To Franchise? Or not to Franchise?

This week was franchise week and it was very educational. I have learned some valuable lessons and had my eyes open to new opportunities.

No matter what business you start, even if you don't plan on franchising, you should set it up like a franchise. I can't remember if I said that in my last post but even if I did, it is very important and should be reiterated!

I had the opportunity to interview a franchise owner of a Little Ceasars Pizza in California. I got in contact with him through my aunt who was in his same church congregation. He is very successful and, from the sounds of it, seems like he knows exactly what he's doing to be successful and he wishes others would just stay out of his way and be just that.

I am learning that no matter what business you want to start or franchise will take a tremendous amount of work. It is imperative that you put in the extra time and sacrifice things. You won't be successful if you don't.

In my $100 challenge I have earned $240 total. I put $4.84 into it. So my net income total is $235.16. I am pretty impressed with what i've been able to earn from this. Granted every second hasn't been easy. If I continue with sewing lessons I am going to put an age cap on how young my students can be. I have a 7 and a 9 year old and they just don't grasp it all. They have a hard time even running the machine at a decent speed. So I have come away during this "trial" period with a better idea of how to make it better!

Beneficial Interviews

This week I was able to interview Louis Adams who is an entrepreneur. I had another company owner in mind but when things weren't working out I looked to those around me and asked who they know that are entrepreneurs. I landed on interviewing Louis. It was a very beneficial and eye opening experience. I won't go into too much detail, as I did in my paper, but I did want to say that as an overall consensus I would like to find more entrepreneurs to interview. I learned so much from Louis and I feel like there is so much more knowledge out there for me to learn from and grow with! I would definitely encourage all aspiring entrepreneurs to find a few entrepreneurs to interview and actually take there advice! Their time is worth so much and it would be a waste to them and to you if you didn't learn from their mistakes and successes.

I have also been working very hard in my own business of alterations and gotten a lot of clothing off the racks and back to my customers. It feels good to finish a job well done and see the customer happy with the results.

I have also continued my sewing lessons for my $100 Challenge. I finished one student and gained a new one this week My new student is on the higher end of being an intermediate student. She has had quite a bit of experience and is a bit older than most of my other students. She is 15 and catches on very quickly. We will be making part of an outfit/costume she has designed for the opening of Star Wars Land at Disneyland!

Picture from: http://www.pinsdaddy.com/star-wars-clone-cartoon-character_VuTGbSyIhVLb5COQkSG47kd9XEkOjExf6E9H2YU8tlaut*mExeVN62Y1GCG6rTFx%7CUuGKrcMOuP9fBw6j1WMpw/

A Clear Vision

This week was really good. I now have 5 students for my $100 Challenge teaching sewing lessons! This week I will finish on of those and add a new one. It has been a very fun and eye opening experience.

I am really learning that I like teaching and enjoy it, maybe more than I enjoy doing alterations. But then I do an alterations job and the client is so happy and then I love alterations more again.

After all we learned this week what stood out to me the most what the fact that I need to establish a clear vision of where I want my business to end up. It is such an important part of creating a business that if you don't have a clear vision you could end up closing down or regressing back to an earlier stage of work. So by next week I hope to report back with a clear vision of where I want to end up!

Reading the E Myth taught me that I can't do it all. I need to employ the help of others. Currently I am a "technician". I need add an entrepreneur and a manager if I want to truly succeed. But not only that, I also need to take the time and energy to learn new skills and prioritize my time better to further the company along.

Be a Leader, not a Manager

I learned a lot this week about the type of leader I am on track to be and the type of leader I want to become.

We took a quiz that gave us scores. These scores told us what type of leader we are or have a tendency to be. The leadership options were: Autocratic, Democratic and Free Reign. My highest scoring type was the Democratic. This is the participative type of leader. I was happily surprised for these results! I would like to continue to culture that type of leadership and make it stronger. 

Earlier in the week we read an article that lowered my hope of being a successful entrepreneur. I was becoming aware of all the weaknesses I have where they should be strengths to be successful. But my husband helped me see that I am already on the right track to becoming successful. I have started my own business and started a small job teaching sewing lessons on the side. So as long as I continue to learn and grow, I have great potential.

These were some of the quotes from the article Leaders and Managers by Hugh Nibley:

"Leaders are movers and shakers, original, inventive, unpredictable, imaginative, full of surprises that discomfit the enemy in war and the main office in peace."

"For managers are safe, conservative, predictable, conforming organization men and team players, dedicated to the establishment."

"In short, while management shuns equality, it feeds on mediocrity."

“A ship in port is safe,” says Captain Hopper, speaking of management; “but that is not what ships were built for,”

Confidence is Key

In my growing up years I was a very strange mix of shy and outgoing. I cared a lot about what people thought of me or how I was acting. Even so to this day I still feel this way. But because of this strange mixture of personality I adopted a key phrase that helped me get through each day:

CONFIDENCE IS KEY.

This allowed me to believe that no matter what I did, as long as I had confidence in that thing, I could do it and still be happy and not care so much about what others thought of it. 

I was reminded of this as I watched the Acton Hero Bud Brigham. He talked about figuring out what our core values are and letting them drive us in all we do. My core values comes from my religion. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was baptized a member when I turned 8 years old and it was THE best decision I ever made. Because of that decision I was able to form an wonderful friend group that shared my same values and helped me become a better person. Because of the decision to be baptized I served an 18 month mission for my church. My mission changed my life forever and deepened my testimony and rooted my core values. Because I chose to be baptized I found a wonderful and amazing man at my church and we were married in the Ogden Temple where we were sealed and married not only for time on earth, but for eternity in the heavens.

These same concepts apply to the business world. One decision can shape the way to do business for the rest of our life. Who we surround ourselves with makes a difference in the integrity of our business ethic. 

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I had my first student come for sewing lessons this week. I was so nervous at first because I had never tried teaching someone how to sew. It can be difficult to teach someone how to do something that has become second nature to you. As the lesson went on I became more comfortable in teaching and I began to learn my teaching style and ways that are effective in teaching others. I remembered my motto... Confidence is key, and I was able to have a successful lesson. I am very excited to start my other lessons next week with new students and discover more about how to effectively teach sewing lesson that cater to each student individually.