Ethical Guardrails (Guideposts)

Nine years ago one of my boys decided that he could drive our family vehicle faster than road conditions allowed.  He ended up spinning out of control, crossed the lane of traffic once and hit the guardrail.

 Then he spun around again, tagged the guardrail with the other end of the vehicle.

Finally the vehicle crossed back over both lanes of traffic to end up backward in a ditch.  Goodbye family vehicle.  Fortunately our son escaped unhurt.  It was then I noticed the miracle.  The Guardrail was our miracle.  On the other side of it was the Snoqualamie River.  Had those guardrails not been there he would have ended up in the river two different times and the outcome could have been tragic.  Nearly 30 feet of guardrail was destroyed by our vehicle but they did their job.

This week in my entrepreneurial class we learned about ethics.  In 'Making a Living and a Life' by Elder Lynn G. Robbins he gave grades for levels of acquiring wealth.  A-Level grades are given to people whose primary motivation is lifting others or love of God and fellow man and the secondary motivation is earning money.  B-Level is where the motivations are flipped.  C-Level is the love of money is the primary motivation and the secondary motivation is an indifference to clients and customers.  Then there is Level D where there is no regard at all for distress and harm to customers.  

We also discussed how our core values and spirituality correspond so closely with how we practice our professions.  We need to be congruent in both our personal, spiritual, and professional lives.  Hence the scripture 'No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' Matthew 6:24

I'd like to think of sticking to those core values as my guardrails, my guideposts.  This week was our first test of those values.  In signing the lease for our new store we wanted to put into writing that we wouldn't be open on Sunday.  The owners of the property felt it was important to be open on Sunday.  In fact they own the one and only mall in Utah that is open on Sunday.  Of the two malls in Utah County it is the mall that is doing so much poorer.  Less patrons, stores etc.  Coincidence?  They are affordable and have space for us which is why we choose to pursue this lease.  Needless to say, if we do take that location and refuse to open on Sunday then we will be charged an extra $500 a month.  So staying true to our keeping the Sabbath Day Holy is going to cost us an additional $500 a month.  Is it worth it?  Absolutely.  I really want all the blessings I can get and living an ethical life and business is worth the price.  

One of my other challenges in business is rationalization.  I think to myself, 'Well, if they aren't playing fair(competitors), then neither will I."  It's tempting to not stick to my word when someone else who has promised you something doesn't stick to theirs.  But I realize that the only person I hurt is myself when I break my word.  We've been hurt by the decisions of other when it comes to business and our opinion of them drops.  However, we've been blessed beyond measure by others in our business who openly collaborate with us and keep their word.  I want to be a blessing to others as well.  I feel there is family of merchants whose policy is 'lets help lift each other.'  We lift each other at the same time.

Here are my business Guardrails.

I will never stoop to a lower level even when dealing with someone else who does.

I will never work on Sundays.

I will never put business above my family.

I will always strive to be honest in my dealings with my fellowman.

I will always look for ways to innovate and make the process of business faster without compromising quality or I'll always try to be a lifelong learner.

I will always try to be a team player and build up those around me.

By doing this I feel I will be able to protect myself and my family business from tragic mistakes.

Never to late to Dream.

 When I was 13-years-old I built my first (Dream) tree house by myself. It was messy, not pretty and very unstable.  But I loved it.  I was the imaginative sort of child that liked to play pretend and make imagination a reality.  Three days before my family took the biggest vacation ever to Disneyland, I fell out of that tree house and landed on an old water pump in the backyard, busting it off from its metal pipe while taking a bit of flesh off my backside just in time for the family trip. OUCH!

I'm the tall kid in the middle leaning precariously on one side to avoid the agony of sitting on my injured bottom.  Photographic proof that I could dream and work on building those dream, even if it meant falling and getting hurt.  

I love Dreaming.  This week I took a huge step toward another Dream I've had.  For the past 14 months I've been creating leather armor with my son and partnering with all my family to create a family business.  After being a constant visitor to Fan X (Comic Con), this week we became a vendor. Here is our "GEEK Together Booth" at Fan X 2022 Salt Lake City.

The three amazing people you see are my three sons, Abner, T-rev and Evoman.

I'm the tired, exhausted happy lump on the floor.

Here are some of my handcrafted leather armor.  Shoulder pauldrons, bracers, baldrics and grieves, sword frogs, wand holders, belt pouches and more.

This week in my college class I had two great takeaways.  I watched an incredible video about Randy Pausch's called The Last Lecture.   In it he talked about brick walls we run into in our lives.  What stuck out to me was when he said, "The brick walls are not to keep us out.  The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

I want to dream so badly that I am pulling 60-80 hour weeks with college and work combined.  I'm that happy exhausted lady who is giving it her all.

My other takeaway from this weeks lesson was from 'Stars and Steppingstones' by Jeff Sandefer.

He said, "The ultimate horror is not death.  The ultimate horror is to wake up at age fifty-five or sixty and realize that you have wasted your life, either that time has slipped past while your dreams waited, or that you never had any dreams at all... At fifty five or sixty often it is too late to start over.  There are not enough hours in the day, or days in the year.  Starts and steppingstones are a way to avoid the horror of a meaningless life."

To which I thought.  CODSWALLOP and BALDERDASH.  It is absolutely not too late for me to start living a new dream.  My life has not been meaningless because I chose to focus on my raising my kids instead of pursuing an entrepreneurial dream while they were younger.  I wouldn't have had the time in my day to do that and be an attentive mom.  I have time now and I am pursing my imaginative dreams.  And even better I'm doing it with my kids and having an exhausted blast.  

If my 13-year-old self could see me now, I think she would be happy that I'm building new Dreams and taking my time to build them all the while learning from my mistakes and failures of the past.  Dream on Fawn.

Aye, Aye, Entrepreneurial Captain.

Every weekend my husband don's a pirate costume and calls me Captain.  He's my favorite Pirate.  I'm so blessed to be sailing life's sometimes stormy seas with him.

In Spring of 2021 I was floundering and suffering from depression.  We found out my husband was battling kidney failure in addition to his life long struggle with heart disease.  I realized that if something happened to him I was not equipped to financially take care of our family.  So I attempted to get a job and start learning.  Of the 15 resumes I first sent out, I only got 1 job interview which went nowhere.  Who wants to hire a 50 something year old grandma when you are surrounded by young college age workers, with 2-3 years work experience.   All my decades of school and community service counted for nothing.  In the past 32 years of being a stay-at-home mother.  I'd had only 1 job and it lasted 6 months before we had to move to Utah.  I got really depressed.  Then both my husband and I were inspired that I go back to school.  So that fall I enrolled in BYU Pathway Worldwide.  That was a scary first step.  In July of this year I graduated Pathways and enrolled online at BYU Idaho through the Pathway Program so that I could finish my college education.  I'm working towards a Bachelors Degree in Applied Business Management.  At the same time I went back to school I also started training with my self-taught, leather-crafting son.  I found that my decades of crafting helped me naturally pick up leather working and so I joined a couple of my children selling leather goods and gaming supplies at Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove on Weekends.  Our little 10x10 pop up and turned into a full-time business and we just signed a lease to open our own store this fall.  It's been a whirlwind of a past year.

One of the certificates I'm taking to earn my Bachelor's is 'Intro to Entrepreneurship' and one of its purposes is to start my business journey with the end in mind.  I'm my own Start-Up Business Captian.  I'm beyond thrilled and terrified to be starting my own store with my family and at the same time learning how to start a business through my college classes.  In the past year I learned two different languages.  The language of Excel (taught on a PC) which I then had to translate to the language of Excel used on a Mac computer.  Yes, this old sea dog can learn new tricks.  As I was learning how to use Excel, I was turning around and making spreadsheets to track my inventory and sales.  

This week in class we learned about the 'Entrepreneurial Hero,' taught in an article by Jeff Sandefer.    Jeff taught that...

    "Four of the hardest challenges will be personal, because you'll have to 

    *  Accept that life is hard and seldom fair. (We lost our first lease on the store to a national chain after we had signed the lease and paid first months rent.)

    *  Know that you must persevere to develop the habits and character that will determine your destiny.

    *  Understand that choosing doesn't mean you are in control, and that real entrepreneurs learn to fail quickly, cheaply, and often.  (We learn something every time we have an event,  Even if we don't do well, we learn which events to cater to, how set-up and layout are important and how to engage with customers.  We always learn something.)

    *  Find the right fellow travelers, because you will tend to become like those who surround you. " (In our business we've met two kinds of fellow travelers - those who steal your ideas and copy them then try to push you down so they can go up and those who support you and give you info and help in reaching your goals and dreams.  We strive to be like the goal reachers and try to help others with tips or supplier info, that have worked for us.)

What an incredible experience the last year has been.  I'm trying to get my business sea legs under me.  I'm still a little wobbly, but I'm confident I can learn.  And I've got the best first mate ever.  Like I said before, I sell my leather goods at a fantasy emersion park in Pleasant Grove, Utah called 'Evermore.'  People go dressed in their favorite cosplay, medieval character and go on quests, ride a train, do archery and more.  

We love interacting with other Evermore residents and their friends at our tent. 

As vendors there, we also dress up, hence my husband turning into a pirate and calling me Captain.   If you ever go through that fantasy portal come find our family.  We offer free leather crafts and my first mate will teach you how to play a rousing game of Liar's Dice at our 'We GEEK Together' Merchant Tent. 

   I hope this educational/business adventure leads to something amazing.  This semester of college I'll be taking you along with some of my little Captain Entrepreneurial Business Quests.  Wish me luck.

-Captain FaeFae (my grandma name) Fawn Ashby