Taking Ownership Of Your Career

Originally Published in Forbes May 27, 2020: “Why Now Is A Good Time To Take Ownership Of Your Career” by Terry Powell, Visionary Founder of The Entrepreneur’s Source®.
If there is a bright spot in the business world, it may be found in the self-sufficiency offered through franchising.
When COVID-19 quickly spread across the United States in March, our daily routines changed almost overnight. While adapting to stay-at-home orders, many individuals have been using the additional time around the house in productive ways, such as catching up on reading, tackling repair projects or learning a new skill. This should also be a time to take stock of your career and reinvent yourself.
There are some great examples of how people have all been able to adapt to this new situation, largely through technology and creativity. Many couples are still getting married, albeit with guests watching from laptops or from a far distance. People are still buying and selling homes, carefully, of course. Kids are still working on schoolwork at home, and virtual high school graduations are being planned.
Despite the circumstances our country is facing right now, there are still many reasons to feel optimistic about your future and your career. While we have been forced to make temporary changes to our lifestyle, we don’t have to put our lives on hold. As many people have altered their routines and are now spending more time at home, this is the perfect time to take stock of your career and reinvent yourself.
History suggests that this is a good time to start something new.
As we all try to navigate through this current situation, it can be instructive to look back into the past. The Great Depression (1929-1939) seems like the absolute worst time to start a business, but a lot of success stories began then. Just a few of them include:
- Publix Super Market: The supermarket chain was founded on September 6, 1930, almost a year after the Great Depression began. It’s a pretty interesting story. The founder, George W. Jenkins, was a store manager at a Piggy Wiggly. When the chain started struggling, he quit and took $1,300 that he was planning on using to buy a car and put it into Publix. When he died in 1996, it was a $9 billion company. Now its estimated worth is $38 billion.
- E. & J. Gallo Winery: The family winery began in 1933, when the Great Depression was well underway. It’s now worth almost $10 billion.
- Westin Hotels & Resorts: Founded in 1930.
- Clark: Now operating gas stations in 32 states, the company started in 1932.
- Meijer: Popular in the Midwest, the department store began in 1934.
And while the franchise industry was in its infancy, I’d be remiss to point out that in the 1930s, White Castle was doing very well, probably because its 10-cent hamburgers were just what an impoverished nation needed.
As long as someone has ambition and enthusiasm, there’s no reason they can’t make a career change at any time and become very successful.
You may have more free time than you’re used to.
A lot of people joke on social media about all the free time they have while being at home. That may or may not be true for you, but if you do have extra time, these months in some ways may be a gift.
Turn off the news, block out all the outside noise and focus on the opportunity you have with your free time to reassess your career and what you want to get out of it. After all, you may finally now have the time to really educate yourself, become aware and discover what your Career 2.0 might look like. There are all sorts of things you can do to move forward if you think about it. A lot of career-building is spent at a computer and in your home, anyway.
You are more powerful and ambitious than you realize.
Either the threat of this pandemic will eventually be minimized or the virus is going to stick around. Regardless, we will probably have to coexist with this virus for a while. Meanwhile, a lot of us are going to look back on how we spent this time and wonder if we put our time to its best use. Baking bread, reading books, organizing the family album, appreciating your family — those are all things that feed the soul and are excellent ways to spend time. But so is thinking about and planning for the future.
It doesn’t matter what point in history you are living. Pandemic or not, your career goals are still going to happen … if you want them to.
If you’re ready, to become empowered, and not just employed, while really defining your Income, Lifestyle, Wealth and Equity™ (I.L.W.E.™) goals, The Entrepreneur’s Source® wants to talk with you. Just click on this link https://entrepreneurssource.com/contact.html to get started.
Share this post:
Related Posts
Your Trusted Resource for Career Ownership Coaching™ for helpful hints, best practices, anything related to career ownership.
When Desperation Meets Deception:
How Job Scammers Prey on Your Career Dreams (And How to Build Something Real Instead) The message arrives just when you need it most. After months of rejection, finally someone wants YOU. The salary is perfect. The role is remote. They found your LinkedIn profile “impressive.” Your heart races as you read about the fantastic…
The New Workplace Dictionary:
8 Terms That Prove Your Job Isn’t What It Used to Be. Remember when a job was just a job? You showed up, did your work, got paid, and went home. Now, the very fabric of the workplace is changing, and you need a dictionary to understand what’s happening. If you’ve heard coworkers mention ‘quiet…
When the Job Search Becomes a Marathon:
The Six-Month Mark That Changes Everything If you’ve been searching for work for months with nothing to show but automated rejection emails and ghosted interviews, you need to know something: this isn’t about you not being good enough. The game has changed, and the old playbook is no longer practical. More than one in four…