Last Lecture

To those of you who have an entrepreneurial heart and are getting ready to begin your own journey, I would offer 3 pieces of advice. First, choose something about which you are truly passionate. Second, find a mentor who will be able to offer advice along the way, who can be your cheerleader and sounding board, and who likes you for you rather than your money or possessions. Third, evaluate what matters most in your life and set clear rules and boundaries for how you will behave in your career and how you will manage your time.

Finding something about which you are truly passionate may take a long time, or you may already know exactly what you’d like to do. In my own experience, I’ve found that if I think something is beautiful, interesting, or amazing, someone else is likely to consider it so, as well. The key to having your passion become a successful business is figuring out if someone would be willing to pay you to make or do something beautiful, interesting or amazing.

After about a year of running my small, online craft shop, I was blessed to get some great advice from an old friend. She told me, “Caitlin, you aren’t charging enough for your products. Your time is worth much more than what you’re charging. Not everyone can do what you do, and you could probably increase your prices by 100% and still have enough customers who are willing to pay it.” She works in marketing, so she definitely knew what she was talking about. I decided to follow her advice and I raised all my prices. That year, I made almost twice as much as I had the year before, and I was busier than ever. I just needed someone to say that I could do it! Finding a mentor who knows and understands what makes you tick, who will tell you what you need to know, even if you don’t always want to hear it, and who will still be your friend if everything falls apart, will be one of the greatest moves you can make.

Finally, I hope you can understand that money is not the most important thing in your life. It may be family, education, service, friends, religion, or any other good thing, but just acquiring money will not bring true and lasting happiness. Figuring out what is most important to you will help to shape your entrepreneurial journey and define your success. Setting boundaries that you won’t cross in any circumstance will help you to avoid the slippery slope of small infractions that can lead to life-altering decisions. Balancing your time so that you have enough time to focus on what is most important will keep your creativity from growing stale, and will help you to perform better in all aspects of your life.

Hopefully these three pieces of advice will help you as you begin, so that you can find fulfillment along the way, and avoid major heartbreak.

Balance: Work & Life

Something that has gradually been grabbing my attention this semester in  my business class is the idea that our lives are centered on our priorities, and that it can be difficult to stay true to the most important priorities in the face of great success. Many of the stories and examples we've read this semester bring out the fact that some of the entrepreneurs are divorced, or have poor family relationships. I think that this can happen when we let business and success crowd out the more important things and people in our lives. My highest priorities are my family and my religion. The way that these will stay my priorities is by setting clear boundaries on what I will and won't do in my business. "I will not work on Sundays." This is something that I, thankfully, have great control over. I don't have to work on Sundays to support my family, but it can be tempting to just get on the computer, or even on my phone, to answer a customer's question. But breaking my rule in a small way could eventually lead to me completely disregarding the rule all-together. My life could go in many different directions, based simply upon the small choices that I make consistently each day. I choose to include my Heavenly Father in my day-to-day activities, and focus on spending quality time with my family. I hope I won’t ever let success in business crowd out these most important things.

Purpose of Business

One of the most interesting articles that I read this week was Microlending: Toward a Poverty-Free World by Muhammad Yunus. He explained how the way we think about economics has influenced the way we view people, classifying some people as entrepreneurs, while categorizing others as fit for only labor. He says, "Today we would live in a different kind of world if economics had started out with the premise that all human beings are potential entrepreneurs, which they are. All that an individual needs is an opportunity." I've seen this firsthand in the lives of my daughters. If I give them the supplies, they will use their creativity to make something unique. As I'm typing this, my 5-year-old is gathering all the jingle bells in the house and comparing the tones they make with the bells that are attached to our Christmas stockings. That may not seem like something important to most people, but I know that she is developing an ear for music, and comparing tones like that will help her to sing better and closer to the tunes she hears. I think that as humans, we tend to look for opportunities for growth and creativity all around us. Yunus' article demonstrated his faith in people as he created a lending institution that gave small loans to the poor, those who couldn't qualify under the normal credit qualifications. He gave opportunities to people to help them get started on their financial journey. Sometimes, all we need is a little encouragement and opportunity.
He continued his article with his belief that we could create a poverty-free world, if we want to. We went to the moon! The only reason we don't have a poverty-free world is because people haven't come together in order to solve the problem.

Thoughts on the article What's a Business For?

Virtue and integrity are so vital to the economy because everything tends to fall apart when lying and deceit are brought to light. When the public finds out about a scandal, something like embezzling, stock prices drop and spending comes to a screeching halt. When business leaders short-change their company in the short-term, it affects many people for many years.

The real justification for the existence of businesses is not just to make a profit. It is to make a profit so that the business can then go on to do something more, or something better. That something can be any number of things, from giving back in some way, bettering the lives of it's customers, or even creating a company culture in which people enjoy working.

I agreed with the idea of creating a shorter work week. I've seen many businesses that have meetings  simply to have meetings. Nothing productive is discussed or decided on, but a meeting was scheduled, so they have the meeting. If the work week was less hours, those hours would likely be more productive, because people would be happier for having more time with their families, or spending time on hobbies that they enjoy. If you knew you only had 6 hours at work each day, you would probably be more motivated to accomplish the necessary tasks, rather than filling extra hours with fluff, or just counting time.

Another idea from the article that I could see working well is having a good portion of the seats on the supervisory board of a business reserved for the employees, rather than only management positions. This would help to bridge the gap between what the company wants to have done, and what is actually being done by those who accomplish the work. Needs could be explained, and a better consensus could be reached by knowing the entire picture.