In fact, with so many people now stuck in homes they’d love to leave, but are financially locked into comes both (a) a concession that they’ll be stuck in the same home for years longer that they’d hoped for, and (b) the desire to make their current home as livable as possible—given the new, longer-term commitment to the space.
Now, this gentleman (our electrician friend) offers valuable DIY electrical project information on his blog on a regular basis. That, in turn, established him as an expert and builds a sense of credibility and trust among those who visit his website. This is likely a big driver of visitors and traffic.
So, if our electrician ends up on the phone helping people an hour a day, that’s $162 a day. Do that for 30 days, and it’s $4,860 a month... working an hour a day from home. That’s nearly twice the average annual household income in the U.S., working 7 hours a week!
And, chances are, a small number of people who start out looking for DIY help end up wanting live, on-the-job help and turn the entire project over.The ingenuity of our friend, the electrician/info-marketer, shows how it’s possible to mine an information gap that’s been greatly expanded by the flailing economy. But, what if your passion or trade serves not the gaps and needs of individuals, but businesses? Is this still possible… in this economy?
Short answer—absolutely!Let’s say you’re a designer who focuses on corporate ID, branding, logo and website design. There’s a pretty good chance that, unless you’re a rock-solid marketer, your business is hurting right now.
Lots of local small businesses simply don’t want to pay someone on the outside to do their design work. This will lead clients and prospects to begin to explore DIY design work. Small businesses will try to get by doing it themselves in an effort to save a few bucks (let’s get past the discussion of how that’s often a terrible idea for now and stick to the example).
And, while this appears at first glance to be bad for business, there’s an incredible opportunity here to mine a different aspect of your design jones to not only create a new revenue stream, but also tap the DIY needs of those small businesses and end up with more clients than you can handle.
What might happen if you offered a 4-part educational seminar series, priced at a small fraction of what you’d charge to actually do the design work for your clients? The price would be at the upper end of B2B impulse buy. The topic would be Do It Yourself Branding, Design, Logo Creation and Brochure Design for local businesses, and you’d run it either at your offices or the local library, chamber of commerce or other budget venue?
Chances are, you’d get far more small business owners at that program now than you would have a year ago. And, when you begin to share a wealth of knowledge and layers of thought that actually go into the process of doing what you do, a few things will happen.
à Two, by delivering a ton of high value information, you’ll cultivate a strong sense of reciprocity, leading many to feel the desire to someway, someday, pay you back. And, as the economy recovers, this may well come in the form of future business.
à Three, a solid chunk of those in attendance will realize that what seems fairly straightforward on the surface is actually a whole lot more involved than they thought. The more they learn, the more they’ll realize they have no business trying to conquer such an important task themselves, and the more likely they’ll be to decide they’d rather pay the money to have somebody else do it right. And guess who they’ll turn to?
Use your crisis time not only to find… but to build.The bigger point is, if you use the large chunk of crisis time that you’re not spending trying to find any immediate source of income to:
à
Research gaps in service, information, education, product, community and access that have been created or broadened by the economic downturn,
à
Learn how to set up your renegade path on the side, and
à
Take simultaneous action on this path…
You just might end up figuring out ways to generate the money you need by going renegade, BEFORE you even find your band-aid J-O-B.
Even if you land your band-aid job fairly quickly, take that job with a commitment to yourself to invest every free moment in the pursuit of researching, creating, and then launching your next great adventure—a career built around the life you want to live, not the other way around. A career defined by the marriage of passion and prosperity.
It may take weeks, months or even years. I’ve met Career Renegades who’ve done it in weeks and others who have taken two decades. I’m not selling a quick and easy fix. There’s no such thing. But, we’re talking about something that will profoundly improve or impair the quality of every day, for the rest of your life.
So, you might as well begin it now.