Millennials Create Their Own Opportunities
Some people believe millennials are the screwed generation because there are no jobs for us. And that we have every right to be angry at the older generation for pillaging public coffers, taking on loads of debt, and leaving the broken economy for the younger generation to fix.
.
But I don’t see it that way. So what if there aren’t a lot of high paying jobs out there for young workers anymore? Any job is a good job because any income is better than no income. The world can be an amazing place if we just lower our standards a bit. 😀
.
And just because there are no jobs, it doesn’t mean there is no work. Jobs are given to us, but work can be self created. Don’t ask what the world can give us. Ask what we can produce for the world instead. 😉 Starting a small business is easy. When I was 14 I shovelled snow for my neighbours during the winter. Clearing each driveway earned me $10. Cutting grass would be a great opportunity to make money in the summer. There are plenty of busy households who would gladly pay $25 for someone else to mow their lawn every couple of weeks. Their time is valuable. And all that’s required for this to happen is for some proactive entrepreneur to go knock on their door and say, “Hey, here’s what I can do for you. How about it?”
.
We can also develop knowledge based skills to make money. Being the first group of people to grow up with cell phones, laptops, and the internet millennials have a technological advantage over other working adults today. We can create a free blog in minutes. Social networks keep us informed and enable us to discuss our ideas with anyone from anywhere on the planet. We can download entire first year courses from Yale, Harvard, and other universities for free from their websites. There are non-profit organizations, such as the Khan Academy, which have free lectures on subjects like math, science, computer programming, history, art, philosophy, economics, and more. There’s also plenty of informational YouTube videos that teach everything from how to put on make-up, to how to start a small business, to how to make ricotta and spinach ravioli. ? Yum! Access to information is so ubiquitous today we can develop any knowledge based skills we desire to learn! And then use our new expertise to earn an income.
.
A lot of unemployed millennials in Vancouver and Toronto are really into fitness right? So why not become a personal trainer or yoga instructor? It doesn’t take a lot of capital to get up and running. 😀 Start with one-on-one sessions, and maybe scale up to group classes once the client base grows.
.
It’s easy for a millennial to say that if he had a dollar for every time a baby boomer calls him lazy, then he could afford a house in the economy the boomers ruined. ? But jokes aside, that kind of attitude isn’t very productive. There’s a saying that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. It means we tend to look at other people’s lives and other things that we don’t have through rose tinted glasses. But sometimes all we need to do is appreciate what we do have and work towards the kind of life we want for ourselves. 🙂
How can anyone at the prime of their human capital, who lives in a G20 country in 2015 complain that they are screwed? In all of human history so far we are living in the best of times. Because millennials have grown into such technological liberties we are the most culturally concious and economically self-aware generation ever. And unlike the older generations, we still have our youth. By the time people my age reach retirement age I believe we’ll have even more wealth than the baby boomers. 🙂
.
.
————————————————————————
Random Useless Fact:
Random Useless Fact:
If you’re in the market for a new TV, consider a 4K display if you want your TV to still be acceptable 5 years from now.
Great post, I especially like the quote about the seeds being in our hands. There’s never been more opportunities for people to start their own businesses than there are now.
The amount of self employed people are on the rise. Many of the new entrepreneurs today will go on to run large businesses and provide jobs for their community in the future. 🙂
It’s only with experience and wisdom that the simple saying “everyone is in sales” resonates with clarity.
Selling things to others is essentially what life is about, anywhere in any time.
So true. The better you can market yourself the more success you can potentially gain. It’s a natural evolutionary trait that we use everyday. And some people are better at it than others.
I just want to be sure that the blanket statement of everyone being able to do anything comes with one little tiny disclaimer:
“If you’re willing to work hard for it and wait for the fruits of your labour to be realized rather than thinking it’ll be instant.”
Ah, yes. Patience is a great virtue. We all have the potential to do amazing things, but a lot of those things will take time. All the side projects I have now started out small, and require a lot of time to grow. Dividend investing is a reasonable strategy to make a stable stream of passive income. I started with 2 stocks 7 years ago making $150/year in dividends. Today I hold over 40 high quality names and receive almost $7,000 a year in dividends. In another 10 years I plan for this income stream to grow to $25,000 a year or more. Hard work + time = reward.
Yes, anybody who complains about all the factory jobs being gone….. I guarantee you these people never actually worked in a factory!! What did Blake call them? Dark satanic mills…. yup, thats about right.
Exactly. Societies change and people adapt. 🙂 Before refrigerators were a common household item, milkmen would deliver the product to people’s homes on a daily basis. Switchboard operators used to be an important job too. Workers connected every single phone call by literally connecting wire to wire so people can have a conversation, haha. Today this is done automatically with digital technology. The milkmen slowly found other jobs though, and so did the switchboard operators, many of who were women. Today we have industries like social media marketing that didn’t exist back then. Workers need to understand that human innovation and ingenuity is an ongoing process and we all need to be flexible in an ever-changing world.
In 5 years you will need an 8K TV.. just saying..
Imagine the bandwidth you’re going to need for streaming an 8K video, lol.
I really like the positive attitude here. Every generation has its issues to face.
If everyone had your attitude there would be lots of cool businesses and happy people 🙂
Like attitudes tend to attract.
My mother said something just similar to “How can anyone at the prime of their human capital, who lives in a G20 country in 2015 complain that they are screwed? In all of human history so far we are living in the best of times.” just yesterday as I was lamenting the debt my business has (only 33k, grand scheme: not that much) and how shitty it feels to be turning 30 and have so ‘little’ to show for it… look at the life I live, my house, my bed, my dog, I can still afford to go on airplanes, I have a lot of richness in my life. I need big fat reminder daily to be grateful for all the cool stuff I have in my life. Great post 🙂
Not many people our age can run a business so that’s already exciting. Riches can be measured in many ways, the least of which is “money.” In fact, some people are so poor it’s all they have.
[…] am whining, and of course timely ran into this post here; go read this, from the […]