Your existing career may soon disappear. Will you be ready for your new one?

With each passing year, the global economy is rapidly changing with many jobs and careers vanishing.

But even as our current work opportunities disappear new trends are appearing that offer hope – if we are open to the possibilities.

Hey, where did my job go?

Like us, you may have experienced that sinking feeling when you realized that what you’re currently doing to earn a paycheck might not have a bright future. The very skill you learned on the job; the degree you graduated with; or the experience acquired over the years – now has a short shelf life.

We felt it in our own web design business a few years ago. Easy online web design tools, like SquareSpace.com, began appearing. They offer anyone the ability to DIY their own website, without any coding knowledge, or need to hire a designer or developer. Great thing for consumers. Trouble for developers, if all you’re doing is putting together a website like IKEA furniture. It forced us to reinvent our web design business model, or perish.

It’s not difficult to see these disruptions every day.

Taxi Services are being disrupted by car sharing services like Uber, Lyft and Zipcar.
Legal Services are being disrupted by online services like Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer.
Fast food workers are being replaced by automation.
Anyone in retail is being disrupted by the 800lb online gorilla, Amazon.

Oxford University released a study stating that 47% of jobs will disappear in the next 25 Years. The article posted in BigThink.com goes on to say, “Accountants, doctors, lawyers, teachers, bureaucrats, and financial analysts beware: your jobs are not safe.”

Nearly every industry or profession is being disrupted.

The industrial age may have started the process back in the 18th century, with machines replacing blue collar workers doing repetitive tasks. However, industrial automation has now merged with the information age and accelerated. In addition to automation there are several other large factors affecting our retail, service and white collar jobs, (essentially, all of us).

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

~ E. Gordon Gee, President of Ohio State University

A gazillion articles have been published on this topic, so we’ll bullet point the big four and let the CNN Money video below explain.

Industrial Automation – The machines of the past are now the robots of today, able to do a lot more than basic repetitive tasks. Not only can they manage much more complicated assignments, they are doing it faster, safer and never requesting a vacation.
Globalization – Much of our stuff is now made in multiple countries – all with very low labor costs, and very little regulation. One product can travel across the boundaries of several countries, even several times, in an effort to keep costs down, before actually making to our retail shelves.
Artificial Intelligence – Think of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and especially IBM’s Watson. He’s come a long way since he beat that guy who won 74 consecutive times on Jeopardy.
Devalued Credentials – Every year we are graduating more of us with college degrees, which once opened the door to a new career after we were handed our paper. Now these same diplomas have lost a bit of their shine since so many of us have one and they are not specialized degrees.

Technology is replacing jobs. Are you ready?

First, don’t watch this video, unless you stay the full 5 minutes and 44 seconds. Otherwise you may throw yourself in front of a bus, (though it may stop in time because it’s driver-less). There is a hopeful note at the end. The point is to be preparing ourselves for these seismic shifts in our workforce.

Kind of scary stuff.

We can get fearful and begin blaming other people or events. We can put our head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. We can sit back and accept our fate and hope our politicians can figure it out, (hmm). Or we can educate ourselves and start looking for solutions.

And we think there are solutions. Which is part of the reason we started this site.

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.

~ John C. Maxwell

The rise of Maker Movement & the Entrepreneurial Age

No one really knows what these new future jobs will look like. There’s a lot of discussion from people with more letters after their names (than we have in ours) looking for solutions.

That said, we believe it will involve real people producing real products and services and connecting with other people all over the globe who are willing to pay for the value you have to offer.