Blut ist dicker als Wasser*

Tu sangre familiar vale más que una gran cantidad de amistades** 

As already mentioned in the previous post, I did go down the treacherous path of getting married at the business altar with “my friends.” This experience was and still is my path to winning the Oscar for Best Screenplay due to the look of astonishment, confusion, shock and laughter that I get in one go when explaining to others how quickly and why the milk turned sour with “my friends.” Without losing the grip on my future Oscar, here are a few tidbits from my time being locked up with “my friends” or should I say warnings to up and coming entrepreneurs wanting to go into business with their “friends:”

1. If your friend sees themselves as the next “Julius Caesar,” leave the knife in the kitchen but think twice before signing on the dotted line.
2.  If your friend has the number of the local shop selling clothes for strippers on speed dial, think wisely about whether or not opening a language school is the right venture.
3.  If your friends have a tendency for fish and rubber, maybe you should be thinking about opening a restaurant specializing in fish and where the dress code is latex rubber…

All in all think long and extremely hard when deciding to join hands with your friends as the cut can be very painful when and if it occurs. To avoid getting your hands cut off or ironically describing your former business partners as “friends,” consider going down the altar with your family or receiving support from them. As in the end, regardless of how well you know and trust your friend, once you have signed on the dotted line, the seven deadly sins will come into play in every possible shape and size and if your family does not model themselves on the Ewing family from Dallas, you will be in safer hands. 


If they had no problem in cleaning up your “sh**” when you were a little monster, they will most probably have no problem in cleaning up your "sh**” when you are a grown up monster!

   

Lesson 4:  Business and pleasure doesn’t mix when dealing with friends.  




* ( A German Proverb: Blood is thicker than water).


** ( A Spanish Proverb: An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship).

A Prenuptial Agreement for Business Partners

“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” (Misreporting of an actual quote from Samuel Goldwyn)

As you must have realized from Why Now, I did not turn my dream into reality in the land of “Bunga Bunga Parties” but instead in the land of the “Iron Frau.”

It would take me another few years of still attempting to be a lawyer on Law & Order and working in language schools where the bulk of the teachers were and are budding thespians. A note to all directors out there, as well as advertising in drama schools for your lead, you should also try out all the language schools too: The response will most probably be higher from the language schools…

I then made the mistake of getting pregnant and married too soon and not even signing a pre nuptial agreement with my business partners. Yes, if you enter into a business with other people, you are more or less entering into a sexless marriage with a screaming baby at your feet. The screaming baby of course is the business, itself.  Just like anybody in love, I was completely blind to the misgivings of my business partners and regardless of my experience as a wannabe lawyer; I ignored the blatant gaps in the company contract which were to be an extremely expensive and painful mistake on my part once the divorce proceedings began.  A key note to all future entrepreneurs out there who decide to go into business with other people, regardless of how small the business is and how much you trust and know your beloved partner, have an extremely detailed section on the consequences of separation: i.e. a prenuptial agreement. It avoids the hassle and loss of hair as to who will end up getting the dictionary.  Yes, it can get that pedantic.

Lesson 3: Protect yourself, before going down the business altar.   

Turning a nightmare into a dream

 "Dreams are the touchstones of our character."  (Henry David Thoreau)

When I was growing up, I dreamt of several contrasting careers: air stewardess, vet, a lawyer on Law & Order, however never the owner of a language school.

It was only in my early twenties that I came across the wonders of teaching English abroad: At first, I only did the TESOL as a way to support my frugal attempts of saving the world through doing a social project in Italy. I was unsuccessful in saving the world but instead found that I enjoyed explaining to Italian students,in particular Italian Soldiers (!) the simplicity of English Grammar. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to stay on a year in Italy and work in a school belonging to a chain. (Hence this school will as of now, be known as simply the “chain school”). This is where the nightmare began: 

1) A note to all inexperienced teachers, if a school’s library consists of a wide collection of books with photos of people in flares, take the first plane, train, car or bicycle back to England! Yes, being the inexperienced teacher that I was, I ignored the fact that the range of books were limited and skipped off to the piazza for a gelato. 

2) Another note to all inexperienced teachers, teacher training is important! Unfortunately at the chain school, our teacher training amounted to being shown where the scrabble set was and how the photocopier worked. 

3) Alarm bells should definitely start to ring, when the school owner is involved not only in the language business but a breeding business for dogs and women. I will let your imagination run wild as to what his breeding business for women entailed. Unfortunately, the Italian knack of turning a blind eye rubbed off on me and I happily skipped off yet again to the piazza for a gelato. Thankfully my ignorance was temporary and due to my outrage towards the lack of resources, training, support, awful accommodation, the list does go on for a while and well of course the breeding of women, I was blacklisted from the chain schools in Italy. A final note to all inexperienced teachers, you cannot be blacklisted, as I was to find out!

Throughout however all of this, I had the opportunity to develop as a teacher and go through the initial phases of photocopying a rainforest and going to sleep with the Murphy book on English Grammar. Furthermore I had the opportunity of meeting and teaching a wide range of people from an extremely ambitious Chemist aiming to do the Cambridge Proficiency Exam to an eccentric primary school English teacher from Napoli aiming to learn the English Alphabet – Remember, the Italians have a knack of turning a blind eye.

This experience awakened in me the belief that a language school should be offering more than scrabble and a handful of books to its teachers and clients and the fact that I could run a better language school and would like to run a language school – somehow the breeding business just did not appeal to me.




Lesson 2:  Learn from others, before teaching others.

Why Now?

After 5 years of attempting to be the female version of Richard Branson in the language school world (please note the use of the word attempting!), I thought that the time had come to divulge into the lessons that I have learnt (both good and just plain awful), the people that I have met along the way, including a sprinkling of business partners and backpackers claiming to be language teachers and the mistakes that I have made in running not only a language school but a business in the German city which claims to be a “pearl” and have the longest street of prostitutes dressed in identical uniform within Europe.  

Furthermore after reading countless articles and books on how exhilarating it is to be self-employed, I felt that the time had come to give a true account of the the real advantages and disadvantages, there are of leaving the rat race and joining the circus of self-employed. 


Lesson 1: Becoming self-employed does not mean that you stop running.



PS: I am curious to hear what you have to say....