I will be taking a week off for a little summer break. Please visit some of my favorite sites listed on the right column of my site. If you are new to my site, please feel free to take this chance to go a root around in my archives. I will be back on August 22nd.
StartupJournal offers some additional statistics (from an American Express survey) to those I posted on Wednesday about entrepreneurs on vacation.
This new survey tells us that although we may physically take time off, we may not really be mentally taking time off. And that can take its toll over time, as we all need time to rest. In the past, I have written about this importance of taking time off (here, here, here, and here), as hard as that can be for entrepreneurs.
It may be too much to ask to simply work at full speed for 51 weeks and then try to stop for one week of vacation. Learn how to take time off in small bites. Find something that you can do once a day or even just once a week that takes you mentally away from your business.
In learning how to rest, many people much wiser than me tell us that it is essential to find a way to find true silence in your life. Take a little time each day to pray, meditate, contemplate or whatever your personal preference. But don’t always use words; take time for true silence.
The fruit of SILENCE is Prayer
The fruit of PRAYER is Faith
The fruit of FAITH is Love
The fruit of LOVE is Service
The fruit of SERVICE is Peace
(Mother Teresa of Calcutta).
Author: Jeff Cornwall
Dr. Jeff Cornwall is the inaugural Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. Dr. Cornwall's current research and teaching interests include entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurial ethics.
Balance Takes Work and Planning
Inc.com has a story that just made me shake my head.
About two-thirds of small business owners are satisfied with how they have balanced their personal lives and work schedules, despite the fact that they work an average 52 hours a week, according to a new survey released by the Wells Fargo/Gallop Small Business Index.
The survey also found that over half of small business owners work six days a week, with more than 20% working all seven. Fourteen percent of surveyed small business owners reported taking zero vacation days in a year, and almost 40% of those who do take personal time off said that they still answer work-related phone calls and email while on vacation.
Nonetheless, 67% of small business owners said they were satisfied with their personal life-work balance and almost 90% said they were satisfied with being a small business owner in general.
I’ve been there and I know what they are going through. During the first couple of years of your business you often can’t take much time off. Even if you do, you are thinking about the business. You are running on adrenalin, excitement, and fear. And even with all of this, it is still fun.
But, at some point what was necessity can become a bad habit. And that is the dark side of entrepreneurship. When the business can take over your life and cost you much more than you ever anticipated: your family, your friends, and your health.
Here are a few thoughts on how to avoid the dark side:
– Keep control of your business and your life, even in the early stages.
– Set goals for your life as well as your business in your business plan. Life goals are as important as financial goals over the long run.
– Engineer time for the other things. It may that you make it home for dinner every night, have a date with your spouse once a week, or never miss your kid’s games or concerts. You may need to go back to work afterward, but take the time.
– Make sure any breaks you take are both physical and mental. That will be hard at first. My wife and I tried to meet for lunch when I was building my business. The first few times I know my head was not there. But, I worked at it and eventually learned how to get away mentally. Believe me, it took hard work.
– Set goals for separation. I met an entrepreneur who had been able to build up to six weeks of vacation a year. And she was trying to add a week a year! She became one of my role models. I tried to learn from her how to build a business that could run itself when I was away.
– When life gives you a break, take it. When we sold our business I immediately was mentally working on the next deal. But, my wife tugged my sleeve and said “take a break and make sure what you really want to do next.” At first it drove me crazy. I was used to running in overdrive. However, that break gave me time to reflect and contemplate where I should go next. And surprisingly to me, it was not the next deal, but into teaching.
Entrepreneurship is in my blood. But so is being a husband, a father, a friend, and now a teacher. Learning how to sort out all of the conflicting demands takes hard, conscious work. It never just happens.
Alaska Supports Regulatory Flexibility
Alaska’s small businesses will face a friendlier regulatory environment, thanks to a new law that gives Alaskan small businesses a voice in the state’s regulatory process.
Upon signing the regulatory flexibility bill Governor Frank Murkowski said, “HB 33 is a step in the right direction to ensure the small business community in Alaska has a voice in crafting the regulations that affect their ability to make a living. This in turn will mean that agencies specified in the bill will have to consider the adverse impacts to small business before promulgating regulations. I am encouraged by this move to help return common sense to the regulatory process affecting a very important sector of our economy.”
House Bill 33 implements key elements of regulatory flexibility model legislation drafted by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Similar to the federal Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), the model legislation encourages entrepreneurial success by requiring state agencies to consider the impact of their policies on small business before they issue final regulations.
Blogging is Not Fading Away…At Least Not Yet
When I first took up blogging, many people told me that I wouldn’t be at it for very long. They said that blogging was a fad that would quickly fade away. Well, it is not fading way so far according to Red Herring which says that one-sixth of the total U.S. population read web logs in the first quarter of 2005.
U.S. blog readership in the first quarter jumped 45 percent to 49.5 million people, or one-sixth of the total U.S. population….The increase means 30 percent of U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the quarter, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.
This is raising the visibility of blogs for advertisers.
So what happens when something catches on in the technology world? Microsoft joins in, of course!!
Seeking to raise its profile in the increasingly influential world of bloggers, software giant Microsoft said Monday it has launched a preview version of its new community blogging service called MSN Filter that will focus on topics like music and fashion in addition to technology.
Given Madison Avenue and Microsoft are joining the blogging world, maybe my blogging days are numbered after all……
Congratulations TAG!
Business Tennessee released its annual Business Tennessee Fast50, ranking TAG (The Access Group) as one of the fastest-growing private companies in Tennessee. Charles Hagood, a co-founder of TAG, is an alumnus of our MBA program here at Belmont. (I ran a profile of TAG a few months ago).
The ACCESS Group works with a variety of Fortune 500 companies throughout North America and Asia in providing a variety of engineering, project management, plant relocation, facility startup and consulting services. TAG also provides A/E and design services to industry via TAG Design Services, LLC and recently began providing Healthcare related consulting services targeting cost reductions, quality improvement, and efficiency improvements through its new subsidiary, Healthcare Performance Partners, LLC.
TAG has been honored on multiple occasions as a Tennessean newspaper Future 50 company including 2003, Business of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce in 2001, as well as the 12th fastest growing small business in middle Tennessee by Business Nashville magazine in 2002.
“The 2005 Business Tennessee Fast50 surely reflects the diversity of industry that is so beneficial to our state,” said David A. Fox, editor of Business Tennessee magazine. “These companies are showing what entrepreneurial drive amid a good business climate can accomplish. Many of these businesses are destined to be Tennessee’s biggest employers and publicly traded corporations of tomorrow.”
Carnival of the Capitalists
COTC can be seen at View From a Height.
When are Small Business and Entrepreneurship Different?
A debate has been going on for years in the academic world over the difference, if any, between small business and entrepreneurship. While much of this debate is rather esoteric, there is one instance where I draw a clear line between the two. It centers on private versus public ownership. An IPO is more than a financing strategy. It is a transforming event that will change a business forever (or at least until the company goes private again).
When a business, no matter how small, goes public with its stock it begins to become a different entity when compared to a classic entrepreneurial venture. Entrepreneurship and private ownership to me are critically intertwined. Once a business goes public, the founders become employed managers. Just ask any of the legions of entrepreneurs who went public, only to be fired from the company they founded. Granted, this can also happen to an entrepreneur before his company goes public if he gets venture capital money. But, it is even more common once the company becomes a “public good.”
So when I see lists like Fortune’s Top 100 small businesses, I see them as entrepreneurial successes that are no longer entrepreneurial in nature. They are really nascent big public companies.
Lessons from the Fairway
We played golf today at Ko’olau, which is billed as the “World’s Most Challenging Golf Course.” While that may be a little hype, it is one of the toughest I have even played. Two lessons for entrepreneurs came to mind with our round.
Focus. Ko’olau is right next to the mountains. There is jungle along every fairway, and many sand bunkers in key places. Many holes have you hitting over jungle to get to the fairway. If I wasn’t careful I found myself thinking a shot or two ahead, or thinking about everything around me and not about what I needed to do to execute my shot.
But, I found that when I blocked out the beauty, the danger, the hazards, and just focused on each shot, I did alright. I hit some great shots that sailed over the jungle and landed where they should. Then I went to the ball and made my next shot.
Focus on one shot at a time. Don’t think ahead.
So, too, as entrepreneurs we need to learn to block out that which would distract us. We get excited by all the opportunities that we see out there and start thinking about what to do next. Many entrepreneurs jump too soon to the next deal before the current business they are just getting going is even stable.
Focus on one shot at a time. Don’t think ahead.
Set Realistic Goals and Stay Within Your Limits. My son Russ and I both went at this course with the understanding that we would likely score quite high. We set out to keep our scores in our normal range, and played our games to reach this goal. We did not try to shoot a very low score, as that was just not realistic on this course under the conditions we played in.
As entrepreneurs we need to set realistic goals. Don’t try to turn a nice business into something bigger than it is or bigger than it ever realistically can become. Understand what the business can give back to you and work hard to reach that goal.
I am not saying that we should never challenge ourselves and reach for a goal that may seem hard to achieve. However, we can try too hard.
In golf you should never try to swing too hard. If you do, you usually don’t hit it very well. If you swing smooth and easy the ball will almost always go farther and straighter. Do the same in your business. Know your limits and do the best within those limits. Over time, this will lead to more successes.
By the way, by setting a realistic goal today and playing within our limits, we both shot within our typical range of scores on this quite demanding golf course.
Aloha!
I will be blogging for most of this week from Honolulu where I am attending the Academy of Management Annual Meetings (and squeezing in a little golf with our son, as well).
This is the finishing hole of the Hawaiian Prince, which we played yesterday.
(Picture taken by Russ Cornwall).
Cafe Evoke Enters Critical Times
Those of you who are regulars here have been keeping up with Jason Duncan, one of our recent graduates, who is blogging about the opening of his business. It is called Cafe Evoke and will be located out in Bozeman, Montana. If you haven’t been to his blog site in a while, you should check in over the next few days. He is at a critical point in his start-up.