Yesterday, as I was waiting for a traffic light to change near a freeway intersection, a huge truck slowly came down an exit ramp with a trailer full of flattened and crushed automobiles.
The thought occurred to me: there goes the U.S. automobile industry, maybe the whole world’s automobile industry. Smashed flat by a perfect storm of devastating forces – bloated gasoline prices, poor design choices, frozen credit, unmanaged labor and other costs, changing consumer tastes and a global economy in the tank
I was thinking in metaphors. My mind was ready for any symbol, any sign, any clue that would help me understand the fix we are all in. I saw a load of junk and it became in my mind the industry that had created it.
It was a bummer of a thought, and it stuck with me for a while. Then a ray of optimism crept in.
Those flattened cars were going to a processing plant somewhere to be further broken down into reusable basic materials, then recycled and made into something new. What had been at first a depressing thought became a positive one. It was EOL (end of life) for cars, and BONL (beginning of new life) for the materials in them.
Then another figure of speech came to mind, a simile: those cars are like all of us – people in my town and my state and my country who have been flattened and crushed by the global economic storm, but who are reinventing and rebooting themselves into something new.
President Obama said it in his inaugural address: It’s time for us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get moving again. We are not worthless junk to be thrown away. We are valuable raw material with new possibilities and new purposes.
It’s time to reinvent.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Yes, Virginia, there is some good news
The whole concept of RebootYou.com has been shaken badly by the economic downturn.
My original idea was that there were a lot of reasons to continue working beyond normal “retirement age” – the value of one’s contribution, the personal renewal factor, the waste of talent from a sedentary retirement.
The need to keep earning money was there, too, but it was a very minor reason.
Things have changed. A lot.
Millions have seen a huge chunk of their retirement savings vaporize. Millions have lost their jobs – well before “retirement.” Millions have lost their homes.
The number of available jobs for anyone – retirees or anyone else – has shrunk drastically. Far more people are competing for far fewer jobs.
Is there any good news anywhere?
The answer is “Yes.” These dire forces are stoking entrepreneurial ideas and energies.
The New York Times reports that “(many) laid-off workers across the country, burned out by a merciless job market, are building business plans instead of sending out résumés. For these people, recession has become the mother of invention.
“Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen — when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money.”
This wave of downturn start-ups is different from those in the past, said the Times. The biggest difference is that “the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not just to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea.”
I’m betting that you can turn your small idea into a big one. Give it a try!
My original idea was that there were a lot of reasons to continue working beyond normal “retirement age” – the value of one’s contribution, the personal renewal factor, the waste of talent from a sedentary retirement.
The need to keep earning money was there, too, but it was a very minor reason.
Things have changed. A lot.
Millions have seen a huge chunk of their retirement savings vaporize. Millions have lost their jobs – well before “retirement.” Millions have lost their homes.
The number of available jobs for anyone – retirees or anyone else – has shrunk drastically. Far more people are competing for far fewer jobs.
Is there any good news anywhere?
The answer is “Yes.” These dire forces are stoking entrepreneurial ideas and energies.
The New York Times reports that “(many) laid-off workers across the country, burned out by a merciless job market, are building business plans instead of sending out résumés. For these people, recession has become the mother of invention.
“Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen — when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money.”
This wave of downturn start-ups is different from those in the past, said the Times. The biggest difference is that “the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not just to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea.”
I’m betting that you can turn your small idea into a big one. Give it a try!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Coping with forced rebooting
A story by Reuters last week described the sad stories of several seniors who have been forced to go back to work because they lost their savings in Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme:
• A 90-year-old California man working in a grocery store to make ends meet.
• A 60-year-old Pennsylvania widow giving up her retirement to work as a house cleaner.
• A 73-year-old Florida man looking for a part time job after being financially devastated.
This is not the kind of rebooting I had in mind when I started RebootYou.com. And unfortunately, these are just three of many who are looking at a forced rebooting. Countless others have also lost money because of the economy’s collapse and need to go back to work to pay their bills.
Adding to the pain, millions more are now unemployed than a few years ago making it more difficult, if not impossible, to find that “rebooting” job: too many people on the job market competing for a shrinking number of positions.
What’s a person to do?
Well, I believe the same strategies for reinvention apply, whether the rebooting is voluntary or involuntary. Here are some ideas:
• Be willing so start over, maybe at or near the bottom. Don’t let pride stand in your way.
• Start a business in some line of activity that you love. It will be a small business to start, but a well-thought-out small business can make money – maybe just enough to make a difference.
• Go back to school. Don’t we all need to “go back to school” to learn how to cope in hard times? Going back to school to learn a new skill or brush up on an old one is a healthy and usually productive way to manage a setback.
• Volunteer at a church or non-profit. You may not make money, but you will gain a psychic satisfaction that will be emotionally rewarding and get your mind off your woes.
• Become a teacher or mentor for young people in need.
• Join the Experience Corps (see http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm)
• Do “good work” and get paid for it (see http://www.encore.org/)
OK, not easy. I agree. But as the old saying goes, nobody said this was going to be easy. The most important requirement for rebooting is simple — the desire to do so. The second most important requirement is belief in yourself — confidence that you can do it. Just remember: What you want to do, and believe you can do, you can do.
• A 90-year-old California man working in a grocery store to make ends meet.
• A 60-year-old Pennsylvania widow giving up her retirement to work as a house cleaner.
• A 73-year-old Florida man looking for a part time job after being financially devastated.
This is not the kind of rebooting I had in mind when I started RebootYou.com. And unfortunately, these are just three of many who are looking at a forced rebooting. Countless others have also lost money because of the economy’s collapse and need to go back to work to pay their bills.
Adding to the pain, millions more are now unemployed than a few years ago making it more difficult, if not impossible, to find that “rebooting” job: too many people on the job market competing for a shrinking number of positions.
What’s a person to do?
Well, I believe the same strategies for reinvention apply, whether the rebooting is voluntary or involuntary. Here are some ideas:
• Be willing so start over, maybe at or near the bottom. Don’t let pride stand in your way.
• Start a business in some line of activity that you love. It will be a small business to start, but a well-thought-out small business can make money – maybe just enough to make a difference.
• Go back to school. Don’t we all need to “go back to school” to learn how to cope in hard times? Going back to school to learn a new skill or brush up on an old one is a healthy and usually productive way to manage a setback.
• Volunteer at a church or non-profit. You may not make money, but you will gain a psychic satisfaction that will be emotionally rewarding and get your mind off your woes.
• Become a teacher or mentor for young people in need.
• Join the Experience Corps (see http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm)
• Do “good work” and get paid for it (see http://www.encore.org/)
OK, not easy. I agree. But as the old saying goes, nobody said this was going to be easy. The most important requirement for rebooting is simple — the desire to do so. The second most important requirement is belief in yourself — confidence that you can do it. Just remember: What you want to do, and believe you can do, you can do.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion
I'm pleased to report that the latest issue of Stanford Business, a quarterly magazine for alumni and alumnae of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, carries a short item on our website, www.rebootyou.com. Here's the item:
Trail Guide for Career Changers
After rebooting professionally a number of times, Lee Callaway, Sloan '77, repotted himself once again as an online resource for people -- some retired, some not -- who want to change their lives and take off in new, meaningful directions. Callaway's new venture for new venturers is a website called RebootYou.com, which both inspires and informs. It features stories about people who have successfully changed course, suggestions for volunteer and career opportunities, and a list of books, web links, seminars, and more, all designed to guide the rebooter-to-be.
A thank-you tip of the rebooter hat to Kathleen O'Toole, Stanford Business editor!
Trail Guide for Career Changers
After rebooting professionally a number of times, Lee Callaway, Sloan '77, repotted himself once again as an online resource for people -- some retired, some not -- who want to change their lives and take off in new, meaningful directions. Callaway's new venture for new venturers is a website called RebootYou.com, which both inspires and informs. It features stories about people who have successfully changed course, suggestions for volunteer and career opportunities, and a list of books, web links, seminars, and more, all designed to guide the rebooter-to-be.
A thank-you tip of the rebooter hat to Kathleen O'Toole, Stanford Business editor!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Time to Reboot America
Thomas Friedman, the highly respected New York Times columnist and author of numerous best selling books, has a great column today, Christmas Eve. The headline:
Time to Reboot America
He makes a strong case – so strong, so urgent, I want to quote liberally from it:
“We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
“To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
“For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
“That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.”
Friedman is not the only national figure calling for rebooting America. Almost every day someone in government or business or society at large is calling for the reinvention of our country, or some huge part of it, on a scale not seen in decades, maybe ever.
For such a rebooting to happen, I think we need much more than government bailouts and stimulus packages. We need for people by the thousands and millions, at every age and in every walk of life, to face up to and overcome the hard times by rebooting themselves and their organizations – their governments, schools, companies, churches, civic and charitable organizations.
Remember that the term “rebooting” and its counterpart “booting” were adapted for computer talk from “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.” It is time for some major pulling up on our own bootstraps. We collectively got ourselves into this mess. We collectively need to get ourselves out of it.
It is the challenge and the opportunity of our lifetimes.
Time to Reboot America
He makes a strong case – so strong, so urgent, I want to quote liberally from it:
“We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
“To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
“For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
“That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.”
Friedman is not the only national figure calling for rebooting America. Almost every day someone in government or business or society at large is calling for the reinvention of our country, or some huge part of it, on a scale not seen in decades, maybe ever.
For such a rebooting to happen, I think we need much more than government bailouts and stimulus packages. We need for people by the thousands and millions, at every age and in every walk of life, to face up to and overcome the hard times by rebooting themselves and their organizations – their governments, schools, companies, churches, civic and charitable organizations.
Remember that the term “rebooting” and its counterpart “booting” were adapted for computer talk from “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.” It is time for some major pulling up on our own bootstraps. We collectively got ourselves into this mess. We collectively need to get ourselves out of it.
It is the challenge and the opportunity of our lifetimes.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Bring back the wooly retiree
Scientists are talking – seriously, it seems – about the possibility of regenerating a wooly mammoth, a furry elephant-like mammal that went extinct toward the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. With the mammoth’s genome now decoded and DNA available, the experts say it could be done for about $10 million.
By today’s standards, when “trillion” is the new “billion,” that sounds pretty cheap. But we think it would be a better idea, and much less expensive, to bring back some wooly retirees.
We’re talking about bringing them back into the active, productive, vibrant life of the rebooter. Out of the TV room, out of the lounge chair, on their feet, doing things, and back into the mainstream.
Now of course, retirees haven’t become extinct, but going into a passive, do-nothing retirement bears some similarity to going extinct, doesn’t it? Withdrawing from the active life, shutting down the inner computer and basically checking out of life accomplishes about the same thing as disappearing.
Maybe we should start considering the passive retiree as a missing person. Perhaps not physically missing, but mentally and emotionally and psychologically missing.
Rebooting offers a healthy alternative to retirement “extinction.” Continuing to work, volunteering, going back to school, teaching, consulting, turning that lifelong hobby into a business – all are ways to recharge the batteries and bring oneself back into life on earth.
And the really good news: no danger of a retiree Jurassic Park!
By today’s standards, when “trillion” is the new “billion,” that sounds pretty cheap. But we think it would be a better idea, and much less expensive, to bring back some wooly retirees.
We’re talking about bringing them back into the active, productive, vibrant life of the rebooter. Out of the TV room, out of the lounge chair, on their feet, doing things, and back into the mainstream.
Now of course, retirees haven’t become extinct, but going into a passive, do-nothing retirement bears some similarity to going extinct, doesn’t it? Withdrawing from the active life, shutting down the inner computer and basically checking out of life accomplishes about the same thing as disappearing.
Maybe we should start considering the passive retiree as a missing person. Perhaps not physically missing, but mentally and emotionally and psychologically missing.
Rebooting offers a healthy alternative to retirement “extinction.” Continuing to work, volunteering, going back to school, teaching, consulting, turning that lifelong hobby into a business – all are ways to recharge the batteries and bring oneself back into life on earth.
And the really good news: no danger of a retiree Jurassic Park!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Rebooting: an idea whose time is still here!
RebootYou.com started up a year ago in September. Back then, the economy was fairly healthy and optimism was strong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 13,820 on September 21, 2007, on its way to 14,164 in October. The Consumer Confidence Index was in the 80s, on its way to the 90s.
It seemed like a good time to launch a website dedicated to the proposition of reinvention, restarting, and rebooting – especially after “retirement” from a conventional career.
Now the Dow is barely above 8,000 and the consumer confidence index is at 38, its lowest point since it was first devised in 1967.
Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October. Job losses over the last 3 months totaled 651,000. In October, the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, and the number of unemployed persons increased to 10.1 million.
Many retirees have seen much of their savings wiped out. People are still talking about rebooting, but now it’s about rebooting the whole country – or at least the whole economy.
So is one of the basic ideas of rebooting – continuing to work after retirement – out the window? Is reinvention no longer an option? Are so many people out of work and the economy so far in the tank that there simply aren’t any jobs for people looking to start anew?
I think not.
Maybe the possibility of staying on the job, or finding a new job, is off the table. But there are many other ways to reboot, and now is the time to explore them. Here are a few ideas from RebootYou.com (http://www.rebootyou.com/how_to_reboot.html).
• Start your own business – maybe consulting in your field of expertise, or some other field. In her book, Starting Over: Reinventing Life After 60, author Pat Skilling Kellerman tells story after story of people over 60 who have turned their interests into businesses, including pottery, woodworking, cooking, selling wallpaper, owning and operating a bed and breakfast, song writing and farming, among others. You may not grow “too big to fail,” but you may do very well, as have many of the people in Ms. Kellerman’s book.
• Volunteer at a church or local non-profit. There are scores of organizations that need willing, capable and experienced volunteers in virtually every area -- financial, marketing, fund-raising, general management, hands-on work, you name it.
• Go back to school.
• Become a teacher.
• Join the Experience Corps. Go to http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm
• Join the Peace Corps. (http://www.peacecorps.gov/)
• Pursue a paid Encore Career, as championed by Marc Freedman, Encore.Org (http://www.encore.org/) and Civic Ventures (http://www.civicventures.org/)
• Volunteer elsewhere and do good work. Go to the website http://www.networkforgood.org/ and you’ll find thousands of opportunities, and even if none of them are in your area, maybe you’ll get some good ideas there.
Yes, even with so many gloomy signs and downward-pointing arrows, there are still opportunities for personal reinvention. Despite the dark clouds, there are rays of hope and optimism. At the upper levels of government, on the Obama transition team, in Congress, among the scholars and pundits and commentators, there is talk of rebooting – rebooting the economy and, indeed, the whole country.
In hard times, Americans have always risen to the occasion. We will do so this time, too.~
It seemed like a good time to launch a website dedicated to the proposition of reinvention, restarting, and rebooting – especially after “retirement” from a conventional career.
Now the Dow is barely above 8,000 and the consumer confidence index is at 38, its lowest point since it was first devised in 1967.
Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October. Job losses over the last 3 months totaled 651,000. In October, the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, and the number of unemployed persons increased to 10.1 million.
Many retirees have seen much of their savings wiped out. People are still talking about rebooting, but now it’s about rebooting the whole country – or at least the whole economy.
So is one of the basic ideas of rebooting – continuing to work after retirement – out the window? Is reinvention no longer an option? Are so many people out of work and the economy so far in the tank that there simply aren’t any jobs for people looking to start anew?
I think not.
Maybe the possibility of staying on the job, or finding a new job, is off the table. But there are many other ways to reboot, and now is the time to explore them. Here are a few ideas from RebootYou.com (http://www.rebootyou.com/how_to_reboot.html).
• Start your own business – maybe consulting in your field of expertise, or some other field. In her book, Starting Over: Reinventing Life After 60, author Pat Skilling Kellerman tells story after story of people over 60 who have turned their interests into businesses, including pottery, woodworking, cooking, selling wallpaper, owning and operating a bed and breakfast, song writing and farming, among others. You may not grow “too big to fail,” but you may do very well, as have many of the people in Ms. Kellerman’s book.
• Volunteer at a church or local non-profit. There are scores of organizations that need willing, capable and experienced volunteers in virtually every area -- financial, marketing, fund-raising, general management, hands-on work, you name it.
• Go back to school.
• Become a teacher.
• Join the Experience Corps. Go to http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm
• Join the Peace Corps. (http://www.peacecorps.gov/)
• Pursue a paid Encore Career, as championed by Marc Freedman, Encore.Org (http://www.encore.org/) and Civic Ventures (http://www.civicventures.org/)
• Volunteer elsewhere and do good work. Go to the website http://www.networkforgood.org/ and you’ll find thousands of opportunities, and even if none of them are in your area, maybe you’ll get some good ideas there.
Yes, even with so many gloomy signs and downward-pointing arrows, there are still opportunities for personal reinvention. Despite the dark clouds, there are rays of hope and optimism. At the upper levels of government, on the Obama transition team, in Congress, among the scholars and pundits and commentators, there is talk of rebooting – rebooting the economy and, indeed, the whole country.
In hard times, Americans have always risen to the occasion. We will do so this time, too.~
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