It is an exciting venture (and adventure) when you start a business. There is a lot to do to get things in order with business naming, brainstorming your brand, DBA and business license filings, marketing, etc.
So the question as to whether you’re considered small business or a micro business may seem unimportant – irrelevant, even. To some, it’s just splitting hairs since micro businesses are technically a subset of small businesses. We shouldn’t be so glib, however.
It’s an important distinction, because the very size of your company often defines what assistance you’re eligible to receive from either government entities or the private sector.
Whimsical Walney was born in 2004, but it wasn’t until 2007 and that I had designed, developed, and produced the products that I always wanted to sell. It was therefore at that time that I started looking into the various programs available to small businesses in order to see how I could leverage any resources available to me to support my business.
At first glance, many of the programs I found seemed very exciting with their promises of insights from key business innovators, mentoring, and community. As I looked deeper, however, some of these programs were looking for established small businesses with revenues totaling numbers I could only dream of reaching after many, many years of hard work and continued success.
Fortunately, I learned the small business versus micro business lesson fairly early on and didn’t spend too much time getting involved in things that ultimately weren’t a fit for my business.
What did I do instead? I decided to stay as local as possible and contacted my SCORE office which provides mentoring to a business of any size for FREE. This group of great former executives is ready to answer any type of business question and they do their best to match you with the person who is best suited for your current business problem/need.
With the shift in my business because of CPSIA, I am back to square one for many aspects of building a business; therefore in order to focus on everything I need to do, when I come across great “small business resources” I don’t spend too much time chasing things that ‘might’ be useful.
Instead, I remind myself that I am still a micro-organism that is growing in the world of small business and continue to strive to be a part of the larger group in the near future.
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