Week 9 journal entry -Disciple Leadership

Things that stood out to me this week: In aspects of building trust, Guy Kawasaki talks about three things that are important in building trust. First trust people first, then they will trust you. He gives the example of Zappos - women buy shoes online because of the free shipping both ways, no questions asked. (I've made use of the shipping both ways. But have ultimately purchased and kept shoes several times. Genius business model!) 

Second, he says, "There are bakers and eaters. When an eater sees a pie, an eater is thinking, “Zero-sum gain. I need to get as much of the pie as possible. My gain of the pie is your loss of the pie. I need to get as much of the pie as possible.” A baker by contrast sees the world as an opportunity to make more pies and bigger pies. Trustworthy people are bakers, not eaters." 

Last, he says, "The third quality of trustworthiness is you need to default to “yes.” Defaulting to yes means that when you meet people, you are always thinking, “How can I help that person?” Which is very different than when you meet people and you’re always thinking, “How can that person help me?”

I wanted to have these points in my journal because they are new concepts to me. Previously, I haven't given a lot of thought to trust, or how to get someone to trust me in a personal way, or through business. I tend to trust people by default until they say or do something that lets me know that my trust in them is not warranted. I appreciate the opportunity to look at trust through the eyes of a business model. Trust is so important to cultivate in obtaining and retaining customers or clients!

Personal reflection: 

Last weekend I was commenting on the teacher's discussion post, and realized that I truly am not interested in building a business for the sake of building a business. I'm truly just interested in becoming a therapist, and maybe just hadn't found the right program yet. I finished my comments, and decided to use Google this time instead of Bing. At  11:30 pm on a Saturday night, I searched "online MSW programs in NC". Lo and behold, a new program popped up! It's a part-time online program, a combo of synchronous and asynchronous classes (which I decided would be truly beneficial for my learning style after taking my excel and cash flow classes). It's only 3 hours away, so I could drive there and back in a day if truly needed, rather than dealing with flights, hotel, and rental car that would have been needed to travel to the other programs that I was looking at in Florida and Idaho. AND it's half of the cost. AND it showed up in my search the week before the release of my calling as YW President where I have been serving for the past 3 1/2 years. I was in awe that it hadn't shown up in my many searches over the past year, but it was brought to my attention by the Spirit that I needed to prepare, but the timing has not been right. I feel good about the timing and my husband is fully onboard! I will finish my application over the next two weeks and hope to get waitlisted, since the deadline was Jan 15. They are still accepting applications because the seats have not all been filled yet.

Now I can look at "entrepreneurship" through the lens of building a private practice!