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Technology is rapidly changing the face of work. In 2008, when the recession hit, I was in the middle of a doctoral program at Brown University. What I saw around me was concerning. The market crash was impacting all sectors of business, and the traditional structures of higher education were also falling apart.
Around me I saw many frustrated and confused people. From tenured professors to my undergraduate students, there was disillusionment with the direction of higher education. The younger generations were quickly adapting to the financial environment in their world, while seeing less and less value in the degrees they were pursuing and the careers that were not guaranteed.
I decided that instead of pursuing the limited options of a professorship in an institution where outcomes looked bleak, I would learn everything I could about online business and apply my skills to building an online business myself.
Here is the thing: I had no idea how much I needed to learn to develop my own business in this rapidly changing technological environment. I thought I could apply my intellectual skills to learning how the practice of business works. I thought it would be relatively simple. I was dead wrong.
In the face of a changing economy, more and more people are finding themselves with fewer opportunities for traditional jobs. Many are people that have developed phenomenal skills in their area of expertise. But without employers, they are stuck with a highly developed skill set and nowhere to apply it.
Over the last five years, since I left academia, I have dedicated myself to learning everything I could about how to build a solo entrepreneurship. Of all the challenges I have faced, this shift in mentality is the biggest one: marketing is everything.
The language of marketing can be complex if you allow it to be. I had to learn to look at things through what Shunryu Suzuki calls “beginner’s mind.” Which means I had to let go of all of the ideas I had about how I worked and how that related to other people.
Like many people, I was initially put off by the idea of marketing. I didn’t want to be seen as one of those people that is always “selling.” I had created negative associations with sales, and my traditional academic education had set me up to think that knowledge is power. It turns out that knowledge is only potential power. If you can’t bring your knowledge to the marketplace, it is just compiled information in the dusty warehouse of your brain.
The shift happened when I realized that in the marketplace you are only worth what you can bring to the needs and wants of other people. Of course, you can use your expertise to help people in thousands of ways, but first you have to know what they want. Marketing is the science of understanding people. Plain and simple.
In the years since I left academia I have learned how to help people focus their skills and talents to develop their own businesses as entrepreneurs. It has taught me a lot about how resilient, courageous, and persistent people can be. It has also taught me that anyone can build a successful business when they are willing to see the world through the eyes of the people they are serving.
One of the beautiful things about this technological age is that you can take anything that you love to do and turn it into a business. It is a question of finding the people that need it, learning their language, and adapting what you know or love to do to their need.
For the older generation to adapt and thrive in this new environment there has to be a shift from a job mentality to an entrepreneur mentality. When you have a job: you know the skills that you need, your work is brought to you, you do your work, you collect a paycheck. As an entrepreneur, you have to go out and find the people that need what you have to offer and deliver it to them. This is the challenge and the freedom of being an entrepreneur. The beauty of it is that the payoff can be much greater than what you would make in a conventional job.
This transition from a job mentality to an entrepreneur mentality is absolutely necessary for thriving in the future economy. With the right mentors and determination, anyone can make a massive leap forward in their financial status. So, if there is something you love to do, or have more skill at than anyone around you (and we all have at least one thing like that,) start asking people what they need in that area of their lives and think up solutions for them. Then offer your solutions. You could build a business sharing your skills in no time.
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