Setting Up Your Own Business - Lessons from Hobson's Choice

There are few movies which deal with the psychology of starting a new business. One exception to this rule is the 1954 British screenplay ‘Hobson’s Choice’. The movie is not well known these days, even though it has impeccable pedigree. The film was directed by David Lean, who went on to direct three cinematic masterpiece: ‘Bridge over the River Kwai (1957),’ ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962) and ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1965). For trivia buffs, a very young Prunella Scales aka Sybil Fawlty plays, Vicky Hobson. There is no Basil Fawlty, however Charles Laughton, arguably the greatest British actor of the twentieth century, plays the title role to great comedic affect.

The movie is based on the 1916 play by Harold Brighouse of the same name; and although adapted numerous times since, the 1954 version is the most accessible and the one dealt with in this post.

The movie tells the story of Henry Hobson, the owner of a successful upmarket shoe shop in Salford England. He is a widower with three grown daughters (Maggie, Alice and Vicky) who he forces to work in the shop unpaid; as well as keep house for him. Out in the shop below a trap door, several underpaid cobblers round out Hobson’s employees.

Hobson is an absent employer, preferring to take cash from the till and head to his real home, the Moonraker Pub to drink the afternoon and night away with his drinking mates.

At the start of the movie Henry intends to marry off his two younger and less talented daughters, while keeping the older and business savvy, Maggie to run the shop and look after him in his old age. As he tells his drinking mates at the Moonrakers, Maggie being 30, means she is ‘a bit on the ripe side for marriage.’ He also admits she is far too useful to him to be married off.

When Henry Hobson discovers the cost of settlement, all marital plans fall by the wayside, much to consternations of his daughters.

If you haven’t already guessed by now, Henry Hobson is a selfish, overbearing bully. A miser too; except where his personal needs are concerned, and a heavy drinker to boot. However, in the hands of Charles Laughton, this blustering tyrant, is humanised and played to full comic potential. The opening scenes has an inebriated Hobson returning home from his Mason meeting, and Charlie Chaplin style, negotiating the stairs to bed.

His daughters all want to escape their Father and start a life of their own. In 1880 Britain, this means marriage. The two youngest daughters already have sweethearts in the wings they wish to marry. Both these men are terrified of Hobson and furtively enter the shop when they think the old man’s out. The oldest daughter Maggie, has no husband in waiting and in his drunken moods, Henry Hobson taunts her as a ‘proper old maid’ and ‘tough ancient leather.’

However, as we soon discover Hobson is not the master of his shop. That role is reserved for the customer and it is one very important customer who changes the Hobson’s girls forever. For those wishing to watch the movie they should stop reading now as I intend to discuss the plot and the psychological lessons it tells.

Hobson’s most important customer, the rich dowager Mrs Hepworth comes into the Shop one morning demanding to see the man who made her boots. Henry Hobson ensures her whatever the problem is, he is more than capable of making the man suffer. She silences him and demands to see the maker of boots personally.

The trap door to the cellar is opened and we are introduced to Will Mossop, the unlettered, shy boot hand.

Mrs Hepworth hands him her calling card and instructs him that in future he is to make her boots and if he ever leaves Hobson she is to contact him immediately. She calls him a treasure and leaves.

Henry Hobson cannot understand why, she, the customer, should praise a workman to his face. But to the eldest daughter Maggie, this is the opportunity she has been waiting for.

Opportunity

Business, as in life, is identifying and seizing opportunity when it presents itself. Maggie, desperate to forge her own life, calls Will Mossop up from the cellar. After questioning him for a few minutes about his future plans, she offers him a partnership.

This partnership involves setting up a business together and to Willie’s great surprise marriage. At first he declines. But as a headstrong Maggie counters: ‘When I make arrangements they are not for upsetting.’

Maggie unlike her Father, has understood what makes Hobson so successful and what will make their partnership succeed. She has whittled it down to two things. ‘The good boots which you (Willie) make and which sell themselves and the bad boots which other people make which I (Maggie) sell.’

Companies pay consultants a small fortune to identify competitive advantages and determine why one company succeeds in their market, while another fails. The lesson from Maggie is, that any employee can identify a successful business opportunity, as long as they have eyes and ears and are prepared to shrewdly observe the world around them. Competitive opportunities can be found in the most unlikely of places. Even under a trap door.

New Business Requires Personal Risk

Change does not come without risk. When Maggie’s Father finally discovers their plans to marry, he casts them out of the shop. For Maggie the risks are great. She has left her Father and Sisters behind. She has no job and no social security to fall back on. As a woman, her chances of good employment are slim and she has no other family or friends to turn to.

Yet, when some people are cast out from the safety of an organisation they have worked in for many years, or wrenched suddenly from the certainty of an old way, they find a resilience they never knew they had. Maggie realises her success rests on harnessing two complimentary assets; her brains and Willie’s skills as a boot maker.

She and Willie visit Mrs Hepworth and in an amusing scene an overawed Willie with cloth cap in hand, sits mutely, as Maggie deftly negotiates a loan in his name. She convinces Mrs Hepworth to give them 100 pounds, a princely sum for the 1880’s, ensuring a 20% return on the first year, with Willies skills as a boot maker her security. Maggie goes on to suggest that if she(Mrs Hepworth) tells all her friends of Willie’s new venture then her investment will be secure. Negotiation is a big theme in the movie and the ever shrewd Maggie the master negotiator.

Transformation

If Maggie demonstrates the courage needed to radically change the course of one’s life, the character of Willie illustrates one must also transform. At the beginning of the movie Willie is a shy boot hand incapable of envisaging a life beyond Hobson’s where he learnt his trade. Too unsure of himself to go into Manchester and seek employment in one of those ‘fine places.’ He sees the rest of his life as one at Hobson’s, earning a meagre 18 shillings a week, possibly married to Ada with her ghastly Mother as his Mother in law. He is a man in complete ignorance of his importance and potential, until Maggie takes him under her wing.

Much commentary on the play centre on Mrs Hepworth as the fairy God Mother and ‘Hobson’s Choice’ as a modern Cinderella story or even King Lear. A better analogy is with another play written at the same time– Pygmalion. The comparison is striking. There is Maggie as Henry Higgins, instructing Willie, the Eliza Doolittle character, in the art of running a successful business, lifting him to a new social level in the process.

Modern culture is replete with the one dimensional bossy female character, with a loud voice demanding their whims be obeyed. There is an element of these traits in Maggie. The way she won’t accept Willie’s initial refusal. How she confronts Willie’s intended - Ada and her Mother. She is one of the few characters strong enough to stand up to, and hold her own, against her Father. Maggie is not afraid of conflict. She has inherited her Father’s strong will. But that is where the comparison ends. She also understands people cannot be changed through force. Instead she uses a mixture of strategies.

Use Praise to Change

Maggie never misses a chance to praise Will. Alone to his face, he is a ‘wonder in the workshop.’ To Mrs Hepworth he is the best ‘Boot Maker in Lancashire.’ To Ada and her Mother ‘he can shape and fashion leather like no other.’ She will not allow her snooty class conscious Sisters to treat Will as second class. She assures Will that he will be a better man than his future brothers in law.

Believe in People

If her praise is intoxicating, it is her belief in his talent which is truly inspiring. When her Father tries to beat the love out of him with a belt she walks out of the shop with Will. When Ada’s Mother takes a brush to Will, she threatens to call the law onto her. She risk everything on Will, even though in class conscious 18th Century England, marrying Willie would be considered beneath her socially, and in some eyes a disgrace. She dares her Father to tell all his acquaintances about the ‘strange match your daughter has made.’

Sell a Dream

Her other tactic is to sell Will the dream. But it is not a Maggie centred dream. As she explains to him she has a business idea and it is in the shape of a man ‘Will Mossop.’ There is a moving scene when leaving their new premises for the first time, Willie stops to read the sign of their new shop: ‘William Mossop High Class Boot Maker.’ As he walks home you can see he has finally bought into her dream and he is looking at the world around him with new eyes.

The sign is instructive of Maggie’s methods. Although the business concepts is hers, and it is her plan which brings it into fruition, with Willie merely carried along in her slip stream, she couches it in terms Willie will accept. She teaches him to read and write. She challenges him to take on responsibility. She is the perfect example of the leader as the follower, willing to concede responsibility when needed, and not threatened by Willie’s growing power.

Be Kind to People

The most obvious lesson to be drawn from Hobson’s Choice is to be kind to those around you. Harry Hobson’s selfishness loses him his two most valuable employees. When he finally succumbs to alcoholism and requires nursing, none of his daughters are eager take on the duty. Finally Maggie decides to return, but not out of saintliness. She returns to nurse her Father only after negotiating a half share in the shop for Willie, with her Father reduced to a silent partner.

Practice Self-Awareness

The main lesson one can draw from this movie however is to practice self-awareness. It is Maggie’s greatest strength, the source of her shrewdness and ability to negotiate so effectively. It is striking how many characters in this movie lack any mindfulness. Harry Hobson’s is deluded as to his own importance and business acumen: Willie remains ignorant of his talent. The Sisters to their own snobbishness: while many of Hobson’s drinking cronies remain blind to their own true nature.

Many modern viewers will wince at the Victorian sensibilities of the movie; with its rigid social and gender roles. Many will also find it odd that for a customer to enter a shop, meant they were obliged to purchase. This is what happens to Vicki’s sweetheart Mr. Prosser.

However, Hobson’s Choice, written just as Harry Selfridge customer retail revolution was taking hold of Britain, also points to something deeper.

The movie is set at the height of the most transforming event in human history - the industrial revolution. It is a time when capitalism and industry are pulling millions of people out of abject poverty, lengthening their life span and expanding their horizons. In previous generations, Willie and Maggie, for all their abilities and ambition, would have remained trapped in the role and social class assigned to them by birth: subservient to men like Harry Hobson. Yet in the new order, for 100 pounds investment, they can reinvent themselves, creating a life of their own choosing.

The new society also doesn’t care for a person’s social class, gender or race. Instead it ranks highest those who satisfy the customer. And the customer is not just rich dowagers like Mrs Hepworth. The customer can be, as Maggie and Willie discover with their very first sale, a poor old lady buying a one penny shoe lace.

This is a wonderful movie. A minor classic, if now forgotten. In the end everyone gets what they deserve. The Sisters marry the men of choosing. Willie gets ownership of Hobson’s Shoe shop but it is Maggie who wins the most. Not only does she get a husband and independence, she gets the one thing she has craved most of all – someone to love her. It is this which makes it such a lovely movie. A marriage of convenience turns through mutual admiration of the others talent, slowly into deep love.