|
|
 Volume 8, No. 2 |
February 17 , 2009 |
 |
|
|
The Accidental Entrepreneur
It’s important for me to get out of the office on a regular basis and talk with groups of people who, in the neat language of business jargon, are part of a statistic called “job churn,” the movement of people in and out of the labor market. Right now, churn—which suggests violent splashing—is making us all feel like we’re traveling on very rough seas and producing a lot of queasiness. Although I regularly see individual clients in career transition who often feel as if they are in a small boat in an ocean of uncertainty, I find being in the company of a group of people who have given up an evening or Saturday morning to attend one of my presentations a very different experience.
It is more like riding the subway or a bus rather than driving my own car. When I use mass transit, I’m just another passenger sharing a journey with others from one stop to another. It’s no longer the other drivers and me in our separate vehicles en route to different destinations. We’re all in it together, which is exactly how it feels when I step into a library meeting room, community center or church hall and start to talk informally with people who have come to hear me speak. And, just like the subway, I never know who will sit down next to me or how my world will expand as a result. Such was the case a few weeks ago when I met an attractive middle-aged woman at one of my seminars who claimed she already knew me. “My ex-husband gave me Armchair Traveler or Traveling Armchair? The woman I met at the seminar has embarked on a journey of her own kind, to self-employment, but I don't know whether her trip will really be an adventure, one that enlarges and expands her, or if she will be as unchanged by the experience as Macon Leary is by his. Most career books these days are like the travel books Macon Leary writes in that they are targeted expressly for people who are looking for the comfort and security of a job, not a ticket to the strange and scary world of entrepreneurship. In my book, But the decision to strike out on one’s own does not guarantee a successful turnaround to entrepreneurship. People who start a business “by default” because they have run out of other options often set out simply to create a job for themselves and do not fully engage in recreating themselves—while entrepreneurs dream of business startups, "accidental entrepreneurs" dream of the safety and comfort of a job. There is a huge difference between going through the motions, as Macon Leary does, and being willing to be touched by new experiences, even when they make you feel vulnerable and challenge you to grow into a new identity. Real Transformation 1. Be there. Though it is hard to stay in the discomfort between a neatly orchestrated professional life and an uncertain future you have to create for yourself, the experience has something to precious to offer you. Becoming a consultant offers the promise of getting more satisfaction out of your work, having more choices about how you live, and building a new kind of economic security, one based your capacity to generate work, not a dependence on others to provide it. 2. Find safe people and places where you can give voice to your vulnerability and be supported in it. Macon Leary starts to find a new way of being in the world when he is finally able to unburden himself to another person. The same kind of breakthrough can happen for someone who has experienced job loss when she sees she are not alone. 3. Learn as much as you can about how to run a business. Take courses (they are generally available for very little cost), talk to people at organizations that support entrepreneurial initiatives (Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, the Small Business Administration). Get to know other people who are in startup mode and meet regularly with them. It’s like learning a foreign language—immersion is the best way. 4. Offload attitudes which no longer serve you well, especially resistance to change. In his suitcase, Macon always carries protection from surprise—a book to read to avoid talking to the person sitting next to him on the plane, packets of spot removal to avoid using hotel cleaning services, and a list of restaurants to assure that “a meal in London isn’t much different from one in Cleveland.” It is only when he chooses to leave his “baggage” behind and stumble ahead without all the false symbols of safety that have defined his life to date that we know he’s taken a huge step to being more fully alive. We all carry baggage of one sort of another and I, of course, have no way of knowing what my friend the “accidental entrepreneur ” may need to release to make the next phase of her career more richly rewarding and fulfilling. I do know, however, that “a trip become a journey after you’ve lost your luggage” and becoming an entrepreneur is a journey.
Center News
Find out more about the program by going to www.windnetworking.net or call 617-325-4521.
SmartStart Workshop
PO Box 156, 40 Oak Leaf Rd
Our long-term relationships with clients, recognition by peers, and growing reputation as a community resource speak to the excellence of the services we provide and our commitment to making the world of work a better place for all. Stick illustrations by Eloise Morley. Copyright © 2009 |
|
|
Find out more about Beverly’s new book,
Buy Online Securely
Share this newsletter with a friend
For Email Marketing you can trust
Transition is the process of letting go of the way things used to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become. Transition is the way that we all come to terms with change. Without transition, a change is mechanical, superficial and empty. If transition does not occur or if it is aborted, people end up mentally and emotionally back where they started. We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of the piece of ourselves that we have to give up when and because the situation has changed. The Way of Transition
The new world is not so much made up of small-businesses-growing-large as it is made up of micro businesses that are meant to be successful and lucrative, but are not necessarily intended ever to become big businesses. They aren’t meant to grow because they are meant to capitalize on the opportunities of being small and simple. They are one-person atoms, or one-or-two-person-plus-a-couple-of-support-people molecules. Creating You & Co
|
|
On March 5, Beverly will be the featured speaker for 
