My Last Lecture

 “Last Lecture”

The best entrepreneurs learn and know how to manage the risk. Taking that risk is worth the challenges that we face. Anyone can start a business if they have the determination and a good support system to do so.  Being an entrepreneur allows for personal freedom to be your own boss.

   Like a purple cow we learn to be remarkable, something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to.  Boring stuff becomes invisible the world is full of boring brown cows.  Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring.  Your one chance for success is to be remarkable. Be like the purple cow and stand out.

    Leaders of companies that go from good to great start by getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.  And they stick to that discipline.  The economic future of your family and your business are dependent upon you building a business with the people you hire and the people you trust.  Always hire the best people you can find, not the ones who are available.

    Failing and making mistakes is part of the process of building a company; we learn from this process and we as long as we can quickly recovering from them is what’s going to matter if we learned from this.  Live your life without regrets and without the “what ifs”.  Do not be embarrassed by your failures; Learn from them and start again – Richard Branson.  A person is a product of their own thoughts and success is determined not by the size of one’s brain as it is by the size of one’s thoughts.

I still feel overwhelmed but not as confused as I was in the beginning of this semester. I did not end up with a profit in my company but I do not see this as a fail. I was able to serve and help a few girls prepare for their special night. I donated my entire stock to a company called “encore” that is based in Utah. There seems to be a larger market in that area for used dresses. At the beginning of the semester I invested $25.00 to a dancing group called Dance for Peace in Sierra Leon that would be providing water and crates of soft drinks and bags of charcoal. I feel very good about the opportunity to help this team. I will be donating what should have been my $100 profit to this group because I have learned so much over this past semester that I want to give what I can.

**This was the hardest week of this semester I normally do not get sick because I always get my flu shots but this year with all the changes happening in my family I neglected me and I became very sick with the flu in the final week of school. I am doing all I can to keep my thoughts straight and the energy to finish the many projects I have on my plate.

It does not mean it is the end of the journey

This week has been incredibly hard for me on top of getting the flu to knock me down. I had the opportunity to learn about so many great entrepreneurs that have given me hope and encouragement.
Reading about Tom Nall and what we learn about his core values that he instills in his company that is based on integrity, honesty and hard work. I think he has shown me that it is okay to take a risk and learn from taking the risk.
 My favorite quote from the readings was from Steve Jobs and this will forever be on my mirror as a good reminder that I could have to courage to keep on going.
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.”  Steve Jobs
$100 Challenge left me broke and needing me to refocus on a new direction. Like many of the entrepreneurs we have studied this semester and learning from my failures it is okay. I am going to be okay. I will learn from what my struggles were and move forward with the next idea.