If you've got a profitable cafe or dry cleaning business that's running close to capacity thanks to plenty of happy customers, you are a success.
The Sydney South East regional finalists in the Excellence in Small Business category of the NSW Business Chamber Business Awards have been announced. The region includes the City of Sydney.
The finalists - the eventual winners will progress to the state awards - are The Recruitment Alternative, Opal Minded, The Explainers, Glebe Family Medical Practice, Gallop Solutions, Urban Vision Group, SE-CORP, and Fourth Wall.
While it's fairly clear what most of these businesses do - though Gallop Solutions runs business training, Urban Vision is a construction company (not, as we expected, an optometrist), and Fourth Wall runs or helps run events such as Carols in the Domain, corporate conferences and the ARIA Awards - we thought one was worth highlighting.
The Explainers specialises in explainer videos (those usually animated video sequences you'll often see on an organisation's home page or About Us page, explaining what they do) and infographics.
It's perhaps something of a concern that to us that win the Excellence in Small Business award it is necessary to attain significant growth and be "able to demonstrate the specific strategies and processes implemented to achieve sustainable growth over a previous 12-24 months." So the best and most profitable dog walker (for example) in the state couldn't qualify unless he or she was prepared to sacrifice quality for growth by hiring other walkers that by definition aren't as good as the principal.
While a listed company might need growth to keep shareholders happy, the owner of a small business can do an excellent job without feeling the need to constantly expand. If you've got a profitable cafe or dry cleaning business that's running close to capacity thanks to plenty of happy customers, you are a success - you don't need to move to larger premises or additional locations to prove it.
