Beyond Entrepreneurship

This week in class we discussed mentors and how they play a role in helping an entrepreneur to be successful. One of the chapters talked about how we need to have companions on our journey who will not run away when the going gets tough. Personally, I think it's a dumb idea to involve friends in your business, so I'll have to do it the opposite and meet the friends that will be my mentors through the business (like Jaylee). It's like the whole you can't be roommates with friends but you can be friends with your roommates deal. Mentors help in every day life, too. I've been blessed with some really great adults, especially as a teenager, who helped me mature and become the person I need to be. I'm still in contact with several of them. One that I am particularly fond of is Kathleen. She helped me with a personal vision project for another class and in the letter she wrote me she said what a pleasure it had been to watch me grow up and succeed in my entrepreneuria...

We’ve been talking continually about how you can accomplish anything if you work hard enough. That no matter what the dream is, you can make it happen regardless of what others think. Due to what has happened this year with my business, my entrepreneurial dreams are a little fuzzy right now but I can definitely apply all of this to the other aspects of my life. We also talked about how we need other entrepreneurs and support systems in our lives to achieve our goals. I’m a pretty open person but I tend to tell people all but one or two big things that I am dealing with. Mom included. Colleen included. It’s hard to know if they will be willing to support me or to even understand my perspective on it. It’s like the eating disorder thing with Colleen. She means well, but every time we talk about it, I go away from it feeling like she doesn’t think as highly of me as I thought she did. I will try to be a little more open with things that I encounter on my journey so that others will share ...

We have been talking and reading about keeping towards the goal when the journey is hard. When bamboo seeds are planted, they take five years to show above soil and then within five weeks they are 90 feet tall. Sometimes growth is prevented by our fears and self-sabotage but sometimes it is just part of the process. That moment it finally clicks for you or the one when you realize that you have the life you've always wanted to have, is always worth it. I experienced that last year with college and how even though it has been a very scary thing growing up and not having a certain future anymore, I realized that I finally had what I'd been praying for since I was a kid. Sweet friendships, a testimony of the gospel and a relationship with Jesus, and the hope and faith and perserverence to know that I can get through anything.  I look forward to the moment when I am self-developed enough to just act in the way I want to instead of being held back by old habits, fears, or temptat...

This week in class we talked about integrity as an entreprenuer, employee of another company, or business owner. The book said that once companies go public they typically don't keep the same standards they committed to as start-ups. I experienced that with my business because I set really high standards that got hard to keep when I was really busy. Three people were asked to come up in class and share experiences with integrity as a business owner and I was one of them. I talked about how people would ask me to make items with licensed (usually Disney) characters on them and I did for the first two years but then realized that it was wrong because it was not my creative property. From then on, I denied those orders which took a lot of integrity because there were times that the money really would have helped me. I consistently lost business because of it but it felt great knowing that my products and designs were mine (at least, the ones I custom made vs buying an embroidery desig...

I was thinking about what stops me from accomplishing things as I did the readings tonight. I think the main problem for me is when I want to do something that I am not familiar with or that other people my age don't often do. It's scary to basically invent a path to something. I experienced this when opening my business at age 15. I was criticized for being so young and there weren't many others that were as serious about a business as I was. It took a lot of work to forge that path.