1532: Stop Crying That There Are No Jobs. Create One. by Paula Pant of Afford Anything on Entrepreneurship

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Work Daily. Stop crying that there are no jobs. Create one. By Paula Pant of AffordAnything.com.

[00:00:39] Last week, I jetted to New Orleans for a journalism conference and then Zoomed to Chicago for a bloggers conference. After seeing these groups back-to-back, I had a huge aha moment. I figured out why one group is beating the pants off the other. You see, there's incredible pessimism in journalism circles. Everyone's crying about the lack of jobs.

[00:00:59] And there's enormous optimism in the blogger community. Everyone's celebrating the zillion ways to launch a career writing online. But why? Why this difference in worldview, given that journalists are the best candidates for becoming paid writers? They're professionally trained for Pete's sake.

[00:01:15] It's overly simplistic and wrong to write off journalists as cynics or technophobes. There has to be a deeper explanation, and this week, I think I found it.

[00:01:24] Journalists see the world through the eyes of an employee. Bloggers see the world through the eyes of an entrepreneur.

[00:01:30] I know I'm generalizing, but in this next story, I think you'll see why.

[00:01:34] The Employee Mindset

[00:01:36] On my first day at the journalism conference in New Orleans, a man in his mid-50s approached me. Our conversation went like this.

[00:01:43] Me.

[00:01:44] What do you do?

[00:01:45] Him.

[00:01:46] I'm a journalism professor, so I'm lucky. I have a job for life.

[00:01:50] But none of my students can find jobs. They're bright, hard-working kids, but they're stuck delivering pizzas.

[00:01:56] Me.

[00:01:56] Oh, that's a shame.

[00:01:58] Him.

[00:01:59] It's a real shame. The internet took away all the jobs. No one subscribes to the paper anymore.

[00:02:04] Me.

[00:02:05] Hmm.

[00:02:07] Him.

[00:02:07] If Craigslist hadn't destroyed all our classified ad revenue, it'd be a different story today.

[00:02:12] Me.

[00:02:13] Hmm.

[00:02:14] Different, yes.

[00:02:16] Him.

[00:02:16] So what do you do?

[00:02:18] Me.

[00:02:19] I'm self-employed. I'm a freelancer.

[00:02:21] Him.

[00:02:22] Oh, I'm sorry. What do you want to do?

[00:02:25] Me.

[00:02:26] Um, excuse me?

[00:02:28] Him.

[00:02:29] Another shame.

[00:02:30] Talented professionals being forced to freelance because there are no jobs.

[00:02:34] Okay, let's pause for a second to read between the lines.

[00:02:37] Can you spot his worldview in his words?

[00:02:40] This man is terrified.

[00:02:41] He wants someone else to hand him a job.

[00:02:44] The more stable, the better.

[00:02:45] If no one can provide a steady job, he feels hopeless.

[00:02:49] He doesn't know what else to do.

[00:02:51] There's nothing wrong with having a job.

[00:02:53] The problem is conceptualizing yourself as, quote-unquote,

[00:02:56] stuck delivering pizzas when no one else creates a job for you.

[00:03:00] Having an employee mindset is different than being an employee.

[00:03:04] Loads of employees have entrepreneurial mentalities,

[00:03:07] and that's precisely what makes them such great workers.

[00:03:09] They understand their boss's perspective.

[00:03:11] They're also happier at work.

[00:03:13] Their job satisfaction comes from their confidence that if they got laid off tomorrow,

[00:03:17] they could fend for themselves.

[00:03:19] But this guy isn't confident.

[00:03:21] He's insecure.

[00:03:22] That's why he wants job security so badly.

[00:03:24] He doesn't believe in himself.

[00:03:26] He wants other people, smarter, richer, and probably better-looking people,

[00:03:30] to create a job and bestow it upon him.

[00:03:33] You disempower yourself when you believe that someone else must create your job.

[00:03:37] This man's words are a window into his demoralized worldview.

[00:03:42] Words like,

[00:03:43] The internet took away all the jobs.

[00:03:45] Being forced to do XYZ, deliver pizzas, freelance, whatever, because there are no jobs.

[00:03:51] And,

[00:03:52] I'm lucky.

[00:03:53] I have a job for life.

[00:03:55] The internet took away all the jobs?

[00:03:57] Are you freaking serious?

[00:03:58] That shows a serious lack of imagination.

[00:04:01] If you love your job, that's fantastic.

[00:04:04] But please, please don't ever sell yourself short by doubting your power to create your own job.

[00:04:10] So when the man lamented that no one is hiring,

[00:04:13] here's what I should have said.

[00:04:15] I'm not forced to freelance because I can't find work.

[00:04:18] I choose to freelance because that's where the hottest opportunities are.

[00:04:22] I'm actually the rare journalist who wasn't laid off.

[00:04:25] I voluntarily quit my newspaper job.

[00:04:27] I quit eight months after I got a promotion and a $10,000 raise.

[00:04:31] Oh, and I loved my job.

[00:04:33] Loved my colleagues in the newsroom.

[00:04:34] Loved my boss.

[00:04:35] Quit anyway.

[00:04:36] Now I make more money and have more free time than I did before.

[00:04:40] Of course, here's what I actually said.

[00:04:43] Hmm.

[00:04:44] And then smiled and nodded.

[00:04:47] The entrepreneur mindset.

[00:04:49] The bloggers I met in Chicago highlighted the entrepreneurial mentality.

[00:04:53] They showed imagination.

[00:04:55] Not a single person there would ever utter the words,

[00:04:58] the internet took away all the jobs, or I'm forced to deliver pizzas.

[00:05:02] Of course, a lot of bloggers have full-time day jobs.

[00:05:05] That's not the point.

[00:05:06] The point is that they embody a grab-the-rains worldview.

[00:05:09] They're not motivated by fear.

[00:05:11] They're motivated by opportunity.

[00:05:13] I delivered a one-hour speech at the New Orleans Journalism Conference about how to manage money without a steady paycheck.

[00:05:19] At the end of my talk, I parted with these words of encouragement.

[00:05:23] Quote,

[00:05:24] Ignore the pessimists who say journalism is dead.

[00:05:27] It's never been more alive.

[00:05:29] Journalists are storytellers.

[00:05:31] Throughout history, people who have wanted to tell stories only had one option.

[00:05:35] Work for someone else.

[00:05:36] He gets the profit.

[00:05:37] You get a paycheck.

[00:05:38] Now, for the first time in history, thanks to the internet, we can take the reins.

[00:05:43] We're not forced to climb the corporate ladder.

[00:05:46] We can build rungs underneath.

[00:05:48] We create a website and use it to fast-track our careers into book deals and speaking engagements.

[00:05:53] Or we can be like Rafat Ali, a journalist who launched the news website Paid Content in 2002 and sold it six years later for $30 million.

[00:06:03] He loves his work, so he continues to work there as an editor.

[00:06:07] This is the first time in history that we have freedom and control.

[00:06:10] This is the first time in history we have the potential for a big payout.

[00:06:15] This is the best time in history to become a storyteller.

[00:06:22] You just listened to the post titled, Stop Crying That There Are No Jobs.

[00:06:27] Create One by Paula Pant of AffordAnything.com.

[00:06:30] And a little bit about Paula Pant.

[00:06:33] She is a podcast host, writer, speaker, and media commentator on financial independence and real estate investing.

[00:06:39] Her site, AffordAnything, draws 2.5 million annual page views and holds more than 60,000 email subscribers.

[00:06:47] She is well-traveled, to say the least.

[00:06:49] She's been to more than 40 countries and speaks at multiple conferences each year,

[00:06:54] including a keynote address at the World Domination Summit.

[00:06:57] And she also delivered a talk at Google in the company's Los Angeles office.

[00:07:01] So come by AffordAnything.com to learn a lot more.

[00:07:05] You can find her blog, podcast, and community all right there.

[00:07:09] And of course, a big thank you to Paula for letting us share her work.

[00:07:13] That's going to do it for today.

[00:07:14] Hope you have a great rest of your day, and I will, of course, be back here with you tomorrow.

[00:07:19] That's where your optimal life awaits.