Business success story: Ken Bodnar and micro job-chunking
In 2024, headlines say the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in 50 years, but job seekers age 50+ say ageism is real and problematic. Some of them say the unemployment rate does not capture their experiences because if someone hasn’t searched for work in the past four weeks, the unemployment rate doesn’t count them. Many unemployed people age 50+ tell me they stopped searching for jobs and have given up.
A few years ago, I met Ken Bodnar, and his business success story remains relevant in 2024. Ken was a technical architect who was in his fifties when his employer laid him off. He said, “I was jobless, in debt, and without a retirement plan. I was up the proverbial creek without a paddle.” Ken described his experience,
“I spent a year networking, applying to every possible job, exploring jobs in a different country, and trying absolutely everything to land a job. I applied for jobs that paid less than I was making in the late 1980s. I saw jobs for which I was highly qualified, but they asked for credentials that were not available when I went to school. MBA in Business Intelligence and Data Mining? Didn't exist then.”
Concerned about his financial future, Ken did some mathematical calculations and realized that given current interest rates, a family with an annual income of $150,000 would need a retirement fund of three million dollars to maintain their current lifestyle. Ken didn't have three million dollars, and he worried that retirement would never be an option.
Ken recalled,
“I didn't want to be a Wal-Mart greeter or a fast food worker at McDonald's! I was determined to leverage my education, work history, and experience to generate income better than junior wages at a 'starting over' job. I had to invent a non-job for myself.”
First, Ken prepared for reinvention by eating better, exercising, and revamping his mental attitude. He read research showing that people who visualize themselves preparing for retirement are twice as effective in planning for it as people who don't visualize. While Ken experienced feelings of fear about the future, he vowed to conquer those fears and to work his way into a better financial situation. He said,
“The most valuable commodity of the human experience is the feeling of hope.”
Ken calculated he needed immediate and recurring income and that he would need income past the age of 65. He realized he needed both the stability of cash flow and the accumulation of retirement money itself. To tackle cash flow, Ken used something he called micro job-chunking. He described what he means by this,
“Instead of doing the entire job of whatever was required, I did the bits of work in my field that companies did not have the inclination, expertise, resources, or staff to do. Every manager has tasks on the back burner waiting to get done. I tapped that market.”
To find these opportunities, Ken built a digital online persona. He networked via social media, created online content, and monetized it. He charged premium rates for the work he did for companies because he wasn't costing them the expenses of having a permanent employee. I asked Ken for specific examples of micro job-chunking and he explained,
“When I first started job-chunking, I did a lot of things that I would have been insulted to do if I didn't suffer from career interruptions. For example, I designed a website for a golf course (which is way beneath my skill level). I did a scripting job. I took a whole pile of medical data, and I wrote a program to put it into a database so that it could be searchable. Then they needed a filter for it to validate the data and I did that. I authored a response to an RFP for another company. I was hired to provide a strategy for a mobile app and to evaluate a bid for the same. I was hired to update a forensic blood spatter program. It was an easy but dull job of finding all the deprecated stuff and modernizing it because it was written for Windows 95. I wrote a library to allow a certain kind of cash register to be connected to an IP network for a small company. I did a lot of stuff like that—all uninspiring jobs but ones that I could charge decently for because they required a knowledge base.”
I searched for Ken's online digital persona because I was curious to see it. When I couldn't find it, I asked him if he still had a page somewhere advertising his services. He replied,
“I don't offer my services anymore. I graduated. Once my immediate income needs were satisfied, I began asking companies for a mix of upfront money and equity. I now have considerable equity in two companies, one in Nassau and one on the East Coast, and I have a full-time job as Chief Technology Officer, which pays a regular salary. I do not need to job chunk any longer because I've been able to replenish my retirement savings. It was a process that saved my skin.”
Ken now calls himself a "retirement turnaround artist" and he jokes he saved a retirement that was most dear to him — his own! He observed,
“I went from a gray, unemployed, and unemployable aging techie to a place in life where I live out of a suitcase on airplanes in diverse venues and I have an exciting life.”
Ken is enthusiastic as he describes all the people he has met who use micro job-chunking to make money, including two women who earned over a million dollars selling their quinoa recipes, an unemployed teacher who replaced her income by teaching math and science to homeschooled children, and a wedding planner who creates budget wedding plans online for couples who can't afford high dollar weddings. Ken concluded,
“Essentially, if you have a knowledge base, you can create an income stream using your work history and experience. The best part is, age doesn't matter!”
Ken wrote about his experience in an eBook, 55 and Scared. His book explains how to do micro job-chunking, including how to create a digital online persona, how to create income using what you know, and how to problem solve when something isn't working. You can find that book and several others he authored on the Amazon page for author Ken Bodnar.
Are you age 50+ with a business success story? Send it to me, and I may feature your story in a future article.
