Final Lecture

My four key takeaways from this year and how you should apply them in your life:

1. Find your passion. Life can be difficult at times. When life gets tough we tend to only focus on what is most important to us, and naturally so. If there is no passion in what your are doing when things get difficult it is that much harder to continue down your path. Not only that but why spend a lifetime doing something you may not even like? If you have passion in your work then you will find fulfillment in everything you do. Having passion can sometimes lead to excess Which is lead into my next takeaway.

2. Know your limits. After you have found your passion you should think about what your limits are. How far are you willing to go to achieve success? Everyone is unique and willing to tolerate different things. Some people can not stand working over 50 hours per week while others happily embrace it. Honesty and integrity in business can be difficult especially when the rewards could be quite large. However, knowing your limits and what you are willing to do will help keep you on the straight and narrow. Once you have set your standards you are prepared for the next part.

3. Find your balance. Similar to knowing your limits, you need to find your balance. As time goes on you may begin to tweak your balance and discover more about yourself. Some people have families, some have school and most have personal lives outside of business. This balance is not just a personal decision. This balance should be decided with everyone effected by your decisions and how you will spend your time. With your balance established you're ready for my next step.

4. Don't give up. It's true that life beats you up sometimes. Businesses fail and people can disappoint you. Sometimes we need to know when to walk away. That is okay. Do not quit though. Reset and and start making new plans. Fix mistakes made and move forward once again. We can learn a lot in failure about ourselves and in business. We do not learn anything if we choose to give up.

In summary this is not an exhaustive list of how to govern your life and make decisions. It is however a useful tool to help make some of the harder decisions you will face in your life as an entrepreneur.

Reflections and a New Life

Wow? What a journey it has been. This class and its experiences can be summed up in a recent experience I had with my wife. We were on vacation for our 5th wedding anniversary and during our drive my wife brought up an interesting story. Her friend's child had been attending a Lutheran middle school because of its small class sizes. As part of the school curriculum they have a small religious hour. During that hour apparently some very questionable and ignorant things were taught about other religions. Being of a separate  faith it made him uncomfortable. This is where the entrepreneurial seed was planted in my wife's brain. What if there was a religious school that afforded all the benefits of small class sizes and curriculum control but was operated under various religions and not just one. The school could provide a cultural, religious and educational experience for all the kids to benefit. We must have talked for over an hour and began to work out in our heads about how you could go about creating such a business/school. It was also interesting because I have never seen my wife so passionate about something and it clearly was something she believed in. That's the spark, that's the entrepreneurial spirit taking hold. Once we have that desire we can begin our journey and follow the many steps laid out in this course.

What Would I Do?

The ending of a Field Guide to the Hero’s Journey really got me thinking a lot. What would I choose to do today? If all my goals had been accomplished what would I choose today? That was just such an interesting question. I choose to believe that if I had completed everything I had set out to accomplish that I would not be satisfied doing nothing. I would be searching for that next step that next thing to accomplish. I feel like it is something that just does not stop. If I am being honest and I had nothing left to accomplish I would set out to charity work. I would look for fulfillment in helping others. I could set newer and more purposeful goals to help people. I still do charitable things now but the ability to completely focus my efforts on charity and helping others would be really cool. We often learn and talk about how we have to balance our lives between family, work and other interests. That balance seems like it would be so much easier if I could take work out of that equation because charity work and family time can even go hand in hand.

• Based on what you read in the first two pages (pages 3 and 4), why are virtue and integrity so vital to an economy?

Reading the beginning of the article reminded me of my own experiences with the “free market”. When I say free market what I mean is the game Monopoly. The part where the author talked about the erosion of trust reminded me of playing the game with my older brother. We would play and I would always lose. As I got older I realized it was because he always cheated. Since I figured it all out I had no more desire to play the game with him anymore. So virtue and integrity are so vital because if people stop playing by the rules then no one will want to participate anymore.

• According to Charles Handy, what is the “real justification” for the existence of businesses?

The real justification for the existence of business is to accomplish something more. It isn’t just for making money and turning profits. They make money so they can do more things or do better things.

• What are two solutions proposed by Handy that you agree with? Why?

I think one of his general ideas I agree with was that companies should behave more democratically. Employees should have more control over a company than its shareholders do.

I also liked the idea of business owners and operators taking some sort of oath. I believe a culture within business which has a creed would help the community self police itself. Sure not everyone will buy in but I think enough people will that it could make at least a small difference.

Money and the Pursuit of Happiness

Work and life balance is a constant struggle faced with my family. My wife has retained a successful career despite being a loving mother to two children and serving faithfully in all her church callings. This does not come at a small cost to her. There are many times where it seems she is overworked and over stressed. At these times I always encourage her to try to take a step back and evaluate what her priorities are and if she is fulfilled in the activities she is pursuing. I as well face similar issues. Working full-time while completing school and still trying find time for my daughters often leaves me exasperated. When I choose to start a business I’m not expecting this to change much. Learning this week’s material forced me into an introspective mood. More questions than answers came to my mind. This did not upset me though, like it normally would. It is good for me to think more about what I expect out of my business and what plans I should make with my wife when life begins to change.

Balance is not the only struggle we and my wife discuss. We often discuss how money plays a role in our lives and how comfortable we want to live. We have been very blessed so far in life to be able to purchase a home and enjoy some amenities. With the thoughts of starting a business and growing a family we discuss what would be the best future plan. Are we willing to sacrifice a few years of comfort to hopefully have a bigger payoff down the line and feel more fulfilled in our lives?

On a more playful note my wife and I always compare money and our happiness in the terms of jet skis. It seems silly, I know, but it is meaningful for me and my wife. In our early stages of dating we went on a lake trip with some friends. On this trip we got to ride jet skis and we both agreed it was some of the most fun we have ever had. Now, when we get our tithing statement back or put money away in savings I say, “Look at all that money it could get us a nice jet ski”. We both know we aren’t at a point in life where buying one is a smart idea but that doesn’t stop us from thinking about how happy we will be when we can afford such a luxury.

Life's Forks in the Road

I have had a chance to reflect this week about my interview with my entrepreneur and what goals I am setting in my life. I may have mentioned this in previous posts but I am at a very peculiar crossroads in life. I am nearing the end of my academic journey and have been steadily employed at my current position for over five years. There is little overlap between what I am studying, business management, and my current job, emergency medical technician. I have known for some time that I am not interested in continuing in my current position. However, it affords me the opportunity to obtain my education while also providing for my family. Thinking about the brave steps entrepreneurs face in starting their own businesses made me question if I have that same courage to forge my own path.

Ultimately I believe I do. I have come to the situation where I have three possible paths laid out before me. Option one is to pursue more education and hope for an even higher paying job upon graduation. This option would mean my withdrawal from current employment and a full time commitment to school. Option two involves me finishing my current slate of classes and transferring within my company or finding work elsewhere upon the completion of school. This option gives is the least stressful because it involves very little change until a new job is acquired. The third option is to strike it out on my own. I have formulated a few business ideas but still need to iron out the business plans for each. This option would allow me to slowly begin my business while I work at my current job and then once slightly more established leave my current employer. This one is scary because it is the most foreign to me.

In my interview it gave me hope and anxiety simultaneously. Hope because I know people can do it, I can do it. Anxiety because failure can be really hard sometimes and I am not sure I am ready for it. I hope to follow the advice in the “Think Big” video where Taylor Richards mentioned just being a normal guy and not anything special. His encouragement pushes me into the more hopeful side over the anxiety.

Refusing to Change

I was pulled in when Carly Fiorina talked about Dell's unwillingness to change. She talked about HP's ability to mimic or copy every aspect of their business structure but what ultimately led to their downfall was lack of innovation and change. I found it oddly applicable to my current workplace and personal issues. I work in EMS where there are a lot of old dogs. That saying of you can't teach and old dogs new tricks, well that care from somewhere. What's amazing about the medical field is that it is always changing. What was best just a few years ago may have been replaced by a new method, new technology or new medication. However, a lot of people I work with have trouble adjusting to change, some changes are small, and some are big. Although some changes do not affect the outcome with patients, some ultimately do. That is why I view a refusal to change as such a big deal. Your stubbornness could literally affect the rest of someone's life. 

I guess that brings me to a question I have had throughout my life. How to you keep yourself open minded enough and not be so stubborn? What happens in life that hardens people and makes them so stubborn? My major take away is having multiple viewpoints. You don’t have to believe them all but you do have to understand more than just one view point if you want to be able to change and innovate.

A Funny Anecdote

Listening to Eric Ries discuss his "5 Why's" proportional investment program made me remember a funny story about my father. He was always responsible for setting up the family computer. I was still pretty young at this stage in life an so my trouble shooting skills were non existent. All I knew at the time was simply the computer worked or it didn't work. So whenever I would encounter a problem with the computer I would go to my father and say, "the computer is broken". He would roll his eyes and say back, "the computer is not broken". Every time I went to him I was sure that time the computer was actually not working. Pretty much every time he would come over to the computer sit down and in under a minute say, "the computer is working just fine". Man it was frustrating. In my mind the error was always the computers fault. To my father the error probably always looked like my fault.

That was probably a good proportional investment moment for my father. He could have taught me how to troubleshoot any issues I was having instead of coming to him every time the computer would freeze up or something went wrong. I'm not knocking him, he was a great and patient man, but he did miss an opportunity to teach me how to fix the problem. If he had taken the ten to fifteen minutes to teach me once he could have avoided the thirty or forty times I came to him to "fix the computer". In my life I hope I can recognize the opportunity to find the "why" and then invest into fixing the problem.