Launching Cait

If you had one final lecture to share with a group of students on what you have learned from this course, what would you share? I'd share that why we do things is much more important than how. There's nothing inherently wrong with pursuing financial success, but how we plan to use it once we've achieved it is what will determine our final goal or not. I was impressed with the video this week on Tom Monaghan. I found it interesting that he turned his whole life around because of one chapter in a book! Talk about small hinges. He'd devoted himself to the pursuit of money and success, then gave it all away to help others. While he may have gone off track for awhile (we're only human, after all!), because he'd built up that empire, he was able to immensely help others from making the same mistakes he did. If our ultimate prize is to return to live with our Heavenly Father, then we need to plan how we're going to help others once we've achieved that suc...

This week I really enjoyed Thomas S. Monson's talk about gratitude. I appreciated the reminder that gratitude helps us maintain focus on what's important. A quote from the talk that I loved: "We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude." -Thomas S. Monson I think we all are better people when we have positive mindsets. We're able to think through problems more clearly, we are better able to handle trials or other hard things, and we're just generally happier. The current trend calls an attitude of gratitude an "abundant mindset" vs. negative attitude, which is "scarcity mindset." In relation to the entrepreneurial journey, having gratitude, or coming at our business from an abundant mindset, better helps us to focus on serving our customer's, learning new skills and adapting when hurdles are thrown in our path. This we...

Based on what you read in the first two pages (pages 3 and 4), why are virtue and integrity so vital to an economy?  Virtue and integrity are so important because, as Handy states, "conceal truth or erode trust, and the game becomes so unreliable that no one will want to play." If businesses can't be honest with their doings, then people will find other ways to stash their wealth, and the whole system will collapse. In fact, Handy suggests that business culture may already be wonky now because people believe that businesses, and the executives that run them, are only out to get success and gain for themselves. According to Charles Handy, what is the “real justification” for the existence of businesses? "The purpose of a business, in other words, is not to make a profit, full stop. It is to make a profit so that the business can do something more or better. That “something” becomes the real justification for the business. Owners know this. Investors needn’t ca...

I think the article "Attitude on Money" by Stephen W. Gibson was one of my favorites this week. It's refreshing to read an article on how money isn't evil, it's what we choose to do with it that's good or bad. After reading the article, I'm not sure if I have a healthy attitude towards money. There wasn't a lot of it growing up, nor did my parents set a good example of how to manage it. It's been a struggle as an adult to learn to think of it as a tool, instead of an expendable resource. A few years ago my husband was offered a job with Amazon that had a significant pay increase. It changed our lives. We've been able to pay off all our debt, start investing, and put some money into savings. Even with all that progress, I think there's some mental work that I need to do. I tend to look at everything regarding finances from a place of scarcity. While we've been blessed, maybe if I looked at it with an eye to how to serve, it'd be easi...

Dreaming big has never been a problem for me. In fact, I excel at dreaming. When I was single, I dreamed of marrying an awesome guy. After I was married, I dreamed of being a mother. After I was a mother, I now dream of parenting teenagers instead of toddlers because if they dump those toys out one more time I might lose it. What's really hard for me is finding the joy in the journey exactly where I'm at. Put in the perspective of business, I dream of already achieving financial success and leading a team of people and making a name for myself. But there's joy to be had in the smallness of the business, in the lessons I'm learning, in the mistakes I'm making on a small scale, right now. Remembering to feel that when I'm writing my hundredth paper of the semester, or figuring out a new and creative way to respond on the discussion boards, is the real challenge for me. When I start my business next year, there's going to be joy in the loss of sleep, and bookke...

I think my favorite reading this week was the summary on the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. A lot of it is putting the cart before the horse, since I don't have any company yet, let alone a good one. But I gained a lot of insight on how to start out that will help make me go from good to great a lot easier. I copied a bunch of quotes from the summary, realized I was copying the whole thing and just went and bought the book off of Amazon because I'm that intrigued by the concepts. In the Launching Leaders video, I loved how the speaker (I forget his name!) called the book one of his "friends" or "mentors." It's such a great outlook to have about books that help you learn and grow. I have a feeling that once I read this book it's going to become one of my friends too! I'm especially intrigued with the idea of Level 5 Leadership and how I can start developing those traits now. Or what traits I already possess that I can grow and develop too. ...

I think my biggest takeaway this week is to keep going even though obstacles pop up in your way. Victory in anything is only achieved through blood, sweat and tears. I loved all the history in the study materials this week. I especially loved the story shared about building the Salt Lake City temple. I'm not as familiar with the history of it as I probably should be, and a lot of the details shared were new to me. I can't imagine going through something as difficult as the building of that temple. In a lot of ways my life in this modern day world is incredibly easy. Reading of their trials and setbacks (some of them major!), but continuing on even when they were tired or frustrated or despairing is such a great example to a budding entrepreneur just starting out on her journey.  I also really loved the Winston Churchhill quotes, some of which I shared below. I think it's important to see how others get through challenges, in the hopes that their experience can help me ...

I have never read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , though we own both that book and the follow-up Living the 7 Habits . We even own the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families , which I've also never read. For some reason, it seems daunting to even accomplish the first habit, let alone the other six that follow behind it. However, after reading the summary this week, I've pulled it off my shelf, dusted it off and am going to make a diligent effort to include that as part of my study, despite it not being a part of the curriculum. It seems silly now to have spent the year being so focused on personal growth not to have read the most popular book on the subject! I think the habit that held the most meaning for me was Habit 3, put first things first. I'm not sure if my current scheduling method, which is basically to write every task down for the week on a scratch piece of paper, is working for me. I like the idea of scheduling everything out based on priorit...

Self-mastery has been a concept I've been working on all year. Discipline of self is not something that comes naturally to me. When I realized that I wanted to start my own business, I decided that this would be one of the most important skills I need to develop in order to be successful. I've been working on developing self-master in personal habits, like diet, exercise and regular prayer and scripture reading. I realize that self-mastery is a life long pursuit, but I'm very impressed with my progress so far this year. Spending all year working on this skill has helped me realize all that I can do, and that if I do things right (or as right as I can), then the Lord will bless my efforts.  Another lesson from this week that impacted me was the video on setting rules about my career and my job. I think this would be valuable information for anyone, not just entrepreneurs. It's caused me to think about what having both a family and a career will look like for me. This ...

I dearly love to read, so the idea of applying The Hero's Journey to my own entrepreneurial journey resonated with me. In a book, a character is the never the same at the end as she was at the beginning. A character must evolve, change, grow, learn in order to for the story to make sense. We're all affected by the things that happen to us, and life events change us in one way or another. In the video he says "what matters most is not the prize in the end, but how the hero is changed in the process." My experiences with becoming a business owner will change me, one way or another. How am I goin to let it change me? Will I thrive, or will I bomb? And if I do bomb, how will I pick myself back up again and keep going? One suggestion to help with this, according to the speaker, is to "find great mentors and ask them great questions." In every story the hero has a guide, someone that says the right thing at the right moment to steer the hero in the right direction...