One surprising offshoot of the pandemic: Massive numbers of people have left their jobs to start their own businesses. In the article, “Workers Quit Jobs in Droves to Become Their Own Bosses,” the Wall Street Journal writes, “The pandemic has unleashed a historic burst in entrepreneurship and self-employment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own as consultants, retailers and small-business owners.”
It goes on to note: “The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic, Labor Department data show, to 9.44 million. That is the highest total since the financial-crisis year 2008, except for this summer. The total amounts to an increase of 6% in the self-employed, while the overall U.S. employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic.”
Starting your own business can be exhilarating. But it can be tough as well. It’s a cold, hard world out there for new business owners. Fundera reports that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small businesses fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.”
In a related article, B2B Reviews found that "21% of companies fail by their first year, 28% fail by their second year, 48% by their fifth year, and 65% fail by their tenth year."
But help is at hand for the self-employed. Alpha Software is an affordable force multiplier that can help anyone, even those with no technical experience or background, create the software, forms, mobile apps, and tools that help entrepreneurs and their businesses thrive. Its low-code capabilities put the power of enterprise applications into the hands of any business owner, no matter his or her level of technical expertise.
Just consider the real-life example of how it helped Mike Brown, a maintenance mechanic laid off in the Great Recession in 2007, start Programmatic Technologies. It’s now a thriving business writing applications for a wide range of companies, from healthcare to the food industry, located across the United States and in the U.K.
He chose Alpha Anywhere to launch his business and hasn’t looked back. “At first, I didn’t know anything about database programming, I didn’t know what JavaScript was, I had no formal education in it,” he says. “I didn’t have a clue. But with Alpha Software and good mentoring along the way I achieved my goal.”
He cites Alpha’s excellent documentation as being a tremendous help. With an active community of 17,000 software developers, Alpha Software’s forum, he says, “is a great resource. No matter what kind of problem you’re facing, or what you need to solve, you can always find help there.”
He says that Alpha’s sample programs and code were a great aid as well, and not just in the beginning. He still turns to them, and to Alpha’s forum whenever he runs into roadblocks.
Alpha Software, he says, gives him all the tools he needs to write any program for any job he’s asked to tackle.
So if you’re starting your own business, or just thinking of doing it, help is at hand – the power of Alpha Anywhere. Alpha Anywhere low-code software has the unique ability to rapidly create applications and mobile forms that can easily access and integrate with any database or web service and can exploit built-in role-based security or robust offline functionality. It’s powerful and affordable. In fact, you can build low code apps for free right now with Alpha Anywhere Community Edition.
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