Last Bit of Advice

Last Bit of Advice

                

            This post is meant for anything that wants to start their own business and become an entrepreneur.   Just starting your own business does not make you an entrepreneur.  Becoming an entrepreneur is a process that takes time and dedication.  We all have a little of it in us to start with but you must cultivate that desire and help it to grow into something more.  I have met a lot of people that start a business to make a quick buck and what I have learned from this class is that people like that will fail.  Being an entrepreneur means a lot of hard and sacrifice, and taking a huge amount of risk.  It doesn't mean that you need to take unnecessary risk, but there is a significant amount of risk involved or else everyone would do it!

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you must be doing what you love to do.  If you do not love what you are doing then stop!  Life is too short to waste your time in something that you do feel passionately about.  Find something that you are excited to do every for the rest of your life and figure out how to make money from it.  If it doesn't pay enough to support the life you want, then pick something else.

Lastly, being an entrepreneur is not enough. You must also be a manager and a technician at the same time.  I would highly recommend that you read a book called “E-Myth Revisited” if you want to learn what those three roles are. Good luck with your life and remember to thank daily, He that gave us everything we have in our lives, our Father in Heaven. 

Failure, Success and Finished

Failure, Success and Finished

The time has finally come to wrap up and finish this semester.  It was great learning and running my own business in the $100 dollar business challenge.  I didn't make as much money as I had hoped in the business but I was busy working full time in a new job and I was called to be on an executive board for my daughter's school so I think I did pretty good given my schedule. 

I enjoyed the readings and videos this week and what really stood out to me was the focus on failure.  The world teaches us that to fail is wrong when in fact to fail is to live.  My opinion is that a person only truly fails if they stop trying.  It is important though that we figure out what we can learn from our failures.  People assume that successful people have always had it easy and just stumbled upon success.  People that are successful are those that never give up and learn from their failures.  

I am excited for what the last few semesters I have left here and BYU Idaho have in store for me and I hope that all of the classes teach me as much as I have learned in this class. 

Wrapping Up!

Wrapping Up!

We are now coming to the end of the quarter and while I have enjoyed the $100 project, let's just say that I won't miss baking bars. :)  I was able to sell 26 bars this week! That puts me now at a total of money made at $124! It is good that I made more than the $100 at my costs of making the bars are .37 cents each and so I needed to be over $120 to make the minimum of $100 in net profit. 

This week has also been a fun one in reading about starting a family business and also business succession planning.  I think that most business owners fail to realize how complicated it is to transition a business to a child.  The sad part is that only a small number of businesses make to the 3rd and 4th generations! If properly planned though with a business succession plan, it gives the business a much longer life span.  

What I have realized in all of this studying about businesses, is that, you must be love whatever you do or it is not worth it.  Life is to short to play it "safe." We must not be stupid, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take calculated risks that can improve our lives and the lives around us. 

Franchises and Still Trying to Sell

Franchises and Still Trying to Sell

Alas another week have come and gone and the end of the quarter is nearing.  This week was a very informative one about franchises.  I have thought about them in the past as I have met quite a few owners of them and for the most part, they seem happy and wealthy.  I only wonder if they would be even wealthier if they had just invested the time and money into something else. I guess the grass could always be greener if you know where to look. I also enjoyed Elder Robbins’ talk about making a living and life and how our motivations should be pure and not solely to get gain.  In my industry it is easy to lose focus as I work with money all time and I see all the cool toys and fancy houses that people have and it is hard not to want what they have.  What I have to do is to take a step back and realize that they have been accumulating wealth their entire life and I have only been working at it for a decade compared to their 5 decades or more.  This week for the $100 challenge I was able to get people to try some of my products during the holidays and was able to sell 16 bars at $2.00 a bar. Now I am at $72 of the $100 I need and I only have a few weeks left! Wish me luck! 

Building a Business

Building a Business

Well folks, another week has come and gone way too quickly and this week was especially busy for me as I had to travel to California for a training on trusts for my work.  The training was great and actually gave me great information on how using trusts and business succession planning can help entrepreneurs a lot more than they know.  I enjoyed the reading about Burt's Bees this week and how it was built from the ground up by two people that society would have not bet on to succeed.  That tells me that anyone can become a successful entrepreneur if you are willing to put in the effort.  For my $100 business, I was unable to sell any addition products this week but did reach out to some potential buyers and I am hoping that something will pan out next week.  It is not easy working full time, taking four classes, being an executive board member in my daughter's school and trying to run a business and having a family all at the same time but I find it is fun for me and I love a challenge.  I wonder how bored I will be when I am finally done with all of my education plans. :)  Maybe there will be more non-profit boards I can sit on.  

Making Money and Managing Employees

Making Money and Managing Employees

Well, another week has come and gone, all too quickly I might add.  This week has been great in that I have learned a lot about starting a company and what is an effective way to do that.  I was really impressed by Jet Blue's story and also the article we read based on the results of over 1,400 companies.  I found out that the key to success is constantly doing the right things, all the time.  It sounds simple but if you think about it, you will see that a lot of companies will try and do many things but they do not always do the right things and that is why they may fail or not be as successful as others.  I hope that if I am ever in a capacity to lead a company, that I will be able to use what we have learned here to do a great job.  What is awesome though, is that I can use what I have learned in my profession and it will and has helped me immensely.  

This week for the $100 challenge I have my first order in!! It is for 20 bars at $2 a piece from a friend that will feed them to her family for breakfast as they are a busy household with not a lot of time to prepare a nutritious breakfast.  So that makes $40 of the $100 I need to make for this assignment done! Maybe I'll get the rest by end of next week. 

Leadership and Selling

This week has been a bit stressful but full of great opportunities to learn and grow.  The articles that I have read and videos I have watched have taught me a lot.  I have found that my style of leadership is the best, and that I would make a great leader.  I have also learned that even though I am not an actual "manager," I am a manager in that I have people that I work with and in that I manage how we work together, and that they look to me as a leader to learn from.  I am not as turned away as I used to be about managing people, so if the opportunity presents itself in the future, I will actually consider it now.  As for the $100 business, it has not been as easy I thought it would be.  For me, finding the time to market my product has been the most difficult but I think I may have found a great vendor to sell my product through.  They are friends of ours that own two convenience stores in the area.  I need to figure out what the state requires me to do in order to legally sell my product in their stores.  Hopefully it is not too much as I don't have a lot of time left.  I was hoping to make my first sale this week but so far, not yet.  Maybe next week. 

Organizing and Directing

Another week has come and gone and this week contained a lot of important information for running a business.  I really enjoyed reading in the E-Myth about how I can create and define the roles of the employees in a company so that anyone that comes into that role will only need to read a manual and have some training and will be able to perform the job exactly as the business needs them to.  I also enjoyed learning about how create more loyal employees and how to be more loyal myself to my employer.  There are many moving parts to running a business and it always seems as if there isn't enough time in the day to get it all done.  This week for my $100 business project, I decided that I wanted to test the products of my competition to see what they taste like and how they are marketing their product.  I discovered that there really is a gap in market for a really great tasting breakfast bar, as even the really expensive bars still tasted like cardboard.  With this knowledge, I will be able to speak more confidently to prospective customers about the quality of my product and how they will not be disappointed.  I have also decided, based on the readings, that I will offer new customers a money back guarantee that if they do not like the product, I will refund all of their money. I think with this knowledge I will be able to be much more successful. Next week I plan on making my first sales! Wish me luck! 

Getting Started and No One Really Knows

Getting Started and No One Really Knows 

This week has been an interesting one in that I shot my first video for our elevator pitch.  What took the most time was figuring out how to get it uploaded. :)  With my $100 business, I have purchased most of what I need and I have convinced my wife to help make the breakfast bars which will save me a lot of time.  I have been called to be on the executive board of my daughter's school and so I really don't have a lot of extra time in the week between work school and family, but I will still make it work. In the readings this week, I really enjoyed reading about the purple cow as I have always personally felt that it is the best way to attract new clients.  Standing out and being different is what gets noticed and appreciated by the consumers.  I also enjoyed reading in the E-Myth book about the writer's life and how he didn't really figure what he wanted to do with his life until he hit about 40.  In his search for himself, he was able to uncover a under served market, entrepreneurs. I too have noticed this in a lot of the business owners that I meet; they know how to do the technical side of their business but really don't know how to run a business and keep it running for an extended period of time.  Occasionally I run across business owners that have failed enough times to know what not to do and they are usually the most successful ones.  I don't have any plans to leave my job but at least I am learning more about running a business so that if I do, at least I won't be doing it blindly. 

Funding and Managing Money

So here I am at the end of the another week of class.  This week has been about getting funding and being able to manage what we have.  Having worked in the financial industry for a while now, this week was more of a refresher to what I have learned in the past.  I did enjoy reading in the book about the way to "franchise" our business.  Which means that in order to make our business run smoothly, we should think of it as a product and determine what that product needs to have in it in order to work.  I also enjoyed reading about how we are stewards of our possessions and we are not to waste what our Father in Heaven has given us.  A thing that I want to remember about running a business is that a lot of business run a "boot strap" style with their finances, meaning that they do not spend a lot on unnecessary things even if they have millions of dollars. Just because we have the money doesn't mean we need to spend it.   This week I also decided to personally fund my $100 start-up as I don't really need much to start it as I have most of the ingredients that I will need in my pantry.  

Business Plans and Reading

Another week has gone and I have continued to learn so much in this class.  I can't tell you how amazing it is to actually learn things that I know will help me in life!  This week I prepared my business plan for the $100 Challenge and the Big Business Plan and I am very excited for it! I found a great recipe that I will be able to improve on that will taste amazing and should sell very well.  I need to do more research into getting a food handling permit, as I don't think I need one as this is for a class, but I'd better check to be safe as I do not want to get into any trouble with the state.  I have also really enjoyed reading the E-Myth book and I have also learned so much from it.  I have been in the financial industry for over 10 years now and I can look back and see the different clients I have worked with and see what stages they were in their businesses.  There is so much more to running a business than I had imagined, and I did not realize the multiple personalities that an entrepreneur needs to have.  I don't have any plans to start my own business as a way of supporting my family anytime soon, but the things I am learning will help me to be a better advisor to my clients. 

See you next week! 

Starting a Business - Not that easy

This week has been a bit of a crazy week for me in that I am leaving my old job and will be starting a new one next week.  The reason I bring it up is that in the new job, I will have the ability to run it like my own business, without having to use my own money, so it will be exciting and a lot less stressful than starting a business from scratch like some of the people we have been reading about this week in class.  I really enjoyed studying the Harvard Manage Mentor tool and learning more about the innovative process, finance, marketing and leadership.  It surprised me how much I already know, having been in the finance industry for 10 years now.  

Another thing I have been thinking of this week is the $100 challenge.  At least I was able to narrow it down to 5 different options.  The one that I think will be the best for me, given my schedule, will be to make a breakfast bar that is not meant for body builders or someone trying to lose weight. Just for a regular office worker that wants a quick good tasting breakfast bar that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.  I am a good cook but I need to create something from scratch and I am only used to reading recipes, so this should be fun. If you have any suggestions, I am open! Wish me luck! 

Art of War and Starting a Business

This week in class, I had the pleasure of reading blogs that I would not normally read and more importantly was able to read an amazing book, The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  What was amazing about the book, is that it was written by a general in regards to actual war, but its application to the business world is palpable.  I wish that many people that I have worked for in the past had read and understood what I did in reading this book.  Maybe I would still work for them if they did.  It also gave me a desire to lead a team myself, as it gives you basically everything you need to know to be a good manager.   

I have always been averse to holding a managerial role in my profession, as being a producer, I actually make more with my bonuses than my managers.  After reading this book, I may not turn down an opportunity for management, or I could also use what I have learned in managing the people I work with.  I also work on large complicated deals and some of the things I learned from this book will help me to close them. 

In regards to the $100 challenge, I feel that it will be the most difficult thing I have yet to encounter in my years of schooling.  I would not consider myself someone imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit, so coming up with a business idea has proven to be illusive.  Fortunately, in my profession almost half of my clients are entrepreneurs, so I will ask a few of them for some advice on this matter.  I cannot start a business with anything in relation to finance, which is what I am really good at, as my employer would not allow it, even for school.  It is off to the drawing board for me, and hopefully something will come up that will make a lot of money as I want to win the competition.