LIVING WITH THE RECESSION: PART 5 OF 5.
Ed. note: Welcome to the fifth and final installment of the five part series, Living With the Recession by author and executive consultant Granville Toogood, who also happens to be my uncle as well. For more information on Granville, visit his website [here].
The good news just keeps rolling in with the bad times.
A friend fired from his job at a financial services company has finally found time to turn his attention to his first love, wooden boats. The last two weeks he’s been at the library and online catching up on all the juicy wooden boat news and developments he’s missed for the past career-crazy fifteen years.
Incredibly, he’s already in touch with someone interested in developing a 50/50 business plan for a new company to specialize in hand-crafted 19th-century reproductions. He’s even got a design of his own that’s he’s putting together in his garage.
“Never been happier,” he told me. “Should have done this years ago.”
Another friend in St. Helena, California, has partnered with two other digital whizzes derailed by the recession to buy an artisan vineyard that was itself about to go out of business because the owner passed away. Six months into their new adventure, they’ve already hired six new employees and can’t keep up with the demand from high-end restaurants.
Another Silicon Valley casualty has partnered with his wife, an engineer, to design and manufacture roof tiles that double as solar panels. Not even a year into their new adventure—and before a single tile has even been produced — they have already been approached to sell their technology to a big U.S. energy company. An Israeli company is also showing interest.
These are just three of tens of thousands of inspiring stories popping up every day and unfolding right under our noses. Everywhere you look, in the timeless natural cycle of destruction and creation, the recession is giving birth to new enterprises and new jobs.
Turn on the TV and you would think we were all on our knees, facing a catastrophe. Yes, almost 10 percent of us are out of work. But the other 90 percent are still plugging along. Interestingly, it is not the 90 percent that will pull us up and out of the mess, but the more intrepid and creative numbers of that foot loose 10 percent (probably not the ones, however, who are frozen in fear, feeling sorry for themselves and standing in line for the dole).
The Depression produced The Greatest Generation. The recession of 1987-1992 produced the digital revolution. This bump in the road will probably help launch the greatest growth engine in generations – The Green Revolution, which is already under way and growing stronger every day, recession or no recession.
Thank God for recessions. They wake us up and turn us on, reminding us of who we are and what we can do. Whatever would we do without them?
Everybody seems to agree the recession won’t end until consumers – people like you and me – fire up our confidence and start spending again.
According to nutrition experts, we all should be eating not three big meals, but five small meals that include less meat and more fruit and veggies every day. Let’s assume, however, that for a lot of reasons we can’t all subscribe to the five-meal plan. So let’s take a look at what we can do with just three:
Our 20-something nephew wound up out of work — like most of his friends — and started a networking “club” series of parties in New York for young, unemployed professionals. A handful of months later the “club” is helping people get new jobs and morphing into a rewarding venture. A TV crew even flew all the way from Australia to interview him.