out amongst
this group, with 43% preferring it over the iPhone, which ranked second at
31%.
Do you consider yourself a micro business? Are you surprised
at the results in the survey, or are they where you would have expected them to
be?
The author is solely responsible for the content.
Jason Keith has been working for and with small businesses in the New England area for more than 10 years, specifically small, micro businesses. Born and raised in Massachusetts and a former journalist, he provides a unique perspective on the issues facing small businesses locally and nationally.To reach him directly email jasonpkeith@gmail.com.
This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone.