the impact of a pandemic on the impact we create

Some of you reading this will be aware that for the last 15 years, I've annually published an 'impact report' on my activities as a sole trader/freelancer - and each time I do, I try and pause to reflect here on some aspect of it that's particularly struck me.

Most businesses, charities, and social enterprises who are currently talking about the impact they've created through the pandemic, successive lock-downs, and the disruption to communities and people's lives over the last year, seem to be largely focussing on what they've done over this last year. Which is fine and proper, but it doesn't help us fully understand the wider, longer-term impacts of the pandemic on how we try and achieve our respective missions - only what our immediate responses to it have been.

But I've been using a consistent framework and measures in how I monitor, report, and reflect on, my impact for over a decade. That means that this year's impact report has allowed me to better explore just how far the disruption to how we work, think, and feel, has truly had on my practices - and as such, I'm better able to consider what changes I might need to introduce as we emerge into our brave new vaccinated world (and which I can politely pass on).

Spoiler alert: it seems the pandemic has had little (or as expected) effect on the metrics I use to capture the impacts I create across different themes.

But what I do find of particular note is:

tax paid: it's been already shown by others that in being self-employed, I already pay proportionately more tax on my income than my counterparts both on payrolls, and those taking their earnings as company Directors. But this year, the amount of tax I've paid has significantly increased - and tracking this back into the data shows that it's because I was fortunate to be eligible for some of the government's coronavirus business support schemes: but that support I received to help me sustain my business (and family) was always going to be subject to being taxed - so although it may have initially seemed I could have breathed a sign of relief when HMRC said I was eligible to apply for SEISS, I always knew that there'd be at least one painful sting in the tail associated with it...

grace: in my last impact report, I'd started to capture and monetise my 'grace': the amount of lost earnings I'd suffered due to people either forgetting that we had arranged to speak/meet, or cancelling training sessions with only a days' notice (with no recourse for me to claim any late cancellation fee). Perhaps the most distressing part of this year's impact report is not that this figure hasn't changed, it's that if anything, its actually increased. Which means that the respect we're showing each other in making sure we turn up (or phone in/log on) when we've agreed to, or at the very least, sending apologies in good time if we know we can't, is on the wane...

But there's lots of other things in this years report. It now runs to 11 pages, with 12 indicators, 3 charts, 3 tables, and a slew of summary case studies and testimonials - in the first year I created it, covering the year 2006-7, it only had 3 numbers and was a footnote in my corporate CV!

And you can view it in all it's glorious technicolour and images, here.

Therefore, please do take a look through it - I'd be keen to hear what strikes you about it as being of particular interest in help me better understand it myself, and to therefore continue to create as much positive impact as I can into the future.

why the lifeline of SEISS may bankrupt us next year...

At the start of the pandemic, roughly 5 million of us were self-employed.

At the start of the pandemic, government made financial support available to business owners (in the form of grants linked to business rates) and employees (in the form of the furlough scheme).

Only after what seemed an eternity of panic and doubt, did government make an equivalent scheme for us in the form of the SEISS (except about half of us aren't actually eligible to apply for it!).

At the time, may argued that this was further evidence that despite their rhetoric about entrepreneurship, the current administration don't actually understand or care about us unless we're employing lots of people (despite the fact that we pay more tax than our employed counterparts, and other types of business owners). And this led to lobbies, campaigns, and the formation of #ExcludedUK to try and challenge this discrimination.

For those of us who are eligible, the SEISS grant was a lifeline (because even if we can land paying work, we all know it can sometimes take months to get paid which means weeks of little, if any, income to keep the lights on with).

But for those of us who began breathing sighs of relief, having gone through the small print and talked with others who haven't, we may actually be worse off next year for having received it, than if we'd not been eligible for it in the first place...

Unlike the business rate grants and employee furlough schemes, the SEISS grant carries a clause that says we may have to pay it back if HMRC deem that we managed to end this current financial year in a better place than we feared we would (perhaps because in the last few weeks of it, we suddenly land a large contract or finally get paid those back-invoices we never thought would be honoured). But we don't know exactly what the threshold for that looks like, or might be, beyond terms and phrases that are as equally vague as "substantial meal" is for pub landlords.

We'll only know if this is the case after we've done our tax returns, and as the SEISS grants are taxable, we'll have already paid about 20% of them back as tax. 

So if HMRC deem that we shouldn't have received the grant after all, the SEISS amount will magically transform from a grant into a very short-term loan that carries at least 20% interest - 20% being the amount we've already paid in tax on it, and then there's additional interest on the full amount again unless we repay it straight away. It's cheaper to take a bounce-back loan, or arrange  (and you have more time to repay it).

But there's more...

Lets say that you also pay child maintenance through the Child Maintenance Agency. They calculate what you should pay annually, based on your last tax return. Which means that for next year, the SEISS grant(s) you received will be counted as part of your income/earnings (because it's taxable income), pushing you into paying a higher amount of child maintenance. But if you've had to pay the grant (plus at least 20% interest) back, then they've fixed your amount too high. You're already facing the threat of legal action from HMRC to repay money that you no longer have, and now are also being forced to pay levels of child maintenance that haven't been worked out properly that will stretch you even further than you are now.

The pandemic and lack of government support for the self-employed has already seen nearly half a million of us giving up our enterprises, with many more seriously considering doing the same by the end of this year.

My concern is that the SEISS grant that initially seemed like a lifeline to some, actually shows that the government who've designed them have a contempt for people who are self-employed based on larger business owners and salaried workers not facing any such fears, because of the grant support they've received has no such risks attached.

All we've ever asked for as the self-employed is parity with our employed counterparts (who already enjoy far greater privileges than us in terms of lower taxes, pension contributions, better pay, and such like). Initially this parity was about making sure we can all have access to some form of support, but maybe we should also be asking for this support to be equally non-discriminatory in the risks it forces us to take when/if accepting it?

UPDATE AS AT 10 MAY 2021

and so the panic of having to repay these grants begins (but still with very unclear guidance...): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/penalties-for-not-telling-hmrc-about-self-employment-income-support-scheme-grant-overpayments-ccfs47

sources and references

https://www.statista.com/statistics/318234/united-kingdom-self-employed/ 

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2018/02/who-in-their-right-mind-would-be-self.html

https://www.accountancyage.com/2020/08/07/self-employment-income-support-is-it-payback-time/

https://www.excludeduk.org/excluded-uk-an-inclusive-alliance-for-the-excluded 

https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2020/K-November/Hours-and-incomes-of-self-employed-workers-stayed-low-over-summer 

https://www.altfi.com/article/5997_uk-smes-now-wait-an-average-of-23-days-for-late-payments

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55129828 

how the law is perversely stopping charities and social enterprises from being able to 'trade they way out' of the crisis (unlike private businesses...)

I blogged recently about why we need to stop using the word 'pivot' - but we should keep encouraging everyone to think about how they might make changes to what they do and how they do it (one thing most people seem to agree on is that whatever world we emerge into from this pandemic, it won't be the one we were in when it started...).

And for private businesses, this is fine - they're designed to be orientated to changing marketplaces, and their legal forms mean that they can diversify (relatively) easily.

But this isn't necessarily the case for charities, and social and community enterprises - many of whom are on the 'second line' behind the NHS in supporting communities and people in need.

Now, just as there have been lobbies on government to widen the eligibility of business support schemes that have been introduced, and to introduce new ones, so there have been attempts to get the State to also develop support packages for social and community businesses to help them get through these crisis months.

But there's something else that this all brings up that no-one seems to be talking about (or maybe doesn't want to, because it's too uncomfortable?) - MANY CHARITIES AND SOCIAL ENTERPRISES ARE NOT ALLOWED BY LAW TO CHANGE HOW THEY TRADE. 

Let me explain: 

- private businesses are usually incorporated with governing documents that say they can trade however they want (as long as it's legal).

- charities have to prove to the Charity Commission when they form, that what they are being set up to do (and how they will achieve this) is in keeping with charity law. And there are clear and strict rules about how they can approach undertaking or developing trading activities within these. Even if they think they will be able to make a change within these, then they need to get the agreement of the Charity Commission first. If they fail on either of these points, then what they're doing will be technically illegal - I don't know of any grant making bodies who would be happy to fund a charity that was doing something illegal. The same also goes for insurance policies: if you needed to make a claim and its discovered that you weren't supposed to be doing that activity because of charity law, then the policy becomes void and the charity is left exposed to its Trustees carrying unlimited personal liability...

- But this doesn't just apply to charities - Community Interest Companies (CICs: the much hyped and promoted legal form for social enterprises) has similar restraints as set out and enforced by the CIC Regulator (albeit with much less clear guidance).

* The Charity Commission shows that there are over 150,000 charities in the UK

* Social Enterprise UK says that of the nearly half a million social enterprises in the UK, nearly 1 in 4 are CICs (so roughly another 170,000)

That means that of the organisations who are stepping up the most in this global emergency to support local communities, roughly 320,000 of them are constrained by law from being able to easily adapt to introduce new trading services or to best respond to meeting the changing needs of people.

And that's why there needs to be more explicit and dedicated support to the sector from the State.

can we please stop using the word 'pivot'?

becoming deaf, dumb, and blind, during the lock-down

Nearly all of us are currently subject to a national 'lock-down' during an unprecedented pandemic.

And all of us are responding in different ways to the challenges that this 'new world' we now find ourselves living and working in present.

After the initial panic, patterns seem to be starting to stabilise: we're getting used to having to que for an hour (or longer) to get into the supermarket, and then once we're inside for it to take 2-3 times as long to get around as we used to be able to do our shop in, in order to practice social distancing and limiting contact with fellow shoppers and store staff.

But for many, the revelation that they can now work from home using video conferencing and remote access, and which people seem to already be developing habits around, seems to suggest that many will struggle to want to go back to the drudgery of commuting once we're out of the other side of this (whenever that may be).

But there's something about working from home, and also the wider implications of how as enterprises and business we fumble our way forwards through this, that no-one really wants to seem to talk about:

1) what it your internet connection goes down? I've heard of several people and small businesses who have been essentially excluded from the world completely after routine line installs and upgrades fell foul of 'human error', leaving them deaf, dumb, and blind to the world...

2) and what it your tech dies? My laptop's hard drive failed at the start of this week - and it's unlikely that I'll be able to get it anywhere for repair for months, so in the face of having already had nearly all my earning work cancelled by clients already, and an uncertain wait to find out if I'll be able to access the self-employed income support scheme, I've had to pay out several hundreds of pounds unexpectedly to order to buy a new one, and hope that it can be delivered sometime in the next 2 weeks... (in the meantime, my girlfriend has very kindly offered me the use of hers, from which I'm typing this).

3) Gurus and experts all seem to be extolling the virtues of 'pivoting' our business models - but encouraging us to do so in ways that assume that it's only our current market place or customers that are being disrupted - this is nothing like any of us have lived through before, and nothing that was ever conceived of by the academics and speakers who developed these models and frameworks. So for us businesses and enterprises already facing an immediate uncertain future because of cash shortfalls, our longer term planning is also compromised by the models we're being presented with to reinvent ourselves through having been developed for different times...

4) And finally, what happens after the summer for education bodies?

Universities and Colleges quickly moved to continue to offer teaching and classes using on-line platforms, and replace exams with assignments. But within a few months, these will become the norm for many students, who must surely then begin to wonder why they need to raise the money to live on or near a campus to be able to engage with their further and higher education in the future, when they can access it equally from wherever they find themselves living now?

Like many, I can't see that we're ever going to fully return to living and working as we were at the start of 2020, but I wonder how many waves of shock, panic, and fear this pandemic will successively unleash on us before we can all feel its over - and what these will do in turn to our work, learning, and relationships as societies, communities, and economies.

Hopefully the time that the lockdown offers us to start to carefully think about these things will mean that we don't emerge from the pandemic only to fall into the next global panic... 

reporting social impact - 150 years in, and 8,000 to go...

If you're getting involved with starting to report social value/impact, and find yourself confused about all the different models, standards, bodies, and approaches, then don't panic - you're right where you should expect to be!

Preparing 'social accounts' is often likened to the preparation of a set of financial accounts - tracking what resources have been used, and what's changed (good or bad) at the end of a period.

However - as a species, we've been collectively agreeing how to 'do' financial accounts for about 8 millennia (the earliest reference I can find dates back to about 8,000BC in ancient Sumeria...). But we've only really been doing 'social' accounts for about 150 (the earliest references I'm aware of are co-operative societies in the mid nineteen century sharing how they were impacting on their members and communities).

So if we've been working on agreeing consistent standards and approaches for financial accounts for this long, why is there the sense of urgency and panic to nail the way in which we report the social value and impact alongside the financial stuff?

And just to add to the complication, financial accounting had only a few key audiences who were interested that it was gotten 'right' (investors, regulators, government), whereas social value and impact has far wider groups that it needs to satisfy (providers, commissioners, communities, employees, beneficiaries, customers, grant making bodies, policy makers, and so on and so on...)

So isn't it about time we stopped panicking that we've not yet reached a global consensus on the measures we should all be using when we talk about our value and impact..?

(Unless you're the Bank of England, who've just set a 2 year deadline on us all to figure them out before they make up and impose their own!)

why do we keep insisting on keeping social and 'regular' entrepreneurs apart, when both have the same sh!t to deal with..?

In my experience of supporting various start-up programmes throughout the UK over the last 20 years, and having walked alongside many for part of their journey, most entrepreneurs don't call themselves that. 

They're simply people trying to make a go of an idea to either help them fix a problem they see in their community or help them get a bit more financial security for themselves (usually both).

So I'm increasingly frustrated when I keep seeing national sector bodies re-enforcing a narrative that social and non-social entrepreneurs need special treatment that somehow doesn't seem to apply to the other:

• the School for Social Entrepreneurs recently posted about the 5 ways that social entrepreneurs best learn - but if you took out the 'social' in the title, you'd instantly recognise them as being exactly the same way that any non-social entrepreneur prefers to learn too...

• and the recent Good Deals conference emphasised the impact that being a social entrepreneur has on their mental health - echoing the findings of the World Economic Forums' own research into the mental health of all entrepreneurs around the world... (but not seeming to make any reference or links to this...)

It therefore seems that if you identify as social or not as an entrepreneur, you're probably going to be sharing the same needs, concerns, and preferences for how you access the support you want - and this isn't anything new either: cross-sector research I did into social enterprises, charities, and private businesses all the way back in 2003 (an era of dial-up internet!) found that regardless of which sector people identified as being part of, they all had the same development needs and shared preferences for how they accessed learning and training.

And to my mind that suggests that we're continuing to miss a trick in amplifying the impact that entrepreneurs could be making on society's problems, and the wider economy - why are we creating this artificial segregation of entrepreneurs based on their founding motivations, when the support they need is the same.  And surely by learning and growing together they might better encourage, inspire, challenge, and ultimately "be" more than the sum of their respective camps..?

In the enterprise programmes I've been fortunate to have been able to manage and lead over the years, I've always sought to encourage such a 'mixing it up' philosophy, and although none were ever evaluated on the grounds of it being mixed-sector entrepreneurs, no-one in them seemed to have any problem in undertaking their journey as an entrepreneur with the others who had differing visions or motivations to their own.

So when we will we start to see (social) enterprise support agents admit that these divisions between sectors aren't really that valid or justifiable, and in doing so, be able to be more inclusive in releasing support into our wider communities and economies for the benefit of all..?

is 'responsible lending' starting to mean investing in private businesses more, and social enterprises less..?

Since what seems like forever, there has always been the provision of 'alternative finance' - people and communities coming together to support each other financially when either the banks said "no", or because they wanted better terms than mainstream lenders were offering them.

Over time, this has led to the creation of what's now named and recognised as 'alternative finance' - pioneered by early co-ops, community businesses, and charities through things like credit unions, the formation of the Charity Bank, and such like. And then attracting global interest through the rise and populism of 'micro finance'.

But this isn't a post about the history of this sector (although there are some good stories to tell - like what happens if Quakers set up a bank to offer a more ethical alternative in the 17th century, only to have it suffer 'mission drift': we know it as Barclays bank today. And what happens when all the studies and research starts to show that micro finance doesn't deliver on its promises to lift people of of poverty?).

Instead, this is about my wondering if the recent performance of alternative finance providers, as reported by the sector body, Responsible Finance, is showing that social enterprises are increasingly moving away from such ethical alternatives, and that we're seeing private businesses making better use of these lenders designed to step in when mainstream banks and lenders said 'no'. And in doing so, are we also starting to see an evidence base emerging that shows private businesses are better at creating social impact than social enterprises...?

As readers of previous posts like this may recall, I don't claim to use any statistically significant variance analyses - I try and take a simple layman's approach: looking at the data as it's been published, and sticking it into some simple charts.

To do this, I've drawn on 4 years of annual reports published by Responsible Finance, and also one of Social Enterprise UK's 'state of the sector' mapping reports too.

And to try and break the flow of this post, I've copied these charts below, with some summary observations further down:

Now, taking a 'layman's approach' - these charts seem to indicate some trends. Namely:

• social enterprises have been more volatile ('bust and boom') in their performance in comparison with private businesses ('slow and steady')
• the private sector offers better value for money in creating and sustaining jobs (but it's been argued elsewhere that this is because social enterprises tend to employ people with higher needs than a typical company would be willing to invest)
• responsible/alternative lenders don't seem very keen to lend to start-ups if they're a social enterprise, but are far more willing to do so if it's a private business

Now I mentioned having also looked at another data source - Social Enterprise UK's mapping of the sector. In 2017 this reported that nearly 1 in 4 of all social enterprises were actively seeking to take on a loan of some type (with 83% who applied to do so, receiving an investment = approximately 14,000 enterprises), and those that did were able to secure a median amount of £60,000. But against the comparable year from the responsible lenders, the average amount was £391,185, against 363 borrowers. Which suggests that most social enterprises are NOT going to alternative and social lenders to raise investment, and those that are, are far larger than the typical social enterprise is.

All of which seems to paint a picture of responsible/alternative finance being a good thing if you're a small private business looking to start up. And for these lenders themselves, private businesses would also seem to offer a more stable client base to build on in the future too. These private businesses would also be good to show to policy makers to boot, with their offering better apparent value in helping to create and protect jobs in the wider economy.

But there's lots of other data in these annual publications too, which suggest that there's other things going on around responsible/alternative finance too, not just this dichotomy in performance between social enterprise and private businesses who take loans: 

• the total number of borrowers has fallen by over 50% in the last 4 years 
• the average loan to a private business is up by nearly 90%; whilst to social enterprise borrowers it's only up by 5% over the same period

All of which makes me wonder if alternative finance has gotten too good at being 'alternative' - in evidencing to the wider marketplace of mainstream lenders and high street banks, that those enterprises and people who they previously said "no" to, can now be said "yes" to?

But this is a layman's take on annual reports published by industry bodies. As with my previous posts like this, my hope is that rather than start a revolution and change the system completely, is will instead provoke some further reflections and conversations, and help contribute to making sure that the support and services we offer to businesses (be they private or social), can remain most relevant and current in meeting their changing needs, and by association, the people they employ and the communities they serve.

All I've done here is what I don't see happening that often amongst policy makers and sector bodies - looking at trends over time, and starting to cross-reference other data sources to try and better understand the picture.

what I did in 2018 that got me noticed (in trouble?) the most...

It's that time of the year when a lot of people are starting to share their retrospectives of the last 12 months - greatest hits type profiles of their biggest 'wins', most exciting adventure, and such like.

And it struck me that although I'm now entering my 14th year of being self-employed, I've never actually done one on myself. So, in the spirit of the season, and in keeping with the adage of "try everything once apart from morriss dancing* and incest", here goes:

As this is my first one, I thought I'd try and start with something relatively straightforward and simple - what did I write/post about over the year that caught people's interest and imagination the most?

As some may know, I don't place much stock in social media analytics, so don't have fancy dashboards that track my activity across all my social media channels (and there's rather a lot of it!). So what I've done in the 'keep in simple and quick/easy to start' philosophy is to use the dashboards that are built into my blog site, and on twitter, to try and spot which post on each got the most impressions (people coming across it and reading it), as this seems to me to be the 'right' count for the sake of consistency and continuity? 

But enough already, you cry! What's the result - what did I post about this year that got the most people talking, thinking, and otherwise pausing for a brief moment because it chimed with what they're thinking about or trying to work on more (cue drum roll...):

On my blog - it was my post reflecting on my latest social impact report on myself, and how I'm now aligning it to the UN's Global Development Goals:

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-social-impact-reports-sometimes.html

On twitter - it was celebrating my being named as the most innovative in the UK in developing new csr models: 

https://twitter.com/AdrianAshton2/status/1032656981620867078/photo/1 

At first glance, this might seem a bit narcissistic (something it's been suggested I am in the past by Liam Black), but I'd like to think there's something more encouraging to be taken from this - because to me, what ties both of these posts together is something about being a responsible business: not just in a 'tick box', "we'll help raise some money for a local charity" kind of way, but something deeper about how people are wanting businesses to keep stepping up to the mark and do the right thing by everyone (not just their owners).

This idea also fits with recent national surveys highlighting that public trust in businesses is at an all-time high, while it's at an all-time low in charities, and I'd rather not go into how people are feeling about the government...

So, 2018 - the year that businesses not only heard the rallying call to be the leaders and supporters of society and local communities that we the people are needing, but have also started to try and figure out how they best answer it..?

* sadly I recently came across a photo my mum took of me as a young child dressed in morris dancing attire, but I'm determined to never do a 'luke skywalker'...

member only content

there seems to be an increasing trend on the internet towards content being hosted behind paywalls - the number of emails I now receive with links to research, features, and articles which are increasingly marked as 'member only content' when I try to read them, is starting to annoy me...

I fully appreciate that in an increasingly fragmented economy, people need to find novel and clever ways of being able to earn a living (or something approximating one), and so the potential to earn 'micro payments' of a few pence from people clicking to read your blog post or news feature may seem innocuous enough. But I'm concerned it may herald the dawn of a new net age of digital inequality - not from access to the technology which is the current digital divide, but from not being able to access information or learning when you do.

When the internet was created, it was intended to be as freely open and available to as many people as possible. A principle that chimes with the declaration of human rights, whose Article 26 states that everyone has the right to education [to be able to access learning], and that this should be free; and Article 27 which says that we should all be able to freely participate in the cultural life of our [on-line] community. 

If we start putting up charges to access content, then we start to limit the sharing our learning and experiences with each other - we start to segregate our communities into those who can afford to 'play with us' and those who can't. Which means that potentially increasingly large numbers of people will lose access to articles and research that could help to further understanding, constructively challenge prejudice and bias, and generally create a more consistent experience for us all on-line and in our lives.

I also appreciate the argument that we only truly value things we've paid for, but if the established norm in the marketplace of internet blogs and articles was that they were freely shared, then surely we need to be having a wider and deeper conversation about the effects that our use of 'member only content' may be creating in exacerbating inequality, stopping prejudice and bias from being able to be challenged as they could/should be, and generally increasingly p!ssing people off who are trying to contribute to the overall pool of knowledge and learning at the cost of our own time, in keeping with the original spirit of the internet, only to see others seemingly starting to exploit it for selfish gains...?

what I'm doing to help fix a £14.9bn problem that's killing our economy...

There's a problem in the wider business community that's affecting everyone (and our livelihoods), and it's getting worse every year.

It's a problem that people struggle to feel able to talk about or openly challenge.

And it's a problem that's increasing the risk of pushing us back into recession, and leading to further business closures and job losses than we're already seeing and hearing about in the media.

And it's not red tape or (mental) health - it's money. More specifically, the challenge of late payment: customers who commission us to deliver work and goods for them, and then suddenly get out the big book of excuses when it comes to paying us what was agreed, so that they can hold onto the money that's rightly ours for longer.

It disproportionately hits small businesses and the self employed like me, as we don't have big financial reserves to cash flow the work, or employ finance teams who can chase up the money on our behalf (we have to take time out of earning from other work to do that ourselves). We also can't easily use the courts to chase the money, as that costs more cash and time to pursue, and also risks damaging our public reputation.

Late payment is also stifling the wider economy - most small businesses now don't feel that they can raise the money they need to invest in their growth and maintaining their competitiveness because late payment is causing problems for their cash-flow (which makes it harder to repay any loans), and they're having to take out more time to chase customers, rather than deliver more paying work elsewhere (further reducing their cash in, and profitability). And such declines in economic activity, production, and employment are often cited as causes of recession...

And when the cash runs out for us because we've not been paid the money we're owed - it's game over. Our enterprises fold, and we lose our livelihoods along with anyone we're employing. And for what reason? So that some larger corporate can hold onto the cash (which they already have plenty of) for a little longer.

Sadly it's not just big bad private businesses who are guilty of this. Government and the public sector are amongst amongst the worst offenders for not paying on time; and some of my work with charities and social enterprises has also seen this sector being guilty of not paying when bills fall due as well...

It's currently a £14.9bn problem, with the typical small business owed £11,000 and spending nearly a day a week trying to get the money paid that they're owed.

£14.9bn seems an overwhelming amount that nothing can surely be done about. Government have created a post of late payment commissioner to help change this culture, but they've had little (if any?) impact.

So what can a sole trader like me do about it? Well, I can make a pubic commitment to always and openly paying my suppliers on time (if not early) through being certified as a 'Pay On Time' supporter.

I can constructively challenge customers and clients who start to drag their feet in paying me what they owe me for my efforts on their behalf by using the Late Payment Act legislation (very easy and surprisingly effective!).

And I can do this openly and in a way that hopefully encourages others to start to do the same - and if you're reading this, that that means I'm challenging you to do the same!

Government have shown that they can't fix this problem, but the tools are there for us if we have the conviction, leadership, and resolve to get the job done ourselves. 

Who's with me?

working until the end of my days..?

So I'm now of an age where I no longer think myself invincible, but thankfully still have all my teeth and a bit of hair...

And strange things happen when you get to this point in your life, especially with regards to thinking about your future - you find yourself not just concerned with worrying about if/how you'll take your next holiday, but also that thing called 'retirement'...

There have been studies, articles, and blogs published over the last few months around the internet that suggest we're all going to need to keep working for longer into our twilight years than previous generations have, and that when we finally can officially retire from the need to be an economic contributor to society and the economy, we'll have a lot less to live on.

But these all tend to relate to the 'traditional' worker - people who are employed, with an employer contributing to a pension pot on their behalf, to supplement what will be left of the state pension when we get to that milestone in our lives.

I, and quite a few others, are self-employed. We don't have an employer who's making contributions into a pension fund on our behalf. And most of us struggle to be able to afford or justify making any monthly contributions to a fund out of our own earnings judging by trends in freelancing and self-employment which shows we earn less than our employed counterparts (while at the same time somehow paying more tax!):

- https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/self-employed-slide-further-into-poverty/

- https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/will-the-low-paid-self-employed-undercut-the-minimum-wage/

- http://businessadvice.co.uk/hr/employment-law/37-reasons-why-self-employed-have-it-worse-than-employees/

To redress this, some of us will be looking to use our homes as our pension fund - hoping to pay off a mortgage, and then when the time comes, sell the house and live off the proceeds. But many of us don't have a mortgage or the security of owning our own home (and may never be able to). And even if we did, we may have children who we want to offer some legacy and support to for their own futures, and so we don't want to blow whatever we might be able to raise from selling our home to make sure we can leave something for for them...

All of which, is why I'll be following the current initiative on thinking from TheRSA into how retirement security for the growing numbers of people who are self-employed can be strengthened ('cos the current options don't really work!)

 - https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2017/11/boosting-retirement-security-for-the-self-employed-a-call-out-for-ideas?id=utm_medium=newsletter/fellowship/201117

if you want support for your startup, you'll likely need to ignore your ethics...

I find myself in an unusual conundrum as an enterprise advisor who also has a pretty explicit set of values and ethics in how I approach the way I work:

Over the last few years, government has consistently reduced the amount of resource and support available to people who want to start up different types of businesses as a route to employment, generating jobs, changing the world in new ways, and such like. This has meant that the support that so many entrepreneurs of all types need and value is increasingly scarce.

At the same time, high street banks and financial services bodies seem to be moving into this business support space through creating startup grant funds, developing (free) incubators and workspace, and sponsoring national thematic enterprise support initiatives.

All seems pretty straightforward? And economists would probably point to this as an example of how market forces are creating responses that people and enterprises need, without the need for state intervention.

But here's the rub - a recent survey of the 'ethical-ness' of high street banks seems to suggest that those who are scored as 'most unethical' are the ones doing the most around these startup and social enterprise support initiatives. A case of 'buying your way out of a guilty conscience'? (http://www.thegoodshoppingguide.com/ethical-banks-and-building-societies)

And for the entrepreneurs accessing this support - some won't care where the money's coming from, but I see that people increasingly are interested in how that money has come to be on the basis of choices about where they choose to invest their own savings, suppliers they choose to procure from, and the places they try and recruit their staff from.

Market forces are all well and good, but remember that the market isn't a person - it doesn't have ethics or values like you or I. And that likely means that entrepreneurs' difficult choices will only be added to in the future when they start to weigh up the ethics of accepting the support that they know that their enterprise needs, but comes at a cost of having been raised from investing and trading in practices that they'd otherwise be very uncomfortable with...

the best national business support policy may be no policy at all...?

I recently found myself on an 'expert panel' at a forum convened by ISBE (the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship) on the future of business support policy in the UK, as part of their ongoing conversation into informing and shaping what a new national policy should be.

(OK - to clarify, I was technically there as Leigh Sear of SFEDI and the IOEE, but as he'd been called away overseas, he asked me to fill in for him, hence the confusion of my having 2 names at the forum.)

And while I shared various stories and approaches to business support with those present, I thought it might also be useful to capture here some of the other speakers' arguments and discussions with those in the room that stuck with me, as well as some of what I took away that I'm still mulling over, and that will likely also inform my own ongoing activity in this field:

The definitions debate

With the almost fetishism of high growth in business support policy, it seems that the definition of what constitutes 'high growth' may be too exclusive in excluding many businesses who are seeing significant increases in revenues, but aren't matching this with creating lots of direct employment opportunities (such as software firms, and something that will be be increasingly the norm with the rise of the 'gig economy').

As a result, many businesses who have the potential to contribute greatly to our economy are being sidelined and overlooked - surely to our cost...?

Not a 'bottomless well' (of growth)

It also seems that business growth isn't something that can be sustained - various data sets shared by the ERC(https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ERC-InsightPap-HartDanes.pdf) all indicate that firms can only experience grow for about their first 5 years, and then all mature and plateau; so if policy is to prioritise support for growth, we need to be more open and honest in recognising that businesses are only able to do so for a time limited period.

Measures of success

There seemed to be a general consensus that we need to use more that just financial measures to consider success in business growth - and that these should reflect the aspirations and motivations of the entrepreneurs and owners behind the businesses.

However, I've an idea that whatever these measures are should share the same characteristics as metrics in financial accounts: that they can be bench-marked externally to help us better consider how we compare and contrast with others to fully appreciate just how successful we really are, and that they can be aggregated to form data sets and evidence bases to allow us to better represent and lobby on their behalf.

Whose benefit is policy actually for?

Discussions around the different players active in the business support arena raised a question about who business support should be for, and who should be paying for it. Public policy should take a utilitarian approach, facilitating and enabling the most benefit for the most people, and in the real world, this means that the State can't appease everyone, or provide for all business types and needs (hence it's prioritising of high growth over sole traders as it believes this will create the most impact for more people).

However, we're seeing private firms starting to offer accelerator and incubator programmes, and also sponsor others' enterprise development and growth initiatives. So rather than try and create a single public policy that will encompass everyone, should we rather be taking an approach that uses simpler policy frameworks around different themes and types of enterprise/entrepreneur; better recognising that in some instances the private sector is better placed, and should be leading on elements of support?

The rationale (and risks) for enterprise education to be a recognised part of business support

There seemed to be agreement that any role Universities hold in delivering any policy around business support needs to include elements of enterprise education, and while there are good reasons for this, there are also some risks too - 

• teaching and encouraging entrepreneurship amongst students increases their future employability by developing skills that employers value
• degree apprenticeships creates opportunities for universities to capitalise on their role as a provider of learning, but there's no clear models for how Universities might best harness this new model (yet...)
• there's a risk that in some universities having linked their offer of enterprise support to that of national policy, many student startups are being 'lost' or 'fail to launch' as the University is too focused on encouraging high growth and Intellectual Property-based ventures
• with the rise of corporates taking active roles in offering business support (including where there may not be an immediately obvious business case for them to do so), there's a need for Universities to better co-ordinate their offer with these to capitalise on knowledge and expertise that both are developing - but tellingly, there was no presence from any such corporates at the Forum...

The holy grail: creating a pipeline of support for startup to high growth

Within any national policy that emerges, there will need be a recognition that encouraging new startups is just as important as supporting growth in existing businesses - but that its also difficult to ensure that this progression is smooth or able to be well managed. This is largely because of not only the sheer diversity of different business types and motivations, but also the plethora of support available to them at different stages and in different sectors.

In theory, Local Economic Partnerships should be well placed to better co-ordinate these support offers to maximise their potential for wider benefit, but the experience of many seems to be that owing to the governance models of LEPs not being inclusive or transparent enough, that such knowledge and co-ordination which could unlock the potential of many firms, isn't happening.

If we can only do one thing...

As a closing to the panel debate, a few straw polls were taken of people in the room, asking for shows of hands to gauge what the focus of national policy should be if it could only focus on one thing: more start-ups, or more scale-ups.

(Personally, I'm in favour of more start-ups: they create and encourage more diversity and choice in an ever-changing society; help us develop more resilience; and research shows that the larger firms tend not to stick around that long anyway - the FTSE100 has a churn rate of about 10% each year!)

Overwhelming the room voted in favour of more start-ups.

maybe social investment isn't that different after all..?

I was able to make it along to this year's "Working Capital" conference that was recently staged in Sheffield - a day to immerse myself in reflecting, arguing, sharing, and further exploring the wonderful world of 'social investment'.

Depending on who you speak with, Social Investment is either the next big thing (and has been for a few years...); is a market that's suffered failure in the past and needed interventions from government; or a smoke screen for covering the cuts to grants that sustain many charities and social enterprises...

money might not grow on trees, but these desktop garden
pots from Key Fund mean you can grow most other things 

The day offered a range of perspectives and stories: Cliff Prior of Big Society Capital stating openly what many are starting to whisper in hushed tones - social enterprise should be moving more towards retail and consumer markets because public commissioners are very tough nuts to either crack, or to change their behaviours; and Hazel Blears encouraging those same commissioners to do more to learn from each other to progress the social value act (but in doing seemingly having forgotten previous national initiatives over the last 20 odd years that were designed to do just that...).

But the impressions I'm left with (initially at least - as always, I'm open to others coming back to me to challenge me on these points) are:

• most of the specialist lenders to social enterprise make it difficult for the sector to borrow from them because they usually have repayment terms of only 5 years maximum. But in the private sector its not uncommon to 'refinance' a loan - it can often be hard to get a loan because you've no history of repaying debts; but once you start to, you can flip your loan to another lender on better terms... So what's to stop social enterprises getting what seem initially expensive loans in comparison with the high street banks who see them as being too risky, showing they can manage repayments, and then transfer the loan to their high street bank on better terms?

• the things that are important to those seeking investment (quick decision, affordable terms, flexibility), are the same as for any other type of organisation in any sector seeking a loan

• as a general movement, social investment seems to be a little bit too 'introspective' for my liking: NESTA undertake regular national surveys of social and alternative finance, which no-one referenced today. Without understanding how different 'flavours' of social finance compare to other finance types in how widely they're being used, how can we hope to make a best informed decision about where we should be investing our time in pursuing investment?

But but in all, a good day to reflect, see some friendly and familiar faces, and hopefully the start of most other enterprises' journeys into investment that will ultimately help them create bigger and better impacts on, and for, their respective communities.