With a broken landscape, SME success is a pipedream for most [Video]

When Xero’s ‘The Global State of Small Business Owner Wellbeing’ reports that just 17 percent of New Zealand’s small business owners can take a break, and when only 37 percent of those starting out on their own are still in business after five years, the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) landscape is broken.

But not irretrievably so. That’s the stark view of Alana Swain, Your Success Team co-founder who also has executive experience in banking and marketing. “We have an appalling business failure rate and a mental health crisis. These are linked, because the SME sector represents 97 percent of all businesses, employs over 600,000 people, with staggeringly high failures doing nothing for wellbeing.”

Disturbed by these depressing figures, Swain’s Your Success Team is on a mission to improve business success, including through its ‘Your Business Club service’. She believes government policy and inattention to the plight of entrepreneurs is …