Juwon Ladapo had it made. Or so he thought. A number of well – timed promotions at his Midwest Publishing company, W.C. Green, Ltd., had landed him comfortably in the role of Marketing Director of the Educational Books Division. Unlike many of his colleagues, Juwon tried to keep up with the latest changes in Information Technology. He entered data into spreadsheets to create colour graphs for budgets and expenses. His reports were created with professionally designed word processing templates. The dark mahogany desk, the 180-degree view of the Lagos Lagoon, and the over N300, 000: 00 worth of computer hardware and software in his office were testament to his success. Then it happened. A competitor develops an Information System that used advanced technology to deliver custom books to students on demand over the Internet. Caught without a competitive marketing strategy, sales at W.C. Green dropped dramatically. Driving home after losing his job, Juwon still could not figure out what went wrong.
Julie Nilar just wouldn’t quit. She too had a Marketing degree like Juwon, but decided not to pursue a traditional career right out of college. A nationally ranked bicycle racer, on graduating, she chose
to develop her cycling skills in international completion, maybe to be chosen for U.S. Women’s Olympic Road Team in the year 2000. To pay the bills she got a part time job as a marketing representative for Rolling Thunder Bicycles, a small Colorado mail order service providing custom-made bicycles to a national customer base. As international competition kept Julie away for a long period, she always took her laptop with her to keep in touch with the office. No stranger to information technology, one project she developed during these long absences was a powerful database application which kept track of Rolling Thunder’s suppliers, customers, and their orders.
This application became a powerful tool for Rolling Thunder and one which led to greatly increased productivity for the company.
It is easy to judge one of the two persons above as one being wise and right while we say the other is wrong. However, the same fate may well be the outcome of the two of them.
Many fall into the category of the gainfully employed that these two characters are in today, while many are not so gainfully employed. Whatever category you fall into, chances are that the same realities of today’s 21st Century workplace confront you. Thousands of jobs are being wiped out every day due to unstable economic indices, revolutionary applications wiping out entire industries and several companies falling in its wake, outsourcing of jobs by companies to save costs have become the order of the day, even the safety of savings in your retirement account cannot be guaranteed-that was a myth that went burst globally in 2008, and in Nigeria, retirement
pension savings is never safe from kleptomaniac beauracrats. Yet daily, employees go to work and there is the foreboding of the inevitable happening and you get booted out.
You know you should quit, you even want to quit, but you can’t just quit. You need to support yourself and you still need to support your family. You just can’t walk into your boss’ office and quit. No, you can’t afford to quit just like that...yet.
You think it is wise to invest in one business or the other and then quit. You wish you had done that a few years ago when things were still a little stable but you did not. The option of investing in a business you can run which had potentials to grow is indeed very attractive. If you can successfully run it with growing profit for some years then you can quit your JOB and face your business-your own WORK. Yes that is true and is indeed very right. We are persuaded it is the right TRANSITION PLAN- from doing you present JOB to becoming your own BOSS where you can do your WORK!
However, you need to prepare. Preparing for all these process is like training for the Olympics. If you feel now is the time to move on from your JOB to your WORK, then you need to be READY:
- PHYSICALLY: You need to ascertain if you have the energy and stamina to withstand the rigours and the physical strain of the specific kind of business you want to invest in. It is not wise to invest in any business you don’t have the means of knowing how it is run.
EMOTIONALLY: For instance you don’t quit your job and get divorced on the same day-the emotional burden of the two sudden changes may knock you out; and you need to begin to shift your emotional attachment to salaries to a situation where your income is dependent on how well your business perform as there would be times of dry spells-how do you handle months when sales are slow and you can’t pay up all your bills let alone take home something as income?
- MENTALLY: Get your idea muscle in shape and you need to get used to taking a thousand decisions daily.
- FINANCIALLY also you need more than savings made over the last several years, you need a business up and running, not just running but you need an assurance that the business can stand on its own and produce the goods to at least meet with the quality of your lifestyle and show good potentials for growth.
- And finally, you need to be SPIRITUALLY ready. It is wise and instructive to seek spiritual guidance from God before taking such a major step like that...
The reasons for our assertions above are that the realities of the 21st Century workplace are as precarious for one as it is for the other. The truth is everyone needs a back-up plan and those back-up plans need time to prove that they have growth potentials.
So we ask you to come and let’s run through these processes together. Come and let us show you HOW you can run this process of TRANSITION from your JOB to your WORK without tears. We shall be demonstrating to you various options and models in the hope that you will find your muse and connect with one business model, pattern or the other. Come and talk with people who have successfully run this process and succeeded at it. You will also meet people who are today still gainfully employed and are running thriving business, and so much more...
Sometimes, quitting just now is not the best option!