Leadership

This week the lesson material was on leadership. Something that stood out to me as was “Leadership with a Small L” by Kim B. Clark. He described this as:

“…the kind of leadership that builds and lifts and inspires through kindness and love and unselfish devotion to the Lord and His work.  It is the kind of leadership that we need at every level of every kind of organization in the world and in every ward and stake in the Church.  It is the kind of leadership you will need to build an eternal family.”

I am a mother; this is by far the toughest leadership position I have ever had. I feel the obligation I have to raise my children in righteousness and to work with my husband to lead them as President Clark describes above, with kindness and love. I want to always be found leading by a good example, with a vision and leading with love. We read this article in Pathway last year but I was grateful to be able to read it again. It was a good reminder of the kind of leader my children need me to be.

Speaking of children, I have a newborn who just turned 6 weeks old. My life has changed as I am now a mother of two instead of one. I am currently a week behind my goals of inventory and launch of my business for the $100 challenge. The clock is ticking. My new more realistic goals are to complete these tasks by Wednesday of next week.

Easter Egg Nog

This week I am working on inventory for my $100 challenge business. I decided to call it “Strings and Beans” since I will be knitting bean bags. Since Easter is coming up I will be knitting Easter egg bean bags. I’m trying to decide how many colors I should offer and how many I should have ready to sell. I have never attempted or even thought about launching my own business so this is new territory for me.  I would rather err on the side of knitting too much than not enough. I have plenty of children in my life that I could give these bags to if I don’t make a lot of sales. On the other hand, if I receive more orders than I am able to knit up myself, I have a friend who volunteered to help me. She has been knitting longer than I have and does quality work. I plan on setting up my online shop on Etsy by next Saturday.

Our reading this week included the story about Stew Leonard and his “customer service rock of commitment”.  Leonard was working at his store a couple weeks after grand opening when a customer came in with egg nog that she had purchased earlier. It was sour and she demanded a return. Leonard was taken a back, questioned the customer and told her that couldn’t possibly be. She was furious and said she would never come back to the store again. After relaying the incident to his wife, he realized that there were dishonest people out there but the majority of them were honest people. He knew that if he was always trying to defend himself against those who were not honest, he would lose loyal paying customers. He purchased a huge block of granite and engraved 2 rules on it: 1. The customer is always right, and 2.If the customer is ever wrong re-read rule 1. I thought this was valuable reading. It is the customers who keep people in business and I agree; most of them are honest. This is good to remember as we work to start our own businesses.

The Purple Cow

This week we had to submit an elevator pitch for our business ideas. I chose to do mine on the idea I have for the $100 challenge. I have to admit this assignment was a challenge for me. I am someone who tends to get lost in the details.  I over explain things and say a lot more than I need to in order to get my point across. I had to really think about condensing what I had to say to do my elevator pitch in 60 seconds. We submitted our pitches to the class and we were able to give each other feedback before submitting it to our instructor. I found this to be one of the most time consuming discussion boards but also one of the best.

In our lesson material this week we read an article called, “In Praise of the Purple Cow” by Seth Godin. In his article he explains that a purple cow is something that stands out, something extraordinary and worth talking about and paying attention to. He gave several examples in his essay about how certain products or services stood “out from the herd”. This really made me think about my product for the $100 challenge. What can I do to make sure it stands out from items that are already out there? I am currently working on a few ideas to make my product unique and hope to create a “purple cow” myself.

Provident Providers

This week we read and watched some good material in our lesson plan regarding funding/debt. Something that stood out to me this week was the article by Elder Hales, “Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually”. Elder Hales talks about excess in his article, not just spending money that we don’t have but he focused on addictions to things such as food, drugs and pornography. He said that giving in to the excess diminishes our freedom and negatively impacts our family relationships. He talked specifically about debt and said that some debt is acceptable if it is for a modest home, vehicle or an education. As I read I reflected on my current financial situation. Something that my husband and I have always agreed upon is living by the counsel to stay out of debt. We have strived to live within our means and only incur debt for the types of things that Elder Hales mentioned above. We have been very blessed as we have heeded the counsel of our prophets to manage our money wisely. I know being on the same page regarding our finances and spending wisely is something that contributes to a strong marriage. I know that we can also be examples to our children and teach them that wise money management will result in the avoidance of unnecessary trials.

I am currently testing patterns for the $100 challenge and am narrowing down what I want to make to sell.  I want to make sure that I can produce items that I can knit up quickly but that are still quality items that fill a need. I will finalize my choices in the next two weeks.