Small Business Love Letter

The Momentum Marketing Podcast

This episode is my love letter to all small business owners.

Hey there, I'm Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing podcast. I'm a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode, you'll get real world, practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you're ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you're in the right place.

Hey there. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Momentum Marketing podcast. As always, I am your hostess with the mostest Jillian Kendrick and I hope you are having an amazing, wonderful day today and if it's not amazing, I hope it is as good as you could possibly make it. So May is next week and May is also small business awareness month. According to National Today: small business month celebrated in May. Every year is a special tribute to celebrate small businesses, their courage, community efforts and hard work for an entire month. Not just a day like we get small business Saturday and I think like November, like Black Friday time or whatever it is, but to truly recognize for the entire month of May that small businesses are in fact the backbone of the United States of America and a communal backbone for other parts of the world. For sure. I think it's so important that we celebrate this and take a minute to recognize entrepreneurs and small business owners, not just in the United States, but all over the world that are making a difference in their communities, in their families and in the world as we know it today.

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So to start us off, I want to give you a few statistics about small businesses. Did you know that 99.9% of businesses across the United States are, in fact, small businesses, small business makes up the absolute majority more than the lion's share, more than any other. 99.9% of all businesses in the United States are, in fact, small businesses. That is tremendous and that warms my heart so much. And it also makes me realize the impact of what I do as an entrepreneur to help small businesses grow and succeed. But also the impact that the small businesses have on their clients and their clients and their communities and their families. It's absolutely tremendous.

Here's another statistic, nearly half of all United States employees are in fact employed by a US small business. That's amazing. And what's so crazy about that is 80% of small businesses in the US don't have employees and yet half of the employees in our country are employed by small businesses. That's amazing. And yet again, if 80% of those small businesses have no employees, that's just another reason why systems, why procedures, why automation, why follow up, why technology plays such a vital, crucial, important role in the small business. It really is that employee that you don't have to pay benefits to that will work nights and weekends without complaining, it's so important.

Here's another statistic, only 16% of small businesses actually have between one and 19 employees. Now, that's not to say that that one employee couldn't be the owner as well. Right. That's the case for my business is that I have an LLC, but we're registered or we pay taxes as an S Corp and I am legally the one single employee for now. We hope to change that very soon, but for now I am the one employee in my business. So I guess you could say that my business has an employee even though it's just me, I'm the only one and I'm the owner as well. So I really wonder in looking at that statistic, can we qualify that data a little bit?

Here's a great statistic for 2023 small businesses have added over 12.9 million jobs in the last 25 years. That's incredible. And the professional and business services industry has created 1.1 million new jobs in 2022 alone. That's incredible. That's astronomical. That's really amazing. And within that statistic, the overwhelming majority are part of the education and health services. The secondary majority would be professional and business services.

The next would be wholesale and retail trade. Fourth is manufacturing. Fifth is leisure and hospitality. Then you have construction, financial activities, transportation and utilities and then public administration. Others: information, agriculture and mining, quarrying, gas and oil extraction are at the bottom of that list. But that still means new jobs and it means lots of new jobs for lots of people, which is fantastic.

According to Overload.co the most common reason for starting your own business is 29% of respondents said that the biggest motivation for opening their own business was being their own boss. And that makes perfect sense. You want to do things your way, how you want to do them, not be dictated to not have your life run by somebody else, not be told where to be what to do, how to do it constantly. Now, granted there are people who want that, who like that, who enjoy, and find comfort in the familiarity of being given that kind of direction. But if you're a doer. If you're truly an entrepreneur, the characteristic of being an entrepreneur is going out there and doing your own thing and making it happen for yourself. So it makes perfect sense to me that almost 30% of people would want to be their own boss, would want that freedom, that financial freedom, that lifestyle, freedom that they can only get from running their own business. In fact, I saw a video clip of Shark Tank behind the scenes or something like that the other day where Mark Cuban said, and I might paraphrase a bit, but he said something like I would rather make $50,000 a year and work for myself than make $750,000 a year and work for somebody else. And if a billionaire is saying that after all of the upsets and struggles and things that he's gone through, it's very clear why this statistic is collective of that quote as well of wanting to be your own boss. Amazing.

This is an interesting statistic that I wish had more numbers to it. I wish there was more detail. 20% of all small businesses fail in the first year and nearly half of them will fail within five years. I've heard that statistic so many times over the years. In fact, I've been in business for myself nine years now, which is really amazing and wonderful and an incredible feat in itself for sure. But when you're going through or even if you are in the trenches of that first year in business, just know that if you want to stay within that 80% if you want to be one of the successes, you just have to last a year, you don't have to be wildly successful. You don't even have to make more than a dollar to technically be in the black. Right? But if you can last that first year, you are within the 80% of small businesses who will continue to succeed. And then of those that do succeed and make it past that first year, half of them will make it to the fifth year. So if you can get past that first year, that's a huge hump. But then to make it to year five is really, really incredible and powerful. It takes grit and tenacity, but it also takes systems, it takes processes, it takes people.

Here's an interesting statistic from 2021. The primary reason that most businesses is, because they run out of cash. Makes perfect sense to me. If you're not making money, why would you stay in business? If you're running out of cash? If you're bleeding yourself dry in some way or another, then the business isn't working, right? So what can you do if you're trying to get over that one year hump and then you're trying to make it to year five, what can you do to stretch that out? How can you make sure that you're staying within 30% of your net income?

Here's an interesting statistic, I can't ever remember exactly where I heard it, but this is amazing about small business owners. Did you know that only 10% of businesses owned by women will ever make it to $100,000 in revenue. And of that 10% only about 1 to 3% of those will ever actually make a million dollars in business in a year. That's staggering like absolutely staggering with all that there is out in the world with all of the abundance and with all of our amazing and incredible gifts that we have to share, that people need to know that only 10 to 12% of female owned businesses will ever reach $100,000 a year in revenue. And of that, only 1 to 3% of those, of those like 10 to 12% will ever actually make a million dollars in one year. That's staggering. That's insane to me, it should be much higher.

Before I give you some closing remarks. I want to leave you with this last one statistic: B2B Ecommerce sales in 2023 are projected to grow by more than 80% by 2025. In other words, the e-commerce market right now in 2023 is projected to reach $1.1 trillion. And according to that last statistic, it's gonna grow by over 80% within the next two years. If you aren't yet selling a course if you don't yet have a program, if you are not marketing yourself online yet, or if you're doing it and you're doing a so, so job or you're not getting the results that you want or that you think you should be getting, let's have a conversation because I want you to have a piece of that $1.1 trillion pie in 2023. And I want you to have part of the nearly $2 trillion for the next two years. If that sounds like you email me at [e-mail] and let's start a conversation. As my dear friends, from Keap, their tagline is keep growing, keep serving, keep going. That is the marching orders of the entrepreneur. Continue to serve, continue to grow, continue learning and just keep going. Whatever it is that you're going through it is as Marie Folio says, figure out whatever situation you're facing in business or even in life, know that someone has gone through that before and it's not your job to figure it out all by yourself, all alone. It is your job to find someone who has been there before, to show you and give you a guideline for how to get it done the best and fastest way possible. Your struggles are yours. They are unique to you, but they are not yours alone. Whatever it is that you're going through in life in entrepreneurship and business. I promise you someone else has been there, someone else has been through it. Someone else has come out the other end of that problem. Maybe not unscathed completely, but they have been through it. And that's your job. Your job is not to solve every single problem all by yourself all on your own and figure it all out. Your job is to find people who have already created those solutions or have already been through those situations. Figure out how they did it, see if that fits you, if it fits your values and if it feels good and then try, iterate, implement, and whatever you do, just keep going.

Thank you so much for joining me on this small business month episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your business or given you any insight on how to build momentum, then please share it with a friend and I'll see you on the next episode.

The Momentum Marketing Podcast By Jillian Kendrick Episode: # 11 Topic: Small Business Love Letter Contact: [e-mail] IG: instagram.com/automatedmama