Week 4 Each minute is a little thing and yet, with respect to our personal productivity, to manage the minute is the secret of success. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

The Ministry of Business: How Correct Principles Magnify Business Success

This week’s lesson material was time intensive. Or so it seemed; I read several talks or essays and watched a few videos. The main focus of our week this time was to find our fears and write ways to overcome them. We also defined our core values and wrote a personal constitution. In addition we wrote an essay describing what is in The Ministry of Business by Steve Hitz.
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I enjoyed reading the book by Hitz, it is a great resource for helping a person settle into becoming who they want to be, even if they do not want to be an entrepreneur. The main gist of the book though is that by becoming a charitable person of service to the world we can all make the environments that we live in better.
I had a very hard time coming up with fears to list. Yes I am timid as far as coming forth to speak to people and I do of course have a fear of making phone calls. But as far as a fear regarding starting a business I feel no fear. I encouraged my husband to start the business we own. It is a landscaping business that started in 1997 with maybe ten lawns a mower and a truck.

In order to get him to face his fears I wrote up the numbers for him and let him know I would do the books and in general told him we could do this. The first year was tight but for a while there our numbers doubled each year. We were able to employ four or five young men who were able to then go on missions to share the gospel with others. We never managed to grow very large, but we do have sufficient money to live in a log home on 20 acres. Currently we employ two workers who do pretty much everything. Convincing my husband to hire one more worker is now where we are at. If he trained one more guy and gave the running of the business over to his foreman we could then focus attention on our second business which is a BBQ sauce.
As for my own endeavor it requires less than $500 dollars. I intend to be a copy editor for fiction and will publish a small magazine as well as formatting books for CreateSpace and publish if that is what the client wants. This really does not induce fear.

Here is my Code of Conduct:

I will never:
Lie to customers or government agencies
Skimp on quality of service
Neglect to report income
 
I will:
Pay taxes in a timely manner
Deliver the product paid for
Work harder to learn the best accounting practices
 
My Personal Constitution is much longer so I will not bore you with that, but here are the key concepts formatted in an “I am” phraseology:

I am kind and thoughtful.
I am blessed with artistic talent.
I am engaged in life.
I am well-educated.
I am an entrepreneur with the ability to bless the lives of others.