This past week we had the great pleasure to Welcome Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute to our campus at Belmont University.

Fr. Sirico spoke about how the entrepreneur, endowed with particular natural talents, is the primary agent of economic progress in the modern world, and that even though a free society is highly dependent upon the entrepreneur for its material existence, the vocation of business is relatively under appreciated within the religious community.
“Instead of praising the entrepreneur as a person of ideas, an economic innovator, or a provider of capital, the average priest or minister thinks of people in business as carrying extra guilt. Why is that?” Rev. Sirico has said. The consequences of a divorce between the world of business and the world of faith is potentially disastrous for both worlds, he says.

When I teach about entrepreneurship, I stress the importance of starting with one’s aspirations and goals. For more and more people, these aspirations go well beyond financial goals they hope to achieve through their new business. Lifestyle and family issues are increasingly being identified as key issues as new entrepreneurs plan their businesses.
For many of the young women I work with, planning for a business that allows them to be active mothers for their children is a fundamental goal for their entrepreneurial careers. An article in today’s Tennessean highlights this trend.
“You can’t swing a diaper bag on a playground without it landing firmly at the foot of a woman running, or thinking about running, her own business – whether that business be knitting blankets to sell at a craft fair, selling cookware at home parties, or nailing down advertisers for a franchise entertainment coupon book that grosses six figures.”
There is a popular website that offers support and ideas for women looking to integrate entrepreneurship and motherhood called MompreneursOnline. (Caution: Some opportunistic person associated with this site made sure that they trademarked “Mompreneur”….).

Entrepreneur.com recently offered a guide to the myriad of technology that can link you and your employees to your business twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and around the globe.
“From home offices to hotel rooms, technology is the wind beneath your business wings, the premium gasoline in your work tank, the foundation of your building-you get the idea. Slews of laptops, wireless solutions, remote software and cell phones await your use.”
True. But, technology can also become the chains and shackles that make many entrepreneurs feel like slaves to their businesses. The very freedom that such technology can create also leads to resentment, burn-out, and fatigue in many entrepreneurs. For many, the only escape is when the flight attendant closes the airplane door for take-off. Alas, even that escape may soon be taken away if cell phones are allowed for use on commercial flights.
I would like to offer some possible “connection free” zones that entrepreneurs can create to restore a little sanity to this high-speed world:
-Church
-Your daughter’s dance recital
-The bathroom
-The golf course
-Your son’s choir concert
-Dinner our with your wife
-Family reunions
-Movie theaters
-The tennis court
-The dentist’s office
-Family vacations
-Walking the dog
-Public rest rooms
-College campus visits with your teenagers
-Family dinner
Connectivity is an amazing tool that can allow businesses to grow more effectively. You can keep better communication and coordination with branch offices, traveling staff, customers and suppliers.
But, give yourself some time for family, for rest, and for leisure. Disconnect from the connected world. You, and your business, will be healthier.

Paul Orfalea, Founder of Kinko’s, spoke at the USASBE conference I attended this past weekend. Here is his definition of success:
“Success in life is having kids who want to come back to visit you when they’ve grown up.”

Several entrepreneurs are finding success in giving many families what they want: entertainment with positive messages. StartupJournal highlights several companies that offer either positive contributions to pop culture or filters to clean up content that is less than family rated.
“‘The market was telling us that if parents could buy products and be 100% guaranteed that they weren’t going to be surprised with the content, they’d be very interested,’ says Rich Siporin, vice president of sales and marketing of Langhorne, Pa.-based eGames.”
For someone who lives in an entertainment town, this comes as good news, indeed. But, the common wisdom is that such G-rated content will not sell. So what is eGames experience in this market niche?
“In fiscal 2004, ended June 30, eGames’ sales rose 11% to $8 million, and profit increased 9%, to $1.7 million, from a year earlier.”

I got into an interesting discussion yesterday with a friend of mine about whether outsourcing and globalization were good or bad. He wasn’t sure which side of the political debate about this he stood on, but seemed to be sure that at some point he would need to pick a side. The truth is that this should not be viewed as a simple debate of the morality of outsourcing and globalization, as they are both morally neutral economic tools. The morality comes from how they are used and toward what ends.
For example, assume we are looking at a small manufacturing business that has been making a profit acceptable for the owner for several years. He has been proud of the jobs he provides and has been an active member of his community. The prospects look good for the future of his business. However, a consultant comes in and as part of his recommendations points out that if the entrepreneur were to outsource the manufacturing of his business to Mexico, he could easily triple his profitability. I would argue that in this case such an outsourcing decision, while within his rights in a free market, would be ethically questionable. He had defined his own success as much more than his profits, which met his personal goals, and outsourcing would ignore the employees and community who helped him reach his success in the first place.
Harbus Online (from the Harvard Business School) offers an example of and ethically good application of outsourcing. They tell the story of Digital Divide Data, which operates a digitization business in Cambodia.
“To outsourcing experts and globalization critics, DDD is simply one more company looking to take advantage of cost arbitrage between the world’s haves and have-nots. But…DDD represents a new breed of international social enterprise that melds the merits of the private sector with the morality of non-profits.”
What makes DDD different?
“‘Profits generated from data entry services are funneled into scholarships, healthcare and continued training,’ Tim notes. ‘The problem with most non-profit organizations is that they require annual grant funding. At DDD we aim for a double bottom line – the first is to be operationally self-sustainable, which funds the second, the direct, tangible improvement of disadvantaged people’s lives and the communities they live in.'”
To those who try to define outsourcing as being inherently evil, DDD would be just another company taking away jobs. How sad that a company that is pursuing good ends using good means would be cast within such a net.
Does this mean that we should pass legislation to define “good” or “bad” outsourcing as many are demanding these days. I would argue that we should not. However, does this mean that business should then blindly engage in outsourcing and globalization without considering the moral consequences? Of course not. In fact, if business behaves this way, with total disregard of the moral and ethical consequences of such decisions, they are just asking for government to eventually step in.
The choice is not simply one of free markets or government controls. There is a third dimension made up of moral and ethical criteria that should be shaped by our culture. Sadly, we seem to keep trying to insulate our culture from the moral virtues which should be at its core. In business, just as in government, we have moved to defining ethics in a purely legalistic manner. That is a sure ticket to more government involvement in the day-to-day aspects of our economic lives. The challenge is to integrate our shared moral traditions into our business decision making rather than simply default to government bureaucrats and lawyers.
Thanks to Paul Chenoweth for passing along the Harvard article.

I recently wrote about the importance of self-assessment and self-reflection. One of the important outcomes of this process is to keep all of the important things in your life and your goals all in balance. This article from StartupJournal offers four practical tips to help keep your business from becoming all consuming.
1. Define what is important in life.
2. Make personal commitments concrete.
3. Just say “no” to non-essential tasks.
4. Delegate, then delegate some more.

A couple of students in one of my entrepreneurship classes this fall have had surprising outcomes from their foray into this topic. Through the process of self-assessment and self-reflection they realized that entrepreneurship is just not the path they want to take in life after all. And this is good.
I never view my job as being a cheerleader. Certainly I will give them encouragement when appropriate, but my goal is never to create the most entrepreneurs I can. Rather, it is to create the highest number of successful entrepreneurs I can. And if their hearts and heads are not suited for this journey, then it is good that they find out before they start a business. It is surprising how many entrepreneurs don’t think about these issues and end up feeling trapped and unhappy.
Beyond understanding if entrepreneurship is the right path, self-assessment helps entrepreneurs better define the ideal size and scope of the business before it even begins, by integrating their personal financial, family and other personal goals into the mix.
I even find that successful entrepreneurs with multi-million dollar companies benefit from self-assessment and self-reflection. Often they have lost track of their own goals and aspirations as the business takes on a life of its own. Many talk about becoming servants of the business rather than the business serving their needs.
Here are some of the questions that I encourage all potential and all active entrepreneurs to think about from time to time.
What gets you excited, gives you energy, and motivates you to excel?
What do you like to do with your time?
What drains energy from you in your work and in your personal relationships?
How do you measure success in your personal life?
What do you consider success in your business/career?
What are your specific goals for your personal life?
What are your goals for your business/career, including income, wealth, recognition and impact on your community?
What do you want to be doing in one year? In five years? In ten years? At retirement?
I feel very strongly that examining one’s core values is essential in planning a business and consciously developing its culture as it grows. I ask entrepreneurs to list their core personal values that they intend to bring to their business (for example, treating people fairly, giving something back to the community, etc.). Where does each of these core values come from (religious faith, family, etc.)? Why is each of these important to them? How will they put them into active day-to-day?
Here are some more questions that I have folks who are planning to become entrepreneurs reflect on before getting too far into their planning.
What are the major reasons you want to start a business?
How many hours are you willing and able to put into your new venture?
How would you describe your tolerance for uncertainty and risk?
Do you easily trust other people working with you on a common activity? Why or why not?
How much financial risk are you willing to take with your new venture (personal assets, personal debt, etc.)?
Assume you decide not to start your business. A short time later, you see that someone has started the same business and is doing well. How would you feel? Why?
What are the non-financial risks for you in starting a new business?
How do you react to failure?
How do you react in times of personal stress? How do you deal with stress in your life?
How much income do you need with your current lifestyle?
How long could you survive without a paycheck?
How much money do you have available to start your business?
Which of your personal assets would you be willing to borrow against, or sell, to start your business?
Whose support (non-financial) is important for you to have before starting your business (family, spouse, etc.)?

One of the more inspirational student entrepreneurs I have worked with in recent years was a woman (due to confidentiality I cannot use her name) who had come back to school to support a very personal cause.
One of her children was hearing impaired. In her own research into the possible causes and treatments for hearing impairment in young children, she learned that in many situations the outcome for the child could be significantly improved with very early screening, preferable while they were still infants. And while in many larger hospitals such screening was routine, smaller community hospitals rarely screened for hearing loss in infants.
She took it upon herself to use her previous medical training to begin a service of going to regional hospitals throughout the upper mid-west to offer hearing screening for infants. About the same time, she also decided to finish her bachelor degree. That is where we met.
She enrolled in one of my entrepreneurship courses to learn how to manage this small business. Her original model was one of making sure the fees she charged were enough to cover her basic costs. She had no real intent of even drawing a salary for herself, as her husband was a successful contractor. She just wanted to do good work for others.
The class she was in was a special section I set up for students who had actual businesses up and running. The other students began to challenge her on her assumption that she would never personally be able to make a salary from this venture. We all worked with her on her pricing models, on the efficiency of her routes, how to fill up trips with more hospitals, and how to leverage a part-time clerical employee to increase her billable hours.
Her business is now providing infant hearing screening throughout the upper mid-west, and while still making the services affordable to maximize the families she serves, she is also drawing a reasonable salary for her time and expertise.
I love to see entrepreneurs do well while doing good work. Inc.com’s blog site has a similar story about a woman who actually made it to their Inc 500 list making and selling prosthetists. Read more about her story here.

Entrepreneur.com tells of three entrepreneurs who measure success by more than their bottom line. In their commitment to make a difference in their communities they are examples of truly “good entrepreneurs”.
“The role of businesses in civic responsibility–actively working in communities for positive change–blows past charity donations and in-house recycling programs as businesses take an aggressive, hands-on approach to making change happen in their communities. Despite the tarnished image some business leaders have sustained in recent years, there are shining examples of those who work to build successful communities as well as successful businesses.”
The first was Kowalski’s Markets in Woodbury, MN.
“The Kowalskis had an opportunity to flex their civic muscle when they purchased four store locations in 2002. One of the stores was located in Minneapolis’ Camden neighborhood, a lower- to middle-class community unlike their typical upscale customer demographic. Rather than sell the property, the Kowalskis decided they had an obligation to provide a neighborhood grocery store to that community since the former tenant had failed to do so, and the civic experiment began.”
James Tufenkian uses his carpet business to make a difference in Armenia, his ancestral homeland.
“(H)e brought several Tibetan craftsmen and revived ancient Armenian carpet weaving through his business, which now employs more than 2,000 people in Armenia and nearly 10,000 in Nepal. Tufenkian also started the Tufenkian Foundation, with about 15 different programs to benefit Armenian society; Armenian Forests, a nongovernmental organization to stop deforestation; and Tufenkian Heritage Hotels, with three locations open so far, to drive tourism to Armenia.”
Michelle Rathman is the owner of a St. Charles, Illinois-based marketing/PR firm.
“Her mother abandoned her and her three sisters when Rathman was 4 years old. Rathman left her home and her abusive, alcoholic father and lived on the streets at a young age….(S)he shares her story with inner-city youths. She provides insight and advice in hopes of enabling them to make good choices.”