Week 14 (December 14, 2020)

I'm back for an encore!

If I had one final lecture to share with a group of students on what I have learned from this course, I would tell them to not only be prepared for their entrepreneurial journey but to also trust their intuition.  Striking out on this journey will be time-consuming at first with its share of ups and downs (hopefully more of the former and less of the latter).  Make Heavenly Father your partner and don't scrimp on your work/life balance.  Know you will fail.  And what do you do if you fail?  Give up?  No!  You learn from the experience and keep going.

My last bit of advice to someone wanting to begin the entrepreneur journey is to not make it all about money.  Of course, you need to be concerned with breaking even and making enough to cover your needs.  Eventually, though, you may be earning more than you can spend.  That is when it is a good time to consider giving back...to charities, your community, your church.  Invest in the future and offer a scholarship at the local high school for a budding entrepreneur.  If you have been lucky enough to be sustained by your passion, offer that opportunity to someone who is just like you when you started out. 

My words of advice that I would share in my last lecture would be to always be learning.  Ongoing learning helps you stay at least one step ahead and, in turn, stay prepared.  Ongoing learning can be invested into your business to enhance it or take it in a new direction.  Ongoing learning may make you aware of issues about your business that need attention.  Just like learning what would be best for your journey, you may also learn what is not best for your journey and avoid those pitfalls.  You can't lose when you're constantly learning!

Week 13 (December 7, 2020)

How is this even possible?  My final blog post for this course!

As Elder Thomas S. Monson said in his talk, "An Attitude of Gratitude," "if ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues."

I say "thank you" a lot, and, when I do say it, I fully mean it.  I have volunteers who give of their time to help at the museum; I thank each of them every time they are there.  I do not want them to ever think I take their sacrifice of time and skill for granted.  When someone does something around the house, I thank them.  I do this so they are recognized for helping out.  I thank our Heavenly Father daily, sometimes multiple times, because of all the good in my life.

Have you ever pulled through a fast-food drive-through and the person who took your money did not say 'thank you' or anything at all for that matter?  It could be they were at the end of their shift and worn out, it could be that they just do not care about the job, it could be they just forgot.  I thank them so that they know I recognized the work they are doing.  Later, I thank God for giving me the opportunity to go to that fast-food establishment and purchase food and make contact with someone who works there.  I may have been the only person that entire day to thank that employee.  For that, I am eternally thankful.

I carry this attitude with me when speaking to potential clients or visitors to the museum.  An attitude of gratitude must be front and center with whomever you interact.

I am thankful for this blog and for the chance to reflect on my thoughts about the course.  I am hoping that soon I will be launching my business and will share here my trials and tribulations.

Thank you for reading!

Week 12 (November 30, 2020)

This week, we studied an insightful article in the Harvard Business Review, "What's a Business For?" by Charles Handy (December 2002).  First of all, virtue and integrity are important to an economy because society relies on people’s savings to spur wealth.  If virtue and integrity, or truth and trust, are lost, people will save their money in a tin can buried in their backyard and not pump it into the economy.  Lying to people and breaking their trust will cause the economy to tank.   

According to Handy, the purpose of a business is “to make a profit so that it can do something more or better [for society].”  Today, intellectual property is the basis of many businesses, or the people doing the work and not investing their money.  Yet, the people doing the work to make the business profitable are not recognized as an asset.  For example, I worked for 20 years at a hospital as a medical transcriptionist (transcribing physicians’ dictation).  To the hospital, my wages were considered a cost to the hospital, not an asset.  Several times it was said that just anyone off the street could do my job without training, which turned out to not be true.  My co-workers who coded medical charts for insurance reimbursement, were considered an asset.   

I believe the solutions proposed by Handy of “do no harm” and developing “a new vision of the purpose of business” will work.  “Do no harm,” like the Hippocratic oath, covers sustainability of our planet and our humans.  This refers to investing some profits into taking care of earth so that we have a safe, viable place to continue to conduct business and investing some profits into taking care of our humans so that they can continue to own businesses or do the work for the businesses without working themselves to death.  As noted in Handy’s article, “Profit often comes from progress.”  Another solution of Handy’s that I feel is worthwhile is “developing a new vision of the purpose of business.”  The old vision of the purpose of business was it existed to make money for its shareholders.  The new vision must include the group of people who come together to do something collectively that they cannot do separately; all in that community called a “business” should share the wealth.