Anthony Lucas 

On the topic of business coaching and mentoring, we understand that some states like Victoria are helping to fund these services for businesses. Is that correct?

Bill Lang 

That’s correct. Yes. So in Victoria, the government’s put in place, a number of organisations that can provide mentoring and coaching services to eligible Victorian businesses. And there are still a number of places available for Victorian businesses to get involved with that but only for a limited time. So you know, any Victorian business that is out there and wants to access potentially eight hours of you know, free to the business coaching and mentoring are able to do that and, and one of our organisations Bill Lang International and the website for that is www.BillLang.org. We have a whole team of coaches that are approved to deliver those services. So we encourage people to go and have a look at that and have a look at who the coaches are, and, you know, apply and take advantage of it while it’s available.

Holly Stearnes – Ticker News

When we talk about exporting, what should businesses be watching out for, what should they be doing?

Bill Lang – Small Business Australia

Yeah look, one of the great service area opportunities is around health. So we’ve done a great job with respect to the pandemic health management. With video-related technology now in live video and translation software dealing with Asian countries is a big opportunity. But look it is tricky when you enter other markets, cultures are very different.

There are different ways of thinking about things, not just different ways of communicating, but different ways of thinking about things. So it’s really worthwhile for businesses to start exploring it and to explore some of the great services that the governments of each country have got available to help you go global.

Holly Stearnes 

So for tips for I guess, for Australian businesses, what would you tell them if they were looking at exporting to New Zealand sort of thing? What tips would you give there?

Bill Lang 

Yeah, well, the Australian Government has an organisation called AusTrade and one of the great services and initiatives they have is something called Export Market Development Grants or the jargon is EMGD.

Now what that means is you can go forward and invest in getting advice, advice on marketing, or even setting up websites to target your different countries, not just New Zealand, but also throughout Asia and other countries. And you can get a good percentage of that back from AusTrade to help reduce the cost of exploring and starting to do the market development, the marketing into those countries.

Holly Stearnes 

Yeah, cool. So how does I guess how did I go about getting involved in that? Where do we find it?

Bill Lang 

Always come to www.smallbusinessaustralia.org, we’ve got resources, you can ask some questions. You go straight to AusTrade, in the case of Australian businesses. EMGD, do a Google search on that. But yeah, come and come over to www.smallbusinessaustralian.org, join up for free and we’ve got guides on how you do that stuff and how you access the resources and some of the government incentives.

Holly Stearnes 

I’ve been on their website. It’s amazing. I love that website. I encourage everyone to go and view that.

Holly Stearnes (Ticker News)

We know that the Australian Government is set to expand and simplify the trainee programme. Can you just explain to us a little bit about this? Because we know that it wasn’t set to go ahead and now it is. So what’s happening here?

Bill Lang (Executive Director, Small Business Australia)

We only spoke last week about this were 100,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships, and a traineeship is someone who’s a white-collar person who’s doing specific training for their job. So the 100,000 of them that were initially budgeted for and was capped at 100,000. They were filled in five months.

And we were saying last week, well, we need to see it extended, see it changed, you know, this is working, we need to make sure it really helps more small businesses than necessarily large businesses.

So the Prime Minister of Australia announced only yesterday that they are now going to extend it, they’re going to uncap it, which means as many businesses can apply, who are employing new people and putting them on a particular official training programme.

And I think for you know, the viewers of Ticker, many of them don’t need an apprentice, which is typically someone doing a trade-related programme, but they need people to help them with digital skills, social media, using a range of digital tools.

So every small business that needs help in that area, if they’re thinking about hiring someone, now’s a great time, because as a trainee, they can get up to $28,000 towards the first-year wages and salaries and the cost of training. $28,000.

So yeah, look, it’s another real positive sign from the Australian Government to support people hiring, training and upskilling people through accredited training.

Holly Stearnes

Well, I guess it just says as well, that they’re actually serious about it. And that’s a significant amount of money. If you’re a small business owner, though, how do you actually go about applying for that amount of money?

Bill Lang 

It can be a complicated process, in terms of ensuring that you’re eligible and the type of person that you’re hiring for the type of role can do an apprenticeship or traineeship.

What we’ve done at Small Business Australia to make it really easy for people is we have some education videos that explain how it works. It just takes a few minutes to watch them.

And then we’ve got a little free service that people can take advantage of and then have a conversation with someone on the phone to see whether they’re going to be eligible as well as suggest possible training providers then for them to go and speak to.

Adrian Franklin (Ticker News)
So what, what are you seeing at the moment? I mean, I’m obviously tracking small business. We all are. We’re now in what are we January, February this year, things are ticking along. How are you feeling about things generally?

Bill Lang (Small Business Australia)
Generally speaking, there’s a lot of positive vibes out there in a number of particular small business sectors, you know, things are moving in a positive direction, but we still very much have a tale of two or three cities. And what I mean by that is that certain cities, the foot traffic is still down considerably compared to others. Certain geographic areas, business types have relied upon international tourists as an example, or international students, still in an enormous amount of pain.

Adrian Franklin
So the federal labour says that the government is destroying taxes at apprenticeships. So what’s going on here, in terms of small businesses, and are they missing out through what you know, the Labour Party is suggesting?

Bill Lang
There’s been commentary recently from the Federal Labour Party around you know, the Liberal Party, the federal government for years defunding Tafes and Vocational Education. So tracking things called apprenticeships, which for blue-collar people, and then sort of white-collar traineeship, similar thing to apprenticeships.

So, you know, the federal government in the last budget, you know, announced the great big programme called a building that apprenticeship commencement, let’s get another 100,000. Let’s provide businesses with access to potentially up to $28,000 to get those people in. Now, it turns out of the 100,000 places that were made available, more than 74,000 have already gone in three months. And it would appear that a whole bunch of them have actually gone to organisations that already actually had apprentices and sign them up under this new programme. So the governor really quickly changed the way they designed it, because it didn’t actually add to employment. A bunch of people have been big companies, access money that was supposed to be more for smaller companies to access. So there’s 25,000-26,000 left apparently, many small business owners don’t know about it, and can be tapping into it.

To find out if you are eligible for the trainee and apprentice support visit – www.smallbusinessaustralia.org/traineeship-opportunities

Adrian Franklin
Right. Well, that’s interesting, because policies implemented by governments and it can look shiny and all the headlines, but then drilling down you watch closely to see does this trickle through? And you’re suggesting that at the moment, it’s they need to perhaps do more?

Bill Lang
Absolutely. And I think we’ve got to avoid this sort of trickle sort of concept. We know that a trickling through a number of these businesses need very direct broadband straight direct help to be able to survive and to be able to bring people on and yeah, there’s a lot of money has been made available. It’s quite complicated to sort your way through it. We need to simplify this stuff. We need to get the design right, right at the beginning, take an extra week to get it right. Rather than find that 10s of 1000s of these places have not actually added to employment, and big corporates have got access to corporate welfare payments.

To learn more about the government’s Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements program visit – business.gov.au

Adrian Franklin
We were talking about foot traffic a moment ago. So Small Business Australia released its suburb activity research over the weekend, talking about Melbourne, in terms of foot traffic, but what have you seen here with the report? And also, what can we do about it at this point, you know, we need to get there right now.

Bill Lang
And so when you sort of compare the major capital cities, in particular, you see that basically, Melbourne is still almost down and on a relative basis, still 50%, behind where Sydney is, right Sydney, sort of the second in the ranking. So we’re going to get people, of course, you know, coming back to their offices during the week and coming back into the city areas. There’s some great stuff that’s happened in terms of making everything COVID safe, fun things to do in the city.

So we had a few things to happen that we really need, in the case of the state of Victoria, the Victorian Government to take the lead and not talk about sort of minimum percentage of their employees that can come back. But they can take the lead, they work for the government, they work for the people of Victoria, how about we have like a minimum of 50% of them back in the offices, the biggest employer in the state of Victoria is the state government. Let’s get them back in there. And the other thing is that all of us can actually do is get into the city.

You know, if we’re not actually working in the city, get there on the weekends, and even the events like yeah, the Australian Open is on, there’s been a lot of pain involved with the people of Victoria, a lot of angst about it. And yeah, when I was watching it last night, plenty of empty seats, and according to Nick Kyrgios, even room in each box, so, you know, for those of you viewers out there, got a girlfriend got a boyfriend, like grab them go in and go and sit in Nick Kyrgios’ box.

Adrian Franklin
Very, very good. Yeah, I’ve been working the Australian Open, as you know, and it’s, um, I think the first day the weather was a little bit average, hopefully, with the good weather. But you’re right, we probably need to be more conscious and say, look, maybe I wasn’t thinking of going, but I need to go, I need to walk into the city, I need to go to the restaurant, the cafe or whatever, get in there. Start making more of a conscious effort in some ways, right?

Bill Lang
Look, I think absolutely. And look, I was talking to my 79-year-old dad yesterday. And he goes, there’s another outbreak in Melbourne. And it’s one positive case from 15,000 tests. So we need some calmness bought to all of this. And we need that leadership from the government. And when you call a press conference at 11 o’clock at night to make a whole bunch of changes. And then you sort of say at 11 o’clock at night. Well look, it’s just one case. You know, the action is a bit inconsistent with the way they’re carrying on and the other big thing here Adrian, we’ve got some small businesses they’re getting named and shamed. We’ve got, you know, QR tracking technology, we should be like New South Wales and every Victorian business use the same one available for free from the government. So this stuff can happen much more quickly in the people to be there can be directly contacted, rather than continuing this epidemic of fear about this virus