Fewer than 1 in 7 UK small businesses grow every single ye

Page updated: 13 Aug 2026

Whole-practice growth for wellness practices. Rooted in Wiltshire, UK, working worldwide.

Practices hoping for a tidy, ever-upward growth line are chasing something that barely exists among small businesses generally, let alone wellbeing ones specifically.

Original Research	A claim that fewer than one in seven UK firms sustained growth for four consecutive years, 2021 to 2024.
Source	https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/our-work/publications/
Overview	The underlying report, published by the Enterprise Research Centre, is meant to track small business performance across the UK, though the page we checked was only a publications listing with no data attached.
Year	2025
Publisher	Academic, Enterprise Research Centre
Relevance to Wellbeing	The specific figure appears with no named source, sample, or methodology, so it should be treated as a general industry claim about how rare sustained growth is, not a verified statistic for any sector.
Our Verdict	Too early to tell the number gets repeated often enough to sound official, but nobody has shown their working.
Our Summary	The broad idea, that small business growth is lumpy rather than linear, matches what most practice owners already suspect from lived experience. The 15 per cent figure has no visible source, sample size, or methodology attached to it anywhere on the page. Even unverified, it is a useful counterweight to marketing that promises relentless upward trajectories. It describes UK small businesses generally, not wellbeing practices, so it is background texture rather than proof.
Our Geo View	The claim, such as it is, describes UK firms only, though uneven growth is unlikely to stop respectfully at the border.

Abstract of wellbeing niches and revenue flow

Recognise how this might impact your practice

Why this might matter to you

Coaching: this matters because coaches selling transformation often imply a straight line up, and clients notice when their own graph looks nothing like it.
Therapy: this matters because therapy clients already compare their progress to everyone else's, and a bit of realism about uneven growth might spare them the extra guilt.
Training: this matters because training providers promising steady skill gains for steady fees should be honest that plateaus happen to businesses too.
Alternative Healing: this matters because healing practices built on gradual, non-linear change already have a natural affinity with a stat about growth refusing to behave predictably.
Clinical: this matters because clinics run as small businesses face the same lumpy revenue patterns as everyone else, whatever the clinical outcomes look like.
Retreat/Centre: this matters because centres planning expansion on the assumption of steady year-on-year growth are planning against the odds, according to this figure, whatever it turns out to be worth.

Where this came from

A publications listing page for the Enterprise Research Centre's State of Small Business Britain 2025 report, which mentions the growth figure without showing its origin.

Enterprise Research Centre, publications page, 2025. The specific statistic could not be traced to a numbered page, table, or press release on the site.

Credibility flags: no sample size disclosed, no methodology visible, publisher is an academic-affiliated research centre, but the figure itself carries no attribution at all.

How we scored this

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.

40%

Practice fit, 25How new, 100How solid, 0

Marked down heavily on how solid the method is, since the figure has no traceable source, while scoring fully on recency but only modestly on how well the topic fits wellbeing practices specifically.

It's worth considering changes to your marketing practices

What this means for your marketing

Put a line in your welcome materials saying growth isn't a straight line, even for the biggest players.
Say it before a client says it: mention that slow patches happen to everyone, not just them.
Brief your team to stop promising steady upward curves in testimonials or case studies.
Swap "guaranteed growth" language for "sustainable progress" across your website copy.
Use this as a talking point in client reviews when someone feels behind where they think they should be.

Who this is most useful for

Practice type	Relevance	Recommended action
Coaching	Medium	Use it as reassurance messaging for clients feeling behind on their own targets.
Therapy	Low	Mention only if a client's anxiety centres on comparing themselves to others' apparent success.
Training	Medium	Frame course outcomes around steady effort rather than a guaranteed straight-line result.
Alternative Healing	Low	Use as background context, not as a direct selling point.
Clinical Practices	Low	Keep for internal business planning rather than patient-facing messaging.
Retreat/Centre	Medium	Raise it in planning conversations with prospective partners or investors.

Best before

Best before: worth revisiting once the actual Enterprise Research Centre report surfaces with a traceable figure, or by early 2026, whichever comes first.

Steady, unbroken growth is rare for small businesses, wellbeing practices included.