Job creation and the solopreneur

If you are a job creator, it goes without saying that you have a massive beneficial impact on your community and society at large. It's not often that you see someone enter into business for the purpose of creating jobs for others: the goal is usually income/profit, and jobs may be created as a side effect, a means to an end. To a few, the good of job creation is more like a "necessary evil" factor for making profits.

This why I was so impressed to see the story of a young man who had invented an alternative to wheat-based playdough using a patented soy-based mixture: his single-minded focus on creating jobs in his hometown, Bloomfield, IN was inspiring.

The product, Soy-yer Dough, is for kids with wheat allergies, and/or celiac disease, apparently a sizeable market. Sold out of his home, he has moved 19,000 units. Although not a frequent TV watcher, I caught the segment the ABC show "The Shark Tank" that featured this innovator.

In negotiations with the sharks (apparently a term for people risking their own money in exchange for equity), his initial rebuffs were all about bringing jobs to his community. The investors were eager to get the patent for licensing his idea to Play-Do, which had made an offer on his patent for $500,000, before he even went into the Shark Tank. He didn't budge on yielding control of the business until he was assured that part of the negotiations could include bringing jobs back to Bloomfield, and they also persuaded him that with the capital they could raise with a licensing deal, he could do even more for employment. It was downright heartwarming to watch.... after the deal was made, the inventor, Sawyer Sparks, addressed the viewers of his hometown: "This is for you, Bloomfield." Provincial? I think not.

When I was a kid, I don't recall ever thinking in terms of creating jobs for others. I wish I had. Like lots of other kids, my career fantasies ran the gamut from fame & fortune, to adventure, to authoring... Think about what he was willing to do: it's every bit as much "giving back to community" as a corporate gift for a new theater.

Walk the halls of a business school and ask people what they want to do, what they want as a legacy. I think, as probably do you, that not terribly many would speak passionately about adding to the payroll. True, many of them would think about growing their business and impacting their city, but you don't hear "I want to hire, hire and hire some more" every day, do you?

A good business is usually the creation of an innovative individual, who can grow it and might end up opening its doors to new employees, even if that's the last thing they wanted! More people able to feed their families, build or buy houses, buy furnishings, art, books, games, classes, trade in their community. The exchange of value leading to even more value. That scary unemployment number affects us all, even if we're not in the ranks of the laid-off. Thus, the job creator affects us all too... and they seem to be relatively rare creatures.

Not long ago I read an interview with a successful entrepreneur, a really nice person, whose work has become famous and whose site receives massive traffic. If he decided to, he could monetize the notoriety, scale the work, and create dozens of jobs. However, asked about growing the business, he replied, point blank: "We would have to hire people to grow the company, and we don't want to hire." Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it shows that success in creating a market for a good product, does not necessarily equal jobs: it takes an individual's will to create them, in addition to the quality of their business offering. And the unemployment number will not go down without individuals making such a decision.

Wouldn't it be nice to hear kids talk about growing up to be job creators? Don't more people talk about getting a job, finding a job, landing a job, than creating a job? I think owning your own business is a huge step in that direction: you've created a "job," in a sense, for yourself. Can we engender the willpower to invest our capital and energy to grow beyond solo entrepreneurship?

We're often asked to donate our money or time, or donate services or product-in-kind to support a cause. This is often called 'giving back to the community.' I can't think of an individual who gives more "back" to the community than the person who sets his or her mind to expand opportunities for others through direct employment. Every job created is an achievement, a victory. (What if disadvantaged inner city kids thought about creating a business, about hiring their friends, before thinking about finding a job?)

People like Sawyer Sparks give me hope. We need a lot more like him.