Futurology Minded Entrepreneurs Where to Now?

2020 has torn most SMEs to shreds. Here are some thoughts by a Futurist on Small Business Life post Covid-19

The Best Digital Agency is forward thinking and given that we love to work with SMEs and innovative entrepreneurs who want to stick it to the Big Boys, we thought this week’s blog should focus on giving you the views of a futurist on small business life post Covid-19. Suzanne Styles, the founder of BDA, is an SME enthusiast and what she sees in the immediate future is a world where the large, bloated, bullying corporates as we know them today, have collapsed. Understand, she is not saying that everyone will still be employed, just working from home. She is saying that the global economic fall-out around Covid-19 will be so massive that tens of millions of people who rely on corporates for monthly salaries, will be out of work and having to embrace the SME world of entrepreneurship.

A Futurist on small business life post Covid-19 warns Corporate Employees to Change Their Mindset

Suzanne believes that gone are the days when at the end of the month, guaranteed, you will collect your salary. She sees corporates collapsing en masse and as this happens, all the people they employed will have to find a new way of earning a living. The way of the corporate has always been that when you reached a certain age, you were retrenched to make way for the fresh, exciting, young guns. This usually went hand in hand, with a “desperately needed corporate cost-cutting exercise.” Then, shortly after the retrenchment, the company “suddenly realised” that it needed the grey-haired people it had let go and it would rehire them, as consultants. So, even though by all accounts ‘the oldies’ had been let go, as consultants they still successfully suckled from the breast of the beast that had seen fit to put them out to pasture. This is where Suzanne sees the greatest challenge and opportunity.

Once you have Been Retrenched, the Biggest Battle is to Get It Right, Between the Ears!

Human potential futurist Suzanne Styles says “In a flash, people with years of corporate experience will have no job and no consulting backstop to rely-on. The terror that will wash through their lives will be unlike anything they have ever known. They will have to embrace the zero-security world that SME business owners grapple with every day. They will have to cope with self-esteem issues as their ‘I am worthless’ self-talk escalates with each passing week of no income. They will hit a personal terror-barrier and when they do, they will have one of two choices, adapt, or die! Adapting means they will have to rewire their brains in such a way that their dominant thoughts will help move them away from their crippling fears and allow them to embrace risky opportunistic activities. There is no SME owner alive who has not interacted with their terror barrier, many times over. Those who win are the ones who get it right between the ears. My business, The Best Digital Agency, exists to help people opening businesses in a post Covid-19 world, to get started right in the SME space. These are my views as a futurist on small business life post Covid-19.”

Any other Futurist on Small Business Life post Covid-19 offering views?

Amy Webb, is quoted in The Hustle (24^th May 2020) as saying “Catastrophe is a catalyst for change. What I would do if I were an entrepreneur right now is look for areas of distress — people or businesses that need something, or places where there is existential risk. Then, I’d figure out what the next-order implications of that risk are. Figure out how to mitigate that risk and solve a future problem today. Just as an example, it’s highly unlikely that anybody is going to go back to a movie theatre and have a great experience any time soon. The reason for that is liability. If you’re a movie theatre chain and allow people to sit next to each other without signing waivers and someone gets sick, you’re going to get sued. If theatres open, how should they facilitate people watching a movie? If you don’t serve concessions and people have to sit 6 feet apart, the business model doesn’t work out. If I were an entrepreneur, I’d relaunch a modern drive-in theatre that takes advantage of digital tools and services and meets the needs of consumers today.”

Amy Zalman says “Opportunity generally is somewhere at the intersection of where nobody else is looking and change. I think that virtual reality will get a boost from online platforms. Creative thinking around hybrid opportunities for meeting, and anything that starts with “tele” — telemedicine and the like. I also wonder how attitudes toward cash might change. If people are afraid of cash as an object that might transmit germs, cryptocurrencies could [see a boost]. The World Health Organization says that cash is not a “good” carrier of coronavirus, so we shouldn’t be afraid of it. But nevertheless, people are increasingly exchanging items in ways that are not cash-based.”

Futurist on small business life post Covid 19 – Final Thoughts

“I had a choice. I was Louisa Clark from New York or Louisa Clark from Stortfold. Or there might be a whole other Louisa I hadn’t yet met. The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.” Jojo Moyes, Still Me

Final words from Suzanne Styles, a human potential futurist on small business life post Covid-19 are “The world as we knew it is done. We will all have to reinvent ourselves. In this post Covid-19 world, bad things are going to happen to good people, so be prepared. When they hit, accept them, and get over yourself. Get on with things. The future is all about small business so get started with yours.”