Start With A Win - 5 Small Business Secrets for 2023

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

I have done some research and here are 5 small business secrets for 2023 that I have uncovered.  This is a great way to ensure you are up the right things... and not doing the wrong things in your business.Main Topics 02:17 Stats on small businesses03:54 Five trends of small businesses  - Trend One06:06 Hoteling, what is that?08:30 Trend Two11:23 How can a small business thrive?12:03 Trend Three14:15 Trend Four15:58 Trend Five17:21 A pop-up experience? Connect with Adam: http://www.startwithawin.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcontos/ https://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/ https://www.youtube.com/@LeadershipFactoryhttp://twitter.com/AdamContosCEO  Listen, rate, and subscribe! Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

What are the trends and secrets we're seeing in small business moving into the future? Let's talk about that today on Start With A Win. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters, it's Adam Kantos here in Denver, Colorado at Area 15 Ventures. And I want to dig into small business today. In fact, you know, the want to dig into small business today. In fact, you know, the majority of society is small business. I know we see big box stores,

we see big companies, we see the Teslas and the Amazons and all this other stuff running around. But ultimately, you know, like Amazon is made up of a bunch of small businesses. Tesla, well, that's a big business. There are big businesses out there, some huge market caps on some of these. Take Apple, for example, or Alphabet, Google, Facebook, Meta, whatever the heck they're all called, things like that. But ultimately, it boils down to the local shop, the mom and pop, and really what we play, what position that plays in society and how it impacts our economy, our employment, the communities we live in. So I want to dig into that today and figure out what all we should be focusing on and understanding. So let me run through a few interesting statistics for you. First of all, did you know that small businesses account for over 99% of all businesses globally? Interesting. I mean, almost 100% of businesses are small businesses.

You know, we have, I mentioned, we have the big ones, but ultimately it boils down to the small businesses. They're the backbone of many economies. I've traveled the world and I've seen those small businesses operate. Fascinating. You go in, you know, even go to New York City and sure there's high rises everywhere and, you know, some really profitable and valuable organizations, but a lot of times those are small businesses, be it investment firms or family offices or whatever, where they have, you know, call it less than 200 employees or 500 employees, something like that. But a lot of these are small businesses or smaller businesses. Here's some interesting statistics, though. According to the

International Finance Corporation, IFC, it's estimated that by 2025, small businesses will create more than 75% of new jobs worldwide. 75% of new jobs worldwide. That's an interesting statistic because it shows me that we need to be focusing on the local. We need to understand the local. Why? The local is where our communities emerge from. That's where people shop. That's where people live. That's where they dine. That's where they have, you know, experiences. They raise their kids, things like that. This is a very, very vital role in our economy. Here's another

interesting statistic. This is a study conducted by American Express. It found that women-owned businesses have been growing at a rate five times faster than the overall average. Women businesses, women started business. It is awesome for our community. I'm in the business of owning businesses. So at our firm, we own quite a few different businesses, and a lot of those are women-run. Yes Yes, women run. I mean, we own the business, but we've essentially partnered with these women in order to run these businesses. Fascinating trend. It's a growing influence and impact of women around the world and is awesome. So now that we've looked at these stats, let's dive into five fun trends about small

business. So I want you to be watching for these things between now and 2025. A lot of them you've already seen experience, but I want you to make sure you're staying focused on these because these are really, really important. So the first one is remote work and digital nomadism. Digital nomadism, that's kind of a weird one. Well, here's a fascinating thought. I was talking to a gentleman yesterday who I'm looking at partnering with in business. And he told me that he was really excited because he finally got his Sprinter van. I'm like, well, tell me about your Sprinter van. He goes, it's my dream car. I go, why is it your dream car? He goes, because I can take my

family and I can work from anywhere. So he took he took one of those, you know, midsize vans, like the Mercedes van or whatever that holds, I guess, you know, a dozen people or something like that. So not, not a minivan, but pretty good size one, but not quite an RV. And he built his office out in it. It's got a bathroom, a shower, a bed, a kitchen, things like that. But he can work from any place when his kids are out playing soccer or they're at the lake or whatever it might be. He said he even has this Wi-Fi and cellular thing that he can raise up so he can get service, you know, going down and sitting at the campfire while he's on his laptop or sitting outside or something like that. So he's staying connected. So with the advancements in the technology that we're seeing, and really

the pandemic had a lot to drive this, more businesses are embracing this remote work and digital nomadism. So according to Owl Labs, a survey shows 58% of small businesses worldwide now offer remote work flexibility. This is really a fascinating number because I think we're going to see this fluctuate. When I was the CEO of Remax, we went, obviously, we went all remote during the pandemic. We had to. The city and county of Denver said nobody's allowed in the office at all. And you even had to practically reserve an elevator if you had to go into the office to get something and then they had to sanitize it and they had arrows and footprints on the floor, things like that. It was really, really crazy. But ultimately, it stimulated a lot of business

space to open up. I know we subleased some floors as a result of realizing we didn't need that. Now there's a lot of what's called hoteling going on in business. What's hoteling? Hoteling is where you can check out a desk. It's like checking out a room at a hotel, only you're checking out a desk at an office. Fascinating concept. It really took off with companies like WeWork

and other shared space type companies. But ultimately, it's also settled down a little bit. It's not, you know, hair on fire growing like crazy like it was before. Because a lot of companies have realized that it takes a special person to stay productive when they're working on their own without supervision and accountability. Supervision and accountability. Seems like those are the two things that are really lacking when it comes to that remote work. So you have to be a self-starter, self-driven person and be able to hit your goals without somebody looking over your shoulder and saying, hey, Adam, did you make those calls today? Did you get that done?

So consider that when you're discovering whether or not you can do remote work. That being said, also like the virtual assistant world or virtual designers, or maybe your social media marketing person is sitting in their kitchen someplace, posting your social media, but you're just sending them the content. That's fantastic. That's going to continue to work that way, that outsourcing. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. This rise in digital nomadism is not just changing business, it's changing our communities, because it's allowing people to live further from the metropolitan areas where a lot of the businesses seem to be based. Why are businesses based in metropolitan areas? Because that's where the customers are. There are a lot of businesses going online also to decentralize the customer base and allow businesses to do business across the country.

I know a guy who owns a company that paints houses. Think about that. You can't exactly sell a house painting gig to somebody across the state, across the country, or even really even across the city unless you want to, or even really even across the city, unless you want to make the drive. So what does he do? He has two things. He has a licensing process where he licenses other painters, where he sells them the leads. And then the other thing is he sells product for people to do it themselves. So when you think about it, how do you expand your business outside of your core competency of, say, painting houses? There are some ways to do that. Now let's jump into fun fact number two here. The second

trend is something that I've been watching very closely and it's really, really interesting. And that is the increasing demand for personalized and customized experiences. Personalized and customized experiences. In fact, Deloitte did a study that says 36% of consumers express an interest in personalized products or services. 36%, over a third of the consumers out there, over a third of your customers want their experience and their connection to you to be personalized in some way. How do we do that? This is fascinating. I think this is driven by the consumer's desire to stand out and have products that reflect their personality and views, but it's also because we're all unique and we want to be identified uniquely. Whether or not

you agree with that, it's true. It is part of personal attention and appreciation, which is one of the things we can't give ourselves. Dale Carnegie wrote about it in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in like 1937. But ultimately, it boils down to what do we want the most? We want to be appreciated. When we hear our name or when we have a personalized experience, we feel appreciated. Consider that. This is a great example. Let me give you a great example here. A great example of this is when you go to Starbucks. You go to Starbucks and they ask you your name and they write your name on your cup. And then they call your name when your drink's done. And then they identify your drink. And

something funny that they also do is sometimes they draw like little hearts or stars or underline your name or circle it, or they spell your name wrong just to be funny, things like that. That's a personalized experience. Another example, let's say you make a reservation at a restaurant. What do they always ask you? Are you celebrating something special? Or is this your first time here? Or are you returning? You know, they want to identify, hey, welcome. We appreciate you coming here or welcome home. Welcome back. Things like that. When I go to the Marriott, they know I've spent like 1500 nights in Marriott's over my lifetime because it's on my profile. And they always say,

thank you for being a lifetime titanium elite. I'm like, oh, thank you. And they say, we have a special gift for you today. It's two bottles of water and a thousand points on your Marriott account, which is nothing special, but they gave me something. They handed me something or some places they have like a little gift packet and it has like a little bow on it. And it's, you know, like some Hershey kisses or something wrapped up in a little cover piece. But ultimately people want to have a personalized experience for that personal attention and appreciation that we all love so much that we don't give ourselves. This is fascinating because small businesses

can thrive by offering a personal touch. What is the personal touch that your business offers? Do you say, welcome to Adams when they walk in the door? Or when they show up, do you look them in the eye and smile and say, how are you today? Before you even ask what you can do for them, you ask how they are. That's personalized. And that's a great experience that helps them reflect on their personality and values. And that's really why people want to do that. They

don't want to be treated like a number. They want to be treated like a human. The fun trend number three, the collaborative economy. This is really kind of interesting because there's a lot of money to be found in business in this. This, you know, started with like co-working spaces, sharing resources, businesses reorganizing the power of collaboration. It happens a lot. You can see this a lot in a lot of the startup places where you go in and there's, you know, 20 different tables full of people all working on their own business. Maybe one's an accounting company and one is a, you know, a company that writes APIs or connections with technology for other companies. And those two need to collaborate. One needs accounting,

the other one needs an API, or maybe their customers need that work. Well, that's how this collaborative economy has started working. It's fascinating, you know, like the lawn care service working with the house cleaners in certain neighborhoods and starting up concierge networks in order to service homeowners. I've seen a lot of these different things emerging, but consider that in order to share space, reduce cost. Maybe people share warehouse space where you don't need an entire storage facility for your supplies, but you just need a chunk of it. But all the rest of this goes to waste. So why not let the other business use that to store some of their supplies and split the cost? Makes sense, doesn't it? There's found money in collaborative environment.

Same thing with like restaurants. Like if you go to a food court, a lot of these food courts share a lot of the same product. And actually they share a lot of the same humans where they pass employees around also. Somebody might work at two or three different restaurants. In a food court, they just change their uniform and go work there. Why? Because humans are difficult to hire for business.

When you find somebody who's good at food service, at counter service, you keep them and maybe they want more hours, but you can't give them more hours. Let somebody else work with them too. But share people. Share these things. This is great for mutual support and for the entrepreneurs trying to grow their business and scale it without over hiring or over committing to certain aspects. What's fun trend number four? Oh, you're going to like this one.

Artificial intelligence and automation. I've talked about artificial intelligence before and as well as automation, frankly. And this is really impactful to small business. So as technology continues to advance, small businesses can leverage AI and automation to streamline their processes, improve their efficiencies, and enhance customer experience. So according to a study by Salesforce, 64% of small businesses reported using AI technology, showing its growing adaptation and results for these people. In fact, I use AI and automation in a lot of the small businesses that I operate. How do we do that?

We create content with it. We ask it questions where we don't have to go research the answers ourselves. We actually get good perspective, good answers. Really, I mean, everything from marketing to policy manuals to training, you name it, you can probably find a way to prompt an AI machine to do that for you. This includes everything from chatbots to data analytics, technological tools that can help like write code or create landing pages or anything like that, give you ideas on how to reach out to your customer base. You know, you can fill the calendar and say, here are all the things coming up. Give me 10 marketing messages to send out on these dates and then post those on social media. I mean, how much time and money did you just save by doing that? So this actually gives entrepreneurs and small businesses a competitive edge because now they can leverage the knowledge of a larger group of people at a

larger business and deploy it in their small business. And then the final trend, the final trend is experiential marketing. We talked a little bit about this before, personalizing things. But experiential marketing is a little bit different. This is our fifth trend because it really plays off of all the rest of these. So in today's digital age, consumers are seeking immersive experiences that go beyond traditional advertising. We're talking about marketing here, advertising. People want something special, something new. So according to Eventbrite, 78% of millennials

would rather spend money on experiences. Experiences. Let me give you an example of this. So for instance, you see pop-up stores showing up in other retail establishments. So let's say you have a yoga studio. You have a yoga studio. A good pop-up store that happens in yoga studios, you might have somebody comes in and gives massages. That's an experience. You might have somebody comes in and does like permanent jewelry where they actually like weld the jewelry on you. It's very, it's

painless and it's very simple. And it's really, really nice because you don't have to worry about taking your jewelry on and off. I hear this is a huge trend amongst women. Millennial women love permanent jewelry. Where do you put that? You don't have a permanent jewelry store.

You go and do pop-ups in experience to create these experiences in other locations where people that would want that type of product want to experience that. What do you do during that process? Let's say you go into this pop-up, maybe they have a glass of champagne and they have some flower petals and they have a nice aromatherapy going on or some soft music or something like that. And you, or maybe you have them sit in a little massage chair. You put one of those old shiatsu things on the chair and it like rubs their back and shoulders while they're

getting their work done. It's experience. Like when you go get your nails done, manicure, pedicure, men, go get a pedicure. If you haven't had one, I highly recommend it. You sit in this giant massage chair and they bring you a drink and it smells good and there's music and they talk to you and massage your legs. All they're doing is cutting your toenails for crying out loud and soaking your feet. But you get the whole shebang, the mask and scrub and hot rocks and foot rub and everything. All that is just experience. It's about the experience. When you go to the car dealer, what's a great experience? The massage chairs when you go in, when you're waiting for your oil change, or a coffee maker, a little coffee bar where they have little tiny cans of soda and some bags of peanuts and snacks and stuff like that. All that makes you feel special. I've even been

in one where they have like a fake fireplace and you feel like you're in a lodge in the mountains. They didn't have to do that. Why did they do that? They did that because it was the experience that they wanted to create and people love it. How do they know people love it? They walk around and ask and people tell them and they leave them online reviews. So it's about the experience. This is probably one of the most important of these. People just don't want to go and do a transaction with you. They want to go and have an experience. So consider these different aspects of small business.

Deploy these things in your business. Let me review these real quick with you here. The first one, remote work and digital nomadism. The second one, personalization and customization. The third one, collaborative economy. The fourth, artificial intelligence and automation. And the fifth, experiential marketing. Think about all those different aspects of your business. Put those to work in your small business. Watch your business grow. We'll see you next time on Start With A Win. Thanks for joining us on Start With A Win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also, be sure to check out Adam on YouTube at Adam Canto CEO,

as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.