Chapter 5: The Value Of Strong Mentors

Choose very carefully who you go into business with, and never become partners with a person just because you're afraid of the unknown. Need for mentors in our lives, people we can trust and learn from, people we can always rely on. Finding a true mentor will provide an anchor in all your business activities through their examples, support, and the lessons they teach.

Parents, teachers, tutors, friends who sincerely care about us, church and community leaders, God.  We need to actively seek out and adopt the right types of mentors whenever we can. Adopting strong mentors is one of the most effective things we can do to overcome these challenges.

"Mentor are individuals who have already experienced the challenges of life as a businessperson and who have successfully learned to overcome them. (...) A good mentor will care about you as an individual, and will listen to your concerns, questions, and ideas". (Page 107)

• What type of mentor you need in your life, considering your goals, your strenghts, and weaknesses. 
• Be watchful for people who may meet these ideals and who possess these atributes. 
• If will raise you to higher ground. 
• A great mentor will take interest in you, and adopt you for life. 
• Should not have a personal financial interest in your success, sincere and selfless desire. 
• Become friends for life. 
• Ask for some of their time, who's willing to take a sincere interest in you and your goals. 
• Be communicative, clear, and direct.

Keep them close for the rest of your life. I strongly believe that those who reach the summits of life only do so with the help of a mentor. 

James Ritchie: On Mentors

Mentors provide me the examples and lessons I needed to succeed. Like our parents, sibilings, spouses, life partners. Gives us motivation. Try to emulate them. Recognize the many mentors who have made significant impacts in your life. Lists of personal mentors who have taugh us critical lessons and provided indispensable help. Be mindful of the mentors who cross your path. 

The Value Of Strong Mentors

It is an irreplaceable component of professional success. You fill your life with the people whose support, advice, and real-world, experiential knowledge can lift you above the traps of fear and poor business decisions. 

Chapter 4: The Formula And Happiness

The Formula is perhaps the greatest, most concise , and most clear guide for living a successful life. God is responsible for making our successes possible, and it's only by recognizing this and living our lives according to the spiritual principles upon which The Formula is built that we have been able to attain our goals and ambitions.

James Ritchie: The Formula for Success - The Basics

Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, these are three of them. 

Private Victory:

1. Be Proactive 

2. Begin With The End In Mind 

3. First Things First

We learn to trust ourselves. 

Public Victory: 

1. Think Win/Win 

2. First Seek To Understand, Then Seek To Be Understood 

3. Create Synergy

We demonstrate to the world that we are worthy of their trust.

The seven habit is Sharpening the saw, that is consistently reading, writing, exercising, eating right, thinking, developing talents, etc. 

Private Victory Precedes Public Victory 

We need to experience regular Private Victories, during we learn to trust ourselves, before we try to convince the external and public world that we are worthy of their trust. 

Gethsemane Preceded Calvary

Jesus proved this, first in the Gethsemane (Private Victory), after the cross to Calvary (Public Victory). 

To have mentors whom we can trust, that they give teach with their examples, teachings, and advice of them.  "Go Home, Get Your Education, Make Your Mark, And Get Prepared To Be Of Service". 

1. Get Your Education: be properly trained, constantly work to obtain all the wisdom we possibly can. Love for learning. In the classroom training and real-world education. 

2. Make Your Mark: make a difference, to make our mark a positive one in the world. 

3. Get Prepared To Be Of Service: Serving and giving back, generate the truest and greatest happiness we can experience in our lives. 

Each step directly feeds into the next, the more you live one step, the better prepared you are to live the next one. 

James Ritchie: The Formula For Success- Expanded Principles

The Formula actually gets even better. Combine with J. Paul Getty's autobiography, where he outlines his own three steps. 

1. Get Up Early: early rises. 

2. Work Hard: there's no free lunch. 

3. Find Oil: to build a better mousetrap or provide a superior service. 

Combine with our original formula, and make a guaranteed six step formula for happiness:

1. Get Up Early

2. Work Hard

3. Get Your Education 

4. Find Your Oil

5. Make Your Mark

6. Get Prepared To Be Of Service 

James Ritchie: A Fairy Tale Life

Relates some important events from his personal life as evidence of The Fomula's power. 

The Formula is ultimately a set of principles designed to help anybody who follows them become successful and happy in all aspects of life. You will begin to see great personal growth and you will put yourself on the path toward success and happiness. The real power of The Formula lies in its spiritual focus on serving others. 

Chapter 3: Beware The Double Life

"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

The belief that these two lives will never meet or significantly impact each other. Be consistent in the way you make decisions and the type of person you are, whether at work or at home, will become a significant benefit to you in your business ventures. 

No Duplicity

How strongly our personal lives intersect with and impact our business lives. Like wasting company and resources in order to satisfy his personal addictions. How you behave and who you try to be in one place will always have an effect on who you are and how you act in the other. Living the same principles of professionalism, courtesy, and respect are critical. The focus is really the same, applies equally to business associates, family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. 

We are bound to follow these guidelines in all aspect of our lives. We can't have two separate lives. Commit ourselves to following His teachings in all places and in all times. It's impossible to serve two masters. 

It's A Family Affair

Cooperation between your business ventures and your family. Spouse or life partner. We don't need excuses for our spouses to come on these journeys, do we? It's key in pursuing your goals and dreams. It's critical that both members have equal opportunities to speak, make suggestions, and contribute. 

You create a constant support system for one another. Don't feel it's necessary for your spouse to become a legally recognized and official business partner. 

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni 

Putting It All Together

Learn to be equally trustworthy and transparent in your dealings with business and life partners, then you have a great chance of success in your professional adventures. Open trust, communication, cooperation, agreement, buy-in, and mutual respect in marriage. 

"By supporting each other and working together, we made it through this challenging time (...) We were still in the same team, working toward the same goal". (Page 79)

Chapter 2: The Power Of Covenants

Covenants 101

When we have the enough faith to live our personal standards and keep our covenants, will light the path before us and connect us to Heaven. 

Covenant: in which God promised them if they kept His law and were faithful to Him. (Receive blessings for their obedience). 

As we live according to spiritual law such as this, and experience firsthand the blessing of this obedience, we gain increased faith in the efficacy of faithful and obedient living. Whether public or private, happiness and success. There is a direct link between success and happiness in our lives, and living the covenants we have made with God. 

A covenant is done so without fear or threat; it is made out of respect, and understanding. He dictates what is required of an individual in order to receive certain blessings, when you fail to live according to your covenants, you won't receive these blessings. 

Concept of obedience, and more specifically obedience within the context of covenant making and keeping. "My business is the result of making covenants with God and trying my best to uphold my end of these promises". (Page 60). Hard work is still required. 

The Pipeline To Heaven's Blessings 

The importance of keeping our covenants as it relates to our business activities, "if our fields are watered". Divine guidance and aid. ESSENTIAL. Belief and action, only by living an honest, upright, charitable life. 

Final Thoughts 

I couldn't always trust and depend on other people, depend more on God. "God will provide a way for us to accomplish the righteous endeavors of our hearts, especially when it comes to our business, financial, career, and entrepreneurial activities". (Page 65). 

Chapter 1: Divine Guidance In Business

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence". -Aristotle. 

Chapter 1

Divine Guidance In Business

"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition... Everything else is secondary". -Steve Jobs

God has a plan for me. Small pieces of this plan will be revealed to you through personal spiritual promptings. "Following your heart". Moments of personal inspiration and live according to my personal moral code, that will give me a sense of confidence and security. 

Too Coincidental To Be Coincidental 

I have to be aware about new opportunities to grow, to know and talk with the correct type of people. That my path may cross at the exact time, a precise moment to progress. But the progress doesn't stop there, I have to prepare for something even bigger, like a start a company of my own. Always have new feelings of entrepreneurialism, possibles next steps in my life. To receive divine inspiration and guidance. Like the Liahona. 

Don't be afraid about changes, this life is all about moving forward and looking more opportunities to success. Happy and optimistic about the future. Like he and Ginger created Golden Coast, did that happen in the moment when they met Mike?

Coincidences... coincidences coalesce into a clear picture of divine guidance. God will clear a pathway with which these impressions may be realized. 

Making Lemonade

Sometimes bad people will try to attack us. We don't have to let that discourage us, we will have time of doubts, we need to trust in our family and husband or wife. To turn lemons into lemonade. Search in the troubles ways to be better and enlarge our horizonts. 

Value of persevering through adversity and staying true to what we believe in, regardless of how difficult may be. 

"Acting with faith, trusting your heart's inspiration, and working hard to see your objectives through are critical components in the foundation of business success.". (Page 43). 

Have Faith To Act Urgently

The challenges we faced were not only part of our progression in business, but we were part of our much larger and more significant progression as human beings. Lessons with eternal value. 

Doing all we can do, and then trusting God to carry these efforts through to success. TRUST GOD, in that way we demonstrate our faith. When God speaks to us in our hearts, it's time to act. To act in accordance with God's timing. Don't be so impatient, and we have such limited views. 

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted... A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance". (Page 45). 

Most important: To do the right thing.  Second, to do the right thing at the right time. We open ourselves up to receive the maximal degree of divine aid, protection, and blessings, our actions will be most effective. 

Learn how to recognize personal revelation when it occurs, personal revelation is potent. 

Urgent to follow this divine inspiration, God will continue blessing you even with even more personal revelation and guidance. This type of faithful action allows you to take the next step into the unknown, into the darkness. This is precisely the point at which God will reveal to you the next portion of the path. 

Live Well

We don't have control over the decisions and actions of others. Focus in our personal moral code, forgive our enemies, in that way the ability to love and help others will increase. Help us to survive and grow. 

The Cycle Of Divine Guidance