AND ANOTHER THING
When the sweet smell of success becomes moral incense
PAUL JOHNSON
If 'I could have my time again I would start my own business. This is the advice I now give young people who ask my opinion about what they should do in life. Tradi- tional careers are unappealing. Politics is corrupt and disgusting. Diplomacy? Might as well be a travelling salesman. The law pays well for some, but international law, where the big prizes are on offer, is a dis- mal world. Journalism is now degraded beyond hope, television is going the same way. I could not in good conscience recom- mend any of the churches, even as a voca- tion. Painting? If you're good, you'll starve. Writing? Not as a full-time job. The the- atre? Music? You'll have to be very dedi- cated. Teaching? Not worth discussing. Advertising, PR? Well, if you must.
All these professions — trades — have the dingy smell of the past, the encrustation of ignominy. Creating a business is by defi- nition new: it is a move into the future. It is also a future trend. The enduring legacy of the Thatcher era was the re-emergence of an entrepreneurial spirit, not yet — touch wood — destroyed by Not-So-New Labour. The same thing happened in America, only more so. The record number of new jobs created in the United States in the past quarter-century has been due in large part to newly founded small businesses taking on staff. Of these, over a million have been started by women. In fact, American expe- rience, and evidence from Britain, shows that women are in the vanguard of the new business age. They set up more businesses than men and, of those started, a higher proportion survive.
This is why, when I give a talk to sixth- formers at girls' schools, I recommend play- ing the business card. I argue thus: girls should go into business, especially the City, to learn — and they should, indeed they must, pass their accountancy exams — but they should not kid themselves that they can combine a determined career to the top with a satisfactory family life. Ultimately there will be a conflict, and one or the other, usually both, will suffer. Changes in the law and custom are doing a lot to soften the conflict, but biology ensures that it will remain. Yet many women have strong com- mercial instincts and, once they acquire a little savvy too, they can set up a business from home. Thereafter they can plan their working hours to suit their family needs, and the work-station is the same for both. For a woman to run her own business, and combine it with raising a family, is unques- tionably hard work. But my observation is that women rarely mind work, however hard, if they can see the point of it and are sure it is leading somewhere.
There is an important financial factor, too. Successful career women, on large salaries, often complain to me how little they have to show for it, and how impossible it is to save. Usually they find themselves keeping a (less successful) man. Owning your own business means you can exercise real control over your life, including your financial life, with a strong chance of building up capital value. What you earn and own will be strictly deter- mined by your own efforts, and will be sub- ject to your decisions, rather than somebody else's. As all intelligent women now realise, the biggest single element in securing their freedom is not politics or the law or 'rights' or anything else which can be secured by mere agitation. It is financial independence. And financial independence is more likely to be achieved by entrepreneurial success than by any other method.
So girls — women — keep your eyes open for business opportunities! I don't know how much schools encourage girls to think in terms of starting a business — very little, I suspect, and universities even less. But the whole thing can be made exciting; more exciting these days than other careers. We all find the existing commercial world — the products and services on offer — highly unsatisfactory, women more so than men, I suspect, for they look harder. The essence of entrepreneurialism is spotting a gap in the market, examining the nature of the hole, and the reason for it, if any, and decid- ing whether and how it can be filled. That is a fascinating study in itself. The commercial mechanics of filling the gap, or replacing methods or products which fill it badly, of examining the competition and then con- structing a hypothetical scheme for beating it — costing the scheme, working out possi- ble profits, then examining how it can be sold to a bank or other financial institutions — is an exacting but absorbing exercise.
It is also creative. Indeed, it is essentially creative. There is no fundamental differ- ence between creating a work of art or founding a business. In fact a new business is a work of art. It demands imagination, the ability to conceive a new, glittering, attractive product in the mind's eye, or to see, on a virgin site, busy workshops arising, functioning, delivery vans charging to and fro. But such works of art and imagination are living as well. They involve people, employees. To engage staff, however few perhaps only one or two — and then to enthuse them with your imaginative vision and encourage them to make their own contribution, this is a nurturing role, a mothering kind of creativity, which may explain why women now find they are so good at it.
There is also a moral point. Many dons in universities still teach the young that busi- ness is somehow immoral by nature. The opposite is true. To create an honest busi- ness, far from being immoral, is not even a morally neutral act. It serves the community by providing a useful product at a reason- able price; and it creates employment. In the writings of Maimonides, the great 12th- century Jewish polymath, there is a passage describing, in ascending order of merit, the most worthy forms of charity. But the high- est of all, he says, is to give a needy person a job. And if it is a real job it ceases to be mere charity and becomes mutual service, the highest form of human material congress. It is hard to think of any activity in the world today which has a higher moral value than creating jobs that are real, last- ing, decently paid and offer satisfaction and a future. Those who create new businesses, and make a go of them, ought to be treated as heroes of society. Are you listening, Tony Blair? Will you make this part of your moral crusade?
If there are particular reasons why women have a big role to play in the new world of entrepreneurs, young men are equally indis- pensable. They are more adventurous, more inclined to take risks. No new business ever succeeded without an element of risk, often a big one. The risk is, to some extent, the life-tingling thrill. The nervous excitement of a launch, the salutary terror of knowing you must be able to meet the weekly wage bill, the creditable aggression towards comneft- tors, the sweet smell of success, always sweetest when measured by indisputable fig- ures on an account-sheet — there are heady rewards for masculine instincts in the rough world of trade. Righteous rewards, too. Dr Johnson was at his most just when he observed: 'There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.'
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