Small businesses now. They are the backbone of our country and I know firsthand how tough it is, long hours, constant hurdles, and too often feeling like you're in it alone. And what I keep hearing from you is that small business owners don't feel heard. My team and I are paying close attention to our small business community and the feedback that comes to us through the Mental podcast. Now,
one thing is clear. You want to hear from more businesses beyond Sydney, from across the country, and especially those that are doing it tough. That's why my team and I are launching the Small Business call Out. The Small Business call Out, which will be under the Mentor channel, will talk to business owners all over the country every single week, no matter where you are. We want to hear from you. What's working, what's not working, What do
you need from the government to actually succeed? What are the things can you enlighten us about what it's like being in the small business community. This is yours to make your voice count. We want to hear from all industries, from those struggling, from those who feel overlooked, or those who have something to say but haven't had the platform to say it. I'm going to continue hosting the Mental podcast, but the Small Business call Out will be uploaded between episodes.
So let's get into this week's edition of the new Small Business call Out. What is the name of your business and in simple terms, what does your business do?
To introduce myself, my name is Jason Graham. I've been in business in Canberra and New South Wales for thirty five years. Our current business involves a couple of different companies. We own offshore Boat Sales, which is based in Canberra and we look after act New southde ailes and further afield such as the coast.
And what offshore.
Boat Sails does is it sells new and news boats. We specialize in custom design. We're a Yamaha outboard dealership. We are a service agent for YMA and spare parts. We do retail electronics packages for the marine industry such as Garmen, pretty much all things boating. We're specialize in full rebuilds for boats for people that want to rebuild an older boat or repower it with a new engine. And we supply Australian made boat trailers to the local network.
The other business that.
Stemmed out of COVID due to the lack of supply down into New South Wales and Canberra with Queensland being shut off. I'd been designing boats since we started offshore, which was in twenty eleven, so when our supply chain cut off, I basically started design and manufacturing myself, using some specialist boat builders that are based up the far North New Southwest coast.
So we now build Australian.
Made played alloy boats under the Cutting Edge Design banner. They're all still fully backed by Yamaha and Garment, but each customer has the advantage of having a custom design boat and build done from start to finish by us, and that's backed by, you know, forty years of boating experience myself, even though all the other businesses weren't boating.
And then Cutting Edge Designers then diversified even further because as we'll get to the marine industry has sort of slowed down a fair bit with with with customer sentiment and tightening the belts and government and whatnot. So we
actually sell golf carts as well. I'm a Caain golfer, so we were diversified by doing that, and now we've actually diversified a little bit further in that cutting edge has now another arm which is Cutting Edge Business Solutions, whereby we actually are helping other local businesses in and around Canberra and New South Wales with things like post systems, ATMs.
Hospitality.
And yeah, and crypto solutions as well, which is out there.
But yeah, it's all sort of I guess.
Related, because it's all business related, bricks and mortar. I'm at the offshore boat sales office, you know, meanwhile boats servicing Yamaha sales.
All that goes on.
But we're sort of supporting ourselves by doing a lot of diverse, filed.
Stuff I think, which was something you had to do coming out of COVID.
What was the most rewarding part of being a small business owner?
The most rewarding part of all of the businesses that I've been involved with has been having that idea and bringing it to life. I guess unlike a lot of other business owners, I've never actually purchased a business or taken over someone else's business.
I've utilized franchise systems before.
But every one of my businesses has been a startup, stemming back to when I was fourteen years old working on the farm.
I came from a little town called Wombat Out me.
Young and the first business I had was sending fresh fruit to China out of our orchard because dad dad didn't pay too well, so I convinced him to let me have a crack at selling some fresh fruit through a friend's dad knew that the possibility was there. Went to the Sydney markets. Old Greek guy down there, he probably related to Mark.
He backed me.
I think he thought that I was maybe a little bit older than than fourteen, but he took that batch of first sugar plums and sent them to China, and about eight to ten weeks later, I got a big fat check in the mail and it was pretty exciting stuff for it fourteen year old kid, and I guess that's what started at all. And to answer the question, that's what gives me the most satisfaction about being able to bring an idea to life, being able to meet
the demand. You know, I think one of the biggest things with any business is making sure that you've done your background and you've checked your demographics, and you make sure that there is a demand for whatever you're going
to do. That doesn't always work one hundred percent, as anyone in business will tell you, especially at the moment, because things are so tough, everything's up and down, but by being able to pull it all together and come together with an idea, whether it be you know, selling boats, building boats, having you know, I've had a couple of bar and restaurants.
I've had Jim's mowing and fencing.
I've had civil construction companies, a baby shop or tab.
You know, there's a fair bit that's gone on.
But I do feel that everyone's got the opportunity to make anything what they want to make.
It's just damn hard work, but it's very very rewarding. It can also be very.
Very draining and disappointing, especially when you know things are not going your way.
What is one thing you wish you knew before you even started your business.
Look, I think that if I could go back to the early nineties when I bought my first pub, I think I was nineteen twenty years old right now, what I wish I didn't know, which is the opposite of what you're asking, is that I wish I didn't know how much easier business was then.
Now.
I'm not saying that it was easier as in work hard or you didn't have to do one hundred hours a week or whatnot. But I think the return for the hard work back then, even though from a monetary point of view may not have been as much turnover or as much revenue, I do feel that what you got back from business was more of a return on your investment that you didn't feel like you were getting cheated.
And I think the longer that you've been in business, and especially the current economy that we're in now, you know, the ATO has got incredibly tough with everything.
People are very very tight with money.
So you know when we talk about boat building and selling outboard engines, and that's all discretionary spend, right, So none of us knew that COVID was going to hit, right, And during COVID, some areas of Australia thrived in the boating industry because, say, for example, Queensland, it's a lot warmer in Queensland and people didn't have anything else to do except recreational boating, so whether they were fishing or their family or whatever, so things went off in certain
different areas. I guess if you knew what was going to happen, in hindsight, we'd all be able to prepare better for what tohead but you.
Never know that.
And that's one thing about business is you never know what's going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen with government at the moment. You know, we're in Canberra. Canber is so government are orientated as far as the holding pattern. So there's like as soon as it comes
up to a federal election, the whole country stops. But in Canberra it's even it's felt, you know, it's felt greatly because because the city seems to have that stigma of being advertised as the government is not the government, the government is Canberra.
You know.
So when people talk about Canberra all the time, especially during you know, when there's media and there's you know, the Great Debates and all of this stuff on TV, it does take away from the overall view of Canberra and people sometimes probably forget that Canberra is just another city which is run by small business, you know, the
building trade and everything here. If we knew the building trade was going to be as effective as what it has been in the last three years, you would also look at different ways of as you said before, pivoting your business. But yeah, it's a difficult one to try to guess what would help.
All I know is that.
Things have gradually getting harder because the costs of running business is growing and growing and growing. You know, the cost of rents, the cost of outgoings on those buildings. You know, obviously there's not as much spending in the economy,
especially discretional spending on recreational items such as boats. So that's what has more or less forced that diversification back into a few other areas which are all related back into business, but have given us the opportunity to at least expand, but not only that, just survive.
I guess at the moment is it is a matter of survival for a lot.
Of businesses, not just Camber, but everywhere all throughout Australia. And the statistics say, you know, if there's startup businesses within five years, fifty percent of those businesses don't continue.
That's a given.
There's a high percentage of directors and business owners that are not even paying themselves a wage, which I'm one of those business owners. You know, the other people you work with, you and your business to business supporters, they have to get paid first. So you know, I'm very very lucky that I've got a wife and family that
support me in the business. She has her own job, and I would hate to think what it would be like if you didn't have a partner that actually, you know, pulls their own weight by being able to help in a financial way and keep the household running because a lot of the time in business, everything that comes from the business goes back into the business, including every minute of the day, seven days a week.
To me, business has been my whole life.
And what inspire you to start your business, those.
Are straight out supply supply boat sails, become a Yamaha outboard dealership, create that service side of the business, be able to just provide everything boating for camera because there was no one and there still is no one else in the act that provides that service. Then having the supply issues force that pivot to cutting edge design, whereby we're now able to actually build our own boats for
customers based on what they want. More importantly, Australian made, so all the money's staying here and I don't need to probably put as much pressure on myself to sell as many boats as what we used to when we were buying factory built boats. Out of Queens because we're cutting out that middleman. You know, if I can spend more time and bring a higher quality product, that's what you want. That's what gives you that satisfaction in your business.
And most importantly, you know, we're in business to make money. If you're not making money, you're not going to stay in business. So if you can do something yourself using the best contractors and boat builders that you can, you're still spreading the love by employing them and spending money with them. And we're buying Australian you know, it's aluminium, it's freight, it's every touch you know on these building these boats creates more work and more jobs for people
in our business community and that small community. Every single person touches one of these jobs. If you took all that away, a lot of people would suffer, you know. So you know, been able to go and have a game of golf every Wednesday morning at the local golf club, which I've been a member at for thirty years.
People see me.
In my golf cart. If they want to buy a golf cut, they can see it. They can order one. That creates more sales. It's another business solution and we're providing that service to the local economy.
In Canberra whereby previous.
There was none, And I guess that's why then we've even diversified further back to that business solution side where.
And I'm not having a crack at the big four banks but everyone does.
What we're trying to do is touch base with all those thirty five years of business contacts that I've got, which I think I've got twenty seven thousand in my phone. So out of all those people that I've touched base through all the different types of businesses, if I can go to them and help them save money on their f poss or positive system or business solutions, whatever it is, if I can help them save money and keep the money in the local community, that's my main goal, I guess.
And that's where Offshore Boatsals cutting Edge has all stemmed from thirty five years of business experience and seeing that a lot of money gets drained out of the local community in the industry, so the building industry here in Canberra at the moment. And I listened to one of the guys did one of the shout outs a few weeks ago, and he was a camera based guy and I understood every single thing that you've saying was so true.
And theiggest problems at the moment we're seeing Canberra is that these big developers are bringing in staff from outside. So whether they are overseas workers or they're from Sydney or Melbourne, they're big crews. It doesn't matter where they're from,
it doesn't matter. But what happens is they come in, they take all of those jobs on those big, big, you know, apartment buildings and whatnot, whether they're commercial or private, and they don't physically live in Canberra, so they're earning the money from those jobs and all of that revenue
goes back to wherever they're from. So if they're from Sydney or Melbourne, or they're from overseas, and that's all great, we need people to be able to do these jobs, but that's where your local community, which Canberra is not a very big place. Our population is, you know, probably smaller than Liverpool. So it's the money gets drained out of Canberra and back into the other areas and we don't get we can't get that funnel back.
So if that money goes out of the circle, that.
Affects all businesses because your tradees are not getting paid as much, they won't spend on discretionary products like going out for dinners and going to the pub for a beer and a coffee and whatnot.
So what happens is then.
The public servant sector, because they're finding it tight or there's not as many jobs, they're not going to spend as much with tradees. So it's a big circle whereby all the businesses need to be in that circle to
keep the money going around. And if the money gets funneled out of our local community and which is our state, which is you know the Australian Capital Territory with capital of Australia, you know what we're seeing at the moment, and that was evidenced by the guy the other day from Canberra talking is that the money is just going straight out of the state and it's not coming back, so it cuts.
That supply, you know. Yeah.
So yeah, in short, what we're always trying to do is developed that local business and try and keep the money going around within our economy so that all the businesses can be successful, because we don't want people to fail.
How is your business doing right now.
In the current economy, The business at the moment is generating the least amount of turnover that I've ever seen. Our business is directly affected by the discretionary spend from local Right. In Canberra, a lot of people don't really understand a lot about Camera. Most people would say, this guy's crazy. He's got a boat shop in Camera and there's no water.
Right.
That's a fairly good assumption because there is no water and Lake Burley Griffin you can't even run an engine in it, you know. So so I understand when people say that to me, because I do get a lot of backlash on that.
I'll say, why are you? You know? But obviously.
A company like Yamaha wouldn't back us to open a dealership in Canberra if they didn't think that it was required.
Right. So there's a lot of statistics.
Most Canbarans spend a lot of time at the coast. So the whole South coast, so anywhere from you know, south of Woollongong, Coyama all the way to Eden gives me a massive blanketed area and a big demographic of people that fish, water, ski whatnot.
And then we're.
Surrounded by a lot of dams as well. Another question people would ask is well. Are you affected greatly by summer and winter? People think that a boat shop will be busier in spring and summer than during winter.
Traditionally that's the opposite.
A lot of the boat shows and a lot of the promotion goes on during winter. So even though I'm coming to work at four point thirty five in the morning, it's minus six, we're still up until now seeing a lot of.
A lot of support across the whole year.
Coming into Christmas is always busier because you've got deadlines and you've got to have boats finish for people going.
Holidays and whatnot.
But traditionally it was always pretty much across the board all year was the same sort of you know, the month is not a massive difference. In the present economy where we sit, we're coming into winter in Canberra, we've got a federal election.
Interest rates are high.
Even though they keep squawking about interest rate cuts, that doesn't change the fact that most people are struggling with costs of living, which includes paying their mortgages.
And unfortunately we're the first ones that are hit.
So if people are not spending money with traders, and trades are not spending money with us, and similar type businesses.
Our revenue is cut to the hilt, so we have to.
Concentrate a lot more on providing a better level of service to the customers that we do have, and that what we've spoken about with diversifying into different areas, we're hoping that that will create more revenue to get us through the tough times where you know, offshore boat sails, cutting edge design with the marine industry been a bit on the dead side, which is Australia wide, by the way, Like when I talk to all the other dealers, everyone's
in the same position, so and there's no point crying about.
It, you know, even though I'm sure that we all do it some stage.
It's the reality is that people who are only going to buy something when they're ready to buy it, you can't make them go and spend money because at the moment the wife says no to the boat, no to the motorbike, no to you know, a weekend away with the boys or whatever it is, and it'll be people have just been a lot more careful with what they're doing so that they can, just as I said before, survive.
I guess so at.
The moment I would say that our businesses and our business and a lot of other businesses are all in survival mode.
What challenges have you faced as a small business owner and how do they impact your business and how did you overcome them? Did they affect your family members, did they affect your relationships? How did you solve them?
Yeah, I think there's the list of items that are impacting everyone's business, including ours at the moment, will be very very similar. I just find at the moment that, especially with the reduction of revenue and sales due to discretionary spending and people been careful and people been over committed the government themselves, I don't think, especially if we talk state government, small businesses definitely not on top of their list.
You know. I've been a member of the.
Chamber of Commerce here for a number of years because it gives you the opportunity to be able to talk about these things with other people and find out what they're doing to try and help themselves. Their escalation of rent, the outgoings like things like rates in Canberra, the cost of doing businesses exponentially more expensive than just over the
border in New South Wales and Queenbea. I've got plenty of friends that have picked their businesses up from inside the Act and taken it to New South Wales because there's massive differences in pricing when you look at vehicle registrations, stamp duties and taxes, workers compensation costs, insurance costs, which are major major parts of our business, you know, I
mean we pay massive insurance. I think the outgoings on a rental commercial building these days, I mean in twenty eleven outgoings on our property, we're a couple of grand a year. In twenty twenty five our outgoings is twenty five thousand dollars a year plus rent, So that is just that that's a massive increase, the increases of rent as well coming out of COVID.
I guess in the Act we weren't protected.
No business was protected from rent in the Act, unlike New South Wales, where you know, the New South Wales government implemented certain criteria that people got rent assistance. You know, they might have only had to pay half or eighty percent, depending on their situation and how much revenue they are losing. So again that sort of really reiterates to me that you know, the Act government in power has not really implemented anything that's a small business.
Support network. You know.
In New South Wales, you know there is the New South Wales Small Business Party. Basically you've got a seat, you've got a representative in Parliament. Act has nothing, so you rely heavily on you know, business chambers and the like to stand up for what's happening.
But you know, there's only so much you can do. So yeah, I've lost a little bit of track there, I suppose, but it is just.
Astronomical how much the expenses have increased, you know what I mean for people that I don't employ a lot of staff, but you know a lot of my people are contractors. But you know, the extra superinnuation businesses have got to pay obviously, they've got to keep up with wage increases. And if the revenue is on the way down and the costs are on the way up, obviously that's leaving next to no profits for a lot of businesses.
And as we discussed earlier, perhaps they're not even paying themselves a wage or whatnot, which I'm sure is fairly prevalent across the whole industry everywhere, you know, So yeah, I think that sort of gets most of it out there.
One of the big things I feel is that.
A lot of people are not They're not very positive at the moment. They might they might have come into a business with a positive attitude and a happy end.
They want to win and they want to do this and they want.
To build it, and then all of a sudden, perhaps the amount of effort people put in is not giving them that revenue and that financial gain. So people start to think, are they better off being in business or should they go back to being an employee for a company?
I guess which then at least you're secure.
You might not have all the the perks have been in business where you are free to.
Do what you want to do. Even though you might do one hundred hours week more than the next person, you still feel free because you're running your own business. Yeah.
So, I guess there's so many angles and parts of that that are making things difficult, But you know, it's.
Across every level of every.
Part of your business. At the moment, I think there's a lot of pressure from everywhere.
How confident are you in the Australian Government's ability to support small businesses effectively? If you advise Australian Government on one action to take to better support small businesses. What would it.
Be Definitely.
My confidence level in the government to support small business on a state level on a scale of one to ten, they're minus ten. I after thirty five years in business in Canberra, I could honestly say to you that the government has never once provided anything of value to help
me in business ever. And in saying that, there are some federal government bodies now in place, such as there I think they called so the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise OMBARDSMAN, which when you ring them, they're normally in Victoria. They normally answer in Victoria. But it is a federal funded places. Now. I've coming out of COVID, you know, and we've had we've had some really close people to us, like a very close friend.
Committed suicide around eighteen months ago, and.
He was from the private sector. The amount of pressures that were put on him from all angles of life. Flick that switch right now, That's that's something that I would never begrudge. I have no comments on on on that side of it, but it just shows the amount of pressure and what's sort.
Of happening in the economy and within.
Australian business that that there you can allow people to get to that stage that that that becomes an overlying pressure that you think that you know there's no way out. Those guys from the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise amberdsmen, I must say.
Even though they're not really a government.
Agency, they are excellent and if if anyone wants to ring them and talk to them about business or about they might be getting pressure from in a franchise agreement, all they need help with legal questions or whatever, I would say that they're about the only company I've found that is worth a phone call to so and that's only through research of my own. There is an office here in Canberra, but I've rang them before and I've
seen that that that's they're federal anyway. So I really think that offering government grants and free loans, and I know all these items have been discussed by other people on the podcast over the last six weeks, I don't think that they're going to help anyone. I think that that type of help is nothing but a band aid. If your business is in a situation where you owe money and you think that by borrowing money from the government's going to get you out of that hole.
That's not going to change it.
What people need is the support, someone to ring, someone to talk to. I know that Mark's touched on it many times about mental health and all that, and that's that just goes along with the whole pressure of running business.
It's a tough game. There's no you know, there's no there's no.
Ifs or butts. It's just hard, you know. And at the moment it's the hardest it's been. And if people you just got to hang in there. I mean, my level of confidence in business and the government is the lowest it's ever been.
In thirty five years.
On a federal level, we're now waiting for a election. My confidence in the current federal Parliament that's pretty much zero. I'd love to see a change intact from any government, it doesn't matter if it's.
Labor, Liberal or whoever.
Whoever's in power needs to provide more support to all business because business is the crux of the Australian community. Without business and without all the people that we employ, the country can't sort of it can't work, you know, like it just it's not going to work. We don't rely And I'm based in Canberra and Camera still it doesn't operate on public servants. Yes, there's a lot of government here, there's a lot of defense, there's a lot
of all of those public service sectors. But without the building industry and small business and your local mechanics and your service stations and your coffee shops and your hospitality and your pubs and your clubs and all that, well, a town doesn't exist.
So you know, yeah, we just need more.
More support as far as by being able to generate spending.
To save people money. And I'm not running for parliament were but you.
Know, at the end of the day, people are only going to be able to spend money if some of the pressures of course of living.
Are reduced, you know.
And you know we can't we can't make interest rates go down.
We can't we can't make inflation go down.
But you know, whoever's in power is going to have to seriously look at how we get people spending money in small businesses again so that everyone can be profitable.
Where can people find you and your business?
Let us know to find us.
As soon as you type in anything about boats, we're going to come up in Canberra.
Whether it be Instagram.
Or Facebook or the sites if people want to find us, will pop up under Offshore Boat Sales, will pop up under Cutting Edge Marine, will pop up under Cutting Edge Designed by Jason very soon, or pop up under Cutting Edge Business Solutions, which will be another company name that we'll run with so that people can see what we do. People jump online and they jump on the Yamaha out Board Australia site. We're going to pop up on there. You know, they look up garment dealers for a garment electronics.
We're going to pop up on there. If people want to find us, they'll find us pretty easily. All phone numbers basically come direct to me. You know, my secretary and myself are always accessible on the phone.
Generally.
If I don't answer, even if it's a Saturday or Sunday, I'll tell all people just to send me a text. Mainly, the reason for that is it if someone's in a boat, they might be a bit stressed out, they might be having a problem, they can't start their boat, they're at the boat ramp and they forgot to turn the kill
switch off, you know, so or on. So I'm happy to not always in you're in the phone, if you're still asleep or you're in bed, but you know, I'm happy to text someone and hopefully try and help them out wherever they are.
And yeah, we just want.
To really promote the local business in Canberra and surrounds, which includes a lot of regional New South Wales around Canbra. What we're trying to do is help everyone in business in this area help one another. And I guess that's why I'm so in favor of things like the shout Out and listening to podcasts with Mark and similar other podcasts so that people have, you know, just got someone else to listen to and not take all those problems home because your wife doesn't always
Want to listens to do