Between Strategy and Stardust: How Small Business Magic Changes the World
- Milly Morgan
- 15 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Small business owners are my kind of people. I think they play such an important role in our world and it's an honour for me to be able to support them, and I get such a kick out of learning what kind of new magic someone is bringing into the world. Sometimes that magic is building safe spaces for vulnerable people, sometimes it's holding a community together, sometimes it's filling gaps that no one else can even see.
Small business owners are woven into the fabric of their communities. So what might feel like wizardry is actually deep connectivity to their people. It's seeing a problem, feeling it in the gut and responding with something useful, beautiful, healing and that bonds us all together is like playing with universal stardust. This enchanting space between the strategy of entrepreneurship and the stardust that makes us all human is my favourite playground. It's where dreams are born, people support themselves and find freedom, they grow and adapt and create something that really matters. And I am so here for it.
The underestimated role of small business in society
Most of us are used to thinking of small business in terms of economic contribution. It’s the backbone of the economy, the engine of jobs, the driver of local spend. That’s all true but it barely scratches the surface.
Small business actively strengthens community by connecting deeply to the people they serve and responding to the needs that they can see from their unique perspective. By responding to their community (who we could also call their "niche") they create a sense of place, where their people feel seen, heard and respected. For example, the local IGA where I used to live had a large volume of vegan customers, so many that the owners of the store started colour-coding the price tags on the shelves so that all vegan items had green tags and their customers could easily see what products were safe for them. It's a small gesture but boy it made a huge difference. The vegan community felt safe, supported, and the relief they felt not having to check everything in their basket meant they grew a very loyal customer base and took a large portion of the local market away from the coles/woolies conglomerate.
Small business has the capacity to be flexible, to pivot, to react directly in response to the lived experience of the people they serve without the input of a boardroom, policy cycle or bureaucracy. This lack of shackling makes us incredibly powerful change makers, community creators, problem solvers and a vital part of a thriving social world.
Because we’re not trying to serve everyone, we’re responding to something specific, something niche, local, heartfelt, or deeply personal. That kind of responsiveness is not an accident, it’s the result of being embedded in a community. Of being human-scale and close enough to the ground that you can hear what’s being whispered, not just what’s being shouted, and we shape our offerings around it.
Small businesses are the midwives of local culture, connection, and care. The café that notices when someone’s missing. The coach who designs a program for a niche no one else understands. The artist who makes tools for neurodivergent kids. The communications expert who helps childcare centres create safe spaces for children. The retreat facilitator who creates space for emotional recovery. We don’t wait for permission. We see the cracks, and pour ourselves into the work of filling them. We design solutions for a need no one else is addressing. And in this way make people feel seen in a way no generalist institution ever could.
That’s the kind of impact big systems rarely manage. But it’s the kind of thing small businesses do all the time. The magic in entrepreneurship is seeing a problem and finding a solution, equivalent to waving a magic wand over their small community, their niche, and saying "I see you, I got you".
The stardust of neurodivergent problem-solvers
Many of the small business owners I work with at Blue Fairy are neurodivergent, myself included, no surprises there! And if they're not neurodivergent then they're people who don’t fit the mould. I'm too chaotic to appeal to people needing rigid structure. So it means I have spent a lot of hours working with neurospicy people on flavourful ideas and seeing how flexible the entrepreneur model is for people like me. A lot of my clients, like me, felt friction working in traditional employment systems trying to keep up with productivity norms that don't work for their brains. Many of us have been misunderstood in workplaces, burnt out by bureaucracy, told our ideas are too niche, too idealistic, too unrealistic. Pft. I say to that, pft.
All of us have seen the dirt through the floorboards of those systems and if we haven't fallen through the gaps ourselves then we've seen the people hanging out down there in the dark that need our magic to light it up. So, we build.
When you’ve fallen through the cracks yourself, you see them differently. You know how cold and lonely it is down there. And you don’t want anyone else to feel that unseen. So you built the thing you needed. More importantly, you can imagine solutions no one else would think of, and your voice and energy will connect with people who really need to hear it.
Neurodivergent entrepreneurs often bring an incredible mix of vision and specificity. The way neurodivergent minds often pattern-match, synthesise, and empathise with the unmet needs around them. We also struggle, with all the obvious things like focus and structure, but also with the weight of doing it all ourselves and from within systems that either aren't designed by us or that we have to build from the ground up. So, we build.
It’s not just about self-employment. It’s about self-expression. Someone told me once that you don't start a small business to become a millionaire, there are easier ways of making money. I bet we all know that in our bones! This is hard sweaty work we do to keep our bills paid and our dreams alive, but when we're in the flow of that universal magic and responding to the needs of the community around us, we create the kind of work that makes sense for how our brains and bodies move through the world. And in doing so we make that work useful for someone else, so no one else has to feel like they don’t belong.
The loneliness that no one warns you about
Of course, all of this sounds noble and beautiful, and it is. But it’s also hard. Even when your work is beautiful and impactful, it can still feel like shouting into the void.
Running a small business can be deeply isolating. Especially when you’re doing it in a values-aligned way and not just running the insta-fashion treadmill of beige business models. You’re not just selling something. You’re offering a piece of yourself. You’re making decisions from your gut. You’re trying to build something ethical and accessible and sustainable and strategic and unique and also make your money to support your family.
It’s a lot.
You’re in your own head, solving your own problems, second-guessing your own strategies. You’re wearing all the hats and holding all the emotions. And because your business is you, it can be hard to know where the work ends and you begin. Even when you love your work. Even when you’re grateful for the freedom. Even when you wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It can be so lonely and we need people in our corner. That’s why spaces of connection matter.
We don’t just need more clients. We need more collaborators. We need people to bounce ideas off, to sanity-check our strategy, to remind us that we’re not failing just because we’re tired. To help us pivot when an offering landed flat and to keep the inspiration alive. We need people who speak the same language and who understand the pressure, the purpose, the self-doubt, the self-trust. People who don’t need you to prove your worth, because they already know how much this takes.
Enter stage right, the Blue Fairy Convention.
I've been rolling around the idea for The Blue Fairy Convention for a while now. I used to run singles and social events with the goals of creating community and connecting people and it's a passion I still have even if I'm working in a totally different space now. I think the more connected we are the more likely we are to succeed and the more fun we have along the way. So I've been putting together my ideas for this convention and it's finally launching!
The inaugural event in 2025 will be exclusively for existing Blue Fairy clients but if we love it and the event is worth opening up I would love to see other entrepreneurs coming along. I eventually want it to be for all people doing the messy, meaningful, soul-filled, spreadsheeted and emotionally nuanced work of running a small business that really matters to them and the people they serve.
It’s not a conference in the traditional sense, it will be very low key. Think sitting around a table together sharing pizza at lunch time. There’s no high-pressure pitch decks. No manufactured scarcity countdown nonsense. Heck there won't even be any internet because the local hall where it's being held is off grid, so it'll all be paper notebooks!
It’s a gathering. A space to sit in a room with others who are also trying. Also building. Also navigating the space between strategy and stardust.
There will be talks and workshops from myself and also from you. There will be space to share your work and your wisdom, I want everyone in attendance to participate in the lightning rounds, but there are also spots available for full length talks and workshops for you to deliver. There will be peer-led idea gyms, where you can bring something you're stuck on and get help from people who think differently. There will be long table lunches, cups of tea, and conversations about what’s working, what’s not, and what you’re holding onto when it feels hard to keep going.
We're going to be there to show up for each other because when you step into a room where people recognise your magic (and I don't just mean the polished parts you show your customers, but the scrappy, persevering, determined parts that keep your business thrumming) you remember why you started and where you want it to go from here. When we operate together, our businesses aren't small, they're sacred. We are part of our own network of people building things that matter, that are part of the magic holding the world together.
Tickets for the Blue Fairy Convention are on sale now. If you’re already in the Blue Fairy ecosystem, you’re invited. Come find your people.