Be Prepared To Be Self Employed

While speaking to my National Association of Self Employed representative he threw out a figure that by 2010 50% of all people in America would be self employed. It made me curious so I did some Googling. I found this link. It turns out that this is a prediction made by Peter Drucker. When Peter Drucker talks people (including myself) listen. Are you ready for self employment?

Until a new economic model is introduced we are in a Market Economy. Why do I bring this up? Because when I break it down a Market Economy is totally dependent on buying and selling. Unless you have a trust fund with an unlimited source of income that means you better know how to sell for the foreseeable future. I have read a few books on sales. Lately I have been reading the Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer. I highly recommend it. It’s no-nonsense and the chunking of information is superb. When I talk about selling I’m not just talking about selling THINGS either. If you want to get anywhere in life you need to be able to sell whether it is selling yourself (like for a job) or selling ideas within your company or as an outside consultant. Maybe at one time all the world was a stage now all the world’s a sale.

As I see it we are in the “Market World” scenario as outlined by Allen Hammond in his book ‘Which World?’. There used to be a wonderful link hosted at Cal Tech that outlined the book but it no longer exists. So all that I can do is give you a link to the book at amazon.com. It’s good stuff. Not only did I at one time glean much of the information off of the now nonexistent website but I also attended a lecture given by Jay Gary on the subject matter of the book at the Foresight 2004 conference which was hosted by Regent University’s School of Leadership Studies. Bottom Line – learn how to sell.