I used to wonder if I should make more effort to get in on the dot-com boom. The thing is, I’d learned many years ago (from a fantasy-genre short story about entrepreneurship, of all things) that it’s a losing proposition to try to get rich doing the same thing everyone else is doing.
Steve Pavlina has written an excellent article on How to Make Lots of Money During a Recession. Articles like these tend to drip with privilege, and his is no exception, but I still think his advice is basically sound:
During such times people get scared and start cutting back on expenses. They cut some of the fluff from their lives. They stop buying so much stuff they don’t need.
This causes some businesses to do poorly, especially businesses that don’t provide stuff we really need. We can live without new credit cards and gas-guzzling SUVs for a while. Those non-essentials can be put off.
We also become more sensitive to receiving genuine value. When we spend money, we want to make sure we’re getting a fair deal.
Consequently, businesses that provide genuine value can actually do better during a recession. More people will flock to those businesses in tough times, while the fluff businesses will become more and more paranoid. [...]
Instead of focusing on trying to make more money, put your time and energy into CREATING and DELIVERING real value. Find a way to give people what they want and/or need.
Take note that the keywords here are CREATE and DELIVER.
Don’t miss the follow-up article, How to Create Real Value:
…you know you’re creating value when you can see tangible positive changes in the world as a result of your creative output. [...]
How do you figure out how to provide strong value?
You get started by creating stuff that provides little or no value. Then keep experimenting. Keep trying different things. Look for ways to improve. In this manner you’ll progress to weak value and eventually to some strong value.
As awful as the recession’s effects on our lives may be, I believe this is a great time for individuals and small businesses to reach out to their communities to provide help. Do what you can for others. Don’t worry about getting rich, but do know that you deserve to receive value in exchange for the value you provide others.
May you find meaning and joy in all that you do.
The Two links, with my best wishes for an increase of abundance in your life by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.