Why the “recovering entrepreneur” in my bio isn’t just for laughs

I swear I must have started, stopped, and restarted writing this piece about seven times. The subject is one I’ve wanted to discuss for a while, but I’ve been wary of sounding bitter, or as though I think I know better than anyone else. Neither is really representative of me as a person, and neither helps me illustrate my point. Also, the past few weeks have involved so much back and forth, both within my life and without, that every time I think I’ve got a handle on what I want to say, some new experience crops up and changes everything.

And so it is that the following piece is probably about a month in the making. I decided to stop agonising over the tiniest details and just put it out there while it all still made a modicum of sense in my head. I hope you enjoy and, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or the less stimulating but still somewhat useful LinkedIn, you’ll have seen that “recovering entrepreneur” is a phrase I’ve chosen to describe myself with. I debated using it because, let’s be honest, it’s hardly a legitimate job description or anything, but it felt too integral to me and my story to just leave it out. It also bears a lot of relevance to what I want to use my site to discuss, both now and in the future.

For those who know me personally, I imagine the whole recovering entrepreneur thing is more self-explanatory — I may even have presented you with your morning coffee at my old shop at some point. But if I’m a stranger to you, or some sort of internet acquaintance, this description probably doesn’t make as much sense. We all know what a recovering alcoholic is, for example, but a recovering entrepreneur? What does that even mean? Surely you’re either an entrepreneur or just, you know, not an entrepreneur?

Well, outlandish though it may sound, I’m here to tell you that being a recovering entrepreneur is a very real thing, and herein I will do my best to explain just why this is. For, although I officially ceased to be an entrepreneur over a year ago now (if indeed you can ever truly cease to be an entrepreneur), I know for sure that I am still recovering.

From August 2015 to July 2019, or the 24th of June if we’re splitting hairs, I ran my own speciality coffee shop in a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne. I was twenty-four when we opened, twenty-eight when the business eventually sold. For the majority of those four years, and long before we officially opened, even, I lived, breathed and bled the business. It was my life, my identity. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was the shop and the shop was me. There wasn’t really any separating us out.

“Although I officially ceased to be an entrepreneur over a year ago now, I know for sure that I am still recovering.”

While I was fortunate to have the support of my father from the very beginning, ultimately the responsibility for everything, whether front of house or behind the scenes, lay with me. I wrote and pitched the business plan, and negotiated the terms of our five-year lease. I designed the space more or less single-handedly, and learned an important lesson in assertiveness when my statement tiles went AWOL. I sketched prototype logos for the business from the recliner at my grandmother’s house while my then-month-old cousin dozed in my lap, and hand-drew diagrams for our various brewing methods whilst watching David Fincher’s Gone Girl.

This sort of monomaniacal dedication is exactly what you need when starting your own business, but, with only a handful of exceptions, I don’t know many people who have been able to keep it up for more than a few years without burning out in a most dramatic fashion. I certainly couldn’t.

I’ll spare you the details of all the 4-5 a.m. starts, six-day weeks, and tax return-related tomfoolery that took place in the interim, and will simply say that running the business for those four years was an all-consuming endeavour. It took until the tail end of 2017 for me to acknowledge how burnt out I was, and in March 2018 I met with a commercial property agent to discuss selling the business. We eventually went to market in August 2018, however it wasn’t until May 2019, nine looooong months later, that we found a buyer.

Although I was relieved and more than ready to sell, I’m not sure I prepared at all adequately for the adjustment (or adjustments, as it happens) I was going to face. I thought that, having set up, ran, and eventually sold my own business, anything else I turned my hand to would be a piece of cake. Oh how wrong I was.

“I thought that, having set up, ran, and eventually sold my own business, anything else I turned my hand to would be a piece of cake.”

If I could go back in time and tell myself to take the remainder of 2019 off, I would. But I’m a restless soul, and when I was headhunted by a well-known vegan food company in August/September, I felt it would have been insane of me to turn the offer down. I had already used their product in my shop, so I knew it well, and whenever I mentioned the pending offer to anyone in my circle their response was something along the lines of: they seem like they’d be a great company to work for!

And I’m sure they are a great company to work for. But unfortunately, in my experience at least, that “seem” was doing a lot of heavy lifting. I kept thinking it was all too good to be true, and in the end it was. I’m going to refrain from dragging their name through the mud here as some recent dubious decision-making on their part has meant that many mainstream media outlets have already done so with abandon, and there isn’t much I can add to that. In any event, they dismissed me for rather egregious reasons and re-advertised my position with a significantly reduced salary a week later, so make of that what you will. I guess this was just my first indication that the grass wasn’t always going to be greener on the other side of self-employment. 

I told you I was wary of sounding bitter. I suppose it’s hard not to sometimes. And, hey, it could be that their decision had nothing to do with money at all, and that it really was just a square peg, round hole situation. I’ve never claimed to be the sort of person who fits in everywhere (which is perhaps why I became an entrepreneur in the first place) and I’d be lying if I said the company induction in Sweden hadn’t made me feel as though I was being ushered into a cult. Even if they hadn’t fired me, I doubt it would’ve been long before I got spooked and hopped the perimeter fence.

And then a little thing called COVID-19 came along, ruining a lot of things for a lot of people. Even if I hadn’t lost that job, I wouldn’t actually have been able to do it — it was field-based and, given that lockdown was confining us all to our homes, the “field” didn’t exist anymore. Any other jobs I’d applied for were postponed or else cancelled altogether, and so I was left with stacks of time for reading, writing…and wrestling with my thoughts.

“I’ve never claimed to be the sort of person who fits in everywhere, which is perhaps why I became an entrepreneur in the first place.”

Although I obviously didn’t envy the position many of my peers in the hospitality industry had found themselves in, on some perverse level I did envy the resilience and adaptability being shown by so many in the face of this unprecedented threat. I witnessed cafés and restaurants pivoting to become general stores, coffee shop owners moonlighting as cycle couriers, and entire physical businesses moving online. I envied these people for being able to show such spirit in the face of adversity, punching with all their might against the ongoing pandemic, while I was sitting at home doing, well, nothing. And I know that’s exactly what I was supposed to be doing, but for some reason it didn’t sit right with me. I hadn’t quite managed to shake that business owner mindset.

In more recent weeks, as certain restrictions were lifted, I found myself (albeit temporarily) back in the role of the server. I’d been putting out feelers for something, anything, to tide me over until I started my Masters. I spent a few weeks working at a bakery in Newcastle city centre, and also picked up some shifts at an immensely popular café just ten minutes’ walk from my house. The former was enjoyable but, from my point of view at least, beset by communication and admin issues. I have an increasingly low tolerance for both and so politely walked away. The latter, on the other hand, was about as well-oiled a machine as you could imagine, with a phenomenal, tight-knit team, but I just couldn’t keep up with the pace. I waved the white flag, reiterated my respect, and reverted to customer mode.

Both of these jobs were only ever supposed to be temporary, but I must admit that my inability to feel at “home” in any work environment since selling my shop has become a cause for concern. Is it that I have an issue with authority now, or something? Am I unable to understand someone else’s vision? Or, and this is my hope, is this just another symptom of being a recovering entrepreneur? When you’ve been used to the buck stopping with you, it’s hard to know how to act when it doesn’t anymore.

One thing I have realised recently is that hospitality is certainly not for me anymore. I think I already knew this when I decided to sell the shop, and I honestly never saw myself returning to it after that, but at least I know for sure now. Perhaps it was the industry, and not self-employment in and of itself, that had caused me to burn out after all. Perhaps I’ll always have an entrepreneurial bent to me now no matter what.

“When you’ve been used to the buck stopping with you, it’s hard to know how to act when it doesn’t anymore.”

I’m hopeful that the MA I am about to embark on (which I will discuss in more detail in my next piece) will steer me in a suitable direction, and I will continue to write all the while. I don’t have any answers right now, but I knew I wanted to undertake further education eventually, and I suppose COVID-19 has simply forced my hand. It could be just what I need to rehabilitate myself post-entrepreneurship, and hopefully I can figure out where exactly I belong, and where I can make a difference. Or perhaps I’ll just have to start something up again…

Are there any other recovering entrepreneurs out there who can relate? If there are, I’d love to know what you think. Drop me a line via Twitter, or whichever platform you prefer.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.com in 2020.