In 2006, a group of businesspeople got together and formed an online community where businesses could help each other. Today, it has 20,000 members representing small and medium enterprises throughout Ireland and 60,000 visit the site every month.
Farmers, who are some of the sharpest businesspeople, don’t feature much in the membership, but perhaps now is the time for discussion to happen around finance to learn from each other as the industry expands.
The site, www.smallbusinesscan.com, has grown exponentially through the recession.
It started out as a forum where people could ask business questions, share challenges and get answers and insights from other businesspeople who had faced similar problems.
The conversations grew, talking about raising finance, grants, getting paid on time and dealing with suppliers. It then grew to where people were talking about exporting, building quality brands, building support networks and dealing with State agencies.
Today, smallbusinesscan.com has one of the largest blogging sections in Ireland where conversations, discussion, debates and arguments on running a business are aggregated into articles by 600 volunteer bloggers and shared with a community that now reaches 100,000 businesspeople every month on mass social media.
The site has a business planning tool, which would be useful to many farmers, where people are led through the intricacies of writing a business plan or funding plan with blank financial spreadsheets available to build a set of management accounts.
It has an app that loads onto the iPhone or iPad where guides such as understanding banking are available.
SHARING OPTIONS