Fitting yourself to your business

Self‐expression and business formation are not conventionally associated with each other. One is to do with art or psychology, the other with technique or economics. Yet in reality, the two processes are intimately associated. Business, like life itself, is an evolutionary process. As an enterprise unfolds, so the entrepreneur tells his tale. The better integrated the tale, the more naturally the business will unfold. This connection is at its clearest at the early stages, when the entrepreneur is managing the transition from employment, or unemployment, to employment of his or her self. In this paper I want to describe this transition, as experienced by one insightful entrepreneur, taking part in our action learning programme. The passages in italic type represent the thoughts and observations of Oliver Shirley, a trainee‐entrepreneur undergoing the URBED programme.