Thoughts for Thursday ~ The Small Business School Challenge

Welcome and welcome back! What an exciting couple of weeks it has been for L.U.V. Enterprises. You'll have to excuse me for essentially disappearing. Life has been insane. And I couldn't be more grateful for the insanity. It's been so amazing. 

First of all I want to thank The Small Business School Challenge who granted me the opportunity to participate. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up. So let me tell you a little bit about it before I continue.

"What had happened was..." there are these small business schools across the country who put together about 20 teams of three MBA students. These teams are then partnered with businesses across the country. The purpose of the team is to find out the needs of the business and create a plan to help them thrive in this new economy. The plan is to be implemented over a period of twelve months. This all happens in about 48 hours. 

There is a local competition between the student teams of the business school. The top teams from each school advance to the national competition. I'm not exactly sure what the students get from their hard work and dedication but all the businesses who win receive money.  

Now I don't know when the students receive their businesses. What I do know is all they have to work with is the website (if the business has one) and whatever information the business submitted to participate. I spoke with my team for the first time on Thursday night at 9p. By Saturday night at 8p their local competition was over.  

So I'm sure you understand why I need to send a super duper extra mega special thank you around the Milky Way to my MBA students who knocked it out of the park with their presentation and the Strategic Report they created for L.U.V. Enterprises! 

Their work put them in third place in competition with other teams from Duke Fuqua School of Business. (Yes! That means I will be getting some money. I have no other details to share though.) The official list of winners is on The SBS Challenge website. They went above and beyond the requirements for the competition though. I am so grateful for the way they used their talents and complimented one another for me to gain the advantage in the end.  

To MY MBA students: Malika, Mujahid and Spencer - I will forever be in debt for your absolute brilliance in taking all the information I threw at you and creating a feasible business plan for me to implement over the next twelve months. Thank you. Thank YOU! THANK YOU!!!!

Trust and believe... When God's got you, God's got you! 

I also need to say "thank you Cici!" She's my partner in the Divine. I was genuinely stuck when I received notice that L.U.V. was accepted to the competition. I had to fill out a questionnaire about my business needs to participate. I knew things I wanted to focus on but there were so many, I was having a hard time narrowing things down. 

God had given me the thought to get enrolled in the parenting programs that are crucial to the NEW Emancipation Proclamation. I thought it was just to get prepared to use them for it. I didn't have any other thought about what they were for.

So I asked Cici what she thought, without divulging my own thoughts. What she came back with blew my mind! Her reply was: "how to create a parent coaching package that you can sell online to generate passive income. Then a portion of the proceeds could go to paying a low income family to learn parenting". It was sheer brilliance.

Interestingly enough that's not how it ended up playing out in the plan with the MBA students. God took what I needed to hear from what she said and pieced together what I was missing. I'm so EXCITED, THRILLED, ESTATIC!

Another huge shout out goes to Kayla at #BlackDollarNC. She's the one who introduced me to the competition. If it were not for her I might not have known about the competition. And if I think about how I met her and then think about how I met them... like I said, "when God's got you... He's got you!"

The plan my MBAs created has three parts to it:

1. Fundraising

2. Accreditation

3. Social Media Marketing

Looking at this list it's pretty simple, right? Makes completer sense that's what I have to do, right? I totally agree. The beautiful thing about my MBAs is they did all the research. They did all the footwork so I could just take the plan and follow it. Thank you SBS Challenge, Duke Fuqua and my MBA students.

Needless to say, not only do I know the best is yet to come, I know how it coming. And it's coming soon. WHOOOOSA! Deep cleansing breaths.

Please let me encourage you. The best isn't just coming for me. It's coming for you too. I'm grateful you are here with me. Your thought for today is: when God's got you, He's got you! Don't let anyone or anything dissuade you from believing that, even crazy, unexpected life circumstances. Sometimes those are the very things that prove God is with you! That's it for now!

Create today. It's another amazing day in paradise. May your choices make it the best day ever.

Peace, Love and God's continued blessings. Always...(s.m.i.l.e.)