Down Economy Business Advice
Forget the Job Search
Written by James Garvin for Gaebler Ventures
Unemployment keeps on rising, rising, and rising, with no real end in site. Even as the economy rebounds, available jobs usually languish behind the rest of the economy. These days, everyone knows someone unemployed, but rather than spending hours submitting job applications like everyone else, take that business idea that you've had for months now and make it happen, there's no better time.
It's true; there is no better time to start a business than when you're unemployed during a recession.
Finding a job that you want today can be like finding a needle in the haystack. You spend countless hours fine tuning your resume for the thousands of jobs that you apply for online, and you're lucky if you hear back from one of the employers or headhunters whom you've been trying to get in touch with for months now.
As you spend time searching for a job, you need to think about your opportunity costs. Your opportunity costs are the things you are giving up by spending your time searching for jobs. One of those opportunity costs might be focusing your energies and time on starting your own business. (See my previous article "The Opportunity Costs of Entrepreneurship" to see why time spent on your own business will pay off, no matter what.).
To use the popular quote "If only I got a nickel for every time I heard.....I wish I could start my own business". The hardest thing about starting a business is well; starting it. There are many reasons (or excuses) as to why individuals who say they want to start their own business don't. The biggest one being fear of the unknown and the uncertainty of what the future holds for them. There is no paycheck, no health insurance, and very little security. If you can put those aside and understand that your time can be better spent by building your own business, you are guaranteed to find a new drive within yourself to succeed that will likely never be found in your new job.
Entrepreneurship is a lot about finding yourself. You quickly understand your strengths, weaknesses, and what you're made of. It requires you to grow as a person, and strive for new goals in your life. It's not just about profits (although those are nice too). While not all new businesses succeed, the skills, knowledge, and personal satisfaction that you gain from trying, are second to none. I guarantee that employers will be much more impressed with seeing "Founder of..." on your resume rather than nothing during the 6 months you have spent searching for a job.
James Garvin began his education studying biotechnology. In recent years he has turned his interest in technology to helping two internet startup companies. The first business was an online personal financial network and the second was an e-marketing platform created to help entrepreneurs demo their web sites. Currently a student at University of California Davis, James is spending his summer incubating two new online businesses and writing about his entrepreneur experiences.
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