Would be entrepreneurs who have failed to get their business off the ground are an interesting breed. My definition of an entrepreneur by the way is someone who has tried or succeeded in building a business that bootstraps or raises funds and employs others. Sole traders are something different. They still very much have a business, but they are not in my definition entrepreneurs.
This piece is about entrepreneurs who have failed. I have lost count of those failed entrepreneurs who say, “I am probably unemployable by anybody else now”. I used to say it myself, until I started working for other people again.
I am fortunate, I don’t have to work for a regular wage now, but I choose to help other people who are building and scaling their business. Some of them I charge for my services, some I don’t. But the fact is these people are engaging me and therefore I work for them. So even grizzled old entrepreneurs who have spent twenty years or more building and selling businesses can be employed again. Working for someone is a fact of life. If you need a wage and you are saddled in debt, as failed entrepreneurs often are, the choices you have can be limited. One day you may start another business, maybe you won’t, but do not underestimate the skill, knowledge and expertise your time as an entrepreneur has given you.
In writing this I want to appeal to prospective employers of failed entrepreneurs.
I have often heard potential employers say when looking at a failed entrepreneur’s resume “They would be impossible to manage”, and it is those words that reveal everything about the prospective employer, not the candidate.
Let me explain why failed entrepreneurs make wonderful employees. Especially if you are looking for a new middle manager or supervisor in your business.
Entrepreneurs cannot fail to learn a great deal about business, even if theirs fails. They will have been involved in Sales, Finance, Marketing, Operations, Purchasing, Human Resources and probably Legal and Funding activities. If you are a corporate employer and you are looking for your next manager, what do you look for on someone’s resume? You look for someone who has probably gone through a management training program run by one of your big fellow corporates, maybe a Unilever, P&G or Mars manager looking for their next job. What you will get when you employ them is just that, someone who has gone through those training programs, which are very valuable, they teach you a great deal. I worked for twenty-two years for Mars, and I learned pretty much everything I needed to in order to start a business, but I really learned how to run a business when I was doing it.
As an employer, if you are reviewing resumes soon don’t dismiss out of hand that person, that entrepreneurial mum, that smart university graduate who didn’t think they wanted the corporate life. These are now people who have a mass of experience in areas that you probably don’t. They may only be with you for a short while as they get themselves back on their feet and stake their next business adventure, but in the time they are working with you, if you listen and learn from them, they will pay your decision to employ them back manyfold. You must be disciplined enough to see them as a wonderful resource, and work with them in that way. Do not treat them as a failure, they are simply someone who wanted to do something of their own and so far, it has not worked out. But they are there, willing to share all that experience with you. They will rapidly become a key employee and they may even decide to stay with you and build a new career, after all only one in twenty new businesses succeed.