MBA2219 My 5 Business Predictions for 2023
2 Feb 2026 · 16 min
Omar Zenhom predicts bootstrapped businesses will prioritize profitability, SEO spending will spike as ad costs rise, and live cohorted learning will boom as a $325B industry. Remote work becomes a hiring advantage and demand for coaching and niche courses surges as workers reskill.
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Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because a better you equals a better business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 20. And in today's episode you will learn my five business predictions for 2023. One of the things I actually spend a lot of time doing is looking at trends, looking at how things are moving and in what direction they're moving in. This allows me to make better decisions in my own business and plan for the future. So instead of just keeping this information and research to myself, I'm going to share it with you. These are my five top predictions when it comes to the business world for 2023. These are the things that I really strongly believe we're going to start seeing happen in this year. In fact, a lot of these things have already started to happen, but the momentum is just getting started. I'm going to share with you each prediction and why it's important to you, how you can use this information to improve your business, make better decisions and grow faster. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Support for today's show comes from virtual gurus. Many business owners get stuck. They can't scale their business anymore because they've run out of all the time they have. They're working, they're hustling, but it's just not enough. The key to scaling your business is Offloading work you shouldn't be doing. You need to start building a team of people doing tasks that are sucking your time but not really. Your secret sauce, your superpower that you love doing every day. How do you start building that team? What? Well, that's where virtual gurus come in. They help you build a team around you to get the support you need without breaking the bank. They match you with skilled, remote administrative talent and you pay only for the hours you need. With an affordable subscription plan with no long term commitments or recruiting costs, you can build the support team you need while keeping your operation lean, saving you up to 40% compared to traditional hiring costs. And virtual gurus can help you find great people with great skill sets in all kinds of areas like bookkeeping and data entry, sales and marketing support, email and calendar management, and a whole lot more. They can connect you with one general assistant or multiple specialized assistants. But one of my favorite things about virtual gurus is that they're on a mission to provide meaningful work opportunities for underrepresented communities. So you'll benefit from an incredibly diverse talent pool. Book a free consult@thevirtualgurus.com MBA that's thevirtualgurus.com MBA MBA and get the support you need. We got a lot of predictions to cover today, so let's jump right into it. This is my first of five predictions that I strongly believe we'll start seeing in 2023. Some people say we're about to enter a recession, that we're already in a recession, that inflation is going to get a bit worse before it gets better. I've done a lot of research in this area and spoke to experts in the financial markets. And the truth is, is that this is the year we're going to feel the brunt of this recession. Now a lot of people get scared. They think, oh, the economy is going to tank and my business is going to lose money. A lot of great businesses are born and have thrived and really taken off in recessions because recessions create opportunity. People need to retool, shift, make changes, adapt. But one of the things we're going to start seeing more of because of this is and because of the cost of money, meaning that it's cost a lot of money to borrow money because of interest rates. We're going to see more bootstrapped entrepreneurs, bootstrapped businesses. The free flowing cash we've been seeing for years in the startup space is just not here anymore, okay? It doesn't exist. Investors are a lot more cautious and they just don't have the ability to borrow money easily to be able to invest into those businesses. This means businesses are going to start thinking about how to be profitable, how to be self funded, how to grow on their own. This is actually a good thing because it's a good practice for every business to have to be profitable on their own dime so they don't have to have inflated growth. We're going to see more and more businesses choosing the bootstrap route, sometimes not by choice, because hey, they just can't get the funding, but they want to get started anyway. So they start slow, they start steady, and they start growing with their own personal investment, whether it's a small savings or starting with pretty much nothing. With pre launching, with selling services, with bundling to make the revenue they need to grow the business they want. You're going to see a lot of different resources out there, whether it's courses, whether it's books, seminars, conferences on bootstrapping businesses. This was the case a decade ago, by the way. History repeats itself, especially in the economy. So back in 2010, 11, 12, bootstrapping was all the rage because that's just the nature of the economy. And it lend itself to saying, hey, cash is expensive, no problem. Build your own business on your own dime, on your own wits, on your own energy. So you're going to see more and more businesses, including software businesses and the tech industry and all that, going the bootstrap route. More and more online businesses are going to start investing in SEO search engine optimization. Why? Well, the cost of advertising online has gone up significantly in the last year and will continue to go up. Businesses will simply just not be able to afford running social media ads to gain traffic and leads or fill their funnels. They're going to have to rely on old school search engine optimization, writing great blog posts, optimizing their site, even hiring some experts to make sure that their site is set up properly so that Google crawls and finds their great content. This is going to be a lot more cost effective. But anytime there's a boom in an area, you're going to see a lot of different kinds of people claiming they're experts at SEO that are just simply not. So you're going to have to be extra vigilant about looking at their past work to see if they're able to apply what they know and what they can do to your business. But SEO is definitely something that many businesses are going to start investing more and more money and time in because it's more of a cost effective long term solution to getting traffic. This doesn't mean that the cost of advertising is not going to be reasonable anytime soon. But for the next year or so, it's going to get expensive, especially on the major platforms like Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. In 2022 alone, the price per click on Facebook ads has increased on average on all industries. 4%. Now you might be thinking 4%. That's not too much. Well, it is once you start looking at the total amount of money you're spending over the course of the year. This is according to wordstream.com, but if you still want to invest on paid advertising and you're on a budget and you don't know which platform is best to suit your budget, Facebook is still one of the cheapest places to advertise in comparison to LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Even Pinterest is more expensive than Facebook when it comes to cost per click. This is more of a reason for you to be like, hey, if I want to reach everybody, regardless of what platform they're on, SEO is the way to go. Prediction number three Live learning. I'm completely bullish when it comes to live learning. So much so that we really made some major changes and improvements to our own company. Webinar Ninja introduced a sister product called Course Ninja to serve this new market. Live learning is growing tremendously. We're going to see it grow even more in 2023 because Covid gave us a chance. Two years of getting people used to doing live calls and training and meetings. Online Learning is a $325 billion industry and the fastest growing segment of that market is live learning. You're going to see more businesses running live cohorted courses, live coaching, live workshops, mini courses. And it's for good reason. They're a win win for the business and the actual student. Let's talk about the student first. We all know when we have skin in the game, we show up. I found that regardless of the price point, Whether you're charging $19 or you're charging $9,000, show up. Rates are higher when it's live. Why? Because they don't want to miss out on the interaction. Think about it. Have you ever booked a ticket to a conference or a meetup that had a recording that they would give you as a part of the ticket and you just didn't show up? No, because you're like, hey, I paid for this ticket. I want to get. They're live. Enjoy it. Network with people, get to know people and get the Content from the instructor live so I can interact with them so the student shows up. That means they learn more, they apply more, and they get better results. Many studies have shown that recorded or on demand courses have less than a 3% completion rate, while live learning courses have over 90% completion. In my own experience, completion rates are higher than 95% now on the business side, businesses can charge more for a life course because it has higher intrinsic value and perceived value. Because hey, it's live. You get to ask questions, you can interact, you can get coached. It's tailored to the group so businesses can actually have higher margins with open and closed cohorted live courses. It's also great for businesses because there's less preparation. If you want to run an on demand recorded course, there's a lot of pre production, shooting the videos, editing them, making them all polished and perfect. With live courses, people are not expecting this to be this high production, highly edited video. There is no edit, it's live. So really, businesses and course creators can just show up with their slides and teach the content. And guess what? The next time they run the course, they can improve upon it and iterate fast. You're going to see a lot of live courses offered in different disciplines in 2023 because it's a very underserved market right now and there's a high demand for live learning. Prediction number four, Remote work will once again become a benefit. Over the last couple years with COVID remote work has become the standard. Most people just work from home. But now, as restrictions have lifted, many big businesses and companies are asking people to come back to the office minimally, they're asking them to come back a few days a week. So full time remote, meaning allowing your team to work remotely wherever they want in the comfort of their home or coworking space five days a week, 52 weeks out of the year is going to be the exception. Meaning this becomes a benefit again. So if you're building a small business, a self funded business, and you want to attract great talent, you have a great ace up your sleeve. Many great talented people do not want to go back to the office and and yet their companies are requiring them to do so. At the very least part time, people have gotten a taste of freedom and flexibility and autonomy and they value it now. So by you offering the ability for people to work remotely 100% of the time, you're able to attract great talent even for less than you can normally afford. People willing to take a big cut if it means having the autonomy to work how they want. I know this firsthand because when we recently interviewed some people for some positions we're hiring for, this came up. People said, hey, is this a fully remote job or do I need to come into an office? How flexible the hours, things like that in the last few years, for the most part that wasn't the case. People just assumed it's going to be remote. So remote work is a great benefit you can offer to your team to get that amazing talent that can help grow your business. I got more on today's episode one more prediction for business in 2023. But before that, let me share some love for today's sponsor. Support for today's show comes from Virtual Gurus the biggest lesson I've learned in the last 10 years as an entrepreneur is that my time and what I spend my time on is the single thing that will determine my success. If you want to drive your business forward, you got to find the discipline to focus on the key priorities you need to tackle while getting the right support for the things others can do for you. How do you find these people that can do this work for you? Well, that's where virtual gurus comes in. You can get the support you need to outsource the tasks you shouldn't be doing without breaking the bank. They match you with skilled remote administrative talent and you only pay for the hours you need through an affordable subscription plan with no long term commitments or recruiting costs. That means you can build the support team you need while keeping your operations lean, saving you up to 40% compared to traditional hiring costs. Virtual gurus can match you with remote assistants who have a range of skill sets including bookkeeping and data entry, sales and marketing support, email and calendar management, and more. Book a free consult@thevirtualgurus.com MBA that's thevirtualgurus.com MBA and get the support you need.
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Right, we've gone through the first four of five predictions. A rise in bootstrap businesses investing in SEO, the rapid growth and need for live learning and remote work as a benefit. Now prediction number five. We talked about elearning before and how large that market is, but it's going to get even larger coaching and courses. Why? Anytime there is a change in the economy, inflation, a recession, this means people will transition, meaning they're going to lose their jobs and they're going to look for new jobs, including new careers. This is often a catalyst for people to start their own thing, to build their own business, to build their own product or service, and they're going to need some help. Anytime there's a transition in the economy, there is a transition in the workforce, meaning people need new skills. People are going to be looking for courses and coaching that can help them in that transition. In fact, when the economy is tough, most people invest in learning and coaching programs in particular because they want to fast track to the outcome whatever they want, whether it's a new job or a new business or a new skill. When things are going good in the economy, people are not such in a rush to get to the outcome, they slow walk it. But when there's urgency, people are relying on it. So whether you're a coach or a course creator, or you're looking to become one, my advice is to niche down and offer training for a specific niche. For example, if you're a design coach, meaning you help graphic designers, then get really specific to help specific people get a specific outcome. So instead of just saying I coach graphic designers to become better graphic designers. What kind of graphic designers? Print ux, UI brand designers? And what is the outcome? What are they trying to get to? So a better niched down topic or area you can help people in is UXUI designers looking to start their own consulting firm? Why is this important? Why is niching down helpful to you? Well, UXUI designers looking to start their own consulting businesses will find more value in your program because it talks directly to them rather than hey, this is a program to help designers. They're going to believe that you're more likely to help them get to the outcome because you're more specific and you're tailored to their needs. It also allows you to deliver their needs easily because you're not trying to cover everything under the sun. This gives you an incredible opportunity to charge premium prices and get amazing results. There you have it guys. These are my five predictions for business in 2023. Use them and don't take my word for it. Do your own research as well on these predictions. I've done a ton of work myself to research these topics, research my hunches. And by the way, some of my hunches were wrong after research and I didn't include them today. But the point is I wanted to do the work for you so that you can have them on a silver platter. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app right now so you get the next episode automatically and you tell that podcast app hey, this podcast is awesome. Thanks for your support and following the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The reason why I do this research and try to figure out where things are going in business and make these predictions is because I have a limited time, I have a limited effort, I have limited energy and I want to be able to exert that effort and energy on things that matter, things that actually are on my side so that I'm riding a wave rather than pushing a boulder up a hill. This is where you find businesses thrive and grow and go viral because they're not doing all the heavy lifting the market and the trend is helping them along the way. So ride your wave to make things a bit easier for you and your business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.
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