Chapter 1 -...
The Dream Isn't Always the Same
You've been working in the same field for 20 or 30 years.
The rate race is getting to you.
You're bored, tired, burned out.
You're looking for a change.
You start to wonder what else is out there.
Sound familiar? Millions of Americans find themselves in the same predicament. And many of them wonder at some time or other about moving to some remote locale, living simply and starting their own business. The dream, however, isn't always the same. It may be a bar in Key West, a surf shop in Costa Rica, a ski shop in Aspen, a winery in Napa. Perhaps it's not the business that's new, just the locale - your accounting firm in Vermont, a restaurant in Maui, your dental office on Bainbridge Island, or your consulting firm just about anywhere. Regardless, for most of us who have the dream it remains just that - a dream. For whatever reason, be it funding, know-how or just plain old-fashioned hootspa -- our dreams never get off the ground. We stay in our corporate jobs, until one day we're ready to retire to the Winnebago and that house in Sun City.
Consider that a whopping three-fourths of U.S. workers are either actively or passively looking for a new job at any given time, according to the 2006 U.S. Job Retention Survey, conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). For those who did voluntarily leave their jobs, their reasons were less about money or career opportunities, and increasingly about the need for a change.
As the graphic below shows, "Ready for a new experience" was the second biggest reason that employees left their jobs in 2006, according to the survey. That's up from a distant fourth place just two years earlier. Similarly, "Career change" also moved up sharply, to 5th place in 2006 from 8th in 2004.
What do those statistics tell you? That Americans, or at least a good part of them, are becoming increasingly tired of the rat race. They are deriving less and less satisfaction from working in corporate America, feeling bored and under-appreciated, fed up with an increasing lack of job security and the perception of poor management. They're also finding it harder and harder to balance work and life issues, according to the SHRM survey.
Some U.S. companies are finally getting the hint, and are initiating new programs specifically designed to retain unhappy employees - merit bonuses, career development opportunities, flexible work schedules and telecommuting, childcare, more vacation time.
Still, they have been unable to stop the flow. Increasingly, Americans are striking out more on their own - setting up small businesses or sole proprietorships, becoming contractors, working from home.
(Stats here and a graph from the u.s. employment survey).
Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation, points out that fewer than one in 10 Americans now work for a Fortune 500 Company, and that the largest private employer in America, by body count, is no longer General Motors, AT&T or even Microsoft -- it's Manpower, Inc., the temporary employment agency. And an increasing number of Manpower's workers are choosing temporary work because it offers a better work-life balance, not because they can't find permanent work.
More and more entrepreneurs are setting up shop not in the big cities where they've made their livelihoods, but in paradise - the resort towns, mountain communities, island retreats and beaches of the world - where keeping up with the Joneses gives way to quality of life.
Meanwhile, another major trend is also indirectly driving the quest for paradise - the aging of America. Some … million baby boomers will hit retirement age over the next … years.
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