The Entrepreneurial Dilemma
My job is meeting people day in and day out. And most of these meetings are to discuss and talk about how to make the transition from the employee world into the business world. The software guy is almost always thinking about opening up a software company or an app development company. The artist is thinking about starting an art school or an art gallery or an art based website. The musician is thinking about opening up a music school and a teacher about starting their own coaching centre. These are obvious choices because the only things we are confident about are things we have done for many many years and accumulated experience and expertise in. Here is how the story typically starts for most ambitious professionals.
A teacher hates being employed at a school or a college and feels being taken advantage of, what with being made to teach beyond the initial agreement and also participate in the marketing/administrative activities of the institution. The obvious option he thinks of is to start taking tuitions and ultimately convert it to a home based coaching class. Obviously the income jumps from anywhere around 30k a month to say around 1 lac a month but now he is busier than ever before. Now he has a job during the day and another job during the evenings and weekends as well - one he has created for himself and cannot run away from because it’s “his own job”. And most of the time this becomes the end of the entrepreneurial bug…so difficult to handle that he cannot think of expanding it further.
Soon he realises that his teaching is so good that everyone wants it but he has no more space left in his living room and dining room to expand. He also wants to cater to other subjects which he is not an expert in and ends up recruiting a few more teachers to cover the ground. Obviously now he will need to rent a room for doing this. Not an issue because the returns justify the additional investment. The problem is the lean periods where not enough students come in but the salary and rent stays the same. So he starts looking for a marketing person who can advertise his class and create a bigger funnel. The marketing guy does that but he can’t close all the inquiries coming in. So the next step is a team of sales guys who can negotiate and close every deal. All seems to be going good and the trickle has turned to a flood even in lean times. The only problem being the good times when they can’t handle the demand anymore and so they start recruiting more teachers and a bigger facility with 5-6 rooms in it, which is difficult to manage and so enters an admin guy who can handle the bills and the maintenance and the cleaning and fixing. But since this requires some sort of administration as well, the next logical step is to hire an HR and a Finance person to make sure all these employees stay happy and the money doesn’t get messed up as well.
The brand is becoming a power player and the government departments always want a share of the pie - so here comes a special guy who will handle Govt Affairs. Obviously older players in the market don’t like the new kid coming on the block and spoiling the show and there are legal issues that start arising for which an in-house legal counsel is the only one to be trusted. The number of teachers are increasing fast and the turnover is high too and to maintain the standards there has to be a Training department which keeps the quality of teaching high.
This is called a “Business”. Unfortunately the only problem is our teacher is actually a teacher and not a business owner. He actually loves to teach students hungry for knowledge but what he is dealing with 95% of the time now is not students but these various department heads of the “business” he has set up, trying to resolve their issues and giving them direction. It’s not long before he lies in the bed one night thinking about his purpose of life and his real passion and where it all started and where it ended up. The stress is not worth it; the work no longer enjoyable; the cause and the path lost somewhere in the din of the day to day management and expansion.
The story is no different for the rest of the professionals either. The doctor’s hospital, the artist’s school, the engineer’s consultancy, the accountant’s practice, the player’s academy…and unfortunately when I meet these successful people, I hear two stories. I hear a story for the first 30 minutes which beams with pride and joy of success but then another story which opens up after 30 minutes which talks about stress induced lifestyle diseases and a quiet desperation. Where did it all go wrong? In my opinion, the biggest missing link in all these cases is mentorship. The guidance of someone who had walked the same path before them and who could have helped them preempt this dilemma because they would have seen it coming 10 years down the line.