Work & Life

Work life and home life seem to be something that everyone struggles with separating. It is so hard to find a balance between the two. Its funny because my husband and I were just having a conversation about this earlier this week before I knew this is what we would be learning. He is a manager of a door to door solar sales team. While being a manager of an office he is expected to hit really high numbers on the doors, work 6 days a week, and work sun up to sun down. Now that the sunset is earlier it is getting better but when the sunset wasn't until 9 pm our family life really struggled. The company was expecting him to work 12-13 hour days, 6 days a week. We are constantly trying to figure out a system that works for us to balance the two.

In the video "Is Work/Life Balance Possible" by Ann Miura-Ko she talks about other entrepreneurs leaving their families for something they are truly passionate about. She tells us that if we aren't passionate about it then we will hit a crisis of conscious. If you are going to go to work and leave your family then you need to make sure its worth it of you in the end. You need to be really passionate about what your doing or else it isn't worth the struggle and sacrifice your family is making.

Pursue Your Dreams

I learned so many great things this week from the readings and videos. We learned about thinking big, have big goals and things to aspire to so that you don't sell yourself short. I found the "Pursue you dreams" video to be very motivating as well. This week I also interviewed a successful entrepreneur. Although I don't want to go into the exact business that she is doing we both are creatives and will be using similar marketing strategies. One of our assignments this week was to talk about some things we learned from our interview and I want to document them here as well so I can reflect on them while on my journey.

1.     Online marketing is key

My interviewee said that if she could start all over again she would make a bigger emphasis in the online market. Using etsy, Instagram, pinterest, bloggers, etc. to get her name and brand out there. I think that this kind of strategy is applicable to anyone who is wanted to get exposure on their product.

2.     Don’t wait and get started

This is probably the best piece of advice she gave me. I have been putting off my own journey of entrepreneuership for many years now but think about how many years I have wasted by waiting! I could be much more successful by now if I had just started back then.

3.     change is good!

Just because the market changes or trends change doesn’t mean it has to be a bad thing for your business. I found this really relevant to me because what I would like to do involves me being up to date on the latest trends. I like the concept of change because then it allows for more room of creativity.

5.     Network- make friends!

The whole reason my interviewee is so successful today is because she started networking from the beginning. The relationships you create in your business will be so beneficial. In the field I’m interested in people who have more of a “baker” attitude are more successful, rather than an “eater”.

Trustworthiness

This week in our readings and videos something we learned about that stood out to me was leadership with a small “L”. I remembered learning about this in part of the pathways program I did to get into BYU-Idaho but it was good to relearn it. President Kim B. Clark tells us that it is “the kind of leadership that builds and lifts and inspires through kindness and love and unselfish devotion to the Lord and His work.  It is the kind of leadership that we need at every level of every kind of organization in the world and in every ward and stake in the Church.  It is the kind of leadership you will need to build an eternal family”.  This is the kind of leadership that Jesus Christ was a great example of and what we should strive to be like. Another thing I also liked was in a video by Guy Kawasaki. He said “Trustworthiness occurs when you first of all trust others… you trust others and they will trust you”. He proved that statement by giving examples of extremely successful companies like Zappos and Nordstrom. I am really grateful that I watched that video because this is the type of business I want to be a part of and create. If we are greedy and don’t trust our customers then our business won’t be very successful. A good mentality to have when meeting new people or creating a new business is: How can I help that person?

My Life Running My Business

In our readings and videos this week we were asked to watch a video on David Carrington. I really liked hearing a little bite about his story and journey as an entrepreneur. Something he said that stood out to me was “my businesses were running my life, instead of my life running my businesses. We get so engrained in what we are doing we don’t take a breath to see how we are doing it”. Although I am not that far in my journey of entrepreneurship I can see great wisdom in what he said. I don’t want to get to the point where I disregard my personal code of conduct. Our businesses don’t run us, we run them and that involves making choices. I am really glad we had the opportunity to write personal code of conducts and board of advisors to help prevent us from doing the things we said we would never do. David Carrington ended with this quote and it really hit home for me. “One of our goals as an entrepreneur is to clearly know who we are and what our brand is and consistently execute the brand. If you do that you’ll be successful.”