entrepreneur

Some people choose to be entrepreneurs: others have it thrust upon them, and their number is increasing. The risk of a managerial career coming to a full stop is greater than ever before, and an entrepreneurial replacement may look a better bet than the two alternatives: idleness or the daily grind round the appointments pages.

Some idea of the numbers can be gauged from those on the books of Dunstable-based GMS Interim Management: 3,000 qualified executives ready and eager to make it on their own. As managing director Charles Russam says, working as an independent consultant is 'not that different from a small business.' The independents have only one product to sell - themselves. But they, too, need skills in the sales, marketing, personnel and finance functions: and, like the small business, they won't have anybody else to supply these necessities.

Russam knows whereof he speaks. A former big company man, working on the Beefeater Steakhouse side of Whitbread's, he then filled in time as a consultant and temporary finance director. He saw an opening for management consultancy linked to Accountancy Task Force, London, which supplies high-class financial temps. When he wanted to expand, his ally was unwilling, so Russam bought himself out in 1985: and promptly hit a snag.

The clients didn't want his consultancy so much as the people he recruited to do the necessary work. In 1987 Russam switched to what was then called 'executive leasing', now known, more loftily, as interim management. Companies in need of executives for specific purposes for a while, maybe a long while, hire them from Russam and his competitors for a typical £300 to £500 a day, which gives some idea of the high status of the jobs.

The typical successful independent (and the easiest to place) is 45-55, 'a safe pair of hands', who has completed the cultural change from the employee mentality to the employer one - and is a bit of a 'hustler.'

Hustling - pursusing the main chance wherever you can, even at parties - is one vital distinction between the big and small company person. So is the ability to survive without any certainty of where or when the next cheque will arrive. Russam advises anybody to set time aside, no matter how heavy the pressure of current business, to work on generating future income, forgetting the eternal bleat, 'When I'm working I'm not selling: when I'm selling, I'm not earning.'

But the greatest entrepreneurial issue, 'the basic question', is marketing. Small businesses often plunge into a market unthinkingly, and so do independent consultants. Ask first, says Russam, what is my trade? What am I actually selling? You quickly arrive at the importance of having a Unique Selling Proposition, a specialisation where you're the expert: and it makes no difference to the principle whether you're expert in original cast albums or business planning.

The second important message is to keep skills up-to-date. That's obvious enough for somebody who is acting as a temporary finance director: but running your own business is equally demanding, and covers the wide range of functions mentioned above. Training improves performance every time: and another common bleat ('I haven't got time to go on courses') can prove very expensive.

Russam's own business has been sufficiently successful, despite the impact of the worst post-war recession, for him to be glad that he took the independent plunge. He now handles his leading database of 3,000 interim managers from four offices, and, bringing the wheel full circle, has just bought an equity stake in Accountancy Task Force, the firm where it all started. But he wouldn't launch his business on the world in the same way.

His mistake, he says, was exactly the one he now warns the new, forced entrepreneurs to avoid. 'When I started I tried to do too many things all at once.' The best advice you can follow (and he wishes he had) is very simple: focus and specialise.