A recent survey of Australian small business owners has revealed a loathe for buzz words such as ‘mumpreneur’ and ‘tribe’.
The survey conducted by business consultant Angela Henderson found buzz words have generally lost all sense of meaning.
“Business is full of buzzwords and jargon, but there are some words that really annoy people because they get thrown around like confetti and lose their meaning,” she said.
The words ‘mumpreneur’ and ‘hustle’ were revealed as the most overused and despised words in the poll which surveyed 830 small business people.
Henderson said 28 per cent of women in business hate the term ‘mumpreneur’ seeing it as a derogatory. Although she said the use of the term was divided.
“Some people wear the label like a badge of honour, while other women find it incredibility offensive.”
She cites a response from one respondent as an example, who suggested the connotations of mumpreneur were incredibly negative.
The respondent said: ‘It’s as if, when you reproduce, your prior qualifications, skills and experience go back on the shelf; you become a ‘mum’, then to do anything entrepreneurial is an unusual variation of your true function of being a mum (and probably quite remarkable in itself because surely you have no brain cells left now). No one mentions ‘dadpreneurs’ do they?’
The second least favourite buzzword was hustle, with 22 per cent seeing it as negative word conjuring images of people being forced to work hard or selling out.
Henderson suggested it was interesting to see what words really irritated people.
“There were 30 words that seem to keep showing up in marketing and on social media posts that have the opposite effect to what the writer intends,” she said.
“Instead of enticing and drawing the reader closer, these words are repelling and turning people off.”
The top 10 overused words are:
- Mumpreneur
- Hustle
- Authentic
- Boss Babe
- Influencer
- Live your best life
- Preneur with any prefix
- Expert
- Guru
- Tribe.
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