Last Lecture

This week in class we are asked to give our last lecture.  I feel the last lecture is supposed to be something moving or profound.  I'm not sure I have that just yet at least not in an entrepreneurial sense.  This last lecture seems a bit overwhelming so I am going to try to just speak (or type) from my heart.  Through the things we have learned in class and the lessons I have learned in my life as a budding entrepreneur, there are a few things that I believe will help you be successful. 

The first and most important lesson for myself, and I hope for others, especially Christians, is to have faith and pray.  So often people go through life floundering along without any direction.  However, we have the knowledge that we can pray to our Heavenly Father and receive answers to our prayers. Heavenly Father can give us inspiration and guide us in the direction we should go.  Most people believe in chance or luck, but I do not think it is just chance or luck, I think most of the time it is our Heavenly Father giving us direction (even to those that do not believe or acknowledge him), possibly even pushing us into the situations or the path that we need to move forward on our journey.   My favorite scripture is Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."  If we are able to recognize his hand in our lives, trust his inspiration, and not be stubborn; thinking we know everything, he will let us know the way we should go.  He will "direct thy paths" to help us go where we will learn what we need to learn, experience what we need to experience and meet the people we need to meet so we can be successful in our lives.

The next thing is to get going on that path as early as possible and find any way to make it work.  My husband and I wanted to begin in the rental property business many years ago.  We took a couple of courses and had a couple of different opportunities, but they fell through.  One in particular, was a duplex.  It was perfect, two incomes for one mortgage, in a decent area.  The seller was asking $95,000 for it.  Unfortunately, the place did not appraise for $95k and we were unable to get funding for it. Thinking back on the situation now, I do have regrets, I wish we would have pushed through and found a way to come up with the money or negotiate the price so we could get the duplex we really wanted.  At this point, it would have been paid off and bringing in income all this time.  I think the important thing here is to find your calling and take the steps to get you there as quickly as possible. People get sidetracked by J-O-Bs (Just Over Broke) and just punch the clock to make a paycheck, but don't actually start on their stepping stones to get them to their star.

The third thing I would suggest is to get an education.  This does not necessarily have to be in the classroom.  It could be life experiences.  It could be working with a mentor.  It could be reading books from the library in your chosen field.  Get as much experience and education as you can while you are young, but continue to learn throughout your life.  Don't stop learning.  Surround yourself with people smarter than you who are willing to impart their knowledge to you.  Be hungry for new knowledge and skills.

Forth, you must be willing to work hard.  More and more young people want to sit back and have everything handed to them.  What happens at my job is everyone stretches out their assignments for the whole day instead of getting it done and asking what else you can learn or help with.  Put in an honest full day's work.  Those that work hard tend to be the ones that truly succeed, not just at work, but at life in general.

Lastly, never give up.  Don't let someone tell you that you can't.  If you think you can, keep trying, keep going and find another way until you find what works.  No one knows your drive or passion.  I am sure many people told Henry Ford he could never made a "horseless carriage", but he did.  I am sure others told Thomas Edison that light could not be produced without fire, but he kept trying until he invented the light bulb.  We have not lost until we quit.  As the saying goes, "where there is a will, there is a way."  Just make sure it is your will and way you are following.  You can do it!

No one's path is the same, but we all have one.  We have a calling that we should be fulfilling.  If we can find that calling and go after it, we will have an enjoyable life.  

Overwhelmed but Grateful

This week we did not have a specific topic we were supposed to write on, so I wanted to share what has happened and how I can apply the lessons from this week to it.

I feel like I have a ton of things on my plate and am feeling a little overwhelmed.  This week in addition to school and work, I have been at the church for three days straight working on decorating for the church Christmas party (6pm-11:30pm), then having the actual Christmas party (6pm-9:30pm), and today to make the ornaments that we will be giving out at the Relief Society (women's organization for my church) Christmas party (10am-1pm).  I still have Christmas decorations to be set up at home.  Luckily most of my gifts are bought, but they still need to be wrapped.  I try to get things done early because I get overwhelmed easily and then the holiday becomes one of stress instead of enjoyment.  However, this week has been very overwhelming and frustrating to an extent. The hours spent at the church have been daunting and I come home exhausted and in pain.  I know part of the pain is my own fault because of my weight and my other health issues.  But some of it has to do with we always feel like things need to be grandiose and people always think they can do more things than they can in the time they have.  Plus people don't always complete the things they should when they should (or show up on time).  So for instance, the leaders decided they were going to do this decoration that required crepe paper to be taped to a hula hoop. The understanding was that it was going to be done prior to the night so we just had to hang the hula hoop and then tape the ends to the walls.  Well, even though I told the person doing it, if they needed help to let me know, she told me she would have it done Wednesday night.  I told her again if she didn't to let me know and I could do it during the day on Thursday so it would be ready for Thursday night.  She didn't and it wasn't. So we spent at least 15+ minutes putting it together with three of us doing it.  Not to mention the person bringing it was already 45 minutes late to set up.  So now it was almost 7pm when we actually got started decorating.  Not to mention the boxes that were put together the night of instead of having them done at home while people were sitting around watching TV.  All things that would have shortened the duration of time spent the night of.

While the event turned out great and the decorations were beautiful, sometimes I think we try to do too much and then people get burned out.  So when it is no longer their assignment they don't want to help because they have already put all the time in previously.  And so then others get burned out.

When I returned home today I told my family we had to get our decorations done and they grumbled.  So this year we decided to just put out the things we really like (our trees, our stockings, our hearth decorations, the nativity set, the dining table center piece and some Christmas books, oh and a the two strands of lights on the house, pretty much everything else stayed put away).  The other things I love seeing, but it was too exhausting for me this year.  Maybe I am getting tired out too easily in my older years, but the time was not worth the reward for me.

In all the hubbaballoo of the season and despite the complaining I am currently doing, I really am grateful for this time of year.  I love the music, the decorations, the food and activities.  I love finding the perfect gift for each person.  But most of all I am grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ, who came to this earth as a little babe so many years ago, in such humble circumstances.  He gave his life for me and for all of us, that we may return to live with our Heavenly Father.  I am grateful that we have this holiday season to remember Him and his love for each of us.  Each year we try to do things to remind us of the reason for the season, going to the nativity display, going on a "Walk Through Bethlehem", attending church, spending time with family and friends. These things remind me that the craziness of the season is not what it is about, but the love we share with others and with our Savior.  I am grateful to experience it all.

What's a Business For?

This week we read and watched videos about using our businesses for good.  They spoke about how especially as entrepreneurs we have the opportunity to help others, whether it is through actual charitable contributions or by our business providing a service to those around us.  I believe that the Lord will help us with our businesses, especially if we are using it as a tool to make the lives of others better.

Charles Handy, the author of “What’s a Business For,” says that the “markets rely on rules and laws, but those rules and laws in turn depend on truth and trust.”  If a company cannot be trusted that they are following the rules, then no one will want to do business with that company.  If the market as a whole becomes untrustworthy, then people will no longer want to invest in companies, will not purchase goods from untruthful companies, will not put their money in banks, will not request loans and the whole market will collapse.  Just as the Enron and WorldCom scandals shed light on the scandalous accounting practice of inflating numbers and creating off balance sheet accounts, the world lost trust in the accounting world and their audits that are supposed to protect consumers and shareholders.  Handy says, “Trust, too, is fragile. Like a piece of china, once cracked it is never quite the same.” If no one can be trusted, then who will we do business with?  Who will want to do business with us if we follow unfair and untrustworthy practices?  No one.

According to Charles Handy, the “real justification” for the existence of a business is to “do something more or better”.  Meaning, that a business is not just here to make money for the owner or shareholders, but to do something meaningful with the business.  This could be creating and producing a new gadget that will make people’s lives better.  Or it could mean to provide a service for the people in a community.  What is the vision or drive a company has?  If it is just to make money, then that is not much justification for a business.  But if it is to make a difference, then that is the real justification.

One of the solutions mentioned by Mr. Handy that, I believe, is a large key to a successful society and economy is the “contribution ethic”.  It piggy backs off his “real justification” for business, to make something more or better.  Basically, that you are contributing to society through your business.  This contribution can be in any form, but it is providing that merely to make things better and not for profit, the profit just comes as a result of truly following a vision or passion.

Another solution Mr. Handy brings up is the sense of community within an organization.  I work at a large credit union that has always been within the top 15 largest credit unions in the country for over 20 years.  When I first started, I truly felt a sense of family and community.  I felt like we were all in this together to help the members and in fact, our internal slogan was “Be the Member.”  There were and still are many people that have been here for 30+ years.  Over the last 5 years or so, it seems that we have lost our vision a little bit.  It feels that in our desire to help more people we are no longer helping the one.  We don’t know our members personally and we seem to be quick to make blanket decisions and implementations to avoid risk but aren’t willing to look at how this might affect the one person.  As I said, I felt like we were a family 17 years ago when I started, but now, it seems everyone is out for themselves, we no longer work as a team or community.  Maybe it is just within my department or maybe it is the younger generations, but previously people would work to get their own assignments done so they could help out the others.  But lately, it seems that people want to drag their work out for all 8 hours when it could be completed in 5 or 6.  The sense of family is lost (or maybe that is how families now work).  But I don’t see the changes in society as a good thing, because I know it is not just in my own company, but in others. I see us going farther away from a community mentality to a “me mentality”.  It’s not just in business, but it is in our actual communities.  How often do people get together to have “a barn raising” or sit and talk on their porches?  When was the last time you even heard about a community dance or picnic?  We are losing our sense of togetherness to an individualistic lifestyle.  As these things happen, we lose what truly makes people great, their love and charity.  This cannot be just a business mind set, but a life mind set.  If we could learn to love and serve others more fully, the community mentality could return and make things better in all areas of our lives.  I know that maybe that is not possible in the world we now live, but maybe at some point people will wake up and realize we are all brothers and sisters and what truly matters in life is not how much money we can make for ourselves, but who we love and help along the way.

Attitude on Money

This week we were asked to read talks and watch stories about money and happiness.  Many of the presenters had differing opinions on how it was achieved, but the majority of them did agree that money does not buy happiness unless you are using it to help others.

One of the talks was called, "Attitude on Money” by Stephen W. Gibson.  I felt he had two main points, first, that we all have a distorted view of money, whether it is distorted by our own thoughts or those around us.  It could be as minimally distorted as people should pay tithing to as large as the only way to get to heaven is to give all of our money away.  Mr. Gibson gave an example of glasses and how they distort the way things are seen even though that distortion makes what you see as perfectly clear, to someone else it is completely blurry.  But either way it is a distortion of what is really there.  His other, more important, point, in my opinion, is that money can be used for good or evil, but money itself is not evil.  We can spend time earning a lot of money.  But what is important is what we do with that money, do we use it for ourselves to buy large mansions or do we use it for others to build schools or for others to buy bombs?  One is good for just me, while the other is good for others and the last one is technically bad for all.  

We were asked to answer the following questions:

• What is your attitude toward money?
• Honestly, mine is a love/hate relationship.  I have always said that.  I need it, so I want to get enough for my needs.  Plus I really do want to do things or use the money in a way to help others.  But I find myself obsessing over it sometimes.  Not necessarily on how to get more, well some of that, mostly because I really want to pay off the two credit cards that we currently have, so I am always trying to think of ways we can cut back on costs or increase income so we can use the money to pay off our debt.  I don't like it having control over me. I want to be able to control it a lot better.  I am glad we are following the Dave Ramsey way of budgeting and working on paying things off.  This will really help us now and in the long run to be in control of our money instead of letting it control us.
• How can your view of money affect the way you live?
• I believe that your view dictates how you use money and in turn how you live. If you believe that it is there to help you and others you come in contact with, then you are more willing to live your life giving. However, if you believe that money is there to help you buy the bigger house, the newest car, or the next great gadget, then you will be obsessed with earning more to spend more.
• What rules are recommended for prospering?
• Here is what Mr. Gibson suggests:
• Rule 1. Seek the Lord and have hope in him 
• Rule 2. Keep the commandments, that includes the temporal ones, tithing and fast offerings. 
• Rule 3. Think about money and plan how you can become self-reliant. 
• Rule 4. Take advantage of chances for learning so you will not be ignorant of these matters. Education, as President Hinckley has taught us, is the Key to Opportunity. 
• Rule 5. Learn the laws upon which the blessings of wealth are predicated. 
• Rule 6. Do not send away the naked, the hungry, the thirsty or the sick or those who are held captive. 
• I really like these rules.  I think that as we focus on the Lord and what he wants us to do and how he wants us to handle money; we will do the right thing.  Ultimately, we are here to do our best and return to live with our Heavenly Father.  If we cannot say that we have loved others, given service in whatever way is required and followed the commandments of the Lord, then, I feel, we will have wasted our life.

Entrepreneur Interview

The past couple of weeks we have had an assignment to seek out and interview an entrepreneur.  As soon as I saw we were given this assignment I knew immediately who I wanted to interview.  There is an entrepreneur in my old ward who is a rental property business owner.  I wanted to interview her in the past when I was given this assignment, but it never worked out.  I knew this was the perfect opportunity.

I set up an appointment and went over to her house on Friday, November 11.  I did not feel like I had to ask her the questions in order that I had on my sheet as I felt the conversation flowed naturally and she would address the question sometimes before I even got to it.  

Here are the takeaways I got from our interview:

1. Start as early as possible, but only go as fast or as slow as you can handle
• The younger you can start in your business the better. Don’t wait too long because sometimes it takes several years to truly see the fruits of your labors.
• Go as fast or as slow as you can handle financially and stress wise. Sometimes it can be overwhelming and if you take on too much too fast you fail to do any of the things that need to be done.  Your business (and even your personal life) will suffer.
2. Pray for the direction you should go
• Always seek direction from the Lord in every decision and in how to manage your time and money wisely. 
• Be willing to follow that direction.
3. In the rental property business, it is nice to have a good cop/bad cop.
• Have one person who is the softy and can be kind and nice all the time.
• Have the other person be the one who is a stickler for the rules and can enforce them.
4. How to best manage finances
• When repairs are required, try to do as much of the work as you can as possible to save yourself money. Search google and YouTube videos or take classes at Home Depot or Lowes.
• Don’t get swayed by the large sum of cash that comes in at the first of the month and then spend it all before the month is over. Create a budget and stick to it.
5. Constantly be doing your homework.
• Make sure you get an appraisal and a home inspection to make sure you are getting a good deal.
• Look into creative financing or do things differently to get the down payment for the next purchase. 
• Always be reading or studying the market and the internet to find other deals or other ways to improve.

While a good majority of the things we spoke about I already knew, she tweaked some of my thinking or gave me other ideas to pursue.  I was able to tell her things we had done and she would say, "maybe you could try this."  I felt it was more of a refining process than a complete learning process.  It was really nice to be able to bounce ideas off of someone who had somewhat done what we are trying to do.  In her case, I found out they just have the one mobile home park and some one room cabins that they rent out and they have not tried to gain any other rental properties nor do they intend to.  So there were a few things she was unable to help me with, but overall it was an amazing experience and I felt like we are moving in the right direction.  I just wish we could have moved there a little sooner in our lives.

Good to Great

This week in class we have read many talks and watched many videos about going from good to great. In the book "Good to Great", by Jim Collins, he states, "Good is the enemy of great...Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life."  Do I have a good life, but not a great life?  At this point in time, I think so, but it is something I want to change.  I don't believe that Heavenly Father put us on the earth just to stumble through and be mediocre, but to be our own best self.

As I have thought about the concept of good to great, I have realized to in business, it doesn't necessarily mean being better than anyone else at their expense.  While you can be better than your "competition", it comes internally in wanting what is best for you and your customers and your competitor is kind of in the side or rear view mirror. They are there, but don't necessarily play a role in it.  It means keeping it internally and making you better than the you of yesterday.  I believe that it also means looking for opportunities to improve in just about every facet of life.

It seems the last couple of weeks these lessons are starting to meld together as a complete story.  I feel they are pieces of the puzzle that as I work on each of them and put them together to make one complete picture I will ultimately reach my own greatness and our business will emerge as a great one.  I know it will take time, I know these things won't happen overnight.  However, I think they can happen quicker than we have done in the past, that we can be as the flywheel that Jim Collins speaks of where one good decision and action on that decision, leads to another and another until the wheel builds its own momentum and turns almost on its own.  I believe that as my husband and I work on each of the different parts together we can eventually become the great company (and people) we want to be.  I think that is exactly what our Heavenly Father wants from us.  To be the greatest disciple and person we can be.  It doesn't matter what someone else is doing, we are not going to be compared to them.  What matters is what we personally do and how we treat those around us.  That is what will give us the ultimate goal of eternal life with our Father in Heaven and our families.

Keep going

This week the theme that I got the most from was to never give up.  It reminds me of the picture of a frog in the mouth of a bird.  The frog is holding the bird's neck so the bird cannot swallow it.  If we don't give up then we can still be successful.

As entrepreneurs it is hard work and sometimes you get knocked down.  Just as in life, sometimes we just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.  Not everything is going to be easy, not every time are we going to succeed.  But if we can get back up and keep going and try again we will ultimately succeed.  Lately, I have felt very overwhelmed, frustrated and sad.  I keep feeling like things just keep going wrong. Maybe the Lord is testing me to see how I will handle it.  I think I fail miserably at it (as I am crying in my bedroom), but then I remember that I have to keep going. I may slow momentarily, but I don't completely give up.  I try again and again and eventually the next day comes and things do get better.  I learn from it and I keep trying.

I worry about money and about losing everything, as I spoke about in my fears posting.  So we have taken very few risks in our rental property business.  We have been trying to start our business since probably 2002.  However, it took us until 2013, when we bought our new house to keep the old house and make it a rental property. In March of this year, we bought our second rental property.  We keep going forward, we are more like the tortoise than the hare.  Hopefully it will pay off, but at this point it is making it hard to achieve our ultimate goals because we are going so slow.  However, I know that as we keep going we will be blessed.  We will not have the risk of losing our properties because we have grown our business too fast and our finances could not support it.

My favorite quote of this week's assignments came from the Mormon Message video called, "Good Things To Come."  The video can be found here.  Elder Holland says, "Don’t give up...Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it...You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come...Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come."

I know that with the help of the Lord, I can be successful in my life and in business.  I know that as I put the Lord first in all that I do, he will direct my paths.  I need to be willing to keep going, keep walking, keep trying, and not give up.  As I follow Him, I will be successful.

7 Habit of Highly Effective People

This week in class we have been learning about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey.  In some ways it makes me feel energized and encouraged and in other ways it makes me feel depressed.  It is one of those things where you are encouraged to do all the habits and become highly effective.  But then you realized how far away from that type of person you are.

Here are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Habit 1: Be proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3: Put first things first
Habit 4: Think win/win.
Habit 5: Seek first to understand then to be understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

Covey says that these habits should be done in order.  The first three are personal victories (ones you feel inside yourself) and the next three are public victories (those that affect others around you) and then finally the seventh habit is interdependence (where you use your independence to help others).

So based on this I believe the habit I need to work on the most right now is habit 1.  I need to work in the important but not urgent quadrant.  Meaning those maintenance type things that need to be done so that you don't have an urgent problem.  (For instance, getting your oil change and maintenance on your car so that you car doesn't breakdown on the freeway.)  I tend to be very reactionary. I handle the fire that is right in front of me and then waste away much of my other time.  So I rarely take the time to prevent the fires in the first place.  I need to focus on the preventative maintenance.  That is the goal I want to work on this coming week.  I will try to remember to report back next week.

Balance

This week in watching the videos for our class I have learned about balance.  It is important for us to put the time and energy into our businesses, but it is more important for us to spend time with our family and putting the Lord first.

Last night we had a training meeting at church and one of the leaders asked us what things need to be done to increase our personal spirituality.  The regular Sunday School lessons were stated, reading our scriptures, saying our prayers, attending church, going to the temple, and having Family Home Evening.  Of course, I have heard all these many times over the course of my life so that was not new, nor was the leader's comment, however it struck me more this time than others.  He said, "what is more important than taking the time to do these things?"  I thought about how doing other things instead of these can jeopardize my salvation.  Is that TV show or video game or whatever else it may be, more important than doing the things that bring me closer to God?   Am I willing to risk it?  What do I treasure?  Is it wealth and fortune or is it family and God?  If I truly treasure my family and God, then I need to put them first.  I need to make sure that I spend time doing those things that bring me closer to them.

This past weekend (technically Wednesday through Sunday) we went to Vero Beach, FL and spent five days there.  We went sight seeing and learning.  It was an amazing vacation.  It was wonderful to relax and get away from the craziness of school, work and daily household chores.  I saw my son light up and take in so much information.  He just kept talking about how much he learned and how much fun he was having.  He answered questions that the instructor or tour guide would ask him and they were amazed with the knowledge he had.  I came to realize that our son thrives in a hands on learning environment.  He does horrible in a regular classroom setting where he has to sit still in a seat and listen to a teacher lecture.  But if he is able to go and see and do, he absorbs everything!  

I know it will take time to get our business going and have the income that will allow us to go to places like this often and have him learn from real life experiences and museums rather than learning history from a textbook.  I am not saying those things are bad, but they just aren't right for my son. The more and more I think and pray about it, the more and more convinced I am that there is a better way for him.  It is amazing what a few days away with your family will help you see.  You realize what is important and how quickly time passes and if you don't stay connected and keep your life in balance.  You can lose so much.

I am grateful for my family and for the gospel.  I am grateful for the inspiration that I receive and that as I follow that inspiration, the blessings flow forth.  I pray that as my family continues on this crazy journey full of changes every day (between trying to become debt free and paying cash for everything, to getting closer to quitting my part time job, to continuing to build our rental property business, to now this possibility of home schooling my son) that we will continue to be directed and continue to have an open mind.  If we take the time to stop and really think about all the possibilities and not be so quick to make decisions, I believe that we will ultimately end up where we want to be, or at the very least, where the Lord wants us to be.

A Hero's Journey

This week we were asked to watch a talk given by Jeff Sandefer called "The Hero's Journey".  He speaks about the mission we have on this earth and what is truly most important at the end of our life. Surprisingly, it isn't being famous or wealthy.

He says, "I believe that you have a very special mission on this earth.  A mission that will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.  But only if you have the faith and the courage to find that entrepreneurial calling."  Each of us can succeed in our lives.  If we find our calling, that which we were put on the earth to do, and follow that calling with faith and courage.  It isn't easy to be an entrepreneur.  In one of the other videos we watched it said that 99% of people who are entrepreneurs don't receive rock star status.  However, if we are following our calling, I believe it can be exceedingly rewarding.

Sandefer says that the three missions of the school he began and teaches at are:

1. Learn how to learn.
2. Learn how to make money.
3. Learn how to live a life of meaning.

He says that most people come to the school for number 2, but leave feeling number 1 is the most important thing they learned.  He says that number 3 is where we find the most reward.  As I said, once we find what we are meant to do and we actually are doing it, we will find the most joy and be the most fulfilled.

At his school, one of the assignments is to interview 10 people they admire.  They have to have at least 3 people over the age of 60.  He said that the common theme of people over the age of 60 are summed up in three questions:

1. Have I contributed something meaningful?
2. Was I a good person?
3. Who did I love and who loved me?

As we reflect on these questions and think about our eternal journey, these truly are the most important things we can accomplish in this life.  It won't matter to Heavenly Father what our salary was or how big our house was or what kind of car we drove.  He won't care if we were famous or if we started a company at all.  He will care about how we treated others, did we do something worthy with our life and who (and what) was important to us.  If we can answer in the affirmative to these questions and have a long list of people we loved and who love us (not for our fame or fortune, but who we truly were every moment of the day), then we can stand at the judgment seat and know we have accomplished all that we have been asked to do in this life.  At that moment we will be welcomed into the eternities with a simple statement, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant... enter thou into the joy of thy lord." (Matthew 25:21)  If this is not our goal and not the reason why we are placed here on this earth, then why are we here?  This is just a time for us to prepare for eternity, this is not our final resting spot.  We must be engaged in a worthy cause, trying to contribute something worthwhile and doing good works.  God expects this of us. Are we doing our best to fulfill our potential, our calling?

Fears

This week in our class we have learned about how our fears can prevent us from achieving our goals and not allow us to follow our calling.  It also can cause us to not reach our star or not use our stepping stones.

We were asked to address our fears.  I have a lot of fears of being an entrepreneur.  For our rental property business it seems that one fear leads into the other and the next and the next.  So the first fear, while it is minor and in the long run not that significant is that we don't have a tenant or that our tenant doesn't pay the rent.  Second, if the tenant misses several months, how will we pay the mortgage payment.  Then, if we don't pay the mortgage payment, will we lose the rental property via foreclosure? If we lose the property, how will that affect our credit?  Will we be able to purchase additional properties in the future or will that ruin our credit permanently?  Finally, if we lose multiple tenants, multiple months of rent and ultimately multiple houses to foreclosure, how will we meet our personal monthly obligations?  Will we end up having to file bankruptcy?  How will my family respond to a bankruptcy, will my marriage survive?  Will we lose our own home and be homeless?

Another set of fears is having more repairs that need to be done than money that is available.  If there is a major repair that needs to be done, will we be able to afford to do it?  Or will it be too much and we will be taking a loss on our rental property business?  If that is the case, how will we handle it? How will it affect our personal lives, especially if I have quit my part-time job, my husband has quit his job and am relying only on this for our income?

Finally, what will happen if the property catches on fire and is completely destroyed?  Again, how we will pay the mortgage on the property if there is no rental income?

In going through this exercise, it seemed that the majority of my fears were mitigated by savings and budgeting.  If we begin now to save one, two, three month's and eventually a year's worth of rental income/expenses, then when a tenant moves out, it will be okay if we don't get paid rent for one or two or three months as we have the money in reserve until we get a new tenant.  We need to make sure as we are budgeting and spending for repairs and expenses on the rental properties that we do not use every bit of money each month but put aside a reserve for these cases.  The other portion of it, is making sure that personally we are getting out of debt, saving for expenses instead of using debt to purchase things, and living within our means.  If we are living within our means without the rental property income and using the rental property income to purchase additional rental properties (reinvest into the business).  Then we will not have to worry about the majority of these fears.  Eventually, we will get to a point where the rental property is generating enough cash flow for my husband to quit his full time job and we can live covering all of our expenses and the rental properties expenses and continue to build the business.  Then we will be financially self-reliant.

The Formula

This week, as I have continued to read The Ministry of Business and watch the videos and other readings, I have learned of "The Formula".  I have also learned that I have been doing it all wrong. Well maybe not all wrong, but wrong half of the time.  Let me tell you The Formula and then I will tell you why I have been doing it wrong half of the time.

The Formula by James Ritchie

1. Get Up Early
2. Work Hard
3. Get Your Education
4. Find Your Oil
5. Make Your Mark
6. Get Prepared To Be Of Service

So if we breakdown the steps of the formula, starting with step 1 - Get Up Early, I do get up early when I go to my current job.  I get up about 4:45 a.m. and get to work by 5:45 a.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  However, on non-work days, I usually don't get up until 8 or 9.  I know going in to work so early, I get so much done in those first 3 hours of work before everyone else gets there.  On non-work days, I usually stay up late at night and don't want to get up early.  However, I know if I would, I could make a good breakfast for my husband and son (they typically do it themselves right now).  Then I could get right to my school work or whatever else might need to be done.  Regardless of what time I get up, usually 1 p.m. is about my limit and my mind and body want to be done working for the day. However, if I have gotten to work by at least 6 that is already a 7 hour day, so it would be no big deal.  If I wait to get up until 9, I don't usually get going on school work until 10 and by 1 p.m. that is only 3 hours of work.  Obviously, I need to work on that.

Step 2 - Work Hard.  I think when I am at work and most of the time when I am doing my school work I work hard.  I need to work harder when it comes to housework and more importantly yard work.  I hate working in the yard, I live in Florida for crying out loud and it is HOT and humid most of the year.  To work in the yard between April and October is draining.  But if I could get my mind wrapped around it that if I would spend just one hour working in the flower beds each week I could keep better control of it, than spending 4 hours once every month.  Things get overrun so quickly and the task always seems overwhelming.  I need to work hard and work on it a little at a time consistently, not sporadically.

Step 3 - Get Your Education.  I am currently going to school at BYU-Idaho through the online program for Business Management - Entrepreneurship.  I also like reading books about real estate and other business opportunities.  In addition, based on the experiences that we have had over the last couple of weeks, my husband and I have decided to start taking the DIY classes at Home Depot and Lowe's.  We also want to work with friends that can teach us how to do some projects.

Step 4 - Find Your Oil.  I know we have already found our oil in the Rental Property Business.  I believe I explained in a previous post that my husband and I have always wanted to be in real estate.  We currently have two rental properties, a single family home and a duplex.  We want to continue to grow our business.  I also believe that I can use my scrapbooking hobby to create a digital invitation business on Etsy.  At this time I don't want to open the business because I know if I have too many irons in the fire, I will get burned.  I don't handle stress well so I have to manage what I know I can handle and not try to take on too much.

Step 5 - Make Your Mark.  I think that down the road we could become a great Rental Property Business.  I know we can use this to also complete step 6 also.  I want to be the landlord that people say when they move out, "Hey, you should rent my place.  It is nice and the owners are really great people. And the price is really good."

Step 6 - Get Prepared To Be Of Service.  With our original property, I have always felt that it is a property that we were supposed to use to help people out.  We have had people who are good and want to pay the rent but have just had bad luck.  We have been able to have the rent much below market value to help them.  We have been able to work with them to make their payments when they lost their job.  I know that as we are able to do this, we will be rewarded, maybe not in this life and definitely not monetarily through this property, but we know we are doing the right thing and helping someone in need and that makes us happy.

These were the greatest things I learned this week.  I saw many other videos and readings that were really good and I hope to instill those in my life and entrepreneurial career also.

Week 2 - Lessons Learned

This week I (and my husband, Kevin) have learned some very important lessons on this Entrepreneurial Journey.  Some of these lessons have been from actual things that have happened and some have been because of what I have read for class.  Let's just say it has been a very busy week and a whole lot of lessons have been learned.

The first lesson we learned is, no matter how much you trust someone that is doing work for you, it is best if you do a quick check to make sure it is completed and done correctly.  This past week the duplex we own had bees.  We thought they were building a hive in the insulation, but when the bee removal guy came he couldn't find any hive activity only scouting activity and there were a lot less bees than there were when we were there last Saturday.  Long story short, when we went to take care of this problem, we ended up finding out that a whole lot of other problems that we thought had been taken care of by our handyman were not.  I was extremely hurt as our handyman is also our friend. He did not finish the first job he was supposed to be doing.  The second job he did was done the lazy man's way, to put it nicely.  I was very embarrassed, as I had been told things were done.  However, the tenants thought that he was coming back to finish, so they hadn't said anything to us and it has been two months since it was supposed to be completed.  I apologized to the tenants and told them I would work on getting things resolved.  So for my first lesson learned, just take a quick check to make sure everything is completed and done correctly.  This could have been resolved sooner and we possibly could have avoided the bee problem, as not having the job done correctly is what allowed them access to the house.

The second and third lessons I learned were brewing after the incident occurred at the rental property. I half-jokingly told Kevin, as we were leaving the property with the knowledge of the bee issue and the work not being completed, "this wouldn't have happened if you knew how to do any kind of handyman work."  He said he knew.  My husband has zero handyman skills...I have more than he does and that isn't saying much.  A few days later, after watching the bee man fix a small portion of the insulation that was supposed to have been handled by the handyman, I thought, "I can do that".  I began thinking, "I wonder how much it would cost to buy the supplies (including the staple gun and staples) and putting it up myself."  It would become a business expense so that would take care of offsetting some of the cost and we would have the staple gun to use for other projects around our house that we have needed one for but ended up doing something different.  It didn't look too hard and I thought, I really think if Kevin was helping me we could do this.  So I said something to Kevin about it and as we looked up the prices for the supplies we needed, we were pleasantly surprised by the price for the staple gun and staples, even the insulation cost less than we thought just based on the price the guy was charging us to do the project that he never finished (thankfully we have not completely paid him yet, so we still have to deal with that portion of it).  Obviously any type of repairs cost money and are somewhat pricey, but it was less than we expected.  We began talking about how we could start attending the classes that Home Depot and Lowe's offer for free to learn some of these more basic skills.  He also mentioned that maybe we could then use those skills to also start fixing up and flipping other houses.  I would like to do that, but am pretty sure we are not there yet!  However, based on this incident, the second lesson we learned, was maybe we can do more than we realize.  Maybe we can learn skills that will help save us money in the long run and push us into other areas we didn't think we could go before.

Which leads into the third lesson I learned.  As I read one of our assigned textbooks for class, "The Ministry of Business", by Steven A Hitz with James W Ritchie, he told a story of something that happened to him and his wife and their business.  They were sued by a previous employer and were told they could not do their business in the area until the lawsuit was over.  This caused them to go outside of their area and into several other states and eventually the whole US in the same time period they had planned to just be in all of California.  He says, "Had it not been for this unexpected lawsuit, we would have remained perfectly content."  He went on to say that, "the lawsuit was both a curse and a blessing."  I have felt that way this week, the bees were a curse, however, I believe in the end they will be a blessing.  Had we not had the bee problem, we would not have known about the issues at the rental property and would have continued to use someone that apparently doesn't finish jobs and doesn't do them very well.  This would have had a bad impact on us as landlords that we don't know what we are doing, that we don't care about our properties and when we try to rent it out, it will not show very well and will be hard to get it rented to new people.  Luckily our current tenants know we have tried and just got worked over a little and are sympathetic.  They know we are going to do what we need to so we can make it right.  I have learned that sometimes God gives us things that sometimes we feel we can't handle, but that as we step back, take the emotion out of it, and look at the bigger picture we realize it is for our good and ultimately the result will be fabulous.  Maybe my husband is right, maybe if we take some of these classes and ask people to learn from them, maybe we really can fix up and flip homes, which will help expand our rental properties and our income.  But if not, at the very least it will allow us to save money by fixing some of the minor repairs ourselves and only hire out the bigger jobs.

The final lesson came from the other assignment we had for class this week to read through and watch an excerpt from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.  Maybe many of you know who he is, but I didn't.  He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.  He created a new degree program with the help of another professor that changed the world of digital graphics and virtual reality.  His programs were a huge success and many students outside of the digital graphics college took his classes.  He also worked on a virtual reality project at Disney for the Aladdin ride they were creating.  Anyway, his last lecture was on following your childhood dreams and making them a reality.  He was a dreamer in a good way, he thought of something and then found a way to make it happen.  He felt there were times when he was pushed along by others at certain times to get him to where he needed to go to make his dreams a reality.  He also mentioned that his parents allowed him some freedoms (such has painting the walls in his bedroom anyway he wanted) that gave him the courage to go after his dreams and feel like he could succeed.  Having dreams is important.  It gives us direction.  It also goes back to the saying, "shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll land among the stars."  We need to dream big and go for it, but if we don't quite make it, that doesn't mean we failed, it means we got closer than we would have if we didn't dream at all.  We all have dreams inside of us, some from when we were a kid and some we come to as adults.  How many of us wanted to do and be certain things when we grew up, but how many of us actually have done it?  As a young child, I wanted to be a lawyer, not sure why other than probably because I thought they made a lot of money.  When I was in 8th grade, I specifically remember in my English class we had to do an assignment on the career we wanted in the future.  We had to contact and interview someone in that field and ask them questions.  At that time, I was pretty good at math and enjoyed it, so I thought maybe I would like to be an accountant like my uncle (who I interviewed).  I also thought it would give me the flexibility to do it at home after I had children.  Fast forward almost 25 years later and today, while I am not an accountant, I do have an accounting degree, I do accounting functions at work, I assist with major general ledger out of balances and research.  The girls at work even say, "If Michele can't find it, there is no finding it." So while maybe I didn't become an actual accountant, maybe my dreams just needed a little tweaking.  A dream I have had as an adult, since my husband and I got married, is to own rental properties.  We felt that it would allow us to have the financial and time flexibility to accomplish some of our other dreams of going on a mission and helping people around us. While, it hasn't been smooth sailing and certainly has not looked anything like we thought it would, we have been able to slowly get into that business and are looking forward to moving it forward.  It is important that we dream big.  We have to have courage and the fortitude to keep pushing towards that goal even if it doesn't happen as quickly or exactly how we had envisioned.

Welcome to My Entrepreneurial Journey!

This semester at BYU-Idaho, I am taking a course called Introduction to Entrepreneurship.  I am looking forward to this course.  Initially, I thought this was truly going to be about how to start your own business.  However, it appears from this first week that it is going to be more about how to start you.  In fact, one of the portions of the course is called "The Start Up of You."  Meaning, finding what you enjoy, finding what you want to do, finding about whom you are, finding your goals in life, finding your passions and loves and then turning those things into a business to benefit others.  The majority of the course seems to be about learning about you first.

Many of you know that my ultimate dream for a career is to own rental properties.  It took Kevin and me many years and many courses to finally get our first rental property.  I guess I shouldn't say we "got" our first rental property as much as I should say we "kept" our first rental property.  People kept telling us that if we sold our first home to buy our new home we would be able to put that money down and the payments would be less.  However, knowing that we only had less than 5 years left on the mortgage and also knowing that our ultimate goal was to own rental properties we could not sell our first home.  Now three years later, we have purchased our second property, a duplex.  Within the next year and a half, I would like to purchase one more property.  Or, if we are lucky, with me going through this course and some other things we are doing, we can purchase another property much sooner than that.  We will see, but my goal is to keep moving forward with that.

Most entrepreneurs don't usually just stop with one business, so why should I?  I am working on setting up an Etsy shop to sell digital invitations.  Because of my love for scrapbooking, I have decided I should put my love to use.  I think I can create (and have created in the past) pretty cute and fun invitations that people would be willing to buy.  I know others who have done it and are very successful.  I have many ideas for invitations and many invitations that I have already created that could be converted into items to sell.  I have been encouraged to do so by a good friend and also my adviser at school.

As I continue throughout this course, I hope I gain the knowledge about myself to stop living in the rut I have been, going through the motions that no longer excite me and breaking out and following the dreams that I have had for 15+ years.  I look forward to what I will learn and putting that knowledge into use.  I hope you will follow me on this journey and if you have ever wanted to be your own boss, seriously consider it and make plans to do so.  Life is too short to not enjoy what you are doing or the journey you are taking.