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.

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!

The Last Lecture

            It is hard to choose what to say for your last words. However, now that I have completed this course, I feel like I could actually give advice to an aspiring entrepreneur that might benefit them. I would tell them to talk with current entrepreneurs that they know to find out what day-to-day life is like working and running your own business. After they have a real understanding of the dedication it takes to be an entrepreneur, then I would invite them to decide if their entrepreneurial cravings would best be satisfied working for himself or working for someone else.

            One thing that I learned in this class is that you don’t necessarily have to own your own business to be an entrepreneur. You can apply the same skills that are required in running your own business as you could any larger company. Applying these skills in a larger company might actually help you and be less stressful than running your own business.

            The next piece of advice that I would give an aspiring entrepreneur is if all that they want is money, you are making a mistake. There is much more to being an entrepreneur than the potential of making more money. Actually, if that is your main motivation, you will most likely fail! I say this because if this is at your core, you will be more willing to lie, cheat, steal and give up any other morals you have, just to earn a buck. This kind of entrepreneurship will neither bring happiness, nor financial stability.

            The last piece of advice that I would give would be to involve yourself in something that you not only love and are passionate about, but also something you feel will help benefit others. When you don’t enjoy what you are doing, and are not helping other people do the same, there will be a void in your life that you will seek to fill. Entrepreneurship will bring you freedom, happiness, and satisfaction for not only yourself, but your family, your friends and your customers.

            In my personal opinion, living a life of entrepreneurship is one worth the risk as well as the reward. Be patient, smart and understanding. I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.