Entrepreneurship as a Viable Career Option

07/12/2017

Lou Bromley has more than 20 years' experience across corporate HR, and secondary and tertiary education delivering career development programs and services. This article is based on a pre-conference workshop that Lou delivered in partnership with Rebecca McIntosh from iLab, the University of Queensland’s start-up accelerator. You can find Lou on Facebook or by email [email protected].

Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash

Entrepreneurs and influencers

I met Alborz face-to-face for a panel interview at my pre-conference workshop in May this year at the CDAA National Conference in May. Alborz had become a celebrity of the Brisbane start-up scene with the sale of Caradvice.com.au the year before for a cool $35 million: not bad for $35 in 2006 to create the site! 

Increasingly, universities are responding to students’ needs to access more information and connect with influencers to help them build a start-up business.

So it wasn’t surprising that a month after the CDAA National Conference, Alborz returned to his alum mater, the University of Queensland, as the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology. 

With start-up clubs and accelerator and incubator programs moving on campus, this creates a challenge for career development practitioners working in secondary and tertiary education: we need to know about start-up ecosystems and how to help our clients navigate them.

Consider this question: when someone sees you to talk about their future options, do you explore entrepreneurship with every client? The future of work is for the agile and flexible—and an entrepreneurial mindset is a key component. The entrepreneurial mindset is not something that the Zuckerbergs and Bransons alone; it’s essential learning for all of us in order to navigate our way through uncertainty and developing resilience.

Start-ups as viable career options

 Initially, I was hesitant to suggest founding a start-up as a viable career option to clients. To my surprise, I learned how entrepreneurs share their previous business failures and mistakes in terms of learning opportunities. Alborz had 17 start-up businesses before his success with the caradvice.com.au website. Some were complete flops. One was a huge success but had to shut the online business down as he was only 12 at the time, and it cost his parents $2000 a month in hosting fees.

But Alborz frames every business he has had in terms of what he learnt. With each business he came away from the experience with new knowledge, more skills and a sense of purpose.

Alborz confessed the only salaried role he has had was a graduate job after his IT degree—ironically, he joined The University of Queensland with their IT support team. And he hated it.

Alborz was disillusioned with his graduate role within three months of starting: he couldn’t create or innovate.  So he created a website after his own passion—a place where you could source reviews and advice about cars from high performance, luxury brands to entry-level vehicles. Caradvice.com.au was born.

After a month of operation, Caradvice.com.au was earning the same amount he was earning in his graduate role. So he quit salaried work.

We will meet clients for whom being in a salaried role will be a soul-destroying experience, like it was for Alborz. Let’s meet the challenge and explore with our clients how a start-up community may offer them a chance to create, disrupt and be successful in their career, and be an active part of entrepreneurial ecosystems, too. May the entrepreneurial mindset be a part of your career development practice.