The Authentic Eccentric

So, it’s taken about 7 weeks, but I have finally reached some clarity with where my life is leading me. I know - I am a slow learner.

The truth is, while I love what I do, I also love mentoring and helping others. Most of my clients don’t want to learn what I do - they want me to do it, hopefully better and faster than they could do it themselves. While there isn’t anything wrong with that, it leaves a major chunk of my skills and work satisfaction un-met. I’m not the type to accept that.

At the same time, I’ve been battling a growing sense of urgency to roll out my solution for sustainable self-employment to a larger audience that I can possibly reach via my consulting practice. I didn’t intend to use this platform and/or methodology for doing so, but I recently realized I wasn’t applying my own advice on launching ventures. For those of you who haven’t heard it from me before, it’s this - get started, now. Even if it isn’t perfect, moving forward is more important than waiting for all the pieces to come together.

So, I am going to use this blog to teach, mentor and support my visitors, colleagues and friends about readily available tools to create sustainable self-employment. This is a blog in progress; as I add content and resources I will also update these posts with appropriate links. Ideally, I will also alter the architecture and format of this site in the near future, but I think it is more important to get started than perfect.

So, we begin.

I don’t feel right spouting a bunch of “answers” without first laying out my perspective of why sustainable self-employment is a solution to some big, hairy problems facing our society.

My first concern was the rising number of disabled people. According to the 2004 N.O.D./Harris Survey of Americans with Disabilities, 54 million Americans (1/5th of our total population) are living with one or more life-altering disabilities. That may be you or someone you love; odds are that your live has been touched in some way by a disabled person.

The second problem I looked at was the affect of free trade on the middle-class. Globalization and increased trade has cost American jobs, especially in the manufacturing, service and information technology fields. Gartner, Inc., a high-tech forecasting firm, estimates that 10 percent of computer service and software jobs will be moved overseas by the end of 2004. A recent UC-Berkeley report projected that some 14 million jobs are ultimately at risk of being outsourced.

Obviously, globalization and disabled people aren’t unique to the U.S. - those are simply the fastest facts I had at hand. If you have updated and sourced data on other countries, please contribute them via our handy comments section to help visitors see the global perspective on these growing issues.

The third problem wasn’t a problem, it was actually part of the key. It’s the growing sense of a deep longing for meaning and purpose in our lives and professions; a growing desire for work that improves the condition of lives, instead of simply profiting off them.

The good news is that there are already answers and proven, tested solutions. What has been lacking is a clear roadmaps and guides; this site will provide both. In my next post, I’ll cover the key strategic points of what my colleagues affectionately call my “mad genius plan” and how it translates into a solution for anyone interested in gainful, meaningful self-employment.

If you are interested in getting updates when I post, you can either subscribe to our RSS feed or via Bloglet; both options are available on the navigation bar. I will be posting at least once a day although I suspect it will be much more frequently while I get the core concepts up for people to review.