3d • General discussion
Still Waiting for Someone to Hire You? Maybe It's Time to Stop Waiting.
I see a lot of you in here grinding through job applications. Tailoring resumes. Writing cover letters. Following up on interviews that go nowhere.
And I get it. I've been there. Hell, I'm still there sometimes.
But here's what I've been thinking about lately. What if we're asking the wrong question? We keep asking "How do I get hired?" when maybe we should be asking "How do I stop needing to get hired?"
Nobody wants to hire people over 40. We all know this.
The algorithms filter us out. The hiring managers see our experience as "overqualified." The salary expectations don't match their budgets.
We can keep banging our heads against that wall.
Or we can build our own door. I'm not talking about some massive startup with investors and employees. I'm talking about something that's yours.
Freelancing. Consulting. Coaching. A service business. A digital product. Something you control.
Because here's what I've learned after months of building my own thing while freelancing on the side:
The traditional path is broken. But there are other paths.
The data actually supports this.
People are starting businesses in record numbers right now. Over 5 million new business applications in 2024. That's 50% more than in 2019.
And here's the kicker: 64% of entrepreneurs in the US are over 40.
We're not too old for this. We're actually in the sweet spot.Most entrepreneurs don't even launch their businesses until they're 42. But I'm not going to lie to you.
It's scary as hell.
I've failed at business before. Multiple times.
And starting again at 57, broke, with decades of failure behind me? That takes everything I've got.
But I've never been this far along. I've never had this much momentum. I've never felt this certain that I'm onto something.
Here's what's different this time.
I'm not choosing between a job and a business. I'm doing both.
I'm taking freelance work to keep money coming in. And I'm building my own platforms, my own products, my own audience at the same time.
You don't have to quit your job to start building something.
You just have to start.
So if you're stuck in the job search grind right now, I want you to ask yourself something.
What would you build if you knew nobody was going to hire you for the next year?
What skill could you monetize? What problem could you solve? What service could you offer?
Because the truth is, we don't need their permission to earn a living.
We just need to stop acting like we do.
I wrote a deep dive about whether this is actually the right time to start a business — with real data, real fears, and what I'm actually doing about it. It's raw, it's honest, and it might be exactly what you need to read right now.
Drop a comment below: What would you build if you stopped waiting to get hired?
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Still Waiting for Someone to Hire You? Maybe It's Time to Stop Waiting.
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