Autumn Budget 2026: What It Means for Small Business Owners

The Budget’s done. Most owners will read the headlines and either panic or ignore them. Both cost money. In episode 128 of the Mentor Business Podcast, Dr Lewis Haydon talks owner to owner, from the subcontractor’s seat of his own businesses, about what the Autumn Budget 2026 means for small business owners and what to do about it this week.

In this episode:

• Why the weeks before a Budget can hurt more than the Budget itself
• The “valid barrier” no salesperson can talk their way past
• Why rates relief and national insurance shouldn’t be what drives your decisions
• The three versions of your cash flow forecast to run this week: the good, the bad and the ugly
• Why your mood as a leader spreads through your team, and what the science says it does to decisions

Transcript

Recorded 28 October 2026, the day of the Budget. Transcript from the recording, lightly edited: names corrected and strong language masked. Figures and details were correct at the time of recording.

The Budget’s done: panic or ignore?

Budget’s done. Most owners will read the headlines tonight and either panic or ignore it. Both cost money. In the next 15 minutes, I’ll tell you what today actually changes for an owner, just like you, and what I’m doing personally about it in my own businesses this week. So I’m Dr Lewis Haydon. If you don’t know by now, I research and work with business owners who are fed up of getting paid last: in money, in time, and in what the business leaves behind. Whether you sell it, give it away, whatever you want to do with it. It’s about you getting paid. And paid now, not after all the taxes have gone out. This is the Mentor Business Podcast, where I document what actually works for real owners, even when things go wrong.

So, this is episode 128. By the end, you’ll know what today’s Budget means for a small business, the mistake most owners make around it, and how to put it into your numbers before the week is out. Thinking proactive around the Budget rather than reactive to the Budget.

Sail your own ship: victors, not victims, of the Budget

So, what does the Budget mean for small businesses? Now, look, whatever the government may say about the Budget, you can go and read about it. You’ll read about the things that are going to change. Previously we heard about, you know, we felt the effects, especially when national insurance went up. Or there was a change to corporation tax. These are the big things that affect us. And of course, there’s been a change in, you know, the people that are running this now. So maybe what we’re hearing today is going to be something that’s quite nice until the next one comes round. Okay.

So, what does it really mean for a small business? Regardless of what happens, you need to be able to sail your own ship. You need to be able to take ownership, not be victim to the Budget, but be victors to the Budget. Sounds a little bit cliché, doesn’t it? But look what I’m saying here. Whatever the government put in front of us, whatever the economy might say, there you are. You’ve got to be ready for it. You’ve got to have the right structures. You have to have the right people. You have to have the right culture. You’ve got to be bulletproof to these things.

As soon as you start passing blame because somebody’s doing something to you and it’s not your fault, you lose that ownership. And as soon as that happens, you can’t run a business. Yeah? You’re just feeling the waves hitting you time after time. What you need is to build a battleship. You need resilience. You need to have your numbers in place. You need to make sure that everything is there. So no matter what the weather, you can deal with it.

The subcontractor’s seat: how one company waiting stalls the whole chain

So, should you wait for the Budget before making business decisions? Let me tell you a story. In one of my businesses, we work for the NHS, and the NHS employs large contractors, which employ subcontractors. Now, we’re not a large contractor, we’re one of the subcontractors. Okay. Now, the reason I’m saying this is authenticity, and there’s probably a lot more SMEs that listen to these podcasts rather than larger businesses. So you’re the right audience. Yeah, I feel the pains that you go through.

When it was in 2024, we had the ideas of the Budget that was coming out, the uncertainty around it. And in the construction industry, yeah, you’ll know about this if you work in construction or similar, there was a lot of uncertainty around what the Budget might bring. Now, for a company that employs thousands of people like these large construction companies, they don’t know what the Budget will bring and what impact that will have on the company. Yeah, there’ll be tighter margins that need to happen. There could be more tax that has to be paid, there could be more tax on people that has to be paid. And remember, this is affecting a thousand families as well. Okay. So they have to have that responsibility to protect their own boat before looking after anybody else’s boat.

What does that mean? Their suppliers, which would be the subcontractors that need to carry out the work. And by the way, this could be in any industry, because it affects all SMEs and all businesses, really. But we’re talking specifically to the SME owner right now. Uncertainty from larger business: there’s money pumped into the economy, and those larger businesses have to feed into the smaller businesses. Okay. So if you were in IT, for example, the larger companies that would be subcontracting out work to the smaller companies would also be feeling these same impacts. Using the context of the construction world, it’s the same in any other world, really. It always works down the same in that sort of pecking order. Money has to come from somewhere.

Okay. When there’s uncertainty, decisions don’t get made. So for my company, when it was 2024, 2025, you know, we speak a lot in these podcasts about sales. We did a whole series on sales; if you want to upgrade your sales knowledge, go back and listen to that. But what we talk about is points of contact. How many times are you reaching out once you’ve had the enquiry? We’ve done a marketing series as well on how to get those enquiries. You get the enquiry, your salesperson then has to call up. They then have to make sure that they’re nurturing and they’re closing, right? And not closing in a pushy, pushy way. You’re offering service until the best informed decision can be made, and you’ve got to be there, front of mind, all the time.

When a salesperson calls up, though, and the answer is that they can’t give you an answer on when the job’s going to start, because they just don’t know, because their customer isn’t making a decision, that is a valid barrier. Okay? There is no objection handling that can get around that until a decision has been made higher above. There could be some really smart salespeople right now that could sell that, but it’s pretty logical, right? If the decision hasn’t been made by a larger company or by a government agency or whatever it may be, then it can’t flow. Money can’t flow. Decisions can’t flow.

And if there’s no money flowing, it’s the SMEs that have to employ these people. If you look at the amount of companies out there, ninety-nine percent of companies are SMEs. They employ the majority of people. And then of course they have social responsibilities. They have responsibilities to employ people. But where’s that cash flow coming from when decisions can’t be made?

So this is a bigger problem, okay? Now, regardless of whether the Budget is gonna bring good news or bad news, does business still happen? Is business still happening in 2026, like it was in 2025, 2024, 2023, and then even COVID? If we can make it through COVID, you know what it’s like holding a business during COVID times, right? And you’re still here. So why hold up the whole of the industry? The whole of the subcontractors, the whole of the SMEs, the business to businesses, okay? These big businesses have to do business with smaller businesses, and it has an impact.

And this is what we do in this podcast: we give SME owners a voice. Not just the SMEs themselves and how they become profitable and pay more tax and what have you. How you get paid. How can you pay yourself? How can you pay your people that are all ambitious, your A-players that want to grow in a business? How do you recruit new people when there’s no decisions getting made? And this is the sort of impact that a Budget can have.

Buzzwords versus your own plan: scenario A and scenario B

What does the Budget change for small business rates relief? So there’s a lot of talk around this. But it’s very similar to, let’s go back and touch on previously, what did we have? What does the Budget change for employer national insurance? It doesn’t matter. You’re going to get these buzzwords and buzz terms come up. But at the end of the day, a decision you make in your own business is up to you. If you want to hold back because of what’ll happen in the future, that’s on you.

Now, what you can do is that you’ve got to be able to project into that future. You’ve got to start to, not project, predict that future. Now, accountants don’t like future talk, because they want evidence, to the penny, of what’s happened. And that’s their job: looking in the rear-view mirror, making sure that you’re compliant and everything gets worked out correctly. Talk to your accountant about this; they can help you with some cash flow forecasting or whatever. But it’s your job as an owner. You’ve got to take responsibility for this.

Whether it’s about rates relief, whether it’s about what it means for national insurance, get informed by your accountant, get informed by the chamber of commerce, get informed by the right news, not when it’s too late. Then what you do is you plan for it. Scenario A, scenario B: your planning days. So every client of mine, when I’m business coaching and mentoring people, we make sure that we’ve got a 12-month plan. Once a year, what’s the 12-month plan? And then four times a year, every quarter, what is the 90-day plan? We plan it out.

And in those planning days, especially the 12-month one, we look at 18 months in there as well. Where do we want to be in 18 months? Well, we don’t know what the crystal ball might look like, but this is the goal. This is what the North Star looks like. What sort of things could get in the way? Well, we could have a national insurance change. We could have business rates relief. Well, great. Then you’re gonna get a bigger wage bill. You’re gonna get a bigger hit. You may have some bonuses from it. There may be some relief, like we mentioned. Does it really matter, though? Does it really move the needle? What moves the needle here is that you are planning for scenario A and scenario B. This is what great looks like, this is what good looks like. Are we still gonna be okay if the worst happens?

SWOT analysis every 90 days

People talk about SWOT analysis, right? Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Businesses need it. When should they be reviewed? Every 90 days, because it always changes. Talking to a technology company, what sort of threats are going to be coming up in the future with AI? Well, it’s already there. So a good friend of mine, James, is now having a discussion with me. He’ll be coming on the podcast soon as well, by the way, so James, if you’re listening, this is a shout-out for you. He owns an app company.

And if you think about app companies, well, aren’t they under a lot of challenge right now with the way that AI is going? Well, no. He’s absolutely smashing it, because he’s ahead of the game and finding out where the opportunities are, where people will fall down when using AI. Okay. So you need to be able to do this as well. I’m giving you some examples here, because as an SME owner, you could be a gardener listening to this right now. You could be a plumber, an electrician, a software company, a manufacturing company, you could be in care, medical, technology, whatever it may be. It’s the same thing. You’ve got to be using these principles.

Where is the time set aside for you to plan? Where is the time set aside for a SWOT analysis? Where is the time set aside for you to do this cash flow? Because a lot of SME owners, and we can all put our hands up to it, right, we just go into the tornado of the week ahead of us. What is ahead of us in our week? Who is the loudest shouting customer right now? Who are the suppliers that we need to pay? Where’s the next payroll? And this is the thing. You’ve got to be thinking about this stuff. And I get it. Owning lots of businesses, these were the things that were keeping me up at night, until you get the right plans and the right systems in place. And that’s what we help you with on this podcast.

The good, the bad and the ugly: a 13-week cash flow, every week

So how do you update your cash flow forecast after the Budget this week? Run three versions. The good, the bad, the ugly. Put it on an Excel sheet. Use AI. You know, if you want some help with technology and what to use, you can use ChatGPT if you want to. If you want to go to the next level, you could use things like Perplexity, you could use Claude. There’s a lot of technology out there that can start to do this for you. But the point is you need a system.

You need a system and you need time. There are 24 hours in the day. This is where things like ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity won’t help you. They’ll give you great advice and strategy, but where are you going to do it? Where’s the accountability to actually get s*** done? Right? It falls on you. Not that spur of the moment where you might just open an app and have debates with ChatGPT for 90 minutes. I mean, everyone’s an expert that uses ChatGPT. It makes stupid people feel clever, you know, at the end of the day, because you think that you’re in flow with it. But none of that matters if you don’t actually put it in the diary. If you don’t do anything around it, if the behaviour doesn’t change. So first things first: get that slot in the diary, build it into a system, a recurring event in the diary.

What do you look at? The good, the bad, the ugly on your Excel sheet. This is what’s coming in. Like mini P&Ls, every week, right? Revisit it. What does the 13-week cash flow look like? What about if this happens in the Budget? The ugly? What about if it’s not so bad in the Budget? What about if the Budget doesn’t really affect us and we can actually flourish through it? Okay? All those need to be in place.

Then what you need to do is remember that your words, the way that you show up, your emotions, are contagious. Okay? Contagion effect. Scientific term, evidence-based. That’s what we talk about in here. You’re hearing the Dr Lewis Haydon part come out right now. It’s evidence-based that your emotions, whatever you’re giving out, are contagious across your workforce. It affects the culture. You need to have your own rules of the game, and the fish stinks from the head down. So who are you gonna be as a leader during times like the Budget? That’s the main question.

Contagion: why your mood decides whether decisions get made

So, what should owners tell their team and customers this week? We’ve got to set a positive attitude, a positive culture, and that contagion effect is real. Okay? Now, when you start doing the opposite, and this is research by Barbara Fredrickson, absolutely amazing, absolutely incredible, her research on how emotions start to affect results, broaden-and-build theory, I speak about it quite a lot: the more negative emotions, the less thought-action repertoire that’s available. What that means is decisions get held up. There is actual science behind this.

So I was on BBC WM yesterday talking about this, and in the pre-interview I said, look, you know, I’m a scientist as well as a business owner. I like to use evidence as opposed to people’s opinion. If you look on my website, lewishaydon.com, by the way, you’ll see all the research that I publish. So it’s not just me talking about this stuff; I’m actually backing it up. And the news person said, “Look, Lewis, yeah, great, but we need to put it in layman’s terms, because it’s going out to tens of thousands of people.” Fair enough. Okay.

So the science part that I couldn’t say on the news is this: the evidence is there. More negative emotion across the team equals less thought-action repertoire, fewer decisions being made. It means that people hold back. It means that people choose not to get out of bed that day with a positive attitude. It means that people choose not to go and actually do that thing in front of them that they know they’re supposed to do. So as a coach that understands thought-action repertoire, what do you think I have to do? Alright, it’s gonna be s***. Sometimes I feel s***. I’m a business owner too, going through exactly the same sort of stuff.

There’s a saying in coaching: when the client is up, the coach is up. When the client is down, the coach is up. It’s leadership. You need to do the same. When your team are down, you’ve got to be up, you’ve got to drive it through, because of this thought-action repertoire.

If you’re in sales, here’s a big sales tip right now. The more that you drive and drill the negativity, the less thought-action repertoire, which means that people won’t make decisions. They’ll go away and wait for the right time. They’ll make sure that the logic is always correct. “Let me think about it.” You’ve lost the sale. When it comes to the close, where a decision needs to be made, people need to be in a positive position. If they’re not, there’s no thought-action repertoire and no decisions get made. So there’s something that you can do about it. And I’m not just talking about sales. As leaders, as managers, you are in sales. You need to convince your internal people, your team. Okay? So that’s something to be conscious of, around team and culture and any sort of negativity that might be happening in the business.

Your one job this week, and next week’s episode

So, one thing to do this week: put today’s changes into your cash flow forecast, run the ugly version, and make the decisions you’ve been putting off. And then next week, we’re answering the question that we’re all thinking about, okay? How do you start to make the right hire? How do you find out who these right hires are when business might not be going so well? “Lewis, look, you’ve just spoken today about making decisions, but it’s gonna cost me a lot of money.” Okay. So how do you know you’re hiring the right person? Let’s talk about that next week, and how you put that into the cash flow.

We had to talk about this on this episode today, because you need to get that cash flow forecast. You need to know your numbers. Regardless of what the Budget says externally from the government, you need your own internal budget, the budget for the business. I’m not here to be anti-government, by the way. I’m here to say take the learnings from it. They are budgeting for a reason. Why aren’t you budgeting?

Look, they’ve got to take some responsibility as well. I am going to stick up for the SME owners and the SME owners’ voice right now. We need to hear more. That’s what I said on the news yesterday. We need more upfront, proactive information to support us through hard Budgets. But ultimately, what do we do with that information? We could hear it as early as possible, but if we don’t do something proactively, like plan, like change our structures, then what do we actually do? So next week, let’s talk about how you start to put those structures in place, and get people to run it by finding and hiring the right people. Catch you on the next episode.