Start Your Own Small Business Now

I am writing this page about starting your own small business because I think that this is the only way you can take control of your life and your financial future.

At this very moment, hundreds of thousands of people are worried about losing their jobs and the financial consequences of such.

An increasing number of people have lost their jobs in each of the last few months.

Those who remain in their jobs are rightfully worried about losing their jobs because job losses are predicted to rise over the next year.

Last month there were:

3 million searches for manager jobs
1 million searches for director jobs
1 million searches for management jobs
3.3 million searches for sales jobs
1.5 million searches for retail jobs
1.2 million searches for accounting jobs
1.2 million searches for engineering jobs
1.2 million searches for customer service jobs
820,000 searches for finance jobs
673,000 searches for banking jobs
600,000 searches for media jobs
550,000 searches for insurance jobs

Is this a passing phenomenon that has come from a bad economic time?

I don't think so. Jobs have been steadily disappearing for the past 15 years.

In 1994 a landmark book was published entitled "Jobshift: How To Prosper In A Workplace". The author is William Bridges. He is a top management consultant. Prior to that, he had been a university professor.

In his book Bridges explained that 200 years ago the concept of a job did not exist. People did many different tasks to earn money.

It was only with the advent of the industrial revolution, that the concept of a job emerged. People were needed to perform fixed functions in a manufacturing assembly line. Following that came office jobs and management jobs to support and oversee the work on the assembly line.

Bridges argues that with the end of the industrial era will come the end of jobs as we know them.

Over the last 15 years, we have seen companies eliminate many of their support function jobs in HR, IT, Accounts, Travel Arrangements etc in favor of contracting with providers of these services on an outsourcing basis.

The US Department of Labor predicts that today's students will have held 14 jobs by the age of 38.

I suggest to you that the industrial era has ended. We are now living in a new era-the knowlege era.

In a nutshell, you need to be in business for yourself now. You need to start your own small business now.

Doesn't it make sense to act now and create financial security for you and yours by starting your own business?

In the 20 years that I have been an executive coach and a life coach, I have provided career guidance to countless managers who were seeking a change of career to stabilize their financial futures and provide them with the quality of life they wanted. In many cases the career change was driven by job insecurity. In some cases it was driven by long working hours and stress.

In virtually all cases, leaving employment and starting a business was explored. In many cases it was pursued; in some cases it was not.

As a result of my experience, I understand the challenges and the fears you face when considering such a career change. Perhaps the biggest is "better the devil I know than the devil I dont know" when thinking about how to make money to support your family.

The devil you dont know takes you into areas where you lack knowledge and experience. "Could I start my own business and make money at it? What type of business could this be? Could I run a business at home? Could it be an internet business? How do you start your own small business?"

Asking these questions is daunting. Answering them is even more daunting.

However the devil that you do know will increasingly offer you job insecurity, long working hours, and stress as time goes by.

Experience has taught me that there are 3 common denominator issues that you will most likely need to address to make the transition from working at your job to starting your own small business. They are:

1. The mind-set for entrepreneurial success
2. Finance
3. Ideas about business opportunities

The right mind-set is invariably the first in sequence and the most important. Without it, you may not take the first step - which is deciding to start your own small business.