Top 5 Business Trends for Service Entrepreneurs

Solo entrepreneurs building new lifestyles while flexibly working from home will face new opportunities and challenges during 2025. Those who are ready to get uncomfortable in their growth, those who stay informed, ahead of market trends locally and internationally and those who lay focus on opportunities rather than on political discrepancies and economic hardships, will be the winners.

It's resilience that will let us succeed in 2025, it's athletic commitment and strategic clarity that will give those entrepreneurs the competitive edge. 2025 also will also teach us to put our bold and colourful, authentic hat on, to unload our personal backpack of heavy weight expectations and this-is-the-way stigmas.

Instead, we will play "I pack my suitcase" and add light-weight values such as self-love, intuition and trust, an ability to ask for help and the benefits of modern services. Those services and processes that help to reduce procrastination like automatisation and AI and those processes that benefit small-sized businesses in economically difficult times - concepts such as sharing economies and sustainable networking.

The benefits of planning ahead, staying informed and anticipating business trends in your industry will set you apart from the competition - and I am confident this blog article will help you with just that!

Trend #1 - Women's desire for autonomy and healthy habits will boost a new generation of female solo entrepreneurs

Do you think the market of solo entrepreneurs, coaches, yoga teachers, reiki practitioners and spiritual healers is exhausted? It is not. We're only just in the beginning of witnessing a revolution. According to Forbes, we can see a transformation in the small business ownership world, from entrepreneurship being a "risky and outlier choice to a mainstream, highly aspirational pursuit".

Over the past 20 years, technological developments and transformations in social structures have given new opportunities to women and marginalised communities. However, especially when it comes to the role of the women, we have seen major transformations in the speed and quality of life, with more responsibilities and higher expectations having added on to the already busy and multitasking magnitude of to-do's which many women face.

Living in Sweden, I should not be pointing out the disadvantages of the transformation in social patterns, as the nordic philosophy of gender roles is strongly focused on equal rights, evenly distributed parental roles and equal opportunities in the job world. However, my observation and work with women over the past couple of years has given me insight into the overload of brain activity, the internal expectations women place on themselves and the speed in which life happens today, has not only contributed to a high increase of burn out and mental illness, but also to an imbalance in being able to live life authentically and in accordance with one's own values. Some behavioural patterns and individual habits cannot be regulated with new policies or a political agenda. The way women have operated in families and in their jobs over the past several centuries cannot be transformed within a matter of decades, because we find there must be more equality between genders. When adding on the same responsibilities and expectations that prior to these societal changes were fulfilled by men, it does not automatically erase the responsibilities and expectations that were already fulfilling 100% of a woman's daily agenda. Instead, it became a "lucky add-on". It was labeled a privilege that full-time working women increased by around 20% in many of the western countries since 1970. (Source)

Today however, I want to put this celebratory increase into relation with burnout numbers, mental health illnesses and psychological struggles. Women especially have suffered through higher numbers of burnout and mental illnesses.

Technological advances, social media and a pressure to be up-to-date with the global political and economical situation have added pressure, expectations and heavy load on the shoulders of all people, but especially on those of women.

Today, we are questioning when a mother does not want to work full time, when a person is not responding quick enough to a social media comment, or a whatsapp message. It is negatively seen when someone doesn't have at least two university degrees, when we're not reading a new book every month, when we're not up-to-date with the global news of the day or when one doesn't have a "proper" job.

We have been taught and educated to hustle. To do as many productive things as possible during one single day. Over and over again. No wonder, that social media scrolling has become a sickness, and procrastination a #1 symptom and regret.

Humanity has become robotic and now we are trying to build robots to take that load of us.

Which other living being in this world cares more about data, screens, their bank account, weapons to produce, politics, technological systems, living up to other's expectations and likes on Instagram than the food they eat, the rest they get and the air they breathe?

When have we stopped caring about the basic needs, our most essential needs for well-being, for living, for experiencing life on earth?

The desire for traveling back to our human roots, for spending time mindfully, for listening to our inner voices, for being present with the children we raise, for eating food that nourishes and for recovering and resting when we need to, for listening to our closest friends and neighbours, for helping out and receiving help, for growing food that comes from our garden and for learning to wait again, that it grows and matures.

This is the magic and revolution we will witness to set off during 2025. To disconnect the invisible strings of a human life that has been shaped by systems, numbers, laws and expectations, by money, by hierarchies, by stigmas and screens.

There will be a movement because women have started to realise there is a different approach to live life on earth. There are ways to gain back one's autonomy, there are ways to start thinking for oneself, find back to the purpose we want to fulfil and serve.

Healthy habits and autonomy will gain more and more importance and with that, women will find the courage and trust to step into self-employment, into breaking the ties that connect them to a stressful way of life, a lifestyle of endless expectations and limitless to-do-lists.

Trend #2 - Personalised, easy-to-use consumer experiences will be expected during 2025

With access to more reviews, comparison, information and data, consumers will become more and more demanding when it comes to quality services. Mediocre will not be enough any longer. With communication technologies that no longer limit us to a local community and easy, one-click ways to compare products and services, consumers expectations of high quality products and services will increase.

A quick sales call to convince a customer that you have what they need will no longer do the trick. People love to buy, but they don't love to be sold to. And in a world where selling happens on every page they click, on every house wall they turn to, and in every email they receive, selling becomes more and more of an art. A line so fine that it becomes challenging to even see. Quality, authenticity, credibility and realness will gain importance in today's world .

Additionally, with time being holy and scarce for most people in today's work, all consumer experiences should have a focus of being uncomplicated and easy to consume. With an overload of information, clarity becomes a necessity. Consumers cannot and do not want to take time "figuring things out". Instead, as service providers our main focus should lie on delivering solutions that free up time for our customers, are simple and straight forward and require as little as possible effort.

Trend #3 - The use of automatisation and AI will determine the success of small business development

The speed of business activities when using AI and automatisation efficiently will determine how quickly a business succeeds. The time spent in core business activities with our without the help of AI and automatisation will quickly determine the success of a business. While AI has become a hype during 2024, it will be the make-it or break-it strategy during 2025. The key to using AI in business will lie in utilising it in the best way possible, to keep authenticity, credibility and trust up on the business rating scale.

It is a huge pitfall to use AI for example for creating original content to be sold. Once you take away your authentic self, AI will be your business developer and that of many other choosing the same path. And since AI can only take data and information from what has already existed, it's losing your one most important quality - YOU!

So using automation and AI in a way that it saves you time, it assists you with repetitive tasks and gives you back the mindspace you need to drive your business forward, will be a challenge, but one that can be fun when you've understood how to utilise it. Would you like to learn more about automatisation, funnel creation and lead generation? Click here.

Trend #4 - Free-time, less stress and mental health will become more and more important during 2025

With reaching mental capacity for performance, with higher awareness levels about physical stress symptoms and with more acceptance to make rest a priority, new work patters will continue to grow roots in society. While we are noticing deficits of teams working from home instead of meeting in an office, the flexible benefits of working from home and deciding over one's own time are going to be prevailing. The opportunity of creating a lifestyle that allows more "life time" will grow in people's minds and the possibility of building a business that aligns with one's own values will not seem so exotic anymore.

Rather, it will become an option of working, and with the right support system in place, with networks that don't operate on the basis of greed and ego but rather on collective growth and support, more and more women will want to choose the path of solo entrepreneurship in order to avoid stress, lower health risks and increase time to enjoy life.

Trend #5 - Data driven decision-making will shape the development of small businesses

As experience and knowledge on how to run small-sized (online) businesses will increase, so will the need to track data. Data is QUEEN and will determine a business' timeline and success. With technological advances, with the right programs and strategies, data will become more important even to small entrepreneurial ventures, because the benefits for success will become more and more obvious.

While large groups of solo entrepreneurs have gone through an experimental stage since Covid times, they are now getting closer to their make-it or break-it phase and will realise the importance of data. The need for systems, for analytics, for data tracking and data analysis cannot be ignored any longer, and will therefore require a strong focus during 2025.

If you are looking for a CRM system, helping you with funnel systems, an easy to build and use website, a course platform and a customer management system, please contact us for more information. We have an all-in-one solution integrated with our Loyal to Growth Membership. We help you with branding, design of your website, course platform and funnel creation.