Determine your Course, and Have Willpower

In business class this week I could take the four most important topics and summarize them for you.

Jan Newman said that you don’t grow a business at all cost. You should go slowly and balance your personal life and career. All elements you keep adding on to your life belt later could make you crunch down into the same time you once had as a single adult.  While crunching your time, you can leave your loyalty to the Lord and loyalty to your spouse and family first. Priority is needed to be cautious of your time. He explains that in the book of Doctrine and Covenants the Lord says we need a willing heart and mind. The greatest legacy will not be money, it will be your family, actions, and integrity.

Most entrepreneurs get their ideas merely duplicated or modified an idea encountered through previous employment. This principle about getting ideas for businesses through experience or prior employment inside the field of the business focus is very important for me. I have not been employed much in the business field and I opened my own small business but it is without business experience. Thus, I learned from this that I can get a job and gather ideas from the job.

There are two ways to acquire the skills above: learn them yourself or find a partner who already has them.  (From Strategies that work para. 151.) This is important to me because it tells me I do not have to know it all, or be an expert in all the aspects of a certain business. All I have to do is find someone who can do it with me that has the skills that I lack.

Eldon Tanner said, "There are two important elements in self-mastery. The first is to determine your course or set the sails, so to speak, of moral standards; the other is the willpower, or the wind in the sails carrying one forward." The third topic about moral standards being set for business objectives is also supportive for any entrepreneur. This is followed by the willpower we all need to push us along, just like the wind for the sail of a boat. The imagery of the boat being set to a course makes me think about past lessons where we learned about being set in a general direction, because boats just like in real life tend to veer off the path so naturally, but it also can be good to be open minded and change plans sometimes to accommodate the off-center business.

I am looking forward to more teachings on the subjects of integrity, and business ethics.