Self-Employment in Later Life

The contribution businesses actually and potentially make to Community Development.  Businesses make a huge contribution, simply by being there.  We support them through opportunities to (1) buy from small and local businesses, (2)  invest time, money and ideas (3) develop approaches and ideas for local regeneration.  

In later life, people are often relatively financially secure and so might spend time exploring, experimenting and encouraging local businesses.  

We live in a world dominated by huge corporations that don't have our best interests at heart.  Small-scale businesses and enterprises make a real difference, enriching all our lives.

I'm committed to real change in our communities, asking what makes them places where people enjoy life and what disadvantaged places lack.  Many people would make their contribution to community if they understood the contributions they are in a position to make.

It's easy for people to lose touch with the work only they can do and I reconnect them with their real work for the benefit of all.  Over a lifetime real work can be lost or buried beneath loads of experiences, which may obscure their life purpose.  I want to see thriving neighbourhoods where everyone knowingly makes a contribution.

"Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered" by E F Schumacher's inspired me when it was published in 1993.   It's still relevant.  Most of the problems we face as a planet are from huge unaccountable Corporations.  When they model success, we get the utterly misleading emphasis on profit.  Capital is the means to do stuff.  It is not something to be accumulated for its own sake,  

Business activity is meant to enhance the lives of everyone.  When we invest in the local economy, we invest in ourselves as well as everyone else.   This is self-interest and not the same as selfishness.  It is understanding that when I help others, I also help myself.

Climate change is especially important.  It has two impacts that deeply concern me.  First, the erosion of hope.  We hear about young people committing suicide and this is largely because we are failing to show that there is hope and their task is to find and practice their real work. 

The second effect is denial that results in accidie or far right politics.  Both are distractions from the daunting reality of climate change.  Anything will do as a distraction and so a sense of helplessness or distractions online or through drugs.  The right spins a yarn that there are other things that take precedence or that it's not true and we should return to status quo ante.  And so we see wars such as Ukraine and Gaza, which are immense distractions.  And we see promises to end net zero, oblivious to the fact that it isn't possible to go back as we've already passed peak oil and renewables are cheaper and ultimately the only game in town.  

My real work is a tiny contribution to practices that work.  Together we build something new and this is possible where small businesses and enterprises collaborate consciously and unconsciously.

I've been an accredited Methodist Local Preacher for over 40 years.  This means I'm used to public speaking and indeed it's my most favoured way of sharing a message.  Audiences inspire me and I find my flow through their presence.

I'm used to taking stories apart.  This is the work of the preacher who takes ancient stories from their religious tradition plus stories from their lives.  This has enabled me to develop an instinct for how stories work.  I can sense where something's missing and see patterns in stories.  

I know how to segue between stories and teaching.  This is really important for the business owner when speaking in public.  It's about understanding the many meanings in any story, which one they need to bring to the fore and how to do that.  How they use stories to capture and hold attention, so that an audience listens to their teaching.

Also, religious traditions have always been about exchange of ideas, when permitted to do so, ie in the absence of religious extremists.   Simply copying ideas from elsewhere rarely works because context is everything.  But insights across the world can inspire new creative endeavours.

As a community development worker, I developed economic regeneration projects in Sheffield and Maltby and then worked nationally for a project-funding programme.  I've seen many excellent programmes come to nothing because we were unable to find sustainable funding.  This is why I'm in business, in search of sustainability.