Introduction to Entrepreneurship (B183)

This week, my grandmother leave us; she passed away. She was an example of how to become an entrepreneur, she was not the founder of any profit or nonprofit organization, but she left her personal mark in the mind of a big population. What was my grandmother business? My grandmother business was the happiness. She studied nursery, and she learned the necessary skills to care about the health of people, but she had a powerful resource, her most valuable resource was the passion that she had to serve others. How was she a leader? She motivated others to participate in her business. Two weeks ago, she was sick, but she did not want to stay at home, and cry. As she did during her entire life, she got up every morning, and visited the old and disadvantages people in the town, she ministered them individually. Acts like that motivated people around her to become part of the same enterprise: to serve others. She did not die as a rich woman, and she never received a public r

During this year, I have learned that an entrepreneur frequently doesn’t make money in the short term (an employee earns more money), an entrepreneur doesn’t have a lot of free time (an employee has more free time), an entrepreneur need to lead a team work. After read what I have learned, do you still want to be an entrepreneur? An important decision in the life is to choose the correct career, if you are passionate with the idea of run a new venture, do it! But if you feel a desire of become an entrepreneur in any industry, I encourage you to do it! If you chose the difficult and excited pathway of run a venture, you must to develop the sense of identify the opportunities. Before find the opportunity, you must to ponder all your ideas, and then check if your ideas follow the following: “Realness” of the opportunity: are there people willing to buy your idea? Durability of the opportunity: are there some barriers that could stop the business? Marshalling resources: are the

This week, I have learned from different essays, and in the book “A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey” about the power and influence the money in our life, when we put it in first place, money can destroy us. I like the story of the King Midas. He has a strong desire of get gold, and he received a gift, he could turn in gold everything that he touched. In just seconds, he built a fortune, but he noticed that he lost the pleasure of take a flower, and smell his aroma; play the guitar; and finally, he lost her daughter after touch her. The story of King Midas could be associate to an exceptional story, but many entrepreneurs become like King Midas. They become successful entrepreneurs whom can rise fortunes, but they lost the time for enjoy the pleasure of a good food, a dance night, and even some lost their families. I am not suggesting that work hard and rise money is bad, but we need to fix an equilibrium, and understand what is the purpose of money. King Benjamin say “I

Fulfilment, satisfaction, and happiness are reasons because we want to become entrepreneurs, spouses, parents, recognized, or whatever. President Thomas S. Monson shared a formula to success in our live. The 3 steps that he shares are: Fill our mind with truth Fill our live with service And, fill our heart with love I have proved that 3 steps work to have a happy life. Sometimes, entrepreneurs and people in general search for happiness in sensual pleasures (good food, drink, and sex), but at the end, they discover that these pleasures don’t fulfill them enough, and don’t give them the happiness than they are looking for. President Monson suggest “that when we search for truth, we search among those books and in those places where truth is most likely to be found.” The knowledge from good books help us to avoid bias in our path to the happiness. Service, it is one of the best ways to enrich our life of happiness. Implicit factors in service are to be grateful wi

This week, I had the opportunity to interview an entrepreneur who works in the tourism industry with a travel agency. This experience helped me to learn some basic and universal principles about what define an entrepreneur as successful. During the interview, I learned that he never focused in money or income as a goal, but he focused so much in the following aspects: 1. A happy family is the main goal of any project. 2. An important asset of an entrepreneur is his network. 3. You can measure how good are you manage your business when you are able to leave your business because you are sick or another event, and the business is still running. I learned about the behavior a good entrepreneur that an entrepreneur is always looking for new opportunities of business. A good entrepreneur is not just a people who know how manage effectively his resources, but he knows how raise resources when it is necessary. An entrepreneur is a creative person, a person who don’t fear to mak

In Good to Great book, we learn that good is enemy of great because when people are comfortable with their results, they are not able to fix better and higher goals. Also, James C. Collins invite us to choose the correct people for the company. This people, and you must be disciplined people, this mean that leaders must be humble, commitment, organized, inject personal capabilities, and make meaningful contributions based on talents, skills, good work, etc.; after you have selected people, then you can make assignments for members of company. The author teaches us the importance of disciplined thoughts, this mean confronts the true facts, and understand the hedgehog concept. And finally, it is important to create within the company a culture of discipline, and implement technology accelerators. This week, reading the document “A message to Garcia,” I learned that one of most valuable abilities is the ability to execute. In the document, I learned the following steps: 1. Accep

In the entrepreneurship journey, the most important to reach the goal is staying in the way. Most of entrepreneur don`t reach their goals because they abandon their purpose, or they don’t see a soon happy ending. Elder Holland teach us about blessings, and how sometimes blessings could delay, but for all whom are faithful, blessings will come. Sometimes projects are not following a good way because we are making any mistake. So, it is important during our journey make a step back, visualize the way, make pertinent adjustments, and start to walk to the main objective. Taylor Richards in a video that I was watching this week say that we are able of reach anything, we just need to start, and then during the work new ideas and solutions will come to our mind. Entrepreneur tip: When you are having a problem in the production process of a product or any other project, you can use “the 5 whys”. A method developed by Sakichi Toyoda and used to find the root cause of a defect. Th

Sometimes people start their career in entrepreneurship because they want a financial success. This is a mistake, when you start an entrepreneurship to get money, you can fail in your purpose, but when you start an entrepreneurship because you really love what you are doing, you will feel satisfaction, and additionally, you have a probability of receive an economic reward. As I have tried to show in my previous posts. Entrepreneur is a lifestyle. So, I will give this week some counsels about how to become an entrepreneur based in the book of Stephen R. Covey, The 7 habits of highly effective people. The first habit that we must to develop is productivity, this mean that we are upon the control of our reactions to any conflict or challenge. Some attributes associate with this habit are self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will. The second habit is beginning with an end in mind, and it is related with the third habit, but first things first. This third

Lately, I have read a lot about entrepreneurship, but a fact is that entrepreneurs feel a strong necessity of become entrepreneur. They cannot run away of this calling, they cannot avoid to create a new product or service, they cannot avoid to broke work schedules, they cannot to stay in the same place for a long time, they cannot live with challenges without find a solution, they are artist, they are engineers, they are managements, they are leader, and they are rebels. Image by myproductivitykit.com When I was mentioned the characteristics of an entrepreneur, I didn’t mention that they were rich because an entrepreneur could not become a millionaire person, and he could start a project without much money or without a plant of production, and even without a big group of employees. The essential and more important asset of an entrepreneur is THE TIME. The time is the resource that an entrepreneur need to create value within an enterprise or project. When he has time to l

This week, I was studying about some attributes of a successful entrepreneur. The first attribute that I learned was perseverance. When, I was a full time missionary, one of the principles that I enjoyed to share with people was “enduring to the end”. In the gospel, frequently, people make covenants with quickly, and the start to receive blessings, but suddenly a proof afflicts them, and some of them abandon the righteousness, and they lost the blessings that God had prepared for them. As people who abandon their covenants with God, some entrepreneurs abandon their goal when they see problems in the way. Only perseverant entrepreneurs have the joy of taste the sweet reward. Another attribute of a good entrepreneur is his ability to find and built a good team, and he knows how to use this team in a way that produce the best results. Number 3, a good entrepreneur has a firm grasp of which numbers are important. And finally, a good entrepreneur is a person who knows

What is important? What really matter? This a deep question. Regrettably, the answer sometimes is where we don’t hope. Small things make great things. Sometimes, we can have lost our path looking for big things, when smalls thing performs all big project. If you are not sure what is the important in your life, I counsel you to listen your heart. Praying, and look for divine help is a good idea. You shouldn’t forget that preparation is important before start any venture. And, I am not talking just about academic preparation, preparation include emotional and physical condition to put face to the journey. Is the hard work the key to success? Hard work is important, but hard work don’t depend of long hours of work, it is much about how good you plan and execute your work. If you are working long hours without time for your family, you are in the wrong direction. What is the perfect venture? This is an easy question. You must to identify what you born to do, when you

This has been a week of continues learning, and I want to share the most valuables learnings of this week. I learned a formula for success and happiness proposed by Jim Ritchie, and this formula he learned from his mission president. I want to share with you every point of his formula, and add my commentaries. 1. Get up early It is funny that he mentioned this as the first point of the formula, but I had noted the difference between a day when I get earlier or not, and when I get early is because I have a propose for the day, and a plan to learn and success. 2. Work hard Ezra Taft Benson said: “Work, work, work, there is no satisfactory substitute”. We cannot sit down and wait until success come to us. Work in a fundamental factor in the achievement of our goals. 3. Get your education This is an elemental step to success. Sometimes argue that there are some examples of successful guys who never got his Bachelor Degree, but education is more than a Degree, education i

“Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things” Randy Pausch This week, I had the opportunity of watch by first time the video The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I found it instructional and motivating, so I will share the YouTube video in this blog. If we analyze the speech of Randy Pausch, we face that he had many dreams in their children as much of us. He wanted to feel 0 gravity, playing football, being a Disney imaginer, etc. But the reason because Randy achieve his childhood dreams was because he taught that all things are possible, and he had the inspiration to make his best effort to accomplish his goals. Something important in the life of Randy is that he didn’t achieve his dreams as was originally written, he discovered that some dreams needed to be modified to be attainable, so he did it. Dreams were important in the life Randy, and in our life because give us an objective. Personally, I admire Martin Luther King because he

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'" - Muhammad Ali My first time as an entrepreneur was when I was in the kinder. My father bought a package of candies, and I sell it in the kindergarten. My candies were different to other candies that the kindergarten sold, so I sold a lot of candies. This and other experiences have tough me some basic principles of become an entrepreneur. When I knew that one of available emphasis in my business management program was entrepreneurship, I started to ponder if would be useful for my career to take this emphasis.   I started to review the biography of some important entrepreneurs. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook didn’t take any course of entrepreneurship on Harvard, but he had as mentor Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs has as mentor Larry Page. The analysis of these and other influencers could support the popular thought that sugges