For the past 5 years we have heard the “talking heads” tell us how business is just not willing to invest in job growth given the current political climate. Those in the media think we are just a bunch of lambs, waiting for the big bad wolf to tell us which way to go. Maybe big business is enjoying an excuse to sit on it’s big wads of cash, but the rest of us are done waiting.
I own a small business myself, and I closed a small business myself when it was no longer a viable means of earning a living. I admit I stumbled around for a while, trying to figure out what to do next, and heaven forbid, I even tried to get a regular J.O.B.That didn’t work well. I was too qualified for some, not qualified for others, and truth be told, for many I was just not 25 and cute any more. Let’s face it, after 20 some odd years of running my own shop, I probably was not particularly suited to work for someone else again, so it may have been a blessing in disguise that the job thing did not work out.
My partner has been slowly and steadily building his web design business, and for the past two years, preaching the benefits of social media. In fact, he believed in social media so strongly that he built people blogs almost for free. As I have a background in training, he asked me to learn about building and maintaining blogs so I could then teach these same people how to maintain them. I did that, and I went out and trained the people he built those blogs for. They blogged for a couple of months, and then the business of doing business got in their way and they blogged no more!! That is when we decided to create social-cindy.com.
At first we were still working hard to convince people they needed to do this social-media thing, and now it is the other way around. People are coming up to us and asking if we can help them. For me, it isn’t just about social media, it is about people wanting to invest in their businesses. They are tired of hoping the economy will turn around and things will get better. They are ready to MAKE THINGS GET BETTER!!
I love that! I love that spirit, and I love that people will not let them selves be held hostage by the world economy or big business. Even in down markets, there are opportunities for success. You can’t get someone to hire you? No problem, just start your own business. Mark Cuban was on CNBC this morning, and he said he is investing in private startups. People who are building their own companies from scratch with a cable modem and a $1,000 lap top. He is not even considering publicly traded companies, he is scoping out private startups only. In my case, I am a prime example of a privately owned company that is investing in itself. My laptop was only $500.00, not $1,000, but everything else is the same…
That is how our country will begin to recover!!!
cindy fletcher
social media practitioner extraordinaire!!
