This Woman's Business Tanked and It Was the Best Break She Could Ever Imagine.
By Jim Schell, author of “So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur? Read this book first!”
I hate failing. I mean I truly hate it. Sure, as they say, you learn from your failures, but you can learn just as much from your successes; and successes aren’t nearly as painful – to the pocketbook or to the ego.
But I know a woman (not the one pictured above, but the symbolism is similar) who swears that the failure of her latest business was the best thing that ever happened to her.
Let me explain.
This woman, let’s call her Anne, is a classic serial entrepreneur. Like most serial entrepreneurs, she loves starting a business and scaling it, but once it’s up and running, her anti-management genes kick in and she wants to - no make that she needs to - get out of her managerial rut and get busy cranking out another startup. What’s happening, as all serial entrepreneurs know, is that Anne is addicted to the adrenalin rush that comes from making a startup, or a turnaround, work.
Don’t feel sorry for Anne, she can’t help it. It’s an addiction and there’s no known cure.
Strike a chord? If so, then you too are a serial entrepreneur, whether you like it or not. Which means - I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this - you’re bound to go through life without ever knowing the meaning of the word “security.” (Not to worry, my lips are sealed. I won’t let your spouse know this).
In order to grasp the lesson behind this post, you must first understand that Anne is one of those homegrown entrepreneurs who bootstrapped her businesses: she wouldn’t know a venture capitalist or an angel investor from a garbage collector. She’d flop down her own dough and personally guarantee her bank loans, after opting for Subchapter S’s over LLC’s or C Corp’s. Yet she was as much an entrepreneur as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, except that there weren’t as many digits behind the numbers on her financial statements.
No matter, her degree of risk was the same, or more, than Elon’s or Jeff’s, which means that everything Anne owned was pledged as collateral to someone or other, which further meant that her future was inherently clouded by risk. Every. Day. Including. Weekends.
Given that backdrop, Anne’s tale goes something like this:
She bought her first business from her parents. Made it go, sold it to an industry rollup, and acquired her second business. Made it go too, then sold it to a guy who ran it into the ground and stuck her with the paper she’d let him carry on the sale. As this was playing out, she bought a third business, which was essentially a turnaround, and was on track to make that one healthy too, when the Great Recession raised its ugly head. Somehow, she kept that business afloat for several years, until stress by a thousand cuts caught up with her and she sold it.
Burned out, Anne dipped her entrepreneurial toe into the nonprofit waters, taking over the leadership of a local nonprofit and making it click. And then, one fine October day in 2016, her husband came home from his new job and told her how rewarding it was, how inspiring it could be, and how he could hardly wait for tomorrow. Intrigued by his passion, Anne decided to give his adopted profession a try, and eureka, discovered her true role in life.
Yes, Anne became a teacher. A high school teacher. A high school business teacher.
And a drop-dead awesome teacher she became, at that. How could she not, she’d experienced it all, where business was concerned. She’d known success, failure, growth, death, Nirvana, and the depths of Hell. You name it and she’d sampled both its honey and venom. Imagine what it would be like if all our teachers had the same kind of hands-on experience that Anne had. But that’s another story.
What really set Anne apart, however, was not her experience in business, although that certainly played a key role. Rather, the real differentiator was her passion; a passion for helping kids, for teaching them a trade, and for giving direction to their life. “Jim,” she told me with eyes blazing, “the failure of my third company was not serendipitous. It was meant to be. If that business hadn’t failed, I would never have discovered my true mission in life.”
“I’ve never been happier,” she continued, a smile as wide as the Mississippi River etched across her face. “Despite taking a serious cut in pay,” she added, laughing. “I’m 53 years old and it feels like I’m back in business again. I’m a freshman, a rookie, an education outsider, yet I know I’m changing the lives of kids. Everything I’ve done up to now has been in preparation for this.”
She shook her head, before concluding, “can you imagine how good I can be ten years from now?”
It’s not just her word I’m taking here, incidentally, I’ve been part and parcel to some of the cool, entrepreneurial stuff that Anne is doing for, and with, her kids. Thanks to her contacts in the business community, she can bring successful businesspeople to her classroom. Or she can take her kids to the ultimate classroom, the businesses themselves. Hell, she can talk veteran CEO’s into guiding the tour. She knows her way around the business world and she’s learning her way around the classroom. And she’s loving it.
Yes, Anne is an entrepreneur in a teacher’s clothing, and, lo and behold, she’s doing her entrepreneuring in education; a tradition-bound career field that is not known for developing people who are enthralled by change. But, as Anne has learned from her business career, change fuels entrepreneurship. Without change we’d still be dialing our phones.
What Anne’s experience teaches us is that anyone, in any career field, can be an entrepreneur. Anne happens to have honed her skills in business and then went on to nonprofit, and education, but hey, entrepreneurship is transferable. She could have done what she did in any career.
All it takes is a sprinkling of experience, an aversion for risk, and a shitload of passion. Along with more than a tad of good luck.
Jim Schell is an 82-year old, geezer-defying, author, entrepreneur, mentor, and facilitator. Jim also writes CoolReads (i.e. condensed books) for his latest startup, Lights On Publishing. Like Anne in the story above, he’s also a serial entrepreneur, so naturally one of his CoolReads is “So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur? Read this book first!” If you’re interested in reading it, check out Lightsonpublishing.com or stop by Jim’s Amazon author page. Jim can be reached at [email protected].