Reflections

 I have taken a few other entrepreneurial based classes but I have learned more from this one.  A recurring theme in my discovery moments this semester has been to take time for my family.  I recognize this as an issue with me it also came up in many of the articles we read. I am comforted to know that it is not just me and is a common struggle among entrepreneurs. I take courage when I read their stories and can learn from their examples.

This is clearly one of the areas I need to focus on, but I feel all want to be entrepreneurs will benefit from the lesson where we talked about ethical guardrails. We were asked to ponder-what will you always do, what will you never do, what do you want to be known for? These questions have been reverberating in my mind and heart ever since. I have noticed that some of my choices and actions have been altered by them. I feel they are applicable whether you work for someone else or yourself. 

Another element of this class that shifted me and I have spoken to many people about is discovering what you were born to do. I have been calling it a recipe of experiences, gifts and skills that only you have. There is no one on earth with your unique experiences, gifts and skills. As such, you bring a perspective and an offering that no one else does. You can choose to plod along through life or you can choose to use your uniqueness to make a mark on the world. After this class, I believe firmly that all of us have the potential to come up with ideas and create businesses, but few will find the courage and passion to do it. It does not only take courage, but courage with a balance of humility. I do not believe you can be a truly successful, prideful entrepreneur. I loved the counsel to find someone that fills in your gaps to be your partner. What a great idea! 

One final bit of advice that I have learned from this class is not to let fear hold you back. Take a step toward your idea. Do not hover on the edge of what you know, step into the unknown. You are not alone. You are surrounded by potential customers and investors ready to guide you. Who are those potential customers and investors? They are all around you. Don't be afraid to share and ask for feedback. If you do not share, your idea will never grow.

Identifying the Opportunity

 This week we read a portion of an excellent article called Identifying and Exploiting the Right Entrepreneurial Opportunity for You. This article inspired me and built my excitement and confidence for starting my businesses. Something that was eye opening for me was the counsel to be ready for your initial idea to spark an entirely new set of ideas. You need to be open to it and not look at your business idea too narrowly or single minded. I need to be open to pivots, even if it is at the very beginning of my idea. 

Just as I need to be open and I will add humble in the formulation of the business, as it grows, I need to preset milestones and benchmarks that force me to regularly assess my business and investment with open and objective eyes. They can be goals in relation to customers, product development, sales etc. But this is not all, an important element is to also check in with people closes to me that can help me see things I might have missed. They can help me see how I am doing in my work/ home balance and relationships. I had never thought of that before.

I need to be humble. When I find a partner, I need to find one that balances my inadequacies. I learned it is best if I have worked with that person before, so I have a good feel of how we work together and if their strengths are truly the ones I need.

Beyond these points, there are five various criteria that I should analyze when assessing opportunities. They are realness of opportunity, durability of opportunity, marshalling the resources, managing the venture, and harvesting the venture. One of the analysis questions that speaks to me the most is in relation to the durability of the opportunity.  It is 'Will we be able to develop distinctive competencies?' Creating a business or meeting a need is not enough. I have pondered on the word distinctive. I believe it is not enough for me to find what I want to offer distinctive; the customers need to recognize it as such. You might be working alone to build the business, but it is not a solo job. You are dependent at every step of the way on feedback from customers, investors, your family, and potential partners. Through this article and others form this week, I have developed a better understanding of the multifaceted elements to discovering and building out a business opportunity. 

Who's Got the Money?

I came from a very frugal family. I can remember taking ballet classes in socks and tap class in my Sunday shoes wearing my mother's Jazzercize leotard because my parents did not want to buy ballet and tap shoes or dance clothes. As a result, when I enrolled my daughters in dance classes, they had multiple dance outfits and the best quality of dance shoes. Growing up, I did not deeply feel the lack of money, I wished for ballet shoes, but was so thankful I had dance classes. I think it is interesting that my children with dancing clothes and dance shoes have felt poor because we are not regularly going on cruises or trips to foreign countries.

I say all of this to help lay a foundation for my thoughts and feelings on money. My feelings have changed after attending many finance classes as part of my degree path. Before, I saw money as the means to get all the things I wanted. Now I carefully weigh out if I want to give up my money for the trade of the good or service. I find more often that I want my money more than I want the dinner out or new outfit. As an adult, I was anxious to provide for my children and purchase the things I wanted; now value security more than things so I value money more.

As an adult, I have also seen how money can work for you and how if you conserve money, you can multiply it and make it work for you. This has come into play as I have received a small amount of inheritance from my mother after she passed away a few years ago. I have a strong desire to use that money in such a way that it will grow and multiply. I am protective of it. I want it to be a beacon that I can refer to for decades to come to show what my mother's gift to me is and has become.

I see money as a building resource that is limited, yet what I can build with the money is limitless if I manage it correctly. The goal of obtaining money is the reason why I work and sacrifice time away from the people I love the most. I want to collect enough so that one day I will not need to be away from the people I love. 

Here are some steps that helped me to change my view of money and how I use it. I want to keep my money. I do not want to spend all this time working and not have anything to show for it. I must track where I spend my money and the amount. I need to make sure I am saving for emergencies and saving for myself in a fund that will never be touched until there is a time I can live off the interest alone. This takes discipline. To maintain this discipline, I have to keep my goals in mind and as I mentioned before weighing out each expenditure. 

I have learned that I love to give and share. When I have excess, I love to share it. Knowing this, I budget for giving, not just my tithing, but gifts as well. I find it interesting to note that most finance books and lessons talk about the value of charitable donations as a key to building wealth. I think it is not only the power and blessing from God, but also a practice of not holding on so tight. Think of it, when you are in a relationship and you are so possessive that the person can never get away from you, the first thing they will do when they can is get away from you because you are smothering them. Could money be the same way? When you value it but do not miserly, possessively keep it, you have a healthier relationship with money and it with you.

Money and the collection of it cannot be your driving force. If money is your master, you have no love or joy. My goal is to make and use my money to build a life where I can be with the people I love. They are my motivation.

So I go back to my ballet class in socks. I think my parents were on to something. They gave me the experience that I longed for. I was a dancer. They chose to keep and invest money instead of spending it all on things that in the long run are of little consequence. My mother often quoted a line that said, 'If you do not have a wolf at the door, hire one.' It is important to live beneath your means and shape your surplus into a force for good that will bless you and those you wish to serve in the future.

Leaders Wanted

 Someone once told me that you will either be just like or the opposite of your parents in different elements of life based on if you liked or did not like what you observed in your childhood. For instance, my mom never sorted laundry.  As a result, I had a lot of pink socks that were originally white and today I sort every load. My mother put service close to the top of her priority list. I continue that and have developed a firm personal testimony of service.

I am learning that my leadership style has also been influenced by the leaders and managers that I have had. I either really liked their style and try to incorporative it or I hated their leadership style and I try to be the opposite.

This first element of leadership in my opinion is trust. Often to establish trust, you have to be the first person to extend trust. As you do this, ideally, this will inspire trust in others. Communication is also a key to leadership, but honest communication needs a foundation of trust. For instance, if I am going to share my business process improvement ideas with my manager, I need to trust that he will listen, that he will care, and that he will give me honest feedback. I trust that we can work together to find solutions. I regularly rely on the mutual rust between my manager and I when I summon courage to give feedback back to my boss about an issue or I offer to take on a new assignment.

With this foundation of trust, leaders I admire provide all the resources they are capable of offering and then they allow me room to create. They then create time for me to return and report on how I am doing and what I need. They offer suggestions and mentors. They provide me with feedback that helps me to see how my project connects with others and clearly explain the needs I need to meet.

As entrepreneurs we need to be leaders. We need to find ways to establish trust. One of those ways is to share your idea! Give it to the universe. Everyone you meet is a potential customer, mentor, or investor. Trust them with your idea and ask for their feedback. Organize those ideas and have the courage to take action on them. Just as in a manager/employee setting, report back find a way of reporting back to the people that are interested in your idea. Report on your progress and gather more feedback. Let them know how valuable they are to you. You are building trust!

Allow yourself room to create. Mistakes are a necessary part of creation. Allow them to come and learn from them just as a good manager would do for their employees.

You cannot do everything for yourself. You need to find mentors or partners that can help to fill your gaps. A leader is not a one-person show. It takes a team. Doesn't that take a weight off? You do not need to carry it all. You can hire a consultant to do the accounting, or contract with a tech team to build your app. You are free to focus on what you were born to do and find others to do the rest and if you are creative, you can do this without losing equity in your company.

A good entrepreneur leader is a planner. It is fun to dream, but put your dream on paper or into Excel. Follow each business flow and find the gaps in your plan. If you find a gap, take courage, seek mentors and customers to help you understand the best way to fill those gaps.

If you truly have found a pain point that you can fill, you have limitless resources. You are the leader that will organize the resources of the universe to meet that need.

Habits for Growth

 I am a list person. I do not know if there is anything more satisfying than checking off a to-do list. In contrast, I am not sure there are more frustrating days than those where I work all day and do not accomplish or complete anything. It is easy for me to get lost in the to-dos and miss the value of being present or what I have accomplished for good while not attending to 'the list'. In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we study 7 Habits that if cultivated can lead to success. I will not go over all of the habits today, but I will highlight the ones that I need improving on and why.

Habit 3 is 'Put first things first'. This idea is illustrated by a table. In this table there are four categories, 1 and 2 on the top and 3 and 4 on the bottom. The top categories are 1. Important and Urgent and 2. Important and Non-Urgent. The bottom two are 3. Urgent But Not Important and 4. Not Urgent and Not Important.

On an average day, I could find myself buzzing around all of the categories. If you manage your time and resources well, you should be able to minimize and almost obliterate the tasks that fall into category 1 because you have managed the tasks when they were important and before they become urgent.

I think some of the most stressed people I know run around putting out fires all day. They are what the book refers to as problem minded. A more effective perspective is to be opportunity minded and plan your tasks and days preventatively. One way I can avoid being problem minded but be more opportunity minded is by managing expectations. In categories 3 and 4, those tasks might be there because they are placed there by other people, particularly the Not Important But Urgent Activities. Those could be placed there because other people see them as urgent, they have placed their emergencies on my plate due to their lack of planning. It is important for capable and busy people not to take on the jobs of rescuing everyone else.

In order to stay in category 2, the Important and Non-Urgent, we need to keep our personal and professional goals in mind. This will bring focus and help us prioritize our resources. Regardless of how talented we are, we all have a limit to resources, and we need to allocate them in accordance with our responsibilities and goals. 

Scheduling is another key element that helps to stay in category 2. If you know that you have time allocated to manage needs X, Y, and Z, you do not need to worry that you will not get to them. Regardless of the best schedules, unexpected events are going to happen. You will need to be adaptable all while maintaining the balance we talked about previously. Just because the order of events needs to shift, that does not mean that items will get ignored or be allowed to grow to urgent. Developing stronger skills in this habit will help me focus my limited resources where they can have the most impact.

One other habit I would like to develop more is Habit 5 Seek first to understand, then to be understood. I honestly thought that I had mastered this but I recently had an experience where I was shown that I missed the mark. In order to create the Win/Win success spoken of in Habit 4, you need to understand others. If you do not understand them you might be under the impression that you have created a Win/Win situation but you never fully understood their need from the start. You need to create a space where they feel safe to share, so you are getting the honest answers and information that you seek. To create the Win/Win you must invest time in asking questions to gain understanding. Furthermore, you need to listen and learn about the needs you are trying to meet long enough to know you are addressing the root issue. Otherwise, the root problem will remain, spawning other issues.

Regular self-evaluation is a key to improvement and success. As an entrepreneur, you are the engine that keeps the business moving forward. At this point in my progress, I can recognize that habits 2 and 5 are the ones I need to be working on and refining. This will change to other areas as time and experiences come. It is important to be in a state of humility to recognize the areas where we need improvement. I recommend taking time to evaluate mistakes and progress to see what lessons can be learned from them and where we can improve. Chances are, you will be able to trace them back to one of the 7 habits.

Perseverance

Although I am not a big Disney fan, when I think of perseverance, I think of two quotes from the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons. The two quotes are, "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new thing...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." The other is, "From failure, you learn, from success not so much."

I feel that both of these quotes are applicable to the perseverance that it takes to be an entrepreneur. I feel it is important to learn from history so we do not make the same mistakes but you can impede your forward progression if you are only looking back. You can apply this to your personal life and repentance as well. We need to learn from our mistakes, square our shoulders and look forward. With the lessons learned from the past, we can build new dreams for the future. 

With that being said, I am who I am today because of the mistakes I made yesterday. I am very thankful for the mistakes of yesterday. I would not like to relive them, yet I am grateful for them. Mistakes are a needed element of learning. As the Meet the Robinson's quote mentions, we do not learn that much from success.

When you find a mentor, they will be able to mentor you because they took paths that did not work. They know the dangers and pain first hand and can help guide you around them. In truth, the entrepreneurial journey is often a long one with more lessons learned than conquests. It is important as we embark on our business journey, that we do not look forward with rose colored glasses. Toss them aside and grab some tissues!

Yet, this is where the power of your passion comes in. If you have chosen something that you are passionate about and have already accepted that you will give your career to, then the long hours and the endless feedback and resulting pivots to your product will not wear you down because you are fueled by your passion. You are doing what you were born to do. That brings you joy despite the long hours or repeated pivots needed.

I will note that I have found some people like Magdalena Yesil have found that they love start-ups. They are born to create, develop and sell. Sometimes they are called serial entrepreneurs. Their paths still require healthy doses of perseverance.

Virtues that are within perseverance are humility, truth seeking, flexibility, listening, and prioritizing. I have also noticed that money is not a successful motivating element of perseverance. If that is what you are working for, you will not have what it takes. In speaking of perseverance, President James E Faust listed these opportunities and blessings of perseverance:

1. How to organize and use time wisely

2. The importance of hard work-that you reap what you sow

3. Leadership skills

4. People skills

5. The value of gospel study

6. Respect for authority

7.The importance of prayer

8. Humilty and dependence on the Lord

People that are not implementing the virtues above can be tempted to cut corners and turn to non-ethical choices to reach their goals. They want to skip the pain and quickly get to where they thing the greatest reward is. One thing that I have found in my study of entrepreneurship that fame and money is not the goal. The goal is following a calling, making a difference and sharing. 

Hard times and mistakes are going to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey. Embrace the mistakes and the feedback that your path will be peppered with. They are your steps to your goal. Keep dreaming and keep the true virtues of perseverance wrapped tightly around you and the people you select to mentor you on your journey. 

Live, Love, Learn, Share

When I was younger and dreaming of my adult years, I never thought I would see dishonesty from adults. I will be the first to admit that I was not the most honest of children, but I figured adults would have it all figured out. I was shocked to see dishonesty in the workplace as an adult. It is disgusting to see what some adults will do to get ahead. I am happy to say I learned my honesty lesson as a child and have been a very honest adult. 

A people watcher by nature, I find myself observing people in the workplace and making mental notes on who I can trust and who I cannot. Business transactions are trust exercises and filled with risks. It is important to surround yourself with co-workers, contractors, and vendors that you can depend on. Often it is not just your livelihood on the line, but countless others that will be hurt if you do not build your work on a firm ethical platform.

The corner office, the larger paycheck or shares, the recognition, are not worth getting there dishonestly. We need to identify our priorities and values. At the end of the day, who do you love, who have your blessed, what will you be remembered for, how do the people you interacted with feel about themselves?

Being an honest adult is not all I need. I need to be the type of person that builds, shares, encourages. The true movers and shakers are not doing so because they are motivated by money or fame. They do so because they are motivated by what they alone were born to do and they are building this life and purpose while being true to the values they cherish and want to be defined by. All of us need to regularly evaluate ourselves. What do we want to be know for? What do we value? What can we alone do? We each have a unique set of skills and experiences. I believe as we focus on them and look for ways to share that we will leave this world far better than we found it.

I was inspired by the Take Control of Your Life video. Wanting control of my life was a major motivating factor in going back to school. I will never again leave my life in the hands of fate. I am a big believer in the power of networking which is taught in the video. They also talked about the tri-quation that includes self-esteem, productivity, and event control. They form a triangle. It was explained that when any of those values are high, the others will be high, if any one is lower, the others will be lower too. I had never thought of that but I recognize it as true. 

Each time I learn a new concept, I instinctively want to share it with my children's. I want them to have every opportunity for success. I feel that I and my family members need to focus on these skills. To get there, we need to decide and create core values and prioritize them. I think it is interesting to note that we need to prioritize them. If they are imbalanced in their priority, we might be tempted to be dishonest adults as I mentioned earlier. One way we can guard against that is to in our evaluations of ourselves, evaluate our values and what priority we are placing on them. 

As a person of faith, I have found that it helps me to keep the eternal perspective in mind. After this life, will it matter if I had the corner office how big my paycheck was or if I was give recognition for my ideas? It will not, what will matter is did I do what I was sent to earth to do? Did I love, sincerely love and build the people in my reach? Did I lift and build others? How did they feel about themselves when I left them? Did I leave the world a better place. That is my goal. I want my love to echo through the spaces I have been for a long long time.