I’m going to share with you nine disruptive predictions for 2021. Now, this is mostly for entrepreneurs and business owners but there are some lifestyle predictions in here too.
Okay, but first I’d like to touch on something larger. A lot of entrepreneurs have been asking me
“where’s the events business going to go?”
And
“what do you think is the future of entrepreneurship?”
Well, I’d like to take at a higher level of abstraction and go a little bit deeper, and that is that whatever human beings need, there will be a business model created around it.
So, if you look at humanity’s greatest problems, these are are entrepreneurs biggest opportunities.
Of course problems in ecology and green business models and things that will help the longevity and lifespan of humanity and the planet, those are great business model opportunities where you’ll you could create a fair exchange environment, where you could balance really elegantly helping humanity and the planet and the world with a nice tidy profit margin and that really is entrepreneurship in its purest form.
Okay, so whilst this isn’t one of my nine disruptive predictions for 2021, it’s definitely 9.5.
Right, back to what human beings need right now. Let’s get into my nine disruptive predictions for 2021.
1. The need for human connection in 2021.
- I think we need connection.
- I think we need leadership.
- I think we need hope, certainty and guidance.
- I think we need truth.
- I think we need trust again because I think a lot of these have been disrupted.
I can’t say that they’ve gone but due to the pandemic, lockdown, regulations and general fear from 2020, they’ve certainly been eroded.
Now, as an entrepreneur you can seek to solve this need, you can use the creation of connection which leads to hope and leadership and solution to build and create a new business model.
Why did Zoom do so well? It’s not just because of the convenience of the app but because humans could connect when in reality we were restricted from connecting physically.
And it’s the same concept with the new social media app Clubhouse, it enables us to connect with one another, get close to people of influence and those that are very successful in their fields. This is something tactile that we’ve lost during the lockdowns.
So, in 2021 any business that creates connections will be successful. This is why our new online events have done so well because it’s the next best thing to Live Events. Aim to create a connection and focus on your community and you will have an advantage over your competitors.
2. Clubhouse, will it Fly and be the next big thing?
So, prediction number 2 is actually about the new social media platform, Clubhouse.
Clubhouse kicked off in a big way in December 2020 with a fantastic viral marketing campaign that really leveraged the concept of anticipation marketing, which is marketing something ‘in anticipation of’ but, you don’t actually know what it is.
Similar to the marketing phenomenon of the much-anticipated but failed F.Y.R.E festival, Clubhouse is an invite-only platform and suddenly all over social media everybody was seeing/sharing these little beige squares “you have been accepted to Clubhouse” or “you have been invited to Clubhouse” and as a result, we’re now all obsessing over it and people are clambering for an invitation.
I believe that Clubhouse is going to be a big social media channel this year by its very viral nature. It’s great that you can listen in rooms and be a voyager via audio while you’re running, walking or doing whatever. I’ve been building a 4000 piece Lego Lamborghini cyan which is my new addiction and I’ve been able to do it whilst listening in and giving advice in rooms on Clubhouse.
So my advice, get in on Clubhouse, you’ve got to try it for yourself and start your own rooms. I amassed a thousand followers in the first three days just by floating in and out of rooms and by testing.
Will it fly and be the next big thing? I don’t know, because its strength is you can listen voyeuristically while you’re doing other things, but that could be its weakness as well as if you’ve got a thousand people in a Clubhouse room how many of them are actually engaged? More on Clubhouse and how you NEED to get onboard this next massive trend in my next blog.
3. There is going to be a Resurgence of events later in 2021
A lot of people have been asking me “are live events dead?” and my answer is… ”well is the human connection dead? is the desire for humans to get together to network dead?”
Once the doors open again, everyone is going to want to connect with one another, touch each other and meet together. I really do believe that if you run live events as we do, there is going to be a big upsurge in new customers and new audiences coming to events.
And I don’t just mean educational seminars, I’m talking about live gigs and experiences, there could be a mini-boom for the industry similar to the property boom or boom in travel and I think when things open it’s going to go wild.
As there have been more lockdowns and more restrictions the sense of anger and frustration among the public has increased and the need to ‘do other things’ has only been heightened. So, I do not think that live events are dead, I think they’re going to be huge.
I also think that online learning and training is going to continue to grow. By running online events at Progressive during the lockdown, we’ve been able to reach people in more than a dozen new countries and it will enable us to scale more globally, quicker.
4. Property markets and economic correction.
Don’t ask me by how much or when it will happen, but there will be both a property market and economic correction at some point in 2021.
There has been a recent boom in property, Bitcoin and a number of other assets and commodities as entrepreneurs have been able to delay taxes, enjoy the stamp duty holiday and take advantage of the government furlough scheme, but when this all comes to an end, we will see an economic correction.
Unfortunately, many more employees will be laid off when furlough ends and entrepreneurs will need to pay back-dated taxes and pay back government loans and as a result, it could really clog up the economy and force a correction, negative growth or even a recession.
But, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’re 12-13 years into a cycle and with a recession comes opportunity. So, as an entrepreneur, you need to be ready.
- Be liquid in your business so that you can buy property.
- Be active in the market so that once prices drop, you have already established your pipeline.
- Preserve your capital as much as you can and make sure that you build good relationships so that you can access finance when you need it.
5. The pandemic of fear.
Now the reality is, on a global and humanitarian level, the fear of the pandemic is almost as impactful to us as the COVID-19 pandemic itself.
Why? Because even in the recession of 2008, it wasn’t a global fear. It didn’t affect all businesses, children, schools or teenagers, but this pandemic affects everyone on the planet on a global scale. It’s a universal unknown uncertainty that breeds fear in everybody.
So, how can you avoid being fearful?
Well, number one is you must inoculate yourself and immunise yourself from the fear because if you allow the fear of others to impact and infiltrate your business you will end up freezing, procrastinating and not doing anything to improve your business for fear that it may all go wrong.
As an entrepreneur, fear should spur you on to want to find solutions and create viable products and services that leverage the new pains and problems of your clients. I like to use the analogy of a black hole and a star. A black hole seems to pull and absorb everything around it and a star seems to shine bright and push everything out. Do not allow the fear of the pandemic to become like a black hole, but do use it as an opportunity to use that energy can convert it into a solution, into progress and into persistent relentless action.
6. The rise of social media platforms.
Okay, next then is the rise and rise of social media platforms in 2021. Social media and communication platforms will continue to rise in 2021. Facebook has been busy improving and optimising their platform, Tick ToK has become huge and now Clubhouse has just kicked off and I believe that the longer that we are in and out of lockdown, the bigger and more important new and existing social media platforms will become.
Social media is so important because it enables you to give our valuable and regular content, build new verticals and funnels to increase your conversions and generate your business thousands of leads. But, I do think that there will be a rise in premium platforms for example the Facebook supporters programme and the new stars feature, Patreon, Shopify luminary and YouTube premiums.
New premium social media features now make it easier for entrepreneurs to monetise their following and justify the hours and hours that you need to put in to create daily content and it’s now very viable to turn a large following into millions by utilising premium features and the option for paid-for-content.
7. Many more companies are going to struggle.
The stories of retail businesses closing and travel companies struggling have been regular and recurring over the past few months and unfortunately, I think it’s only going to grow with more bankruptcies, insolvencies and unemployment.
Any business with a physical location is really going to struggle and I think unemployment could rise quite significantly. Now, as an entrepreneur thinking paradoxically, this could create some leverage and online business opportunities for non-physical location businesses. Ecommerce businesses are going to continue to grow more and more.
8. The paradox of scale and the personal touch.
Okay, in 2021 you’ve got an opportunity to scale quite dramatically because more eyeballs that ever are on social media with more traffic and more engagement and as a business offering a product or service, you’re not physically restricted by a location.
But, here’s the problem..as you scale you lose the personal touch. It’s just natural that as you get more followers and more fans your inbox goes mad and it’s hard to stay connected and to offer that personal service.
As you scale it can be hard to solve your audience’s needs, pleasures and pains so you have to take some responsibility to stay in touch with your audience because it could be your product or service that turns their life around.
9. Your customers have new problems, you need to find them and you need to solve them.
Right so, number nine of nine disruptive predictions for 2021 is that your customers have new problems and you need to find them, you need to solve them and you need to do it fast. If you’re slow, you procrastinate or you spend too much time trying to be perfect you will fail.
But how do you know what your customer’s new problems are? Well, one way is to constantly and consistently stay connected to your community, talk to your audience and understand the challenges that your clients are facing so you that can quickly and effectively solve them.
The lockdown, quarantine and travel restrictions will have brought about new problems for your clients so always think about how you can solve them fast because the speed of implementation, speed of feedback, speed of learning, speed of action, speed of iteration, speed of pivot, speed of service and speed of creation is what will win in 2021.
If you’re too slow to solving your client’s problems in 2021, you’re dead. Due to the law of compounding. technology is moving faster and faster and as an entrepreneur and business owner who needs to adopt new platforms and technologies to better solve the problems of your customers, you will be rewarded for speed and penalised for being slow.
