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...