Over the course of a 30 year career I have encountered many people. I consider most of those people acquaintances but a few became friends because we typically shared the same perspectives and had similar goals.
Lately, many of my friends have been either retiring or quitting the corporate world and starting their own companies. I think this is something that happens to most people when they hit their mid 40s, they get burned out of whatever particular life they have had and go off and try something different.
There is the joke and stereotype of the mid-life crisis man who divorces his wife of 20 years, buys a corvette and starts dating some bimbo. Fortunately, my friends don’t fall into this category but sometimes I wish they would rather than starting their own business.
Recently, and perhaps because of the new year, I’ve been approached by no less than two friends to help them start their business and help them generate some sales. They ask me to do this because I’m still employed in the corporate world and I have many networks of businesses I deal with on a day to day basis but it’s not something I want to do because I simply don’t have time.
It’s not the first time it has happened. Early in my career when I was starting out I had people trying to convince me to join Amway or similar program. I had a former VP start a coffee shop and kept asking me to help him out. Another opened a restaurant and wanted me to invest or at least dine in even though their restaurant was a one hour drive from my home.
Now here’s the interesting thing, I could and should tell these guys to just bugger off but the truth is that I’m approaching corporate burn out and probably wouldn’t mind joining these guys in their startup, not for the money but for the pure freedom of choosing your own daily fate and hanging out with people that I can laugh with day to day. .
It occurred to me thought that if everyone across America starts to feel this way, corporate america might implode. We already have labor shortages everywhere and the leadership and most companies is abysmal but they too are getting ready to cash out and walk out the door.
I looked up the generations coming up and was shocked to see that the oldest Millennials are now 42 years old which means in 10 years they will be in their 50s!
- Gen X: Born 1965-1980 (44-59 years old)
- Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (28-43 years old)
- Gen Z: Born 1997-2012 (12-27 years old)
I can already visualize future me. This post is just to give you younger people a heads up as to what’s coming.