Jennifer Norweb of Miami, Florida got fed up with local employers offering low pay, long hours, and menial work after she had earned a Marketing and Finance degree from the University of Miami’s School of Business. “I had some solid work experience in my field by the time I graduated but employers seemed not to care and offered bottom-of-the-ladder, minimum-wage starting salaries. After months of searching and interviewing, one employer offered me a fairly-respectable starting position. We agreed on the details – responsibilities, salary, benefits, starting date, et cetera – and I prepared myself to start work, but once the job offer was made I never heard back from them. After weeks of calling the company, I finally reached the Human Resources Director who informed me that the company was downsizing and the position for which I was hired had been eliminated.”
So Jennifer decided that she had had enough, and would go into business for herself.
Today, increasing numbers of American workers, evaluating the recent collapse of corporate culture and finance as well as the disappearance of job security, have taken the step of driving their own destinies. Either by choice or of necessity, more people are pursuing self-employment as an alternative to working for a company where virtually nothing is guaranteed any longer. Self-employment rates have been growing at the rate of 4.5% per year (an increase of 126,000 self-employed Americans in the last quarter of 2010) and these rates are expected to continue as increasing numbers of individuals opt to work for themselves and as “home-based business” becomes a commonplace term.
We are moving from being a “company man” or “company woman” to being our own man or woman. Changing attitudes toward work are due, in part, to advances in computer and telecommunications technology. Faced with globalization, the rapid pace of technological change, and the ups and downs of the economy, more and more of today’s workers find security in the idea of free agency. Job uncertainty has bred a worker that is more resilient, adaptable and entrepreneurial than his or her predecessors, and many highly motivated individuals are deciding to invest in themselves rather than in a company on which they cannot depend.
In conjunction with this thinking, enrollment in entrepreneurship programs has skyrocketed in recent years. In 1970, only 16 business schools in the US offered entrepreneurship classes; today, there are more than 2,000 college and business school entrepreneurship programs, including those at Baylor College, USC, University of Notre Dame, Washington University, Temple University, Babson College, and Brigham Young University, to name a few. We are experiencing the beginnings of a true entrepreneurial economy fueled in part by the recession and in part by our changing attitudes toward work. And the message has caught on.
One factor luring do-it-yourselfers toward self-employment is certainly the relative ease of starting a business these days: servers and computers are cheaper than ever; the worldwide web allows business owners to reach customers and promote their goods and services with minimal marketing or sales expenses; employees can be hired at minimal cost due to high unemployment; and office space is more affordable than ever due to the downturn in real estate market rentals.
Jennifer Norweb was lured by all of these factors in deciding to work for herself. She is the founder, owner and president of Norweb Promotions (www.norwebpromotions.com), a Miami-based internet marketing company which specializes in website services, social media marketing, email broadcasts, search engine optimization, lead generation, display advertising and SMS text messaging/marketing. She rents office space in the trendy South Miami area, hires specialists and programmers to assist in meeting the demands of her professional work, and likes being able to set the standards and provide the solutions to meeting her clients’ needs. “I only promise what I can deliver, and I always deliver what I promise,” she says. She relishes working for herself and although she has to manage all of the inherent problems of running her own business, she also reaps the benefits of a job well done and this gives her great satisfaction. “The most difficult challenge in owning your own business”, she says, “is trying to manage your time appropriately; I often find myself working into the wee hours of the morning and I have to force myself to stay on some kind of a reasonable schedule so that I maintain some real work-life balance.” She has plans for future expansion of her business, but believes in taking things slowly, making careful decisions, and pacing herself before moving the business forward. “If you do what you know,” she advises, “and you put your trust in it, it will succeed”.
Increasingly, as in Ms. Norweb’s case, individuals are marketing themselves and their talents in an effort to find a niche that incorporates some sense of stability and security in this uncertain economy. They are finding creative ways in which to do the work that they enjoy, and are finding fulfillment in doing so.
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