Business Ideas for The Post-Covid World

Do you want to escape the daily 9-to-5 rut you’re stuck in? Maybe not, but better ideas have come to mind? Or is the idea of ​​being your own boss just too tempting to pass up?

Fortunately, in a world where technology is at the forefront in many sectors, it is easier than ever to go your own way. To open a store you don’t need a building, just the products and a website. To be a secretary you don’t need an office space, just a reliable WiFi connection. You don’t have to move to LA to make music friends, you just have to decorate your home.

As the saying goes, restrictions breed creativity, which was proven during the lockdowns. Many good ideas emerged and the best ones stuck. We’ve put together a few ideas that might encourage you to go out and make something of yourself. Read on for all the details of the best industry ideas to emerge from lockdown.

Influencer

Don’t mock. Depending on how you do it, there is a lot of skill and a lot of money in influencing. Chances are you’re only seeing one side of the issue, and that’s usually a well-lit photo of a coffee cup taken during golden hour. But what if I told you that a lot of skill – creative and business – went into taking that photo. It could include a product placement for a coffee company, it could be used as a networking opportunity to get a brand’s attention or generate buzz. It can simply be used to market their own business.

And then there’s the content itself, which includes everything from capturing to editing. Filming, photography, editing, music, graphic design and presentation skills are all part of creating quality content. There are many transferable skills in both.

You can use influencer marketing to market your own business, or even start your own affiliate blog, which serves as a site where you can showcase your favorite items for a commission. A few hours of work per week can earn you a full-time salary.

Either way, if you get the basics of an influencer’s role clear, you can market just about anything else on your agenda, like…

Hospitality

The catering industry has had to go through many changes due to the lockdown. The shutdown quickly gave way to takeout services, which eventually gave way to socially distanced dining, but during that time a lot of new ideas emerged about how the foodservice industry could shake things up.

The most common idea was eating through a window. A pick-up/delivery service where restaurants and cafes could not serve food within their premises, but handed over the food through a window. When things opened back up, the idea stuck. The roads are packed with delivery drivers and cyclists for everything from the mom-and-pop cafe to the nearest fast food supplier. It means less space and therefore less rent, or you can even do it straight from your own kitchen, which will greatly reduce the gap between beginner and entrepreneur.

And then there is the idea of ​​food trucks. You’d be surprised how much a food truck makes during lunch alone. There was once a class prejudice there, where a food truck meant low-quality ‘junk food’, but street food is on the rise. It’s usually very high quality, tastes like nothing you’ve tried before, because they don’t have to convince investors that the masses will eat it, and they go where it’s most popular at the time. You see food trucks in the park, at festivals, outside clubs, etc. It is also attractive to the customer because it is usually cheaper. If you’re concerned about menu prices, check out this guide.

Freelancer

When office doors opened again, the response was a resounding: “Do we have to?” Middle management was surprised to discover that employees around the world actually enjoyed working from home. There was more freedom, whether it was working around outside commitments like childcare or an exercise regime, or simply stopping for five minutes for a breather without worrying that your boss will think you’re slacking off. And we’d be remiss if we said employees report getting more work done at their own pace, because we know managers love productivity.

So it only makes sense that some employees, while working from home, began to wonder why they needed an intermediary in the first place, and suddenly freelancing became a viable option again. You can work at your own pace and avoid all the cash expenditure and pollution that comes with commuting, plus be your own boss.

And it’s easy to apply a freelance position to just about any skill set. To start, take a look at the role you currently play. If you can do it from a computer, is there anything stopping you from doing it for yourself instead of for a company? Consider applying a freelance position to the role you have so that the transition is easy.

However, if you are trying to get out of the job, you are there, there are also many options. It’s all about matching your skills with the right freelance job. If you have figures, you can delve into accounting. If you are handy, you can buy a van and pursue professions such as plumbing, carpentry, DIY, etc. If you have organizational skills, you can become a personal assistant for various clients. If you have writing skills, you can look into ghostwriting, copywriting, journalism, etc.

Lecturer

And there’s another option if you have all these skills you can use: teaching. Teaching has many capacities. The traditional way of teaching in a school requires a lot of education and internships before you get there in the classroom, but the lockdown has revealed many ways in which it can be made easier.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, here’s the best lesson of business life in lockdown: use video calls. Of course, traditional teachers and lecturers had to adapt to Zoom, and some didn’t do well there, but you’ve been using Zoom for at least a few years now and you can use it to teach all over the world. Get hired as a personal tutor or set up university study groups to provide more personalized guidance to those willing to pay for a helping hand.

And getting back to the influencer’s influence, there are many online courses popping up on major social media accounts. You can record a curriculum on your chosen topic and sell access to it to anyone who is interested.

The best part about this is that you can sell courses on just about anything, whether it’s fitness regimes, make-up tutorials, cooking, DIY or university subjects like social sciences and literary analysis.

If you can market yourself as a trusted source in your field, you can capture everything you know in simple, easy-to-digest content and put it behind a paywall like Patreon.