Luke's blog for Intro to Entrepreneurship

 Put first things first. I strive to be an optimistic person, and I have felt that this habit makes that easier. Put first things first is the third habit from Stephen Covey's "Seven Habit of Highly Effective People." The book says "t he heart of effective personal time management is to spend the maximum time possible doing important jobs in a non-urgent atmosphere that increases your efficiency." It is very easy for us to start getting ahead of ourselves and overthinking which leads to us to forget about the task at hand. I often found this happening with my friends during college when we were trying to make plans and something unexpected happens and we start trying to solve that problem before we even know what the options are. This is a low stress environment obviously, but the concept is the same. This is also how it helps with optimism, because instead of getting caught up in the problem you look for the solutions, and fairly often the solutions end up solv...

 There was a quote from this week that has really stuck with me. The quote said:“The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.” I liked this quote because it teaches us a few different lessons. One lesson I got from it is that we should not be too hard on ourselves. We should learn to conquer ourselves. To me this means we should learn it what ways we can be the most productive in conquering the things of this world. We all have different areas we struggle in, but we can learn how to best react to these areas. I, for example have difficulty in studying extra outside of typical assignments in school. Throughout my time in college I have learned that the bigger issue is after class I have a hard time studying or doing homework so I prefer to get up early and study and do homework before class. This also helps because then I have studied the material beforehand so class makes more sense.  The other thing that...

 This week we watched a video titled "A hero's journey." There were multiple things that stuck out to me during that video. I will share and talk about some of them. The first thing was the question the speaker asks himself. He asks "Do I really have what it takes to succeed?" This is a question we all ask ourselves. The bar is set high in life, there is a lot expected of each of us. I believe the important thing to remember is that success varies from person to person. Do we all have what it takes to be the richest man in the world? Probably not. We all come from different backgrounds and different circumstances that might not allow us to reach that level of success. We each of what it takes to be successful but that will be different for every person. Another part from the speech I liked is when he gives the idea to ask five people what you do better than anyone else in the world and to press for specifics. I have never done this exercise but I have heard of i...

 This week there were three important concepts I learned that I want to apply for the rest of this semester and for my future life opportunities.  1. Creating a strategy for my life.  This concept is pretty self explanatory. Strategy is a plan of action. It is a natural instinct for us to create strategy. Whenever opportunities arise, good or bad, we create a strategy to overcome them. For example, last semester in school I took a class that encouraged us to create our grad plan in order to have all of our classes lined up and help us stick to the plan. This can be considered a strategy. I made a plan of action for me to be able to graduate. Some of the other actions to this strategy would be to get a job in order to pay for school, create an plan each semester on when to study and get my homework done on time. As I follow this strategy the steps to graduating will fall into place.  2. "We must pay attention to the small things that will help us to grow and develop ...

 1. If you pursue your calling with discipline, intentionality, and the help of fellow travelers, what are the chances that your worst case scenario will really happen? We all have fears in this life, but if we do what we are supposed to and live with discipline then there are low chances any of our worst case scenarios will happen. 2. As you look at your list of fears, what themes emerge? What is at the core of what you really fear? Financial ruin? The judgment or disapproval of others? Physical harm? Endangering the ones you love? Embarrassment? My core fear is the idea of not making my family happy. This could be financially, or just any support. If my kids did not have enough resources to live...that is the main theme of my fears. 3. What is the risk of taking no action – not following your calling? How do you plan to deal with fear when it pops up on your entrepreneurial journey? The risk is that I do not fulfill the things in life I wanted to. I want to trust in God and know ...

 This week we read a lot about being honest in your dealings as a potential business owner. I enjoyed reading the talk by Sheri L. Dew titled "True Blue, Through and Through." The shares the following story in the talk: "An incident in the life of President Joseph F. Smith bears out this point. In the fall of1857, the nineteen-year-old Joseph F. was returning from his mission in Hawaii, and in California he joined a wagon train. It was a volatile time for the Saints. Johnston’s Army was marching towards Utah, and many had bitter feelings towards the Church. One evening several hoodlums rode into camp, cursing and threatening to hurt every Mormon they could find. Most in the wagon train ran and hid in the brush. But Joseph F. thought to himself: “Shall I run from these fellows? Why should I fear them?” With that, he walked up to one of the intruders who, with pistol in hand, demanded, “Are you a Mormon?” Joseph F. Smith responded, “Yes siree; dyed in the wool; true blue, ...

 I enjoyed the videos that were provided this week. It was cool to hear some of the stories on how different well known businesses got their names and how long it took them to become successful. It is cool hearing and learning about success stories like this. The specific example I am thinking of was the invention of WD-40. The number 40 in the name of this product is part of the name because it was successfully created on the 40th attempt. Norman Larsen was the developer of the product and I think there is a great lesson we can all learn from him. We can learn that we are not going to be perfect or successfull on our first try, probably not even in the first 10, 15, or 20 times! We all have the potential to be successful with our dreams if we are willing to do what it takes to achieve them. Mr. Pausch is a great example of dreaming and achieving. He had many dreams, one to work at Disney that he got declined for, but he quickly realized that if we lead our life the way we want to ...