What happens if you take awesome but struggling entrepreneurs and put them in the corporate board rooms to share their disruptive perspective? You get more inspired, action-focused board meetings and less starving entrepreneurs!
This is the first post in a series I’m spinning off from when I mentioned my 18 now dormant business ideas in my earlier post Fifty Shades Of Entrepreneurial Pt 3. I don’t think the series is going to be 18 parts. It’s probably going to exceed that…
Entrepreneurs are GREAT! (Photo credit: UK in Canada)
Here I’ll be sharing ideas and concepts that were created by me. They’re all things I’d love to turn into reality, but time and other resources are scarce. Maybe sometime. And hey – if you should want to take an idea and do it yourself, please tell me first! Who knows, I might have some extra tips and tweaks or contacts/resources, and we could create a joint venture? Here we go then, the first idea:
Rent An Entrepreneur
The problem
Many starting entrepreneurs and startup founders run bootstrapped businesses and constantly worry about their own personal finances. This is before they’ve had any significant funding, and they’re building a product that won’t create big revenues for some time. So they have skills, ideas, initiative, courage and motivation. But they can’t live off those qualities… yet. So they get by with crappy part-time jobs or doing low-level consulting gigs as developers, designers or whatever. Not an optimal situation.
The solution
Create a “business and innovation agency”, recruit a bunch of entrepreneurs like those described above – around ten to fifteen people should get you off to a great start. Each individual’s time commitment only needs to be around 5 hours a week. Set up a nice and simple website and pull some strings (the people you just recruited should be both technically skilled and well-versed networkers).
The product you’ll be selling is “60 minutes of idea and action infusion into your stiff and boring meeting with the executive group or the board”. You’ll be selling to established companies that are worried because they’re facing unpredictable changes in market conditions and need to innovate fast or lose to their competitors (this is every. single. company. out. there – you know it and they should know it too).
Build and promote engaging and inspiring stories about the entrepreneurs. Set the pricing to a premium. Go out and hustle, and get some prestigious first clients. Take a cut for each gig. Then smile all the way to the bank – because you will have provided a meaningful and stimulating part-time job for the entrepreneurs, stimulated positive change and real actionable initiatives to the clients, and probably a bunch of unforeseeable spin-off effects in the long run.
That’s it for today, folks.
