The Entrepreneurial Mind

Many of you know about the Four P's that make up a marketing strategy -- product, price, promotion, and place.

Those of you who read this blog regularly or have had me in class also know about the Three M's used in assessing opportunities in entrepreneurship -- market, margin, and me (or mission for social and corporate ventures).

In our new book, Bringing Your Business to Life, Mike Naughton and I introduce the Two V's that together help make a "good entrepreneur" -- vocation and virtue.

Entrepreneurs who understand their work as vocation seek to not only serve themselves through their venture, but to also serve a greater purpose.

The entrepreneur has to define the success of his business beyond financial, technical and market achievements to moral and spiritual principles that reveal the business as a gift to others. This may initially sound a bit too moralistic and idealistic. We have found, however, that when entrepreneurs describe their success and satisfaction of their company with a broader criteria than merely financial gain, they are on the way to setting a foundation to building a company that is faithful to their deeper commitments. Some of the criteria include

- creating jobs in which employees can find security;
- generating and distributing wealth for their investors and their employees;
- developing a highly positive culture that attracts workers who see the business as a good place to work;
- maintaining low rates of employee turnover and high employee satisfaction;
- providing needed services and products with great quality, and so forth.

No matter what path leads us to become entrepreneurs, the only way we can be fully human in our work is if we see our work as an opportunity to give our talents to others in service to the good of society and to God.

Virtue includes those habits that define how we approach our work as entrepreneurs.

When a person works, he affects the inner landscape of his character. The issue is not whether he changes himself, but how he changes himself. And the key to understanding the significant revealing of his personhood is not found in the amount of revenues he has generated, or levels of promotions, or the percentage of market share he has captured. Rather, the moral and spiritual character of an entrepreneur or businessperson will be captured in the responsible relationships he has forged with others in the actions of running his business. More specifically, this can be shaped by the opportunities he pursues, who he chooses to do business with, who he hires, decisions he makes about products and markets, decisions about whether and how fast to grow, the corporate culture he builds, and his engagement with the community as a leader and/or citizen.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When people use the term lifestyle business they usually are referring to something small and even part-time. Academics and policy folks will often say the term lifestyle business with a hint of indifference, boredom, or even condescension. This is not a business that interests them very much if it is not designed to scale up and grow.

I would argue that every business is a lifestyle business.

Why? Because the business we create will dictate our lifestyle.

We can choose the lifestyle our business creates deliberately, basing it on our goals, aspirations and values.

Our lifestyle may be one of integrating our business with our passion to change the world. We call this a social venture. Our lifestyle in this venture would be one of sacrificing our own income and wealth potential in exchange for making the world a better place.

Our lifestyle may be one that has the flexibility to spend the time we want to with our family, our church, our community, our hobbies, travel, or what ever.

Our lifestyle may be one that keeps things simple. We are willing to trade off the growth potential in a venture for the peace of mind of having no employees to worry about or to provide for.

Our lifestyle may be one of fame and fortune -- of work ahead of everything else. So we look for opportunities that provide wide open markets with significant growth potential.

Be deliberate in planning a business that reflects the lifestyle you want. And understand the trade-offs that come with the choices you make -- there are always trade-offs.

High growth ventures offer high rewards of income and wealth. But, they also come with the risks associated by pursing such ventures. Your income is more at risk, certainly in the short-run. Your family will likely see you less. Your hobbies and interests will take a back seat.

The decision to keep your business small can offer the ability to control your time and make it more flexible for other parts of your life. But, your income potential will be more limited and you will have to be content with passing on opportunities to add on more products, move into other geographic locations, or maximize our share of the market.

The key thing is to recognize that every business has an affect on your lifestyle. Be honest with yourself. Know what lifestyle you truly want and then engineer that lifestyle into the business you build.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our book on entrepreneurship and virtue, Bringing Your Business to Life (co-authored with Mike Naughton), is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

Here is what a few folks have had to say about our new book:

If you want to be one of the truly great entrepreneurs you need to read this book. Jeffrey Cornwall and Michael Naughton have done a masterful job of illuminating a side of business we all should be thinking about.

Bo Burlingham, Editor-at-Large, Inc. magazine

Bringing Your Business to Life gives us essential tools we can use to build entrepreneurial ventures - and entrepreneurial lives - that matter and make a difference.

John Wark, Consultant and Former Software CEO

Professors Cornwall and Naughton utilize real life experiences to demonstrate that entrepreneurship is a virtuous profession. Using basic Christian principles, the authors explore the issues facing entrepreneurs during all stages of their venture and challenge the myth that entrepreneurs have to act in unethical ways to survive. This is a must read for anyone starting a new business and a great primer for a class in entrepreneurial ethics.

Jeffrey S. Hornsby, Ph.D., SPHR
Kansas State University

While reading Bringing Your Business to Life I found multiple opportunities to apply the Four Virtues to my life and to the ventures that I'm presently involved with. It is practical, insightful, and relevant for entrepreneurs who desire to better understand the social, spiritual, and economic impact we can have through our for-profit and non-profit endeavors.

Corey Cleek, General Editor, Devotional Ventures

Jeff Cornwall and Michael Naughton have created a compelling argument for the integration of ethical and moral behavior and entrepreneurship. They dispel the myth that the “Ethical Entrepreneur” is an oxymoron rather they offer strong evidence that success and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. Bringing Your Business to Life offers a vehicle for more cross campus collaboration by introducing liberal arts concepts into the phenomena known as the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.

George T. Solomon, D.B.A.
Director, Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence
The George Washington University

Bringing Your Business to Life is a prescription for success in life as well as in business. It is a great synopsis of how financial and spiritual well-being can intersect in doing well by doing good. It reveals that it is not only what we do as a chosen profession but moreover who we are as a person that will dictate where we go in life. Bringing Your Business to Life is good medicine for good business. In fact, it reminds us that doing the right thing and putting faith into action is the best medicine for a great life.

Ron Loeppke, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACOEM

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I encourage you to read Susan Brown's wonderful essay that challenges how we define success in our lives.

My generation has lost touch with what it means to be content. We equate contentment with home or bank account size. Are we content? I suppose we could ask the psychiatrists and counselors we regularly visit. Alternatively, maybe look at divorce statistics or observe declining church roles while noting increasing doctor visits for stress-related ailments. Maybe interview local pharmacists who increasingly fill prescriptions for sleep and stress disorders or ask a financial analyst to explain the reason behind the increasing debt ratios.

I wish I had clear-cut answers as to why our generation has taken a 180-degree turn from prior generations. Success is good, but a problem occurs when enough is not enough. Our nation is heading down a destructive road unless our values change. Bigger government is not the answer. A diamond's size does not make a lasting relationship. True beauty is not superficial. House size, career title or bank balance does not equal contentment.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 07:28 AM | Permalink

In my Tennessean column this week I write about the importance of defining our lives by more than what we do for a living.

We seem to create folk heroes out of entrepreneurs who expend Herculean efforts to achieve success in their businesses.

And while this is good to a point, if entrepreneurial success comes at the expense of our marriages, our families, our faith, and our friendships, it is a hollow victory.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My co-author Mike Naughton likes to remind people in his talks around the world about faith and work that "If we don't get leisure right, we can't get work right."

The immediate conclusion that many people jump to at this point is that they need leisure time to recharge for work, or to rest so they can gain that competitive edge. Our leisure time from taking this view is simply instrumental to helping us build a business or advance in our careers. But, this is absolutely not what he means by his statement. Mike has argued that when we look to non-work and leisure time in terms of "balance" or in terms of "recharging", we are missing the point.

What Mike is saying is that we need to pursue an integrated life. One in which our work and leisure are both guided by the same faith and passion -- toward the same ends. How we pursue our leisure time and how we pursue our work both help create who we become -- in terms of our character and in terms of our virtuousness. Both leisure and work have a purpose and give meaning to our lives -- one does not simply support the other.

The Wall Street Journal today reports on a new study that seems to offer empirical support for Mike's point:

For the study, the five professors surveyed some 4,000 Americans, asking what they did the previous day and then quizzing them in detail about three randomly selected events from the day. Those surveyed were asked to rate the three episodes based on feelings such as pain, happiness, stress and sadness. All this was used to calculate what percentage of time people spent in an unpleasant state....

The standout cluster was what the authors label "engaging leisure and spiritual activities," things like visiting friends, exercising, attending church, listening to music, fishing, reading a book, sitting in a cafe or going to a party. When we spend time on our favorite of these activities, we're typically happy, engrossed and not especially stressed.

So don't view your weekend as a time to vegetate and to simply recharge for the week. Pursue meaning and purpose in all that you do in your life.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:42 AM | Permalink

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
(Carl Sandburg)

NicheGeek.com offers a wonderful example of the latter choice from the Middle East:

About five years ago, Stef Wertheimer came across Gamila Hiar, a Druze woman with no formal education who had learned the ancient art of making soap from wild herbs and olive oil as a child. At the time, Hiar was supplementing her family's income, producing about 500 soap bars a week, from a corner in a room underneath her house in Pqi'in, a village in the Galilee region of northern Israel.

Hiar, now 68, ended up at Tefen Industrial Park, a bold philanthropic enterprise located about eight miles from the Lebanese border. Wertheimer, the founder of Iscar Metalworking, established Tefen in 1985 in order to encourage entrepreneurship in one of Israel's most undeveloped and low-income regions, with a population split largely between Arabs and Jews.

(Thanks to Ben Cunningham for passing this along).

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:13 AM | Permalink

The Wealth Page Blog wrote a post based on my column on the need for entrepreneurs to seek wise counsel.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:25 AM | Permalink

The topic of my column this week in the Tennessean is the importance of seeking wise counsel throughout the development and growth of an entrepreneurial venture.

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely vocation. It can seem like you are alone when it comes to wrestling with the worries, fears, and uncertainties that are a normal part of owning your own business.

However, such isolation should not be considered an inevitable part of the entrepreneurial experience.

Throughout the life of a business, the entrepreneur should consistently seek advice from people with experience and expertise.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 08:40 AM | Permalink

Free markets are neither inherently good, nor are they inherently evil. Entrepreneurial activity is not in and of itself a moral act. The ends that the entrepreneur pursues and how they pursue those ends defines the morality of their entrepreneurial efforts.

There are entrepreneurs who use their gifts and talents to build businesses that provide economic, social, and cultural benefits.

But there are also entrepreneurs who although they may build personal income and wealth, they do so in the pursuit of ends that can actually end up being destructive to society. In our soon to be released book, Mike Naughton and I describe this type of entrepreneur as follows:

But the most enduring counterfeit of prudence are those who confuse being prudent with being cunning. They can be highly efficient, technically competent and have a great sense of timing, but their purpose is only for themselves. To have technical skill without good ends can unleash a powerfully destructive force in society.

Sarah Brown sent along a story from Time that may fall into this category:

...40% to 50% of first marriages still break up. In the spirit of American ingenuity that can find a way to make a buck out of even the worst situations, a cottage industry has sprung up to help people cope with and often celebrate this passage from one part of their lives to the next. "Once divorce gets so common, the human approach is to treat it like another aspect of life," says sociologist David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers.

Please know that I do not pretend to know what is in the hearts and minds of the entrepreneurs who have launched businesses in this newly discovered market niche. But, I think that most of us can agree that the break-down of families has been a less than positive force in our society over the past thirty years.

What do these entrepreneurs sell? Here are a few examples from the article in Time:

Business for products aimed at the newly divorced, from greeting cards and postbreakup getaway packages to custom-made cakes and joke gifts like wedding-ring coffins, is booming. New Orleans resident Renee Savant bought a hearse, thinking she would rent it out for over-the-hill-birthday celebrations. But since she began her service last October, the hottest demand has come from clients who want to ride around as they and friends celebrate the death of their marriages. "I would never in a million years have thought the fad would be divorce parties," says Savant.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sam Davidson of CoolPeopleCare sent me a link to a blog post that offers "10 Morning Rituals For The Healthy Entrepreneur". While these can feel a bit hokey at first, it is important to engage in this type of routine. It can be a key element for creating temperance in our lives. Work can so easily become all consuming, especially for the entrepreneur.

Reading this reminds me of the routines that I value that I have let slip a bit lately....

- Quiet reflection or prayer sitting on my back porch early in the morning with my first cup of hot coffee.

- Taking my daily walk with my wife (and our dogs, of course).

- Attending morning mass on the way to work.

Lent is right around the corner. I think I will commit to bringing these things back into my daily routine rather than try to find something to "give up" for Lent.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the discussions between our Belmont entrepreneurs and the ideablob.com team last evening, the topic centered on the value of getting multiple perspectives when facing a decision -- of seeking wise counsel from people with experience and expertise. Seeking counsel is one of the practices that Mike Naughton and I talk about in relation to the virtue of prudence in our book about being a good entrepreneur titled Bringing Your Business to Life (due out later this spring). Prudent entrepreneurs are good stewards of the resources available to them for their businesses, including investment and other start-up capital, employees' labor, customer trust, and so forth.

Seeking counsel is never more is never more important than when considering whether to launch a new business and how to best position it for market entry. Aspiring entrepreneurs should not seek out only those who act as cheerleaders to their dreams. Find people with expertise and experience who are willing to bluntly tell you the flaws and weaknesses in your plans. My students call this being "Cornwalled" when I offer my honest assessment of their ideas and plans. I always encourage them to seek more perspectives than mine. More than once I have failed to see the wisdom of a new business idea!

One of the things I like about ideablob.com is that it is creating a forum that dramatically widens your circle of people who can offer counsel on new ideas. Many of the people who frequent the site are passionate about entrepreneurship.

Seek wise counsel on your ideas from several people with different backgrounds. Listen to their counsel -- never argue. Reflect on all of what you here and look for common threads that you can use to make your idea stronger. It will improve the odds that your idea is really a good business opportunity, that you will position it properly when you launch, and that you will realize the success that you dream of.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:54 AM | Permalink

Entrepreneurship on steroids. That is what I call entrepreneurs who are consumed with raising as much money as they can, as fast as they can. When we confuse the means (raising capital and securing other needed resources) with the ends (building a sustainable business), we see entrepreneurship run amuck.

The goal of entrepreneurship is not simply to find the next big thing to lure venture capital or make a mad dash to a public offering. It is to create a venture that creates income and wealth for the entrepreneur and allows the entrepreneur to pursue other goals in life through this economic activity, be it creating more jobs in a better place to work, offering a better product to the customer, or making the world a little better place. The goal of entrepreneurship should be to build a good business -- with legs -- that will help build this entrepreneurial economy.

So on this theme I offer you one of the funniest, albeit somewhat depressing due its truth, videos I have seen in a long time: Here Comes Another Bubble v1.1 - The Richter Scale via YouTube.

(Thanks to Bruce Schierstedt for passing along this gem!)

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In my days as an entrepreneur I would often joke with my entrepreneur friends that we should start a "3:00 a.m. Club". It seems that most of us were always awake worrying about something or other in our businesses in the middle of the night. I seemed to wake up right about 3:00 a.m. with spreadsheets in my head (just to date myself a bit, they were Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets).

Well, someone has now come up with a term for this particular entrepreneurial affliction -- "sleepworking."

According to the 2nd Annual Staples National Small-Business Survey, more than half of small-business professionals said that work has actually become part of their dreams. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said that they “sleepwork” (i.e. dream about work), and nearly 70 percent of those “sleepworkers” report they wake up and put their “work dreams” to action.

The survey also revealed that 98 percent of U.S. small-business owners and managers are working during their time off -- including nights, weekends and vacations -- and nearly 54 percent expect to work even harder in 2008. This is not good news. I am on a personal quest to find a verb that describes entrepreneurship so we can stop defining ourselves only by what we do in our work (see this recent post for my rant on this issue).

Other results from this survey also give us something to think about:

- The car remains a favorite place to work, with 72 percent saying they make business calls while driving and nearly 40 percent saying they get their best ideas behind the wheel. I think I get stuck behind these people every morning on my way to the University.

- Slightly more than 38 percent cannot remember the last time they took a vacation. If this bothers you at all, please see this essay on why a good vacation is so important and how you might really make one happen.

- If given a choice, nearly 52 percent said they would accept comparable business results in 2008 if they could have twice as much free time. There is hope!! But wait... 48 percent said they would work even more hours if they could double their company’s sales. Fifty-two percent make New Year's resolutions for their business. Of those, 58 percent said they resolve to increase business, while only 21 percent said they want more time off.

Folks... I love entrepreneurship and free enterprise as much as anyone, but not ahead of my family and my health.

Here is a New Year's Resolution for all entrepreneurs. Slow down, just a bit. Enjoy your successes in business, but never at the expense of your health, family, faith, and friends.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Entrepreneurs today are not only the builders of our new economy, but also have the potential to help rebuild our society and culture. Here is one simple example of how entrepreneurs can be true community-builders sent to me by Ben Cunningham. From Deleware Online (via Crave Online):

[Pedro] Toala was paralyzed in June 2006, when kids tipped over the portable toilet he was using in a Wilmington city park. His spine broke when he fell....

[M]ost of [his] split-level house was inaccessible to a man in a wheelchair. He could not eat dinner with his family or go into the backyard with his son. Just getting in through the front door was difficult.

Early this year, Cher Przelomski and The Planning Factory, a special events company, decided to investigate how they could help the Toala family as a way of celebrating the firm's 25th anniversary. The group first tried to interest producers of ABC-TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." When ABC officials declined, Przelomski and her colleagues organized their own version.

About 70 contractors and 60 volunteers responded to revamp the entire home and make it not only more accessible, but more beautiful, energy efficient and functional. Pettinaro Relocation provided a furnished apartment for the Toalas to live in until the work was complete.

The family was able to move back into their remodeled home in time for Christmas.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 12:29 PM | Permalink

Sam Davidson has a nice follow-up piece to my post the other day on passion at his blog site CoolPeopleCare. He offers a thoughtful four step process that takes you from dreams to passion, from passion to plans, from plans to action, and from action back to dreams.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Sam Davidson has a nice follow-up piece to my post the other day on passion at his blog site CoolPeopleCare. He offers a thoughtful four step process that takes you from dreams to passion, from passion to plans, from plans to action, and from action back to dreams.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 11:24 AM | Permalink

I have had several conversations over the past couple of weeks about the role of passion in new entrepreneurial ventures. Indeed, a good business model is never enough to carry you through the adversity and tough times that entrepreneurs almost always will face in their new ventures. And the career literature is full of the term passion these days. Experts encourage people to seek a career path that "ignites their passion" and helps give their life meaning.

I agree that passion is an important element in choosing the right venture to pursue. For those regular visitors to this site, this part of the "me" part of assessing opportunities that I often write about.

But I have some concern that many are taking the importance of passion and meaning too far -- to an almost unhealthy extreme. If unchecked, seeking meaning for your life from your business can lead to the kind of workaholism that many had hoped to avoid with an entrepreneurial career.

All of this discussion reminds me of a post I wrote a while back that might be worth another look....

What do farmers do? They farm. What do designers do? They design. What do managers do? They manage. What do entrepreneurs do? Well, they.....

Those who start and build businesses engage in a career that has no simple verb to describe what we do. Entrepreneur is a noun. Entrepreneurship is a noun. Entrepreneurism, a newer form of the term, is a noun. Entrepreneurial is an adjective. But, as you remember from 8th grade, adjectives simply describe nouns.

Entrepreneur comes from an Old French word (a fact that I still find hard to accept) entreprendre, which means to undertake. So it started as a verb, but now is a noun. As a side note, I am glad we did not take the literal translation of the French term to refer to those who start businesses. Otherwise all of us who are entrepreneurs would be known as undertakers instead.

So why is Professor Cornwall going into a long, and rather seemingly trivial diatribe? Am I finally becoming the doddering old academic we see mumbling to himself, shuffling across campus?

I assure you there is a point to all of this.

I have been watching the crusty old journalist (another profession that is not a verb), Dan Rather, go ungraciously and rather defiantly off into the sunset of his life. His career as a journalist is clearly behind him, but he won't give it up. And then it came to me. His understanding of who he is is defined only by what he does for a living. He defines who he is as a person by the career he has pursued. Without his career he has very little else. Without it he is lost as he has nothing else in his life that has any real meaning.

We have seen others fail at retirement. Lee Iacocca could not stay retired as a corporate executive (noun). Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan could not stay retired as athletes (noun). For all of them, what they did for their work defined who they were as people.

Careers can do this to us. If we are not careful, they can consume all that we are. And what gets lost? Our families, our friendships, and even our souls.

If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work. We need to resist becoming the noun of what we do for a living.

Work hard at being a spouse. Work hard at being a parent. Work hard at worshiping God. Work hard at being a friend. Work hard at being a good citizen in your community. And yes, work hard at your vocation. None of these alone can fulfill our humanness.

One of the risks of using nouns to describe what we do in our work is that it can reinforce the tendency we all have to get carried away with our work. I loved starting a growing businesses (most of the time, at least). I love teaching and writing. It is indeed a blessing to love what one does for a living and joy the hard work that goes along with it. But, with every virtue there is a vice looming in the background. Although hard work is a good thing, it can be taken to excess and become a vice if it keeps us from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.

American society does not make this any easier. I am reminded of the lyric from a jazz record from the 1980s that said, "Everything in moderation, and moderation is the first to go." We have become a culture of excess.

This is particularly true for the entrepreneur. We seem to create folk heroes out of entrepreneurs who expend Herculean efforts to achieve success in their businesses. And while this is good to a point, if entrepreneurial success comes at the expense of our marriage, our families, our faith, and our friendships, it is a hollow victory. If all we have at the end of our lives is our wealth, if that is all we leave behind, that is not a life well lived. As the old saying goes, "you never see a hearse with a luggage rack."

So here is what I am going to commit to: I will help to find us a verb to describe what entrepreneurs do. It has to be catchy, like the term entrepreneurship, so that people will actually use it. And if they do, maybe that will be one small step toward no longer defining those who start businesses only in terms of that activity. We can be, and should be, so much more.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

We stress the importance of engineering personal goals and aspirations into entrepreneurs' business models. This includes both financial goals (income and wealth) and personal non-financial goals.

A profile of an entrepreneur at Career Journal shows how one entrepreneur found the balance she was seeking between work and family.

In a culture obsessed with profit and growth, how do you curb the growth of a successful start-up to preserve time with your spouse and new baby?

For Brenda Thompson, who started the business of her dreams only months before having her first baby, the answer is to ignore the siren song of expansion and keep the business small. Her story shows how taking the long view can pay off.

The interview with Thompson is worth a careful reflection by any start-up entrepreneur. She is honest about the upside and the downside of the career path she has chosen.

(Thanks to John Russell for passing this along).

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you have spent any time in Nashville you have probably heard of the Bluebird Cafe, the iconic music club founded by Amy Kurland back in 1982.

After twenty-five years, Amy decided it was time to exit her business. From the Tennessean:

Amy Kurland, who started The Bluebird in 1982 as a gourmet restaurant, is selling the now-legendary club to the Nashville Songwriters Association International. The group promises not to change a thing.

"I wanted to retire, but I didn't want The Bluebird to go away,"' said Kurland, 52.

Amy could have sold the club for a lot more money than she did. But, money was not the only kind of wealth that Amy created in her business. She measured her success as much in terms of her ability to create a venue to help launch the careers of struggling songwriters and musicians as she did by the income and wealth that her business generated for her.

Instead of selling to the highest bidder, she sold to a group that would forever keep her vision alive. That is clearly the act of a good entrepreneur.

The list of now famous artists who got their start at Bluebird is unprecedented in the music industry: Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, Josh Turner.... the list goes on and on.

My first experience with the Bluebird Cafe came while I was being recruited to work at Belmont University. The Dean took me to the Bluebird to give me a taste of what Nashville had to offer. Immediately I was taken back to my college days in the 1970s. Ann and I loved to listen to coffeehouse musicians -- singer songwriters just like the Bluebird hosted night after night. (A note of trivia: I tried my hand as a coffeehouse musician a time or two in those days). I was hooked.

We now get season passes every year to go to Bluebird on the Mountain. Bluebird teamed with Vanderbilt University to offer a monthly Bluebird songwriters night under the stars on top of the nob (that is what we call big hills that are not quite mountains here in Tennessee) where Vanderbilt has their observatory. It runs from spring through fall.

Thanks, Amy. Thanks for having the courage to start Bluebird, and thanks for having the courage to insure it will stay the Bluebird now that you are moving on in your life.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We are finding more and more young women being drawn into entrepreneurship as a way to gain more control over the balance between family and careers. This article at the Wall Street Journal shows that is it not just the Moms who are seeking this type of lifestyle balance.

Interviews with men who stayed home with their children for several years, and are now looking back on it, paint a different picture. While much attention has been paid to at-home mothers who opt out of the corporate rat race for good, many at-home dads are quietly doing the same thing -- finding flexible alternative work. And while the adjustment can be rough, some of these men discover at-home parenting marks a permanent turning point toward better life balance.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amy Lynch has an interesting post at her site about Generation Y workers (or as I call them the Entrepreneurial Generation). She is a consultant on Generation Y -- yes, it seems we need consultants on this generation....

From her site:

Millennials grew up during an era of extreme informality. Polite behavior and face-to-face skills are not a given with this group. Even when they want to be polite, be a valuable employee or provide customer service, they may not know how. Furthermore, they grew up communicating by computer, so they may miss the nuances of your body language or tone of voice that could tell them when they're doing something that isn't up to standard.

So the question is, how do you distinguish Millennials who have no interest in or incentive to work (and whom you cannot continue to employ, at least not at this stage of their lives) from those who are simply behaving Gen-Yishly and need coaching rather than firing?

(Thanks to my colleague -- and fellow Kentucky Wildcat fan -- Lori LaBleu for passing this along).

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 03:54 PM | Permalink

We had the pleasure to welcome Dr. Michael Morris and Dr. Arthur Brooks (both from Syracuse University) to our campus yesterday. It was part of the kick-off for our new major in Social Entrepreneurship here at Belmont that is scheduled to begin next fall.

Arthur Brooks may be a familiar name to many of you. His latest book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, has gotten a lot of attention in the press. He gave a morning talk titled Giving in an Entrepreneurial Culture based on the research behind this book. Here are some highlights from his talk:

- Americans gave $295 billion in 2006, with 75% of this amount coming from private individuals

- 75% of American families give to charity and 50% volunteer their time

- Per capita, Americans give 3.7 times more than the French, 7.1 times more than the Germans, and 14.3 times more than Italians

- His research suggests that Americans give more because they are rich, but also that in giving more we become richer. He estimates that for every dollar Americans give they become 3.75 dollars richer.

- Givers are much happier than non-givers. It seems that there are physiological responses to being charitable that result from giving. In fact, we are hard-wired to give to others and when we do give it makes us happier, healthier and richer.

He summarized his findings by dispelling the four common myths about giving:

Myth #1: Giving makes us poorer

Giving is not the zero sum that so many assume. Those who give become richer over time.

Myth #2: People are naturally selfish

As mentioned above, we seem to be hard-wired to give. It is not natural for humans to be selfish. Rather, it is natural to give to others.

Myth #3: Giving is a luxury

The working poor give the highest percentage of their income of all income brackets. Second come the rich. The stingiest are the upper middle class.

Myth #4: An entrepreneurial nation can afford to forgo service

In fact service is part of what seems to have built our entrepreneurial culture and economy. One of my favorite essays on this was the 1998 article by George Gilder, The Soul of Silicon.

There has been quite a bit of controversy over who Dr. Brooks found actually gives the most. It seems that conservative Americans give much more than liberal Americans. The myth that conservative capitalists are greedy could not be any further from the truth.

I will write another post before the end of the week on the talk on social entrepreneurship that Drs. Morris and Brooks gave to our campus.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For those of you in the Middle Tennessee area, I will be giving a talk today on the new book that I co-authored with Mike Naughton, Bringing Your Business to Life: The Four Virtues that Will Help You Build a Better Business--and a Better Life, which is part of our Good Entrepreneur Project. The book is scheduled to be released next summer.

I will be talking at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Nashville at 6:30 p.m.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 07:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

There is a perception that that small businesses pay much less and are as good to their employees as are large corporations. The latest data from the SBA tells us that the low pay is not exactly true -- small business pay is up to 90% of that paid by large businesses. And the just released list of top small businesses to work in from the Wall Street Journal and the non-profit Winning Workplaces shows that they are at least as good to their employees.

While each company is very different, we encountered some common themes: These small businesses tend to let employees at all levels make key decisions, and they groom their future leaders from within. They offer generous traditional and untraditional benefits (how about a six-week sabbatical?). And they constantly hunt for new ways to improve the employee experience or engage employees.

And many share a sizable slice of their profits with employees, teaching them to read company financial statements so they grasp how their job is connected to the success of the organization.

These small businesses set a high standard that any small business owner should aspire to achieve. The article offers compelling profiles for each small business on this list. These offer a road map to help entrepreneurs build truly good cultures for their employees.

If you think your business or one that you come in contact with should be on this list, you can nominate them for the 2008 list here.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:32 AM | Permalink

My column this week in the Tennessean encourages entrepreneurs to translate their ethics and values into concrete actions in their businesses.

While business ethics is getting much more attention in the press, in the boardroom and in the classroom, I am concerned that our definition of business ethics is sliding into a legalistic world of rules compliance.

Whether it's in everyday life or in the business world, we have to be careful not to boil morality down to a simple list of don''s that serves as a checklist of how to be ethical.

Business ethics should so much more than a list of rules to follow. It should be a much broader set of standards of how we treat one another..

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture today based on our new book, The Good Entrepreneur (co-authored with Michael Naughton from the University of St. Thomas). It is so affirming that today's students are looking for more out of their business than simply cash. Don't get me wrong -- they want to be financially successful! But they also want so much more out of their lives and view an entrepreneurial career as a path to reach all of their goals in life.

In our discussion today we talked about the question: "Who is the good entrepreneur?"

Traditional entrepreneurial virtues have been thought of in terms like ambition, ingenuity, diligence, perseverance, tenacity, and self-discipline. While these virtues are necessary for building a financially healthy and successful venture, they ignore the fundamental purpose that leads many people to become entrepreneurs.

When we survey entrepreneurs and ask them how they define success in their businesses they will include things like building a certain type of culture in their businesses and creating good jobs for people in the same breath as building profits and wealth. Building a culture that reflects our intention of how we want to treat employees, customers, and other stakeholders in a way that is consistent with our core values requires that we broaden how we define entrepreneurial virtues. It does not mean that the traditional virtues listed above are unimportant or irrelevant -- quite the contrary. They are necessary to create a financially successful business. But they are not sufficient to create what we call a truly good company.

Being a good entrepreneur challenges us to think about the virtues that define our character. Character forms with each act and each decision we make in our business. It is formed by the opportunities we choose to pursue, who we choose as business partners, who we hire, our product and market decisions, and how we engage our local communities. Every business decision or action we take, no matter how small, can shape this character.

The executives at Enron did not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to cheat their employees and shareholders. In all probability their actions were the culmination of a career of actions and choices that shaped who they became as people, which dictated how they would act when it came to the big decisions that led to that company's demise.

We choose to look at entrepreneurship in our book from the classic cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance.

Prudence refers to being good stewards of the resources we pull together from others to build the business. We understand the obligation we have to those who give us their money, their labor, their business, and ultimately their trust. The good entrepreneur does not take that trust lightly.

Justice refers to treating people fairly. For example, if our employees help us create profits and wealth, it is just to find ways to share that with them be it through compensation, profit sharing, phantom stock, stock options and so forth.

Courage doing what is right in spite of the added risks and challenges that this path in life creates.

Temperance is understanding that we are more than entrepreneurs. We are spouses, parents, friends and citizens. We need to take actions that lead us to be good in all that we do. That may mean that we temper our ambitions to make sure we have time for family and friends.

So who is the good entrepreneur?

The good entrepreneur is intelligent and technically competent. She is a good steward of the resources and gifts she has available. She is prudent.

The good entrepreneur builds strong relationships in his family, with employees in his business, and in the broader society. He does this by being just.

The good entrepreneur overcomes obstacles in building her company, but does so without ever compromising what she knows to be truly right. She does this with courage.

The good entrepreneur moderates his work ethic with rest. He does this through temperance.

I will be writing more on all of this as our book comes closer to being released next year by Regal Books.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

There is a book that I have been meaning to read that I saw reviewed in our local paper here in Nashville. I have not had a chance to read this book yet, and usually I don't write about a book until I have read it. But, the concept behind this one caught my attention. The book's title is RUT Management: Discovering Adventure in the Routine of Life. It was written my local writer Mark Cornelius. Here is the abstract from Amazon:

The Answer's Been Right in Front of You the Whole Time! Most of us travel well-worn paths with the expressed mission of breaking out of the RUT. It seems to be the right thing to do on the surface; who wants to think of themselves as being in such a routine that they can not, should not, dare not veer off the trail? And You Thought "Escape" Was Your Only Option! Not another self-help book, RUT Management is a fun but truthful look at the very human tendency to pursue distraction rather than maintaining the focused pursuit of long-term goals and dreams. This work addresses the constant conflict between "convention" and "change" in our lives. It examines RUT development, RUT anatomy, RUT relationships, and RUT management as tools for navigating the path through RUTs, and for DISCOVERING ADVENTURE IN THE ROUTINE OF LIFE.

When I was a full-time entrepreneur, my life often seemed like constant chaos. One thing that stands out in my mind from this period was how precious certain routines in my life were to me.

The weekly trip to the riding stable with my daughter. My daughter and I sang or whistled the same silly songs every time we drove through the country on the way to her riding lesson. I stood at the same place along the same fence during every lesson, and marveled that such a little girl could control such a gigantic animal.

Going to church with my family. Our son was the one who made sure we went to church every week -- even when we were on vacation. Whether we were in the mountains in North Carolina, or in the middle of Florida, come the weekend, he would always ask the question -- Where are we going to go to church? I have to admit that it occasionally crossed my mind to skip church, especially on vacation, but I was always snapped back to the reality of the importance of this routine in our family life together.

Eating dinner at the table. This was the routine that my wife created for our family. We began every evening meal with a prayer -- the same prayer every time. And then the conversation would always begin with the same question from me -- What was fun today? The kids would then tell us about the little things and the big things that happened in their lives.

Friday pizza with my partners. Every Friday at lunch, my two partners and I closed the door to the conference room and shared pizza. The staff knew not to disturb us. Did we plot grand strategies for the future course of our business? Every once in a while we would. But mostly, we shared each others' company, traded funny stories, and talked about our families. It was the one time each week that the three of us always would share the fellowship of a meal.

I could not agree more with the premise of this book -- get in a rut!

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 06:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My column this week at the Tennessean is on rest and vacation:

Rest. Entrepreneurs can never seem to get enough of it. Vacations. Not a word that is in many entrepreneurs' vocabularies.

According to a study just released by American Express Small Business Monitor, about two-thirds of small business owners find it stressful balancing their personal and business lives. Yet true rest and real vacations are essential not only for the entrepreneur's personal health but for the health of the business.

So how do you build a business that allows you to create balance in your life?

You can find the entire column here at the Tennessean.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

According to the latest release of the results from OPEN from American Express Small Business Monitor, which is a semi-annual survey of small business owners, entrepreneurs are struggling with finding balance in their lives.

- While business owners recognize the importance of "down-time" in their lives and most are satisfied with the amount of leisure time they have (81%), most report that carving out this time does not come without stress. Two-thirds of business owners (64%) find it stressful balancing their personal life and their business. Women business owners are more stressed by work/life balance than their male counterparts (71% vs. 62%).

- Two-thirds of business owners (67%) report they find themselves making sacrifices in order to be an entrepreneur. Among those who feel they are making sacrifices, family (52%) and friends (42%) are areas where they make the most sacrifices, followed by personal finances (36%) and health (35%). Male business owners are more likely to find themselves making sacrifices in their personal lives in order to be an entrepreneur when compared to women (73% vs. 65%).

- As business owners find themselves trying to achieve balance, they identify flexibility as the most essential entrepreneurial attribute. One-third of business owners (34%) identify flexibility as the most essential aspect of being an entrepreneur. Following at a distance is working well under pressure (24%) and knowing the market (18%).

- Taking their own advice on the importance of flexibility, two-thirds of business owners (64%) report making personal time for themselves during the business day. Men are slightly more likely than women to make personal time for themselves (66% vs. 60%). Although entrepreneurs realize the importance of taking time for themselves during the business day, nearly half (45%) consider taking time off from work to pursue a leisure activity a 'guilty
pleasure'. Female business owners are more than four times more likely than their male counterparts (18% vs. 4%) to consider ignoring an email as a "guilty pleasure".

- There may indeed be a connection between exercise and business success. Fifty-nine percent of small business owners report exercising several times a week with nearly one-quarter (24%) exercising every day. Nearly three-in-ten (29%) business own