Habitat collapse: despite all our attempts to protect the landscapes on which plant and animal species depend, sometimes it happens.
It happens in business, too. Your habitat might be the niche your business serves (newspapers that set type in lead), the group of folks with whom you regularly collaborate (your favorite graphic designer, web developer, and accountant all retire or go out of business at once), or—god forbid—your entire industry (film cameras). Regardless of the scale, you realize the space you’re inhabiting—your habitat—can no longer sustain you.
Let me give you an example.
I have a very good friend whose habitat is collapsing. For the sake of our discussion—I don’t want to reveal too much about his actual identity—let’s say that he’s makes and repairs wooden wagon wheels. And let’s call him Abe.
Abe first entered the wheelwright trade serendipitously. He applied for a job with a stagecoach company, hoping to ply his novice blacksmithing skills as a farrier. But the manager of the stagecoach company—let’s call it Bells Cargo—wanted at least a journeyman blacksmith, so he wasn’t interested in Abe. But he did say he had an opening for a wheelwright, and he asked Abe if he had any experience with woodworking tools. Abe admitted that he didn’t—even though every high school graduate by this time had some spoke-setting skills. The Bells Cargo manager said in that case he couldn’t use Abe.
But Abe was persistent. He said he’d work for free for a week, and if he hadn’t produced a working set of wheels by the end of that week, they could fire him. But if he did produce good wheels, Bells Cargo ought to consider keeping him around.
Ends up Abe was exceptionally good at making wagon wheels. He became a wheelwright at a time when, although cars were filtering into the market, they weren’t yet being churned out on production lines—they were more of a boutique item. And so there was still quite a bit of money to be made as a wheelwright, and during holidays and special events, when folks were out travelling quite a bit, Abe picked up a lot of wheel repairs for not only stagecoaches, but carriages as well.
Then along came Henry Ford and assembly lines and efficiency theorists, and in a period of two decades, the long and glorious history of wheelwrights ended.
Abe now finds himself a relic, a creature without a habitat to sustain him. Sure, he can ply his trade among hobbyists, but there aren’t enough of them to keep him in business. In his town there’s only the one guy who drives a carriage downtown for tourists.
It’s really sad. Abe’s depressed. After all, even though he never intended to become a wheelwright, there’s a long and glorious tradition of wheelwrights, and he felt welcomed in that brotherhood. He enjoyed working with all the other folks who took pride in building stagecoaches and wagons and carriages.
But all is not lost.
Because unlike in the world of actual flora and fauna—which take generations to evolve new adaptations, and thus can face extinction rather precipitously—people can adapt and evolve quickly.
Abe has a number of transferable skills, and he’s picked up some experience in adjacent industries. He might apprentice himself to an artisan furniture maker, for example—because Abe is a sucker for anachronistic industries—or, because he’s picked up quite a bit of knowledge about horses as he’s worked in carriage shops and barns, he might parlay his observations about horses into horse whispering or, with some schooling, equine homeopathy.
But when you’ve been a wheelwright for two and a half decades, it can be hard to reimagine oneself as an practitioner of alternative medicine for large animals. And it can be even harder to explain this change to friends, family, and clients. Who knows? Maybe it ends up Abe should have stuck with handicrafts and made high-end Adirondack chairs out of sustainable hardwoods. Maybe he wants to leave that door open, just in case.
Abe’s therefore in the process of establishing a couple of vivaria, tiny incubators where he creates and manipulates the environment instead of letting external forces wreak havoc with his habitat. So he’s started a blog about equine homeopathy, and he’s created a binder of clippings from craftsman magazines and websites about artisan furniture, and he’s sketching some possible creations. He’s noticed the local ag university offers courses in large animal husbandry, while the community college’s art department offers a course in working with wood.
Flexibility and reflection
It’s at once thrilling and frightening to set off on a new adventure, especially one that promises to be so life-changing.
But Abe and others will make it if they adopt a few key practices:
Reflection. Maybe this takes the form of writing in a journal or on a blog. Maybe it’s rest. Maybe it’s doodling or playing the guitar. It looks a bit different for each person.
Flexibility. By which I mean two things: openness to serendipity and a willingness to try new (and sometimes initially uncomfortable) things.
Learning. Listening. Reading. Observing. Asking questions. Apprenticeship.
I’ll write more on these in the future blog posts. But for now, ask yourself: In what ways am I letting myself be open to new opportunities and new learning experiences? How am I processing what I’m learning and observing?
(Also note that Abe was flexible and open to learning when he stumbled into his first beloved career as a wheelwright.)
You don’t need to be making plans now. This stage is all about reflecting, collecting, marinating.
Don’t fear the desert
When you’re looking for a new entrepreneurial habitat, it’s tempting to migrate toward the lush, green jungles and forests that appear able to sustain a good deal of competition, or toward the lovely islands.
But sometimes the most attractive places are the first to have their resources exhausted. Forests get cut down for lumber, or they succumb to fire. Island species may grow smaller over generations, and they might even become maladapted to other niches (birds that no longer fly, for example–the dodo, anyone?) and thus stuck on their islands.
Your new habitat may at first resemble a desert, but the desert is actually thriving with life—you just can’t always see it immediately because it’s small or hides during the heat of the day. And in the spring, many desert habitats bloom in ways that might surprise you.
If you’re open to adaptation, you may find you’ll thrive in your new habitat.
What’s your habitat looking like these days? Any plans to seek a different one?
Polar bear photo by Ajay, and used under a Creative Commons license
Wagon wheel chandelier photo by Ralph Hogaboom, and used under a Creative Commons license
Wildflower photo by Rennett Stowe, and used under a Creative Commons license