From Tucker Max on explaining the 21st Century free market for careers:
It used to be normal that you had to have:
- a hospital to be a nurse
- a publisher to be a writer
- a restaurant to be a chef
- a school to be a teacher
- a TV network to be an actor
- a manufacturing company to be a product designer
- a radio station to have a radio show
- a bank to be a banker
- a record label to be a musician
- etc.
However, there were always a few other ways to be in those professions as freelancers, consultants, tutors, trainers, and private service companies. While these used to be fringe ways of getting around the old institutions, today, getting into a career directly is the mainstream path.
The old gatekeepers and institutional bureaucracies of the past are becoming the fringe employers while the various online worlds are making them less relevant. It has never been easier to independently make money in a profession. To do something your way, on your schedule, or to provide value in a new way.
How about a few specific examples?
- Write a report and have an ebook for sale on Amazon in a day.
- Put up a podcast on iTunes on subjects that interest you the most.
- Buy a food truck to sell your specialty sandwiches and use Twitter and Facebook to get clients.
- Engineer your electronic prototype with Raspberry Pi processor and open source software and hardware like Arduino.
- Shoot a short video (as an actor, teacher, or musician) and upload it on YouTube for the world in minutes.
- Put up a Yahoo Store in a day to sell about anything and have them advertise it for you.
- Sketch out a product, use a freelance website to have someone turn it into a computer-aided design (CAD), and rent a 3-D printer to make your prototype or final product.
- Rent space in one of the commercial kitchens for part-timers to make your food items for sale at flea markets.
- Buy products out of season cheaply to sell later on Amazon’s FBA program.
- Ask programmers to bid on making your smartphone app idea that you then promote.
- Use Alibaba to find wholesale sources for products that you sell locally.
- Raise money on a crowd funding website to fund your projects and product launches.
- Snap together littleBits electronic components to make your prototypes.
- Lend money as a private lender or on peer-to-peer platforms.
These are just a few of the ideas and mechanisms where today, anyone can directly enter a profession and bypass bureaucratic institutions if they do not support your goals.