“Hey, business leaders - how you doin’ this holiday season?”
We asked this question in last week’s newsletter, expecting maybe a few dozen responses. Within 3 days, 150 small business leaders reached out.
Here’s what we learned from them.
For 93% of these small businesses, this won’t be their first holiday season. On average, they’ve endured 12 holiday seasons. And outliers like Skyline Electric Company have been in business for 60 of them!
These companies currently have 11 to 25 employees on average but vary in size from 1 to 250+ people on their payroll. They represent a wide range of industries (law, medical, retail, construction, tech, and so on).
And they’re looking to hire two more team members on average before the year ends. (Only 16% don’t plan to hire anyone in that timeframe.)
When asked what they’re most concerned about these next few months...
PS -Shoutout to Sophie Rebholz from Envy Island Tan, Derek Coffey from Sharper Business Solutions, and Stephanie Legare from Freedom Home Services for winning our survey giveaway! 🎉
TL;DR
This week's highlight reel
Grab the popcorn. After filing for bankruptcy in 2019, movie theater subscription company MoviePass is back. But this time, they plan to build a sustainable business model that rivals AMC and Cinemark subscriptions.
The breakup. Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest health products company, plans to break up into two companies in the next 24 months. One focused on consumer products, and the other on medical devices and drugs.
Iceland-verse. The country’s tourism agency just released a parody of Meta’s announcement video. Meanwhile, Meta restricts advertisers from targeting users based on “sensitive” topics, like health, sexual orientation, and politics.
Too fast and furious. Last month, consumer prices in the US rose 6.2% annually - the fastest pace in 31 years. And US inflation has risen over 5% in each of the past 5 months, suggesting prices could keep rising into next year.
For audiophiles. The audio-streaming giant Spotify has acquired audiobook distributor Findaway - a safe bet considering the audiobook industry is set to reach a value of $15B by 2027.
