Kevin Koym

Seth Godin speaking about Conceptual Shift #3- an Attitudinal Shift Towards Work

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As you have heard here before- there is an attitudinal shift that is occurring towards work, largely driven by the Millennial Generation. Here is what Seth said recently on this blog about this new class of jobs and workers:

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

We are seeing a new class of worker emerge. This worker is taking advantage of Conceptual Shift #1- the Superempowerment of the Individual. Passion is what is driving “superempowerment”. It is also what is driving a massive shift in how work is being done- and this will force a major change among individuals and companies into the future.

Meet the man that created an economic miracle

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Spencer MacCallum Over the holiday weekend, I had the honor of meeting a man that has catalyzed an economic miracle for a part of Chihuahua, Mexico. Spencer MacCallum discovered the work of Juan Quezada, and over 30 years took the little town of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico creating “the fairy tale of Mata Ortiz”.

Spencer spoke of how Mata Ortiz went from a poverty stricken dust bowl to now a hopeful place of over 500 potters among the town’s 2500 citizens. Moreover, the town has galvanized together an industry that anyone of the town’s members are invited to be a part of. Juan Quezada’s artistic influence has been an open door to the whole town- giving others the skills to pull themselves out of poverty. And the pottery that they are creating is not the run of the mill stuff that you might have seen in some random flee market- many of Juan’s art pieces go for over $4,000 USD when sold in Mata Ortiz- or much, much more when sold in the US market.

What I found so profoundly interesting is this community created social capital with each other- building their own “business ecosystem”, and with this pulled each other out of poverty. And even more so- great acknowledgment goes to Spencer MacCallum in recognizing what this community had to offer to the world- and how he catalyzed this community out of poverty.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

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A friend of mine that I use to work with at NeXT, Inc. just forwarded the following Youtube video. Working with Steve Jobs at the start of my career has forever positively warped my sense of what is possible in the world. Steve says “Follow your heart, even when it leads you off of the well-worn path”. Also “If you live your life like today is your last day, some day you will be right.” Thank you Steve. Thinking like this changes the world. Here is Steve Jobs’ commencement speech to the recent graduates of Stanford.


Entrepreneurship is not just about building great products.  Steve says “You can’t connect the dots looking forward”. You must follow your heart.  Thanks to Kedar Mhaswade for helping Conrad Geiger at Sun find this video.

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Urgent focus: Small Business Growth and Tightened Credit

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Recently there has been a bunch of press about the growing threat of recession coming to the US.  Today’s front page article of the New York Times tells a story that all of us as entrepreneurs need to start preparing for called “As Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit, Growth at Risk“

From the article there are two important paragraphs to note:
Credit flowing to American companies is drying up at a pace not seen in decades, threatening the creation of jobs and the expansion of businesses, while intensifying worries that the economy may be headed for recession.

The article goes on to focus on small business, and how small business is getting hit the worst.  So why is this important? Small business is where all of our growth and job creation is coming from. From the NY Times article:

In recent months, smaller companies have been adding jobs even as larger firms have been shedding workers, according to the ADP National Employment Report, which tracks changes at companies with payrolls overseen by ADP. From May to October, 276,000 of the 378,000 jobs added were at companies with fewer than 50 employees, the report found.

It is the entrepreneurs that are building startup and small businesses that are contributing to the greatest growth of the US economy.  Programs that are being structured by the government should take this in account- and support small business- versus focusing on solutions for large, slow moving corporations that typically are the benefactors of the pork coming out of Washington DC.

So what can entrepreneurs do in lieu of dealing with a drying up of financial capital other than make sure that they voice their vote strongly in the coming election?  Although I will go over this in a coming blog post and also in my forthcoming book, given today’s news, it is worth mentioning here sooner as well.  Even though financial capital might not be as available, social capital can be utilized to continue to build businesses.  Social capital, called “human capital” in Paul Hawkin’s book called Natural Capitalism can be a somewhat replacement in lieu of financial capital.  Creating social capital is what we have been doing in Bootstrap Austin and other entrepreneurial social networks that I have been building.  To get an idea of how this is happening…  think back to times when farmers helped each other raise barns together… these farmers were creating social capital with each other (“I help you, you help me”).  As many stories from my family members can attest, they had no access to financial capital… but they could help each other, and survive the worst of recessions.  It appears that the US is entering into a time that once again that entrepreneurs building social capital together will be the way that we are going to be building our businesses, as financial capital runs and hides during the storm.  Thanks goes to David Armistead for one of the conversations that helped me clarify some of the distinctions in this capital transformation.

Superempowerment at your doorstep

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The following New York Times article “Personal Assistants on Call, Just Not in the Next Office” is further evidence of a growing trend of entrepreneurs hiring, at a few hours at a time, personal assistants to lower the “80 percent of their time on the trivial 20 percent of tasks”. As I mentioned in a previous post about the Superempowerment of the Individual we are at a time that entrepreneurs that allow themselves to get bogged down in the minutia won’t be focused on their true strategic value… These entrepreneurs should be embracing support at very affordable prices, allowing them to live easier, while still building their businesses. And this is not just about offshore resources. Local Austin companies are providing these types of services as well. It is great to see support to be now in reach of the individual entrepreneur or employee, at a level that has never been present before. Expect access to these types of services to expand, as our economy shifts from being a knowledge economy to an knowledge ecology, with further specialization of services that are available on an hourly basis, at an inexpensive price, as needed.

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