The last lecture

It's end of semester time and a time to reflect on the good things of life.

If from all the things I have written you had to chose one single item to take away, it definitively has to be the formula for success. There are many things that are important to be said and taken away but they can all find a way into this formula for success.

1)      Get up early

2)      Work hard

3)      Get you education

4)      Find oil

5)      Make your mark

6)      Prepare to serve / Give back

I've read several books which I can recommend but this all fits into get you education step #3 above from the formula for success. Interestingly enough most of them make reference to working hard and to staring early. Some make reference to early in life while a few make reference to early in the day.  One thing is for sure, time is precious and can not be wasted hence one must start early at whatever it is that one will do.

For example if I were writing to my kids, its important that they get first things done early in life, like forming good habits, getting their education and in general becoming good people, good citizens. They are to work hard at it and be educated on what exactly it means, once they are doing this then they need to go on and find oil, or be good at something and make a bold statement.

I have noticed that most of the books I read also made some sort of reference of giving back or serving other.  I enjoyed a book called “The Servant” by James Hunter, this book talks about how to be a good leader one must be ready to serve first. It is a cycle that keeps going.  One person takes the learning from one does the best they can and then takes the learning back to the community or society, it is also a form of giving back.

Take a moment to ponder on the steps of the formula like I did and you will realize that it will surely lead  to success. One can not go wrong doing these steps, yet one must take care not to get lost trying to overcomplicate things, it can be easy to get lost in all this because of the simplicity of the formula.

So, this is me giving back to whoever might read this. 

Apply the steps to your life, the steps are simple but they must be customized to what it means to you.

Working for a company, ok?

The question has been in my head for a while and this week I may have found an answer.

Am I doing right by working for another company if what I really want to do is be independent?

The answer is in the video Paths to an Entrepreneur Career. That may have just made it easy for me then. I have known that I need to do my best, I have seen my self excel in different areas, just have not been able to call it mine. Note to self:  I'm here for the learning more than the money.

Reflecting on where I am, I guess, life is good.  I am where I am now thanks to the great people I have met along the journey.  President Monson could not be more right when he talks about having an attitude of gratitude.  I often think about how little children are not able to survive on their own, even after being able to talk and walk, life is not that easy for humans and what would be of most of us if it weren't for our parents?  I am not sure if its just me and my head accident or everybody's memory fades out where I cant remember my childhood, I can't remember about my mother feeding me or anything. Sadly, I don't have memories of my early years, but I am capable of reasoning that she must have loved me to take care of me.

This week we also learned about living in the now, it reminds me of Eckhart Tolle.  His book the power of now is a great book, the past is in the past. I should learn from that but only live the present.

What is a Hero’s Journey?

This week as we finished reading the Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey it seems to all make sense. I want to assume that everyone one at least once wanted to do something great in life, yet life’s needs end up taking away that vision and those dreams fade away. It takes a Hero to set out to do something and accomplish it. Many, including myself at some point only think about money, but what is money for by itself?  How do we keep from becoming overly obsessive about it?  This is where the whole panorama fits in. It is important to have defined goals and then set out to work hard and achieve them. As I wrote the book summary I was able to reflect upon my own situation. I am sure glad that I have a purpose and know it. I am glad that I am not just lost without a truly meaningful goal like I was a few years back.

Reading a Harvard Business Review paper, I also went over a few key important aspects like: Why are virtue and integrity so vital to an economy? – People will stop trusting and will soon and move their money elsewhere.  No one wants to do business with someone that has no integrity, not doing business means the economy and cash flow starts to slow down and possibly even coming to a halt.

According to Charles Handy, (HBR paper) the real justification for the existence of a business is for it to do “something” better, it’s not simply about making gross amounts of money, that leads to wrongdoing.

Handy writes that we, as charitable organizations do, should measure success in terms of outcomes for others as well as for ourselves.  I think this should be fundamental because even a business cannot exist for long without taking care of others.  He also writes that better corporate behavior is needed and less corporate democracy. I particularly think this is true, I have seen with employers and clients that the behavior is just not the right one, it is most of the times driven by the need to achieve certain goals, no matter what it takes or costs, doing a lot of damage in the process.

Attitude toward money

There was a time when I didn’t have money and I wanted it so much, I worked hard to get some money and it made me feel secure and confident.  I could not go out if I didn’t have enough money on my wallet. I was very conscious about how much I had and how I spent it, spending it meant my security and confidence level was decreasing and my panic levels were increasing. Then I got married and had kids, It was a strange change and at first thought I needed to have more money to feel secure.  I can go for days now without money in my pocket.  Yeah strange but my attitude towards money has changed.  I still have the need to make enough to cover for my expenses and those of my family but now its about them and not about me.  As long as my family is taken care of I am good. I have learned to live by a budget and to have an emergency fund.

I think that my view of money can affect my life if I let it control me, or us.  Money is not or should not be the end goal. Money should be the means to achieve those things that are needed, money is the means though which we trade in these days.  How much money we need depends on our goals and lifestyle but it is important take care of it, to make sure we don’t just ignore it and pretend that it will always be available, failing to plan for the future will probably result in disaster. Being too obsessive about it will probably also lead to disaster as we lose track of the important thing.

What rules are recommended for prospering?

My number one rule it to be grateful. This means giving back, paying tithes, helping the needy etc.  Then the second rule is to keep it under control, I have seen how some people just lose control of their income and expenses. People just go on shopping sprees on credit cards and how does that end?  Never good.  Living with les

Leadeship dashboards

This week has been a slow but good one.  Travel to client site was a very insightful conversation, I was asked where I saw myself in next 3 year?  Maybe outside the organization I answered.  I am trying to eliminate dependencies from my job.  The fellow  traveler was a bit surprised by my answer  I guess, he might have wanted to hear me say that I wanted the next level in the corporate ladder but it is really not my desire.  Reading Robin Sharma a couple years back got me thinking that its about what and who you are on the inside and not on the outside.  I feel like I'm already a leader, I don't think I need to prove it to anyone.  I am not looking for personal glory in any specific company, I am looking out for my family and these are my goals and my motivators.  

My friend asked why I didn't see myself in the organization and rather outside.  I simply stated that I don’t mind, but I know that I am just a resource and don't want to be at somebody's mercy so I am taking control of my life and future. 

In the meantime, this week was a good lesson to reflect on whether I am good or great. Yeah, I may see myself a bit good, but I want to get to great. How do I score as a leader my self?

I started creating a leader dashboard based on the items that we have learned from the book summary. Good to great. 

An interesting week

Well this is a bit odd, strange or staged from above.  This week was a short week in both my classes, it was also a week that needed a lot of attention at work and home. I was having several thins to do and just felt like dropping the ball on some, as I was watching this weeks material, the concepts resonated with me.  Keep going said one.  Ok, I thought so I started doing budgets and planning again.  Another problem came up and root cause analysis was incorrectly done by one of our team leads twice.  Well, there was the video of The Five Whys and solved our problem, human problems.  Guess that works out.

We had a short brainstorming session at work and people only came up with a few ideas, low hanging fruit said David Carrington.  I invited our team to think a bit more and come up with a few more ideas.

 

This is something I need to remember, seems like a magic formula for increasing business so I’ll just leave it here.

1)      Increase number of customers

2)      Increase frequency of purchase

3)      Increase the average order

But what I like most is Elder Hollands advise to keep going “Victory at all cost”  I thinks whatever we are doing like a web business or at this moment building a future for my family.  The same applies, keep going.

 

Advertising with a purpose

Amazing, I have learned something new this week. I used to think that this activity of creating ads was just as simple as throwing some words on to the add and what ever made sense.  I realized today that there are some best practices that everyone shares.  For example. Headline 1 an Headline 2 are not just two spaces, they have a purpose. one is related to what the user is looking for and the second to what we can offer.  I also had not realized that the URL can have a path, but now that I think about it, it only makes sense.  By having different paths associated to different ads, it is possible to have different groups and different adds showing different information all on the same website.  how call is that?

Things to remember from this week. Ads need to have the same domain, google will verify the domain, no all caps allowed, and no special symbols either.

Habits

This week we have read about habits, a topic which I personally like a lot, I had the opportunity to review the 7 habits of highly effective people.  Don’t recall how long ago was when I read this book and I constantly think that I need to review again. I just did a quick analysis of myself to see how much I had learned the concepts I learned long time ago. Can I call myself a highly effective person?

It was interesting to find out and the approach I took to do a self-evaluation was a simple checklist.

1.       Am I Proactive? – Yeah, I think most of the time yes. I don’t wait for others to push or boss me around.

2.       Do I think about the end result? – I would say that yes, I do.  I like to know where we are supposed to be headed.  I am thinking about a workshop I had with the team not too long ago at work. It was the first thing that came to mind.

3.       Do I set right priorities and work on the most important things  first? – Ouch, this is something I need to work on. I understand and overall I think I work on the important things but have noticed that I sometimes miss opportunities.

4.       Do I collaborate or just think about my own interests? – I don’t see my self as a selfish person, I don’t mind helping others so yes.

5.       Do I take the time to understand others before being understood – Yup.  I just took the time to understand what was going on in Argentina and my local team, did this before trying to impose something.

6.       Do I “create” synergy?  Yup, I like to build teams. I am actively involved in this at work and at home.

7.       Do I sharpen the sawy? – I thought this was where I was failing until I took a moment to ponder and realized that I have read several books lately and am also enrolled in this course.

6.5 out of 7 . I would say its not a bad score….

Keywords keywords!

This week I had the opportunity to research about keywords on google ads. First problem I encountered was that I had signed up for adwords express account. I could just not figure out how to get past that part because it kept giving me the simple interface and I could not get to my keyword planner. I had a hard time trying to figure out where I was.  I did a google search for ads.google.com and it keeps taking me back to the same place. I then realized it did not look as it should according to my class material.  I just had to go back and read the course material once more to figure out what I had done wrong. I then realized that I was warned to not sign up for adwords express.  Since I did not find a way to undo this, I simply used a different google account to open ads. google.com, and it worked.  Remember:  There is a difference between adwords express and ads.google.com.

What I learned from these two google ads platforms is that they are both by google, they are both using the same platform and everything but one is simple and the other is for expert mode.

Adwords express is a simple interface that is intended to make things simpler for the new user, but comes at the expense of not having control of the campaign strategy. Google makes the decisions according to what it thinks it is best.

Google Ads is the full version of the tool, it is a little bit harder to use, needs more knowledge of what you are doing but gives you full control of your campaign.

If it were easy everyone would be doing it right?

This week I have been able to do some research and investigate about legal entity types in my country, I have also had the opportunity to research and get failiarized with the requirements to operate a business online.

In Mexico there is no diferntition between online and offline business to the SAT. SAT is the taxt authority, the Secretaria de Administracion Tributaria.  It only wants its share of the money, and it doesnt matter where the funds come from :)  Well, that is not a complete true statement, it is important where they come from, but between traditional shops and online shops, there is no difference.  The RFC (Registro Federal de Contribuyentes) gives you the ability to do business legally because it is now registered and the government knows what to expect.  This also gives them the information needed for tax declaration becaue every time an invoice is generated, the SAT is informed of taxation happening.

I have learned that S de RL is the best way to start a business because the liability is limited to the capital invested and the paperwork is very simple to take care of.

Unfortunately the website creation is still troubling me and I need to do more research on that, I have a horrible class grade so far and know that it is important but I just need to think that I am in this for the learning more than the grade.  Yeah, the grade is important but I hope I can average it with other classes and/or retake. Today I need and am learning the concepts, that makes me happy.

Loyalty to God and Loyalty to Family

This week was a short lesson and actually worked great because I had to visit a mine site, I had to host visitors and had to keep up with my other activities at work.  Though the lesson was short and there was little material, here I am finding myself again at the last minute doing my homework.  I am grateful that it worked out fine but could not help feeling guilty that I had spent the day with family and kids. I attempted to do my homework earlier but my kids wanted to play, they wanted me to fix their new bunk beds, I could not leave the rooms with all things out of place because it was more wok for my lovely wife. I attempted to do my homework in the evening while the older kids attended scouts meeting and the baby was asleep, something woke him up and I went into panic mode because time is running out. Yeah, I am guilty of procrastination and I figured who am I kidding, I am not putting in the time needed, I am leaving my entrepreneur learning for the end.  I head over to the website to drop some classes and find out the withdrawal period is closed.  Resigned I then start to do my homework and come across this great vide – Loyalty to God and Family by Jan Newman.  It is just what I needed to learn this week. It was comforting to know that the Lord expects me to take care of my family first.  I guess this is an affirmation that nothing in life is coincidental, if the lesson would not have been as short as this week was, I might have been in trouble. It was a short week, I took care of my work, took care of my family and finally that they are gone to sleep, I have learned a truly valuable lesson. Yeah, this is what I needed to learn this week, this is what I need to know later in life when I come back to thig blog post

Buy me a drink?

So I like to talk and I may have a lot to say, the longer we spend the more talking Ill end up doing.  Hopefully what advice I can give would be of value to you. If not, I would appreciate you telling me that I am just rambling around so that when the next person come around I can have a better approach. Talking is fun an I enjoy it, but it would be nice to enjoy this conversation along with a soda pop.  

Would you mind buying a couple drinks while I go get some of my notes?

Thanks for the drink.  Lets discuss what we learned this week, shall we?
I have reviewed how to get PayPal button up and running, have also reviewed different websites to get idea of how to get clean sites created. I liked the source given in the lesson this week, Ill save it here and hopefully it will be available for my review later. https://www.smartinsights.com/user-experience/essential-2017-web-design-trends/ There was another website that allowed to choose color palette that I liked, link here: http://www.paletton.com/

How will I measure my life?

This week 3 interesting things have happened.  I have read this book called launching leaders which talks about making the best of our lives, about establishing end goals and about charting a plan to get there.  Secondly, we are in the process of yearly appraisals at work and although I didn't complete my own yet, I have been reminding people and asking them to complete their self evaluations. Third, I have been troubled and busy trying to determine how to effectively measure my newly acquired team of sourcing and procurement professionals.  I am not all that familiar with this and there are many functions in the process. One thing is for sure, no one likes an unfair rating at the end. Everyone wishes we would have had more time to do something, or we regret not doing something simply because we knew it but we lost focus of it.

This week I went and reviewed the Harvard Management Mentor lesson on appraisals.  I didn't really put to much interest in yearly reviews because targets can not be fixed for so long periods. Interestingly I learned that even in business the targets move, that they require adjustments. This made it clear to me that goal setting must be slightly different approach and even when many things can change in such a long time, We should still be setting realistic and relevant targets. We should be checking every now and then on how we are doing.

The same hold true for our lives, I recall troubling my mother and many others with the question of why we need to live, what is the purpose of life. Its not like I didn't have an idea of what was expected out of my life, meaning what Heavenly Father wanted me to do, but the question now is about what do I want to do with my life?

I have my life goals pretty much defined already but still seems like some of them were more like wished and not necessarily goals because there was not plan to achieve them.  I feel confident that I can now go and draft some of them now and bridge the gaps there.

How will I measure my life?  How will I do my yearly appraisals?  How will I do my half-yearly, my monthly and weekly review?  

How would you measure your life?

notes on starting a new business

This week was very though for me, I again had to travel to the mine site, where I am locked in and the work there is 12 hour shifts, internet is limited, it is a client location so getting personal thing done is between difficult and impossible. Did have a chance to spend nights at the nearby hotel which is sponsored by the company but it too didn't have good internet connection and it was only in the open air lobby.  I recall how cold it was when I was sitting there trying to do my homework in the middle of the night.  My colleagues telling me I should leave some work for tomorrow, they know that you have to get up at 5:00 am to be ready by 6:30 when the bus leaves.

You are probably thinking what does that have to do with the lesson of the week?  I don't know yet, I just feel compelled to write it. Maybe one day I will look back about how I thought for a minute about withdrawing from class this semester because of my sudden time limitation changes.  Anyway I have decided to continue. I might end up writing a lessons learned post in a few weeks from now when the semester is over.

What did I learn this week?  I was able to explore hosting options a different way.  I had done some research in the past and it was a headache because I did not know what to look for, how to decide and even when my option met the needs, I still thought for a moment whether I was missing something important.  This week I was able to compare hosting providers based on what they can offer, I realized that in the past I had let the google adword credit go to waste because I did not know how to make the most out of it. 

I am still struggling to get the product selected because there are several things that are attractive to me. I want to invest time in something today that will after some time later give me the rewards.  I am not looking for instant gratification but rather trying to build something that will be good for many and for a while.

I was surprised to see that there is a lot of opportunity for financial education out there.  I am not the richest person and don't know the most to become wealthy, but I do know how to get out of trouble and have used this at work in the past, like when I worked at the mortgage bank, I have gotten myself out of trouble with the same techniques I helped my employer's clients. I feel confortable that I can provide this counseling and guidance on my own now.  Need to think about it a little longer.

One small step, two check marks in the bucket list

This week I have been learning about drop shipping and affiliate marketing. Both of these have caught my attention in the past and I am glad that this class is clarifying these things for me. I used to think that affiliate marketing would be nice because it is sort of like building passive income and the seller would take care of fulfilling and handling the order and all that.  I have purchased goods or services from referrals myself so I know that it work, yeah sometimes even I feel like I don’t like to click on referral links. Not sure why but still purchase from them. As I was reviewing the list of recommendations I noticed Amazon was there so I decided to sign up and learn what it means.

The process was very simple but it asked me for a website, I don’t have a website but luckily this class has already requested I create a blog, so I was familiar with the process and did one right away.  I created a blog, posted a blog entry and got my links up.  It was easy and fun at the same time.  I already had on my “bucket list” to create a blog about the fun we have in the family so I thought now was the time and voila, it is created. One less item in my bucket list. Make that two, the blog and the affiliate marketing. 

http://dosmascuatroyuno.blogspot.com/

Week 3- Formula and Happiness

I feel comfortable with some of the topics we learned this week.  I was raised with some of the basic values of integrity, ethics etc. I still think it was great to have a reminder of this and really like the video about Why ethics are important but the part that I want to remember from this week is the formula for happiness. 

It is a fact that I don’t like to get up early all the time, I also know that I am more productive at night time but have seen the advantages of getting up early too. I normally have my alarm clock for 4:00 am. Unfortunately I am not able to get up so early going to bed late and I have learned the ability to turn off the alarm clock in my sleep. I think I turn it off in my sleep because I just don’t remember and can’t figure out how it was turned off.

Work hard is something I do too, well not always but I try most of the time. I generally keep my self on track.

I had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out what “Find oil” meant, but after getting the explanation.

The others feel confortable but here is what I want to remember for future reading.

 

1)      Get up early -- How early is early?

2)      Work hard

3)      Get you education

4)      Find oil

5)      Make your mark – Should examine what this means to me

6)      Prepare to serve / Give back
 

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Here are the questions to this weeks requirements.
1)What are you lookin forward to learning and experiencing?  I would like to know what finding oil and making your mark means in my life. I know this is not a canned resopnse so I look forward to experiencing this myself.

2)What did I learn from the videos of this week?  - well, the listed above.  :)

 

Business models

Dear blog or diary, not sure what to call you.

This week has been a difficult week for me to carry out my activities because I had to go to the mine site.  For my instructor and others reading: unfortunately work days at the mine are 12 hrs, time after work is little and I was on a business trip so that meant that after office I still had meetings and other arrangement to take care of. There is not a lot of flexibility after hours either because we stay at the mine's camp site, which means, no internet, shared accommodations and curfew.  

I did manage to get some of my assignments done and read the material but did not complete for both of my classes so I will definitively have a hit in my scores. This week I was learning about business models in one of my classes and the discussion board was about the time and effort needed to be an entrepreneur.  This week being away from home and those that I call the reason for all that I do, made me rethink my life and it is serving as a reinforcement that I must continue the entrepreneur path.  I just simply am not at liberty of my time and my life because I am selling my time for money.  yeah, that is not a smart move.

I discussed on one of the discussion boards about business models and had the opportunity to remember how my Transportes Vian website started to be a hit. I am learning and reconsidering what could have gone wrong.  I had the service that we were providing and neither of us had the experience leading a web business. Our business model resembled a lot a merchant model where we advertised services on our website and visitors had the ability to select from the offering.

Just so that I can make reference to this in the future: here is the website http://www.digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html 

Lets begin

So I am starting this blog as part of a class assignment but I can already see the value of it and already anticipate that it will not end in 14 weeks. I will need to see if I can change the name of the blog later. If not, that's ok too because it will serve as a reminder of how it all began.

This week, I have had many things going on at home and work that I have been very consious of timings to make sure I don't miss a class deliverable. I have a learned several things including that we should not settle for less than our potential as mentioned by President Hinckley. That made me invest time wisely in reviewing the material. I was tempted a couple times to just get through the and complete the tasks. Glad we have prophets guiding us how to live.

I also learned about risk taking, and I pondered what it means. I used to live in an earthquake prone area, people would constantly panic and get scared every year when we had the little ones. I was optimistic and would tell them it was a good thing because that meant (in my mind) that the Earth was not building up pressure. I used to say that we need to worry if there weren't any earthquakes knowing that bothered should be because that meant that pressure was building up and it would go kaboom anytime. Seems that this is the risk itself and this is how I was able to picture or relate to the teachings of this week on risks. "Take small risks to avoid the big ones"

Great leaders have good friends
I wrote a list of books I need to read soon.