This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What are your predictions for next year? What do I think is going to happen in 2025, which by the way is right around the corner? What trends, opportunities and challenges should side hustlers and small business owners be preparing for? A listener in the Boston area is wondering, well, what does this year holds? What should we do? Is there anything specific
we should do or prepare for? What are some good opportunities perhaps looking into the year to come? What kind of side hustle should we all start? Or how should we change or evolve or grow or transform? I'll do my best to give you a couple of specific ideas and insights that I hope will be helpful to you as you plan and begin your new year. This is episode
2,919 of side hustle school. Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're going to hear from our listener right after the break. Hi team, this is Megan calling from the Boston area. I've been listening to your podcast
for a while and I'm curious, what are your business predictions for 2025? Are there any trends, opportunities or challenges you think side hustlers and small business owners should be preparing for? I'd love to hear your thoughts on what's coming next. All right, Megan. Well, I am no futurist, but I will take a stab at it. Here are three
things, at least three things that I think we're likely to see in 2025 as it relates to side hustling and small business. Number one, the continued growth of remote work and freelancing. There's been a lot of attention recently, a lot of news stories about how companies are asking workers to come back to the office and such. I'm sure that will continue as well, but there are also plenty of companies that are embracing flexible work models and of course new companies that are started, new businesses, kind of go into that with a remote first mindset as opposed to something they have to adapt to later. I feel confident that platforms like Upwork and Fiverr will continue to thrive, but as well, maybe some niche platforms will emerge for specific industries. So keep an eye on those. That's
number one. Number two, not chucking rise of AI powered tools. Of course, AI is becoming a huge force in business. 2025 expect more AI powered tools that automate tasks like customer service content creation, perhaps even decision making in some cases. So this is an opportunity and a challenge. The key will be to adopt tools that streamline your
work, but not rely on them to the point where you lose your creativity or your personal touch because of course that is valuable. What else? E-commerce is going to keep evolving. E-commerce is going to become more personalized. Let's say I think customers will continue to expect more tailored experiences. Businesses that use data to personalize shopping experiences
like customized product recommendations will have an edge. Shopify and other platforms are already kind of making this more and more common. So if you use a platform like that, they will do some of that for you. I just think this will be more of the norm going forward more and more personalization. And then the last thing, perhaps just overarching, I do think there's going to be economic uncertainty. Like we should prepare for economic fluctuations.
The stock market is not always going to go up. Inflation has been an issue for several years. It does seem like it's been coming down, but I don't think there's any certainty. So not just interest rates or inflation, but also supply chain issues. All these things could impact small businesses. And ultimately you got to ask yourself, what is it that I
am building? What am I making? That will be recession proof or at least somewhat independent from external events. I think if you focus on that, you don't worry so much about what else is going on or what the latest trend is. The side hustlers who succeed are those who embrace new tools, but also kind of stick to a vision. So keep your vision consistent,
but be willing to try new things if that makes sense. Those are my predictions for the next year. We'll see how they hold up. Listeners, thank you for being out there as we are at the end of the year. There's a few more episodes to go. This was 2919-2919. Thanks so much.
Take care of yourself. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. from the Onward Project.
