A second career arises as the solution for the urgent individual need to face financial uncertainty present and future. On the other hand, learn a second career is a possibility of taking advantage of the new business opportunities for the individuals appeared into Globalized Markets because of the historical shift of the last two decades.
Why and How you should Learn a Second Web Business Career
Summary:
A: Why it is today more necessary and possible than ever, access to a complementary second career that reverse the individual financial uncertainty?
- The current scenario creates the urgent need of a Web business Career for everyone.
- The current historical event that makes possible and available an unrestricted Web Working Business profession.
B: How to take advantage of the current opportunities?
- How to prepare yourself for new scenarios?
- How to plan your new self-education?
C: How to manage and take advantage of the new opportunities?
A: Why, it is today more necessary and possible than ever, access to a complementary second career that reverse the individual financial uncertainty?
As a result of the current historical situation, it comes to us the possibility of learning a Second Career as the solution of two urgent situations:
First, the need of taking care of the second half of our lives, due to the lengthening of the average life, that is financially threatened because of the vulnerability of the retirement fund, under risk in the long run, because of the volatility of the financial market.
In the other hand, this historical period allows the resurrection of the Individual business, collapsed some years ago, and achieves financial autonomy because of a new window of outstanding opportunities is opened in the last years of the Globalization for Individuals persons.
From the historical events after World War II, known as Post-Capitalism, into which born the Baby-boomer and the younger generations, arise as consequences, to new unrestricted business career and jobs alternatives with unlimited working opportunities, together with the urgent need to personally take care of our future financial security that was lost in that same period as a way of reversing the financial problems presents and futures in the second half of life into the post-retirement stage.
This article is based on the extraordinary contribution of the outstanding work of Dr. Peter Drucker-The Management’s father-(1909-2005) DRUKER
The Drucker Institute is an unparalleled resource. Closely aligned with the Drucker School of Management, the Institute preserves, promotes and enlarges the legacy of Peter Drucker.
As a result of Collateral Damage, it is urgently necessary to be prepared for financial uncertainty. However, as a consequence of the Collateral Opportunities, it is convenient to take advantage of the historic opportunities of accessing a second global and unrestricted career.
The historical period that goes from the end of World War II until today, known as Post Capitalism, can be considered for greater clarity divided into two stages.
The first stage starts near the end of the War, and its consequences affect life until today.
The most important consequences began with the advent of Globalization by 1960 and diffusion of Personal computers by 1970.
The second stage overlaps the first one. This stage starts in 1990 with the massive use of the Internet and also remains alive today.
Extraordinary changes occurred within both overlapped period that modified the civilization in different ways as never before in History.
From the perspective of the individual, the changes caused different types of side effects, which for simplicity we grouped into collateral damage and collateral opportunities.
1) The current scenario creates the urgent need of a Web Business Second Career for everyone.
- Historical events that changed the individual working lives, risking the individual financial security.
The concurrence of historical events that happened after World War II originates the need to take care of our financial security, especially for the second half of our life.
On the other hand, those same historical changes, particularly those that occurred in the most recent stage of Post Capitalism, created the conditions that bring us the opportunities that arise as a result of the extraordinary advances in knowledge and technology allowing the resurgence of individual productive capacities and the possibility of regaining the control of our financial future.
Let’s face “The New Certainties” from the words of Dr. P. Drucker The following quote from Dr. Drucker analysis gives us an idea about the current situation that created the scenario of both: the adverse situation that has to be faced and the need to be prepared for a second career:
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
THE NEW CERTAINTIES
“We live in a period of profound transition. The changes that are taking place are more radical than perhaps any changes in history.
- The Collapsing Birthrate
The most important single new certainty is the collapsing birthrate in the developed world.
Accompanying the decline in births will be a corresponding shift in the age of the population. As fewer children are born, a larger proportion of the population will be older.
Coupled with the fact that people are living longer than in decades past, there will be an explosion of older people and a dearth of younger ones. This is an unprecedented experience.
One new reality will be that retirement age will have to be raised, perhaps as high as 79. If not, there won’t be enough workers to meet demand.
Above all, there is no precedent for a population structure in which old people past any traditional retirement age outnumber young people as they already do in parts of Europe and as they will do in all developed countries well before the middle of the 21st century.
“Retirement” may come to mean two different things. It is quite likely that the trend toward “early retirement” will continue. But it will no longer mean that a person stops working. It will come to mean that a person stops working full-time or as an employee for an organization for the entire year rather than a few months at a time.
- The Distribution of Income
Shifts in the shares of disposable income are just as important as shifts in population, but usually even less attention is paid to them. And they are likely—indeed all but certain—to be as dramatic as the demographic changes during the first decades of the 21st century.
Quote from:
–Management Challenges for the 21st Century
- The main reasons that increase the risk of running out of money in an unpredictable future
The consequences of the changes produced since the advent of Post-Capitalism both positive and negative created a scenario in which it is necessary to deal with our Financial Security especially in THE SECOND HALF OF OUR LIFE.
- Lengthening of life
- Improvement in the physical and mental capacity of people
- Prolongation of work capacity, long away from 65
- Shortening the life of companies
- Job insecurity
- Shifts in the shares of disposable income
- The retirement system requires to increase the retirement age to be sustainable
- Insecurity of retirement funds because of the volatility of the global financial markets
- The risk of running out of money after retirement
The urgent need to personally take care of our financial security
The need to personally take care of our present and future financial security it is a must.
The lengthening of life create two situations:
a) Financial uncertainty
More years of life increases the need for financial resources to cover the future necessity of the longer life, increasing the risk of running out of money at some moment in the future due to the uncertainty of the retirement programs.
b) Financial Opportunities
On the contrary, the lengthening of life not only means more years of life, but it also comes together with more health, either physically and mentally, and of course, the increase in our productive potentialities.
Learning a complementary career is not only a way of taking care of our financial security, but it is also a way of taking care for our health our self-esteem and our dignity, recovering lost place into the economically active world.
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
- The Second Half of Your Life
One can no longer expect that the organization for which one works at age thirty will still be around when one reaches age sixty. But also, forty or fifty years in the same kind of work is much too long for most people. They deteriorate, get bored, lose all joy in their work, “retire on the job,” and become a burden to themselves and to everyone around them.
Manual workers who have been working for forty years—in the steel mill for instance, or in the cab of a locomotive—are physically and mentally tired long before they reach the end of their normal life expectancy, that is, well before they reach even traditional retirement age.
They are “finished.” If they survive—and their life expectancy too has gone up to an average of seventy-five years or so—they are quite happy spending ten or fifteen years doing nothing, playing golf, going fishing, engaging in some minor hobby, and so on.
But knowledge workers are not “finished.”
They are perfectly capable of functioning despite all kinds of minor complaints. And yet the original work that was so challenging when the knowledge worker was thirty has become a deadly bore when the knowledge worker is fifty—and still he or she is likely to face another fifteen if not another twenty years of work.
To manage oneself, therefore, will increasingly require preparing oneself for the second half of one’s life.
Quote from:
–The Essential Drucker. Copyright © 2001
2) The current historical events that make possible for individuals learning an unrestricted Web Working Business Profession.
It is repeated once again, the opportunities that changed the history of the world and the lives of people since 1944.
In other words, access to business education without restrictions and business opportunities for individuals that occurred in 1944, is the mirror of current opportunities.
There are situations in the World’s history that sometimes go unnoticed and yet produce monumental changes. The access to college education for more than 10,500,000 veterans at the end of World War II is one of these events. This fact gave rise to the knowledge society and to its main protagonist: the “Knowledge Worker” from which derived the Post Capitalism, the Management, and the Knowledge Society.
The GI Bill of Rights program, that is, Servicemen’s Readjustment Act enacted in1944, offered university benefits and other benefits to veterans of World War II, and later for veterans of the Korean War. These events, together with the Globalization of the economy and the incredible advance in knowledge, changed history and Post-Capitalism began.
Again, the same outstanding historical fact that created the Knowledge Worker in 1944 it is repeating nowadays as a new historical fact in which born the Web Worker.
Overlapped to the above-described scenario, it is also occurring since 1990 the repetition of a similar historical situation occurred in 1944 which allowed the unrestricted access to education that becoming at that moment the start point of the Post Capitalism, the Knowledge Society, the and the advent of the Knowledge Worker.
That situation in 1944, is the mirror that reflects today the new opportunities that arise again as a result of the unrestricted access to high-level business training throughout the Internet in which the “Web Working” is the pathway.
• Why is it now more important and possible than ever to access a web business career without restrictions?
Let learn from the Management considerations made by Dr. Peter Drucker:
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
“The GI Bill of Rights – 1944-and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America’s veterans – signaled the shift to the knowledge society.”
Quote from:
–“Post Capitalism”
- How the new opportunities that balance the landscape appeared?
In the most recent period of the Post Capitalism since the time that the Personal Computer got critical mass by 1970 and the extended use of the Internet in business after 1990, it was born the Information Age.
From the conjunction of the Knowledge Worker born in 1944 and the Age of Information, born in 1990, the Web Worker was born.
The “web worker” is a specialized kind of knowledge worker.
The web workers main asset is his knowledge, his main resource is the Internet, and his main strength is the possibility of getting web customers.
The possibility of a parallel career or a new profession is one of the greatest opportunities that arise, as a positive side effect that appeared within the last stage of Post Capitalism with the birth of the Web Working.Likewise, the opportunity of achieving a second self-managed economic career, or a new professional job, allows us to face the harmful effects produced by the previous stage of Post Capitalism, in which it became almost impossible to carry out independent business activity. Also, because of the same events, the job security is under fire together with the loss of security of the funds that finance our retirement.
In this post-capitalist scenario, the financial support of our financial present and the economic security of the second half of our lives have been put at risk.
A parallel career or second career is a great chance to overcome the negative side effects produced during this historical period. Although the changes are both positive and negative, the new scenario that creates forces us to think in THE SECOND HALF OF OUR LIFE in advance.
B: How to take advantage of the current opportunities?
1. How to prepare yourself for new scenarios?
Let’s hear again what Dr. Drucker has to say as regards:
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
- The Parallel Career
For the first time in human history, individuals can expect to outlive organizations. This creates a totally new challenge: What to do with the second half of one’s life?
To manage oneself therefore, will increasingly require preparing oneself for the second half of one’s life.
It first became clear thirty years ago that working-life expectancies were lengthening very fast.
Quote from:
–“Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)”
2. How to plan your new self-education?
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
- The historical Revolution for the Individuals
The changes and challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem to be self-evident to the point of appearing naive. Managing oneself, however, is a revolution in human affairs. It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker. For in effect, it demands that each knowledge worker think and behave as a chief executive officer. It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge worker’s thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.
- Managing Oneself:
What Knowledge Workers Can Expect More and more people in the work force will have to learn to manage themselves. They will have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contribution to the company, and they will have to learn to develop themselves. They will also need to stay young and mentally alive during what may be a 50-year working life. They will be in charge of their own destinies.
These are powerful new demands on individuals, Including discovering what your strengths are, who you are and how you work; asking where you belong; defining your contribution; taking responsibility for relationships; and planning for the second half of your life. What Are My Strengths? Many people think they know at what they are good. But often they are wrong. Today you must take the time and make the effort to identify your strengths.
Quote from:
–Management Challenges for the 21st Century
- What you need to be aware of?
Although the learning possibilities are unrestrictedly accessible in the cyberspace, there is not a programmed structured education, like in traditional learning system, this is because there are many business models and too many mixed information.
Also, the technological changes, although they are generally good enough, however, because they are too much frequent and disordered, they generate great confusion and stress.
The way to afford those frequent change is to appropriate as soon as possible the Structural Knowhow and the Fundamentals principles of this new activity.
So understanding the basics Principles is an essential requirement from the beginning so that the information does not get disordered in our mind and the changes instead of creating confusion represent a contribution to our learning process.
Despite the above mentioned, not everything is confusion. It is possible to find thematically focused courses at a low cost that covers the first stage of our learning process in which it is necessary to create a general vision of the Internet-based businesses.
Although there are specific courses of good quality as well, they do not contemplate the different needs and levels of knowledge. However, they are applicable to deepen specific aspects that are required in more advanced stages of the learning curve.
At the first stage of the learning curve, you don’t need of specific knowledge, you are building your overall vision, and ordering the different piece of the puzzle so the thematically focused course may be a good and affordable chance.
- An affordable approach to Online business world
Since there are not structured programs, as it was already mentioned, it is a priority from the very beginning learning the fundamentals or the foundational principles in this very changing technological environment. It is also necessary to take into account that learning to work on the web is a process and, like any process, it has different stages and levels to which you must go step by step.
The first stage of self-learning education is to get a global vision.
You can do it through a broad approach that draws the whole picture of the online business world.
It is possible to achieve this learning from thematically focused tutorials that will allow you to discover the basic principles, the fundamentals and the main purposes that you should pursue, which later will be the pillars of your know-how.
Therefore, by learning different approaches, including testing different strategies and tactics, it will be possible extracting from that, the main concepts and the fundamental principles that will be making up your global vision.
This first step should be done without a risky investment since some of the information would be not usable and can be redundant. That is why the thematic courses are the best choice.
Later on, when you already have an overall approach to the whole thematic aspects that cover the web working training preparation, and you have made some test and experiences, you will have a general vision, then you may want to refine your knowledge and learn some specific course on the topic you considered more relevant an effective, in order to get the result you want to achieve.
This approach needs a conceptual structure that will help you order your ideas in a sea of confusing information. To help you create that conceptual structure, and build your own learning program, you can read this article.
C: How to manage and take advantage of the new opportunities
- How to avoid frustration and abandonment
Some Causes of Frustration that you should be aware of:
1- Excessive information scattered, messy and confusing.
2- Difficult to distinguish between qualified and unusable information.
3- Information not appropriate for the level of knowledge of each one.
4- Non-existence of structured and specific programs such as in universities and business schools.
5- The lack of a Master Guide or Road Map that allows selecting and ordering the information collected and building the know-how of the future business.
6- Be fooled by easy solutions that promise to make money with 3 clicks of the mouse that end in frustration and abandonment.
7- Be fooled by all those reductionist who want to make believe that in businesses just one aspect matter and casually that aspect match the product or service they offer.
In the businesses like in most areas, all aspect matter but especially in the businesses in which although technical advances occurred, the evergreen universal principles remain alive.
Don’t forget the essential principle in business: Getting Customers Profitably. Also, ever keep in mind that this is your main competitive advantage.
Dr. Peter Drucker – The Management’s Father
(1009-2005)
Self-regulation of learning – “self-coaching”
- Information Challenges
“The new Information Revolution began in business and has gone farthest in it.
It is becoming clearer every day that these technical changes will indeed must lead to redefining what is meant by education.
One probable consequence: The center of gravity in higher education (i.e., post secondary teaching and learning) may shift to the continuing professional education of adults during their entire working lives.
This, in turn, is likely to move learning off campus and into a lot of new places: the home, the car or the commuter train, the workplace, the church basement or the school auditorium where small groups can meet after hours”
Quote from:
–Management Challenges for the 21st Century
- How to build the learning Program that will guide your self-education
The available information in the cyberspace:
How you can find the appropriate learning information and choose the one that fit your needs
In general terms, you can get the following types of web-available information:
- Free, good but sometimes inaccurate information
- Low-cost Thematically focused tutorials
- More Expensive but very Specific coaching courses
- Diverse types of web business public events
- Free, good but sometimes inaccurate information
Although it is almost sure to find everything we want in the Cyberspace by free, however, the problem is that there is a high degree of dispersion in the kind and quality of the information that makes systematic learning very difficult.
This is more difficult when people do not have an overview of the industry and do not know what they should learn and in what order they should do it.. When they find disordered information, it is not easy to determine what the useful information is, and what is not. Nor is it easy to establish a learning order that allows step by step progress. Generally, this type of scattered information is worse than not having any information.
There is also a lot of very valuable free access information in some case highly specialized and too much advanced that only confuse those who still do not have the fundamentals and are not clear about what they are going to do, However, this kind of information is very valuable when they already know what needs to learn.
- Low-cost THEMATICALLY FOCUSED tutorials
As it was mentioned the web working training is a process that has to be walked step by step and in which there is not a structured learning program as in the formal education.
Although there are no formal academic courses, on the web business area, there are thematically focused tutorials that cover the most relevant topics, and they are available at a very low cost.
When learning through the thematic courses, the learning process goes through different sets of tutorials.
The different thematic courses cover a single topic related to some aspects of the web business.
In general terms, the thematic courses are applicable to different business models.
Although each course is focused on different aspects, some ideas may be repeated in some of them. In this way, the fundamentals and principles begin to emerge. In some cases, the fundamentals are hidden into that repetition.
These ideas are commonly accepted concepts that everybody seasoned in the subject, considered obvious and that they suppose are generally known for everybody. These are the Pillar of the industry.
When learning the thematic courses, they should not be used as a cake recipe and apply them directly as such instead, it is important to keep in mind, that other topics make up the complete picture of any businesses, and that those different topics are related to each other.
The convenience of the thematic course is that they cover every topic in its whole extension, and for just a few coins we get a complete picture of one particular aspect of the web businesses.
The low cost of the thematic courses is worth the price we pay for them, even though we only take advantage of a few ideas that allow us to take a step forward.
While in some tutorials there may be some ideas that could be repeated as mentioned, or that in some way may be outdated, due to the speed of the innovation that is constantly updated, however, the fundamental ideas remain the same and maintain their value.
Those evergreen ideas and concept are the ones that you should gather and save in your mind because they make up the pillars of your future business model.
These thematic courses deal with classic and essential themes, which are generally the basis from which the foundations that must be learned can be extracted or inferred to achieve a general vision that survives the changes.
This type of low-cost course is the most recommended for those who start. It is a way to achieve a good enough training that allows to get the fundamentals of the business and on the other hand to be forming an idea of the business model in which you wish to venture.
Due to the variety of existing thematic courses, these courses fulfill the function of the subjects within a conventional education program. This is achieved in a very convenient way because they allow knowing all the business requirements and developing skills through the practice of the essential skills through step-by-step guides for a specific topic.
- More Expensive but VERY SPECIFIC coaching courses
Because of the constant changes in the technological world, the new required knowledge and Skills, generally are not Offered like Structured Careers.
Many good quality high-cost learning programs aim to specialized employees of large organizations that perform specific functions in a limited area for a salary. Their goals are just the goals of their specific job. They do not need to get a general business vision nor to learn the fundamentals involved in the success of the company for which they work for.
There are many web working courses and tutorials on the web, most of them very good, however, mostly too much specific and focused on a particular topic, that become inappropriate for those that need a whole vision, avoiding the confusion that can cause insolated topics when their basic needs are the fundamental and principles.
Although these types of courses could help, they are useless without good preparation.
These highly specialized courses, not learned at the right time, when the basic concepts are still not clear, can become a bad investment and in a source of confusion.
- Diverse types of web business public events
The webinars, conference, symposium, meeting, convention, forum, summit, and so on, are very interesting events, in which it is possible to learn a lot and improve our skills; however, to take advantage of them, it is necessary to have previously the fundamentals and the know-how of our own business.
- How to manage the information gathered, and build a learning program.
It can be helpful for you to follow the Guide focused on the major business principles which remains the same for any type of business in any part of the world and at any time of the businesses’ history.
You can use that guide as checklists that will allow you to realize what function perform each piece of information gathered and then relate it to your business model. So you will be able to build the Road Map with actionable ideas that will become in your business actions Plan.
CONCLUSION
In addition to extraordinary improvement in the history of human knowledge, happened after World War II in the period known as Post-Capitalism, also occurred positive and negative side effects that change our economic life.
Those side effects for clarity we group into 1) Collateral Damage and 2) Collateral Opportunities-both with financial consequences, Financial Uncertainty, and Financial Opportunities:
One of those relevant changes that produced both, Collateral Damage and Collateral Opportunities is the lengthening of people life.
- Financial uncertainty
The need to cope with the financial consequences of lengthening life is due to the increase in the amount of money needed to finance more years of life after retirement. In addition, the extra money needed is not guaranteed due to job instability and the insecurities of retirement funds due to the volatility of the global financial markets in which pension funds are invested.
- Financial Opportunities
As a positive consequence of lengthening life the increase of the labor productivity of people with not only allows more working time but more physical and mental health to enjoy lives and job.
As a balance to the collateral damages of the Post Capitalism, the unrestricted access to business education that changed the world history by 1944 it is repeated again.
The opportunity created since 1990 by the second part of Post-Capitalism is the repetition to the scenario that gave birth to the knowledge revolution, where unrestricted access to education was made possible by the extraordinary historical shift happened after 1944, it happens again, allowing the resurrection of the individuals business opportunities.
The individual has returned to appear as a protagonist of the businesses scenario as an essential economic actor.
The technological changes occurred in the last two decades revived the individual’s business strengths that were relegated by Post-Capitalism.
The new historical shift power the individual’s strength to carry out the task that sustains and make it possible the any businesses since the beginning of the trade in the World history. That task is the possibility of acquiring customers profitably; in fact, this is the individual main competitive advantage.
Because the need to acquire Web Customers is essential for any kind of business venture, being it a Local business, Affiliate business, Self-employed, Independent professional, Freelancer, Outsource or whatever, this fact open up countless opportunities for the individuals.
As one of the best Collateral Opportunity and more relevant Financial Opportunity create by the mentioned shift in human history after World War II, is the possibility of unrestricted access to a business Second Career.
A web business second career is self-directed, unrestricted; where no limiting conditions exist that allow you as individual the access to global markets, working from a fixed location like your house your office and even your car or plane if you are traveling.
This training is possible learning through thematic courses that cover relevant business aspects in a complete way at a very low cost.
To help you to create your own learning program, it could be useful for you, our guide to the basic business structure that can assist you in the process of ordering your ideas.
Following the basic business structure guide, you will order the business ideas you gathered from different sources like the thematic courses, in which you will find and extract the fundamentals and principles that will lead your learning. You are going to develop an overall vision of the entire web business industry from where later will raise your business plan and your business know-how.
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