Pride comes before the fall. I see it all the time in entrepreneurship. That moment where the business owner doesn’t want to be told they need to switch up. Instead, those business owners resort to their pride and sticking their chin up. Then three to six months later, that same business owner realizes the gig is up, quietly close down their shop and that owner is now working at the Amazon warehouse or driving Uber.

During the early pandemic, many people got nice savings from either their 401k cash-out, PPP fraud, stashing rent payments during the moratorium, and getting unemployment bonuses. A lot of people decided to quit their jobs, take their chances, and start up a new business venture and new direction in their life.

Most people opened up retail storefronts and boutiques as their entrepreneurial venture. They have focused on cute gimmick shops like a café, or restaurant, or a second-hand sales shop. This was going to be the new direction the new start. But things have changed here now in 2022.

Supply Chain Disrupted. We are seeing a lot of empty shelves at big-box stores where items are no longer in stock or just empty all the time. If you trying to purchase a big-ticket item like a car or appliance, expect to wait several months due to backlogs. COVID is breaking out at ports and manufacturing facilities around the world, making things worse. The Russian-Ukraine conflict is disrupting the global food supply chain and energy pipelines as well.

Labor Shortage. We looking at a situation where some employers do not want to increase their wages and cannot find cheap labor help. We looking at low-wage folks with more freedom to do gig economy work or move to areas where pay is higher. Good talent can go where ever they want and take a sabbatical from the job sector altogether, chilling in Idaho.

Inflation. As a result of a disrupted supply chain and labor shortages, prices of goods are increasing at rates most adults have not experienced. Groceries are very expensive and it cost more to wholesale from suppliers where prices at restaurants and clothing stores have to increase their price. Even haircare prices are rising and salons have to raise their rates as well.

With these factors, all these folks who went out there and build up cute business models focusing on storefronts now are in a perilous situation. Cannot hire anybody, cannot meet their original projected profit margins. Their business model is now unstainable if they do not make any adjustments.

In 2022, we all have to be elastic, flexible, and be willing to pivot and transform due to the constantly changing environment. We have to reset the roadmap.

I have to make personal changes to my business operations and our business model due to the landscape that is facing me and let me highlight.

Go Global Scale and Go Big Now. We can longer play around one market growth at a time, we are going to fire all pistons and move into multiple global market hubs right now and be more aggressive in growth. The Black community has been a letdown for me, my folks following charlatans on YouTube during a critical moment of our lifetime. If you look at our model and see our true organic support I did not target, our real audience will be hubs and markets like merchants in South Korea and immigrants to other nations looking to startup businesses – that’s our real opportunity and target on a global level.

Consider Market Hubs Outside Japan. When someone shows you who they are, believe that ish, for real. What Japan has done with their arbitrary travel ban against foreigners means they are not serious about global business and are a bunch of bigoted nationalists at heart. I cannot recruit talent or build a global company out of that kind of environment. Also, Europe is going to be a problem with the opportunity of new fresh talent coming out of both Ukraine and Russia. East Europe like Poland and Lithuania is going to be overrun with immigrants who will try to establish themselves in those streets and cause crime and new problems. I have to consider new locations like Bogota or Dubai or Singapore but we are still giving Japan a chance although we won’t risk it all on Japan after seeing what they pulled with that travel ban.

No more Physical Assets – All Digital. We are not talking about gold or other precious metals or foreign currency investments – we have great advantages as the Japanese yen is at an all-time low versus the dollar. We are talking about not being engaged in physical goods like setting up physical stores or hubs, selling physical products. Everything is going to be digital. Digital Ads, digital workflow, digital data gathering, digital products and digital assets. This means we will focus on the membership model, subscription model, billing model, and make payments online.

Accelerate SPAC Pursuit. We will not be coy or lax about SPACs and will move aggressively in this direction. Be mindful of two things – we do not have to be the USA to get listed via a SPAC and we do not have to do deal with the American market to be acquired by a SPAC as SPACs are available worldwide. We are going to pursue the best and most available opportunity for us. I will be meeting more with SPAC firms and getting the show on the road as we build up and scale up our operations.

Now with that said, do you see if I got time to be entertaining low-frequency characters in the Black community and their lightweight “Black in Tech” crab barrel they invented in this tech space? No, we have to move and pivot hard directly towards the big goals because tomorrow is not promised with all of this turmoil in the world that can turn things for the worst in a very short time.

Now your turn – you cannot afford to try to maintain simplistic business models. The only models I can see that survive like cockroaches are the pawnshop model of pawning items and reselling them if they cannot pay or they pay off their interest each month. That’s the only business model I would be in if I was to stay physical or wanted to start a storefront business.

Rethink your business model and I will advise the following.

Get out of physical inventory. The cost of goods sold will only increase with inflation, lowering your profit margins. In addition, the Fed is increasing interest rates so those loans on business will be higher and invoicing and billing are also driven by that interest rate and will be factored in the cost of goods. Food for restaurants, computer equipment, and more is just going to get more expensive to acquire to run a business.

Get into digital inventory. This means going into digital content like creating paid subscription programs for content you offer. Or create NFTs to sell for crypto and use that as a part of your asset portfolio. There are other digital assets like metaverses, blockchain ledger entries to hold assets, and more. You can even offer API services like we are doing and bill customers per access charge. You can sell digital display ads that people just contact an API to pull the next ad. This puts you in a highly flexible, highly scalable position where you don’t have to worry about supply chain disruptions and other physical inventory problems.

Focus on digital payment models that identify customers. These are subscription models, pay-per-access, crowdfunding, and more. Focus only on online methods to get paid because you don’t want to be out there in these streets taking money from physically crazed strangers anymore. This goes into another topic – focus on digital payments that identify the customer so you can screen them, no more nightclubs with shady people, you better know everybody that shows up at the door. We rolling out a dating service that we will screen heavily the person before they are allowed on the platform.

This is not the season to not understand the reason why you need to reset your roadmap because none of this going on in the world has been predicted or expected to go this crazy and off the ramps. We are in a delicate time where prices can shoot up and the rich will be ok but the poor will suffer harder. You should not expect simple business models like opening up a storefront to sustain your future in this environment. You should adopt current and future trends such as focusing on digital transformation.

This is the new direction and scope of where we are – you have to change towards what’s ahead of us.