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.

The $100 Challenge

This week has been very exciting and interesting. I have gained some first hand experience on what it is like to be an entrepreneur. I have worked side-by-side with someone who lives this life daily. At the same time, I was able to research other entrepreneurs in other parts of the world. I was able to find and read some entrepreneurs that came from the place where I served my mission. I learned that I can do something to help these hard working individuals, whom I care so much about, grow their business. I have the opportunity to start a small business where all the profits will go towards one of these individuals.

I recently learned how to bake cinnamon rolls, compliments of my wonderful and beautiful wife. Baking isn’t typically something that I would consider to be an interest or hobby of mine, but I have really enjoyed learning the science behind it all. I can appreciate the feeling of seeing hard work actually pay off in a physical item. It has been a learning experience, but eventually turned into something I like to do. I will be baking and selling these cinnamon rolls in order to save money to donate to the Suriname entrepreneur of my choice. While I have many different business ideas, I feel like this idea will be easily profitable in my area.

I look forward to sharing my successes and failures in this small endeavor with you on this blog!