The thought of adding executives can be overwhelming to entrepreneurs who own fast growing companies. In fact, even the thought that they need “executives” can be mind bending. Which position should I add first? How do I know what type of talent I need?
What can help with this is to create a Team Development Plan.
– Start with a self-assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, and skills. Keep doing what you are good at, and add folks who can pick up your weak areas. If you strength is marketing, build a team that complements this strength.
– Develop a plan that allows you to work on your business and not just in your business. This means you not only add people to your team, but you must work toward creating a whole new “job description” for your role.
– Before you run out and hire outsiders, assess the potential of current team/staff to take on more responsibility. It is almost always cheaper to grow your own talent. However, most of us overestimate the abilities of our employees to grow into these new roles quickly enough. And some just really won’t want the added responsibilities.
– Based on an inventory of all of your management needs over the next few years, create a plan to train current staff and bring on new talent with clear priorities and milestones. Timing is everything. Bring people in too soon, and it creates an overhead drain that can badly impact cash flow. Bring them on too late, and the company may not be able to handle the challenges of growth.
– A word of caution. Don’t just look for people with the right skills and experience. Make sure each new team member will fit with your culture. The right fit with your culture can be just as important as their technical abilities.

Belmont students have two ideas in this month’s ideablob.com competition. Both are ventures based on social entrepreneurship business model. As of this morning they hold the top two spots in the voting.
Noah Curran’s idea is called Turning Actions into Good, which is a web-based non-profit charity which revolves around the kindness of strangers. The concept allows anyone who feels compelled to participate in a charity, regardless of their financial status, a way in which to contribute. If people want to get involved, they can do it in a variety of ways. Whether it is through actions or through generosity, anyone can do an act of kindness. What makes all of this possible is the facilitation of the official TAG website.
Jancie Dotti summarizes her ideablob entry as follows:
“I want to create a completely fair trade, completely organic coffeehouse that sponsors social justice causes while taking care with the environment. In addition to serving fair trade coffee, we will also only use fair trade sugar, tea, and cocoa as we educate our consumers on how their buying habits affect the working poor in developing countries. Every month, this coffeehouse would sponsor a social justice cause–promoting awareness to customers about worldwide issues of injustice. This coffeehouse will also have free wifi, live music, local art–all with a community emphasis.”
Join in this month’s ideablob. And while you are there, vote for one of Belmont student ideas!

Bill Gates talks about the power of capitalism to use market forces to create real change in the world in this video clip from the Wall Street Journal.
(Thanks to Andy Tabar for passing this along).

Just thought I would share a picture of a few of our students celebrating our recent National Model Program award from USASBE. They are all sporting new “I’m a Belmont Entrepreneur” tee shirts.

The ideablob.com team is here at Belmont tonight and all day tomorrow.
They are hosting a get together at Bongo Java this evening and will be speaking in our classes all day tomorrow. If you’re in Nashville come on over to Bongo Java tonight!

I’ll blog more on their visit tomorrow….

There is a growing perception that American entrepreneurship is simply about getting rich no matter how it is done and no matter what the costs. I call this “entrepreneurship on steroids.”
Watch this short YouTube video about an English entrepreneur and listen carefully to what he has to say about American entrepreneurs toward the very end of the clip.
Wealth is a good thing. It can create good outcomes for the entrepreneur, his employees, his investors, his community. But it should never be viewed as the only measure of success. For many entrepreneurs it is not even the main yardstick they use to measure their success.
What we don’t need in the world is a bunch of narcissistic, one-dimensional, entrepreneurs “on steroids.”
(Thanks to Jeff Williams for passing this clip along).