So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

While watching the Rich Grad Lesson #5 video when he talks about being financially illiterate. He goes through the key terms that you need to know to becoming financially literate. He shows how poor people go from income to expense (basically living paycheck to paycheck). He back tracks and says he was poor once but being poor is a state a mind. I am not saying you can magically decide to have more money but you can choose to pity yourself when you are living paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet. We all have a choice. In the BYU Marriott School of Personal Finance webpage,  http://personalfinance.byu.edu/?q=node/12

I found a quote that really stood out to me. “The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we “give,” brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give! (Neal A. Maxwell, “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 22).”

We have our agency that was given to us and we get to decide what to do with it. We can choose to be happy or sad with our personal finances, we can choose to go to church and live righteous lives. We get to decide.

Perseverance

I like to think of myself as a determined person. I work hard and I know I can do certain things really well. There is one thing that I fail consistently with; I have this bad habit of quitting things when it gets too hard.

I took a military fitness class just to say that I could. It was at 6:00 am that was three times a week in the middle of winter. I remember after the first week I was ready to be done with the class. I kept thinking to myself when my alarm went off, if I don’t get up will regret it later. Like reading my scriptures I felt good about myself when I would got to crazy workout of a class. I felt like a better person for sticking it out and I even got most improved at the end of the semester.

This was one of the first things that was really difficult for me that I saw through to the end.  

The underlying theme that I read about in this weeks reading was perseverance. I find it interesting how something like sticking it through to the end could relate to the business world and to personal everyday life.

The most successful people I know worked hard and kept working hard even when they didn’t have to work as hard anymore. I don’t believe it was easy for them or that they succeed on their first couple of tries. However, that is what set them apart as being successful… is that they persevered.

Honesty and Business Ethics

What does a cow drink? First thought that jumps in my head is MILK. I promise I am not dumb, let me explain my answer…

In the Rich Grad Video #3 – (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXv_hg-PdEM)

The speaker had us focusing on the color white and when he asked the question, “What do cows drink?” the first thing that came to my mind was milk, because of the association  I had just made with the color white. I know that cows drink WATER, but it was interesting to see how he had just conditioned my mind to believe that it was milk.

The speaker then said, “You have to be mindful of your beliefs. Your beliefs will create your reality.” My life is composed of what I believe in, from where I live to how I spend my money. To get out of the “rat race,” as the speaker puts it, you have to change your beliefs. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing but if you ever have to compromise your integrity that is when I see a problem.

In the talk given by Elder Lynn G. Robbins, Making a Living and a Life he says,

“Working in this world to make a living was part of the Lord’s plan for His children, not just to survive, but to see how we would get along with others in making that living – to see if we would be honest in our dealings with our fellowmen.   Satan quickly recognized the work environment as a strategic setting to stir up all manner of sin, including covetousness, jealousies, self-indulgence, living beyond one’s means, anger, contention in marriages, infidelity, greed and envy, selfishness, even theft and murder.”

I believe that sometimes we have to change our way of thinking to get ahead in life, but on the same turn we have to be careful to not let others change our perspective and how we view things.

Rule #1 from Rich Grad, “Money is not the most important thing in life, however the most important things in life require money.” Where we live, where we go to school, what we eat, these are very important things in my life that require money. To be able to pay for them I have to have money… well that is a given.

It is easy, when listening to men of the world to become conditioned to the world view that they have. If money becomes our primary objective, we may lose sight of the truly important things.  I never want to get to the point where someone asks me what is the most important thing to me and I instinctively say “my career.” Just as I know cows drink water, I know that my family is and will always be most important to me – no matter what the world conditions me to believe.