How to Feel like a Genius

When was the last time you were in an Apple Store?

 Even if you aren’t a Mac owner, (and if you aren’t, you don’t know what you’re missing) check out your local Apple store. 

There are few retail stores where the staff seems to be having so much fun. Note the t-shirts on the Genius Bar staff:  “I could talk about this stuff all day.” Their genuine enthusiasm makes it obvious that they love what they do.  Can you imagine feeling like that about the way you spend your work day? I can- because I do and so do most of my self employed friends and you can too. In fact, when you’re doing the work you were born to do, you don’t even differentiate between work time and playtime because when you love what you do it’s seamless.  Now if you’re thinking that your friends and family will find you boring if you talk about your business so much, you’re hanging out with the wrong people. Start surrounding yourself with entrepreneurs and you’ll find the enthusiasm inspiring. Try it-gather up an unlikely group of happily self employed friends: an artist, a geek, physicists and a financial planner. Difficult to imagine this foursome having anything in common, right? But assuming they’ve all created work they love, even if their specific fields are foreign to one another, there’s a passion in the air so powerful you find yourself longing to feel what they feel. If you don’t feel like an Apple Genius, it’s time you start doing something you “could talk about all day.” 

Why a Recession is the Best Time to Start you Own Craft Business

Do your friends and family discourage you from starting your dream business “in this economy.”?  Is their reasoning that you’d be unwise to “leave the security of your job in a recession?”  I’d find that humorous if it weren’t so sad because,most likely, these naysayers have never been self employed and haven’t yet been victim to the mass layoffs of “valued employees”. In the present economy, the only secure job is the one YOU CREATE for yourself.

Yes, I do listen to the news. I know people are losing jobs and retailers are shutting their doors. And I also know that most of my self employed friends with small businesses are  reporting record breaking sales. Because when you’re self employed, you create your own economy. When something isn’t working , you can make changes quickly without the bureaucracy of a board of directors. On the corporate level, by the time reports are generated and changes approved, it is frequently too late. Too much has been lost. Not so in Read more

Lose Your Job, Find your Passion…and Financial Security

In an article in yesterday’s New York Times, reporters Matt Richtel and Jenna Wortham featured several twenty-something college grads who turned what could have been the misfortune of losing previously coveted jobs into an opportunity to make their own fortune. 

Truth be told, I don’t normally read the technology section-for me it would be like reading the Shanghai daily news (and not the English version), but the headline, “Weary of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own” obviously caught my attention. Being an avid self employment advocate, I thrive on any proof that entrepreneurs are more secure than employees. 

Richtel says that Alex Andon, a graduate of Duke University, was laid off last May from a biotech company. After months of looking for work, he started building jellyfish aquariums in his San Francisco apartment. Using new technology to keep the fragile jellyfish alive, he’s already sold some tanks, one to a restaurant for $25,000. He’s also selling desktop versions on his website. 

Four of Andon’s roommates have caught the entrepreneurial fever and started businesses of their own, including laminated, fold-out language guides for travelers. 

The Times article also mentions 25 year old Monica Zaminska who was laid by her PR firm and after meeting with several recruiters and sending out countless résumés, started a restaurant review website for food enthusiasts Zaminska says, “I love working so I made work for myself.”

While the headlines are filled with reports of Doom and Gloom, whether you have been laid off or are losing sleep over the next round of job cuts, you can either join the negativity or see this as the perfect time to get started on those entrepreneurial dreams. If you don’t have any idea what you’d like to do, you probably ought to spend an hour with a  life coach and unearth those interests. If you know what you love, but can’t see how you could possibly make a living doing it, or you know what it is you’d like to do but don’t know where to begin, send me an e-mail at themuse@inspiredlivelihoodcom. We’ll look at your idea and figure out how to make it happen. 

As one of Andon’s roommates, Erin Kitchell said, “This is a good a time as any to try something entrepreneurial. There’s not a lot of opportunity out there right now” (for jobs). And as the self-employment muse, I’m telling you, there sure are lots of opportunities out there to start your own little empire. 

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