I have written often about the challenges for entrepreneurs of finding balance between the strong, often conflicting pulls from family and from their business.

Toddi Gutner offers three case studies on entrepreneurs who have worked at finding this balance in a recent piece at Business on Main.

One entrepreneur uses mobile technology, one has built a team, and one has become a master at the art of time management.  You can read more here.

I wrote a post back in October about a program that is encouraging small businesses to hire released inmates who have participated in an educational program.

Fox News picked up on my post and contacted us about running a story on the program I wrote about.  They ran a story that highlights inmates who have had success with this program.  Well worth a view, which can see here.

I tell my students that through our program we can help them manage the forty percent of business failure that has its roots in their pre-venture activities.  We can teach them how to better assess opportunities and how to design, test, and pivot their business models.

We can also help them manage the forty percent of business failure that results from businesses that are not prepared for the challenges and pains that result from growth.  We tell them over and over, “The leading cause of business failure is success.  Success is only good when you are prepared for what it brings.”

But, we really can’t do much to help them with the other twenty percent of failure that comes from events beyond their control — hurricanes, floods, recessions, and so forth.  Insurance and remembering that Cash is King can serve to buffer against the unpredictable, but sometimes stuff just happens and even such preparation is just not enough to pull them through.

When I was in New York this week to celebrate small business champions, just a few days after the anniversary of 9/11, I thought a lot about all of the small businesses that did not make it through the aftermath of that horrible event.

But some did.

Sure insurance, government assistance, and cash in the bank can help to some extent, but they can only take you so far.

However, a few entrepreneurs do make it through the events that are unpredictable and completely uncontrollable that cause the other twenty percent of business failures.  For those few entrepreneurs who do survive, what helps them make it through is often the same things that got them through the tough times experienced during their original start-up — determination, passion, grit, hard work, faith, family.

Business on Main has an inspiring story of one small business that has survived 9/11, in spite of being completely dependent on their location next to the World Trade Center.  It is a story that shows what the entrepreneurial spirit is really all about.  You can view it here.

“Culture is one of the most precious things a company has,” said Herb Kelleher, Founder, Southwest Airlines.  “So you must work harder on it than anything else.”

For the entrepreneurial business, its culture begins from day one.  The culture is a reflection of the values the entrepreneur brings into the business.

Culture is important for an entrepreneurial venture because it is the mechanism that institutionalizes the values of its founders.  Culture serves to socialize new employees.  It helps them understand how they should treat the customers, how they should treat each other, how they should act in their jobs, and how to generally fit in and be successful within the business.

If managed properly, culture also improves the performance of the business.  Culture is an important part of the overall strategy of the business and helps ensure a growing organization will continue to meet the expectations of customers that were established by the entrepreneur during the early start-up of the venture.

For many businesses their success has been built on the entrepreneurial nature of the business.  Since it is important to keep the entrepreneurial nature of the business, as that is what has gotten the business this far, it is important to create a culture of entrepreneurship.

“Building a culture that encourages autonomy, risk-taking, and entrepreneurial behavior is challenging,” said Jennifer Prosek, CEO of CJP Communications and the author of Army of Entrepreneurs: Create an Engaged and Empowered Workforce for Exceptional Business Growth.  “For companies that want to out-think and out-pace the competition, an entrepreneurial culture isn’t optional: it’s an absolute necessity.”

According to Prosek, the key to unleashing that creative energy is to create an entrepreneurial culture based on four pillars.

1. Authenticity — Demonstrate your sincerity by being enthusiastic about entrepreneurial strategies and actions pursued by the business.
2. Commitment to People – “An entrepreneurial culture is based on the idea that each individual can be a powerful force for change in the organization,” said Prosek.  Support the professional development of your staff, celebrate exceptional work, and don’t forget to have fun.
3. Commitment to the Business — Align an individual’s interests with those of the business. “At my firm, we have a program called Commission for Life™,” explains Prosek, “Which encourages new-business generation: Anyone who books a meeting that results in a new client gets 5 percent of the revenue for the life of the business.”
4. Continuous Effort — The work of building a company’s culture never ends.  

Sustaining an entrepreneurial culture starts with who you hire.  It is essential to carefully screen prospective employees to ensure that they will fit within your culture.  An entrepreneurial culture is also sustained by your reward system, by the autonomy and respect you give to your employees, and by consistent communication about your ongoing entrepreneurial vision for the company.

Creating an entrepreneurial culture creates a business that will continue to grow by adapting to change and by actively pursuing new opportunities in the market.

It is very common for entrepreneurs to take on partners.

They may be co-founders of the company, key personnel who are given an ownership stake as part of compensation, family and friends who offer some startup support or outside investors.

In any of these circumstances, these people become owners of the business.

And the foundation of working with a group of owners should be a sound legal agreement among all the owners.

This agreement should lay out the basic rights and responsibilities among partners as it pertains to the business they own together, such as what decisions are required to be voted on, what happens when a partner leaves or passes away, and what information those who run the business must provide to the partners.

The best time to set up a partnership agreement is when you first start the business. At this point in time, there is little to squabble over. The business exists only on paper, so finding a fair way to deal with an exiting partner seems much easier.

But such a document only lays out the minimum requirements. There should also be an ethical set of standards that goes beyond the basic legal requirements.

This is particularly true for those in the partnership who have ownership control by holding a majority of the shares.

The heart of working successfully with partners of any kind is communication.

Many partnership agreements establish the minimum requirement of providing everyone with annual financial summaries and holding an annual formal meeting. While this meets the legal requirements of most agreements, it falls short of commonly accepted ethical standards.

Communication with fellow owners should be frequent and predictable. Common practice is that the managing partner should ensure that every owner gets a monthly set of financial statements. It is also good practice to include a narrative summary of business activity over the past month.

If there are partners in the business who are not actively involved in running the company, quarterly or monthly meetings are a good way to keep everyone informed. These also allow for discussion of important issues.

Communication with partners should always be completely honest, open and proactive. The managing partner should view his or her role as a steward of the company for all of the ownership.

With that comes the responsibility of keeping everyone informed of major accomplishments and significant problems or crises. This type of communication shouldn’t wait for the monthly report.

Partners should always be among the very first to know about such things.

Communication should be comprehensive. While monthly reporting may provide a fairly succinct summary, at least once a year partners should be given a thorough overview of the business’ past, present and future.

Too often partnerships that are guided solely by the legal requirements of their formal agreements tend to end up in a legal mess trying to resolve conflicts and disagreements.

Entrepreneurs who view themselves as stewards for the other owners — and who follow a higher standard of communicating — are better able to resolve issues among themselves or avoid such problems altogether due to a strong sense of trust.

Many entrepreneurs talk about integrating their values into the vision for a new business. But some take it one step further and actually build a business model based on their values.

Green Truck Moving Co. is a Nashville-based startup that is integrating the founders’ commitment to the environment and the community into the mission of their company.

The founders have implemented environmental practices that include using more eco-friendly fuel in their trucks, recycling and reusing moving materials, operating a virtually paperless business and using recycled materials. “While not all consumers are typically inclined to buy solely off a company’s values — say eco-friendliness — it is important to make consumers understand the potential impact it could have in their own community,” said co-founder and Belmont University MBA student Emmanuel Reed.

“We feel our values will help us grow our business, because it is not just a selling point. We have to walk the talk and have our values drive and inspire the people within our organization.”

They also commit to plant two trees after each move they perform for their customers.

As the business expands, they have plans to go even further in pursuit of environmental values. Green Truck Moving is developing rentable, reusable containers made of recycled material to replace traditional moving boxes.

Another example of integrating values and vision is a new business called Mattress Works.

This startup, founded by a group of Belmont students, exists to provide employment opportunities for the homeless and to divert waste from landfills through deconstructing and recycling used mattresses.

“We developed Mattress Works out of our passion to encourage environmental sustainability and create social change in the community,” said co-founder Emily Hollingsworth.

Mattress Works has secured used mattress suppliers and scrap buyers for two trial runs. It has processed about 160 mattresses between the two pilot operations. This served as proof of concept, which allowed it to test the viability of the business model and identify any weak spots.

After working out some kinks, the founders are moving forward with Mattresses Unlimited as their first supplier, and they are negotiating a contract with a second supplier.

“Our end goal is to transfer the ownership of the venture to a homeless man who has been trained as part of the Mattress Works team, embodying our belief in the power of entrepreneurship to facilitate change in the lives of others,” Hollingsworth said.

Hollingsworth is leading a team of students presenting Mattress Works at the Texas Christian University Values and Vision competition this week.

For a growing number of entrepreneurs, starting a business is more than just a vehicle to making money. Entrepreneurship is a path to pursue their values through the vision they create for a business.

Rev. Robert Sirico will be giving an address on the Belmont University campus this next week.  The title of his lecture is “A Moral Analysis of the Economic Crisis”.  Father Sirico will examine some of the key cultural factors
essential to a robust economy, including rule of law, trust, and a
worldview that encourages rather than undermines these things.

Father Sirico is president of the Acton Institute, whose purpose is “integrating Judeo-Christian truths with free market principles.”

Fr. Sirico lectures at colleges,
universities,
and business organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad. His
writings on religious,
political, economic, and social matters are published in a variety of
journals,
including: the New York Time, the Wall Street Journal, the London
Financial
Times, the Washington Times, and the National Review. Fr. Sirico is often called upon by members of the
broadcast
media for statements regarding economics, civil rights, and issues of
religious
concern, and has provided commentary for CNN, ABC, BBC, NPR and CBS’ 60 minutes, among others.

This is Fr. Sirico’s second visit to Belmont University. 

Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Time: 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Location:  Maddox Grand Atrium, Belmont University, Nashville, TN
Details:  This event is free and open to the public