Not many people that I know of went into business for the primary purpose of creating jobs for others. The goal is usually income/profit: jobs may be created as a side effect, a means to an end. To a few, the good of job creation is more likely to be a “necessary evil” factor for making profits.

This why I was so impressed to watch the story of a young man who had invented an alternative to wheat-based playdough using a patented soy-based mixture: his single-minded focus on creating jobs in his hometown, Bloomfield, IN was inspiring.

The product, Soy-yer Dough, is for kids with wheat allergies, and/or celiac disease, apparently a sizeable market. Sold out of his home, he has moved 19,000 units. Although not a frequent TV watcher, I caught the segment the ABC show “The Shark Tank” that featured this innovator.

In negotiations with the sharks (ABC’s term for people who risk their money in exchange for equity), his initial rebuffs were refusals to take jobs from his community. The investors were eager to get ahold of his patent for licensing his idea to Play-Doh, which had made a preliminary offer on his patent for $500,000, before he even went before the Shark Tank panel. He didn’t budge on yielding control of the business until he was assured that negotiations would include bringing jobs back to Bloomfield; the investors also persuaded him that their combined capital could do even more for his hometown’s employment. It was downright heartwarming to watch…. after the deal was made, the inventor, Sawyer Sparks, addressed his neighbors back home: “This is for you, Bloomfield.” Provincial? I think not.  Think about what Sawyer was willing to do: it’s every bit as much “giving back to community” as a corporate gift for a philanthropy.

When I was a kid, I don’t recall fantasizing about creating jobs for others. I wish I had. Like lots of other pre-teen kids, any imaginings about a future career ran the gamut from fame & fortune as an actor or rock star, to adventure as a fireman or soldier, to authoring as I got older…”What do you want to be when you grow up?” for most kids is not: “A source of jobs.”  Too bad, too.  Because it doesn’t appear to be too common even in adults.

Walk the halls of a business school and ask people what they want to do with their lives, what they want as a legacy. I think, as probably do you, that not terribly many would speak passionately about adding to the payroll. True, many of them would think about growing their business and impacting their city, but you don’t hear “I want to hire, hire and hire some more” every day, do you?

A good business is usually the creation of innovative individuals, who grow it and might end up opening the doors to new employees, even if that’s the last thing they wanted! More people able to feed their families, build or buy houses, buy furnishings, art, books, games, classes, trade in their community. The exchange of value leading to even more value… That scary unemployment number affects us all, even if we’re not in the ranks of the laid-off. The job creator thus affects us all too… and thee people seem to be relatively rare creatures.

Not long ago I read an interview with successful husband-and-wife  entrepreneurs, a really nice couple, whose work has become famous and whose site receives massive traffic. If they decided to, they could monetize their notoriety, scale their work, and create scores of jobs… and they know it. When asked about growing the business, they replied, point blank: “We would have to hire people to grow the company, and we don’t want to hire.”

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but serves to show that success in creating a market for a good product, does not equal creating jobs, necessarily. It takes an individual act of will to create them, in addition to the quality of their business offering… the unemployment number will not go down without individuals making that decision. It can be a complex undertaking, with regulations, costs, risks, and potential for stress. Once the payroll grows, if things slow down, the entrepreneur is faced with the choice of operating at a loss, or terminating some of the positions.  All the more reason to say the person that takes the risk is courageous.

Don’t more people use the terms: getting a job, finding a job, landing a job, than creating a job? I think owning your own business is a huge step in that direction: you’ve created a “job” for yourself. How can the entrepreneur be supported, to encourage the willpower to invest capital and energy to grow beyond solo entrepreneurship?

Most of us are asked to donate our money or time, or donate services or product-in-kind to support charitable causes. You’ll hear that called “giving back to the community.”

I can’t think of an individual who gives more back to the community than the person who sets his or her mind to expand opportunities for others through direct employment. Every job created is an achievement, a victory. What if disadvantaged inner city kids grew up thinking about creating a business, about hiring their friends, before they started thinking about finding a job?

People like Sawyer Sparks should give us hope. We need a lot more like him.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”
-William Hutchinson Murray,   The Scottish Himalayan Expedition.

Originally posted in Biznik’s discussion forum, revised to flesh out some ideas.