The second season of Main Street Business Insights, a podcast featuring the stories of downtown and neighborhood entrepreneurs, launched today with an episode featuring predictions for small business trends in 2024. Every Wednesday for the next 11 weeks, tune in wherever you get your podcasts as host Matt Wagner, MSA's Chief Program Officer, takes a deep dive into the personal journeys of Main Street entrepreneurs and the leaders that support them. 

Launched in August 2023, the first season of Main Street Business Insights featured downtown and neighborhood entrepreneurs, highlighting the innovative ways Main Street business owners have overcome adversity and the advice they have for others on how to keep their businesses on track. In our second season, we'll widen our lens to cover macroeconomic trends, share advice from the community leaders, and feature economic development and small business marketing experts. 

Of course, we'll also continue to take deep dives into the personal journeys of entrepreneurs – this season, focusing in on overarching issues that small business owners grapple with that are too often overlooked, such as loneliness and burnout, digital marketing and AI, and more. 

Today's episode focuses on economic, societal, and technological trends that Matt believes will impact the work of Main Street leaders and the businesses we seek to nurture and support. Given the topics and guests coming up in Season 2, this episode is meant to lay out the issues, trends, and shifts that our business owners are likely to experience in the coming year.   

Matt breaks down his predictions from last year – the misses, the wins, and a push prediction from 2023. Plus, he uses data, stories, and anecdotal evidence to make his six predictions for the coming year. 

Listen to the new episode here – or wherever you find your podcasts. You can also watch an accompanying video breakdown of the episode to get extra insights through data visualizations, photo examples, additional case studies, and more. And as always, we encourage you to rate, review, and subscribe to get updates every time a new episode drops.