Posts

Week # 14

If you had one final lecture to share with a group of students on what you have learned from this course, what would you share?   The biggest thing I learned from this course was to find your passion and purpose in life. The beautiful thing about the entrepreneurial spirit is you don’t always need to own a business to have the spirit. Entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to improve their industry and business. They are an asset to any employer, but before you can be an asset, you have to have passion and know your purpose.    What would be your last bit of advice to someone wanting to begin the entrepreneur journey?   You can’t focus too much on what outside influences say about your business idea.  If you have done your due diligence and discover there is a potential market for your skills, product or service then go move forward. Starting a business is hard enough without focusing on what others have to say. I have a few examples of this personally but one specific example from
Post a Comment
Read more

Week #13

Lessons Learned President Monson’s talk regarding gratitude was really important to me because I think having an attitude of gratitude is a great way to remove your problems from your life. If we think about the people he outlined being grateful for like mothers, fathers and teachers then we can also think about how they would look at us, and hopefully, we are acting in a way that they wouldn’t be disappointed in us. The things we are usually grateful for came at a sacrifice to them so to honor their sacrifice, we can live our best lives. I liked hearing about Randy's journey out of Harvard to eventually starting and running a VC group. I can't imagine how challenging it was to balance his family life and run a business that essentially nurtures young businesses into hopeful successful models like Yahoo or AOL. The thing that stuck out to me most about Randy's story though was eventually bringing on Carl Nichols to the business. I have had about 2 people I "worked"
Post a Comment
Read more

Week #12

Week # 12 Based on what you read in the first two pages (pages 3 and 4), why are virtue and integrity so vital to an economy? In the example of the stock market, we trust there is no inside trading or other shady activity going on in the organizations we are investing in. These companies also have a duty to run their businesses honestly because people depend on their success. We can't have an economy built on lies. According to Charles Handy, what is the “real justification” for the existence of businesses? To make a profit so the business can do something more or better What are two solutions proposed by Handy that you agree with? Why? Measuring success on outcomes for others. I think as a business you really should always be thinking about how what you do impacts the customer. When you stop doing that, you stop innovation and if all you focused on is money then you'll lose sight of what makes you relevant in the market. I like the idea of sharing dividends with employees. I h
Post a Comment
Read more

Week # 11

What is your attitude toward money? My attitude towards money has changed as my circumstances have changed. When I was young, Money was a means for me to have fun and more money usually meant more fun and more fun things. When I moved away from my house, It had less to do with fun and more to do with a necessity to keep the lights on and food in my mouth.  The biggest change in my attitude towards money happened when I got married and had kids. Once I was married it was "Our Money" and we have always had this attitude in our household, regardless of if one person was not working or not. I think in this way money became something sacred. We only spend it on what we need and plan it out because it's so vital to our family unit's existence. Expensive items are never purchased without approval from my spouse and we find most our our "fun money" goes towards our children's entertainment. If I had to put a word to our family's attitude of money, It's s
Post a Comment
Read more

Week #9

  Week #9 Lessons Learned In the Letter to Garcia, it said to execute means to take a task and do it without pushing back, making excuses, or finding a way to do it quickly and sloppily. It means a good attitude and a resolving “Yes, I will do that” attitude. This made me think of Nephi and his “go and do attitude”. James Ritchie also spoke about someone from the Book of Mormon this week and I really enjoyed the way he compared the characteristics exhibited by Captain Moroni to essentially a Level 4 leader (I don’t think he ever said level 4 specifically, but he hit all the points for sure).  I spent a lot of time this week contemplating the concepts from Good to Best but if I had to pick one principle that hit me the hardest it was getting the right people on the bus. I’ve been in organizations that hire traditionally and it almost always results in people just doing the bare minimum. I’ve also personally been the guy who’s invested in the success of the company and as a result was ab
Post a Comment
Read more

Week #8

  Lessons Learned The 5 whys had some really great advice for anyone with a future in management. I really liked the idea of approaching just a small part of the problem instead of potentially wasting resources on each whys. I would assume after enough time having to work on the issue, people will want to resolve it 100% so it no longer gums up the process. David Carrington said some really great stuff about his website that really resonated with me. David decided to not take advantage of Dale Earnhardt's family’s loss. I think it’s important to take a look at how we determine price sometimes and do what’s right over what we can get away with. I do this with my own business at large events by not increasing the costs of my goods beyond what I would normally sell them at and as a result, see more business than my competitors.  In “You can do anything” the speaker pointed out that Nephi’s brothers were always saying he couldn’t do the thing the lord needed him to do. There are enough
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 7

  Week #7 Lessons Learned 7 Habits of highly effective people has been on my list to read for a while now. It was nice to get a small taste of the lessons from that book in less than 10 pages. Although everything from this was good, the biggest thing I will take on my entrepreneurial journey is the idea of keeping a healthy surplus in my “emotional bank”. Every interaction we make has an effect on our balance. I think this concept pairs up well with another business concept of “moments of truth”, which is the idea that every interaction with a customer tells something about your business and yourself. If you smile at every customer and say thank you, they will likely think you are an honest person who wants their business, but if you share a bad personal attitude at one of those customer interactions, the moment of truth for that customer changes to something negative about you and your business. If we seek to build up our emotional bank we will have positive moments of truth and build
Post a Comment
Read more