Hiding in Plain Sight

By Barbara Winter

My neighbor Susan lived in a charming Victorian house on a corner lot. It wasn’t the house that had passing drivers slowing down, however. It was the gorgeous gardens that got attention. That was no accident, of course. Susan spent every free moment digging in the dirt.

One day as I was walking by, I stopped to chat. “Have you ever thought about starting a gardening business, “ I asked her.

“Who’d ever hire me,” she laughed.

“Probably anyone who wanted their yard to look as beautiful as yours,” I replied.

We didn’t discuss it further, but the idea seed was planted. Before long, Susan enrolled in a gardening class through the county extension agency and by the following spring her business was born. Many of us have discovered a new direction in mid-life. The options and possibilities for turning something we love into a livelihood we can share with others is wonderfully not limited by our age — or even our previous occupations.

Susan’s not the only one, of course, who overlooks opportunity hiding in plain sight. It seems that many of us are looking in the wrong place. Often that place is far outside of ourselves. I speak from personal experience.

I spent the first two decades of my life trying to answer the question, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” Even then, it struck me as a ridiculous thing to ask a child with limited experience in the world.

Despite my lack of a career direction, I convinced myself that I’d find the answer once I was in college. My plan was to sample anything that caught my fancy until I connected with the perfect match.

That clever plan was thwarted when I arrived at college registration and was told I couldn’t enroll unless I declared a major. That was considerably more commitment than I had planned to make, but I pondered my dilemma briefly and announced that I wished to major in English.

Three years later, I headed off with my diploma in hand to teach high school English. I lasted for five years and left with neither a plan nor prospects. After spending a couple of months trying to come up with an appealing career, I decided to visit the area employment service. To my astonishment, I found a job. They hired me, on the spot, to become an employment counselor.

For the next 10 months I spent all day every day talking to people about jobs. I quickly discovered that I wasn’t the only clueless person. Almost no one had any sense about doing work that would be a source of more than a paycheck.

Eventually, I got a third job as an interior decorator in an upscale furniture store. Although I had neither training nor experience in doing such a thing, I brought so much enthusiasm to the interview that I was promptly hired.

That was the last job I ever had. I decided my next boss would be me.

It was the best decision I ever made. However, having those previous experiences in employment gave me valuable skills and insights that led me to where I am now. Looking back, I can see that each of those jobs gave me a piece of my own puzzle.

My teaching days uncovered my love for sharing ideas and information. My stint at the employment service had me searching for better ways to help people uncover the work they were born to do. And my brief career as an interior decorator showed me that I was far more creative than I had ever realized, and that creating different projects was a huge source of satisfaction.

While it could be argued that every business is influenced and informed by our personal experiences, a great deal of opportunity goes unused when we fail to see the potential of putting that experience to work.

Personal experiences lend themselves to all sorts of enterprises. Here are some things to keep in mind to discover those hidden opportunities.

• Value your own experience. Very often the things that are easy and effortless for us are overlooked because we assume that what we can do, everyone can do. That’s almost never true. Your special set of talents, skills, and life experiences are a one-of-a-kind package. Writer Carolyn See says, “I hope I’m wrong, but I imagine about 90 percent of the human race is snoozing along, just going through the motions.” Staying awake for the journey is important if we are to find gold in our lives.

• Have a generous spirit. You must be convinced that what you have discovered will make other people’s lives richer, happier, healthier, or smoother in some way. Keeping it to yourself seems selfish.

• Find a better way. Doris Drucker, wife of management guru Peter Drucker, found a new opportunity for herself this way. She writes, “For years, my role as the wife of a professional speaker was to sit in the last row of the auditorium and shout, ‘Louder!’ whenever my husband’s voice dropped. I decided that there had to be a better feedback device and if there wasn’t I was going to invent one. Then I decided, at the age of 80, that I would start a business and sell it.” Solving a common problem or simply finding a more effective way of doing something has been the start of many a successful business.

• Tell your story. Benjamin Franklin said we should all write something worth reading or live something worth writing. Personal experiences can be the basis for both autobiography and how-to books. Workshops, seminars, and consulting are other ways of making your story pay. You need to live it first, of course. Your experience could be utilized through teaching or mentoring those coming along behind you.

Take a fresh look at your own life. Take an inventory of the jobs you’ve held. What did you enjoy most? What do you never want to do again? You may find pieces of your personal puzzle hiding in plain sight.
 

Barbara J. Winter is a pioneering self-employment advocate, writer and teacher who has spent the last 25 years pondering the question, “Why aren’t we all self-employed?”

Helping others discover the Joyfully Jobless life is her favorite occupation. To readers of Winning Ways newsletter, the longest-running self-employment publication of its kind, she is editor/publisher.

Readers of Making a Living Without a Job, a book that’s been in print since 1993, know her as the author. Participants in Barbara’s seminar of the same name, along with others, including Establish Yourself as an Expert and How to Support Your Wanderlust, know her as a passionate teacher.

Followers on Twitter know her as @joblessmuse. To Zoe, Zach, and Noah, she’s Grandma Vegas.

She also leads retreats that include Compelling Storytelling and Follow Through Camp to help small business owners bring creative thinking and fresh ideas into their work. She is convinced that small is still beautiful and loves working with one-person enterprises. Her newest seminar, Small, Sassy and Successful, helps entrepreneurs create a business that's better, not bigger.

Barbara is also an intrepid world traveler and curious lifelong learner. When she isn’t out exploring the world, she can be found blogging at JoyfullyJobless.com, connecting with other entrepreneurs on Twitter and Facebook, or reading a really good book.

Click here to visit Barbara’s website. Click here to email Barbara.