Week 14: My Last Lecture

In business there are five very, very important lessons you need to do.  There is no specific order to these points and they will change during the course of your entrepreneurship, but you need to memorize and internalize these lessons.

            One, follow your passion.  Know what you want to do and follow your passion. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make enough money or it is hard or it is abnormal or weird. Follow your passion and it will lead you to where you want to go. Your passion is your God given or basic animal desire that you were meant to be and do. It is you and if you ignore it you will ignore yourself and you will burn yourself out.

            Two, get help from the experts. You might have the passion and desire, but there are experts out there that know how to do Facebook, excel, data warehousing, piloting and insurance. Use them, no reason why you need to waste time, energy and resources on learning something that can be outsourced to an expert that is doing their passion.

            Three, work on your business and not in your business. What you dream now will not come true if you are working in the business. You need to remove yourself from your business and work on it, as if the business itself is the product. If you are opening the restaurant at 5am, making all the food, preparing for tomorrow, taking the payments, closing at 10pm and then cleaning the restaurant, when are you going to have time to fix the business processes? You need to make business processes that remove you from the business and allow others to work in the business. Once you have yourself removed you can perfect the business and make it a working product/machine that will give you what you want.

            Four, it is the small and simple things that accomplish great things. All experts and professionals started with nothing other than a desire to do and compounded over years became what they are now. Michael Jordon was not born playing basketball, Beethoven was not born composing songs, and Steve Jobs didn’t know anything about fonts until he was in college. Experts use compound interest to become. By doing the same things over and over and over again for years will eventually make you the best. Work and create your business a little at a time, every day and eventually you will be what you want to be and have what you want. If you work on your business 30 minutes or an hour a day; in no time you will have the knowledge and the capability to create your business. And when you finally have the business you want continue to work on it by small and simple things to make it perfect.

            Five, just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Do not let fear, family members, friends, money or time get in the way of you doing it. Launch that website. Put a post on Facebook. Try the product. Let someone else try the product. Most dreams are stopped by fear. By just do it, you will remove that fear and will overcome the barriers that will suddenly appear to stop you. Just do it and things will work out for you. Just do your passion by small, simple tasks and ask for help from the experts when you need it.

Week 13: VW Beetle is like a Business

Yesterday I was looking out at my 1970 Volkswagen Beetle that I am fixing up, it is my first car that I bought in high school for 900 dollars. I caught it on fire by going up the Lewiston hill at 65 miles per hours which threw a piston rod through the engine case, releasing tons of gas, mixed that with the sparks from the spark plugs and you have a fire at the back of Volkswagen Beetle. Standing on the highway watching people go by watching me watch the fire, I realized that I was one of my life’s dreams to fix this car up and drive it until I die.

Yesterday I asked myself after 15 years of dreaming, is it worth fixing up my car? Was it worth a thousand or so dollars on carpet, engine parts, gears, mirrors, seats and ect to fix up a car that has sat in a back yard? The answer is “YES” because it is my dream. “YES” because it is part of who I am. Just like my business to build ultralight aircrafts, when I look at it and think about all the stuff I have to learn on how to build airplanes, all the materials that I have to buy and build and trial and error, I constantly ask myself, it is worth it do have my dream business or should I do something else?

The answer is “YES” it is worth all the trouble because it is my dream, it is who I am. And no matter how depressed I get or how much flax I get from friends and family or from myself, I can and will build a business that I am passionate about and dream about. Just like my Beetle, I can ask myself is it worth it and have doubt, the answer is still “YES.”

Week 12: Spirituality mixed with Business

This week’s lesson was very spiritual in comparison to other weeks that we have had. This week we learned on focusing on basically changing the world from where it is right now to where it could be if we as entrepreneur decided to use our skills for the better. Sarah Endline, creator of SweetRiot, focuses on how she wanted to create a culture, a team and not just another corporation trying to earn a profit. I believe this is very important when having a business that is going to involve employees because you want them to feel driven by something greater than their bi-weekly paycheck.

The greatest spiritual influence came from a talk by Elder Gay entitled “Entrepreneurship and Consecration.” In Elder Gay’s talk he discusses the standards that the world gives us for businesses compared to God’s standard of successful business. The world’s standard is to maximize shareholder earnings but with God’s standard is found everywhere in the scriptures stating that we should have “charity ….. and labor for Zion.” As we go forth with our businesses we must realize that we are to use our skills to build up the Kingdom of God and to bless others in any way possible. Elder Gay gave a personal story of a man that had a revelation to search out the LDS church with a promise that he would be able to build a school. Elder Gay helped him receive his school because the man became a member of the true church. God blesses those who put him first.

Week 11: Attitude towards money

What is my attitude towards money? That is a hard question to answer because my attitude and my actions are two completely different things. I have a road block in my life mind that prevents me from doing certain financial things. My attitude towards money is that money is a tool, like a shovel. I can use the shovel to help plant and cultivate plants or I can use a shovel to bury a body, really extreme example there of good uses versus bad uses. I think what we do with money is really the issue.

How can you view of money affect the way you live? My friend had a very poor family and so now he hoards all his money. He hoards it so bad that he won’t buy the necessities of life or for his business until it becomes an emergency, then he will buy, which usually causes him to spend more money that if he would have studied out the prices and followed the trends.

What rules are recommended for prospering? I believe by following almost any lesson or teaching from a multimillionaire we can prosper in our financial endeavors. I believe that the lessons from Ministry of Business will help us achieve the level of commitment, discipleship, self-control and enjoyment that we desire.

Week 10: Two Lesson

This week was a very quick week in learning but I feel like I learned very two important lessons. The first lesson is that I need to allow others in my company to explore their dreams and desires. In the video License to Pursue Dreams by Marissa Mayer, she talks about how Google allows its employees to spend 20% of company time on their own projects and ambitions. People ask her if Google isn’t losing out profitability and losing company time. Marissa charted all the projects in the last half of 2005 and found out that 50% of those projects actually became products for Google. Enabling people to use my tools for their benefits can increase profits, morale and a company over all.

            The second lesson I learned this week is not to under estimate myself. Just like Taylor’s Boat were the number six in the country for boating companies, I too can become the best entrepreneur and have the best business or company based upon the team that comes together. Mr. Taylor does quote Good to Great by James Collins. It is amazing how many people use this book and takes its principles and actually become the best. If I assemble a team that is the best, we can make the business the best.