The truth about SMEs

You may think that the restaurant that charges you 10 bucks for your sandwich (where you can buy practically the same sandwich or ingredients to make one literally for a quarter of the price) is ripping you off, and the boss of this restaurant is swimming in his swimming pool filled with all the cash you and the other busy and naive people give to him on the daily basis.

Well after some observation and some time, I found out that businesses in general (or SME in this case) are generally losing money. Or their margin are usually very thin. Restaurants you see in the street are making in general 10% of net profit after deducting taxes, employees, rent, supplies etc. And businesses have risks like risk regarding the clients not paying, risk against employees not working well, getting sick, stealing your company’s money etc. And companies have bigger risk as well such as a global pandemics where, well as you know businesses are struggling to stay alive, to pay the employees and to pay the suppliers.

Now when I see a restaurant owner, I don’t see a crook taking money from innocent clients anymore. I see a fighter, a hustler, a father, a mother working to give service to his/her clients, to pay his employees and the suppliers. Not everyone is willing to take the downside of being a boss (the responsibility, the risk of getting everything wiped out, the non paid overwork hours etc). Many prefer getting a stable salary, get a limited responsibility, and go home from work thinking about something else.

Now I am actually pretty happy to see people opening up stores, restaurants giving a service they’re good at for a price. I want to eat some Indian food here, a Chinese food there, I want to have a good Iphone, I want to be able to stay in a decent hotel when I go somewhere. All this have a price. And the price are even sometimes too low considering the risk that these businesses bear even if you think that’s expensive. Even a good business can run out of business after two months of zero revenue.

Yes the pandemics really changed the way I see the world. I see things I didn’t (want to) see before. So the next time you see a “boss” what would you think of him/her? Write down your answer in the commentary.