Welcome to Clever Little Business!

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! This blog has been in planning for a while and I am very excited to launch it and start sharing and learning with all of you. I see this blog as an opportunity for me to share the knowledge I have been acquiring over my career as well as exciting motivation to learn new things (such as blogging, for example). I have been planning this blog for about a year now and wanted to do it the right way, so have been following some great bloggers and entrepreneurs. Although I am still not sure about the right visuals, writing techniques and search optimisation, I do have the knowledge and passion and decided to take the plunge.

Photo by mihtiander/iStock / Getty Images

So, who am I? My name is Artur Durbanov and I am a business advisor. I can almost feel the scepticism oozing through the screen as you have read the last sentence. Well, the truth is - I really like the concept of a small business and my current role gives me a great exposure to a huge range of small businesses from hipster coffee shops to builders, from interior designers to tyre fitters and so on. Every day I get exposed to the problems these businesses encounter and try to solve them in the most efficient way. 

I was born in Russia and 10 years ago came to Australia to study at the Australian National University. I graduated with the degree in accounting and international business and joined a large mid-tier accounting practise. My biggest concern on my first day was - "did I just spend 4 years to push papers and stare at Excel spreadsheets for the rest of my life?". It turned out that it's not that bad and behind every number on the spreadsheet, every call and email, every letter to the tax office, there was a real human life that was affected. Once I finished my the Chartered Accountants program and became a CA, decided that it was time to change my career and work in the field I am actually passionate about - business advisory. I wanted to be more involved in the actual business side of things and not just to see my clients during tax time. These days I provide advice ranging from tax planning to eBay store set up and hope that some of the techniques and experiences I share will help you to achieve your business goals. 

Over the years, I found that there are lots of great blogs that provide resources and advice about starting and running an online business. This is not surprising – passive income is a very desirable goal for many entrepreneurs and the success stories of online start-ups and bloggers show just how many zeros one can add to their annual income conducting business online. However, most businesses in the world are small and … eh ... tangible. In a country like Australia, small and medium businesses that sell goods out of their physical premises (so not over the internet) or provide services dealing with customers directly face to face account to account for 70% of all employers!

Unfortunately, 80% of all new small businesses in Australian fail within their first year of operation and if my blog can contribute to improving this sad statistics – my goal is achieved!  Quite often, this mistakes cause a lot of pain for the owners of this small businesses. A lot of the time, this mistakes can be easily corrected or avoided, but they are not. You know why? Because most of the small business owners are lonely in their quest. They lack the support network and try to solve problems that they have no expertise in. They lack resources and knowledge of how to work on the business, not just in the business. I see the mistakes that hundreds of real small business owners in a variety of industries make every year. And I also either see or come up with solutions to avoid or correct this mistakes. I hope I can help some of you avoid the pain of this mistakes and take your business where you always dreamt it would go!

So welcome to my blog and lets begin our journey!