As adults, lots, being around for twenty years more than you, pre Dx era, the combination of not fitting into the social workforce, and having the focus to see a whole.
Put Business Owner in the DSM as a Special Interest, it is rare enough in the general population, and does produce five to ten times the jobs of big business or government. Small business is the economy, and the growing edge.
The vast majority expect someone else to figure out their life, and hire them. Computers have made the type obsolete. Jobs came from networking, knowing lots of people at a shallow level, and being social, fitting in where ever they went.
That model worked when most spent their lives in a small town, became weakened when they started moving every few years, no longer lifetime relations, but even more effort on fitting in.
A few years back among the apartment dwelling young, a job, marraige, ran for as long as the lease. It was a fine example of renting a life. Then they left everything behind, and started over on the other side of the country.
As long as employment was rising, they could just plug in anywhere, rent another year, for a decade ago employers were having to work the prison system to keep staff count up.
Computers were the watershed, many have thousands of Facebook friends, so they can pre set up their next life, but the other side is, computers do what they did, better, cheaper, faster, productivity is up 20%, unemployment is 20%.
Their goal, joining a group where they were all alike, and could be better than the people who were different. It was High School taken into the work world.
The nerds were left behind, but did have just as many hours, which were spent learning things, to make up for their lack of social grace, and spent more time looking at business structure than keeping up with who was dating who, worldwide.
No doubt about it, nerds developed computer marketing which took all the jobs of well dressed airheads. As they had no function but looking good, and having sex, they mostly moved back home with their parents.
Nerds who often lived in their parents garage, with Broadband, have been chipping away at brick and motar sales, it still has a long run coming, as online sales are only 10%. The very companies who funded on line marketing, paid nerds, are now the next target, as everything they do can be done better with a lot less overhead.
Nerds are like China, the despised of the world who will work cheap, but then build a better factory, and know all your customers. Few in business see the overall structure of their business, but nerds have to to set up the computers.
One of the main things I have discovered is there are unlimited small markets that are wide open. It may be really small, but if you are the only one in the world supplying it, it works.
The second would be the German Model, Mittlestand, companies that employ ten or less, do not want to grow or sell out, just focus on being the best of their class, making one or a few world class products, keeping up with developments, supporting their customers, and make more than workers in any other field. Their products will not be copied, for the setup cost is bigger than the market, and they have the market. These companies often are family, several generations, a few friends, and expect to continue forever. They can afford to own the latest machines, and spend years developing future products.
Everything flows to the big fish in a small pond.
So nerds do not have to take over the world, just pick the nerd size high profit small markets and keep quality and service the best. As they do not see the whole of the social world, but can learn all the tricks to a video game, they are naturals at small intense focus. Once automated, they can work on the next interest, and having a selection of small markets keeps overall sales up.
This has been going on for a while. The business story is Grandpaw started the company in his garage, after ten years could quit his day job, raised and trained a family, who then ran the company for forty years. Grandson inherets, and bankers tell him they will loan him the money to grow to ten times the size, and he does, ten times overhead, debt service, and the income of the company is just enough to give Bankers income on their investment, which when he misses a payment, the bank sells a company with a fifty year track record of good earnings.
Start small, find a constant small market, and stay small. Then start another project, markets do not last forever, look to the future, and think about your real business is building small companies. If it has been bringing in enough to support three people, and may for generations, might grow to supporting five, that is a very sellable company.
If you are a serial business creator, no one market decline can bankrupt you, and the high labor companies that pay the wages can be sold to people who would like to own their job. It is a good way to get rid of employees and turn them into supppliers. You can also get all the writeoffs before selling. Structure the sale over five years, it is all capital gains. If they screw it up you have a captive supplier.
All business is small, what makes the money is it, and everything else is hung on that. Most hire more to keep up, and never look at what they have, sometimes the path to being productive is getting rid of people. No one will give you a better deal unless you say, I want a better deal.
Work expands to fill the time alloted. There is always a lot of fluff and filler, don't be the one paying for it. Companies that went to a four day week, 32 hours, 20% less payroll, still got all the work done.
If you are not exploiting labor, it is exploiting you.
01 Dec 2009, 2:52 pm
