Week 6

Acton Hero: Phil Romano

Phil Romano teaches that we need to be individuals and to not be like everyone else. In our businesses if the product or the business doesn't feel good to you, it won't feel good to the customers. Give service all around you, in your community, in your business, anywhere you can. Don't think about the profit think about the need. Do all you can do, don't be lazy! Do everything you can do by being productive because you only live once. If you have to make it work, you make it work! I myself enjoy being productive and keeping busy. I am usually always working or doing things around the house. I have also enjoyed being serviceable in my community. I have door-to-door collected donations for a children's hospital and I have made baby blankets and infant hats for the children's hospital. One thing my dad taught me growing up was Good, Better, Best. It is a conference talk by Dallin H. Oaks. Whenever we as kids would do something, he would always ask us if what we were doing was good, better, or best. It was his way to get us to be the most productive we can be.

I learned you need to be a "purple cow". You need to be remarkable, do something no one else has done before. "The old rule was this: Create safe products and combine them with great marketing. Average products for average people. That's broken. The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out" (Purple Cow article).

10 ways to raise a purple cow: Making and marketing something remarkable means asking new questions and trying new practices.
Here are 10 suggestions.
1. Differentiate your customers. Find the group that’s most profitable. Find the group that’s most likely
to influence other customers. Figure out how to develop for, advertise to, or reward either group.
Ignore the rest. Cater to the customers you would choose if you could choose your customers.
2. If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not
launch a product to compete with your own that does nothing but appeal to that market?
3. Create two teams: the inventors and the milkers. Put them in separate buildings. Hold a formal
ceremony when you move a product from one group to the other. Celebrate them both, and rotate
people around.
4. Do you have the email addresses of the 20% of your customer base that loves what you do? If not,
start getting them. If you do, what could you make for them that would be super special?
5. Remarkable isn’t always about changing the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you
answer the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to your software. Getting in the habit of
doing the “unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to see what's working
and what’s not.
6. Explore the limits. What if you’re the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the
easiest, the most efficient, the loudest, the most hated, the copycat, the outsider, the hardest, the
oldest, the newest, or just the most! If there’s a limit, you should (must) test it.
7. Think small. One vestige of the TV-industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn’t appeal
to everyone, the thinking goes, it’s not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable
market and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there.
8. Find things that are “just not done” in your industry, and then go ahead and do them. For example,
JetBlue Airways almost instituted a dress code—for its passengers! The company is still playing
with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best-dressed person on the plane. A plastic
surgeon could offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put a book on sale for a certain period
of time. Stew Leonard’s took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the
customers pick their own. Sales doubled.
9. Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything
you don’t do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, “Why not?”
10. What would happen if you simply told the truth inside your company and to your customers?

E-corner Videos Notes:
- Ability to provide a unique product or service
- Make yourself likable. Dress appropriately, smile genuinely, and have a great handshake.

$100 Challenge Update:
- This week I recorded an Elevator Pitch describing my business in less than 1 minute. I learned the importance of having an elevator pitch on hand because you never know when you will need to use it as an entrepreneur.

Week 5

Acton Hero: Desh Deshpande 
         When something goes wrong it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. If you don’t agree with your business partner, things can get problematic and it will be difficult to work together. Optimism is important in life. It is a good thing that optimism is important because I myself am a very positive and optimistic person, I always have been. That is a good attribute to have when starting a business, it will help you to keep going forward and doing what needs to be done to start and run your business. Another thing that is not always a bad thing is setbacks. Setbacks can expand your comfort zone and make you stronger. It doesn’t matter where you come from when you want to start a business, it only matters that you have the motivation needed to start the business (and optimism).  Young children in North America need to realize and learn that they have an easy life compared to other children around the world. They have many resources available to them at others don’t. With these resources available to them they can do anything they want with their life.

Harvard Manage Mentor Notes
- 4 steps to creating a budget:
- set goals
- evaluating and choosing options
- identifying budget impacts
- coordinating budgets
- Interpret numbers with care when doing a budget
- 3 different types of budgets:
- Operating Budget
- Capital Budget
- Cash Budget
- Fixed Cost vs Variable Costs in a business

- Never fall for averages when creating a budget. They can be misleading!

Elder Wirthlin's Talk:
Question 1: Elder Wirthlin says that debt is a form of bondage. In what ways can entrepreneurs avoid debt altogether?
Answer 1:. Getting the required funding before beginning the financial steps so you don't spend your own money. Avoid using a credit card so you don't spend more then you have that you then have to pay off. "Beware of covetousness". Look at the pros and cons before buying something with credit. Keep a savings account
Question 2. What are the five key steps to financial freedom? Which do you believe is most difficult, why, and what can you do to overcome the challenge?
Answer 2;
5 key challenges -
1. Pay your tithing -
2.spend less then you earn -
3. Learn to save
4.honor your financial obligations
5.teach your children to follow your example

Hardest. I think the hardest 2 would be to pay your tithing and to spend less then you earn. Paying tithing can be hard for some people because it's 10% of what we earn. (before paying expenses). And for most people that 10% seems like a lot and that money can easily get distributed elsewhere and forgotten about being paid to tithing. One way we can avoid this from happening is to each pay cheque automatically put aside the 10% and pay it as soon as Sunday comes so we don't accidentally take it and use it for something else. 2nd is spending less then you earn. With so many people these days having credit cards. It's easy for you to not pay attention to what you are spending on your card and then loosing track of going over your earnings and therefore being in debt. One solution to that is to make a budget and stick to it. Also avoid having credit cards or keep the lowest balance possible on your credit card so you don't get in to debt.

Elder James E. Faust's Talk Notes:
- I like this! She said: “I decided when I wanted to spend any money on myself I would forgo it and put the money into the temple fund. This meant no new clothes or shoes, books, hair appointments, necklaces, or anything of a personal nature until I reached my goal. I thought this would be a sacrifice, but instead I have found joy in it. It has been a rewarding and fulfilling experience.”
-"To be faithful members of this Church requires sacrifice and consecration. It means that worldly pleasures and earthly possessions should not be our principal aim in life, because the gift of eternal life requires a willingness to sacrifice all we have and are in order to obtain it."

Elder Robert D. Hales Talk Notes:
- "Each temptation we overcome is to strengthen us, not destroy us. The Lord will never allow us to suffer beyond what we can endure"

$100 Challenge:
This week I wrote a report about my capital. I am going to fund $20 (I will get the money from my parents) and I will use that money for gas and for toys and activities from the dollar store for the kids that I babysit. My ROI will be 4400% based on my estimated earnings in 3 months and only putting $20 into the business.

Week 4

Acton Hero: Paul Robshaw

It is important to have a drive for work. You won't get very far in life without that drive. Even though being a hard worker and the money and accomplishments that come with it are important they are not as important as our core values. Keep your values, integrity and honesty. Dream! Dreams are a "reality without boundaries". You should start working at a young age to help you gain that love for hard work. Your parents should give you chores around the house, help you try to find a job when you are old enough, and teach you how to use the money you earn wisely (put some of it away for savings). I myself grew up with the knowledge of the value of hard work, my dad owns his own business and is up early every morning working in his office or working in our yard. Growing up I had chores to do and when I got old enough to start to work I worked all of the time and when I am not working I want to be doing something else productive. I was taught to be productive and not just to sit around and do nothing.

Things I learned:

GEM- Gathering, Enhancing & Marketing

- Gather- Collect the materials, resources and equipment
- Enhance- Add value to the resources we gathered (in a lemonade stand business you take the gathered resources and make the lemonade)
- Market- We market the materials we gathered and enhanced

"A startup is not a dollhouse version of a larger enterprise." Eric Ries
What makes you an entrepreneur is not the product you sell but the business you are trying to conduct.

How to avoid Startup mistakes:
1. Stay on target
2. Be realistic about costs
3. Hire people you need not people you like
4. Know when to say goodbye

$100 Challenge Update: This week I wrote out my business plan for my $100 Challenge project. I chose to use babysitting as my business. I also wrote my business plan for my Big Idea project.

Week 3 Journal

Acton Hero: Tom Monaghan

Tom Monaghan is the founder of Domino's pizza. He talks about how important it is to not get caught up in all the 'toys' and to not be prideful. He says to not be worried about being obsessed with impressing people. Use your wealth to benefit others, use it to build the kingdom. The most important thing is the eternal, not the now. Invite others to join you in your journey of building the kingdom. For Tom, education is the most important thing he can put his money towards that can be the most beneficial. He did just that, he founded a catholic school (college). I agree, education is very important so that other people have equal opportunities as he has had, so they can live to their fullest potential. As a millionaire one should try to live a reasonably priced lifestyle and put your hard earned money to good use for helping others.

In the article Special Report on Entrepreneurship in The Economist magazine it says the unpredictability of chance and the importance of culture make things complicated when trying to search for success.

In the same article I read that when there is high unemployment rates it discourages people from starting their own businesses because if they fail they might not find another job. Also in this article Peter Drucker said "entrepreneurs innovate" and "innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship".

It is important to encourage a playful attitude in the company because it helps with peoples creative thinking process. It gets ideas flowing.

Some ways you can foster a playful attitude is by: - putting crayons and paper in a conference room to allow the group members to draw their ideas

- you can put a flip chart in a non-traditional area (like the staff kitchen) to allow staff members to spontaneously jot down ideas while socializing/discussing with co-workers

- add beanbag chairs to a conference room to allow for a more casual feel and less strict/tense

- put in a reward/incentive system like a pay bonus or vacation prizes to help motivate staff to continue thinking of new and creative/innovative ideas

- suggest that the staff create a college from various magazines showing their ideas or play a game that helps them discuss ideas.  

Things I want to remember from the readings & videos:

- In your business you should put your customers first and the money making second.

- Entrepreneurial Success Formula:

ES= [I+(M^3)]xP- Entrepreneurial Success=[Idea+(Market x Money

x Management)]x Passion

- Ideas Come from EVERYWHERE!!

This week for my $100 challenge I submitted my top 5 business ideas on the discussion board to get input from my classmates about my ideas. As well as discussing my classmates business ideas with them.

Week 2 Journal

Acton Hero: Corey Bell

In the Acton Hero video about Corey Bell, I learned that in entrepreneurship people don’t use the word ‘can’t’. If what you are doing does not line up with your vision of what you want your life to be (your 15-20 year plan), change what you are doing to make your vision happen. If your goal is to do something that touches lives, do it! Don’t just hope for it! Live a life without regrets! I don’t want to die with the question “what if…?” What if I had followed my dream, what if I had gotten the right education, etc… I need to live my life in a way that when I die there are no ‘what if?’ questions. You should rise to the challenge of following your dreams. When you meet people you should try to take something away from the interaction that inspires you. We owe the world, the world doesn’t owe us. People are not worried about what you did in your life after you have lived it, but they want to know who you are. We are put here on the earth to make an impact.
I really liked learning how to handle money and how it is related to running a business in the book I read called The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

Notes from the book:
- 7 Baby Steps (these more apply to life and less business)
1. Make a $1000 emergency fund fast
2. Debt Snowball- make a list of your debts smallest to largest and pay them off in that order
3. Fully fund your emergency fund. Equaling 3-6 months of expenses
4. Put 15% of your income into a retirement fund
5. Start putting money into a college fund for your children
6. Pay off your house
7. Build wealth & give!


-Don't overspend, even when you think you have the money to overspend! This applies in your life and in running a business!
- Don't use credit cards!
- "Wealth building isn't rocket science. Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge" (Ramsey, 33)
- In your business "honestly assess your earning capacity and live below your means"(Ramsey, 36).
- USE A BUDGET & Practice the Envelope System!!

At this point in our $100 Challenge project I have picked out which kiva organization I want to donate to. :)

Week 1 Journal

Acton Hero Bruce Thompson:

In the video by Bruce Thompson I learned that it is not about the money you make but it’s about the people you meet and the relationships you form. No matter what is going on at work it shouldn’t affect how you treat your clients and people around you. Your work shouldn’t take priority over spending time with your family, set a limit and leave work at a reasonable time instead of spending excessive hours on the job. It is important to have integrity in everything you do at home and at work. When you come home from work don’t spend time on your phone or computer working, create a balance, socialize with your friends and family, have fun. Although education is important there are other aspects in your life that are equally important to running your own business. Some of these things are your ability to persevere and be confident in yourself. Make your business fun but don’t make it your life.

Quotes:
- Henry Ford- "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently" "Whether you think you can or think you can't-- you are right"
- Franklin D Roosevelt- "Let me assert my firm belief that the only think we have to fear is fear itself" "...but above all try something"

Sam Walton (founder of Walmart)
Sam's Rules for Building a Business:
- COMMIT to your business
- SHARE your profits with your associates and treat them as partners
-MOTIVATE your partners
- COMMUNICATE everything you possibly can to your partners
-APPRECIATE everything your associates do for your business
-CELEBRATE your success
-LISTEN to everyone in your company
-EXCEED your customers' expectations
-CONTROL your expenses better then your competition

IT ALL BEGINS WITH A DREAM!!!

During this class I hope to learn how to a better business owner so I have the opportunity to run a successful business one day. I think it is important to keep this entrepreneur blog because I can look back and refer to it in the future when/if I am opening my own business. I can also show it to my friends and family who may be interested in opening their own business.