Among the many (figurative) hats I wear, “entrepreneur” is one of them. That's a just another fancy-schmancy word for someone who gets a rush trying to earn some more gold—which would add a spin to the term “gold rush”--...and often fails.
Some of my failed attempts include the following: Marketing screen doors for submarines, going door-to-door in the Arctic (or would that be going igloo-to-igloo?) selling fridges, and running a farmer's market in the Antarctica.
Obviously these ventures would have failed...had they been seriously tried.
Closer to home, my entrepreneurship efforts generally have been around things we raise on the Back Thirty, with some measure of success, as well as my weekend teaching seminars and home education supervision. Happy, repeat “customers,” I suggest, is one measure of success. Paying all one's expenditures, with a token profit, would be another.
Once a given business shifts into high gear—namely, somewhere between a one-person fruit stand and trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange—there are many complications with running one's own business. Some of the said factors include promotion, product, and personnel.
It's the personnel or staffing dilemma that is a tack in my chair right now. I cannot tell you how many management-types have talked to me over past couple of years, bemoaning the desperate lack of qualified workers.
Note I said “qualified” and not “certified.” The prospective workers may have a grade twelve diploma, perhaps even a university degree. That apparently qualifies them for employment. However, that piece of paper (also known as a “receipt”) means squat when it comes to work habits, personal integrity, and teachability. To a person, these industry leaders would do anything to get potential employees to simply get to work on time, come prepared to work with a good attitude, and ready to learn the trade. The rest, they say, is up to them.
With the character void that is reaching Hurricane Sandy proportions in our failing Western culture, I have a simple suggestion. So simple, of course, that it may be seen as over-simple, even hopelessly naive.
The possible solution? Thought you'd never ask: Hire mature women.
Let me repeat (or skip this line and move to the next paragraph): Hire mature women.
I find the best clerks, the best nurses, the best waitresses, the best teachers, the best assembly-line personnel, the best whatever (and we're only discussing women here), are those who have lived life to a full extent (a good definition of “mature”), and are now ready to move on to the next challenge. Living life to a full extent could include years of marriage and raising kids, balancing budgets and schedules, working through marriage issues and hormone assaults, and dealing with teachers and collection-agencies, to say nothing of health and finance setbacks.
They know the shame of shysters, the absoluteness of assertion yet the necessity of niceness, and have that uncanny knack of going the extra mile. They have stuck at things they've hated through thick and thin, and know the importance of plodding on, regardless of feelings, friends, and fears.
I would hire a woman like that in a heartbeat. In fact, if I were premier, I'd love to have a few in my cabinet. I am aware that there is a balance between women who are qualified for the workplace, yet have responsibilities at home. Indeed, I would be very loathe to take a woman away from her more pressing role, if she was needed for her family.
(I am fully aware of the dangers of a woman working for a man who is not her husband, especially if her new boss is winsome, considerate and well-mannered. My thesis today is to recognize the inestimable worth of mature women in the workplace, when and where appropriate.)
So, after the kids have moved on, in one way or the other, I would draw from such a pool of workers. I find that when I travel—so I am speaking specifically of the service industry--they make the best gas bar attendants, motel clerks, and breakfast managers.
I am not discussing women in management, as I generally don't interface with them on a daily basis. Needless to say, the ones in management would also do a great job: Anyone who can manage a home well can manage a department or business well.
Mind you, I would likely get into trouble if I posted the following sign outside my business: “Now hiring: Only women over 40 need apply.”
I would probably have to hire a mature female security guard for starters: After all, she will have had lots of experience handling cranky people.
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