Ethics and Values: November 2007 Archives

We stress the importance of engineering personal goals and aspirations into entrepreneurs' business models. This includes both financial goals (income and wealth) and personal non-financial goals.

A profile of an entrepreneur at Career Journal shows how one entrepreneur found the balance she was seeking between work and family.

In a culture obsessed with profit and growth, how do you curb the growth of a successful start-up to preserve time with your spouse and new baby?

For Brenda Thompson, who started the business of her dreams only months before having her first baby, the answer is to ignore the siren song of expansion and keep the business small. Her story shows how taking the long view can pay off.

The interview with Thompson is worth a careful reflection by any start-up entrepreneur. She is honest about the upside and the downside of the career path she has chosen.

(Thanks to John Russell for passing this along).

If you have spent any time in Nashville you have probably heard of the Bluebird Cafe, the iconic music club founded by Amy Kurland back in 1982.

After twenty-five years, Amy decided it was time to exit her business. From the Tennessean:

Amy Kurland, who started The Bluebird in 1982 as a gourmet restaurant, is selling the now-legendary club to the Nashville Songwriters Association International. The group promises not to change a thing.

"I wanted to retire, but I didn't want The Bluebird to go away,"' said Kurland, 52.

Amy could have sold the club for a lot more money than she did. But, money was not the only kind of wealth that Amy created in her business. She measured her success as much in terms of her ability to create a venue to help launch the careers of struggling songwriters and musicians as she did by the income and wealth that her business generated for her.

Instead of selling to the highest bidder, she sold to a group that would forever keep her vision alive. That is clearly the act of a good entrepreneur.

The list of now famous artists who got their start at Bluebird is unprecedented in the music industry: Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, Josh Turner.... the list goes on and on.

My first experience with the Bluebird Cafe came while I was being recruited to work at Belmont University. The Dean took me to the Bluebird to give me a taste of what Nashville had to offer. Immediately I was taken back to my college days in the 1970s. Ann and I loved to listen to coffeehouse musicians -- singer songwriters just like the Bluebird hosted night after night. (A note of trivia: I tried my hand as a coffeehouse musician a time or two in those days). I was hooked.

We now get season passes every year to go to Bluebird on the Mountain. Bluebird teamed with Vanderbilt University to offer a monthly Bluebird songwriters night under the stars on top of the nob (that is what we call big hills that are not quite mountains here in Tennessee) where Vanderbilt has their observatory. It runs from spring through fall.

Thanks, Amy. Thanks for having the courage to start Bluebird, and thanks for having the courage to insure it will stay the Bluebird now that you are moving on in your life.

We are finding more and more young women being drawn into entrepreneurship as a way to gain more control over the balance between family and careers. This article at the Wall Street Journal shows that is it not just the Moms who are seeking this type of lifestyle balance.

Interviews with men who stayed home with their children for several years, and are now looking back on it, paint a different picture. While much attention has been paid to at-home mothers who opt out of the corporate rat race for good, many at-home dads are quietly doing the same thing -- finding flexible alternative work. And while the adjustment can be rough, some of these men discover at-home parenting marks a permanent turning point toward better life balance.