There’s that old story about the fella who discovers that he’s been speaking prose his entire life.

That’s what I thought, suddenly, listening to the recently self-employed gentleman, despairing of his recent downsizing.

I call him self-employed, though he would not yet admit it: because he’s now on his own. He’s smarting because the conditions of his employment have suddenly tanked: his customer, his former employer, is uninterested in his skill set. Right now.

Right now, he’s smarting: feels rejected; feels disappointed; feels royally pissed off.

Really: his situation is different in only one sense from the family business leader who’s just lost a client: the businessman knows he’s in business.

Downsized employees don’t recognize themselves as entrepreneurs: don’t recognize that they’ve spent long professional years sussing out opportunities; and have been paid for their knowledge by their organizations.

The necessary learning for my recently self-employed client is this: he’s been in business for himself for a long time. Fortunately or not, he’s been able to sustain an economic relationship with a single client. But his run has ended.

It has allowed him the fiction of believing himself simply dependent rather than savvy: maximizing his interests by remaining with the firm.

The problem, right now, for him, is his resistance to seeing the picture in any way other than the way he wishes to spin it.

My family business client might tell him (if he’d heard the story), “you’re a lucky guy, you’ve got some severance, which represents cash flow. Now get moving!”

It only requires the not so simple act of reflection.

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