ESG, DEI, and 8 Other Business Trends for 2022 (Part 1)

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch with insanely successful entrepreneurs who shared their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Well, now you can here successful entrepreneurs reveal their step by step strategies and other fascinating stories. So grab your seat at the table because this is Business lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss. Hey everybody, Roland Frazier here. And today I want to talk about 10 trend based marketing things that you can do to achieve profit breakthroughs and breakouts for 2022. There's a lot of cool things going on right now. One which you hear a lot about in the investment banking world is esg. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. And here's the opportunity, like the trend is basically that there's a tremendous focus right now on sustainability, on corporate responsibility, on businesses taking their part to do their share, to keep the environment well, to do social good, to get involved in social matters and also to be good and to build in some sort of governance or some protections against the people that are part of those companies doing bad things. So here's the opportunity that there's a lot of funds right now that are only ESG investing. They're only investing in esg. They're funds that were set up to do esg. There's a big focus on that. A lot of bigger corporations are saying they'll only do business with people who have an ESG focus. So think about, like for us, when we're thinking about what to buy or what business to be in or even how can we change our business? The more that we're focused on being environmentally responsible, on being ecologically sustainable, the more we're going to get business from all of these bigger companies that are focused on that. And one of the reasons that they're focused on it is because consumers are demanding that companies be more environmentally sensitive, more socially responsible and have better governance. So your win on both sides because in terms of getting investments and funding and acquisitions acquired by companies or big contracts from larger companies, being ESG responsible is gonna be really, really helpful. On the other side of it, consumers are gonna like it when you are responsible as well. So what you wanna do is think about what can I do in my business right now? Or what businesses could I get into, what businesses could I acquire, what changes could I make to become more sustainable? So that might be supply chain, it might be reducing carbon footpr, even giving back environmentally. Right, it might be any of those kinds of things. And then similarly, from a social responsibility standpoint, are there any opportunities for the business that you're in or you're acquiring or you're thinking about getting into to do things on the social front that will do social good. Should you contribute to Black Lives Matter? Should you become part of some social things that are going on so that you can contribute positively to your local community or to the world at large? Those are really, really good. And then on the governance side, more and more responsibility is gonna be placed with the board of directors of companies to be responsible. Like to be looking at the business of the company and saying, hey, are we doing anything we shouldn't be doing? Is there any opportunity for us to do things better from an environmental or social standpoint? And definitely, if we're doing anything that's like harming the environment or doing social bad, then we should look at that. So that's the first big opportunity is getting involved in a way that with your company or acquiring companies or founding companies, that you can actually be responsible and kind of launch into the momentum of this esg, environmental, social, governance trend. The second one is, is dei. So it's a lot of initials, right? So DEI is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. So what does that mean? Well, from a diversity standpoint, it means that in terms of the people that are working with us at all levels of the business, we should be diverse, both racially and socioeconomically. So how can we get people of different genders, however they might identify, involved in the company so that we can get different perspectives? How can we be friendly to the LGBT communities? Right. How can we get the influences of those people and their perspectives involved in our business? Not just people that we're selling to, but people that are actually in the management and not people that are just working in a low level. People that are actually maybe on the board of directors or in executive positions. Positions. Because there's been study after study that's shown that a diverse company does better, is more profitable, comes up with more ideas, is more innovative than companies that don't have that? So that's the. Like the diversity. Now, the equity is, how do we get some stakeholderness there? How do we give these people the ability to have some ownership in the company so that we have stakeholders of the company, not just employees or managers, but actual stakeholders in the company that are going to profit and be uplifted by their involvement and by the things that they contribute to the company and the things that the company does as a result of having their perspectives? And then inclusion is from a very, very broad standpoint, right? Not just in terms of the company, the employees the management, the senior executive team, the board of directors, but also the. In terms of how are we going to be aware of all of these different interests that are out there and how can we serve them? And the profit opportunities are pretty huge because while this is a big trend and a big theme for 2022 and probably going the rest of this decade, what are the opportunities that we have within the company to bring these diverse interests and viewpoints and perspectives into the company? How are we going to not just have them there, but actually ensure that they are heard? And is there an opportunity for our company to facilitate any of this? So maybe your opportunity, business wise, is to get into the DEI space and say, we're going to help facilitate DEI integration into companies. It might be as a consultant, it might be as a manager, it might be as a service provider that provides some sort of service there. It might be along the hr, it might be in terms of corporate manuals and documentation, it might be in sourcing and hiring. It could be any of these things. It could be training, it could be even training for existing companies that are thinking of installing a DEI initiative. So there's a lot of opportunity there and a lot of money flowing to companies that are DEI awareness. So that would be, I think, a good second trend to think about. The next would be, what about this thing, this great resignation? There's so many people right now who are especially younger folks that are leaving their jobs and they're leaving saying, I'm not happy with where I am, I'm not happy with the progress that I'm making. I'm not happy with the prospects that, that I have of really getting to do something that's profitable to me, but also fulfilling. And, and, and that I feel is socially responsible and contributive to the world and, and doing some good while feeling good about myself and also taking care of myself so that I'm not working until I just, like, that's the only thing that I do. Because there are other things that are important to me too. So we have this, this great resignation going on of a lot of people leaving positions. And it's creating a real problem for businesses. It's restaurants that we go to, they say we can't get enough servers at hotels we go to, they're like, we can't get enough people in the valet, we can't get enough people at the front desk. We can't get enough people anywhere in the business. And so they're all running at a fraction of their full capacity, despite the fact that Demand has come back terribly strong. So, so opportunity here is I think to think about how do we serve all of these people who are leaving the workforce and starting businesses for the first time? The last article I read said that new business filings in the United States alone were up 25% year over year as a result of the great resignation. So a lot of these people are leaving their unfulfilling dead end jobs and they're saying I want to be an entrepreneur. They I want to be self employed, I want to go into business for myself. So opportunity wise we can train these people, we can provide courses and instruction for them, we can facilitate their ability to get their businesses started. That's a huge opportunity. The other thing that we can do is on the stem, the bleeding side. What can we do to help companies integrate programs into their businesses that will cause people to want to stay? That will be more attractive as a job for someone who would otherwise be going off and trying to find something that's more fulfilling. Now starting new businesses is also very, very hard. So I anticipate that you'll see a lot of these people who want to go back into the workforce, but hopefully in a better position. So job recruiting companies and placement agencies and HR facilitation and advisement agencies, those will all be things that I think will be good career counselors. Any of the things that are going to help people who didn't make it on their own get back. Anything that's going to help people who want to get out of challenges in their business. This could be bankruptcy, this could be credit repair, those kinds of things. Like people who fail at business have challenges. So you'll see a lot of opportunity I think to serve those people there. You'll see business coaching and business opportunities as being very strong in 22, as those people look for the different things that they might do and as a new job when they don't know what those are. You'll see career training and colleges and education and career development all doing well as those people either want to get self development to help their own businesses do better or they want to take a little bit of time to maybe level up their skills so that they can go back and not be in a dead end job, find something new, find something that they can go into that that will give them more opportunity. Similarly, we've seen a huge change in the amount of people who are working remotely. So anything in the remote workforce facilitation area could be good. One of the companies that I advise has a zoom like company that provides the ability to do remote meetings. And so that's for sure still a good place to think about being any of the support services that could help them work from home, any of the support services that could facilitate that from a software standpoint, personnel accommodation, any of those kinds of things. So that's, that's going to be big. The human cloud of the ability to access humans on demand through the gig economy, right? Like upwork and things like that, still going to be big. The ability to create agencies around that big opportunity there, the ability to do anything that's going to serve the significant portion of people who are electing and going to continue to elect to work remotely and to make the connection between those people and the central employer that where they are working remotely from connect better in any way is going to be good. So that's consultants, that's software, that's facilitation, training, development, all of those things. And as far as keeping track of how likely are my employees to have a great migration away from me, what's the threat of me losing these great employees that I've got or the few that I can keep even if they're not so great, there's going to be a lot of support and opportunities there. So companies that measure ENPs, employee net promoter score, how happy employees are and how likely they would be to recommend their employer to a friend as a place to work, that's something that you want to keep your finger on the pulse of. So companies that help companies keep track of that, that's something that's going to be good. Companies that help people who have low ENPSs to figure out how can I make my employees happier, people who are culturing coaching on culture, people who are providing software and products around that to facilitate culture improvement and employee satisfaction elevation, those are all things that are big opportunities for us. So whether your company does that and you want to add that or you're thinking about going into a new company, these are to me very, very hot, good places to go. Another would be thinking about reallocating the supply chain. So how so there's been a huge challenge in getting goods. We've seen inflation of 10, 20, 30, 50% or more for products across the board. And a lot of this has to do with kind of a catch up period when production stopped or was significantly reduced worldwide because of the pandemic. And now we've got all of the demand that was pent up during the time that the few supplies that were being made were coming out. And, and now we have everyone armed with probably support from the government over that period of time in some way, not traveling, not spending money they would normally spend to go out and eat. So there's a lot of money that would have otherwise been spent on other things that's being focused exclusively on products that are in short supply. Because of manufacturing challenges and shipping challenges. We have 96 boats, 96 cargo ships in the LA and Long beach port right now. 96. Right. Backed up. And that is something that is going to be worked out probably though going to take a couple of years. So big, big opportunity in 22 to say how can I facilitate supply chain reallocation? Because permanently, a lot of these companies that were acquiring supply and from overseas, from China, Vietnam, places like that, they are saying, wait a minute, this is a huge threat that we never even saw coming and we're not going to get blindsided by it again. So we're going to move some or all of our manufacturing to North America. Now that might mean Mexico through programs like the Maquilladora program, or it might just mean just plain flat out US based manufacturers. So in terms of creating manufacturing facilities to provide the supply chains, the supply chain items that are needed across the board from a manufacturing standpoint, I think there's a giant opportunity. If you can look and find markets where labor and location are inexpensive but the quality of work can be performed successfully. I think you'll see from a real estate investment stand, from an infrastructure and buildings and equipment standpoint, from a labor standpoint, from a labor training standpoint, from a facilitation of supply chain allocation management standpoint, there's going to be huge opportunities across the board there. So that's, to me, that is a really big one. The next thing would be AI, artificial intelligence and the ability to integrate AI with humans. Right? So there's a lot of replacement going on right now. And it's only at the very, very we have AI agencies that the artificial intelligence is writing letters and sales ads and copy for campaigns to promote things, completely replacing the copywriting people that used to do that. And by the way, at this point the copy's coming out better. And when you split test and say which of these two pieces or which of these two ads is performing better, the AI is winning, right? Not all the time, but a lot. So we're getting to a point where we're hitting what Ray Kurzweil called the singularity where computers intelligence was equaling or starting to exceed that of human beings. And in doing that in the workforce, it's going to create a lot of displacement. So here are the opportunities. Like where's the profit in this? Well, on the AI side, it's get involved in AI verticalization so that you can have artificial intelligence that's being applied in specific verticals like agencies or wherever, you know, warehouse management, supply chain management, any of that kind of stuff. And be part of the companies that are providing those AI solutions, AI integrations where you're helping those companies that manufacture, that create the AI solutions get integrated into businesses in various verticals. Huge opportunity there, training people to service the and work the AI as an AI technician. Big opportunity there. Displacement training to help the people who are being displaced by the AI coming into those companies and finding them new jobs and retraining them. Big opportunity. So lots of opportunities across the board in multiple verticals for AI. So that's five, that's number one, two, three, four, and five of the biggest trends that I see right now that I think are going to provide some really significant profit opportunities. So remember, the first one was esg, that's environmental, social and governance. The second one was dei, that's diversity, equity and inclusion. Then we talked a little bit about the great resignation, the human cloud. We also talked about number four, which is reallocation of supply chain and all of the things that you can do to support that and, and help people migrate their supply chain from one thing to another. And then last but not least, how can we balance AI and the integration of AI with the human side? Everything from the actual integration into using both of those things in a business and balancing the competing interests of those to the opportunities of being part of the AI companies or helping the displaced folks find and retrain into other jobs. So that's five really big opportunities I see coming in the business world for 2022. And I'd love to hear what you think and I'd love to see how are you taking advantage of these opportunities yourself. You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Frazier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening. Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the right deals and the right guidance. And that's exactly what we give you in the epic deal fast track. 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