Week 14- Last Lecture

Find Your Calling, Your Niche, Your People, and a Grateful Heart!

Becoming an entrepreneur for the sake of becoming an entrepreneur is a path that many take, but I believe the more worthwhile path is becoming an entrepreneur because you simply must! You MUST do this because it’s your passion, it’s your calling, it’s your drive, it’s something that doesn’t exist and you must make it so! In order to devote so much of your time and energy to a new business you have to have a huge amount of excitement for it. Therefore it cannot be a business you are starting just for the sake of starting. You must believe in it.
      The best question I answered for myself from this class was “What do you love doing so much that you lose yourself in it?” It was from a wonderful book called Hero’s Journey; but the question really got me thinking. What do I love doing so much that I wouldn’t mind doing it for my whole life? That I would have the kind of desire necessary to start a business doing? And along that line, what do I want to be remembered for doing? You must ask yourself this question and then ask yourself how to make a career out of that.
     I also believe that a fair amount of successful entrepreneurs are successful simply because they found a niche that needed filling. Find your niche! Look at what you love doing and how readily available that is in the market. Find a place to plant your flag and set yourself apart from the competition! Look at it from different angles and find a way to bring your passion and skill set to new customers.
     Find the right people. Also from the book Hero’s Journey, I learned that the most important thing you can have on your journey is good people walking with you. You need the RIGHT people, not the available people. You need people with skill sets that you lack and that can help to push you in ways you can’t push yourself.
     And lastly, find a grateful heart. Gratitude is a skill that’s too often overlooked. In your quest to start a successful company, there will be heartache, there will be loss, and there will be pain. But if you choose to look at life and circumstance through the eyes of gratitude you will find that you have had much success and have the ability to carry on further. You can pick your head up and move forward knowing you have accomplished much.
     If you have those four things, you will be successful! You will find joy in your journey!

Week 13- Should I?

The overlapping circle chart on The Role of Entrepreneurship from the Harvard handout titled "Identifying and Exploiting the Right Entrepreneurial Opportunity… for You" was incredibly helpful to me. I think that should basically be tattooed on the forearms of any “Serial Entrepreneurs”. What an awesome chart to help you see if what you want is within reason.

     And it made me think about the case study this week and how Randy Haykin found something that was a perfect middle area. He found a niche in a market he knew a lot about, a service that wasn’t being offered, his talents worked well there and he enjoyed it, and it was economically feasible because of his severance package.
     Throughout this class as I have tried to apply what we are learning to my own small entrepreneurial idea, I have learned a lot. But that chart was helpful to see that it is a good place for me to apply my time and talents.

     I also really liked the stuff that Stan Christensen said in his video about not being too stressed about finding the perfect first job or defining yourself in the perfect career. I have long thought that those things evolve overtime organically and that people put way too much emphasis on it.

     And as I’ve mentioned many times before, I love all things gratitude so I loved reading President Monson’s talk again. That is one of my favorite talks and it keeps me grounded in the importance of gratitude.

Week 12- Giving Back

Gratitude
I loved the chapter on “Coming Home” and the emphasis they put on gratitude. They also talked about gratitude on in the first chapter and how it can help you on a long journey. I’ve talked before about gratitude and how it is important to me, but I always love reading about it.

Entrepreneurship and Consecration
My favorite parts of this were easily the part near the beginning when he said: “ Life and financial means have changed dramatically for my wife and me since that time, but I do not remember being any less happy in those day of extremely limited means that our current days of much greater abundance. One of the most powerful lesson’s I’ve ever learned about money is that beyond making ends meet, whether you have low or much of the world’s good will never be a fundamental determining factor of personal peace and happiness. But rather it is your attitude towards wealth that will be critical.
     I loved that because I truly believe that money doesn’t make you happy and this was a beautifully phrased life lesson that affirms that.

I also loved his story of the Chateaubriand Principle that his father called “The grand secret of success in business.”
     In Europe in the late 1700’s early 1800’s, Françpois-René de Chateaubriand’s students asked him to summarize history in one sentence, he said: In the days of service all things are founded; In the days of special privilege all things deteriorate; In the days of vanity they are destroyed.
     What an incredible lesson that more business people should regard as the grand secret!


What’s A Business For?
1 – I loved the analogy of the fine China and then once it’s broken it’s never the same as an example of trust in companies. It’s true that as customers, once burned, we find it hard to go back to a certain business. Rules and laws depend on trust and truth. If people aren’t’ willing to play by the rules and follow them, then the mutual respect dies down and we can never be successful.

2 – The purpose of a business in other words is not to make profit, full stop. It is to make a profit so that he business can do something more or better.

3 – I loved hen he said, “We should as charitable organizations do, measure success in terms of outcomes for others as well as for ourselves.” I think that would be such a powerful way to help other’s using business. Instead of just looking at the bottom line, look at the people you’ve helped.
     And I liked the examples provided about serving the poor and those who were neglected customers. These not only served those not being served, but also led to profitability in some cases. How can I help those we aren’t helping? Is a powerful question that all businesses should ask.