Let me explain something to you. What’s going to happen in the economy is going to happen, whether you worry about it or not. Same with the election.
I spend my days writing,so I’m often working with TV noise behind me. Pundit after pundit has stopped trying to predict the election, because now they are all trying to predict the meltdown. Trust me, they can’t predict either.
I’m a futurist, so of course I saw all this coming, and I went through my own moments of fear before you did. Now I’ve come out the other side. I’ve let go of the outcome, which I cannot influence.
Instead, I’m doing everything I can to use my experience to help myself and others get through this. After all, I started my business during one of these(1980), survived another one (1990), started another business and went through still another one(2000), and now feel pretty much like a Weeble. (Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down. You have to be old enough to remember Romper Room.)
So. If you want to be a Weeble, here’s what to do:
Come listen to people who aren’t suffering, but are doing something.
Use the Early Registration discount to register for the Third Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference on Nov. 19. We’ve aggregated some of Arizona’s best and most interesting entrepreneurs, and stirred the pot with amazing outside influences. Our early registrations are ahead of the last two years, as are our sponsorship commitments, so there’s still something happening in Arizona, if not on Wall Street (and not in real estate). Try learning something new.
Start a company yourself
Stealthmode Partners has, for the first time in its existence, sponsored something with cold cash, and it’s Phoenix Startup Weekend, October 17-19 at Gangplank. At a startup weekend (it’s a national movement that has just come to Phoenix), you just show up, join a team, and work on a project with that team all weekend. Or, as the publicity says, “Startup Weekend is an intense 52 hour one weekend event bringing brilliant and talented people together to create companies, projects and great startup business communities.”
You can be sure these people are not sitting around fearing things they can’t control. Instead, they’re trying to change the world.
Myself, I helped an old friend start a solar contracting company this morning. We got it done in essentially one meeting by pooling our talents and experience. Will it scale? Who knows? We don’t care; we’re the type of people who start things and find out. In the meantime, we get to learn about a technology we really care about and do something we will enjoy. Mostly we want to create a landing place for some of the great talent we see available as they are laid off by the fear mongers. We will have fun.
Sure I can’t retire. But I don’t want to. Retirement is a concept sold to you by financial planners. Have I lost money? Sure I have. So what? I’m alive, I’m healthy, and I’m happy.
