A Dirt Empire, Pivot & Millennial Millionaires 💩

Almost 88% say online sales will be an important source of revenue in 2022, while 97% place importance on digital tech. 42% say they will become more reliant on online sales in 2022 compared to 2021.

In fact, the top three areas of focus are:

1. More use of digital technology
2. More revenue from online sales
3. More focus on cutting costs

Speaking of threats, inflation is a major concern for 97% of businesses. Rising costs are one of the biggest threats they currently face. And many consumers have similar concerns. The top three cost pressures for small businesses are materials, shipping, and equipment — in that order. The challenge of higher shipping costs is compounded by the fact that almost 71% of small businesses have experienced supply chain problems this year.

The pandemic has somewhat taught business to navigate supply chain and labor issues. Which is why the macro outlook for 2022 among small business is  positive and technology oriented. 

Imagine making millions selling bags of dirt for $110 a piece. That’s what the Canadian startup Black Oxygen Organics did. Their buyers were gullible idiots who bought into their claims of “magic dirt” that could cure anything from Cancer to COVID.  

How did they do it? 

It seems the company’s founder - Marc Saint-One has been peddling dirt since the 90s. He started a ponzi-style scheme where the first line of purchasers became marketers for the company getting their friends and family to buy. The more dirt you sold or more sellers you on-boarded, the more commission you made. 

Sellers mostly used social media to sell their lot. The company, that started selling in May, was making approximately $4m in monthly sales. They had a horde of 21,000. 

Of course, it couldn’t last long. Customers who felt cheated started digging instead of buying more dirt on the company. Soon the FTC, FDA, health departments got involved after hearing some enraged complaints. and the company finally had to shut shop.

If you invested in shroom stocks last year, you must have experience heart pain from the horrifying roller coaster hurtling in one direction — down.

The psychedelic medicine market has been taking a beating lately, but that’s only short-term. The long-term outlook continues to be strong. A recent report by CB Insights lends support to the macro positive trend.

The report states that funding in psychedelics startups increased more than 8x last year compared to 2019’s numbers, with the funding total surpassing $700M, spread across 45 deals. That’s a big deal! 

Other industry highlights from the report:

• Funding for psychedelic digital health solutions is projected to grow 250%.
• 20 US states have loosened regulations around psychedelics research, approvals, and healthcare access. 
• Approximately 25% of psychedelic medicine companies focus on psilocybin.
• Nearly 40% of psychedelics startups and almost 50% of deals focused on drug R&D. 

Millennials are risk takes. That’s how they became millionaires. They invest in high fluctuation avenues compared with boomers, who more likely have a balanced portfolio with fewer fluctuations. 

That's how they got their millions.  

A lot of millennials owned company stock - a popular form of employee incentive of the last decade used by startups that couldn’t afford massive salaries for employees. Now, many of these startups have gone public in the past years making these original millennial stockholders millionaires. This is supported by the fact that there was a record surge in market debuts this year in the U.S., with 416 IPOs raising around $156 billion. 

Millennials were also one of the firsts to invest in technology and tech startups at a time when most VCs thought it to be a dangerous industry. In fact, a lot of the company stock owned by millennials were of tech companies of the early 2000s. Little did they know that in a decade, technology would pervade literally every industry. And then there were also those millennials who had simply put it all on Tesla and just held and held and held.

And millennials are once again the first to invest in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. 83% of millennial millionaires said they own cryptocurrencies. 

But this trend is now changing. 

Since the pandemic, many millennial millionaires have started structuring their financial planning after leaving companies with stock or after working at a start-up that is now going public. 

A majority of millennial millionaires (55%) say they plan to sell their company stocks in 2022 because of potential tax changes, according to the recent CNBC Millionaire Survey. They also say they will change estate plans (35%), sell real estate (26%), or make large gifts or donations (23%) for tax reasons, according to the survey. Clearly, they’re quite hassled with the recent tax changes.