Typically in the world of entrepreneurship, the failure of an enterprise is considered harmless, sometimes necessary and always educational. An experience to be shaken off as the budding millionaire moves on to the next bright idea and new dawn.
However, things are not always so neat and tidy, as the experience of our village shows.
The story concerns two village families and two independent business men. The first, let us call him Juan, was a brickie, a good tradesman, in fact some people say exceptional. He decided to expand and took on a workforce of mainly immigrant workers, bid for some council contracts, completed them in a timely fashion and linked in with similarly ambitious partners to form a construction company that built a number of blocks of flats. All seemed well, and no one resented his Mercedes or the fine house he built next to his parents. The second, we will call him Josep, is a house painter, he has seven children and worked like an ant, always turned up on time, did a very fair job for a very fair price, normally worked away on his own but sometimes with his oldest son. Life seemed to progress and his family were fed and happy.
One block of flats completed Juan asked Josep to paint them prior to selling, a big job for Josep and one that necessitated him taking on a couple more painters to complete the eighteen flats. He completed them on time as he always did, and just in time for the bottom to fall right out of the housing market. Juan couldn't sell the flats, the bank called in his overdraft, he couldn't pay his own workers and certainly not Josep.
Josep had already paid his painters, and couldn't believe the disaster that had ruined his life. He despaired to the point of walking out into the main road in front of a thirty eight tonne articulated truck and tried to end it all. Fortunately the truck managed to stop and avoid him, but he is currently in the psychiatric ward and in the depths of a depression, the future is uncertain for his wife and seven children and his house is on the line.
Juan has retreated behind the walls of his fine house, and is apparently dodging crowds of angry african immigrants who want to be paid. Since most of the money he lost was the banks he at least can go back to bricklaying . Josep may never recover.
So next time you hear someone preach about the educative value of failure think about Josep staring at the walls in a locked ward and realise it is not all about the failed entrepreneur, it is also about the trail of misery they leave behind.
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