We are witnessing a global work revolution taking shape in the first half of 2021 that will accelerate during the second half of the year. Right now, employers who had their workers remote are requesting employees return to the office. Laid-off service industry workers in 2020 are being courted for rehire back at restaurants. There are two major factors of this employment revolution (a) digitalization and automation and (b) employees who decided they don’t want to come back and work that old job they weren’t really happy with.

This is a transformative moment in our lives we need to re-evaluate our careers, what we really accomplishing at the job, and if we need to reset the journey and course of our work, our careers, and our lives. Most of us already reflected on this in 2020 and 2021 but if you haven’t, the time is now to decide if you really go back to the same work or do something different.

In this article, let’s talk about what we should have on the top of our minds and readjust our career outlooks to reflect on our values and in pace with current and future trends.

Before We Get Started

Dream and Hustle have been talking about these transformations that were taking shape the past 10 years. This blog is written by a real Black man from the West Side of Chicago who handles his own and made his own and operates around this world. When a real Black person steps up, a real one from Pulaski and Lexington on the West Side of Chicago – these Black folks online ran towards some BS clowns on YouTube and social media wanting to follow someone mediocre they can relate to. They ran from Black reality and engaged in celebrating the Obamas, clout-chasing anybody who tells them they are a net-worth millionaire, read stupid books like 48 Laws of Power, and followed frumpy weak-looking characters like a Dr. Boyce Watkins.

Let me explain something – I can careless about anybody who followed Tariq Nasheed, Jason Black, Boyce Watkins, Po-light or whatever or Dr. Claud Anderson. Those weak-minded followers can show up to the Amazon warehouse standing all day waiting on a robot to bring containers for them to sort for shipping.

They got a robot bringing their work to complete while still talking about how rich Jeff Bezos is - straight lol at those broke ass clowns and they still aspiring to be rich lying about their pockets. Be on social media talking up other folks “net worth” but got an Amazon robot bringing containers to their station to sort stuff to be shipped out, lol all on that.

Me on the other hand, I noticed these same folks quiet when I have access to Asia and European circles to handle real things to bring back patterns and practices to elevate the Black community and Black people the past 10 years – notice they stay quiet about Dream and Hustle while celebrating mediocre characters the last 10 years – everybody quiet now, huh? We opening a space in Tokyo, I will be in Europe later to set up Croydon South London (can’t wait to meet more proper Afro-Euro sistas there too), the API platform has a real global waitlist and post-paid per-access billing like Amazon Web Service, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform and we signed partner deals – see how the global moves are made quiet and I’m looking and acting broke like Russell Simmons? Black folks want me to be mediocre more than I can actually be - that’s how I can just do things.  

I want to give you this background because I’m fully aware of the future of work from my immersion with my peers in places like Taiwan, Singapore and China – they are innovators, entrepreneurial on the job, and have the freedom to pursue a personal passion, better than Silicon Valley culture. Seattle is a better model of couples working while selling OEM stuff on Amazon with custom branded products like kitchen and cooking items while working full-time in the Seattle area. But you are seeing what Black folks been doing mostly the last 10 years, following and chasing celebrities and clout-chasing commenting on a Nas and Jay-Z video at the poker table while the rest of their global international peers are cashing chips on Black folks at work and replacing them with robots.

This has to be brought up because you will not get this information from any other media source because they can’t really communicate Black, not West Side of Chicago Black to tell you what’s real out here for Black folks. They – like Blavity weak-ass business model - scared they will get their white privilege sourcing advertisement revenue and media access taken away from them. You need to know what’s really going on impacting Black folks during this disruptive period of work transformation. Sitting around listening and watching goofy crap then find out your job was quietly being outsourced or automated and you acting shocked and confused as hell, maybe watching a Nas and Jay-Z video might save you then, huh?

Evaluate Your Mental Anguish and Trauma

There was massive mental trauma in 2020 as a result of government lockdowns. We saw people working at restaurants already living check-to-check suddenly thrown out of work and was very traumatized not knowing if they going to make a living. Then we saw unloyalty corporations starting laying off their own people in the middle of the crisis. As entrepreneurs, many saw immediate closure of their business they spent a great deal of lifetime sacrifice to start. There were plenty of entrepreneurs opening up a business for the spring of 2020 when everything went to lockdown in March 2020 and had to declare bankruptcy. All of this caused trauma that the news is not reporting on.

It was trauma for me as well with international connections cut off. It was trauma for the Africans and Black Londoners who wanted to steal Hollywood acting roles from African-Americans and couldn’t travel back and forth. Everybody was impacted by the disruption of our life and our flow and that has caused mental anguish. People who were planning to get married in France and Italy in 2020 had their plans canceled and settled for getting married at Myrtle Beach, South Caroline, damn.  

You have to accept being frustrated, upset, and angry at having your life disrupted in 2020 and you have to accept you didn’t have a plan to deal with this kind of COVID-19 lockdown. Think about landlords trying to kick out a clown tenant and the eviction moratorium kicked in and they cannot evict a non-paying tenant losing money for over a year babysitting those deadbeat tenants buying flat-screen televisions and not paying rent.

You need to take this mental anguish you suffer and ask yourself what can you do differently from this point on because job disruption was not the worst of it. Do you know what was the worst mental trauma?

Everybody Showed Their True Colors

The worst mental trauma was seeing how selfish people around you were, hoarding toilet paper and paper towels at the grocery store. Seeing how co-workers who you thought was cool when yall was at the office started showing how fake and unconcern they were about you when we all worked at home, not even bothering to reach out and ask if you are alright.

Seeing how reckless these punk kids and family members were going out getting COVID and bringing it back home causing their elders to pass away on a ventilator fighting for their last breath. Then everybody cannot attend the funeral. Then the fake co-workers at work, yeah, I forgot I already mentioned the fake employees – they will be nothing but strangers you have to tolerate crossing paths every time when coming back into the office. You already know how fake your co-workers were in 2020 and probably don’t want to speak to them when you come back to the office – I don’t blame you because I feel the same way.

What you realizing that everybody you let in your circle around you wasn’t really there for you and will forget about you really quick. You allowed yourself to be comfortable around people who really ain’t bringing any value to your life while you had best wishes for them inside your head. I had ex-girlfriends or women show up in 2020 giving me some because they lost their jobs but when they were getting money, they acted like they didn’t know who I was.  

Even the news media start lying and showing their true colors of having an agenda. You cannot even trust people on social media, they try to aggregate a lie in numbers and promote a cancel culture of people for challenging a lie or artificial narrative being told.

That is a major trauma – loss of trust and respect for other people after seeing true colors. Notice I haven’t covered the cheating husbands and wives who now have to work at home and the other spouse is sensing something with their third eye and their gut about the person they were married to. Or the teenager with a hidden drug/sex problem while the parents were working at the office now acting funny with the parent working from home watching them – all of this is trauma not reported in the news people are dealing with.

You have to evaluate if your house was truly in order and if your friends were who you thought they were versus who they really were. You also have to realize and I say this strongly towards Black women, those “girlfriends at the job” may not have been as tight as you pretended to be – yall be sitting around talking crap about the good Black men at your job because you know you got some garbage dude at your house waiting for you to come home from work and fix something to eat.

Kicking the Can Down the Road

One thing that has been done in 2020 that never happened before in history was the government passing a lot of deferral legislation. Eviction moratorium to defer evicting people or foreclosure on homeowners. Allow people to withdraw from their 401k penalty-free and pay it back interest-free. Extended unemployment benefits. Courts are closed so people can’t sue and cases are backlogged that will take years to unclogged.

All of this is going to unravel the second half of 2021 as things get back to normal and people called back to work on site. Evictions will start occurring and people who saved money are going to leave landlords high and dry. People who got extra money or pulled out money – the problem is money is not going to save anybody in the second half because money cannot save you from disruption and transformation.

You see what’s going on where a lot of people around you about to face everything at once in 2021 that was deferred in 2020. Landlords are not about to allow a deadbeat tenant to get away with $15,000 of unpaid rent without putting an eviction record on that. The housing market and corporate rental market is going to crash as well because people will be able to buy homes from desperate sellers who now have to dump the homes they are currently behind on.

But most important and listen carefully – a lot of corporations did not fire or layoff people as they wanted during the pandemic – they are fully prepared to do such as thing as soon as they can without blowback.

You need to decide how you are positioned in this can-kicking environment and when it’s time to pay the piper, where will you be?

You Don’t Want to Go Back to Pre-COVID Normal

Look around at the world today, the work you doing and what’s going down. You have to think for yourself and look out for yourself at this juncture. Do you really think you can “return to normal” after what happened in 2020?

In your true heart and mind, you want to move up to bigger and better things than what you just went through. You don’t want to see those fake co-workers who going to try to pretend they glad to see you again. You don’t want to go back to doing the same routine and task with a hierarchy management system trying to tell you what to do. You may want to explore your passion for what you really want to do and you know it.

You may want to start that side business, write that book, open up that co-working space, work in a new sector or move to a new location that been in the back of your mind. You not trying to go back to the old stuff because life goes on. You expect someone working minimum wage at McDonald’s having to take a public bus for 40 minutes to get there to want to go back and work at McDonald’s for low-wage? That McDonald’s’ worker wants to start their own burger joint in their hood and hire their own people.

Everybody is realizing they can do bigger and better after sitting around in 2020 and realize they don’t want to go back to where they were at. Acknowledge this is the same way you are feeling right now as well – there are bigger and better things you can be doing right now.

Look at What’s Ahead of You

You have a lot of great options and opportunities ahead of you – that is one thing you need to take away from this article. There is plenty of opportunity and knowledge out there to start businesses and ventures that fit your lifestyle and purpose. First of all, Black Enterprise is a garbage magazine with content creators linking to other people's stuff and rehashing press releases. Black Enterprise is not real Black journalists who go do exclusive research and come back with exclusive content – be a bunch of characters dressed up trying to look Black and professional. Let’s stop it with the Black Enterprise stuff and focus on finding real information and knowledge to start up and launch the venture that means something to you.

There is a lot of funding opportunities from alternative sources, most are grants as a lot of money is being poured into the Black community. You don’t have to be on Shark Tank trying to impress someone to invest in your startup or impress some Venture Capital acting like their money is the solution to get your business off the ground. You have to realize you may not even need funding – you may just need a platform like Stripe or Office 365 and get a workflow started. So remember – it’s not even about the money, it’s about being enabled to do things to get your business off the ground.

You have better Black entrepreneurial and Black career-minded support circles – you don’t have to think about those clowns you grew up with, went to school with, or from your former jobs who act like they have a problem with you progressing. It is plenty of awesome places for Black people to meet and make markets – Atlanta, DMV area, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc. – you will meet your level when you start moving at your level – I cannot tell you how many fine rare-breed Black/Blasian women I met in Tokyo just walking around as a proper brotha.

You also can work a job while pursuing what you are doing but I recommend you work a real damn job, not a broke job. A real job has things like proper healthcare benefits, retirement matching, stock purchase plan – take advantage of these things to accumulate money. Broke ass folks who be following Boyce Watkins talking about people working job when people with good jobs quietly get into six-figure asset holding easily after a few years that they can fund their dreams later.  Health insurance is very important because that is a very expensive cost if you paying out of pocket. Work the job, learn on the job and have a work/life balance in place.

In 2021, we operate as Black Excellence – we don’t got time for clowns and broke-ass people in our Black community who don’t support progress and want to tell me and you about someone else “net worth” trying to downplay me and you and what we doing for ourselves. Most of them are jealous or washed up and made decisions growing up Black when me and you were straight on the grind and focus on becoming Black Excellence. The only thing you got around you is opportunities, support, and appreciation to pursue Black Excellence – we ain’t got time for nothing else. Cut off those haters and people not supporting you properly.

Pursue Your Purpose Instead of Just Find Another Job

In our Black History, the thought and mindset is Black people should just be doing task-based jobs. That’s how the Democrats think where Obama was talking about “shovel-ready” jobs. We saw Dr. Claud Anderson's silly ass Powernomics and his efforts to have Black empowerment by having Black folks working task-based jobs as well. See, Black folks want you to wear a hard hat or put on plastic gloves and work somewhere for an hourly wage or work a corporate job on a salary sitting in an office cubicle – that’s the historical mindset.

That’s why Black folks around you clam up with you mention something about starting a book publishing company, starting a paid podcast, giving you the silent treatment. I need you to cut off folks around you who try to not appreciate your desire for progress and focus on finding folks who are aligned with your future ambitions. Don’t let loyalty be your biggest hindrance, because it will be if you let it.

You need to break the cycle of Black people just working a job or go find a job or getting your ass off the couch and find a job mentality that going on around our community. There is plenty of massive opportunities the average Black person do not understand because these Black folks are engaged in talking up celebrity worship, relationship issues, and fake Black money gurus out there.

Let them all go and set yourself free – trust me, it will be the best most relieving feeling you will have in your life once you cut worthless cats out of your life and you will regret having them around for this long.

The new era and paradigm are fast-food workers need to become $20/hour value contributors to keep McDonald’s delivering quality – not minimum wage workers; the market demands it. The new era is profit-sharing and co-op organizations to run ventures. The focus is on having modular reusable assets to lease like a pop-up store for rent or experiential to create exhibits and performances. There is a Biden infrastructure bill where we can use solar power to charge up lights during the day to create night markets at night to support vendors and have good food and hawker stalls to support a scene. You can even create new financing and financial businesses like Buy-Now-Pay-Later that we saw spread throughout Europe and showing up at Pawn Shops – future article on this later.

Don’t look at the second half of 2021 as finding a new job. Look at how you can fit in the paradigm shift and focus on your lifestyle. Write down your job as your biggest stack but on top of that stack identify other things such as launching a podcast, starting a newsletter, perform consulting work on the weekend or spend evenings as well. Write that book, run a trade conference on weekends, open a resale boutique or resale/rent luxury bags. Go way beyond the basic career/job mindset we had before COVID hit in 2020 – we are in 2021 and focus on a new direction, new journey that reflect your lifestyle and your journey with purpose.