2026_04_06
April 7, 2026
Small businesses tend to workin a single owner hierarchy. The hierachy is vertical not horizontal. The people you take on are not ususally hired to take the responsibility of disciplines away from you - they are essentially helpers that assist you with that responsibility. They remove some of the necessary tasks from you to free up some of your hours in the day but without you they are rudderless. You still have the burden of decision-making as the helpers cannot be trusted to make those decisions for you.
With big companies you hire people with the skillset to remove that decision making process on a daily basis from you. Only during review meetings do you get to direct the department heads.
TradShack should capitalize on this vertical heirarchy by becoming one of those helpers. One way is to act as a mentor through the audio field guide. You are not asking the stakeholder to give up time to sit a course - they can listen to this audio field guide while they're driving, delivering, relaxing or even before they go to sleep. Time poor services such as resurrect the website maintain the website host design and administer the website emails and lead generation is a key function in today's online world. Use the quotation you might buy the tools cheaply but you don't want to spend your evenings earning learning carpentry.
"Why should I believe a word you say you've got no marketing degree no business qualifications".
Because there are no business qualifications for small businesses -they're all aimed at corporate business management.
Degree level business qualification is ususlly aimed at large businesses by showing the time-honoured metheods creating, expanding and preserving money.
Formal business education deals with accountancy, marketing strategies, human resource management, economics, business practices, health and safety law, company law etc. All of this is good advice and once people have these business degrees they can go and educate other companies they can take responsibility away from the stockholders and can be trusted with that responsibility freeing up the stakeholders for more company cultural decision-making that suits the style and creativity of the company. Small businesses have none of this hierarchy so what good would someone with corporate business education and qualifications b to assault raider a self-employed man or even a soul creator. This is the gap in the industry don't use the word market for the small business owner large corporations expand horizontally in the departments small business owners small businesses develop vertically into helpers and task sharing but the responsibility is not handed over it stays with the stakeholder this is the difference between large businesses and small businesses and there is no formal small business education qualification degree scholarship award or even prize for this multi-million population of UK small business owners
A simple rule of thumb is to realize the business consultants follow the money they're not in business to help people they're in business to help themselves. I remember quotation from a very respected and then close friendly no longer with us who's business focus was to help people in debt through ethical debt management. The word ethical here is quite important because debt was managed through the legal process and written off through the legal process. I suggested to him you take these individuals and small companies through a bankruptcy through a constructive bankruptcy to remove their debt and refresh their lifestyle but why don't you offer services after bankruptcy to build that small business back up. The answer was "There's no money in it. What's the point?" So even 'ethical' debt management gurus still follow the money it seems
There may be a book for publication to do with 'Why consultants and business management experts are not interested in small businesses'.
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Memorable quote that sums up the likely audience for TradShack services: "Other tools may be cheap but I don't want to spend my evenings learning carpentry"