Last Lecture - exercice

Today I will write important lessons that I have been learned these last months. One important thing that I realize is that theory and practice are linked. My entrepreneurial life starts since I was young in fact When I was 7 years old. My grandfather had a newspaper signature and he read it early in the morning, and after he put it in the garbage, so I realize that I could sell the newspaper again on the same day for less than half the price. So I sold it every day for some small stores near our house. For sure, the people who bought it from me, bought just because they liked to help and that was a fun job” of a kid. But my “business” was not that. After some days selling an old newspaper, I had enough money to buy a box with 30 bubblegum and sell it to my classmates at school.

That time I was just practicing and I had some success for a time. But after for some reason  I stopped to do it. The years passed, I started studying and my father who was always an entrepreneur salesman, gone bankrupt three times in a period of 12 years. So I decided during my teenage, that I would never run my own company. It is much easier to work for someone else I thought. I worked from my 15 to my 19 in chemistry companies and I liked, but I understood that my dreams would be harder to achieve if I keep working in that “comfortable “ situation.

When I was 21 I decided to start my own business (I was stronger than me). We are in full operation until now and I hope for at least more 20 years ahead. During my journey I refuse to believe in theories, I always believed in practice and hard work. But my results during that time were much work and many problems. What could I do to change that situation? To be humble and start studying again. When I started my studies I knew many theories, suggestions, and processes that were perfectly applicable to my business. So in 2015, I decided to dramatically change my company (it was chaos, every change has the ability to bring chaos, but the chaos is part of the change ), not the product, even the business. The process to change a company should first start with me and after I would be the reflex for a change in my company. I had to improve my discipline, my financial life, my responsibilities, among many other skills that I should develop to start a change. But while I was not that person I had to call someone who was. I am writing the steps that I took because I would like to show you that every single step was theory before acting, and it is working until now, we are much more organized and productive.

I realize that I had to make some decisions that I was putting off. That hurts a lot! You have to admit that you as a manager is not as good as you thought you were.  So I learned that the first step is to be humble. The second step is to understand the situation and the third step is to apply the theory related to that situation. And the most important thing is to follow up on the development of the decision taken. Most entrepreneurs fail in this last part and think that theories do not work for their business.

Another important lesson that I learned was, always look for advice from good people, people that already step the same steps that you intend to step someday. It is also very important to look for inspiration from heaven, Our Father in heaven wants us to succeed in this life, and more we receive from Him, greater is our responsibility to help others to succeed. We don't realize that we are a big family, every decision taken can affect someone in a positive or negative way.

Persistence is another important key to overcome barriers. The walls are there to be broken and we can demonstrate how bad we want to see what are after that wall. In an entrepreneurial life we have to take decisions all the time, every day, every hour, every minute, and in my opinion this is the most critical point of an entrepreneur. The decisions we take will affect people that we love, people that we like. Sometimes we have to fire people not because they are bad workers or bad people, but because we have to change process, products or even people. These decisions are the most difficult to be taken but if we feel, we have to act immediately, never procrastinate in business, because your competitor may not procrastinate and you will lose the running.

If you have the desire to start your own business this is great I encourage you to do that! It is wonderful, full of learning and rewards, but at the same time I say it with my own knowledge running your own business is extremely difficult, it is hard, harder and much hard, without know, understand and apply good theories. Look for inspiration, look for good people, be humble to start again if necessary, never put you in a situation you can´t say no, know how to ask questions, know to listen to the answers, listen to your customers, have new ideas, don´t give up, be courageous and the most important DO WHAT IS RIGHT!!!