029 - Why now is a good time to reinvent yourself
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that something was terribly wrong. I was in my office talking with a team member about one of our projects, when my boss’ boss stuck his head in the door.
“Hey Lyn, can I talk with you for a minute?”
“Sure!” I pop up and follow him out into the hallway.
“We need to go downstairs.” He said as he headed briskly toward the elevators.
None of this was out of the ordinary, but today something seemed off about him.
“Are you okay? You don’t look like you are feeling well,” I said.
He looked at me, shook his head and said, “this is not going to be a good day.”
And then he said nothing else.
Right then, I knew he was walking me into the gallows.
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About 45 minutes later, a security guard escorted me to my car and retrieved my company badge. Laid off.
All I remember about that ride home was thinking, I never want to be in this position again. If there is a way to make a life running my own business, I have to find it.
And it seems that coming out of the pandemic, millions of Americans feel the same way.
Applications for the employer identification numbers that entrepreneurs need to start a business have passed 3.2 million so far this year, compared with 2.7 million at the same point in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“This pandemic is actually inducing a surge in employer business startups that takes us back to the days before the decline in the Great Recession,”
- John Haltiwanger, an economist at the University of Maryland who studies the data.
A new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), sponsored by Babson College and Baruch College, finds that 27 million working-age Americans, nearly 14%, are starting or running new businesses. And Millennials and Gen-Z are driving higher interest in entrepreneurship as 51% of the working population now believes that there are actually good opportunities to start companies.
Applications for new U.S. businesses are rising at the fastest rate since 2007.
And it doesn’t look to be slowing down. They are calling it the great resignation. A Microsoft survey says as many as 41% of workers are thinking of quitting their jobs.
What do all of these people know that you don’t?
This is a great time to reinvent yourself by launching a business or just rebranding yourself for a new career.
Here are five reasons why this is a great time to reinvent yourself.
You don’t need a lot of capital to start a business. With today’s technology, you can do most essential business functions from a cloud-based service or phone app. In fact, you can even start a capital-heavy by crowdsourcing it. People will pre-pay you and when you have raised enough money, you go make the product.
Security is no longer in a job. Just as I learned on that fateful morning, security doesn’t exist in corporate world. It is rare to hear of someone working at the same place for 30 years anymore. Seasons of retrenchment have cured that.
Side hustle is a thing. More and more people understand the culture of the side hustle. Bosses don’t frown as much as before when they find out you have another job. It’s almost expected.
People are starting to spend again. Coming out of the pandemic, people are starting to spend again. Many are anxious for travel and other connection experiences and are now budgeting and spending for them.
Business and branding skills are much easier to learn. I left my first job and hired a business coach because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I paid him a ton of money. Today, I could probably figure out most of it for a fraction. Now, I’m even teaching most of what I’ve learned — many the hard way — over the last 10 years.
If you have been thinking of reinventing yourself — either as a new business or positioning yourself for a new industry or change of career, you’ll want to pay attention to next week’s episodes. I’ll share some of the foundational approaches to establishing your authority in a new field.
