Leadership

This week in introduction to entrepreneurship we learned about disciple leadership. We learned about the reasons it is important to be trusted. Guy Kawasaki in aspects of building trust compared two types of people. The first type of people would be the bakers, while the second type would be the eaters. Eaters will eat as much pie as possible so no one else can have pie. They are in it to get as much for themselves. Bakers look to help others. They will bake more and make bigger pies to help people enjoy the pie. The baker tries to help everyone have a piece of pie. We should want to be bakers in our business. We should find the ways to help people all around us. 

We also learned about helping your business to be more successful is to hire nice people. Nice people will help other employees out. The team will work better together if they are nice.

Another thing I learned was about being a good leader. A good leader will take people to higher ground. A leader will cause things to happen. It is important to be uplifting to people around you. We don’t want to be the one who brings people down.

The last thing that I really found important and helpful was from the Jim Colins’s book, Good to Great. There are five statements that will help you be successful. The first one is good is the enemy of great. Don’t settle for good, when you can be great. The other thing is getting the right people on the bus. You need to find the right “nice” people to work with that will be willing to help others and work with a team peacefully. The third thing he said is that you need to possess these three characteristics: great product, believe you’re the best, and passion for your product. We will need all three together to be great.  

Overcoming Challenges

This week in class we learned about overcoming challenges. I have many challenges, but my greatest challenge in business is how exactly how to get started. Also, this week we had to start thinking about someone we can interview that is an entrepreneur that we can learn from. I have picked someone who is my friend who I believe I can learn a lot from.  I can overcome my challenge with research and interviewing a person who is a success at his entrepreneur business.

I also know that if I trust in the Lord, I will be guided in my adventures in life. I know that counseling with the Lord in all that I do, will help me know that I am on the right path. After counseling with the Lord, I need to trust myself that I am ready. The next step would be to jump into action and go for it.

With help from my family and friends supporting me I know I can succeed. I also will take the information I learn from my interview and decide how I should proceed. My supporting team can help by cheering me on. I think I can do great things with great people at my side helping me. They can also pass the word around about my business to help with the advertising. Family and friends could also chip in and help work my business while I am trying to get the business off the ground. I know they can be and will be a big support in helping and motivating me.

Together with the Lord, family, and friends I will be able to accomplish hard things. I will be able to believe in myself while taking these big steps and I will be able to start my business with confidence and I will succeed. 

7 Habits

This week I learned about 7 habits written in the book of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey. A habit that was mentioned first was to be productive I thought was most meaningful to me. I find that this is true in our everyday life. We need to be productive to get anything done. I start out the day with a list of items that need to be accomplished by the end of the day, and other items that need to be accomplished by the end of the week. By the end of the day, I feel that I truly have finished important tasks that make me feel like I was productive. There are days that I make a list and I don’t do anything on the list. I feel tired from watching TV and then I feel guilty that I didn’t accomplish what needed to be done. Sometimes, that is letting my family down and that makes me feel horrible.

The second habit was beginning with the end in sight. Followed by, put first things first as the third habit. The fourth habit was think win/win. The fifth is seek first to understand and then seek to be understood. Habit six was to synergize and the seventh habit was to sharpen the saw.

By doing all seven habits, I will have a life filled with passion and purpose. As I seek to do these habits in this order, I am preparing myself to meet the world in my business life. I have set goals and achieved them. I feel good and confident. While feeling confident, I am ready to enter the world with more goals. I trust myself to move forward and start making decisions that will affect me and my team. When I have accomplished all seven habits, I will have achieved personal effectiveness. Finding balance with these habits will help me succeed in life.

Self-Mastery

This week in Introduction to Entrepreneur class, a few things stood out to me. The first thing was more of a reminder, but we need to set goals and follow undeviating course to be able to achieve what we want to achieve. In a talk called Success is Gauged by Self Mastery by N. Eldon Tanner, he mentioned a story of someone being a hundred percenter. Being a hundred percenter was giving their all and always showing up. I think that setting goals and being a hundred percenter will help us accomplish to be self-mastered in any area we want.

The second thing would the importance of time. Time is valuable and shouldn’t be wasted. We don’t want to look back on our life and see that didn’t accomplish anything. Family time is also part of that category for me. Family is the center of Heavenly Father plan and should be centered with us too. If we set rules for how family time should be set, working around that should be possible. Family is important and should not be over looked.

The last thing I wanted to mention was loyalty of God. Jan Newman talked about this subject and how our religion or Lord time should not get crunched with being too busy with working. The Lord wants to help us succeed, but if we can’t be loyal in spending time serving the Lord, he will have hesitation on helping us. The Lord wants us to serve people around us and do our ministering in the church. The Lord isn’t looking at helping us make as much money as we can.

By setting goals, spending our time wisely, and being loyal to God, we can accomplish the thing we want. It is possible to fit everything in if we are self-disciplined. By following these three things we can get self-mastered in whatever area we want to work at.   

A Hero's Journey

One of the missions on this earth for me is to find my entrepreneur calling. My calling could be something that I’m good at and enjoy doing. To find it my calling, I can record in a journal all the things that make me happy over a course of two years. I look at that list and decide on something that I can do better than others and it makes me happy.

In the video, A Hero’s Journey, the comment was made that we need to keep asking questions to learn. Never stop asking, and never stop being the smartest person in the room. Learn to live a life of meaning. Have purpose in your life, by serving and helping people in your everyday life.

We should have role models and ask them questions. Ask them questions about their success and what they had to do to get to the place they are now. We ask them about the challenges, failure, and hardships they had to go through to get where they are now.

We can ask ourselves questions. The first question could be about how I contributed something meaningful during my time here on earth. To have a meaningful time, it would need to involve service. A calling that will be meaning will have service tangled with good works. The second question to ask we is if I was a good person. These are the guardrails that keep us on the straight and narrow path back to our Heavenly Father. We could write I will not statement and stick with them throughout our life. The third question we can ask ourselves Is who I loved and who loved me. We shouldn’t worry about things that don’t matter and remember that failure will make us stronger. The last question we should ask is the best one. Do I have courage to take the first step in my hero’s journey?

What are my Fears

This week in class we were asked to think about fears we might have in being an entrepreneur. If I pursue my calling with discipline, intentionality, and the help of travelers, what are the chances that you worst case scenario will really happen? My worst-case scenario is customers not liking what I bake and serve. No, I don’t think this scenario could really happen. I have been baking and serving treats for a long time to my friends, neighbors, church members, and family. I always get above and beyond complaints for my goodies. I have made recipes to mimic things we have eaten in Hawaii that have turned out great. As I look at my list of fears, the real core of my fear is, I don’t know what to do. Because I don’t know what to do, I feel that I will fail before I even start. I do worry about disappointing my husband and being judged by others. But as I think about these worries, they are worldly worries and I don’t need to worry about those things. I need to put my faith and trust in the Lord. If I do this, I will be OK. As I keep learning more about start ups and taking risk, I am feeling more confident about this adventure. My adventure of opening a bakery is something I have always wanted to do. I really like helping people and I really like baking. I know that with my families and friends support, I can start my own business. I believe in myself. As I start my journey and this fear pops into my mind while on my entrepreneurial journey, I will say a little prayer and remind myself of why I wanted to start this from the beginning. I want to do something I’m passionate about, good at, and serve people.

I will be Honest and Trustworthy

This week in my course, I learned about the honesty and business ethics. I read and study about how important it is to be honest in all your dealings. Satan will try to tempt us with many things, one being competition. I can’t be quick to fall into that temptation, just to get ahead of others in the same field as me. I also learned about being true blue through and through. This was a talk given by Sheri L Dew. In this talked she commented on the virtue we must follow is integrity. Integrity is having the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. This is important for anyone who is wanting to start their own business. Not only for the customers, but for the employees that will be working for me. I want to be known for having integrity, and I try now to set the best example I can of this. I set the example for others around me and most importantly, for my children. I want my children to be proud of me and to follow my example of this virtue. I live in a world with so much pressure, I need to be able to stand up for what I believe in. I need to be in the world but not of the world. This week I discussed with others the importance of how we need to keep our word or promise. When I say I will do something and commit to it, I will figure out a way to get that one thing done. The person I committed to is relying on me to keep my word. If I didn’t keep my word, why would anyone want to approach me and ask me for help. They would not know or trust me to get things done. I will stand up for things I believe in and be trustworthy.