 I'm at this. This is my first podcast. It's very exciting. It's going to be called Lewis on the Couch with . So anyone I can rope in to sit on the couch with me and speak for 20 minutes to an hour or so. My first person is a great friend of mine called Matt Jaffa, and he works at a Federation of Small Businesses, members of an organization. Felly, nid ydych chi'n gwneud, rydyn ni'n rhaid i bobl y gallwn gwahydau'n cyflawnio. Rydyn ni'n llanio'r cwylio i'r leol, ac rydyn ni'n rhaid i chi ddod. Hei, yw Lewis. Welch i chi'n podfodol. Rydyn ni'n cael ei gilydd, yn ei ddwyngau, yn ei ddwy. Yn ni'n gweithio. Helo. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Yn ni'n gweithio? Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio hoffa iawn, mae'n ôl yn gweithio, gydnwch wedi gwaith yn cael 15 yma, felly mae'n gweithio met Gaffer Ddynogiad, betu bydd yn gweithio'r lle, mae'n gweithiau, mae'n gweithio lle iextrwyr mai'n gwnaeth, mae'n mi f SBS, mae'n gwypeth, mae'n ddysgogol ffordd, mae'n gweithio'n gweld i gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'n cwysig oeddenn까지, mae'n ganwch yn hollw yr ymddangodd, Mae hyn ydy'r bobl hwn i'r newydd? Mae'n gael i. Mae'n nhw i'n cael eu ddweud. Mae'n nhw'n gael i. Ond i fi'n gweithio i'r dweud. Beth fyddai'n ôl yn ddechrau? Beth yw FSP? Mynd i fawr i'r bwysig yw wlad hon yma. Dwi'n gyfer dwyloedd Llyngenol, o fod y bydnog Cymru, i ddiwethaf i'r d двигchiliu, So we can be engaging with our 70 odd Members of Parliament in London and we also do the press and public affairs. How's the new mayor compared to Boris? They've got different, you know, different particular positives and negatives. I would say Boris is, you know, he's very good at the whole chat-chat as you do in meetings. Whereas you know, Soneke is a real detail, he's kind of mayor as you can see, details. But they're very different in characters, but both very strong at selling the message of London, which is good. Ken was before my time, so I haven't got the knowledge of that, but yeah. But no, it's good, it's a good, you know, it's been two years now that Zedig's been in charge. You never got to rename the bikes, did it? No, it's just- It's still a Boris bike. It's always going to be a Boris bike isn't it really, but you've just got Santair in there, written all over it now, but- That's true. No, it's good, but you know, we also do, you know, as you, as you already know, we do lots of engagement, we do lots of events across, we've got about 7,000 members across London. Nice. It's all small businesses. All small micro-businesses, mainly fewer than like 10 employees, a really small business. Is that a definition of a micro? A micro is less than 10, small is less than 50, so you're talking about 99% of the economy is made up of small businesses, and that gets lost. It gets lost a lot of that in terms of the public, you know, the whole term SME. You know, you can have an SME that's defined as one person business, or it's 249, and it's, it's a, it's completely- Well, a medium business is 249. Yeah, but the term SME is always, you know, floated around, but it doesn't, you know, you can, you speak to a business that has taken on its first member of staff, or a business has already got 248 members of staff. It's a, you know, it's a complete difference, but that's how governments of the past have viewed it. And so most people in the UK work for a small or medium-sized business? Well, yes, around 50% work in an SME, or 50%, 60%, and the rest are working large businesses, but it's, it's the smallest businesses, those, you know, micro businesses to take on the extra apprentices. Those are the ones that we need to be supporting in the economy, because they're the ones more likely to employ staff, but just don't have the resources to be able to do so. So you're finding that people are, like, take on apprentices quite a lot now? Well, actually, some data that's coming out now is that, actually, there's been a drop in the number of SMEs taking on apprentices. Oh, really? It's still very hard for businesses because, you know, to set up an apprentice in a small business, micro business, you're talking thousands of pounds, and you don't necessarily have the... Is that not refunded? There's a bit of, you know, support in terms of training, but technically, you know, there's no real, you know, incentive financially wise to taking on that person. So it's a leap in the dark, and if it's your first member of staff, again, there is that concern, and the support's not there. So we need to find ways, you know, we're lobbying for, you know, businesses like yourself, small businesses, having a kind of incentive where it'd be £2,000, £3,000 to take on an apprentice, particularly 16 to 25-year-old, because small businesses are really struggling in terms of the cost of doing business in London, and that's what we're focusing on. Interesting, but they are, I guess they're cheaper to take on than a normal employee? They are, but that's, you know, small businesses want to take on, you know, they're keen to take on apprentices, but they just don't have the skill, they don't have the kind of HR backup that, say, a large business has, or a medium-sized business has to take on that person. And so the larger medium-sized ones are taking on more apprentices? They're more likely at the moment to take on those apprentices, but we need to find a way to encourage smaller micro businesses to take on these apprentices, because it's not just beneficial to the apprentice, it's beneficial to the business. It gets you new skills, gets you new talent, gets you, you know, things like digital arena that you've never thought of, and it actually makes you more competitive. I think it's awesome. Our friend Toby, a healthy vending company, he took on an apprentice, which apparently was really good. But there's a lot of planning that goes in, training, proper structure, but it's really valuable. It'll be interesting to see, over time, if less people go to uni and they start doing, and it's either more apprentices, apprenticeships. There's more, there's more like higher degree apprentices that are taking place now, more of these, you know, in particular in financial services, you know, a lot of that accounts and a huge amount of high-level apprenticeships. And, you know, why wouldn't you think about going down that route if you were going to... It's still seen as probably better to go to university. True, but again, but it's expensive. It is, but that's the thing. You know, if I was thinking about, you know, university again, you know, the high cost, you'd think twice, wouldn't you? I think, and I've got the stats on this, but I think, I mean, the MBA stuff is being squeezed now, because an MBA is close to 100 grand investment, and you don't actually get the highest salary or return. So I think applicants are correct me if I'm wrong, but I think applications for MBAs are going down. Again, not one I know about, but it's, it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, it's interesting, but I mean, some jobs you have to have a degree. You do. You're going to be a scientist. You've got to do science. There's no doubt about that, but it's a worthwhile thing to think about going down the apprenticeship route. 100%. So that's, you know, it's one of the things we're continually lobbing the government on to make it easier for smaller micro businesses to take on apprentices. And then to the main issues, cost? It's cost is mainly, and that's the, you know, particularly businesses that you've got coming down the line. You've got to pay staff like auto and roll them into pension schemes. You've got your high cost somewhere here where we're sitting right now, the kind of the high cost of commercial space and rents and rates. They're eating up your, your, your, your profitability where you find that extra money to be able to take on a young person. And that's, that's where we need to be able to support them, whether it be through things like national insurance reductions for employers, you know, incentives to take on, you know, grants to take on apprentices. We need to be thinking in that way to make it easier to take on staff. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, you've got how many staff you've got here at the moment? So six of us? Six of us. Yeah. Very good, very good. All, like part-time, full-time? There are five are permanent and one is part-time. Okay. And we've had a bit more, we've had a bit less. And I think one of the things that our members tell us is that things like employment issues, that's one that can be a big stumbling block for a lot of small businesses, it puts them off because they hear about things in the press regarding things like employment tribunals or, you know, how we can make our staff more effective or, you know, thinking about self-employment rather than, you know, employment. And so it's kind of, it's... But the good thing about the UK is you can try people, right? So, I mean, so for the employer, you can take someone on and obviously you don't, unless you discriminate, but you can get rid of anyone for anything within the first two years if they're not working out, as long as you don't discriminate. No, that's the main point. As opposed to, say, France where you can't. So the effect of that here is that businesses are able to try people, which is great. And if they do well, it's great. And they're not so tied in for a long-term financial risk, which is not the case in, say, France. Yeah. I mean, again, that's a lot of the reasons why we have a kind of the FSB small plug when I'm at it. A legal advice line is that it's free for any small business that joins us whereby if you've got issues regarding employment or if you've got issues regarding contract law or anything legal in your business, you can phone that legal advice line and they support you through that. That's one of the main areas where people join the FSB and why we've got such a big base of 170,000 members. What are the other key issues that small businesses are facing? I mean, in terms of things like commercial space and business rates, those are the ones that are really hitting. Rates have gone up, haven't they? Rates have gone up. They went up last year with the revaluation and now from April 1, we're going to see those rates going up even higher, 3.5% increase across the board. Wow. Just in London? Across the UK. Oh, right. We've now got a situation where 33% of all the business rates are coming from London going into the Treasury, so 8 billion of the 25 billion take is coming from London, but it's not as many businesses paying into that. The concern is that small businesses in London are faced with a real twin threat of not just commercial property affordability problems but business rates that are stifling them and stifling their ability to grow and making them think, do we go further outside of this zone one area? That's the fear we start losing micro-business in the centre of London. Are you finding that some of your members don't actually need an office? With technology now, we've just cut the cords to our desk phones. Our phone's on our laptop. There's an app on our smartphone, so our guys can work anywhere in the world. O2O number is brilliant, but what it means is that we don't actually have to have an office. A lot of firms are talking about being virtual, global firms, borderless firms. I think a lot of businesses think about that, but I think a lot of them say, even if they're getting their staff to work remotely on a day, maybe there's a strike in London or if there's communication problems in the office where they have to work from home. The problem you've got is that setting up from home is a broadband issue. It's a kind of an issue regarding sensitivity of data. Broadband is so bad in the city. It's a nightmare. The Mecca and being in the capital city that we would be leading in this area, but we don't. We have pockets particularly on the east side of London, in the east-central part of London, probably around here. It's dreadful, and you just wouldn't expect it. The internet is a joke around here. The biggest complaint, I think, from all of my employees is the internet. That's a real question. In central London, by the Bank of England. You can see one of your members of staff agreeing with you right now. It's crazy. It really is. We talk about that we need to be thinking about being a one gigabyte city. We're struggling with speeds of five megabytes per second in central London. We're rapidly losing ground on our international competitors as a result of broadband. That's true. Back to cost of rent and stuff. You can actually build a virtual team, borderless office, different countries, if and once. I have to use you as a case study. We're all in an office though. We have a business where people feed off each other. It's a sales-based environment. It's nice to work together. I feel that for all the talk of work-life balance, which I always find funny because the opposite of life is death and people look way to death. Thank you. I read that earlier. All that means is that people want to work from home, which means you have less human contact. People need to have human contact. They want to feel part of a tribe. You don't if you're at home. You can literally go for like... We get a lot of members who are home-based workers. About 20-30% of our businesses are home-based. It's a lonely experience. You see people that come to our networking events. We've got local networking events. They go for that community aspect to be able to speak to people. You can hear the stories from other people in your similar shoes. You can't explain it to people who are in office. You've got to hear it from other people who are experiencing that element of loneliness like you are as well. It's so important that you've got local areas and local communities, which is why organisations like this where we're in these co-work space where if you're looking to grow out of your bedroom, it's a good way of engaging with other people in your particular field. Why do you think so many people want to work from home? It might be a lifestyle kind of choice. It might suit them, but at the same time, if you're faced with a situation where you're going to be paying £5,000, £6,000 in rent and rates, or you set up from home, what are you going to do? Absolutely. That comes down to a cost. The main element is the fact of how do you reduce your expenses, reduce your outgoings, and a third of turnover goes on rent and rates. How can you do that? It's out from home. Is that right a third? The average that we see amongst people is a third of turnover is going on rent and rates. We've put out a splash media thing last week that said rent and rates freedom day is now about April 15th, April 20th when you stop paying money on your rent and rates. It's getting worse and worse. We just have to find ways to support businesses particularly with the cost of doing business. Tough. It's tough. It is. But worth paying. Is that my phone? That's mine. Let's shut it off and then... So how have you got the phone off finally? How are your members feeling about Brexit? Ever since I've been asking them since the day we decided to leave, there's been that kind of stoicism. We'll rock through it, we'll get on with it, we'll roll as we need to and we'll get through it. I haven't heard anything else different really. For them there's still that level of uncertainty and when there was that uncertainty regarding whether or not people who were working here from the EU were allowed to stay here but now there's a little more clarity on that. That's well received. Having the certainty regarding things like the transitionary period after two years very important for small businesses. Most of these small businesses and micro businesses focused on the UK? Like they're deriving most of their businesses from the UK? In the main, yes. But the countries they are engaging with most are EU countries. That's where they export the most too. So we do need to have a greater drive to be able to be in a position where we can start to look at ways to export with other parts of the world that maybe they haven't thought of in the past. But I think again a lot more needs to be done in terms of how our ambassadors set abroad are supporting. Ambassadors being... Are there in terms of how we're engaging with the Department for International Trade selling the UK, selling our product abroad to get support and help businesses who maybe have never been on a... As a business, how would you get involved? How would you get that kind of support? I think looking at areas like the Department for International Trade and London and partners looking at those particular areas but finding a way to think about things like trade missions very... But then there's... Before Brexit happened and we had UKTI there was these 99lb packages really subsidised to get small businesses abroad for two to three days to parts of things like Turkey for instance or just parts of Eastern Europe to be able to go on trade missions and go to conferences abroad and to actually sell their wares because if we can support them in those shorts it could be very beneficial. So I think there's more that can be done by the Department for International Trade. Have you been lobbying them on that? We have been done, yes. Is there an appetite from them? There is, I think so. They need to find innovative ways to be able to get our members to look to export and for businesses... And this is outside of Europe? This is outside of the EU. It's kind of important because they still want to have that kind of relation with the EU but we need to think further afield. I think the other area is the issue of getting talent. That's going to be an issue for your business in particular getting the right talent. So what are the issues that they're finding? Not being able to hire the right people? I think the problems they've had with the thing like non-EU migrants coming in has been the difficulty in getting visas, particularly tier 2 visas into things like restaurants where maybe you say you're an Indian, you're a specialist Bangladeshi caterers for instance or people in the IT sector. People you need over that specialist knowledge. The tier 2 visa stuff's been tough since the financial crisis. So the government, I think half the amount of visas. First you need to be registered as a firm to support visas. So we wanted to hire an Australian Australian guy but we're not the type of firm that would be able to get a licence to sponsor. I've had businesses call me up which kind of businesses, craft businesses just saying they're struggling to get those non-EU migrants into the country where they need to get that talent and the theory is if we don't get that migration system that works effectively for non-EU migrants how are we going to do the same for EU so it's important that we learn lessons of what's worked well and what hasn't worked well from the current migration system. Are they working on that because you don't hear much about it? It's all about EU, Brexit. I know, but it needs to be dealt with because we need to know what kind of, whether it's going to be a point-based system whether it's going to operate like it does in some Scandinavian countries, how it's going to operate because again that certainty to be able to know that you're going to be in a position where you can employ the best talent from across the world. It's so important for business. Hugely, no hugely. Particularly on your field. Absolutely, we are we're doing a lot of Brexit recruitment we hire for firms setting up in Europe. Also European firms wanting to do business here. The visa issue specifically though is a tough one. If a firm wants to hire someone and they need a visa they have to advertise a role for a month prove that they can't fill it with someone who's eligible to work here. So it's quite tough. There's a shortage list that the kind of migration, this is really geeky. Migration advisory council has a kind of a shortage list that works for the UK and Scotland as well. We think there should be one in London whereby if London in particular needs talent from abroad where there's a shortage list we should be able to get the talent we need quicker using a system that's set up by the Migration Advisory Council Interesting to see if people still want to come here given the current. I still think there's a draw to come over. There's of course uncertainty but I'm kind of maybe an optimist. I still think there's going to be enough that people will still want to come and make the transition to come to work in the UK. I think so. You've got to be positive. Interesting to see whether your members have employees that are European who want to go back. I'm sure there are some. You will hear that of course you will. But a lot will still say they want to stay an optimist with the fact that they know there's that right to remain. That's great. But we just mustn't discount the people that still want to come to the UK who want to provide the skills that we so desperately need and businesses cry out for they struggle. Some of them struggle to get the talent that they need from the UK so they look further afield because that's where they can get the talent and we want to make sure that that happens. Or they can hire them as apprentices train them up and we can do some hand-grain there. Quite right. Which we've always advocated as well but we do need. We do now we do. We do. We do really. Changing the subject slightly. What do you think of the soft drinks levy? That's a real switch. It's a big switch. I'm very into my healthy ting and all this kind of stuff. I can see. I've been a business. Well not bad. Not bad. Bad back you got there. I've got a bit of a bad back that's true but that's just age messing with me. I think I'm probably better shaped now than I was at uni. We went to university together. We did. I can't remember what shape you were like at uni. I remember you had a far serve at tennis. I did have a far serve. I never went in but it was a far serve. I never went in. I always tied myself out because I was trying to put too much speed in that. You needed that kind of balance but yeah. I think since we've been at uni which was about 16 years ago there's been like a big and like health shift. Certainly on all the sugary drinks and all this kind of stuff. So the government are introducing a soft drinks levy. So I'm not sure what the numbers are. Probably click through on the old laptop and find out. But it's interesting. That's one way of discouraging people putting the prices up. But I think there's a big thing that we need to do on education. So parents not feeding their kids fizzy drinks, chocolates all this kind of stuff. And I think the government can do a lot more to educate people on healthy eating. Obviously obesity diabetes is the biggest trend in the NHS which is very typical at the moment. We mustn't single out one particular area that I think is important. The fact that the matter is we all have a responsibility in this particular area that my personal opinion is government, business, parents even kids as well. All realising the dangers that more sugary soft drinks, the sugary snacks have on our bottom line. Beastie issues is a massive killer in the UK and it's something that has a big strain on the NHS and it takes away from other areas that we need to be concentrating on. So I do from a personal perspective I think it's a responsibility of all of us really. Are you quite strict with your kids? I try to be. I'm more bad cop than my partner but I just think It's bad cop as in you give them No, I'm the other way around really. I don't know a sweet tooth but it's hard. People these days you work not all the two people working you get back late it's tiring It's tiring and hard to make food for the grandchildren. It is and I'm as guilty as the next person it's hard to but when you've got kids all they do is seeing adverts on the TV from this brand of sugar come with this pizza place whatever it's hard to be able to say no you're going to get but the thing is it's all so readily available here. It is, it's so easy. You can go down to Sainsbury you can go to Tesco whatever it is and there's so much choice it's hard to eat healthy it's also more expensive to eat healthy it definitely is we need to flip that I don't know what the answer is but you see Jamie Oliver constantly on TV and radio but they need to start to reduce the cost of fruit and veg and more veg in particular they do but we'll see it's an interesting one awesome so thank you very much for coming great way to end thank you for letting me be the first first the last we'll have you back on the podcast next time great and have an awesome Easter thank you very much hey folks thanks for listening don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places