Comments on: More businesses started in a recession?

By: Hazel Edmunds

Hazel Edmunds — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:00:35 +0000

Using your redundancy money, any savings, your partner’s salary, or any combination of these, to start up in business for yourself is one thing. Moving up from sole trader to company status, or starting off as a company in these uncertain times is, as a colleague of mine put it, “an entirely different ball game”. And she was right. If I am responsible for my own destiny then I can control that – to an extent. Being responsible for the well-being of others is not something to be taken on lightly.
BUT – sole traders still need to maintain accounts!

By: Ed Hart

Ed Hart — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:44:18 +0000

There is a huge difference between starting a company and starting a business. I speak to a wide range of people who are running businesses who, for a variety of reasons, are not formally registered.

Having an entrepreneurial spirit tends to make you focus on what’s really important – generating sales. The perceived (and real) hassle of corporate administration is the last thing on your mind, at least until it becomes a necessity!

This will be a frustration to government statisticians who want to point to proven evidence about start-ups. I agree that more businesses are started during a recession, but this is not the same thing as new companies.

The picture becomes muddier when you stop to consider how many individuals start to run their own businesses and continue to sign on… Job creation at the same time as increasing unemployment?

By: Matt Chatterley

Matt Chatterley — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:42:05 +0000

Although we didn’t start during the current economic dip, we did (in a roundabout fashion) start as a result of redundancy – albeit voluntary.

I think that for a lot of skilled workers and employees, a ‘final kick’ – such as the opportunity (or inevitability) of redundancy is the jolt that finally gets them going down the path of running their own business.

We are often bombarded with statistics telling us how many small business fold up each day right now – to impress upon us how bad things are – but we are rarely giving the balancing number – how many are starting up..!