The Bishop of London, Rt. Rev. Richard Chartres said those who are made redundant may welcome the release from a working life that left them responding to emails and phone calls at all hours over their Blackberry devices. He said the financial crisis would help people work out what is truly valuable in life. “Sometimes indeed people seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill and to be given an opportunity to reconsider what they really want out of life,” he stated. However, he faces accusations of insensitivity at a time when unemployment is at a 12-year high, close to 2 million in Britain, causing thousands of redundant workers to see their houses repossessed as they fall behind with mortgage payments.

Losing your job is never easy because it is not only your way of making a living you have lost, but also your colleagues and your lifestyle. The current economic climate makes it even harder. Britain is at “serious risk” of entering a decade-long recession similar to that experienced by Japan in the 1990s, the outgoing deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Gieve, has warned the nation recently.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Britain is to suffer worst recession of any advanced nation. The economy will shrink by 2.8 per cent this year, with Britain faring significantly worse than the United States, Western Europe or Japan due to its reliance on the financial sector.

Not much of a comfort now, but the recession will pass and the economic situation worldwide will get better. But the real issue is: your job might not be there any more. The whole sector of an industry may be gone. The consumer behaviour may have changed beyond recognition. The products and services are constantly changing to provide better value to consumers. When the recession is finally over, you might not even have the necessary skills to serve clients the best possible way.

In life everything happens for a reason and each step back ends up being two steps forward. There is, no matter how gloomy the recession and its consequences, a silver lining. The hardest way to learn is by experience, but experience is also the best teacher. Use this time to be inspired. You could do worse than thinking about how you could come up with a business idea of your own.

©2009 Accidental Small Business Owner

In Britain the government ministers fear that the economic downturn will be felt differently by men and women. The reason is that the rising jobless rate is often harder on women because their tendency to earn less and work part-time so they can care for family members. As women tend to work in smaller workplaces, redundancies go unnoticed by the media. Those women who are still employed may have to take on more work-an extra job or longer hours-to make up for a male breadwinner who has lost his job.

British ministers fear employers will cut female personnel much more readily than male workers as the downturn accelerates. Ministers have expressed concern that women will be targeted by employers seeking to avoid the costs of new policies, such as flexible working rights and longer maternity leave. Ministers also fear some of those being laid off are victims of discrimination and could be out of the workforce for a generation.

There is something you could at least consider while waiting the economy to turn around and finding your dream job again.

It might seem counterintuitive to start a new business when the economy is in downturn. But a recession can actually be the ideal time for launching a company. In fact, many well-known and successful organizations were born during an economic slump. Launching a start up in a recession will teach you how to be shrewd and prudent with your time, money, resources, and investment. Another positive effect of a bearish economy is cheap resources.

The following major corporations made it big during recessions.

In 1975, when Microsoft was created by Harvard University dropout Bill Gates, it was just a little company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It dealt in rudimentary computing languages and began its climb to business stardom with the success of MS-DOS, which was sold and marketed to IBM Corp. and then IBM clones.

Burger King Corp., with its flame-broiled burgers, is another recession startup. The company began in 1954 when James McLamore and David Edgerton opened a Burger King restaurant in Miami, Florida. During another recession in 1957, the company introduced its successful signature burger — the Whopper.

Why did these companies succeed? Usually it is because the founders recognized a market need and filled it. Identifying that need is the key to any thriving business, regardless of the economic climate in which it begins.

©2009 Accidental Small Business Owner

How frustrated do you have to be before you consider working for yourself? Only you know the answer to that question. Perhaps the pain of where you are at the moment, and the agonising truth that doing nothing changes nothing, forces you to at least look at the surrounding world differently.

Think about what is grinding your gear in your current situation. If it has something to do with your employment, then the good news is that you can do something about it. You might be underpaid and your talents and skills go unnoticed. Being made redundant or being fired could be an impetus for becoming self-employed. Being passed over for a promotion is another motivator to look for business opportunities. You could also be tired of the daily routine of your job.

You may think that it is more prestigious to be an entrepreneur and that it will satisfy your ego better than having a mundane job title and a salary to match. It is true that there is a trend of certain types of businesses that are more popular than others. But the purpose of running a business is not to give your ego a boost. The only reason a business exists, survives, and flourishes, is to serve clients the best possible way.

It may not be good time to start a business from your point of view, but it is always good time to look for possibilities. As always, entrepreneurs ask a lot of questions. They want to know as much as possible about the business they are interested in. Consider the sentence: “When times are hard, people go back to basics.” Think about what it could mean in your case.

Starting from scratch during a recession may still be challenging, but when was it ever easy?

Opportunities presented in a recession prove one man’s trash really can be another’s treasure. Whether you consider yourself optimistic or opportunistic; counter-cyclical businesses do well when a downturn strikes. Cobblers, clothing, electrical, and motor repairs businesses are also experiencing a boom in trade as concerns switch from purchase to repair, some as much as 30% according to a recent Times newspaper survey.

As always it is beneficial to widen your horizon. It is almost proven truth that in an uncertain economic climate, the one section of the community that is still growing is the over-fifty marketplace. They have equity in their property, they have savings and they earn a bit more as interest rates rise. They are continuing to spend on holidays, on hobbies, on sports and keeping fit, on interests, on lifestyle, on health and diet. So anything in those directions is a very big market.

Don’t dream about it. Do it. If others can. You can.

© 2009 Accidental Small Business Owner

It happens to all of us. Suddenly, out of the blue, we get an idea of the type of business we would like to do. Those who are serious about starting a business and running their own company will do something about it immediately. They at least write it down.

The most eager people might even search on the Internet to find out about the competition, the potential market size, and the likes and dislikes of the customers.

Then there are the ‘let me see’ people. They have to think about it and sleep overnight before they do anything about it.

Last are the people who doubt the functionality of the idea and wait for a better one to come.

Which category do you think you belong in?

Opportunity knocks only once. Is this true? Do we only get one opportunity in our lifetime, and if we miss that then we lose our chances to become an entrepreneur?

Opportunities pass but they do not pause.

Some people do not see the opportunity when it first knocks at their door. But the second time their circumstances might have changed and they might actually be looking for a business opportunity.

March to the beat of your own drum and pay attention to your idea. If you feel like you cannot take action now, change what you must so that you can take action now. If you do not want to start a business on your own, find a partner.

At the end of the day, it pays to do something with your idea. It is simply easier to correct your actions later on, but if you decide to do nothing when an idea shows up at your doorstep, you cannot help yourself later on, because out of nothing comes nothing. So take action when an idea shows up. No matter how small it might look, it is ten times better than doing nothing.

Question 1: How do you catch your ideas when they arrive?

Question 2: Do you do some research on your ideas?

Question 3: If so, what kind of research? If not, why not?