Faithventure Forum

If you are in the Denver Area on December 15, 2010, plan on joining us at the monthly meeting of Cherry Hills at Work where I am speaking on Belay Enterprises , Bud's Warehouse and urban business as mission. Every month, the group meets on the third Wednesday from 7:00 am to 8:30 am to learn about business as mission opportunities throughout the world as well as to network with other kingdom minded business people. For individuals interested in integrating their business life with their faith, this is one of the best groups in the Denver area. For more information, call Larry Howe at 303-881-0700.  I hope to see you there.

One of the biggest challenges to success as a faith venture entrepreneur is finding the right balance between focusing on your core business while enabling an environment the encourages creative freedom in search of the next venture opportunity. By nature, entrepreneurs are super creative people that are prone to problems with focus. I have met very few successful entrepreneurs who didn't fit the criteria of attention deficit disorder. A fast mind that is prone to skip around allows for creativity. But it needs to be controlled and disciplined. And the first step is realizing that Entrepreneurial ADD is real and best handled by focused business planning. Dr. Jeff Cornwall explores tips from Scott Belsky as preventive solutions for EADD in his blog post " An Antidote for Entrepreneurial ADD :" Belsky's approach offers three key steps (more than that would overwhelm anyone with EADD):    1. Hire killjoys .  One of our partners played this role for us.  He tende

American society finds it difficult to give felony offenders a second chance in the area of employment after they are released from jail. Business insurance requirements and owner liability concerns make it difficult for businesses to hire individuals with felonies. Yet, the post-incarceration success of offenders is directly related to their ability to secure employment. At Belay Enterprises , we’ve had success placing non-violent felony offenders into real jobs in the community after they’ve completed 6 months to one year in one of our employment training businesses. Private businesses are willing to hire offenders after they’ve proven themselves with an employment history and the successful completion of a program. But for offenders with a violent felony offense, future employment opportunities are almost completely nonexistent. This is the case even though, in our experience, there are significant degrees of variance in the seriousness of violent offenses. For insta