Running a small business is not easy even in the better of circumstances, and several current obstacles can make it even tougher.
According to a survey, 40% of small business owners say 2024 can be a defining 12 months for their business, citing the economy, upcoming election and declining sales as their top concerns. questionnaire conducted by Slack.
But that’s not all bad. “At the halfway point in 2024, we asked small businesses to look back at the goals they had set for the year and found that they were pleased with their progress and successes in the first half of the year,” says Gina Taylor Cotter, EVP & GM, Small Business Products at American Express.
In fact, American Express has released a recent report Entrepreneur This found that 9 out of 10 small business owners are optimistic about their company achieving its goals this 12 months.
Young, digitally native entrepreneurs, in particular, are considering creative avenues for growth, according to the report. However, 83% of small business owners said they have had to think more creatively in the past few years than ever before.
When it comes to recent activities that small business owners have undertaken in the past 12 months, 57% of respondents said that I created a profile on social media for their company – and for 32% of them it was the first such motion.
Small business owners too experimenting with partnerships to ensure their success: A third (33%) said that they had worked with one other company or brand in the past 12 months.
Finally, many small business owners want use the power of artificial intelligence.
Fifty-nine percent of all millennial and Gen Z respondents said their company uses AI, compared to 34% of Gen X and baby boomers. The commonest AI use cases include customer data analytics (39%), chatbots and virtual assistants (39%), and content creation (33%).