By Eric Kean, Principal, The Lee Group
Keep Austin weird.
If you’ve never heard that before, you’ll likely see it everywhere now. The Texas town’s brand slogan made a splash a couple decades ago as part of an effort to help promote and support small businesses.
In Austin, weird is seen as a good thing.
When the job market gets a little weird, though, not so much.
You may have noticed, right now, the job market is kind of weird. Why?
For one, we aren’t seeing companies hiring c-suite level professional positions by leaps and bounds like they once were. Money is expensive for businesses. If an expansion is not something needed to survive, or an investment isn’t needed today, many companies are electing to wait.
Money is expensive for people, too. Just look at the housing market. Families may want to upgrade and move into a new home, but are electing not to because they locked into a three percent interest rate and moving would change that.
Professionals may want to take a new position with a new company, but are not as likely to want to move across country.
Those two realities then permeate into everything else.
The restaurant on Main Street ends up not having as many customers, so they don’t have as much business, so they can’t hire more staff.
Retail companies don’t have as much business, either, so they stop ordering as many items to sell.
Families start spending less, putting the brakes on things they were going to invest in, which leads to layoffs in various sectors.
It’s the butterfly effect, or in this case, what could feel like a swarm of butterflies swirling around us while we just work to hold on.
But all is not lost. It may be a weird time, but it’s also a time of opportunity.
There’s opportunity in business development.
There’s opportunity in investing time into your own business.
There’s opportunity in taking this time to better explore technology while simultaneously being more physically present, making deeper connections in real life.
There’s opportunity for people — whether it’s companies looking to grow or professionals looking to advance in their careers — who are willing to, in this weird time, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Do so much business development outreach that it’s uncomfortable.
Do so much investment in your business with networking and technology that it’s uncomfortable.
Do so much asking — because the world belongs to askers — that it’s uncomfortable.
It’s been said time and time again because it’s true — when you step outside your comfort zone, greatness happens.
That’s when you can see the butterfly effect go the other way and swarm towards the positive.
And there’s nothing weird about that.
Eric Kean is principal at The Lee Group, managing the business across all locations and collaborating with the leadership team on key decision making and strategy. Kean can be reached at 757-873-0792 or eric@leegroupsearch.com.
