What it means to be an entrepreneur in 2018

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The entrepreneurial landscape has evolved with great leaps and bounds in the past decade alone. Cloud technology is removing the barriers to entry for would-be business owners everywhere. What was once accepted as the stereotypical entrepreneur, now includes people from every walk of life. With all this change, what does it mean to be an entrepreneur today?

Respect the hustle

I’m a serial entrepreneur – I have always been. I remember being single digits in age, trying to get people to buy handmade leaf decorations on the side of the road. I had lemonade stands all the time. In college, I even “helped” folks with their papers for a little extra cash. In my 20s, I had a children’s clothing company, because… well… I was bored and had children.

As I write this post, I am a principal, co-founder or partner in four companies. I have an accounting firm, a training company, a strategy consulting group and an app. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually thinking about launching another entity. This is the new normal.

Look around. You know people who are starting businesses. They might call it a “contract gig” or “side hustle,” but those are legitimate small businesses. All of these new businesses being started by all kinds of people point to how much the entire underlying economy is changing. When I was a young accountant in south Louisiana, businesses were started by middle-aged men who mortgaged their homes to buy oil field service equipment. Now, because of technology, anyone can start a business. And to some degree, it’s our obligation to be founders.

Technology: helping bring passion projects to life

The best product or service comes from those who are passionate about creating it. That kind of passion will never come from a mega-corporation. It comes from us who stare at a problem and design a solution, from improving how we cook and serve oysters to coaching social entrepreneurs in strategy and pitching (those are two of my actual clients, by the way).

Taking a passion project and turning it into a business often requires an entrepreneur to wear many hats. With limited resources, entrepreneurs often end up acting in a variety of roles within their businesses. From sole marketer, to customer service manager to salesperson – the list goes on. Today, technology is creating efficiencies that give entrepreneurs more time back in their day and enable them to get back to doing what they love.

Take the basic back office of a business. It is and will always be the same: ask people to pay you, pay the people you owe, keep track of it for government compliance. It’s unavoidable. But what is changing at an exponential rate is how we do it.

A successful twenty-first-century business doesn’t use 1990s technology like spreadsheets and cash. It leverages SaaS products like Xero and Square to eliminate the friction between customer service and administration. A business that accepts electronic payments gets data that automatically transfers all the way through the back-office system, without touch.

The invoice is delivered to the customer, money is deposited in the business account. The sale is recorded as paid, the customer is marked as having purchased a certain product, the accounting system recognizes revenue and a line on a tax return is completed. And the aggregate of this happening over and over means that you get quality business data that you can use for performance analytics and marketing campaigns instantly. For a business not using technology, these are separate, high-labor steps, prone to error.

From the back office to the front office

A business owner has limited capacity. A smart entrepreneur puts the person in the product, not the back office. Technology runs the back office. Whether your goal is to scale for growth, have a lifestyle business, or be poised for acquisition, one thing is universally true – you, the business owner, have to get out of the way.

On Friday, March 23, I’ll be on a panel of experts discussing what it’s like to be an entrepreneur at Talk Shop New Orleans. Who knows, I might even reveal business number five.

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