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Create Your Own Job - Don't Take Being Laid-Off Lying Down Okay, you have been laid-off. The question is, what are you going to do about it? I was in the same boat some years ago. Let me tell you how it was for me and how my wife and I survived. It was the spring of 1982. I had just gotten married the previous August and was working as a mud (sales) engineer for Dresser Magcobar in the oil fields in Mississippi. Not only was I supporting my own household, I was also paying the house note for a house I had bought for my Mom and Dad a few years before when my Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and was fired from his job because the company he worked for didn't want to pay increased insurance premiums. I knew the oil field was slowing down, but I figured I was going to be OK. I had a lot of experience and had always been able to find another job with one or two phone calls so I was not worried. One day my Boss, Joe, called me into his office. I didn't have a clue what was up but I did notice that Joe had tears in his eyes. It was just about all he could do to tell me that I was being laid-off along with most of the rest of the staff (within two months our branch office was closed and everyone, even Joe, was laid-off). Joe was one of the nicest guys I have ever known and the best boss I have ever had. I think having to lay off employees was even harder on him than it was on us--and it was incredibly hard on us. Covington County, where my wife and I lived at the time, is in rural Mississippi. I don't know what the official unemployment rate was there then, but about half the men in the county worked in the Oil Field. The school teachers, shopkeepers, farmers, and folks that worked for the state government had jobs, as well as did a few truck drivers, but most of the truck drivers hauled for the oil field and were laid off too. Of 153 working-age people, who I, or my wife, knew during the early fall of 1982, 74, or 48%, were laid-off. Even during the Great Depression, only one in four (25%) did not have a job. I had a headache for three days after I was laid-off. I think it was from plain old worry. Then I got busy. I sent out slightly over 1000 resumes and cover letters all over the country. Out of 1006 well-written resumes and cover letters printed on expensive paper, I received--are you ready for his--absolutely zero responses. And I had lots of experience and great recommendation letters. When that didn't work, I ran up a $332 phone bill calling every company I could find a phone number for and asking for a job. I didn't even get an offer of a single interview. I then got in my pickup truck and drove around much of the southern part of the country and knocked on doors. Over a three-week period, until my money ran out, I knocked on the front door of about two hundred companies in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, and southern Pennsylvania. Again, I received not even a single offer of an interview. I was stunned. This was how I had been taught to find a job and it simply was not working. I drove back to Mississippi and made it home with a couple of gallons of gas in the truck and less than a dollar in my pocket. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no money left and no income at all, not even unemployment. Times weren't just bad--they were horrible. After a few more miserable days, I simply got mad. I was determined that I was going to do whatever it took, within the boundaries of the law, to take care of my family. I read a few business books, but they didn't have any answers. I talked with a number of local businessmen, but they didn't have any answers either. Most of them were struggling as well. Then one day I figured out a way to create my own job. Here is a summary of what I did to create my own job: *First I came up needs that people might pay to have filled that I thought I had the skills to do *Then I estimated the market size for each idea *I figured out how to advertise to the markets *I came up with a unique selling advantage *I figured out how to get any tools I didn't have that I needed to do the work *I calculated whether I could pay myself out of the proceeds *Then I chose a potentially profitable idea that was fast to implement and got busy A week later I got my first check for services rendered. Some time after that I realized that everything was going to be all right after all. That was one of the best days of my life. You can create your own job for yourself too. It is not nearly as hard as searching for a job, and is a lot more fun. There isn't room in this brief article to tell you everything I did, but I hope my story sets you on fire to create a job for yourself. I did it with no money and I believe you can too--and probably a lot faster than I did. If you want more details on every step of how I created my own job, please visit http://www.docspress.com. If you sign up for the Doc's Press mailing list, you will get coupons from time to time good for 25% off on new releases.
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