Last Lecture

It is hard to think of what you would want to say to someone else if it was your last lecture giving. I would be worried that I would give poor advice and I would be even more worries that my advice wouldn’t be followed. However, as I look back on this semester I feel that one thing I learned that could be linked to most of the lessons is to work on your business and not in your business. As I went through the lessons and read many of the case studies I felt that remembering this principle would help in many cases.

There are many stresses that can come living the entrepreneurial lifestyle. I feel a large majority of these stresses are cause by the entrepreneur allowing his business to run his life. Once you as the owner of the business start to feel owned by the business, you need to recognize that a change needs to be made. Make sure you have your priorities straight before you even begin your business. Sit down a write what is most important to you in your life. For example, God, family, yourself, and etc. as you do this your will better understand what steps to take so that the business you create can be used to improve those aspects of your life. You will spend a large portion of your time working on your business, but when you look back at those moments the last thing you want them to be doing is replacing other events that should have had precedence.

Entrepreneurship has many rewards and benefits. I hope the step to become an entrepreneur is taken by more and more people everyday. I believe that entrepreneurs are the most inspiring and motivational people around. These people help make dreams become reality. The pros of entrepreneurship do come with some responsibility, but they also heavily outweigh the cons if you are willing to work, be humble, and learn.

Funeral rolls

This week I got one order. It was for a single full sheet of cinnamon rolls- a $25 order. I wrote it down in my calendar and thought about it all week. I was grateful for the one order, because it was my only one for the past couple weeks. They had asked for a Saturday morning delivery, which is pretty typical for this area.

On Thursday night, I got a phone call from my dad. He said that my Uncle Terry had lost his battle to prostate cancer and died. This was the uncle that baptized me when I was a child, and was there for my family when we needed it most. He was like my second father! The funeral would be quick since there was no embalming or autopsy taking place. They were planning it for Saturday morning, about 6 hours north of where I was. There would be family dinners and events happening all day Friday, too. That night we decided as a family that we would leave early the next morning and drive to Salt Lake to be with family.

However, that meant that I had to cancel my order that I was so excited about. I called them and let them know what happened. They were perfectly OK and understanding about it. We rescheduled for another day. When we got back from the funeral weekend, I got right to work and made them their same order. I ran it over to their house as a surprise. I told them it was “on the house” for being so patient with me.  They were happy and I felt better about canceling. It was worth the time and money I put into them.

This experience taught me how grateful I am about being able to start my own business. Life events happen, and unlike a normal job for another company, there is some leniency for changing up the plan. I am also grateful for the opportunity I have to make my customers happy, even in difficult situations.

A little longer

This week I decided that since orders have been slow, most likely because of the weather, that I would take around some samples up in my mom’s little town of Pine Valley and in our own ward. I had a lady, Mary Esther,  order the next day. She didn’t want a small order, either. She wanted to order $50 worth of cinnamon rolls! However her one request was that we bake them a little more. She even said, “they need to be baked about 5-7 minutes longer.”

At first when she said that, I was a little shocked and didn’t know what to make of it. I had never had anything said to me about doughy rolls or needing to have them cooked longer. But the longer that I thought about it, the more I realized that it might just be her personal taste. I also learned that I need to be better with taking criticism of my rolls. Not everyone wants them done exactly how I like them, so I need to be more flexible and adjustable to meet my customer needs.

So I did just what she asked, and baked them for a full 6 minutes longer than I would have liked them. They looked a little dark to me, but she loved them. She shared them with her family at a reunion and they all loved them as well! Glad I was able to meet her requests!

Double Order

This week was a great learning experience week. It was very hot here in St. George, so I didn’t think I would get any orders. However, I underestimated how much people love eating baked good without having to heat up their own kitchen! On Thursday night I did get one order for Saturday.

The order came from an older lady named Luana. I asked her if she wanted  “one tray of two dozen, or one half tray of one dozen.” When she emailed me back, she wrote that she wanted two dozen. When Saturday rolled around, I had it in my head that she wanted two whole trays. So I woke up early and made her two trays.

She lived an hour away and it was really stormy that day. We had to drive through a very large amount of rain, hale and lightening just to get up the mountain where she lived! When we got there, she wasn’t home yet. However, her adult children were up that day for a visit. They took the cinnamon rolls and paid me the full $50. I didn’t think much about it, and neither did they!

Later in the weekend, my wife was going through the business emails and separating them from our normal ones. She read Luana’s email, and discovered that she hadn’t ordered a full two trays, but only two dozen (just one full tray). After thinking about it some more, we decided that we should take Luana back her money.

So we got back in the car and drove the hour back to her house. When I knocked on the door to give her back her money, they wouldn’t take it.  She said that they had given all the rolls away and they were happy because it gave them a chance to make friends and meet their neighbors. I asked them about five times to take their money back. But they insisted.

I learned a couple lessons from this experience this week. The first one: read each individual order to make sure that you are understanding what they want. The second: it feels much better taking a little loss financially, than to let things slide morally.

Natural Growth

This week was very interesting. As I studies the life of Michael Jordan and his failures, I was able to relate to his struggles. He went through many times where he might have felt sorry for himself, or that he failed, but instead of giving up he pressed harder and ended up coming out on top. In the past few weeks I have many family emergencies and even a family member pass. However, I picked back up where I left off with my $100 business challenge. I went and check the email I setup for this little venture and there was an order placed for cinnamon rolls. It had to be there the next day so I rushed to the kitchen and began to prepare the ingredients so I was ready to wake up early and bake. As I drove up to deliver the rolls, I realized that even though I hadn’t spent as much time as I had wanted to on the business lately, it was still functioning. A business will naturally want to continue growing. It is up to us to help it along that process. It is like a plant, the plant will and wants to grow to produce its flowers, but it is up to the gardener to make sure it is watered and well cared for. However the longer we ignore it the more likely it will be to die. This was an amazing lesson to learn this week. This small experience taught me a lot and I will always remember this time. 

Work and Family

It has been another great week and I have learned a lot. The first thing I would like to discuss was a talk I was able to read written by Elder Hales. In this talk he says that as a natural man you will experience the temptation of addiction. However, addiction is something that can never be fully satisfied. If we let these kinds of thing control our lives we may never be able to experience the blessings the Lord has in store for us.

As entrepreneurs we need to make sure that our priorities are straight. If we cannot keep focused on what it most important then we may never find the kind of success we want to find. The scary part here is that most entrepreneurs want to make a lot of money and this can blind them from other responsibilities such as their families. I hope that I will be able to find the correct balance between work and family.

Infancy and Adolescence

This week I was able to really see portions of the book E-Myth come to life. Last week I read about the different stages of a business. Two of these stages were infancy, and adolescence. In infancy you are your business and your business is you. You take on all the roles the business needs in order to function and you are not yet big enough (or you do not yet want to be big enough) to hire any other employees. Then you have adolescence. In this stage you hire more people to fill important roles you don't like to do or are not as good at. When this happens many times the business owner can lose control and will end up losing what he has built. Many business die during the adolescent stage.

I thought it was interesting to see business I am familiar with in these stages. I think one of the businesses I know is in between both infancy and adolescence. There are employees hired to do the more technical work, but the owner still seems to do everything else and many times pitches in to do the technical side as well. I have been able to see and understand why these stages are so important to understand and how they can be so difficult to actually go through. I hope that I will be aware of these things I have learned as I go through these stages in my own life.

I am now starting to gather material and ideas for my $100 challenge. I went to my storage unit and pulled out our mixer and checked the pantry for the ingredients needed for my cinnamon roll business. I have also thought of some great places to take some batches of samples to give to people. I am excited to make my first batch next week. I hope that I am able to sell as many as possible and that I will have fun while at the same time see success. I will keep you posted on whats happens next week with my samples and sales.