Job
vs. Business: Risk Revisited
By
Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D. Author, Career Coach, Speaker
Many people
start a business to "be my own boss" or "find meaning in my
work." Yet increasingly I talk to clients who realize they
have few choices in the workplace.
Let's
say you join a company, degree in hand, at entry level. You
move up the ladder for fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five years.
Now you're a senior manager in your mid-forties or early fifties.
And your job is gone.
Or you've
established a high profile. You may be a politician, a senior
bank official or a broadcaster. Following your much-publicized
firing, you can't just show up on a corporate doorstep to
apply for a job. If you're not invited in, you'll be left
in the cold.
Despite
the siren call of business ownership, I find clients often
resist the idea.
"I just
want another job," they say. "With benefits."
Risk-averse
managers focus on the numbers: "Ninety percent of businesses
fail. Most don't last five years."
True.
But these days, your next job may not last five years. "Carlene,"
a fifty-year-old sales manager, lost her job following a merger.
A truly gifted salesperson and manager, she does not have
an entrepreneurial bone in her body. She held three jobs in
the next five years, all shaky, all a step down, all miserable.
She continues to haunt the headhunters.
Most people
who fit this profile also haunt the therapists and the pharmacists.
Being knocked down repeatedly can be hazardous to your mental
health.
There
are ways to reduce risk of business failure: plan carefully,
choose your market wisely, don't panic. You remain in control.
And if you fail, you've gained valuable lessons for the next
venture.
If you
are lucky enough to land in a job, use the opportunity to
begin planning your own venture. But don't kid yourself. Businesses
do not generate cash right away. But you might see money from
your business faster than you will see a new job.
Benefits
are hard to lose and society has not caught up to what Daniel
Pink calls the Free Agent Nation. We need legislation to support
those who start businesses following job loss, whether their
soul is entrepreneurial or corporate. For some of us, writing
to our senators may have longer-lasting benefits than writing
to personnel managers with resumes attached.
The days
of "a job to fall back on" are long gone. In the twenty-first
century, your safety net comes from what you can do on your
own.
It's a
hard lesson, and many resist. Yet nearly everyone says afterward,
"I wish I had done this years ago."
You go
through a tunnel, but you emerge stronger, firmer in purpose,
and ultimately happier. And you wish you could tell everyone
how you survived, and let them know that they can, too.
Cathy
Goodwin, Ph.D. Author, Career Coach, Speaker "When Career
Freedom Means Business" http://www.movinglady.com
- Ezine: http://www.movinglady.com/currnews.html
mailto:cathy@movinglady.com
505-534-4294
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