Get a Job by Thinking Like an Entrepreneur

The news is grim. So far over four million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession. People are being ousted from their jobs at rates comparable to the depression era with some predicting a whopping 9.4% unemployment rate for 2009.

With so many people flooding the market, competition is fierce; even for jobs that don’t pay well. Getting a job today will require a new way of thinking of things. It will require you to think like an entrepreneur.

Whether you realize it or not, you are an entrepreneur. Instead of selling candles or financial services, you are selling the knowledge and skills you have developed over the years to a business that needs them. And instead of doing contracted work for multiple clients like the average freelancer, you devote the bulk of your time serving only one client for several years.

While scary at first, this change in mindset is incredibly freeing. Why? Because it opens up avenues of opportunities that you may not have otherwise seen or pursued. Sure you can look for employment at another company in the same industry. But you can also change industries altogether simply by investing in a little education. You can even convert your knowledge and skills into a home based business, something I recommend highly.

Today I’m going to show you how to think like an entrepreneur and secure a job in this crazy economy.
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January Business Update

Let’s start the post out with what I did get accomplished in January.

The Plot Café was updated fairly regularly throughout the month thanks, in part, to reprint article directories. I would love to be able to produce original content for the site but there just is not enough time in my day at this moment. I was able to score three interviews with three wonderful fiction writers which you can read here, here and here and I have another two lined up.

I finally overhauled BloggingShed and got an original template on there.

The New BloggingShed

I felt a little bit like a fraud claiming to be a web designer and yet using a blog template designed by someone else. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. This month I’m going to work on getting The Plot Café overhauled (since yes I am using a template for that as well).

I also helped a friend set up her website. So really, I created two templates last month.

A couple of my articles on Ezinearticles were reprinted on other websites so I got a few backlinks for The Plot Cafe.

Now for the bad stuff.
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My Plan to Escape Rat Race Hell in 2009

A few days before New Year’s Eve, I wrote about two goals I wanted to achieve in the new year. One of those goals was to end 2009 working from home and bringing in a steady income of $577 per week (about $30,000 per year). I plan to do this by generating income from two websites that I own.

The first site is called BloggingShed. This site is going to be the one that brings in the majority of my income. BloggingShed is a blogger’s help site where I post tutorials for the various blogging software out there, talk about how to make money from blogging, how to market and promote your blog, discuss design and coding and make snarky comments about stuff I find on the internet.
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Entrepreneurial Inspiration

I am addicted to entrepreneurship. I dream of owning my own business but lack the self confidence to launch myself off that side of that cliff without being 100% certain that the parachute on my back will open. Which, of course, is impossible. Only two things in life are guaranteed. Death and taxes and with technology advancing at the speed of light, I’m not so sure about death.

I received the latest update email from an entrepreneur’s community I joined called StartUp Nation. In the email was a link to the web forum that listed ideas about starting a business. There were some really good ideas in there. As always, though, before getting involved with any of them, do your homework and make sure you are not involving yourself into some kind of scam.

If you don’t want to sift though pages and pages of posts there are a few sites that will provide you with ideas for starting a business such as:

Springwise

Iconoculture

Entrepreneur.com

For myself, I’ve decided to get involved, somehow, with technology. I love to cook and hope to open my own coffee shop/bakery one day but I thought about it more and decided that that’s something I want to do in my golden years after I’ve made my multi-billions in technology.

I’ve got an idea which still needs fleshing out a little more. The main thing I’m trying to work out is how much it is going to cost to get started and where the capital is going to come from. I want a debt free company so loans will be the very, very, very, very,very,very,very last thing I look at and I do not want my company to be publicly held so selling shares is out of the question. I have this fear that I will put a ton of work and effort into building the company and someone will come along and try to take it from me.

A friend of mine’s husband owned his own software company without loans or going public so I’m going to see how he did it.