The New Wave of Entrepreneurs

If you know anything about me, you know that I’m always talking about new business ideas. I have a love of entrepreneurship, and just a touch of shiny object syndrome. That culminates in me being a wantreprenuer. I have good ideas, and the will to bring them into existence, but end up getting distracted by the next shiny idea.

As the internet grows and gets older, strategies and methods change. It’s no different from entrepreneurship. What people may have only considered as businesses from Mom & Pop shops and restaurants to suit and tie CEO sitting in their penthouse suite firing people like it’s their job (I mean it is, but you get the point) no longer encapsulates today’s wave on entrepreneurs.

Nowadays, entrepreneurs are able to build businesses that fit their own lifestyle.

The Solo-preneur

Thanks to growth of online communication, automation, and freelancing, business owners are now able to run entire businesses without any overhead or employees. Need to get the word out? No need to buy a billboard or hand out flyers, just start posting on social media. Don’t want to spend time accounting? Set up an automation that filters all orders in to your accounting software, then automatically send that to your accounting firm. Overwhelmed with support emails? Outsource it to a virtual assistant.

The barrier to entry is lower. You don’t need to rent office space or worry about hiring employees. You’re able to run a full scale business without that overhead. You don’t get the same intimacy as you do when having employees you can count on, but is that what you really want?

Nat Eliason talks about this in his post The Founder Trap:

At some point, entrepreneurship goes from giving you maximum optionality to providing none at all.

It clicked for me when a bank called to verify an employee worked at Growth Machine. She was buying a house. I answered the banker’s questions, hung up, and a few hours later it hit me: I really shouldn’t screw this up. It wasn’t just my income and lifestyle riding on my work. Someone’s house was too.

That seriousness intensified with each new employee and each new employee’s life milestones. Someone finds out they really need good health insurance. Someone has a baby. More houses. 

If our goal is to create fulfilling work, asking “what happens if this succeeds” is as essential as asking “how do I make this work?” 

He talks about the entrepreneurs who can’t remove themselves from their own businesses since there are people depending on them. This wave of solo-prenuers can easily fall victim to that, but with careful planning, you can nearly completely remove yourself from the equation, automating everything.

Solo-prenuership is extremely common in the creator space too, with monetizing content becoming easier and easier. I have thoughts on the morals of this in the self-development space, but that’ll come at another time.

The Ethic-prenuer

Next up is the Ethic-prenuer. These are the type of people who aren’t just trying to amass money. They want to help make an impact on the lives of people close to them and close to what they believe in.

When I went to college for a year, I took one class that was pretty much Business 101. One of the questions that stuck in my head because it made me so infuriated was “What is the purpose of a business?” The “correct” answer was “to make a profit.”

This type of entrepreneur doesn’t believe that.

If you’re at all interested in what this means, I have to point you in the direction of Wil Reynolds. He recently wrote a couple of incredible, inspiring posts called Living a Life of Enough Part 1 and Part 2.

Wil will be someone to follow over the coming years to see what sort of amazing things he will bring to the world. (#MentorMeWil)

I don’t have anything else to close with, just go read those two posts and have a fantastic day. I’ll see you lovely people tomorrow.

Questions, comments, or want to start a discussion? I’d love to know your thoughts! Let’s chat over on this post’s Twitter thread.