Four Keys to Creating your Job
By Javier MunozPosted on: November 15, 2010
2 comments so far (is that a lot?)
I recently posted on my Facebook status:
If you can’t find a job, create one…
Then, I thought: Not finding a job should not be the only motivation to create one. Now days, if you want to create the most value, the best way is for you to create… your own job. In previous posts, we touched on how tuning to what you love and defining a meaningful purpose are fundamental when deciding to create your own job. The following are four additional keys to creating your job:
Discover your unique expression
The Kauffman Entrepreneurial Activity report shows that entrepreneurial activity has risen to its highest rate in 14 years – meaning that it has been even higher than during the 1999-2000 technology boom. The recession has been the best stimulus to get people to express their creativity. However, this also means that as an entrepreneur, you will have to address the increased competition. How?
Before starting your career as a solopreneur or small business owner, you must address what is uniquely useful or attractive about your offering. Although high quality products and services with great customer services are key, they have become expected. Reflect on how your project will be unique and unrepeatable. The most seemingly mundane of activities can be reinvented to provide its own dimension of value, emotion, and humanity.
Your unique expression compounds your interests, experiences, strengths, skills, passions, values, and objectives. Have you realized that you are the best at expressing your unique combination of gifts? No one can do it for you. You manifest your unique expression every day, but do you embrace it as such? Since by definition your uniqueness can’t be conventional, you must be prepared to meet some resistance. Don’t be afraid of running against convention, surrender to your nature, and flow with it. Take for instance Hunter Doherty Adams, M.D. best know as Patch Adams. He expresses his ideals about alternative health care by bringing together all his life experiences in a unique (non-conventional) expression that is truly meaningful and valuable to many. Create your unique expression playfully – don’t treat this advice as a marketing strategy – it is your divine and authentic expression waiting to be expressed freely.
Test your value proposition
Once you know how your project is uniquely useful, you must test it to confirm your hypothesis. Not matter how wonderful your unique vision is, you cannot create it in a vacuum. You must create it in an ecosystem that must welcome your expression if you want it to live on. Business people call this ecosystem a market, a term that I find dehumanizing and one-dimensional specially in our current relationship driven economy. You test your hypothesis whether it is for a product or service, by running surveys, building functional prototypes, starting pilot tests, engaging in conversation with a well-defined base of potential clients. Keep your product or service simple and offer it quickly for sale to assess response. The feedback that you get will improve your offering while keeping your risks and your development cost low. Writing your own blog, listening to people in your industry (in Twitter and LinkedIN) and engaging with them will provide you with valuable insights.
Package your Unique Expression Professionally
After defining and testing your unique expression’s value proposition, you have to package it professionally. Whether it is a store, a book, a course, a seminar, an invention, or any other creative expression, you must watch the quality of the packaging as much as its content. Packaging is one of the first means you use to validate others. Offering great packaging, means that you are committed to this activity even if you are new to it. You are not an amateur looking to build a business, but a professional with a serious intention for quality building your credibility. Even the question of how to package your unique expression is a useful one when discovering what aspects of your experience could be of value to others. In what format would your know-how be more helpful? Should you package your expertise as a book, as a DVD course program, as a membership web-site, as an iPhone application, or all of the above?
Do the highest value creating action first
What is the highest value producing action or activity that you could do right now? I am not talking about tomorrow or in the course of three months, it is now! I am certain that it is not reading this post! Two equally time consuming actions could have two different value creating consequences: One action could imply a definite departure from your current life and the other could reaffirm your current situation. In the end, your irrepressible urge will drive which decision you make. My only advice is: Take action, discover and express the guru you have within and don’t look back… Please post your comments below on how you are creating your job today and give hope to those in transition.
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November 16th, 2010 at 22:36
I believe that timing is everything. Two years ago I started my own production company booking music events in the East and North Bay California. I was also working at Whole Foods to help pay the bills. Progress was moving slow. So my friend tells me I should look into Just Action. Two days later I let go of my job at Whole Foods and I’ve been able to focus on being a music producer for 3 days straight now. It’s amazing the doors that are opening up for me and my business, now that I am not distracted with the job that “pays the bills”. I’m focusing on what I love and what I know is my mission in life. The creative flow is almost unexplainable. Entertainment must go on! “The time that we live in, makes it easy to give in, but it won’t do you no good.” -Eric Lindell
November 17th, 2010 at 18:34
Hi Samuel,
I appreciate your kind comment! You mention that doors are opening up for you and for your business… Some times there are synchronistic events that cannot be explained. They probably do happen all the time, but we DON’T pay attention because we are distracted with other things that don’t add to your mission. Attention is the key, but with a constructive attitude as context. Keep on playing and let me know when you get to the end of the 4th Bit. The following advanced bits get into personal energy and the necessary resources to overcome adversity.
Just Action!