A bird...A plane..My vision

Ever since I was a little girl, I'd wanted to become a teacher.  Then in highschool my father told me I should go into business, it has more of what he likes to call.."scope."  So being the obedient daughter I am, I chose to enroll at Baruch College to earn a business degree.  However once I got here, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life, aka my major.  For the past three years I've been getting advice, and taking classes to see which field I'm most interested in.  But it wasn't until this semester that I realized what I really wanted to do.  My goal is to manage my father's gemstone business upon graduating college. 

Initially, I thought I'd be a marketing major.  However, since my sister was going away to school once again to get her MBA, she needed me to begin going to work with my father (something I'd done maybe twice in my life).  Just like that, I was given the responsibility of not only managing the accounts of the company but the status of existing and new orders, and shipping.  Even though in the beginning it was extremely overwhelming and intimidating, I've begun to take a keen interest in the business and plan to make it a career later in my life.

One of my first goals that'll help me make this vision become true is to eventually have a full and clear understanding of stones and their specifications.  For instance, I'd love to be able to tell a fake and real stone apart, identify the quality of a stone, and even the rates of each stone depending on its specifics.  I can accomplish this goal by not only regularly get training from my father, but by going to India to learn more about stones from our factory (something I'm doing this coming winter break).

Another goal of mine is to have a good amount of knowledge not only in the management field, but marketing, and accounting as well.  Management, for obvious reasons but marketing because I'd like to maximize the amount of customers we can have as well as learn how to target the correct market for our specialty.  Though I only need a basic understanding of accounting in order to take care of the comapanies client accounts, I'd like to become more confident in dealing with numbers (as I constantly make errors).  I'm already in the process of achieving this goal, as I'm taking such classes while attending Baruch.  It's crazy how much these classes really relate to the business I'm dealing in.

Lastly, I'd want to learn to manage my time a little better.  When running a small business, most of the time you're stuck doing several things at once with minimal help from others.  One of my main problems is that I get nervous and overwhelmed when I realize how much I need to cover at work in a short amount of time.  I'd want to check this off of my goal list by becoming a bit more organized and trying NOT to do everything last minute.  A possible solution may be to keep a task list (which my sister always insist I use).  One way I've already begun solving this problem is by sending daily order status emails to our team in India, so I don't lose track of what orders are complete and what are pending.

Once I can accomplish these goals, my vision will be much clearer and easy to reach.  Hopefully I can make it happen.