Carry on

Last Lecture       

                Sometime In October, I wrote in this blog that I was very close to quitting. Last night I thought back to the day when this semester began. I recall sitting in hotel room in Arizona while the rest of my family slept, opening I-learn and seeing the mountain of work that was scheduled for each week for the classes I had signed up for. I almost immediately dropped one class. Then as the week progressed, I notice that though the work load dropped significantly, I began to understand that as a result of dropping that one class, my graduation date would change. The goal that I had set for myself was now different and expanded, and later than I planned, because I was afraid of a potential amount of work. Within a day or two, I had added the class back and began to tackle it. I noticed that two of the classes that I had were very similar. In fact, they were similar enough that I could use much of the work interchangeably between the two classes with some changes. Granted this only applied to a few assignments, but it dropped my average of 23 assignments each week down to just 18 or so. I was worried, and concerned and perhaps even afraid, but I kept on and am now finished. I had worried for nothing. It was difficult, but the only other options were quit, or expand my workload for another semester. Neither of these was an acceptable option. This was the first test.

                In October came another. While doing my graduation plan, it became apparent to me that I did not have five semesters left, but four full years, and possibly more, to finish my degree. I was heartbroken and numb. I spent a number of days struggling mightily before I told my wife. She suggested I might just quit, that it would be too hard. Perhaps she was right. But I had been waiting for something to come along for years that would allow me to finish my degree and go on to gets a Masters. For almost a full week, I stewed on it and finally decided that quitting wasn’t an option at all. That no matter how long it took, I was going to finish. I rationalized this myself a hundred ways, but ultimately decided that there were no options, forward and out was the only way. About three weeks later, I found out that the program I was using was faulty and that I had less than two years to go. I think back with tremendous gratitude that the Lord did not allow me to quit or I would have lost all the work I had done up to that point. All of it would have been in vain.

                I am sure that trials lie ahead. In Church, in business, in my family, more struggles are coming. In most things, the only real answer is to lower your head and plow on. Sometimes you will have the benefit of knowing it is only for a short time. Sometimes you will know in your heart that it is not a short time and that for whatever reason, your life has just fundamentally changed forever. There is no end, you must adjust to whatever the new situation is and learn to cope with it. I have always been impressed by the last words that Bruce R. McConkie reportedly said to his wife as he passed away, “Carry on.”

                And this is life, just carry on. In things big and small, just keep going. I learn this by doing and I gain a testimony of it by surviving. Find a way to carry on and excel if you can. Things will work out.

Annnnnddd...I'm done

Just done. What did I learn this week? Nothing. I didn't learn anything. I hammered through my assignments, sick, tied, torn tendon in my arm, way over worked, way overwhelmed. Dying mother in law, dying grandmother, mother who may have MS, children who are tyrants, wife who is crabby. I'm done. Nothing left. Three months of hunting season, so busy on every one of them I haven't had but one chance to sit in the woods. Too much homework from one class, more than all three of my other classes out together, a one credit class! Total nonsense. Drove 1800 miles this week in one fashion or another, performed service for those who may or may not have appreciated it, got harped on my some of the biddies in my ward who think their opinions on my life matter. I'm tired. I'm tried and I'm sore and I'm going to go take some medicine and sleep until I wake up without an alarm or when the two year old decides he wants to be up and jumps on me, but I'm. Flipping. Done.

Franchising

         So this weeks lessons have been all about franchising, something that has been on my mind a lot lately. I have been looking at a lot of franchises lately to see what might be a good fit for a hands off investor and have learned a lot about the process. I am surprised at the number of businesses I have never even heard of before that have franchise opportunities available. Business that I would have previously thought were either too small or had too small a market, or were too much of a niche market to even spread out, have franchise opportunities available and some of them at a wicked premium. Perhaps the market for some of these is much broader than I had imagined. I was surprised to find recently that popular places like Chik Fil A, have relatively inexpensive franchise opportunities but they are very demeaning in their scope they demand that the franchise be very hands on and not use the business as an investment in any way. As a matter of fact they want the franchisee to only service them and have no other franchises in their portfolio. Not bad though for the opportunities they provide and the name they bring to the table. Still an attractive proposal but I don't think it is really for me. I don't really want to be in the restaurant business myself, just make money from it. :D

No, turns out it isn't.

        Last week I wrote a post pondering if it, meaning some of the more stringent difficulty of late, were over yet. Turns out they are not. Still supporting four sick little kids, a sick wife who is spending far too much times trying to make others' lives easier and trying to maintain my work and school schedule. Just when you think you have everything in a row, you catch a high and inside fastball right in the earhole. The crap keeps piling up. The air conditioning went out on my car this week This might seem to be a summer problem, and it would be, if it wasn't 90 this week in SoCal. My good friends are moving away this week as well, and I'm swimming in a sea of depression watching them go. I feel like I'm sinking.
        Of all the more valuable things I have learned, I am coming to realize even more as I get older, that there are times in life when hope is dwindling or gone, there are few great things on the near horizon and the suck just keeps coming. You can't quit and you can't stop, so all you can do is lower your head and plow ahead, taking the hits and hoping they don't knock you down more than a little. Business is the same way at many times. I read a book called, "The Dip", that really was about this very thing. You either keep going, or you quit. And you simply can't quit some things, at least not easily, and you can't just do nothing, so you pack up and keep moving. That's all I have this week. My head is down and my eyes are closed, and I'm just plowing on.

Is it over yet?

         Recently my four year old talked my wife into going on a scary ride at Disneyland. My wife didn't want to go but i sure wasn't going so off she went, dragged by an excited kid with no fear. When they emerged 45 minutes later, my son was grinning from ear to ear and my wife had a grimace on her face. My son related that my wife spent much of the ride with her hands over her eyes and when they neared the end she wailed, "Is it over yet!?"

        That was this week for me. Trying to finish several projects for both school and work, all in time to leave town on Friday night for a trio that never materialized and then the anguish for my dear wife of having to put her mother in a home this Thursday on what may be the long slide towards her final days on this earth. This week left me half dead on the ground bleeding out of my ears.

        Nothing is left but to just get up and do it all over again. Just like in business, you;re only defeated if you just lay there. So Monday is another day, and thankfully just a three day work week and I may actually get to do some hunting this weekend.  We'll see.

Getting better

                  This week has been a good one. I found out this week that my time in school should be shorter than I had originally thought. And any amount of time less than what I figured is a good thing.

                  The most important thing I learned this week was in a study of JetBlue airlines. Jetblue focused a toe on energy, long before their official open date, on making their employees and customers happy. It wasn’t about money or the business model, but their sole drive from the outset was to have happy customers. This was a new thought to me. I had always focused on how to make a product or service and then worry about employees and customers as an afterthought. Jetblue put their customers and employees first and built the whole rest of the business model on and after that. This sort of modeling, especially coupled with the huge amount of capital that JetBlue started with, is sure to make a winner. Even without the capital, if a customer is focus on their employees, the happy employees will drive the economical success of a business, providing they have a product the public wants.
                     My goal is to turn my thinking towards this train of thought instead of focusing on the strictly business oriented acts that have occupied my thoughts. 
                      The softball season wrapped up this week and we made a net profit of $132! My daughter and I had a lot of fun together. I think I enjoyed that aspect of this more than anything else. She is an awesome kid. 

Struggling this week

This week I struggled to do just about everything. My health issues decided to flair up and I spent four days in bed. The only productive thing I can say I accomplished is getting some sleep.
     I did learn something, however, and that was how to address the human problems behind whatever business problems there are in your organization. Short of actual hardware or software problems, every problem in the business can be traced back to a human cause. How you deal with that human cause likely determines how successful you will be in you endeavors. Probably the most difficult aspect of business in general is dealing with the wide variety of people that either work for you, work with you, or walk through your doors. The customer may always be right, but sometimes he isn't, and then he needs to be dealt with accordingly. Some of the best managers and leaders I have ever known have the particular gift of being able to tell someone how wrong they are and they believe it.
     Still trucking along on my $100 challenge. Had to sit more than I worked and let the minions do most of the heavy lifting this week but at least we were out of the house.