"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there!"
Tough Love? Or Tough, Love!
It’s really hard to know how to approach this situation… Do you show somebody some tough love today and save them a big hassle in the future? One thing is obvious though… their current approach to “finding work” isn’t working!
So here’s the scenario… an adult daughter of a friend lives in a medium-sized country town. She has had a long history of unemployment. Nothing new there, as that is quite common especially in regional towns. The trouble is for almost everyone in her situation, it just develops a “culture” of unemployability the longer you are affected. And after some 5 years since she left school, you’ve got wonder what the future holds for her and others in the same situation.
Six months ago, she was told that it was time for her to do something about her “situation”! And, for a week or two, some job seeking activity occurred. You know, the obligatory interview with her RTO (Registered Training Organisation), a couple of job interviews, yet another period of “trial” work which came to nothing, filling out more forms online with the local supermarkets (again) etc etc.
It was time to step things up a little, and actually hand out some resumes around town! Yep. That hadn’t been done. So after pushing for a few days, about ten were handed out. And as far as I know, none were followed up on afterwards – ever!
But a lot of time was spent on social media… carrying out a job search there apparently, but posting that she wasn’t able to find work is not what I would regard as “searching”.
And then there was the ongoing “discussion” in the home about money (or lack of it) and the cost of living with rent, electricity, food, petrol, insurance of her car, and car registration, and of course, you could even do some housework at home to help pay your way!
Well, you get the idea. And the answer is really quite simple isn’t it?
Get a job! Any friggin’ job!
Forget this “trying to get a job which suits you” or trying to get one you “like”!
The modern world demands that you need a job to earn money to pay for yourself! You simply can NOT continue to rely on other people (your parents) or the government (your unemployment benefits) to pay your way for you!
It was time to get up off your (now getting fatter) backside, get away from the TV, and actually DO something!
And if the job offers are not flowing your way (at all) for whatever reason, then it’s time to think outside the box!
That means it’s time to think about doing something really scary!
Maybe even try to set yourself up for a job where you are the boss!
I can hear you laughing now… “How’s a 22-year-old supposed to do that?” you ask.
Well here’s the kicker!
She had (almost) finished her Child Care Certificate course (only had one more unit to do). She already HAD her Police Check and Working with Children checks done. She also had very good qualifications in First Aid.
So here’s a business idea for you – and you are free to steal it if you like… 🙂
Set up a day-time babysitting service! Put up a flier around town on all the community boards. Place an ad on the local Facebook BSS (Buy, Swap and Sell) pages. Pay for an ad in the local paper even!
Appeal to all the mums with young pre-school aged kids who want an hour or two off during the day who want to go (kid free) shopping with their friends. Who want to have lunch with their friends. Who want to watch movies with their friends! Who want to get their hair done and have someone look after the kids in their own home, instead of them driving everyone in the salon crazy!!!
And if your friends have kids, do a cheaper deal… say 2 for the price of 1.5 or something, so you can both get away for lunch!
And it’s only for a couple of hours maximum, in their home, and daytime (yep, no nights even)!
Not such a bad idea for someone who “supposedly” likes kids (after all, why did she do the Child Care course?).
I can only imagine what might happen as a result of setting up that type of service… so let’s try to see what could eventuate.
OK… the whole idea might NOT have worked, but so what? What did it cost you if it FAILED? Twenty coloured photocopies of the flier, and a couple of hours of your time!
Let’s say you only got one mum in the first week, and that was it! That’s to say, $20 x 1 hour + $10 per additional hour (if that was the rate you set) so you would have earned a staggering $30 for babysitting for a couple of hours. But again, you “failed” didn’t you…
Now… let’s say you had a couple of mum’s twice a week? That’s “only” $60 for 4 hours “work” instead of sitting on your backside watching soap operas on television!!! Still a failure? Must be – not enough to do this “full time” is it?
But you’ve got enough money to put some petrol in that car now, so you can go out on the weekend without hassling your parents for petrol money! And if that happened every week… cool!
And what if the idea takes off in your town? Wow! Wouldn’t that be great! How many could you look after in a week?
Let’s say you managed to book in just one child every day for 5 days for two hours around lunchtime. That’s $150 for ten hours for “playing” with kids. And of course, if other parents combined with the same outing, you could pick up another $15-$30 for the same time, for the extra kids!
And if it grew too fast for you to do it all yourself, what do you do?
Not do it? No Way!
You would get hooked up with another person who could do the same job! Book them in to babysit, and YOU keep a booking fee of $5+ per session!
So did it work for our intrepid young unemployed entrepreneur?
We’ll never know because she never tried it!
And that was 8 months ago back in March! Again, I can only imagine what the “business” could have grown to now! She could have been well on her way to setting up a national franchise operation LOL
I’m not sure if it was the “fear of failure” that stopped her from taking action on this idea (which seemed like a very good one at the time) or whether it was something else.
But whatever it was, the outcome was identical! Nothing has changed in her life in the last eight months, and she continues to do the same old thing every day.
So what can be done to get her off the couch, and out into the workforce? Any ideas?
Nope. Me neither! 🙁
But maybe, if you’ve got a “technical” side… you could develop an APP that would do the same thing? Look how successful Uber is! Oh wait… it’s been done already! But does that mean you couldn’t think about making a better one????
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