Market Data 
- Grant Sabatier believes there’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.
- Building a business is less risky now with lower barriers and democratized knowledge.
- He recommends starting with building skills around AI.
If you haven’t started a side business or built a secondary income stream, Grant Sabatier wants you to reconsider.
“We all know that no jobs are secure,” the investor, author, and creator of Millennial Money told Business Insider. Why not put your future in your own hands?
Plus, it’s an excellent time to get into the business of business.
“There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur,” Sabatier declares in his latest book “Inner Entrepreneur,” which he describes as a blueprint he’s designed, having launched seven businesses, acquired three, and sold one.
BI spoke to the entrepreneur, whose latest venture is an independent bookstore he opened in the Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, about why the time is ripe for entrepreneurship and what businesses he would build if he had to start from scratch.
The barriers to entry have never been lower
It’s a lot easier and cheaper to start a business in 2025 than ever.
“Before, you had to really stop and figure out everything and maybe apprentice or put down a lot of money and take a big risk,” said Sabatier. “But now there are just so many blueprints available and so many ways to learn. Really successful entrepreneurs are sharing a lot more than they ever have, so as knowledge has been more democratized the barrier is just a lot lower. You can evaluate a business idea with a lot more information than you ever could have before.”
In fact, one of the biggest misconceptions about entrepreneurship is that it’s “super risky,” he said. “I argue that having a full-time job, in many cases, is often riskier than having a business that you built yourself. Because, at least with your own business, you can control more of the variables than if you’re working for someone else.”
It’s also cheaper to start and scale a business than it ever has been. If you’re starting with consulting, which is how Sabatier began his entrepreneurial journey, “you really don’t need much money at all,” he said. “You might need a website, which you can now put up using AI for like $15, and you can set up social media profiles for free.”
What he would do if he had to start from scratch in 2025: Lean into AI
Until Sabatier opened Clintonville Books, which he considers “more as an investment in my neighborhood and in my happiness than as a capital investment,” he had exclusively built and scaled online businesses.
If he lost everything and had to start over in 2025, “I would definitely learn how to build different AI agents and use them to code software products and different AI tools,” he said — and he predicts it would be easier to get started than it was in 2010 when he got laid off from his 9-to-5 and tried entrepreneurship out of necessity.
“I had to learn how to build websites from scratch. You can now use AI to learn how to build websites, and within a few hours, you can build a simple platform and then build a tool that ideally has a subscription component to it.”
If launching an AI company feels daunting, a more manageable first step is to learn about artificial intelligence, how it works, and how you can leverage it.
“Skills are future currency. Skills are ultimately what allow you to adapt and build resilience, and, as we know, the world’s just changing faster than ever,” he said, emphasizing that if he were to add one skill to his repertoire today, it would be AI. “Do your best to stay up to date on it. It’s impossible to keep track of everything, so try to pick a lane and spend a couple of hours a week experimenting with the tools just so you can have a conversation and you can stay relevant.”
It’ll also be helpful in a corporate setting if you’re job hunting.
“More recruiters and companies are going to be adding those questions about AI fluency and experience to their interviews and screenings,” he said. “The more you know about it and the more well-versed you are, the more attractive of a full-time job candidate you are, so it’s just as useful in your full-time job hunting as it is pursuing entrepreneurship.”
