Leza Klenk: The Future Lifestyle of Entrepreneurs

They say that they best way to win in life - is to constantly adapt and evolve. As our environment change every day, so should our survival skills. The past no longer matters, because the way business runs in the past no longer runs the same way or bring the same results today. The ever evolving world of business - adopts new strategies to scale, grow, and sustain. The way we win customers, promote our brand, practise leadership, communicate, raise investments and grow our companies have changed - will keep on changing.

I personally have changed so many practices over the years. Where we deemed fit, we adjusted to ensure our survival as a company and so we will always have the upper hand to continue growing ahead of our competitors. Though this sounds like a tedious process, change is to be embraced. We all know it's inevitable. Resisting change - trust me, could kill your business. The more you welcome changes in your world to keep implementing, you'll soon love the differences. After all, doing the same over years is mundane.

This is how I think the future entrepreneurs will operate, and they will be successful as well despite the different practice and principles. Possibly, faster.

Personal Branding over Corporate Branding

People will study personal branding deeper, and this helps them win people significantly who will help propel their business further. Personal branding is winning people through their genuine persona, putting a face to a company resulting in building trust in strangers faster than ever. We've seen business influencers building large network of following, despite not meeting 99.9% of them in person. The skill in doing well in personal branding, is to first being fully aware of the community around us and how to cleverly use what we have to win the attention of our target audience. The returns will be bigger, faster and the best part of all, it's based on relationships. Those are harder to break, than a contract with a company. People value relationships, because they put their personality as the base to forming those relationships so they take pride and accountability to live up to the expectation of the other party - contributing to a stronger relationship leading to longer business partnership.

Stories will have more value than graphic design

I love some posters designed by my favourite brands, they can be catchy and attractive. It would appeal to me for the moment or that day, or a week or a month sometimes before I come back and decide to buy something that the poster promoted. But after that, I barely remember what I saw especially those posters promoting products irrelevant to me - those for sure, I would forget in three seconds. But stories are powerful. They capture the hearts more than the minds, and that stays deep inside. People resonate to stories and relate it back to their personal experiences dying to find the correlation to get a sense of comfort. And most of the time, they successfully do and when they do - the story stays. And so does the author of the story, in the hearts of the readers. Trust grows faster, with more stories read and written. And people convert to take action when that trust reaches a certain level - when that happens, business transactions are easier to convert. You (author) will never be forgotten.

Pyjamas at home over bustling co-working space

With so much interactions we already have online across our social media platforms, we will most likely like to reserve our balance energy to be alone with our work (or our thoughts) completely immense in building our dreams. And if we need some interactions in person, we can easily book a seat at the next networking event in town! If we need help with work, we get freelancers and providers through reliable marketplaces online, read reviews and choose one. People who used to pay for co-working space, realised they speak to no one while they are working there or most likely, speak to a few people of random conversations that dragged on and on - which kind of wasted their time. So why pay for something you do not need, especially if you are a small team or a solopreneur in the beginning. I rather save the rent for my capital, save the travel time to commute and still reply my emails professionally despite in my pyjamas!

More freelance, Less employees

Hiring people is necessary because we can never do everything alone. But in this era, providers and freelancers are in abundance globally and accessible in a matter of minutes. The preferred reason to using outsourced support is that there is no liability and benefits to look after, or in person leadership and human management. In this regards, everyone can remain productive and owning flexibility of time - instead of worrying about coming to an office on time, or who will be late or absent. Use them when you need, and don't without the hassle to fire or streamline.

Digitalise and Automate

Invest in technology that make certain processes even more streamlined and automated without the need for human intervention. Make ordering simple and easy online, where people can trace their shipment, view past history and activity. Introduce subscription model that contributes to consistent income for your business. Develop an app, where content you put out is easily accessible for readers. Build communities on social media, so selling and promoting to the right target audience makes sense.

Rise of 3rd Party Logistics

Forget about storage space, or spending hours packing orders. The rise of 3rd party logistics is now an option for small growing business to engage - these guys do from storing, packing and shipping the orders. The inventory management is in sync with your eCommerce, to ship only available goods. They charge storage by the day, and not by the month so this reduces unnecessary overheads. Their packing charges cost merely as low as $1.50 per order, and they are tied with good corporate rates with courier partners that can save you money to send goods to your customers. You never need to leave home, spend time packing and organising stock, or having to allocate space to store.

Micro Influencers > Macro Influencers

Back with statistics over the last decade, macro influencers have failed in converting to sales as there is little engagement with their massive followers. A lot of investments will now be channelled instead to multiple micro influencers, with stronger engagement and connection with followers. Their words have more weight and their recommendation to their small but close circle will convert higher sales returns. Macro influencers have also known to purchase "likes" and "subscribers" making their network far less genuine.

Phone > Desktops

More than 67% of the people access their social media platforms via a phone than a desktop. This naturally also means that since it's a gadget fitting our small pockets - we use our phone for pretty much everything else i.e. alarm, calculator, calendar, emails, social media, news etc. More entrepreneurs will start using other apps accessible on phone such as Zoom for video conferencing, Slack for business conversations, Google Notes for their to do lists, and other apps supporting every need like invoicing, video editing, graphic design and more. You don't need a desktop to do marketing, communicate or follow up! Just make sure your phone is charged up :)

Park it all on Cloud

Important documents or any documents for the matter, no longer sits on our desktop which we can only access when we get home. In fact, with everything saved on Cloud - we can access or grant access to these documents via a link on our smartphone. Everything you need whenever you need, at your fingertips. Data naturally becomes more secure, in case anything happens to your PC.

Business > Social

In school days, my teacher often emphasized on how formal letter is to be written. But in this era, online networking on social media has got more social! That means, the approach to make connections is not to appear all too formal with formatted letter. But to instead, be more humane and social aiming to start a friendship first more than business. Yet business transactions can happen, without every being too corporate in writing. Let's meet, and chat and collaborate! As simple as that.

Being more efficient means higher productivity and returns.

The 80/20 rule stands!

80% results from just 20% action. Do less, but with higher efficiency - the results will change your life. Read more of the 80 20 Rule here.

I had a chat with investors recently, while our companies are busy raising institutional funding from family offices and investment groups. Here are the two main things they look out for now:

1. Burn Rate - They prefer companies that have low burn rate but still achieved targetted milestones. They understand the importance of resources which is why they rather invest more money so these expertise can be outsourced to reliable contractors. For a founder to build teams internally, takes a longer time and hold the founder down from doing more important work - such as preserving relationships with stakeholders.
2. Community Focus - They are not easily impressed with huge number of following, presuming there is little engagement from the followers. They prefer businesses with less following, more focused to serve the community and followers who remember and advocate for the business!

Try to google for entrepreneurs who have already successfully build empires without offices - you will be pleasantly surprised. This may not be possible twenty years ago, it is now and it will the primary way of running business in the near future!

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