Rural small businesses are managing to adapt to the challenging circumstances they face. Many of them pivoting and starting “side hustles” to supplement income lost to the the ravages of the droughts, bushfires, floods and coronavirus that have blighted them in the last 12 months.
A report released by technology platform Zoho reveals that 44 per cent of Australia’s rural-based small businesses have started, or plan to start, a second business. More than one in three of these side businesses are retail-based, followed by personal and professional services such as accounting, yoga teaching, homeopathy, legal advice, and bookkeeping.
Despite that has been thrown at them, the research shows that small-business owners in regional areas are still overwhelmingly positive about their situation and prospects. One in three small-business owners prefer to live outside a major city, three in four say being based outside capital cities improves their lifestyle, half believe that people are more productive in smaller workgroups or rural communities, four in five don’t feel isolated working outside a city and one in three would like to mix their professional life with time working on farms or rural properties.
“Despite significant challenges, entrepreneurialism is alive and thriving in rural Australia, but software and policymakers have a role to play,” Zoho Chief of Strategy, Vijay Sundaram, said. “Technology can help with rural development by enabling people to work anywhere, by leveraging the power of innovation and combining it with the influence of government we can repopulate our rural areas, tap into new talent pools and generate a wealth of economic opportunity. Technology is the ultimate leveller. It can empower people, no matter where they’re based, to connect globally.”
Steve Lockyer, Managing Director of Inform Ag, an agricultural technical solutions provider, also believes in the crucial role of technology in boosting efficiency and driving growth for regional businesses, especially in times of crisis.
“Challenges seem to be rarely far away for rural businesses, and as an agricultural business we’ve been particularly affected by drought in the past,” Lockyer said. “Overcoming challenges as a rural business is about identifying and exploiting competitive advantages, and for us that’s technology.
“Nothing can help you prevent or neutralise the impact of pandemic, drought or bushfire, but technology allows us to not only operate in a more efficient, streamlined and systemised manner, which is crucial at times like this, but also to understand our opportunities and challenges as we look to continue our growth,” Lockyer added.
Katharina von Heusinger, co-founder and CEO of The Golden Bone Bakery that manufactures dog and cat treats in Ipswich, Queensland, highlighted the advantages of being based regionally.
“A common misconception is that entrepreneurialism exists only in metropolitan areas,” von Heusinger said. “For us, being based outside a major city isn’t a negative thing; quite the opposite, in fact. While we were hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with sales dropping by 60 per cent in March, community is much stronger outside major cities, and ours has come together to support each other as we respond, recover and return to ‘normality’.
“We don’t look enviously at metro businesses, and that’s because technology and the power of non-metro communities provides us everything we need to operate a healthy, growing and empowering small business, irrelevant of where we’re physically based,” von Heusinger added.
