Small Business Labs

MARCH 1, 2021

Both of the partners at Emergent Research started their careers as economists, specifically energy economists. So we've followed the Texas power outages and think just as the pandemic has accelerated digitalization and remote work trends, the Texas outage has accelerated existing trends driving the growth of microgrids and distributed power. Microgrids are localized power generation grids that can disconnect from the traditional grid and operate autonomously.   Natural gas, propa

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

In 2020 professional services applications from independent workers (freelancers, independent contractors, etc.) increased by 21% over 2019. Most of the 2020 increase came in the second half of the year and continued into 2021, with professional services applications from independents increasing in January by a stunning 51% over January of 2020. This data comes from Independent Workers Lead Recent Surge in Professional Service Business Applications , a research brief from MBO Partners that is ba

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

We haven't seen all the Super Bowl ads yet, but we know independent workers will be featured in two of them. Squarespace's ad (below) features Dolly Parton singing 5-9, a take off on her hit song and movie 9-5.  It shows a variety of side giggers pursuing their passions. Fiverr also has a Super Bowl ad, but we haven't seen it yet.  But no doubt it will feature creative independents.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 26, 2021

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risk Report identifies the top risks faced by businesses and society over the next decade.   This the 16th year WEF has issued a global risk report and the results come from an extensive risk survey of a wide range of risk related professionals. As the WEF chart below shows (click to enlarge), they group the risks by likelihood and impact.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 19, 2021

Poshmark is a social e-commerce platform where people buy and sell secondhand goods, mostly used clothes.  It went public last week and closed its first trading day worth $3 billion.   In the Barron's article Poshmark CEO Sees Huge Market for Used Goods. Investors Agree  the firm's CEO described the trends driving their growth and opportunity.  Key quote: In a Zoom interview on Thursday with  Barron’s  from his office in Redwood City, Calif., Pos

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

TechCrunch's 5 startup th eses that will transform the 2020s looks at 5 broad startup themes that will define the next decade.  These are: 1.  Wellness : TechCrunch defines wellness more broadly than most.  They say it encompasses building " humanistic societies with strong social fabrics that enliven, enrich, and build meaning for our lives …" More concrete is their view on the needs of our health system.  Key quote: Then there’s the health system in general.

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Health AT&T Management UPS 160

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Marriott's Taking Pause: How Slow Travel Is Changing the Way We Explore takes a look at the "slow travel" trend. Slow travel, which is considered an offshoot of the slow food movement , focuses on spending more time in fewer places.   Instead of attempting to squeeze as many sights or cities as possible into their trips, the slow traveler explores a destination and experiences the local culture.  The slow travel trend has been around for years, but prior to the COVI

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 3, 2020

It's looking much less likely the U.S. will experience a sharp, V-shaped recovery. Instead, a growing amount of data is indicating a slower, "swoosh" shaped recovery is likely. The swoosh refers to the shape of Nike's logo and indicates a recession that starts with a steep decline and is followed by a gradual recovery. According to the Wall Street Journal's Economic Forecasting Survey, 70% of economists think the recovery will be swoosh shaped.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 23, 2020

Zagat, the restaurant review site favored by foodies, recently released a Future of Dining Study.  The study looks at the impact of COVID-19 on the eating habits of consumers and how they may evolve post-COVID.   Zagat's report chart below (click to enlarge) shows that consumers plan to return to dining out post-COVID, but at a lower rate than pre-COVID.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 22, 2020

Thrasio is a large and fast-growing acquirer of small consumer product companies that are part of Amazon's Fulfillment by Amazon program (FBA).  They recently raised $260 million in a funding round that values the company at $1 billion.   Thrasio's business model is fairly straight forward.  They find and buy category-leading consumer product small businesses that operate on Amazon's platform.  Key quote from Crunchbase's article on Thrasio's rec

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Small Business Labs

JULY 20, 2020

Last week we had an article on U.S. Census data showing a big uptick in the number of Americans who are self-employed.   s It's likely this increase is caused by people who have lost their jobs turning to self-employment.   Because of this, we found the recent MBO Partners' blog post How to Become a Consultant: 5 Steps to Starting Right to be very timely.

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Small Business Labs

MAY 27, 2020

According to the  U.S. Census,  the number of   nonemployer small businesses increased to 26,485,532 in 2018, up 3% from 2017.  Nonemployers are businesses that have an owner but don't have paid traditional full or part-time employees (W2 employees). The data comes from tax records and you can think of nonemployers as solopreneur businesses (some exceptions apply - see below).

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Small Business Labs

MAY 26, 2020

Lots of work from home (WFH) surveys have been conducted over the past month.  And one of the most consistent findings of these studies is most people want to continue to work from home, but most of those only want to work from home part-time. For example, the Global Workplace Analytics Work from Home Experience Survey found that "U.S. employees want to continue working from home an average of 2.5 days a week (2 days/week globally)." And as the Harris/Zapier survey chart below show

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Forms AT&T 161

Small Business Labs

MAY 13, 2020

Yesterday we covered a series of recent articles saying it will take 2-3 years for the economy to recover to pre-pandemic levels. One reason for this view is almost all industries are being negatively impacted by the recession. Illustrating this is the BLS's employment diffusion index. This index is calculated by adding the percentage of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment.

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Small Business Labs

MAY 5, 2020

According to the research firm Barlow Research Associates , the average small business owner is 60 years old. And as the Barlow chart below shows (click to enlarge), almost 40% are aged 65 or older.  This raises an interesting question.  How will older small business owners react to the pandemic? Will they continue operating their businesses, or will they shut them down?

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 27, 2020

California's new gig economy law, AB5, is not being well received by independent creative professionals.  Freelance writers, musicians, actors, artists, and other creative professionals are finding the new law is damaging their livelihoods. Indie musicians are a good example. Key quote from the musician's Change.org anti-AB5 petition : AB5 will have a devastating and catastrophic impact on independent musicians, their livelihoods and the music industry in general in California.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 22, 2019

We'll be back in 2020.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

Quartz’s members-only article (meaning you have to be a paying subscriber to see it) The stars, teams, and investors turning esports into big business nicely covers the rise of esports. Key quote: “Tens of millions of viewers are tuning in to watch other people play video games competitively, and it’s becoming big business …  it is creating a new kind of sports star, and both the gaming industry and professional sports franchises have taken notice.”.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 18, 2019

Brookings' Meet the Low Wage Workforce reports that 53 million Americans, or about 44% of all workers aged 18-64, have low-wage jobs. According to Brookings, the national average for a low-wage job is one that pays $16.03 per hour or less.  The low-wage level is adjusted using city-level cost of living data.  For example, a job paying $20.02 in high-cost San Jose, California is considered low wage while one paying $13 in low-cost areas of the country isn't.

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Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

California recently passed AB5 , a law that changes how workers are classified. AB5 establishes an “ABC” test to decide whether or not a worker is an employee or a contractor. The law starts with the assumption that everyone is an employee. To be considered an independent worker, a worker must: Be free of the hirer’s control; and. Do work that is “outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business”; and.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 19, 2019

A recent academic study found that self-employed gig workers in the UK score higher across a range of psychological well-being measures than workers in the mainstream economy. The study - The Effects of Self and Temporary Employment on Mental Health: The Role of the Gig Economy in the UK - found that gig workers are about 33 percent more likely to self-report positive traits in terms of mental health than those in traditional jobs.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 22, 2019

Predicting the Next Tech Disruption from Big 3 Strategy Consulting firm Bain and Company discusses 4 forecasting tools (shown below) Bain uses to predict when disruptive technologies will be widely adopted. Two of the tools - experience curves and adoption curves - have been around a long time and widely used. For example, we use both - and especially adoption curves - in our forecasts.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 25, 2019

One of the biggest shifts uncovered by the MBO Partners State of Independence study series is the increased use of online marketplaces to find work by freelancers and other independent workers. As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), in 2012 only 3 percent of full-time independent workers reported having used an online marketplace to find work in the prior 12 months.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 23, 2019

The Federal Reserve recently released its 2019 Small Business Credit Survey.  A key finding is the use of online lending sources by small businesses is rapidly expanding.  As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), in 2018 32% of small businesses seeking credit applied to an online lender. This is up from just 19% in 2016. The top reasons small businesses say they turned to online lenders is their speed of decision making and the view that they had a better chance of being fu

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 11, 2019

In case you hadn't heard, podcasting is booming.  According to The Infinite Dial 2019 , an annual survey conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital, more than half of all adult Americans have listened to one. And as the report chart below shows (click to enlarge), 32% of all Americans aged 12 and older listened to a podcast in the last month.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 19, 2019

We're often asked what the most popular professions are for freelancers and independent workers. This is not as easy a question to answer as it seems. Independent workers serve all industries, work with both businesses and consumers and participate in pretty much every job type and profession. They also tend to self-identify in very specific and often idiosyncratic ways.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 4, 2019

The global human capital consulting and services firm Mercer recently released their annual Global Talent Trends study. For the 2019 edition of this study, they surveyed over 7,300 business executives, HR leaders, and employees from around the world on a variety of talent and HR issues. The major finding is 73% of the executives surveyed expect their industry will experience significant disruption over the next 3 years.  The study chart below (click to enlarge) summarizes the main sources

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

"Job crafting" describes the ways in which employees redesign and customize their jobs to foster greater work satisfaction and engagement. This is done by breaking a job into tasks and then deciding what to do less and more of.  The New York Times article How to Make Work Better covers job crafting and suggests greater use of it by those with traditional jobs would make work much better.  It also points out that the academic researchers who came up with the concept were "

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Forms UPS 182

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Colliers International, a global real estate services and investment management company, recently released their 2019 U.S. Flexible Workspace Outlook Report. According to the report's introduction, its purpose is "to help office occupiers and investors alike to better understand: • The rationale behind using flexible workspace • Examples of leasing models • Types of experience models • The volume and characteristics of flexible workspace in leading U.S. markets • Key issues facing the se

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Rig Up , an online talent marketplace that connects oilfield workers who are looking for a job with oil and gas companies, recently announced it had raised $60 million in VC funding.  The company was founded in 2014 and it pre-qualifies contract oilfield workers and helps them find gigs quickly and easily with energy firms.  Thanks to fracking, U.S. oil and gas production has been growing steadily for the last decade, with oil production at an all time high.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 24, 2019

According to a recent Intuit survey , about 60% of small businesses with fewer than 20 employees use outside accountants to help them with their taxes.  And as the study chart below shows, this saves the vast majority of them time, money and stress. This raises the question why don't the other 40% use outside accountants?  The study chart below shows the answers given by the survey respondents.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 20, 2018

We'll see you in 2019.

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Holidays 2019 119

Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Marketplace and Edison research recently released Americans and the Gig Economy, a survey of gig workers.  The survey covered a lot of ground, including finding about 24% of American 18 and older are gig workers. This works out to a bit more than 60 million.  The survey also asked a series of questions about economic anxiety. They found gig workers, on average, experience more economic anxiety than those with traditional jobs.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2018

We first reported on bleisure travel , which is the the blending of business and leisure travel, back in 2015.  A According to the folks at the expense reporting and management firm, SAP Concur, it continues to gain popularity.  Key quote from their blog post  Do You Bleisure? The Word We Love to Hate is Gaining Popularity Across the Globe : according to new SAP Concur travel and expense data gathered between January 2017 and December 2017.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 25, 2018

After posting on corporations looking to increase their agility on Tuesday, we found two new reports on business agility in our mailbox on Wednesday. Gallup pointed us to their report The Real Future of Work: The Agility Issue. Here's their pitch on the need for increased business agility: The old axiom "adapt or die" has never been more relevant than it is today.

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AT&T 157

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 23, 2018

Earlier this year McKinsey released another in their series of future of work reports, Skill Shift: Automation and the Future of the Workforce. The key finding from our perspective is that corporations are increasingly agility as a key business requirement.

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Skills 114

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 16, 2018

McKinsey's  The overlooked essentials of employee well-being focuses on how companies can improve the well-being of their employees. But it also explains why the self-employed - and especially those that work in coworking spaces - report higher levels of wellness and work satisfaction than traditional employees do. It covers two critical factors - job control and social support - that foster physical and mental well-being.

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