Top 10 Entrepreneurs of All Time

MSNBC offers its list of the “History’s 10 Greatest Entrepreneurs”. Its list:
1. King Croesus
2. Pope Sixtus IV
3. Benjamin Franklin
4. P.T. Barnum
5. Thomas Edison
6. Henry Ford
7. Benjamin Siegel
8. Ray Kroc
9. H. Ross Perot
10. Jobs & Wozniak
This list includes a few good choices, but several of their picks were included because they were really good con-men, sleazy businessmen, or even gangsters. YIKES! What were they thinking?! Let’s try a list of those who build wealth and did good deeds for society as they made their wealth.
What are your picks??
(Thanks to Erin Anderson for passing this along).

Entrepreneur Gets Out the Vote with his Employees

One entrepreneur is being a civic leader by encouraging his employees to register to vote. As reported by NFIB:
“Charlie Birney…general partner of Atlantic Golf, an Annapolis, Md.-based owner, developer and manager of three golf courses, started his own get-out-the-vote effort at work. Aptly named Drive the Vote (www.drivethevote.com), Birney’s GOTV effort, in conjunction with the Maryland Golf Course Owners Association, emphasizes voter registration, voter participation and voter awareness.”
Birney goes all out to make sure that his employees have the information they need to make an informed decision.
“(H)e has compiled information on the candidates running, personalized it for each employee and delivered it by hand. Each personalized manila folder lists the employees’ representatives in the Maryland General Assembly and their voting records, one from NFIB and the other from Maryland Business for Responsive Government.”
He encourages voting by creating a raffle that awards one paid vacation day off to one lucky employee who votes on or before election day.
Why does Birney go through all of this effort?
“‘I really think it’s every citizen’s privilege, right and responsibility to vote.'”
Well said!

Young Entrepreneurs Find Success

Entrepreneur magazine presents their annual Young Millionaires feature. What is particularly inspiring is how these young people worked to build businesses with value with a variety of products and services including manufacturing makeup and body creams, a specialty medical school, furniture retailing, comic books, wine shops, retail clothing, and a large number of profitable on-line or web related businesses.

Second Generation not as Successful in Family Businesses

This study from Wharton reports on the challenge of intergenerational succession in family businesses.
“Despite the lack of independent directors on their boards and voting power for minority shareholders, family-run companies are still the better bet for all stakeholders as long as the founder of the firm is involved as chief executive officer or chairman. If the descendent of a founder runs the company, value is lost.”
Other studies show that third generation transfers are even more tenuous.

Inspiring Entrepreneurial Stories

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.

More News About Campus Entrepreneurs

I am working with over two dozen students who own businesses while in college. Is this unique to my school? Absolutely not! StartupJournal has a profile on student entrepreneurs. College can be a great environment for yound entrepreneurs to get their careers started.
“Students intuitively understand the attractive youth market, can find cheap labor in the form of other students, can tap freely into databases of information that would be very costly to nonstudents and get lots of free advice from professors and other on-campus advisers.”
In fact, more and more schools are building in support systems for their student entrepreneurs, similar to our Student Business Hatchery Program here at Belmont.
Kenneth Brown, a Belmont Student Entrepreneur, describes the benefits of such a program this way:
“I love the Hatchery. It is a great accomplishment and show of support from the university to those who own a business. All of my classes are in Massey and I love the fact that in between classes I can send faxes and e-mails or even hold a meeting in the conference room. I enjoy being around others who share an interest in the spirit of entrepreneurship and even plan to collaborate on some ventures with others who use the hatchery.”
Integrating learning and doing is a powerful experience for many of these students.
“Student entrepreneurs often stress what they see as synergy between their classroom studies and their after-hours businesses. Brett Klasko publishes an online investment newsletter, Investors Alley, while taking junior-year business classes at Emory. The 21-year-old from Cherry Hill, N.J., says that his GPA — currently 3.0 — has improved as he’s completed general-education classes required to graduate and begun studying management and marketing. ‘Now I’m past the introductory business courses and more into the thinking courses where my real-world knowledge and experience comes into play,’ Mr. Klasko says. ‘I can really contribute things.'”