If you are in one business long enough, you start to get known within that business.  I’ve been in the communications business for four decades, about 25 years of which have been spent as the sole or a senior principle of my own firm.  So, I often get contacted by people who have some sort of question or interest, proposition, desire to pick my brain, etc.  Right now,through Facebook, Google searches, my blog, whatever, I am being contacted more frequently by people who share very similar circumstances.  The details may change, but basically:  they are smart; they have had successful careers by any measure; they are out of a job in a market that has ongoing needs but no budget to hire people to address those needs.  These discussions make me an optimist.

By now, I’ve spoken in enough forums (from group meetings to phone chats and emails, etc.) and to enough people (from the communications, real estate, and all sorts of services firms) to see a trend.  This is what I see happening:

• There are a number of really smart people who are out of work.  They look around and they see a limited number of job opportunities and a surge in competition for those jobs.  Any employer who is looking for someone with specific experience has a great opportunity to find someone who is spot-on.  So, the individual looking for a job has to hope that they will be a needle in a haystack because they know that’s what the employer is going to employ.

• These people are realists.  They are working through their contact list.  Although they may cite meeting me at some meeting at some place and time, or that they read something I wrote, I do not really know many of the people with whom I am chatting.  They are running out of names.  I’m not at the top or even middle of their list.  By the time they contact me they still are in the hunt for a job but they know the chances are slim that they will find one before their money runs out.  And although they hold on to the hope that they will eventually be the needle in the haystack, they have a spouse, kids, a mortgage, and a future.  They cannot rely on hope.  They know they need to do something else.

• They are bumping into that “something else” in a totally different way than you usually bump into opportunities.  They are seeing it in disappointing news.  It’s what they hear when their contacts tell them: “I’d love to hire you.  You are just what we need, and we know how to work together.  I just don’t have the budget to hire you.”  Therein is the genesis of future great businesses.

• What they are hearing in addition to the disappointing news is that the enterprise that cannot afford to hire them also knows that their need isn’t going to go away and, left unaddressed, delay could hurt them.  If they cannot afford to pay for a total solution, they also cannot afford to not pay for some band aid.  That’s not a job.  But it is work.  It is an opportunity to provide value and get paid for that value.  And if you can supply a band aid, well maybe you can get a decent price for providing more band aids to more customers.

• So at 3 o’clock in the morning, when they are staring up at the ceiling, they start asking themselves two basic business questions:  1) How do I define what I do?  2) How do I get in front of prospective customers?

• As to the first question, generally because they are out of work, and they have been good Americans by being a good consumer, they do not have much money and capital-intensive businesses are out of the question.  So a great idea for a new manufacturing business is a non-starter.  Usually, the cost of staff is out of the question as well.  So is the cost of an office.  In other words, these people have one thing to rely on: themselves.  There was a time when a person who had to rely on their own capabilities would spend a nominal amount of money and move to where they could pan for gold.  Less dramatically, they would try to get day work of some sort or another.  Those people had to rely on their own physical capabilities.  The people I’m hearing from today are relying on their intellectual capabilities and skills.  They are seeing those as sellable assets that they already possess and on which they can base a business.  So they are going into service businesses.  Because they are smart and have substantial experience, generally they understand that the narrower they define their expertise, the more value they will be perceived to provide to those seeking that particular expertise and thus they will be able to command a higher fee.  With higher fees and fewer clients they need less overhead as compared to having lots of clients at lower fees.  So they are focusing on niches defined by intelligence, knowledge and experience where the provision of value is integral.  Selling commodities (including the commodity of time, which is what most service firms currently sell) is not part of their equation.  It’s all about value – totally logical in a Knowledge Economy.

• As to the question of how they get in front of prospective customers, that too is different than even just a few years ago.  Narrow niches of expertise may merit higher fees, but the universe of prospective customers is smaller by definition.  However, the universe of accessible and serviceable customers has expanded because of the Internet and the communications revolution.  Customers can be anywhere in the world.  They can be reached directly and through many virtually cost-free (or nominal cost) distribution channels. Often the pitch, the service and even the payment can all be accomplished through existing and rapidly emerging technology and processes.

• Among these smart people, there will be some failures.  A good many will learn how to survive and some percentage of them will learn how to prosper.  A percentage of those who prosper will figure out how to leverage their success to build a business, probably with a totally different and radically new model.  And among those, there will be new Fords, Dells and Pages and Brins.  And those people, whose names we do not know yet, and whose businesses are just being born, are going to change industries and maybe change the world.

Creative destruction?  You bet!  Visible?  Not at all.  Need for capital from the government?  Zero (as is their budget for lobbying).  Positive consequences for themselves and their society?  Enormous.  Risk:Reward?  High:High.  Isn’t that what it’s all about – this system called “capitalism”?  It might be out of favor and it looks like there is a consensus among political leaders around the globe that it needs to be changed or abandoned for some new economic and political philosophy.  Maybe they are right.  But don’t tell that to those people who have lost their jobs and have said their own “Enough!” and “Yes I Can” to the system by deciding they aren’t going to waste their time looking for a new job.  They’re spending their time doing something much more basic to success and growth.  They are building businesses.  Bring it on!  Bring it on!