Every Business is different | Nice Networking | The Fun Stuff | Healthcare & Self-care | Black Swans | The offer

If you live in the UK and are the owner of a smaller business you may have come across an organisation called The Federation of Small Businesses. I've been a member for about 15 years and whilst I've dipped in and out of various other business organisations, FSB has remained a constant for me. This post is my top 5 reasons for joining and staying a member too. There's a money back voucher for all HAPI Horse, Bliss Business, and Creative Studio members at the end of this post.

Every Business is different

I go to a lot of networking and I read First Voice, the FSB's regular glossy magazine too. It never ceases to amaze me the diversity of businesses and ways we find to make money, UK business owners are a creative, hard-working and diverse group. If our businesses are diverse, it follows that our skills, styles and goals are also different. Then this must mean that we really need diversity from our support systems too doesn't it?

Additionally, we learn in different ways, have both limited variable time available meaning it's often not practical for all business owners to gather in a building for training or an event. Covid-19 certainly forced many of us to rethink how we work and much of this effort and innovation remains. The FSB supports it's members with many services 24/7, online through members login, customer support help line, local representatives, and live online and in-person events. There is something for everyone and almost always in a timely fashion and delivered in diverse ways too.

Access to any kind support is all very well but irrelevant if the support isn't available for our specific issue or is too cumbersome for us to access. For example, there has for many years now been very little support for business to consumer businesses from main stream funding. Everyone one of us is a consumer of lots of things, my personal view is that this lack of funding has dramatically contributed to the demise of our town centres, tourist spaces and quality of our trades. It's tragic and honestly makes me want to weep, so when I visit town centres and the like who are doing anyway, successful without a supported start, I feel in awe and rather proud of these business heroes. My company Creative Studios and associates have supported a number over the years and we will continue to do so. I sincerely hope that this lack of funding for this and other groups is about to change, something that has consistently been there for business businesses is FSB. Here's the current list of essential support and protection on offer.

FSB Business Banking

FSB Care for health and wellbeing

FSB Debt Recovery

FSB Employment Protection 24/7 HR advice

FSB Funding Platform

FSB Health & Safety

FSB Insurance Services

FSB Legal Hub

FSB Legal Protection Scheme

FSB Making Tax Digital APP

FSB Payments fast, secure and reliable payment solutions

FSB PIRKX 24/7 telephone and online GP etc

FSB PR & Crisis Management

FSB Tax Investigation Protection

FSB Payroll & Pensions

FSB Training

If you are not sure what's relevant to you or already a member and not making the most of your membership then their friendly customer services team are available on 0808 202 888. It's also worth considering that other FSB members might offer a service that you need - sometimes at a discount, and being around like minded business owners means you are far more likely to find someone who has solved the issue you face already. If not you could combine forces with other FSB business owners to find that solution. FSB lobby government on behalf of their members and constantly seek out the important issues to bring to government attention. Smaller business owners in the UK are a large group and having an organisation representing them as FSB do the government hear that collective voice.

One of my favourite features of the FSB website is the accessibility toolbar. It's located top right and is denoted by a little red man figure, this opens into a suite of tools including audio and font changes. It's easy to use and powerful too, a big advantage for many differently abled business owners.

Nice Networking

I've been a serial networker for many years and the thing I love about FSB networking is wherever you are in the country you are welcome to join a group. No hassle no restrictions. It's worth taking the time to figure out which will be relevant to your business but if like me you want to meet many other business owners the FSB network is a great way to do so. Meet-ups are listed by date on the member website and it's easily possible to attend a few each week without leaving your office. There are also some national ones, which are fun events, and there are special interest and in person groups which meet regularly too. Regional groups are run usually by regional FSB leaders and volunteers, they are all slightly different and with good break-out groups featuring at most events, you are quite likely to be able to speak with the members you feel you can connect with the most. This kind of connection is invaluable for members who can't leave their site or who work alone providing support, collaboration opportunities, and friendship too.

FSB Healthcare & Self-care

One of the biggest challenges many small businesses face is how to manage illness and how to stay well. There isn't generally a pool of people who can dive in to your work and something happens and this can be where businesses fail. I've faced these sort of challenges three times now. Once personally and twice where my caring responsibilities impacted my ability to work. It's hard, I'm not going to gloss over that, but having the FSB care in place really helped me get back on track and stay there. I've not joined PIRKX yet, it looks really good and I'll keep you posted. Feel free to share your own experience of this service in the comments below.

The Fun Stuff

I attended one of the national networking events and shortly afterwards saw the competition winners featured in the First Voice magazine proudly clutching their shiny new prizes courtesy of Dell Computers. It was great too see in print and I felt connected to them and the article. The event had been happy and useful to me, a couple of hours well spent. I've taken a look at upcoming events and they include a sponsored coffee break teaching the importance of taking breaks at work, a regional summer barbeque, several women in business events, and a business dinner in Cardiff. These are all taking place in the next month, this was a small cross section. You can also volunteer with FSB to help in a wide variety of ways, check out the video above.

Black Swans

In his book "Never Split the difference" (a great read by the way), Chris Voss, a former FBI negotiator, tells us his experiences of those issues you didn't know were issues until they are in front of you. Voss refers to them as black swans. It's the things you didn't know you didn't know. My experience with FSB is that often my black swans are not only known to them, but well documented with a resolution ready for me to implement. That's available just a phone call or an email away, know this helps me sleep at night and has saved me personally so much time, money and heartache over the years. Their HR documentation and legal support are shining examples of them looking out for me, scoping the universe for my black swans.

FSB have a lot to offer ALL smaller business owners, helping plan for known and unknown issues, minimising and eliminating risks along the way. When there comes along a completely new Black Swan you can be confident that the FSB will work to resolve that one too!

FSB is a personal membership which covers you for all your business interests.

The offer

Creative Studios are proud to be FSB affiliates, working with FSB to spread the word to smaller businesses who would benefit from becoming members, FSB then make a small contribution to their affiliates when a new member joins via the affiliates own link. We've chosen to donate our affiliates contribution to you by discounting £20 from every HAPI Horse, Domestic Bliss & Bliss Business Membership, one per person or organisation (as appropriate), who joins FSB via our link.* Simple click the link to activate, this takes you directly to the FSB sign up page. If you want to take a look at the FSB website first, attend an open event, or maybe call them to check it out. You'll need to come back to this post and click the link to activate. Here's the link:

About the Author

Sharon Roberts is a graduate of Keele University's MCIL program and Staffordshire University in Business & IT. She ran her own business before studying and continues to do so many years later. She is the founder of Bliss Business & Domestic Bliss.

*Minus admin cost