I recently read a statistic that made me really sad. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 60 percent of small businesses cease operating within the first three years of starting.

Why?

There’s a few reasons, but one common reason is that people run out of money. (source)

Over the years I have had many, many aspiring business owners coming to me for branding help, with a small amount of starting capital and plans to quit their jobs and rent office space because they believe that is the only way that their business will be a success.

I strongly advise against doing this unless it really is integral to your business’s success AND you have the capital to sustain the business for 3-5 years.

My husband and I are both self-employed and I believe the key to our success comes down to three factors:

  • We have multiple sources of income, we’re not relying solely on the income from our main business
  • We keep our business costs as low as possible and we intentionally keep our businesses small
  • We follow the Profit First formula

I have my freelance design business and we also have a printing business. In my own business, I work on projects that range from a week to several months, plus I have work that I do on an ongoing basis (some weekly, some monthly and some annually). This means that I have regular income, so if a project has to be postponed or cancelled at the last minute, or I have a quiet month, I don’t have to panic.

When I started my graphic design business 9 years ago, I had a part time job. It was tricky trying to juggle both, and it meant a lot of late nights (it was pretty common for me to be at my day job from 9-5pm and then come home and do freelance work until midnight).

I understand that it can be really hard to juggle a job and a business. And you might say that you NEED to work in your business full time, you NEED retail space and you DON’T have time for a side-hustle, and that’s totally OK. But please go back and read that statistic again:

“more than 60 percent of small businesses cease operating within the first three years of starting”

That’s a really scary statistic right? Maybe they had a bad idea. Maybe they just had no idea what they were doing. But I’ll bet that some of those businesses were amazing, and they could’ve made it if they’d had a bit of extra cash coming in to keep them going just that little bit longer.

Flik Graphic Design