Dr Jeff Cornwall

Business Week recently called me to make my pitch for people who should be on the Top 30 Entrepreneurs of all time. Here is a link to their final list and here is a link to the complete slide show.
I urged them to look beyond just the amount of wealth that an entrepreneur created, and to examine how they create and what they do with that wealth:

Some founders won recognition not just for their companies’ success, but for what they did with the wealth they accumulated. For Jeff Cornwall, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates made the top of his list.
“Look at entrepreneurs who had a profound impact that goes beyond just raw business success, as we often define it on Wall Street,” says Cornwall, whose book on the subject, The Good Entrepreneur (Regal), will be published next year. “The great ones to me are the ones that understood they were building more than just that wealth.”
Many of the pioneers we chose also created businesses that in turn encouraged others to start their own enterprises. Microloans from Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank have helped thousands of poor Bangladeshi women lift themselves from destitution (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/13/06, “What the Nobel Means for Microcredit”). And how many businesses has Pierre Omidyar’s eBay (EBAY) made possible? “He wants to encourage free enterprise around the world,” Cornwall said.

Who would your picks be for this list? Why would you choose to include them?

Business owners like to think that their employees are honest and care about the business almost as much as the owners do. Employee theft and dishonesty is only a problem for big business. However, the fact is that employee theft is a real issue for businesses of all sizes.
I learned this lesson at a young age in one of the businesses my father owned. For example, while in high school I worked in the marina that my dad and two other partners owned. I managed the retail part of the business, the pier as we called it, where we sold bait to fishermen, gasoline for boats, snacks, and a various other small items for people enjoying the lake. I hired some of my friends to work for me on the pier. I thought that it would be fun to work with some of my buddies. But, I soon discovered that they were stealing food and gas, and were cheating on time cards. I had to fire some kids that I thought were good friends — a tough lesson for a sixteen-year-old.
Some instances of employee theft can be small like the ones I experienced, but some can be quite significant even for a small business.
An article in the Arizona Republic highlights the challenges that entrepreneurs face with employee theft:

The 2006 report by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners showed that businesses with fewer than 100 employees suffered a median of $190,000 in fraud losses. Without safeguards, any business is susceptible to fraud, especially common forms like check tampering, fraudulent billing and stealing money before it’s recorded.

The article goes on to list several tips to prevent problems from developing including the need to run background checks, the importance for the entrepreneur to sign all checks (I hand signed hundreds of checks every month in our business just to make sure I had the final review of all expenditures), and critical need to develop strong and consistent control systems even in a small business.
When it comes to employees and the finances of your business, remember the words of Ronald Reagan — “trust, but verify.”

For many of the 20 million self-employed Americans, many of whom work from home, there career choice is closely tied to creating better balance for their families.
From an article at the Startup Journal:

Parents often have to sacrifice the regular income, employer-sponsored health insurance and other tax-favored benefits that make covering bills, planning for contingencies and saving for retirement easier and automatic. But the upside can be lucrative for people who find a market for their product or service, small-business experts say.

The article goes on list nine tips for people thinking about making the move to a home-based business. Many of these are consistent with any business start-up, which is how such a move should be viewed. Too many people make impulsive decisions to work from home, not realizing that they are in fact setting up a new business. This list of tips is a good outline of what should be considered each step along the way.

So you have a great idea for a business — and everyone will be out to steal it if you are not careful. So you protect your idea at all costs.
The problem is that there are people you will need to trust, because without their help and assistance your idea will never become a business.
In my column this week at the Tennessean I offer some advice on how to protect your ideas while still getting the help you will need.
And remember that in the end it is not the idea that will bring you success, but your ability to execute on that idea:

Always keep in mind that success comes from sound execution and implementation much more than the idea itself. Ideas can be a dime a dozen. Even if someone does steal your idea, it doesn’t mean that they can make a successful business out of it.
Ultimately, success comes from the ability to secure needed resources, build the right team and understand the market and your potential customers.

One of my favorite entrepreneurship authors, Barry Moltz, is again helping to sponsor the Pursue Your Passion Tour. Half of all Americans are not satisfied with their jobs. This project is an attempt to help students avoid this same lot in life.

This summer, recent college graduates James Whiting, Noah Pollock and Brett Farmiloe will be traveling 14,000 miles in 90 days on their tour to interview 200 professionals who have a passion for their work.

Here is a schedule of their tour this summer.

I must admit that my thinking on franchises is a bit dated. I still envision someone being stuck making sandwiches behind a counter at their sub shop 52 weeks a year. While this is still true for many franchise opportunities there is a growing number of franchise businesses that offer more flexibility and opportunity for multiple operations.
StartupJournal has an article on how much easier some of the new franchises have become to operate.

The franchising world is letting loose. Gone are the days of one owner being chained behind the counter of a single store day in, day out. Today, there are absentee owners who oversee their operations from laptops and Treos, and owners who maintain dual careers or run multiple franchises. At Hollywood Tanning Systems Inc., more than half of the 330 franchise owners have another job. The chief executive of Sport Clips Inc. hair salons estimates that 10 hours a week is a “generous allowance” for owners to physically be in stores. And franchisees for the Decor&You Inc. interior-design business can receive decorating and product training at home whenever they like via online video seminars.

(Thanks to Matt Nicholson for passing this along).

The folks who hosted the discussion that led to the report that I linked to earlier today have a great new blog called smallbizlabs.com. Here is what they say about its purpose:

Small Biz Labs is the research blog for Emergent Research’s ongoing project to identify, analyze and forecast the key social, business and technology trends that will impact small business formation and operations.
Central to this work is our partnership with Intuit and the Institute for the Future to produce the Intuit/IFTF Future of Small Business forecast report series.
The primary purpose of this blog is to point to and comment on studies, research, surveys and data sources related to small business.

These are great folks and it looks to be a very good blog.

I had the pleasure of participating in an all day discussion last year that examined the future of small business hosted by the Institute for the Future and sponsored by Intuit. In the first report that came out of this project, the changing face of small business ownership was examined.
In the second report, which was just released this morning, the emerging impact that technology will have on small business is explored. Although entrepreneurs have lagged in their use of new technologies in the companies, this report sees small businesses finally embracing the use and application of new technologies in their businesses. Here are a few of the findings:
– Small businesses will become integrated into the “networked” world. Small businesses will embrace technologies that will help them better manage customer relationships, inventory, distribution and employee productivity. Mobile devices will become integral in small business. Small business will have new productivity tools at their fingertips, including new generations of digital assistants.
– On-line tools and applications will become more a part of starting and managing small businesses. Such tools will become simpler to use, enabling small businesses to increase their connections through on-line social networks. This will open up the “virtual world” to any and all entrepreneurs.
– Small business marketing shifts from push to pull. Customers will be able to search for information about what they want with increasing power, no longer just accepting information they receive from the marketplace. The new media for such information will come through devices in cars and through cell phones.
If you want to sharpen your vision of what your business might become in the next ten years, and begin to prepare for what new and existing technologies can offer to keep you competitive, this report is an important first step.