Last Lecture

It has been fourteen weeks.  They have not all been easy but they have been rewarding.  During this time we have read the thoughts of many great leaders and spiritual men.  We have watched videos on others who have gone on to be great successes in the business arena.  Along the way we have been challenged to venture outside our comfort zone to reach our entrepreneurial potential.  All this information and advice has been beneficial and enlightening, so now what? Where do we go next?

Now, we start!  We come up with our idea, if we haven’t already, and we make a plan.  During these last weeks we have been given tools to form our ideas and take well thought out steps to action.  So now we do just that.  Look ahead to possible pitfalls, so you can have the answers already in place if those obstacles show up.  Seek out those with your best interest at heart and ask for their thoughts and incorporate the most advantageous into your plan.

Now go!  Take that next step, rent the space or get the business license or print those business cards.  Take a step.  Do not run headlong into the unknown but take well planned steady steps.  Always keep yourself open to new avenues of expansion but temper those adventures with your well established priorities.  It is so easy to chase after the newest shiny goal and leave behind what really matters most.  Make your priorities early and stick to them.  It may be that each of us will not become filthy rich or world famous but to those in our lives and those who seek our services we will be heroes.  Throughout all the lesson material, with all its myriad of stories and advice, the one thing that stuck out to me the most was to be true to who you are and who you want to become.  If I have learned one thing in my years as a business owner it is that have a lot of money is not the best thing about being a business owner, it is doing something you enjoy and finishing a job well done.  Don’t get me wrong if you don’t make some money you won’t be in business long but it doesn’t have to be the end all of why you do this.  Find the non-monetary reason for being in business for yourself and the journey will be a whole lot more enjoyable.

A Journey of Gratitude

It has been thirteen weeks since I started this class and have enjoyed most all the articles and videos I have reviewed.  This week was filled with knowledge on how to make the most of the entrepreneurial experience and having gratitude for the opportunity.  I most related to the Randy Haykin's article.  While I do not claim to have had as successful a career, I faced many of the same events as he.  I had to balance many o the same priorities as well.  Being successful on a large or small scale still requires you to make many of the same decisions.  Reading about how Randy handled the decisions made me appreciate the choices I made in the past.  It also made me grateful for the opportunities I have been blessed with and the people I got to work with along the way.  We don't always see it but we are influenced by so many around us.  We need to take time, regularly, to remember all those who help us along the way.  Whether they make large or small impacts, they still effect us.

Vision

It is almost over.  I have spent the last 3 months learning about being an entrepreneur and being encouraged to figure out what kind of entrepreneur I want to be.  There has been amazing articles and videos discussing planning and integrity and vision.  There have been discussion boards where we shared our thoughts and dreams.  Through it all I have used the information and evaluated how I did as an entrepreneur in the past and what if anything I would change going forward.  I can see where I could have made different decision and there is more than one cautionary tale that I wish I had heard decades ago but by and large I follow many the admonition with the benefit of having them pointed out.  So much of what was shared is based on being a good person first.  Even the  articles evaluating the idea of less capitalism in the business community was enlightening and worthy of evaluation.  I agreed with the thoughts that perhaps upper management personnel were more concerned with their gain then that welfare of those under them.  I identified with premises that business owners should consider employees and assets not cost to be reduced.  However having been in business for so many years myself I believe a level of compromise is needed for a business to truly succeed.  While employees are assets, too many assets can overburden a business and it will fail.  Likewise if upper management does not get fairly compensated for the level of time and responsibility that is required then no one will be willing to take control and lead a business through the difficult times.  In the end I think the only way to fulfill a dream of the perfect company is to keep it a dream.  Otherwise an entrepreneur simply needs to do the best he can and never get to full of himself to remember the start.

Attitudes & Priorities

So this week we talked about priorities and responded to a couple of mini case studies where we were asked to share how we would best handle it.  Each case study set the family against a career choice.  While I qualified my answers somewhat I believe that we should always put our family's needs first.  However I did qualify one scenario with the family also needing to understand and accommodate the work needs too.  We need to keep our family in the forefront of our mind when making large decisions but sometimes our job just requires us to place its needs first to endure we have a job tomorrow.  The other aspect we looked into was our attitude towards money.  I have never had a strong need for a lot of money.  I prefer memories to things and the thought of cleaning a large home has me dreaming of a small 500 square foot shack.  I like less because then I have more time for memories.  I am not sure if this attitude truly effects the way I live since I don't have a lot of money to begin with but I don't miss not having a lot of stuff so I guess it does.  I am not sure if this will lend to my prosperity but then if I view relationships and experiences as valuable then it means I am more prosperous the more I do, I guess.

Dreams

This week I completed a paper on an interview I had with a friend and entrepreneur.  My friend has had an incredibly successful career as a private investigator and real estate investor.  He is driven, talented and humble.  He is the first on to say he is not the smartest person in the room but brags he knows where to find the smartest people and work with them.  He was a pleasure to interview and had many of the same things to say that the course material this week shared.  Throughout this course several recurring themes have been brought up.  To be successful you need to have a dream, make a plan, press forward, working hard and always look to the Lord for guidance.  It was reassuring to hear my friend share many of those same ideas and thoughts.  Being successful is attainable you just have to be willing to put in the time and effort.

Leadership with a small "L"

This weeks lesson material focused on leadership.  There were many great articles and videos discussing how to be a great leader but the one that stood out tome the most was Elder Bednar's talk about being a small "L" leader.  It is so easy to be the kind of boss that barks orders and hands out praise and punishment in equal measure but Elder Bednar presented an much more Christ-like leadership style that I think, if used by business men in general, would lead to an industrial revolution.  The simple concept of leading by example.  The idea that you do not ask anyone to do something you yourself have not already done.  Sharing you time, talents, and resources to improve not only yourself but those around you.  It is such a foreign concept to the business environment and relegated to the religious circles that businesses miss out on the chance to change, maybe not the whole world but, the entire dynamic of their company and quite possible those companies they associate with.  How much better would not only the employees perform but those in decision making rolls if we were small "L" leaders.

In for the Long Haul

The lessons presented this week in a couple of classes have focused on staying the course or digging deeper.  Somehow this was an inspired course curriculum as half way through the week I was informed of my younger sisters death.  I lost all focus for a couple of days and had no interest in any outside work needs.  I simply did not care.  In the back of my head I knew I had obligations that needed my attention and it was that knowledge that I needed to dig in and get myself through it that kept me from completely shutting down.  I have done most of my work looking through water and needing to reread everything to make sure it made sense but I persevered.  I can not say I will be as good at it next week as we travel to and attend her funeral but for today as strange as it may sound my lesson material got me through to the end of this week.

Mastery

This week I finished a book entitled Mastery.  This book along with the videos and articles on habits went a long way to impress the fact that to gain true success in business you have to be willing to stretch yourself and grow outside a comfort zone.  To be successful you have to develop habits that may not seem easy or comfortable.  You need to look at your success in the form of a lifelong process not a dollar value goal.  In terms of business while the bottom line is a measurement of success, it is not the end result.  The bottom line is just a measuring stick to guide you through your path of improvement. That is not the common way of thinking in the world today.  It was a lot to think about and find a way ti incorporate it into my own life.

Entrepreneurial and Family

Somehow, this week's lessons and my life coincided. While a great deal of our material spoke about making time for your family and remembering what is most important, I had a very sick child at home with me this week and chose to spend a lot of my time with him.  He is a teenage but it felt more important to sit and watch TV with him or read his homework to him so he could stay current than worrying about my business responsibilities.  I still did my work while he slept and did my homework late at night but I am glad I spent the majority of my work hours with him.  Being in business for myself, in the service industry as I am, I have a bit more freedom to arrange where and when I do some of my tasks.  This is in contrast to someone opening a boutique of some kind.  The type of business that you decide to open can impact how you can arrange your family time so make sure you take a long hard look ant the company you are starting before you begin down that road.

Mastery

It has been quite a week in class.  We had a great deal of information given to us and all of it was really good.  I was most impressed with the opening chapters of the book entitled "Mastery".  This book discussed becoming a master of a skill or talent, but it was the description of a master that caught my attention.  To become a master you must enjoy the times of no progress.  You must not look to the nest break though but revel in the time when little or no progress is noticeable so as to master that stage of the learning process.  I had never thought of it that way.  The thought of using the plateau in your progress as a time to master the skills learned so far makes a great deal of sense.  Honing your skills as you advance means you do not have to work harder as you learn new things.  I like that.  In a video we watch it talked about making your decision not about you while they are about you.  This sounds like an oxymoron but they way I figured it, if we make decision about aspects of your lives that effect us, we need to consider others first and how our decision will affect them.  In this way we address the big picture in our lives and now just focus on "me."  This is always a good view to have.

What are my goals

I have had an eventful week which has lead me to be behind in everything I had to do.  Which makes this week's lessons all the more applicable and in my eyes, humorous.  This week we looked at our plans, both short term and long term, and who we want to be in the end.  As we considered these questions we were tasked with creating our own personal constitution and goals, both long and short term.  I am on the downhill side of my working life and am swinging into grandparent mode so many of the goals I had early on in my life have been fulfilled, so I looked to my retirement years and the eternities.  Since I am in the more endure to the end stage of this life I now look to gaining those attributes and talents that will aid me in the hereafter.  Since I have no concrete idea of all I will need, I am going to work on an overall goal of being better tomorrow than I am today.  I know this all sounds vague but inch by inch it makes sense to me.

Ethics in Business

I made it through the third week.  Not only did I do my class load but I am also back east visiting a very sick family member.  It was enjoyable to share the study material with my sister as we caught up with each others lives and family.  As I watch videos and read the articles assigned to me this week, we talked about the talks and the implications they have in both our work and personal lives.  My sister is a homemaker while I am a business owner.  I talked about how if I am to be a success entrepreneur I needed to be an honest, reliable, and principled.  I mentioned how if I wasn't an ethical business owner I would not be in business very long.  My sister said, as she watched a few of the videos with me, that she felt the videos should be shown to new moms as well.  She said that when ethics start at home then they come naturally in the business world.  It was a interesting thought.  She joked that she was the business owner of her family and maybe she could use some of these classes for herself.
In an article titled "Making a Living and a Life", the author described a grading scale for a business man.  As I read the article I could see that his perspective was not from a purely numbers view but from a personal integrity standpoint.  Evaluating myself as a business owner based on his criteria I was satisfied to see that I could say I was an A- to a B+ business person.  While there have been times I have had made business decisions based on a purely monetary focus, for the most part I have always had my subordinates in mind when I reviewed and proceeded in with a decision.  While I think this balance does not allow me a classic "A" per this authors outline I do think it was the best recourse for the situations I was faced with.
After this week's lessons I feel really good about how I have conducted my business decisions.

Living Our Dream

I am in my second week of class and so far I am enjoying the material but not yet finding a fit for me in it.  This week we are talking about our life goals and dreams.  So many people live their lives with no purpose or plan in mind and so they waste precious time just wandering.  As we focused on planning ahead and living a life with purpose I found myself looking back not looking forward.  Have I lived a life a purpose so far?  What more can I do with what is left of my life?

Like so many others I did not have a plan when I started out.  I had an end goal in mind but no real path to reach it.  I wasted time meandering around hoping someone else would set up my path.  I was in my 30's before I started actively guiding my own life.  I still did not have a plan but I was going to do something.  I worked to teach myself how to manage a business and run an office.  I used my desire to help my husband in his dream of being a business owner to give myself a purpose.  I took my love of math and organizing things to set up his office and track in money.  It took me a while to find a job that I learned to love and excel at.

Looking back I can see the choices and decision I made that got me here and I am please with the journey.  I met and helped a great number of people along the way and guided others looking for purpose.  It was an adventure that I do not regret.

Looking forward I am content to do more of the same.  I have no great aspiration for wealth, I just want enough to live comfortably and help others that need it.  Running our own business has allowed us to give jobs to young single adults looking for a way to pay for school.  It has also allowed us to open our home to people who did not have anyplace else to go.  In this way our money was sufficient to meet those needs and I am satisfied to continue this path.  I am going to college purely for the selfish reason that I want to learn and this is a good place to start.

I am living my dream.

The Beginning of it All

It is September 15th 2016 and I am starting a new adventure.  For 25 years I have been a business owner with my husband.  We have had many great successes and a few failures.  Through it all we learned as we went.  Neither of us had any college training in business.  We learn through trial and error, advice from other business owners and research.  This was a grand adventure and we learned a lot.  Today I have started a formal college adventure.  I am going to go find out what more there is to know about running a business in today's tech savvy world.  I am looking forward to learning from peers and mentors and also being able to share my thoughts and experiences.

The one thing that has always been a constant in running your own business, no one else will do it for you so go get it done.  That thought has the drive behind all of our successes and guided us through the trials.  We always knew that if we wanted to be a success we had to make it happen, no one else was going to make us successful.  I intend to use that same philosophy as I embark on the journey of obtaining a bachelor's degree in business management.  I look forward to it.