September and Back To Work (For Some)

Apr 142012

Sunset For Spain

I really haven’t had a long break during the summer and really that suits me better because getting started again is really difficult. Spain is showing that at the moment. Everyone came back to work yesterday, apart from some bank managers who will not be back until next Monday, and all I hear from people is that starting up again is so difficult.

Of course it is! You have just taken the best part of two months off work!

Now Spain is suffering from a crisis/recession of course just like most other countries. Spain’s is rather more profound though because it had a lot of dependency on just one industry, construction. As construction has been decimated people haven’t yet got into other areas where Spain has the potential to be strong, for example renewables, alternative tourism, transport and various types of more specialized agriculture.

What I am seeing though is that people are afraid of starting up things even though their chances of somebody plucking them from the unemployment registry and giving them a well paid job are about as likely as Britain having four men in the semi finals of next year’s Wimbledon tournament. I am always asking people , “If it costs nothing or little to start up and you have nothing to lose why are you just sitting on your hands waiting for things to happen?” Obviously the question is not appreciated but it needs answering.

Fear pervades everything at the moment because everybody has swallowed hook, line and sinker the story that nothing is successful at the moment.

Are people where you are prepared to step out of their comfort zone and move into something new? And why do you think there is this attitude here?

I have a theory, I always do even though they are not nearly always right. I think it is to do with the way the education service runs in Spain. Entrepreneurship is just not valued whereas working for someone, preferably the government, is given priority. Working for yourself is perceived to be a huge risk and there are very few people held up as role models of how to do it. I see no Richard Branson type figure and nobody in the line of Tim Ferriss telling people how to streamline their life. Parents push their children into the safe professions and little parental support comes to someone wanting to do something different. Nowhere does there seem to be the education or young people telling them how to set up on their own and then expand their business.

I cannot wait until we have the Bootstrapping Book translated into Spanish to see the reaction!

1) If I Were In Charge

2) The Dynamism of the Spanish Entrepreneur

3) Spanish Business Culture and Mongolia

Image Credit; From Dsiis on www.sxc.hu