- Young Entrepreneurs are creating profits faster than Fortune 500 companies.
- They hire for specific tasks, not employees
- Crowdfunding projects are preferred over Venture Capital
Forbes magazine interviewed entrepreneurs between the ages of 15 and 30 and found that they have a tremendous advantage over older adults with the goal of becoming self-made businesspeople. Young entrepreneurs usually do not have access to the type of funding an older adult may have. Nor do they have the amount of work experience. But young businesspeople today may find this to be more of an advantage to them than a hindrance.
What they do have in abundance is energy and access to like-minded young entrepreneurs with skill sets and time on their hands to create content and handle unique tasks like social media management, the medium to communicate to millions of potential customers within minutes.
Young entrepreneurs can run rings around an established business or older entrepreneurs because the tools that are available to succeed are literally in their hands every day. They can create ads, hire talent anywhere around the world for specific tasks, and crowdsource money and ideas within mere hours.
Not only can younger entrepreneurs create a business from thin air, but they have also used the tools to do so since they were first able to hold a smartphone in their tiny hands as kids.
They use tools and apps like Fiverr to hire talent for specific tasks and go to “YouTube University” to learn processes for creating or finding a solution within minutes instead of toiling for years in a school that stretches out the same information to fill a curriculum.
Older entrepreneurs do use these same tools in abundance but not with the speed and confidence of a younger person who grew up using apps for creativity and time management.
Remember, entrepreneurs do not have to worry about the income ceilings of a 9 to 5 job. If they run a business as a side hustle while they work a traditional job, they can reinvest their entrepreneurial income back into their business for growth without incurring loan debt. Also, if they are running a business in partnership with another entrepreneur, the synergy of 2 or more people providing income and creativity to a project provides a solid foundation for extreme growth.
Here are 5 Things Young Entrepreneurs can teach us all about running a business in today’s environment.
- Funding is more of a crutch than a helping hand. Young entrepreneurs know that when you borrow money, you’re actually borrowing it from your future self at a high-interest rate. Savvy young opportunists see traditional jobs and crowdfunding as solutions to acquiring or saving money for their businesses.
- Young entrepreneurs do not hire employees, they hire talent online for specific tasks to be done within a specific amount of time. They use apps like Fiverr to find talent to make social media ads, create apps for their business, and more. They also use apps like Thumbtack to hire physical task workers to help organize, install, fix, or assemble products or services.
- The most innovative and creative mindset of a young entrepreneur is allocating work based on what electronic device can handle it. Anything that can be created, scheduled or allocated using a mobile phone within a few minutes or within an hour is worked on by themselves. Work that takes more than an hour or takes more computer power than a mobile phone or Chromebook is allocated to another talent.
- Just because you can do everything yourself in a business doesn’t mean you should. This is pretty much an extension of point number 3 but time allocation is emphasized more than anything else by young entrepreneurs. Bragging about 80-hour work weeks doesn’t sound compelling to them. In fact, it sounds counterproductive.
- For a young entrepreneur, businesses don’t fail; they get retooled, repurposed, or re-envisioned. Failure is a weird term for today’s young entrepreneurs. When a business doesn’t sell enough products or services, they retool a component of that business or change direction to fit the market. Failure to them is just data. With the right amount of data, you can make much better business decisions.
