Week two

I talked to Stephanie about and idea I had for my BIG IDEA business.  She was very excited.  Stephanie has always wanted to be an event planner and this would be way to do that on a small scale.  I am not sure it is really a money making idea yet.  Stephanie is very eager to go ahead and start it up tomorrow.  I told her that she convinced me to take this class so that I could learn how to start a business and that we would need to do some research and think about it before we get it going.  I told her it may take a few months to figure it out and talk to people.  We would need to figure out the money and decide if we wanted to work on weekends.  This could turn into something more with a little start up and effort.  We will have to see. 


This week we also learned about naming our business and I think that we should change the name of our business from Bratt Marketing to ??????? Because of Bob Bratt's bad reputation and some people who don't like us it may be time to start over and try something new.  Maybe it is still OK.  We will have to see.  We need to decide exactly what we want the business to do and figure out the money and how to get more business.  It is a challenge, but this weeks reading has given me some good ideas to try harder. 

Action Heroes

ACTION HERO: Thomas S. Monaghan  

Thomas S. Monaghan is a very interesting individual.  He was raised in an orphanage and I feel that because of that he wanted more.  Monaghan was the founder of Domino’s Pizza.  He was the first to start delivering pizza.  He had enormous wealth but after reading a book by C.S. Lewis he decided that he was full of pride and needed to change.  He decided he wanted to start giving back to others and helping to change people’s lives through higher education.  This was a life changing decision for him.  He quit making money and started giving it away to help others.  I admire his decision.  He could have kept going and bought up more businesses and worked to get more wealth but he decided that he wanted something more.  Helping others to achieve success can bring great joy to you and help you feel you have a purpose.  I think he showed great courage to be willing to change his life course and choose to help others.  He doesn’t just give money but also gives of his own time.  I know that many of us want to own a business to get wealth, but it doesn’t bring true happiness, helping others does.  

ACTION HERO:  Bruce Thompson

Bruce Thompson is a very successful businessman.  The company he founded, Hyperion energy, has billions in assets, however, he says that the business is not the most important thing in his life.  He says that family, relationships, and faith are more important.  He said it is important to set priorities, limits and boundaries and take time for your family, the work will still be there tomorrow.  He also gave two more important lessons, one always do the right thing and two be confident in yourself. 

 

I am an entrepreneur

I have been working on brainstorming my many ideas of what I want my BIG IDEA and $100.00 challenge to be.  I have thought about my experience and what I have learned and what I feel that others would want to buy from me or what service I can provide and frankly it made me a little depressed.  I realized that in the 54 years I have been on this earth that I have not really learned anything that I could use to provide a good business opportunity for myself to make money.  That is when it hit me.  I AM AN ENTREPRENEUR! 

For 34 years I have worked hard to provide a home for my husband and children.  It has been a lean startup.  I have worked to create value by learning all I could about decorating, meal preparation, marriage, raising kids, how to get the stains out of the cloths, and how to get hard water spots off the shower door.  I have had to be innovative and work to see if my efforts where baring any fruit.

I read studies and checked for milestones to see if my staff were progressing well both physically and mentally.  Where they walking within the normal guidelines?  Where they learning to talk at the right time?  Was I feeding them the right foods?  Was I reading them good books?  Since my oldest child had Down Syndrome I was made aware of what the milestones where that my staff needed to work on and I tried to help them meet those.  Some where slow to catch on and some of them exceeded the normal milestone mark.

I experimented each day with different receipts to find things that were pleasing to eat.  I experimented with different chore charts and activities to find ones that appealed to my customers.  If something didn't work I would pivot and try something else.  Sometimes I feel that I should have persevered and worked harder to see if what I was trying was really going to work.

I trained my staff and tried to make sure they knew how to do the jobs that were required of them.  Often times it was harder work for me than doing it myself but I knew that it was important to have a well trained staff.  I have not kept up on the training in the last few years and my staff has become a little lax and do not know their jobs very well, but I intend to work on that.

I showed many leaps of faith as I tried to trust my staff as they left to do other activities that they would be good workers and not get into trouble.  I tried to help my staff be creative with fun activities and new experiences which would build their self-esteem and help them be ready to be their own entrepreneurs.

Throughout all of this I didn't get a degree, no one paid me money to run a good company and provide a good workforce.  A doctor has to work for about 12 years to get a degree and be well thought of.  I have worked for many more than that and no one comes to me for advice about what I have learned or accomplished.  No one pays me the big bucks to help them fix their ills.  But my children still count on me to help them navigate this life and be there for them.  And that in the long run is enough.

Ideas from THE LEAN STARTUP  by Eric Reis 

The beginning

This week I am suppose to begin a journey as a blogger.  This is a place to write my thoughts and ideas about school and projects.  My sons and their friends helped me get this started.  They have taken classes about blogging and were excited to help.  Drew, my son from another mother, has been very helpful and excited to see this start.  He is more excited than me.  Since I have started school I have made a website twice and now a blog.  This will be interesting.

I have had a lot of thoughts about a business to make for this class.  I should sell something to teenage boys.  There are always many here.  Maybe I will have to have a brainstorming session with them next week.  I really had not thought of that before.

I am excited to learn something new but also terrified that I will not make any money and right now I really have no big idea but I am working on it.