Every waking day, we are having tremendous changes in regulations and technology which greatly affects the way businesses operate. Some entrepreneurs will say the future is definitely bright but to others, some of these changes work against their expansion and business operations. Additionally, there’s growing empowerment and embracing of individuality which motivates more people to begin their entrepreneurship journey. But the big question, what’s the future of entrepreneurship?
We asked entrepreneurs their thoughts on the future of entrepreneurship and here’s what they had to say;
#1- Solopreneurship
I think the trend in entrepreneurship is solopreneurship. I see companies transitioning to hiring more freelancers and remote workers. What this means is that those who previously were W2 employees will now be 1099 contract workers. It is a big win for corporations because they avoid payroll, social security, and unemployment taxes. Not to mention health insurance benefits. The end result is a new breed of entrepreneurs forming one-person companies.
Thanks to Brian Greenberg, True Blue Life Insurance!
#2- Growth in entrepreneur movement in the US
I believe that the entrepreneur movement in the US will grow substantially in the next several years. As more and more millennials enter the middle to advanced stages of working, we will see an increase in innovation and development of new ideas and better ways of “building a mousetrap.” This is the time to develop an idea, make a personal investment in one’s self and build a new definition of our dreams. Entrepreneurs have the ability to redefine the conversation while creating a customer-centric way of moving the world and our lives forward. As an entrepreneur, it is a very exciting time!
Thanks to Ira.M. Gostin, Gostin Strategic!
#3- Outsourcing
Entrepreneurs idealize being their own CEO but once they are in the trenches, they end up being a different type of CEO, Chief Everything Officer. The only way to scale a business, is by adding team members. By outsourcing, entrepreneurs are adding professionals to their team, virtually, for a fraction of the costs. When they outsource they are hiring professionals for a certain number of hours per month and not 40 hours per week in addition to benefits, workers comp, etc.
Thanks to Jessica Musa, Virtually Productive!
#4- Three things
I believe that there will be a significant increase in home-based entrepreneurs as automation and productivity technologies such as VR and voice search will help to eliminate mundane tasks and allow for business owners to be more efficient. Advances in Blockchain technology can help to provide a bigger direct to consumer opportunity for entrepreneurs as well. Because millennial's value customization, culture and work flexibility so deeply, it appears that the table is set for more and more people in the corporate sector to migrate to the world of Entrepreneurship.
Thanks to Chaz Van de Motter, Arizona called Elite Marketing Studios!
#5- Decline in cost of starting a business
One of the most fascinating aspects of entrepreneurship is that the cost over time has dramatically declined. To build an app, you can purchase a cheap Chromebook, connect to an incredibly powerful array of supercomputers for next to no cost on AWS, and you can distribute your minimally viable product across large social networks like Linkedin and Facebook with just a key stroke. Distribution is easier, the cost of computing is cheaper, and the startup costs are, in reality, are just the cost of a couch and wifi. The future of entrepreneurship is global, distributed, and remote. Teams will spend less time commuting, and more time in fast moving async collaboration. More will be done from their bedrooms and significantly less from the boardroom. With increasingly powerful broadband internet and fiber, the ability to work remotely yet feel connected has dramatically improved. We no longer have to tap each other on the shoulder, we just have to send a message or a video to get attention and a quick response. The biggest challenge that entrepreneurs of the future face is finding and identifying a product that their potential customers can be delighted by and genuinely want and need. No longer do we need to worry about the logistics and operations of maintaining and scaling a website, but the primary focus must be on the successful outcomes and experiences of the customer.
Thanks to Scott Smith, CloudApp!
#6- Challenge in recruiting top talent
The future for entrepreneurs will be more dynamic and have greater dependence on technology than ever before. Advances in SaaS solutions and automation have allowed new businesses to be more efficient, meaning they will require only a handful of employees at first. The future entrepreneur will put most of his or her workload onto technological platforms. It will become easier to start your own business, meaning that top talent will be more challenging to recruit. You will have to work hard to convince qualified professionals that they are better served joining your endeavor than starting their own company.
Thanks to David Gasparyan, Phonexa!
#7- Change brought by virtual reality
Right now a lot of entrepreneurs are going through the growing pains of their teams not being centrally located at an office building, and spread all over the world. This often leads to disjointed communication between employees and management, and can hinder the “brainstorming” quality of having your company under one roof where ideas and workflows naturally play off of each other. While conference communication technologies have vastly improved in the past decade – including the broader use of video, screen sharing, and other interactive tools – what’s really going to change all of this will be virtual reality. Not only will your decentralized team be able to come together in a common, virtual workspace, but they will be able to work with virtual tools that bring back the advantages of working in the same building. Companies like Microsoft and Google are already paving the way with wearable technologies that will enable this.
Thanks to Jonathan Prichard, MattressInsider.com!
#8- More care about health and needs
The new workforce, aka millennial's and Gen Z's, will care more about their health and needs in their future job setting. Examples would include that their company pays for a gym membership for them (oh yes, get ready for that one!) the company will require active gym usage (making sure the employee goes and gets his heart rate up) and/or offer sports on the side or yoga (something athletic like leagues to attend). Companies will and should put more emphasis on the employees. Keeping them happy, makes them more effective, efficient and guaranteed to not quit or leave. This will cause a chain of events of word of marketing talking about the environment of the workplace which will ultimately stimulate more sales.
Thanks to Andrew Richter, BudBux, LLC!
#9-The Future Is Female
The last decade has seen an explosion of women starting their own companies and stepping into historically male-dominated fields. As we look to the future, this growth will only continue to accelerate. Fields like technology are already undergoing radical transformations in their demographics and, while women are still deeply in minority of tech business owners, it has begun changing and will continue to do so. Looking forward to welcoming more women to the world of entrepreneurship!
Thanks to Michael Horecki, Ideas That Evoke™!
#10- Solopreneurs will join other progressive businesses
Over the next 10 years, entrepreneurship will reach a peak of new startups, increasing the burn rate of founders and the failure rate for new ecosystems. As a result, companies will be strengthened afterward. How? Tired and disappointed solopreneurs or small business owners will join other progressive businesses. To create a real demand for this, intrapreneurship — the act of employing entrepreneurs within existing companies — will take precedence, uniting knowledge, potential, and connections into stronger business entities.
Thanks to Mario Peshev
#11- Companies that support purposeful lifestyles
Entrepreneurship is often defined as the act of designing, launching and running a new business, which often comes with taking on greater financial risks in order to do so. New generations, who view lack of flexibility as the greater risk (not financial stability) will take entrepreneurship by storm, architecting companies powered by purpose that can pivot to support the lifestyles they demand. More and more entrepreneurial ventures will be web-based business, bringing together teams globally.
Thanks to Lorrie Thomas Ross, Web Marketing Therapy®!
#12-Building meaningful connections
It’s about turning contacts into relationships by unconditionally helping others. The key is asking, “what can I do for you?,” instead of thinking, “what can you do for me?” Successful companies come from collaboration and developing relationships. If you are in the business of building relationships, keep helping others and, eventually, your time will come.
Thanks to Wayne Kimmel, SeventySix Capital!
#13-Focusing on employees
Focusing on employees will be critical to the future of entrepreneurship. We want every hire to be for life, and the way we treat employees makes them want to stay. Employees get benefits like profit sharing, quarterly commissions and even a $500 donation to the charity of their choice. These are just some of the reasons employees feel valued and motivated to work hard every day.
Thanks to Tracy Call, Media Bridge Advertising!
#14- Leveraging technology to solve problems
There is no shortage of problems to be solved and with all the economic uncertainty and lack of trust and confidence in government and big business these days I believe it is the entrepreneurial spirit and drive that will keep us on the forefront of innovation and growth. As more scandals are brought to light and robots and technology become more prevalent it will be up to the entrepreneurs around the world to find smart solutions to every day problems so we can address issues like climate change, the opioid crisis, education, etc. Creative entrepreneurs with big ideas like Sal Kahn of Kahn Academy have started movements, businesses and organizations to leverage the internet and begin tackling these problems and we need more people to step up so I think the future will be more entrepreneurial than ever.
Thanks to Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls!
#15- Joint, niche-based entrepreneurial groups
The future of entrepreneurship is heading towards joint, niche-based entrepreneurial groups. The market is already saturated with a lot of young and middle-aged entrepreneurs who’re working in various industries towards their goal. With this exponential growth, we’re likely to reach a point where the only way to succeed is to connect and partner with similar niche-based entrepreneurs. Combining two or three similar companies will bring more clients, shared resources and gained revenue. There won’t be a need for hundreds or thousands of similar companies. They can be a lot stronger and more effective when united.
Thanks to Daniel Chabert, Rockay!
#16- Two things
We're living in the first age when literally anyone can start a thriving media business from their own home with a little know-how, and a few simple resources. Using just a laptop and a digital camera, we've all got the chance to start the next killer podcast or youtube channel. It's all about disruption – mass media is now directly competing with independent creators from around the world, and opportunities for entrepreneurs are everywhere. With automation looming across large sections of industry, and amazing tools now available to us all, the ‘human element' of creativity will undoubtedly become an increasingly-valued, and automation-proof asset for future entrepreneurs.
Thanks to Tom West, Social Trading Vlog!
#17- Growing businesses with the plan to sell them
The world of entrepreneurship is a fast-moving one these days. Being an entrepreneur and owning a business used to be all about setting up a business, then spending the rest of your working life growing that business. Nowadays, it’s more about people setting up and growing businesses with the plan to sell them on within five to ten years before moving onto the next project. As technology continues to grow and change the landscape that entrepreneurs work within, more people will be jumping on fast-moving and trending business ideas, growing them rapidly and then selling them on – I think this will become the standard. I think that while the big companies will continue to monopolise, there will still be plenty of people looking to buy and invest in these small companies, so there’s definitely still money to be made. It’s an exciting time to be an entrepreneur!
Thanks to Ross Davies, Strafe Creative!
#18- More virtual entrepreneurs
In my opinion, as increased automation prompts a re-engineering of job processes and tasks, an increasing number of people will create their own jobs – through entrepreneurship. This future will witness an increasing number of existing industries swept over by the entrepreneurial wave, not to mention the birth of *exciting new sectors*. Much of this work will be carried out through the ever popular ‘virtual working' phenomenon, which will enable a new generation of ‘virtual entrepreneurs' to work from anywhere with just a laptop and internet connection. What a fantastic future to look forward to!
Thanks to Ollie Smith, ExpertSure!
#19- Building personal and company's branding that resonates with prospects' pain points
As the society becomes more modernized, I foresee an increasing number of people (especially millennials and future graduates) exploring the option of entrepreneurship. This stems from the desire to have a voice while not having to answer to anyone but themselves. As a result, I believe this saturation urges entrants to focus on their branding since having a great product isn't sufficient anymore. There are already tons of products and services available in the market. So, entrepreneurs should think about how they can stand out. According to The Golden Circle by Simon Sinek, people are more likely to make decisions based on emotions and not logic. Therefore, there is and will be a rising need for businesses and owners to build on their personal and company branding as one that appeals to the emotional side of their target audience. Go to where your prospects gather (e.g. forums) and listen to what they have to say. Then, find their pain points and resonate with them through your content – be it a video, article, slideshow or e-book. That way, you can connect with them and at the same time, provide value to their decision-making.
Thanks to Bernice Quek, Astreem!
#20- Vibrant promotions
Entrepreneurs have started to become celebrities in recent years and I think this trend is going to continue. Consumers want to know the person who they are buying from, not only does this build trust but allows the consumers to relate to your brand more. Entrepreneurs will no longer be running their company end to end while keeping themselves behind closed doors. The entrepreneur will be out there promoting not just their product but their vision and concept.
Thanks to Drew Kalinski, Amztut!
#21- Creating an adaptive environment for your audience
As the world moves faster and faster and needs continue to change and evolve with every new technology and idea, so must the entrepreneur if they are going to succeed. An understanding and embrace of the changes ahead and the perseverance to help be a part of that change are vital to success, but not as a response, but rather an ability to see what's coming and create the environment to which your audience will adapt. Responsive entrepreneurs are by definition, one step behind, so to separate from the pack, you have to try to be in front of it. Disruption is not a necessity to an entrepreneur, but as expectations from consumers continue to grow, so too does the need to differentiate to compete. Hard work is a given, but the future of entrepreneurship is all about being one step ahead, because keeping pace will not get it done.
Thanks to Daniel Steinfeld, On The Block!
#22- Articulating points concisely
In today’s digital age, an important aspect of entrepreneurship is the ability to effectively communicate with team members without being present in person. This means that tomorrow’s generation of leaders must be able to articulate their points concisely so that they can resonate with their constituents. That said, the future of entrepreneurship will be characterized by those who can inspire remotely without being physically present.
Thanks to Steven I. Azizi, Miracle Mile Law Group!