Week 14 - If I were to write and deliver the final lecture of this B183 Intro to Entrepreneurship...

 

We have spent three months together studying all the beginning concepts of entrepreneurship and exploring different ideas and methods that a person might take to create self-employment for themselves. I hope you'll take this opportunity to reflect on the options that life holds for you and if you feel like you have something unique to share with the world that you'll find the courage to begin. What assignments meant the most to you? What person or company made you excited? What was something unique that you took away from one of those stories?

 The Bucket List assignment was particularly difficult for me at first. I pride myself on making things happen and ignoring excuses, so as I started the assignment I could only think of things I had wanted to do - and done. As I dug a little deeper, I threw some things on the list that I'd never thought much about before. One of those was to take my 11-year old daughter to a Taylor Swift concert. Less than a week later I heard someone mention in passing that Taylor Swift was coming to town soon. Previously, I may not have thought much about it, but now, this was a bucket list item! I checked ticket prices only to discover they were far more reasonably priced than I would have imagined and next thing I knew, my daughter and I were belting along with Taylor at the Rose Bowl.

Together we've studied a wide variety of people that took incredibly different approaches to entrepreneurship and learned that there isn't just one way to success. You'll remember Erica Mills started a card company, Warm Fuzz Cards, at a time when she was unable to work in a foreign country, primarily as a creative outlet. She ended up pulling from the skills she'd developed as a child and later as a sales representative to turn her art hobby into an incredible business opportunity. She wasn't trained in business or finance, she just wanted to share happiness and brighten people's days while creating art. I've thought a lot about what work really means and how to make something we love into work that can bless others.

We also had the opportunity to interview an entrepreneur. Not only were you able to glean knowledge from someone who has walked the path, but you have established a valuable contact. Remember those useful pieces of advice and apply them when they're required. It would not be a bad idea to send that person an email once a quarter or offer to take them to lunch once or twice a year. Take advantage of the valuable asset of knowledge and networking that others can provide.

            Only you can decide whether you're going to take the tools you've been provided from this class and apply them to your life. If you feel like you've got something inside of you that the world needs, I hope you'll find the courage to start. Don't let fear or frustration keep you from doing what you're meant to do. Good luck!

Week 13

From all of the information provided this week, I really loved the video from Stan Christensen about avoiding the wrong job. He mentioned that at Harvard Business School, the average tenure for recent graduates at their first job was 11 months. It made me really think about the time so many of us spend at jobs where we feel unappreciated or unfulfilled. Why do we tolerate this in our work lives? Most of us spend well over 40 hours per week at work and then even more time at home thinking about work. How much time to we waste dreading going back or harboring terrible feelings about our job.

            

For someone hoping to be an entrepreneur one day, I think experiencing as many corporate cultures as possible is a very valuable experience. What things will you be sure to include with your business some day and what practices will you definitely exclude? We may not even be aware of small annoyances that can creep up in the day to day workings in a company until we experience them first hand.

            

These Harvard graduates are not tolerating the stagnancy that can come with a frustrating company or job. They are constantly on the lookout for the next opportunity for growth. Welcoming change provides opportunity for growth and learning from new mentors, new situations and various work styles.

Week 12

This week provided an opportunity to finish the book, A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey. There are so many great pieces of advice in this book. I love that the principles were laid out both in traditional instruction and then driven home through stories and parables. So often I'll read something great and I might even take notes or write it down in a journal, but it doesn't always stick. The way this book was laid out it gave the words then backed it up with a picture to solidify the point. I found myself recalling several of the tales throughout the weeks that we've been reading the book.

Based on the first 2 pages of What's a Business For? we read about the distortion of profits and earnings by so many companies that it has created a problem with the trustworthiness of any financial information put out by a company. Because most businesses fudge the numbers in certain ways, it has become an accepted practice and all businesses can justify the exaggerations. It may not seem like a big deal at first, but these reports have become a slippery slope of dishonesty. Eventually this could catch up to all of us and have a major detrimental effect on our economy.

According to Charles Handy, the "real justification" for the existence of businesses is to make the world a better place. Handy's phrasing says that businesses make a profit that enables them to do something more or better. I loved the thought behind this. Sure, someone creates a business to make money but ultimately, by purchasing so many of those goods and services our lives are enhanced, and the world is a little bit better than it was before. When we spend money on those things we enable the company to make life better for someone else in the future. We spend our dollars as a way of telling them, "Good job. What you're doing is worth-while. Keep going!"

Charles Handy suggests several solutions that I thought were great ideas. One was to reward key players in a company and treat them like they have some ownership. It is backwards thinking that says money is the only valuable asset to a company. The ideas, creativity and hard work that people put into a company should count as its own kind of capital. Another idea Handy proposed was being mindful of an employee's time and outside life. When a corporate culture demands that a person's first priority be their job, it's not just the individual that suffers. Studies have shown that productivity rises when time at the office decreases. People will usually get their job done, whether you require them to work 40 hours a week or 80 hours a week. When you trust an employee enough to give them autonomy, they will usually rise to the occasion.