I believe it is easier to be successful with small businesses than ever. There are more opportunities for entrepreneurs to start small businesses today than at any time before.
Here are some good reasons why I believe this to be true.
A) With increasing population comes increased opportunities for small businesses.
Generally, a sparse population requires a small business owner to provide a wide variety of goods or services to survive. With a denser population, small businesses can still survive by providing a very limited range of products or services.
For example, in a smaller population, a small business that provides landscaping services would probably need to offer many things. Services may include general landscape maintenance, planning, tree felling, lawn mowing, pest control, pond planning and maintenance, landscaping, etc.
With a larger population, a small business could easily thrive by providing just one of these services, as more people will need it.
B) The costs involved in starting and running small businesses have never been so low in proportion to income.
Technology has replaced many of the things that people used to do, and technology does work much cheaper.
Today it is possible to reach literally millions of potential customers around the world very inexpensively.
For example, just a few decades ago, the cost of mailing to thousands of households was prohibitively high. Unless you have a very good product or service that sells well, a small business just wouldn’t take a chance.
Another example, commercial facility security used to involve security guards walking around to check that everything was okay. Now you can buy a good security system for less than a pay week for that security guard, and it will work 24 hours a day for years, without pay.
C) Because modern life is so complex today, small businesses and individuals are open to new ideas, products, and services like never before.
This creates a huge market for training courses, information provision services, educational aids, specialized products and services, news, etc.
With this great diversity, great opportunities arise to combine different products and technologies, thus enabling completely new business areas.
For example, you can combine a low-light camera with wireless communications and a birdhouse. This means that a nest can be viewed remotely on a television or personal computer screen.
Another example would be combining voice chip technology with passive infrared technology to make it sound like you have a huge dog inside every time someone approaches your house.
In our recent history, these opportunities simply did not exist.
D) It may not seem like it, but many people today have much more free time and a higher disposable income than at any time before.
This leftover income (and with current attitudes towards borrowing, a bit more too) tend to be spent on sports, games, hobbies, crafts, amusements, entertainment, vacations and weekend getaways, etc.
This creates many opportunities for the entrepreneur to start small businesses to meet all of this additional demand.
E) To thrive in a modern society you need to have many different skills.
Today, people are faced with a variety of complex tasks. They buy and use a wide range of consumer equipment, fill out many forms, and communicate with all kinds of people from all walks of life (often from different countries and cultures). They also carry out difficult transactions like buying a house, etc.
All of this is a far cry from the average people who existed a few hundred years ago. Many were farm workers who could barely read or write and never traveled more than a few miles from home.
So now, the pool of potential entrepreneurs is much larger than ever. If a person can live well in a modern society, they already have the skills they need to start a small business and be successful.
The good news is also that if you lack a certain skill that your small business needs, then you can probably employ someone with that skill much more easily than ever.
F) More people than ever have access to money.
Until the late 1960s, most people were paid weekly and spent money as they earned it.
It was normal for manual workers to run out of money at the time of their next pay package, which often contained bills and coins.
Today, most people have many bank accounts (with overdrafts) and access to credit cards, which alone have spending limits equal to half-year or full-year income.
Savings and stock holdings are greater than ever. A large part of the population can raise money for their house and if they do not mind paying a high percentage of interest, they can borrow without any collateral.
A wide variety of individuals and institutions are now willing to lend money for good small business propositions.
With access to credit, you can buy the product, ship it to the customer, and get paid before you have to pay for the goods you sold. This was simply not possible until very recently.
G) Tips, courses, and books on starting small businesses are available to everyone.
Researching your chosen business area has never been easier with the Internet so readily available.
Not so long ago, you would have had to buy a lot of books and read them all to get the specific information you needed. Now you can ask very specific questions to a search engine and get very specific answers, almost immediately.
This frees up small businesses and allows them to be much more productive and entrepreneurial.
H) If you start a small business today, you have an immense amount of technology available to you.
Computers, printers, copiers, audio and video recording and playback equipment, telephony, and the Internet are readily available to any entrepreneur looking to start a new small business.
Not long ago, the average multinational company lacked the computing, communication, and printing capabilities available to the common person today.
You can probably think of at least 6 different ways to send a simple message to someone on the other side of the world. Typically 5 of those messages would arrive less than 1 minute after you sent them.
Just 100 years ago (and remember that humanity has existed for about 3 million years) this same message would have involved horses and steamboats and would have taken months.
This huge improvement in technology (especially in communications and information) has really opened up the field for the individual who wants to move on with a new small business.
I) Small businesses starting today have many more options at their disposal.
In earlier times, it was quite common for there to be few companies to go to for commercial supplies. Whichever business you want to name, you won’t find many suppliers of the materials you need to run that business.
Unless your business is in a very specialized area, you will now find that you can source your supplies from a large number of companies. This, in turn, lowers your costs as you can shop around to find the best deals.
For example, there used to be very few ways to deliver your products to your customers. Today, you can choose from literally hundreds of different operators.
Startups can choose anywhere in the world to establish their small businesses or, indeed, where to locate any part of their business.
I know of a successful paintball company operating in the UK in the summer. But when business slows down due to the cold winter, they find new clients simply by moving the company to Brazil and then return the following spring.
They also take advantage of the cheapest labor in Brazil to manufacture the paintball equipment and, when they return to the UK, they use the most experience in the UK to program their systems.
Not long ago, this flexibility of operating a small business would have been totally impractical.
Conclution.
There are many more opportunities than ever to start small businesses, and entrepreneurs who start new small businesses at home are more likely to be successful.
There are more potential customers, the startup costs less, and you have more choices about the type of business to start. Other benefits are a more skilled and educated workforce, and easy access to financial support.
If you want to run your own business, you can also use the power of the internet to do good, quick research, and to support your business in many ways. I think there has never been a better time to start new small businesses.