Intro to Entrepreneurship

Week 1 (September 13 - September 19) 2021

This week I began class without knowing what I was going to learn. I read all the articles, and watched all the videos and I took notes. Taking notes is the best way for me to remember what stood out to me. So this week these are the stand outs:

• In the talk "Your Whole Souls as an Offering Unto Him" by Elder Bednar, the focus was on Faith and Diligence. These two are vital to setting goals and meeting them. He references D&C 103:36, "... All victory and glory is brought to pass unto you through your diligence, faithfulness, and prayers of faith."  To me this means that if you lack any of these characteristics, then you will struggle, and may even fail to meet your goal. He also referred to D&C 4:2, "Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day."  He then broke it down to mean that it means we need to have a Mighty Heart and a Strong Mind. With a Mighty Heart we have faithfulness/spiritual strength, and with a Strong Mind we have competence which is achieved through intellectual diligence and discipline. 
  

•  The next read was "Living Life as an Entrepreneurial Hero". This was really straight forward and I wrote some quotes that were inspiring to me. Including:
• "It's not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." - Marcus Aurelious
• "First we make our habits, then our habits make us"  - Charles Noble 
• DREAM BIG 

•  I then read "What is the Introduction to Entrepreneurship course?"  This one told me what to expect in the coming weeks. The Four big goals are:
1. To discover an entrepreneurial "calling", The Startup of You.
2. To choose constructive habits and to deeply etch them onto my character.
3. To select my next "steppingstone" job or begin my entrepreneurial career.
4. To Embrace Disciple Leadership by examining "The Ministry of Business"

• I will be creating "My Life Portfolio"

• My favorite article that I read was probably "The Starting-Up of You". I enjoyed the layout, and just how it was stated so plainly. It taught me that I need:
• A mindset of Permanent Beta, which means that I must think of myself as a work-in-progress and therefore, I must invest in myself every single day. This concept is hard for me because as a mother of four I am so used to focusing on everyone but me, so this course and reading that really made me see how valuable I really am. I need to make me more of a priority.
• Assets: 
• Soft assets (knowledge, skills, connections)
• Hard assets (cash in the bank, equipment, location)

• I also learned about plans A, B, and Z 
• A.  What I'm doing now. My current implementation of my competitive advantage.
• B.  My pivot to B when my plan isn't working or when I discover a better way toward my goal.
• Z.  Shift to Z if something goes seriously wrong. Z is a lifeboat I can jump in if my plan fails and I need to regroup before getting back in the game.

• I also learned that my Brand is who I am. There for it won't work or grow if I am not true to who I am. 

• Finally the last lesson I think is note worthy this week is also a very important one. I learned it in the "Launching Leaders - lesson 1" video, and also from meeting all of my classmates. Business, as well as life, is a network of people. The more people we know, then the more opportunities we have to learn, and expand ourselves, our minds, and our businesses. 

My final thought for this post is a simple one that takes into account all that I have learned this week. 

Never Stop Starting!