The Enterprise Research Centre's 2024 State of Small Business Britain report finds that a hefty chunk of the country's small firms have no interest in getting any bigger, thank you very much. This includes practices like yours, whether you fancy expanding or not.
Practices often assume growth is the goal, but plenty of small businesses in this report seem quite settled where they are, and there is a consequence to pretending otherwise in your marketing.
| Original Research | A large annual survey of UK small businesses looking at ambition, confidence, and the usual obstacles: money, staff, and red tape. |
|---|---|
| Source | https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-State-of-Small-Business-Britain-2024-Final-1.pdf |
| Overview | The report draws on national business survey data to track how UK small firms are faring, and it comes from the Enterprise Research Centre, a university-based body that has been doing this for years. |
| Year | 2024 |
| Publisher | Academic, Enterprise Research Centre |
| Relevance to Wellbeing | It is not about wellbeing at all, but wellness practices are small businesses too, and the findings on growth ambition and confidence apply just as well to a therapy room as a tech start-up. |
| Our Verdict | Too early to tell Sound research, but you will need to do the translating from "small business" to "small practice" yourself. |
| Our Summary |
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| Our Geo View | UK-specific data. Practices outside Britain can note the pattern but should not quote the figures as their own. |
An academic research centre's annual stocktake of how UK small businesses are getting on, covering ambition, confidence, and the usual headaches.
Enterprise Research Centre, State of Small Business Britain, dated 2024, published as a PDF report in early 2025.
Methodology: based on established UK small business survey panels; sample size not stated in the summary available to us; publisher type is a university-affiliated research centre.
A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.
Marked down a touch on practice fit since it covers small business generally rather than wellbeing specifically, kept high on method confidence given the academic pedigree, and nudged down slightly on recency since the PDF surfaced a year after the year it describes.
| Practice type | Relevance | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching | Medium | Reframe solo practice as a positive choice in your messaging. |
| Therapy | Medium | Drop growth-chasing language from client-facing copy. |
| Training | Medium | Use "deliberately small" as a selling point in course listings. |
| Alternative Healing | Low | File for context; not urgent to act on. |
| Clinical | Medium | Highlight continuity of care over expansion in patient materials. |
| Retreat/Centre | High | Market limited capacity as exclusivity, not constraint. |
Best before: revisit when the next annual State of Small Business Britain report lands, or check back with Sunlight Creations for a refresh once it does.
Most practice owners have, at some point, felt guilty for not wanting to expand, and this report says that feeling is shared by an awful lot of small businesses.
That instinct to keep reading - it's the same one that makes a good practitioner. We've built a story garden, a visual river and a listening wind for exactly that kind of person. Come and find out what we mean over a proper coffee.
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