I outlined a set of expectations that I had when I launched my professional career several decades ago in my first posting on this topic several months ago. At that time I had the impression that:
- I could submit a resume and cover letter for an open position and someone would contact me on a timely basis if they are interested in scheduling an interview with me.
- I would have an opportunity to enter into a “contract with Corporate America”.
- The investments I would eventually make in real estate would be my golden nest egg for my retirement.
- My children would be able to embark on their own careers in their early 20s after earning college degrees.
- I could look forward to transitioning from working full-time into retirement and recreation when I reached my mid to late-60s.
During the past year I have been reflecting and resetting my expectations regarding professional career opportunities for many of us who are more senior in our career. As I argued in the first post, “The American Dream (Revisited): Reflections on Labor Day 2011”, I think that is essential that each of us take control over our destiny from a career perspective.
Reclaim control of your destiny
I embrace entrepreneurship and the power and influence of small and medium-sized businesses on our economy including delivering the innovations that enable our country to complete on a global basis. Based on my own professional career, I believe that small businesses offer the following advantages versus large corporate enterprises:
- Ability to maintain a long-term, strategic perspective on the overall business versus the distraction of focusing on quarterly earnings targets to appease the often unrealistic expectations of the financial market analysts
- Ability to stay nimble and agile by anticipating and responding quickly to changes in customer requirements, competitive threats, and economic challenges
- Ability to continuously focus on exceeding customer’s and your team’s needs versus dealing with distractions of internal political affairs
- Ability to consistently feel empowered to truly make a difference in the world
While many executives and senior level professionals may be sitting by their phones and checking their email Inbox several times a day praying that a corporate recruiter or human resources representative will contact them with feedback on the last 20 or 200 positions in which they have submitted resumes – other professionals have yielded to their entrepreneur dreams and have decided to take control of their own destiny by evaluating and launching new business ventures.
NOW IS THE TIME to evaluate launching your own new business, engaging in an early stage business, or investigating launching a proven business with a franchise, distributorship, affiliate, or licensing business model. Remember that there are numerous examples of successful companies today that were launched during a recession including Apple, Microsoft, HP, Trader Joe’s, Disney, CNN, FedEx, IBM, and GE to name a handful. Each of these corporations started as a small business.
NOW IS THE TIME to take control of your own professional career destiny. Embrace the reality that you do have career options and that you are ultimately empowered to make your own career decisions. While you are waiting for the phone to ring or for an email from a recruiter or hiring manager – I challenge you investigate options to fulfill your own dreams and aspirations through launching your own entrepreneurial business venture.
Included below are several dozen additional references as evidence of the new realities that executives are facing in the current decade.
Reality Check on the American Workplace in 2011
Unemployment and Underemployment in the US
· “Bank of America ... on Tuesday began the first phase of a massive layoff by handing out pink slips to an undisclosed number of employees in Charlotte. … The bank previously said it would cut 30,000 jobs companywide by the end of next year as it trims expenses and tries to improve its performance. It’s part of Project New BAC, Chief Executive Brian Moynihan’s efficiency initiative. The current phase of the project focused on the bank’s consumer-banking and support divisions. A second phase next year will focus on the investment-banking and capital-markets divisions. BofA hopes to slash $5 billion in annual expenses by 2013.” 3
· “Nokia Siemens Networks is slashing 17,000 jobs worldwide by 2013 — nearly 23 percent of its work force — as it strives to cut costs by euro1 billion ($1.35 billion). The world's No. 2 mobile infrastructure maker said Wednesday the measures are part of major restructuring to make the company more flexible and efficient as it struggles against new Asian rivals.” 8
· “Employers shed more jobs nationally through the first 11 months of this year than they did in all of 2010, according to global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. With one month remaining in 2011, job cuts for the year total 564,297, officially surpassing the 2010 year-end total of 529,973. The 11-month total is 13 percent higher than the 497,969 job cuts announced over the same period a year ago, CG&C said.” 36
· “Fewer U.S. companies expect to hire new workers in coming months, as business economists grow increasingly pessimistic about the overall economy’s growth in the coming year.” 26
· “Private-sector employment fell 5.2 percent during the first two years of the economic slowdown.” 9
· “Private-sector employment fell 4.2 percent in the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan statistical area during roughly the first couple years of the economic slowdown, according to federal data crunched by American City Business Journals.” 10
· “North Carolina has 290,200 fewer jobs than it did four years ago, before the Great Recession began” 27
· “The recession officially arrived in late 2007, but the manufacturing sector has endured recessionary conditions for much longer than that. U.S. manufacturing employment dropped every single year between 1997 and 2009, resulting in a net loss of nearly 6 million jobs. A weak recovery during the past two years has restored a tiny fraction of those positions, just 231,000 in all. The impact of this long-range downward trend is evident in the nation's 100 biggest markets. Ninety-nine have suffered net declines in manufacturing employment since the beginning of the recession.” 31
· “The number of unemployed workers in America's major metropolitan areas has doubled since the recession began in 2007. A total of 9.04 million persons in the nation's 100 biggest markets were on unemployment as of September 2011, the latest month for which official figures are available. That was 99.8 percent higher than the 4.52 million unemployed workers in those same metros in September 2007.” 32
· “Businesses in America's 100 biggest markets have reduced their workforces by 4.5 million employees since the onset of the recession in 2007.” 33
Living the American Dream with the Contract with Corporate America (Revisited)
· “Globoforce ,a provider of SaaS-based employee recognition solutions, says its latest Workforce Mood Tracker shows that more than a third of U.S. workers feel under appreciated and are looking for new jobs despite the state of the economy.” 19
· “According to the September 2011 survey, nearly half of all surveyed said they would leave their current job for a company that clearly recognized employees for their efforts and contributions.” 19
· “Seventy-one percent of American workers are "not engaged" or "actively disengaged" in their work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive. That leaves nearly one-third of American workers who are "engaged," or involved in and enthusiastic about their work and contributing to their organizations in a positive manner. This trend remained relatively stable throughout 2011.” 35
Living the American Dream by Finding the right Corporate Job (Revisited)
· “GE to accept 6,000 applications for 480 jobs”. 15
· “…older workers are losing their jobs at a faster rate than the overall labor force; and joblessness for them has more than doubled since the recession began almost four years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the longer they are out of work, the harder it is for people over 55 to find something new. Government figures for August showed that younger job seekers had been without work for nine months on average; for older workers, the duration was roughly a year. "It's always been harder for older workers to find jobs, but it's much more difficult now," says Sara Rix, senior strategic policy adviser at AARP. Many think they may never work again. Given the choice, older workers have been opting since the 1980s to delay retirement, either for financial reasons or because they like working. But downsizing and layoffs are forcing scads of them into retirement before they are ready.” 22
· “An unprecedented rise in the number of Millennials struggling to find work has taken place between 2008 and 2009, the International Labor Organization report states, rising 4.5 million in that time. The global total is now at 75 million, with an unemployment rate of 12.7 percent.” 24
Living the American Dream through Home Ownership (Revisited)
· “Facing these burdens, the American Dream is undergoing stark changes, with fewer people choosing to buy homes and more young people postponing their own independent lives. The census data showed about 14.2% of all young people ages 25 to 34 are still living in their parents' homes this year, compared to about 11.8% before the recession began in 2007.” 13
· “The home-buying season was a bust. March through August are typically the peak buying months. But this time, Americans bought fewer new homes in that stretch than in any other six-month period since record-keeping began a half-century ago. And sales of previously occupied homes didn't fare much better. They nearly matched 2009's total for the peak buying months. And that was the worst since 1997. Combined, total sales this spring and summer were the weakest on records dating to 1963. The figures underscore how badly the housing market is faring and suggest that a recovery is years away” 14
Living the American Dream through Retirement (Revisited)
· “Eighty is the new 65… Americans are prepared to work longer in order to save enough for retirement, according to a survey by Wells Fargo & Co. About 74 percent expect to work in retirement, according to the survey, with about 39 percent working because they’ll need to and 35 percent because they want to. And 25 percent of those surveyed said they expect they’ll need to work until at least age 80 because they don’t have sufficient savings.” 4
· “A quarter of middle-class Americans are now so pessimistic about their savings that they are planning to delay retirement until they are at least 80 years old -- two years longer than the average person is even expected to live. It sounds depressing, but for many it's a necessity. On average, Americans have only saved a mere 7% of the retirement nest egg they were hoping to build, according to Wells Fargo's latest retirement survey that polled 1,500 middle-class Americans”. 5
· “Share of small-business owners who plan to retire before 65: 25%. Portion who don’t plan to retire: 17%.” 11
· “8,000 Boomers turn 60 each day in the US. Yet two-thirds of boomers in the US expect to work past age 65. The boomer generation is delaying retirement age bay an average of nine years, up from five years in 2008.” 12
· “It's official. The first decade of the 21st century will go down in the history books as a step back for the American middle class.” 13
· “Last month, 88% of 800 registered voters said they were concerned about maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement, up from 73% last year, says a national poll out Thursday by Americans for Secure Retirement (ASR).” 21
· “As recent college graduates scramble to find full-time jobs, numerous parents are helping their children pay bills or letting them live at home again. About 59% of parents provide or recently provided financial assistance to children aged 18 to 39 who weren't students, concluded a May survey of nearly 1,100 people by the National Endowment for Financial Education. According to Census data, 5.9 million Americans between 25 and 34 years of age—nearly a quarter of whom have bachelor's degrees—live with their parents, a significant increase from 4.7 million before the recession. But many parents can't afford the extra expense. A full 26% of those polled by the nonprofit group took on more debt to help their offspring, 13% delayed a planned life event such as a home purchase, and 7% postponed retirement.” 34
Reality Check on the Prospective Business Opportunities in 2011
Importance of Entrepreneurs and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the US
· “…the recovering economy is ripe for new startups, but successful startups are more about the right person, than the right idea or the right climate. … If a few of these reasons are calling your name, now is the time to start building your business. There’s no better time, especially if people around you are hesitating due to an apparent fit to my other list. It means you’ll be facing a lot less competition. What are you waiting for?”. 1
· “It isn’t the idea that’s paramount when it comes to investing in tech startups, says Jason Caplain, general partner with Southern Capitol Ventures. Management is paramount, he says, adding, “A great team wins.” 2
· “Many people in our workplaces today feel left out and out of control, even though they are the key to success. People take care of what they own. If they own the work practices and processes in their workplace, they will not only take care of them, they will excel. Energy will go up. Quality will go up. Morale will go up. If we create a workplace fit for the human spirit, we will not only get their heads and hands engaged, we will get their hearts.” 6
· “…telecommuting just makes good business sense. It’s clear that many other employers agree. Nearly 3 million Americans work principally from home (not including those who are self-employed), according to a study released earlier this year by the Telework Research Network”. 7
· “The Intuit Small Business Employment Index released today indicates that ‘small businesses created 55,000 new jobs in September.’ This, the company reports, equates to a 3.3 percent annualized rate of employment growth at companies with between 1 and 19 employees. Moreover, small business employment has been growing for nearly the past two years. Since November 2009, Intuit’s data show that businesses with fewer than 20 workers added 735,000 new employees.” 16
· “The idea that we accomplish work mainly by organizing people to show up together at the same central office or factory at the same time five days a week for a certain amount of pay and benefits is in steep decline. We now stand at the gates of what policy expert Andrei Cherny calls "Individual Age Economics." 17
· “There's only one way out. We have to compete. We have no choice but to make ourselves into the labor service providers that are in demand in the new marketplace. We won't be employees. We'll be small, focused company founders. Free agents. Mini-preneurs. The Individual Economy will require more technological skills and more individual initiative. It will require creativity and innovation. It will require people who hate selling anything to anyone — ever — to work hard to sell themselves and their capabilities to individuals and companies who need them.” 17
· “The angel investor market in Q1,2 2011 showed signs of stabilization since the 30% market correction in the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2009. Total investments in Q1,2 2011 were $8.9 billion, an increase of 4.7% over Q1,2 2010, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. A total of 26,300 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in Q1,2 2011, a 4.4% increase from Q1,2 2010, and the number of active investors in Q1,2 2011 was 124,900 individuals, virtually unchanged from Q1,2 2010. The increase in total dollars and the matching increase in total investments resulted in a deal size of $338,400 in Q1,2 2011, comparable to the deal size in Q1,2 2010 of $337,300.” 21
· “Investments for U.S. startups gained to nearly pre-recession investment levels in the third-quarter, a sign the economy may be improving. Investors put $8.4 billion into 765 deals for U.S.-based venture companies during the third quarter, a 29 percent increase in investment and an 8 percent hike in deals compared to the same period last year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The median amount raised for a round of financing during the third quarter was $6 million, up from the $5 million median a year earlier.” 25
· “Women in the 21st century are a powerful growth engine for small business America with growth in women-owned businesses actually outpacing national business growth over the past 14 years. An overwhelming 99 percent of businesses run by women are small businesses. With the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics projecting that female-owned businesses will generate up to 57 percent of small business jobs between 2009 and 2018, women in small business are showing no sign of slowing down.” 18
· “…the number of women starting companies has doubled over the past three years” 23
· “Entrepreneurs and creators used Kickstarter to raise $8.8 million in September, and these 50 projects exceeded their goals by the most.” 28
· “Nearly all of the businesses in the United States are small businesses. A total of 6.98 million private-sector businesses are located within the nation's 938 metropolitan and micropolitan areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And 6.82 million of them -- 97.7 percent -- have fewer than 100 employees, meeting the definition of a small business.” 29
· “There has never been a better time to do business in the United States than right now,” … There’s never been a better time because the big boys aren’t investing. This is the biggest opportunistic market in our lifetimes.” 37
Franchise Business Opportunities
· “Did you know that franchise businesses provide the nation’s workforce with nearly 10 million jobs? Did you know that they produce goods and services worth an estimated $802 billion? Did you know there are nearly a million franchise businesses in the United States?” 30
Sources
7 Out of sight: When should a company allow its employees to work from home?, Entrepreneur Magazine, December 2011
18 Women Flex Big Muscle in Small Business, Intuit Blog, Monica Appelbe, 13-Sep-2011
23 Women 2.0: Number Of Women Founders Doubled Over Past Three Years, TechCrunch, Sarah Perez, 18-Oct-2011
25 Startup investments rise in third quarter, Phoenix Business Journal, Jennifer Johnson, 21-Oct-2011
29 Almost 98% of all businesses are classified as small businesses, The Business Journals, 02-Nov-2011
32 Number of unemployed workers has doubled since recession's onset, The Business Journals, 10-Nov-2011
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