So a little background: when I graduated high school I started a small business serving a very niche market. It was fun, I could do it at home, and it paid reasonably well for an 18-year-old. I got a BS in business/retailing from a respected university, and when I graduated I doubled-down on my efforts, developed some successful products that I could turn out more quickly than before, and expanded slowly but surely. The company has been featured in the newspaper, interviewed on TV, all that stuff. I'm now one of the leaders in this niche market (around 4,000 potential customers worldwide.)
But it has been declining, and I am out of excuses. Generational interest in the market that my business serves has been waning and will continue to shrink as the boomers die off, and a recent political uproar has caused a dramatic decline in people's willingness to participate in this activity. (I'm not interested in a political discussion, this is just the way things are.)
Increasingly individual customer orders have slackened and I've had to rely on sales to a retailer who purchases our goods at wholesale. This has in the past been a nice arrangement: a few times a year I make up a large batch of items and send them along, and they usually sell out quickly and the shop clamors for more. But the last three checks were late, and the invoices weren't paid until weeks after they were due. I'm afraid they're starting to crack, too.
So I've been making up for lost income through the sale of personal property. (God, I just admitted that to myself for the first time...) I've maintained some basic finance levels, made sure suppliers were paid, credit is fine, debt is...manageable. But the new orders just aren't there.
SO, enough rambling. Here's what I need:
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIND A JOB.
I assume that I update my resume, putting in that for 17 years I ran a mildly successful business, that I have a degree, etc. But what do I do with that? Upload it to some websites? Search some other websites for companies that are hiring? Walk through the door and ask to see the HR director?
I'm in my 30s, and this is embarrassing. I've increasingly had dreams where I'm showing up on the last day of an advanced math class for the final exam, not knowing that I was even in the class. I'm lost, and I don't know how to move forward.
And if you're wondering, no, I'm not going to close the doors on my business. I've been doing it for a long time and put a lot of myself into it; too much to just walk away. I'll scale back to part time, focus only on the highly profitable products, and give it attention on the nights and weekends. I also don't plan to do anything permanent until after the holidays.
TL:DR, guy in his 30s has had a small business since he was a teenager. Business is failing and he doesn't know how to enter the job market where his only work experience is his own company.
Submitted October 21, 2017 at 09:50AM by throwaway762545 http://ift.tt/2gzvEqy
