@bronwynreid is a Business Owner, Author and Mentor who specialises in helping small businesses connect with bigger players. The benefits for owners are enormous and opportunities plentiful in the current post-covid environment.
Her book is titled @SmallCompanyBigBusiness and it focuses on how small businesses can find, win, and retain big customers.
In our discussion we talk about the why and how small businesses should engage with larger businesses and government entities. Bronwyn covers;
- why big businesses are increasingly interested in engaging with smaller businesses
- how the COVID-19 pandemic brought about changes in the business landscape, including;
- disruptions in supply chains, and a
- reevaluation of business practices
- how this has created new opportunities for small businesses to engage with larger entities
- tapping into government procurement opportunities and why Governments are showing more interest in working with local and small businesses
- collaborations and joint ventures , and partnering with complementary businesses or experts in specific areas to access better opportunities and to increase success rates in winning contracts
- exploring opportunities within their local council as many local governments have websites where they list tender opportunities
- the databases and resources available for finding government procurement opportunities (refer to @bronwynreid, her website)
- looking to cooperative and mutual ownership models as a way to support local communities and ensure businesses remain locally operated and owned
- the value of continuous learning, networking, and seeking guidance from mentors and experts to navigate the ever-evolving business landscape
Thanks for listening. Visit the Owner To Owner Podcast website to subscribe, listen back, or check out any resources or information mentioned on the show.
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Reach out to Michael Kerr via the website if you need personal assistance or advice for your small business.
michael.kerr@kerrcapital.com.au
www.ownertoownerpodcast.com.au
[00:00:00] Hi, it's Michael Kerr here, presenting Small Business Bantar.
[00:00:03] A healthy micro and small business sector means a successful economy and a more vibrant
[00:00:16] society.
[00:00:17] Small business boundaries about helping regional business owners better prepare for current
[00:00:22] challenges but also for the audience, Bronwyn is, she's a business owner, an author, speaker, a mentor of other small businesses. She's just, I think, published a second or third edition of your book, which we're going to kind of chat on. The second edition of my first book.
[00:01:41] Second edition.
[00:01:42] And what the book is about, well, do you want to tell me what the book is about?
[00:01:45] And just very quickly so we can set up the discussion. Google translate. Right. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So look, do you want to just, it's going to be a great conversation really looking forward to it. You're going to tell us, you know, what the opportunities are, how to go about capturing them better. Your background and why you ended up in, you know, as a Google translator between a big and a small business.
[00:04:06] when our first child was born and set up our business and which was an environmental consultancy business. Started out in agribusiness, now probably
[00:04:12] most of our business is in mining. So we again a small company supplying to
[00:04:19] BHP's and Rio Tintos and those sorts of people. So that's where all my experience
[00:04:25] has come from to write the book. All our supply chains broke. Now for years, big companies have viewed we small companies as a risk to deal with. We may not be able to supply, we might go broke, we may not be able to supply year round, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:05:42] So they built these long, complex,
[00:05:45] international supply chains.
[00:05:47] And then of course, the people stopped is we all re-evaluated our lives. I would listen to a podcast this morning about the great resignation of people really re-evaluated their lives. And they just don't perhaps want to live in the same sort of society as we had pre-COVID. A lot more caring, a lot more community.
[00:07:02] So we're seeing the rise of, you would have heard the term ESG, gathering in a regional rural area and is this whatever the opportunities opportunities are it's great for small business generally but is it is it a bit more at the pointy and in some of the regional rural communities where there's their procurement spend they want to spend the small businesses. In Tasmania it's 50%. Wow. And I think in Northern Territory it's 90. Yeah. So, so one way or the other, it's, it's, it's net positive. And what we're trying to do in this conversation is encourage small business owners who may going back some time have thought it's, I know, I know that I've dealt with owners and it's just going through the process of a tender or it's just too hard too much time. And they feel like in some cases it's that it's already decided. Why am I going to spend.
[00:12:08] homes in on that government procurement sector. And according to my friend Thomas, 80% of the government spend never makes it onto a tender website. It's done through connections, it's
[00:12:15] done through knowledge, you know, somebody. Yeah. Yeah, for all of the protocols and governance,
[00:12:23] that's an extraordinary percentage of stuff that I actually don't like, as long as we understand author and owner and advocate for small businesses to better connect with big businesses. So where are the opportunities? What kind of theme? Just these are we and maybe there's an even bigger opportunity because some of the bigger consultancies haven't done the right thing and so smaller consultancies state government tender tender databases. Then it's if you want to go a bit above that, then joint tender. Right. Yeah Yeah, and that's It's been creative it's being It's being able to stand back and say look I'm my business is really good at X and I know someone that's really good at why
[00:18:42] is how you approach it. If you and I are going to approach
[00:18:45] in a joint tender or a partnership,
[00:18:47] we need to come at it from how can I help you,
[00:18:50] not how can you help me?
[00:18:52] What can I get out of this?
[00:18:53] It's what can we both get out of this?
[00:18:55] And a large number of small business owners
[00:18:58] do not have that maturity of thought.
[00:19:01] So we have, so in our environmental business,
[00:19:05] there's some specialist types of We as a small company can't keep up with everything. Yeah. So we join up with somebody else who does. Yeah, look, and that's, I think one of the things we want owners listening today is to think about is whether it's just getting work in the first place in a different way. So networking, getting out there, going before this, right, about you know, it's a rare day for where there's not anything in the diary just to think more broadly or higher level about what you might do. So what you're talking about 27 years later, we wouldn't even dream of being able to do all those years ago. You do one job and then you have quite a few skills there and then you, oh well we can tender on that job now. Tender on that job.
[00:23:01] It literally just grows. and really underpins the community. But we had a series of episodes on this podcast to do with cooperative and mutual ownership as a way of underpinning or ensuring that businesses stay locally operated and owned, because they're small businesses if they don't sell.
[00:24:22] And it's the pub,
[00:24:23] I keep talking about the sea lake pub cooperatively owned.
[00:24:26] If you don't have a pub,
[00:24:27] it's a big chunk end of this month. I am going to speak but I'm also going to do an awful lot of listening and learning. It comes back to that pestle thing that I mentioned before,
[00:25:43] you've just got to keep your ear to me and I'll see if we can point you in the right direction. Thanks, Roman. Thanks, Michael. So that is all for today's episode of Small Business Banta.
[00:27:02] I continue to be inspired, bringing you small business experts and other small business owners
[00:27:08] and hearing their stories.