Around a certain age, you’re expected to have figured out a few things. What you wanna do for school is one of those: before your career, it should matter to pick a course, and then learn about what the actual profession looks like in practice. It terms of relationships, parents have a certain anxiety around what their “kids” will be interested in, and that builds up until they find, with luck, a good partner — a side discussion is how sustainable this is, in today’s world, among the youth. Another level is linked to things like where you’re going to live, how much you’re gonna be making and how much available time you’ll have. For so many, time is lacking; and they have to do something entirely new.

That’s how entrepreneurs have their start. At the face of uncertainty and with many pressures from contextual background, they launch a project and try the best they can to make it happen, whether it’s a beauty salon, an illustrator freelance contract, a translator for hire portfolio, a clothing and craft arts catalog, an education endeavor. I could tell personal examples of each of these cases, which are in the back of my head right now. To the people who have put their best to do the work and pay the bills, my best wishes of success in their journey, hopefully maintaining a good work-life balance. But that is actually for the few.

Many think that releasing a project is something that starts with a Google Docs and somehow morphs into a website with an app and the thing is gonna be used by people all over the world. That is an artificially inputted idea of success that technology investment propelled. Small businesses need their own websites, to be in control of their image more broadly, and to feel more confident about what they sell. Product delivery is serious business, but today we call that offering “content”, in a major diminishing of the possibilities in the creative process and growth opportunities for many people around the world, in favor of wannabe monopolies of commerce.

The disputes are high: books are not sold anymore, neither are CDs (I saw a headline recently that said Japan still does it a lot), and teachers are on the screen, while shoe stores are hunting for clicks and jewelry shopping is not looking at the window stand, but rather, at the zoomed in image with details of the product. A big technological renovation made things this way, from our food to our transport; from our potential dates to our bank accounts. Suddenly, human work was replaced by the machine definitively, with the rise of AI. But the more you investigate, the more you realize that humans are still very much needed, especially in areas like internet moderation, and, in a wholly different case scenario, legal proceedings.

Whether or not you’re going to find success in the realm of the digital is up for the audiences to decide. You have to learn about marketing, and study it. You have to see what other people are doing, and hone your skills. You have to be constantly updated, and think of improvements at the practical level. But if you’re the owner of a small store, you’re thinking about payment methods, storage capacity, delivery times, payment of employees, product offering and contracts, costumer satisfaction and installment hygiene. Those are a few of the aspects that dictate the preoccupations of your work, safety being another important aspect. Good luck to the small business owners of today, and may their efforts grant them with the freedoms they were seeking for, even if they have to work long shifts to make things happen. They need our support, and the communities you live in will give it to them willingly. It matters to establish yourself and keep your services rated at good levels to retain customers. The market has, much beyond the big names in the stock trade, a lot of people involved in it.