Gratitude

Receiving an education from a church based organization is a different experience than a state or private institution. I have enjoyed starting the reading assignments with a talk from a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Learning how to incorporate our gospel standards into our jobs or our future businesses will be of benefit to all. Having an attitude of gratitude will bless our customers, our partners, our communities and ourselves. Learning to be grateful at all times of our lives, up or down, is key to overcoming the trials that are sure to come. Being able to seek spiritual guidance when making decisions will help us avoid costly mistakes. One mistake that is made often is choosing the wrong job. It is hard to decide on a path and then once something presents its self we make the decision based on financial needs and might not take future goals into consideration. Having the for thought to seek spiritual guidance when making life plans and goals will help in keeping us on the right path for us. As we prepare ourselves we will then learn to recognize and take advantage of the right opportunities that might show up. If we are learning and growing along the way we will be prepared for those opportunities.

Consecration

The law of consecration has always been of interest to me. The thought of being taken care and taking care of others as brothers and sisters in Christ brings a feeling of peace to my heart. I have been blessed with many opportunities to experience it in a small degree. I have either had to live with other families for a time or have had families live in my home for a time. Everyone working together to live the best we can at the time. The natural man does eventually creep in and it becomes time to move on. But just because we can't seem to manage to level to the full extent of the law does not excuse of from being required to do all that we can for the poor and the needy.

There were a few thoughts that stood out to me while I listed to the talk from Elder Gay Entrepreneurship and Consecration. "An Entrepreneur uses adversity as a path to accomplishment ...they break with traditional patterns of thoughts and deeds to create new beginnings." Throughout this course it has been ingrained in us that the entrepreneurial journey is not an easy one and Elder Gay agrees. "Just because the world does not factor in the power and mind of heaven into business does not mean it does not matter....Successful pioneers are only inward focused as well as outward driven...Our aim must be to do his will..." 

Virtue and integrity are vital in business without it we see the deterioration of world markets. "...organization serves its own interests when it protects the overzealous from themselves." The business should exist to serve a need and provide for as many as possible. The time and talents of individuals should be valued as much as the money from investors. A business should develop a culture of community and service. 

Money

Everyone whether entrepreneur or not needs to find a work/life balance. This is when it is important to seek guidance from those that have already been there and done that. Plenty of good advice can be found from religious and scholarly texts. In the formula for success President Monson advises us to first fill our mind with truth; second fill our life with service and third fill our heart with love. As we use this as a foundation for the principles from which to prioritize our life we can find some balance. Balance can mean different things at different times.
In the Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness it cautions against going on a fool's errand. It recommends thought provoking tasks that will help frame your thought process of the journey you are seeking to take. Task One: Understanding the difference between happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment. Task two: losing yourself in a hero's journey. Task Three: getting started on your quest. This article is a great precursor to the book: A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey. The article and book a full of great advice on how to set yourself up for a good work/life balance.
Then there is the big looming subject of money. In the Attitude on Money by Stephen W. Gibson he helps you think through some of the preconceived notions that you might have about money. Helps you think through changing the filters about money that may harm your path on the Hero's Journey. My overall attitude about money is respect. I respect it in the sense that I learn as much as I can about it and how to best use it. I respect the fact that I have it and can earn more. Our view on money can affect the way we live. If we don't understand it then we might get into trouble making unwise decisions about money. If we fear money we may never have sufficient for our needs or gain more than what we need in order to help others. In the article Gibson gives 6 rules that are recommended for prospering: Rule 1: Seek the Lord and have hope in him. Rule 2: Keep the commandments, that includes the temporal ones, tithing and fast offerings. Rule 3: Think about money and plan how you can become self-reliant. Rule 4: Take advantage of chances for learning so you will not be ignorant of these matters. Education, as President Hinckley has taught us, is the Key to Opportunity. Rule 5: Learn the laws upon which the blessings of wealth are predicated. Rule 6: Do not send away the naked, the hungry, the thirsty or the sick or those who are held captive.

forget yourself

The life of an entrepreneur can be a lonely one if you let it. Being able to interview a successful entrepreneur was a great experience. To be able to hear about someones beginning while at the same time being able to see and hear their middle and end. There are many books on the idea of building a business but there aren't any step by step guides on how to build your specific business. Every entrepreneur has their own dream and therefore needs to find their own way of doing things. It is great to learn the fundamentals of business, but when you are building something that hasn't been built before you need to have faith in yourself and your dreams.
There is also the need to be a well rounded individual. To make time for things other than business. We need to focus on building our moral character and making sure that we have set guardrails (things that we will not do) so that when those choices come up in our lives because they more than likely will, we will have made the decision previously and not hesitate to answer the questions in front of us at the time. As an entrepreneur we seek to be successful and we need to prepare ourselves for that success. 

Trust is hard to come by

A person can't be a leader if he or she is not trusted. Trust is key in order to be able to lead. It has to be all around trust. Trust that the leaders is going down the right path, trust that the leader has everyone's best interest at heart, trust that they will value and respect those he is leading. Guy Kawasaki states that you trust people first and then you are trusted.

Building a trusting relationship with your customers is key. Frank Levinson stated that you want to weld your customers to you. There are a few great companies that have figured out how to weld their customers to them. This takes good companies and makes them great. In the book Good to Great by Jim Collins he outlines the key concepts that took those few companies from Good to Great. He separates 6 key concepts into three themes: Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought and Disciplined Action. All of the great companies had disciplined people at the head of the company. Jim describes them as Level 5 Leaders with the mind set of First Who Then What. The concepts for the theme of Disciplined Thought are Confront the true facts and Hedgehog concept. Culture of Discipline and Technology Accelerator are the concepts in the Disciplined Action theme. As he goes into detail about each of these key concepts you can see the difference the the Good and the Great companies.

Building a ship

This week has been a great lesson on the fact that the road to Entrepreneurship is one that requires a lot of grit. In the talk Looking Back and Moving Forward by President Monson we learn that all good and great things will only come through overcoming trials, struggles and set backs. As he looks back at the history that brought him to be in the place and position so that he could fulfill his divine destiny, he reminds us that we need to honor the sacrifices of those that came before us. The short videos of each of the following entrepreneurs echos the need to preserver. David Carrington found focus in his overcoming cancer. Elder Holland reminds us not to quit, some blessings come soon, some blessings come late and some blessings don't come until heaven. Taylor Richard reminds us that we can do anything. He quoted 1 Nephi 17:51 "And now, if the Lord has such great power and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me that I should build a ship?" I'm sure that all of this counsel will serve there purpose for inspiration when I run into the trials and set backs that I will encounter during my entrepreneurial journey.

Win-Win

I have enjoyed the Intro to Entrepreneurship class so far. I especially like all of the video links to business speakers talking about being in business or building a business. They all have one theme that runs through them and that is that you shouldn't ever think of the money first. Most have specifically mentioned to find what you do best and provide the world with the service of doing what you do best. I love the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I've read it a couple of times. Every time that I read a book I seem to pick one or two things to work on, because if I tried to live by an book that I've read and make all changes overnight I would drive myself crazy. I have worked on a couple of the 7 Habits over the 6 years since I first read the book. As this class has progressed I have noticed that I am flying solo through life and have not really been interested in creating friendships or partnerships that would benefit me as well as those I let into my extremely tight personal space. I feel the need to work on the concept of Win-Win. To actively seek out relationship that go deeper than the 2 sentence conversation you have before starting work or in the church hallway. 

Self Mastery

Never in a million years would I have thought that I would want to master anything, especially my self. Yet as I look back on the trials that I have endured over the past 15 years they have all been training to learn to control my self. In the talk by Elder Tanner Success is Gauged by Self Mastery he quotes Plato "The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile." I can attest that is true. When the rage is gone and you are left with having to account for what you did or said during the lose of control, if you have any remorse at all you will be ashamed of what you've done. This was a talk given in a General Priesthood session, but it applies to all of us.

Elder Tanner goes on to say "there are two important elements in self-mastery. The first is to determine your course or set the sails, so to speak, of moral standards; the other is the will power, or the wind in the sails carrying one forward." It makes sense that if you don't have control over your personal life you won't have control or success in your professional life.

Along those lines I enjoyed the advice from Steve Blank in the video The Entrepreneur and the Family. He suggested that if you have a family to make rules that you will keep, like be home for dinner and set a time for family. 

And Jan Newman echoed that advice in the video Loyalty to God and Family. He stated to prioritize first God then Spouse then Family. 

Endure

I have a note on my phone that I put there a very long time ago. It says Endure=Beyond the point when it would seem reasonable to quit. I don't know if that is the actual definition of the word endure, but someone during a stake conference said it and I wrote it down and never forgot it.
This weeks reading assignments all seem to have the theme of Persevering. The first talk by Elder Faust was title Perseverance. He states "Perseverance is demonstrated by those who keep going when the going gets tough, who don't give up even when others say "it can't be done."
I had always heard that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill but never broke down the math into 3 hours a day every day for 10 years.
I enjoyed the address by Jeff Sandefer, A Hero's Journey. Parts had been quoted previously, but hearing the entire talk from start to finish is very inspiring. I am a list person, I have more ongoing to-do lists than any person should have. I literally now have another To Do list one that is going to replace a few of my previous ones. The guidance, direction and detailed action steps that can be pulled from this talk is a wealth of knowledge and sound advice.
My favorite is "focus and become an expert"

Personal Constitution

At the beginning of the Chapter on Personal Constitution in the ministry of business book there is a quote by Thomas S. Monson "Vision without effort is daydreaming; effort without vision is drudgery; but vision coupled with effort, will obtain the prize."
I want to be a visionary women. As I worked on the deconstructing my fears assignment along side the Personal Constitution step by step laid out in Chapter 7 of the book, I came to many realizations.
Fist of all the last sentence on page 131 "it's never too late to begin developing one." referring to the Personal Constitution.
Then the realization that I needed more time. I had set aside 2 hours for each assignment but I spent 6 hours going back and forth between the two. They seemed to feed off each other. When you ask yourself life changing questions you receive life changing answers.
I was glad to know that this is an ongoing and growing type of endeavor. "Putting together my Personal Constitution took over four months of writing, pondering, praying, and re-writing. I've since learned that my Personal Constitution is most meaningful when I allow it to become dynamic, capable of growing and evolving according to the changes of life. So I continue to work on it, alter it, and expand it."
I will take Steve Hitz advise and not worry about perfection at this moment.

Dreams and Stones

Working through the assignments in the entrepreneurship class I've had to dig deep into the reasons why I do or do not do things. As I wrote out my bucket list I had to really stop and think about what I would like to do if I had (or made) free time. I have spent the last decade and a half taking care of others being responsible for the health and wellbeing. I have come to realize that I need to be able to dream about my future in order to plan and accomplish the things on my very new bucket list.

The Stars and Stepping stones activity came a bit easier, because for the past 2 years I have been on a plan to start a business. I had taken a few small steps but this activity helped me to really put some specifics down and lay them out on a time table. As we go further in the class I look forward to being able to refine this document and really pull out some more defined stepping stones. I found the following quote from that article hilarious "The ultimate horror is not death. The ultimate horror is to wake up at age fifty-five or sixty and realize that you have wasted your life; either that time has slipped past while your dreams waited, or that you never had any dreams at all." I will be 48 years old in a couple of months. This actually happened to me at age 40, I woke up to the realization that I had spent 20 years going from small job to small job or small business to small business and even though I learned a lot about small business, I had no benefits. Plus many years the income was reported as a business loss so nothing was paid into Social Security. So I would be poorer than the poor living on Social Security. 

I have dreams but have set them aside for one reason or another and time has slipped by. My childhood dream was to create clothes for the rich and famous. That is no long a dream that I want to pursue but I am working on an iteration of that dream. It is a pretty achievable goal in the "working years" that I have left.

In reading through and watching Randy Pausch's video, I believe he was able to achieve his childhood dreams first because of the support of his parents. I love that they let him write on the walls of his bedroom. He also referred to himself as tenacious. That is an important quality for people to be able to achieve their goals. It is very important to dream and instill in our children the ability to dream big and give them the courage to seek to accomplish those dreams.