WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Assets

What you can do requires a certain train of thought, or if you like, a way of thinking. I shall explain how this is done later in this section; what is needed now is an illustration of where we have arrived and what is needed to effect a change.

We find comfort in what is familiar. If an animal in the wild has a plentiful supply of food, a stream to drink from and bathe in, comfortable accommodation and a mate it will not wander very far. Why should it? Animals are not well endowed with foresight, they are not materialistic and they do not worry about how many times a week they can afford to go to the pub.

The entrepreneurial spirit is born of what we want out of life.

Our needs and our wants dictate the standard and style of living we strive for.

Humans usually want more out of life: possessions, freedom to travel, clothes and jewellery and so on. Some even spend time and money travelling to watch weird gatherings of individuals kicking bags of wind about - an activity called sport I believe.

A lot of people are perfectly happy living a simple family life in more or less the same location where they were born, or somewhere very much like it. To be able to do this they need a job, more or less any job, that will provide the means for the basic needs of their chosen lifestyle. Perhaps "chosen" is the wrong word here. Evolved lifestyle seems more accurate.

That is why many people stay in the same job and live in the same house for years. Few of us sit down at a point in our young lives and plan what we want out of life and how we are going to set about achieving it.

Most people are "happy with their lot".

Many will moan and complain about the lack of cash, or the government, or the noisy neighbours but while ever the job they are in keeps them one step ahead of the breadline they will settle for their lot.

This simply means less competition for people like me who are born to be restless, who start looking for the next job even as they are in the process of settling into the one they have just embarked upon.

That is why a different way of thinking is required if you are going to get back into employment within a reasonable time.

Did you really like what you were doing for a living, when you were doing it, or did you do it because it was required under the terms and conditions of your employment?

If you liked what you did then well and good, start by looking along that path and see what you can come up with. If you did not like what you were doing, then careful consideration as to what sort of position you are going to look for is required.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people I meet who don't like what they do for a living.

A good place to look, if you've had as many jobs as I have, is at what you have done in the past. This is simply a place to start; then look around, look a little wider and think in broader terms. Consider what you were doing, and where what you were doing fitted in to the global picture.

Were you on a production line making components for sub-assemblies that were in turn part of larger assemblies. If you were did someone travel around installing the finished assembly on a customer's premises? Would you like to be the person who travels around and installs assemblies on customer sites?

Because you were an assembly worker and perhaps had been for many years that does not exclude you from applying for a position on an installation team or in the service and maintenance department supporting that product in its working environment.

By fitting little assemblies into larger assemblies you have acquired a specific skill. You have also picked up a certain amount of knowledge relating to the finished product, the larger assembly.

It naturally follows that you will not need to know a lot more to install the finished product, carry out routine maintenance and repair the thing if it ever breaks down. From assembly fitter, semi-skilled, to installation specialist, support and service engineer in one easy step. To you, at this moment, this may seem like a giant step. A quantum leap. It is not, believe me it is not.

I know of a cabinet maker. A very highly skilled cabinet maker who worked with wood cut from fine trees, the finest trees money can buy. He made exquisite furniture for the wealthiest families in the land.

He had been with the same company all his working life and was highly respected by his employer and his peers. The company, due to the recession and the fact that it had been in existence for a couple of hundred years and had never in its history needed to look for work, ran into trouble.

It did not go under but his employer could no longer afford to keep our cabinet maker on. When news got out that the skilled cabinet maker was on the market he was inundated with offers of work.

His skill in working with fine wood for half a lifetime was highly valued and offers of employment poured in. He thought hard and long and refused to be rushed into making a decision.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He was ill equipped to handle it. On what information could he make a decision?

He decided, in his wisdom and to the bewilderment of the companies who were offering him employment, that there was more to life than being a person who went to the same workshop each day to do the same work.

Certainly the objects he made gave him a great deal of satisfaction, but they were not for him to own. They were for people who owned large period houses and could afford exquisite furniture to put in them. He would never be one of them, he had never met most of them. They employed him through the owner of the company he worked for. He was just the craftsman.

Nothing wrong with that; his work spoke for him and he knew how and where he stood in the order of things. However, he decided to look elsewhere for employment before embarking upon a choice of work that he would have had to do for the rest of his life. He thought laterally. He analysed his position, his assets, his skills and considered his position most carefully.

Being made redundant at his time of life made him look closely at his financial position. He had no choice, he could not afford to retire. After consulting people who know about matters of finance, he sorted his affairs out to his satisfaction.

What he decided to do next was to change his life forever.

He thought about all those people, like him, highly skilled specialists who in all probability, like him, had not for many a year considered their own financial position. What would happen if what had happened to him, happened to them? He speculated that there were enough of them out there, beavering away in the closed world of the workshop to warrant setting himself up as a financial adviser, specialising in highly skilled dedicated craftsmen who had not, as he himself had not, looked at their respective financial position for many a year.

He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

He was a natural. He was gifted. He took to accountancy and the world of finance like a duck to water. In his first year he made, on average, more money in a month than in his last year working as a highly paid cabinet maker.

The story is true and has a fairy tale ending. The cabinet making company which had dispensed with his services, complete with its two hundred year history and reputation was still in existence, but without him it simply did not attract the right clientele to keep going.

He bought the company, appointed his son to run it and set up a sub-contracting service to his by now considerable list of financial clients who were in, or allied to, the same line of business.

Finding yourself unemployed can be an opportunity as well as a set back.