In Defence of Small: Why We Need to Stop Apologising for Not Being Corporate Giants

For most of the 12 years I ran a manufacturing business in the West Country, I bristled at being called an SME.

Not because the term was inaccurate - we were, by any definition, a small to medium enterprise. But because somewhere deep down, I'd bought into the lie that small meant weak, that medium meant middling, that unless you were scaling towards empire-building you were somehow settling for less.

I fell for it completely. I worked for a global Swiss bank for years. Recently I even found myself talking to one of the biggest US banks about working for them. Why? Because part of me still believed that's where real success lived - in the weight and momentum and brand recognition of massive institutions.

But then I actually looked at what I'd built. Watched my parents run their small community-based business for decades. Saw the inside of those corporate giants. And I realised: we've got this completely backwards.

The Lie About Size

Let's be honest about what we've been taught to believe: bigger is better, might is right, scale is success. If you're not building the next unicorn or joining a global brand, you're not playing the game properly. Particularly if you're a man, there's this fear of being seen as weak, and small reads as weak in a culture obsessed with growth at any cost.

The bureaucracy and politics of big business are soul-destroying. The sheer weight of infrastructure and culture and pressure in large corporates has a momentum that individual humans simply cannot withstand without sacrificing huge parts of themselves. I've watched bright, passionate individuals become smaller and greyer and more defended just to survive the environment. Hollowed out from the inside.

Yes, there's status in being associated with big brands - big banks, big consulting firms, big tech companies. But status isn't the same as thriving, and association isn't the same as alignment.

Meanwhile, whilst I was busy feeling inadequate about running a "small" business, I was actually building something far more valuable than I realised at the time.

What SMEs Actually Are

Here's what we don't talk about enough: SMEs aren't just important to the UK economy - they are the UK economy.

As of 2024, there are 5.49 million SMEs in the United Kingdom, making up 99.8% of all private sector businesses (UK Government Business Population Estimates, 2024). Let that sink in for a moment: 99.8%. We're not talking about a niche sector here, we're talking about the actual foundation of commercial Britain.

These businesses employ 16.6 million people - 60% of the total workforce in the private sector. That's three out of every five jobs. Their combined turnover is £2.8 trillion, representing 52% of all private sector turnover.

So when we talk about SMEs as somehow lesser, as stepping stones to something bigger and better, we're not just wrong - we're insulting the backbone of the entire economy.

The Reality for Leaders

And yet. Even when small businesses are profitable - and 78% of UK SMEs reported profit in 2024 - that profit is often wafer-thin.

The median profit was just £13,000 in 2024 (BVA BDRC SME Finance Monitor, 2024).

Read that again: £13,000. That's the median - half make less than that. Think about that for a moment: you're carrying the weight of payroll, overheads, regulatory burden, and existential responsibility for everyone who depends on you, and you're taking home less than many of your employees. You're the one lying awake at 3am worrying whether you can make next month's rent on the factory. You're the one choosing between paying yourself or paying suppliers. You're the one who feels the weight of every redundancy conversation, every missed order, every month you scrape by.

The leaders of these businesses - the entrepreneurs who don't quite fit the corporate world, who have a passion for what they're trying to achieve, who have self-identity wrapped up in what they're doing - they do this year after year. Sometimes because they can't bear the corporate alternative. Sometimes because they're chasing something meaningful. Sometimes because they've got no choice.

And yet they employ millions of people. They invest in their communities. They create connection and dynamism in ways that hollow corporate structures simply cannot.

Compare that to a healthy small business: the dynamism, the ability to pivot, the direct connection between decision and outcome, the fact that you can actually see the impact of your work on real people's lives. There's something fundamentally different about working in an environment where your character matters, where relationships aren't just networking exercises, where the mission can actually align with who you are as a person.

When I think about the big problems facing our society - the crisis of connection and community, the lack of genuine investment in people, the need for work that actually means something - small businesses aren't part of the problem. They're the most viable path to a solution.

The Businesses Worth Celebrating

So let's put to bed this nonsense about SME being a term to be ashamed of. The old adage is true: turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king. I learned that during the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business programme - a major US bank investing significantly in small business leaders because they understood what actually matters.

But madly, because SMEs carry the stigma of association with micromanagement, penny-pinching, low pay, and poor benefits, the sector is probably underserved when it comes to world-class support. Some of that stigma exists for good reason - there are plenty of badly-run small businesses that treat people terribly and contribute nothing to their communities.

But these leaders are navigating complexity that would break most corporate middle managers. They're doing finance and HR and operations and strategy and sales all at once, usually without the safety net that big business provides. They deserve better. They deserve support that matches the scale of their contribution and the complexity of their challenge.

What I'm committed to - what I think deserves celebration and support - are businesses where:

• Leaders are hyper-aligned to who they actually are as individuals

• People within the business are thriving, not just surviving

• The business serves something bigger than quarterly targets

• Resources are deployed with intention and alignment

• Impact matters as much as income

These businesses can absolutely be profitable. In fact, when they're truly aligned, they're often more sustainably profitable than their dysfunction-addled larger competitors. And they can be in genuine service to their communities and society at large without sacrificing commercial viability.

I still don't love the term SME, but not because it's too small. Because it's too broad. What I'm interested in is a specific subset: businesses that are thriving because they're aligned.

Call them Powerhouse SMEs. Call them Aligned Enterprises. Call them Community Anchors. I haven't settled on the perfect term yet (suggestions welcome), but I know them when I see them: small enough to stay connected to their mission, large enough to make a genuine impact, profitable enough to be sustainable, aligned enough that the leaders aren't slowly dying inside, dynamic enough to adapt, grounded enough to build real relationships.

These aren't businesses aspiring to become corporate giants. They're businesses that have worked out that "small" isn't a stepping stone - it's potentially the optimal size for doing work that matters with people you care about in service of something meaningful.

What I'm Building

My contribution is supporting business leaders to find stability, sustainable success, and alignment - helping them thrive in the running of their businesses rather than being slowly consumed by them.

Not because small businesses are cute or scrappy or deserve our sympathy. Because they're the most powerful force we have for creating work that doesn't hollow people out, for building real community connection, for proving that commercial success and human thriving aren't mutually exclusive.

The 16.6 million people employed by SMEs in this country deserve leaders who are supported, aligned, and thriving. The communities that depend on these businesses deserve enterprises that are sustainably profitable and genuinely in service. And the leaders themselves - the ones carrying the weight year after year - deserve to know that what they're building isn't second-best to the corporate alternative.

It's potentially something far better.

What do you think? Have you experienced the difference between big and small business environments? What would you call these aligned, thriving SMEs?

Still searching for the right term: powerful yet human-scale, aligned and profitable, sustainable and dynamic, serving something bigger than quarterly targets. Something with steel in it that makes "small" sound like the strategic advantage it is. Suggestions welcome!

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My name is Marc Richard. I spent 12 years as Managing Director of a South West manufacturing business, transforming an underinvested family operation into a commercially successful enterprise before exiting in 2025. I now works with business leaders in crisis, guiding them through turnaround, alignment, and self-awareness.

I support individuals through crisis and self-awareness so that I can enable aligned and transcendent leaders to create small businesses in service to our communities. The small, humble, profitable businesses that are the backbone of our economy, led by people who've done the inner work.