Jr Smith Quotes

A man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge

The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.

Peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. Thy friends do stand by thee...' -Jesus the Christ

The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.

For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round" - 1 Nephi 10:19

We say that God is true; that the Constitution of the United States is true; that the Bible is true; and that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Christ is true

Strategy is really the essence of the boards value proposition to the company. The ability to strategize well is the essence of what makes a board relevant.

A high-performing board of directors is the backbone of a successful company.

A board-established and led vision is a critical element of effective corporate governance. It provides direction, inspires stakeholders, and guides the company towards a successful future.

Now, more than ever, the world needs transformational leaders not to cultivate change for its own sake, but to lead through the inevitable evolutions in business and human society.

Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and to watch over them in tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what pow'r it has over my mind.

The Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

Shaping the company's future requires understanding the key drivers of value for the company and establishing metrics to measure progress accordingly.

Effective board governance hinges on the accuracy and reliability of financial reporting, instilling investor confidence.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to defining business success, as different companies can and should prioritize various aspects of success.

And thus we see that by small means the Lord can bring about great things" - 1 Nephi 16:29

As a board, you want to be able to identify exactly what the company is succeeding at and exactly what it's failing at so that you can amplify the successes and correct the failures with surgical precision.

Effective risk management and compliance are essential for protecting the company's assets and reputation.

Each business is like a tree in the forest that is the economy. Each business is like a living being that exists within an ecosystem that also has a life of its own.

Effective board governance hinges on fostering a culture of ethics and integrity throughout the organization.

In today's competitive business landscape, a board's primary responsibility is to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of the organization.

Critical to success in corporate governance is a vision that inspires and motivates employees at all levels.

Fortifying the company involves assessing the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and implementing safeguards.

To be successful, a Board of Directors must foster a culture of respect and appreciation.

It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound.

As a board, you want to be able to identify exactly what the company is succeeding at and exactly what it's failing at so that you can amplify success and correct failure with surgical precision.

Investing has the best results when you learn from nature.

Businesses and markets have a symbiotic relationship. Each has a profound effect on the other.

Business is about putting smiles on peoples faces. Business is about helping people to live better lives.

In business, it's important to be able to make informed decisions.

Business models are about the systems and processes related to the exchange of value between sellers and buyers.

With everything in business, the benefits gained should exceed the cost incurred.

You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace.

One way to improve your business is to increase its capabilities. The more capable your business is of providing value to it's customers, the more success your business will experience.

Sometimes the Lord brings us low before he can lift us higher.

To succeed in business, you've gotta understand your customers.

There's so much beauty in getting paid to do what you love. That should be at the heart of every business - people getting paid to do what they love.

Everything in this world has a business side to it.

As markets change and the broader economy evolves, new opportunities for businesses to add value emerge. And new possibilities for new kinds of businesses also emerge.

As society evolves, business models evolve.

People like to know that the companies they interact with and buy from are companies that do good in the world.

Business is better able to solve societal problems than charity. Because solutions are sustained anywhere there is a profit motive.

In business, efficiency is a prerequisite to profit.

By harnessing the power of collective intelligence, boards of directors can make better decisions, drive innovation, and ensure the long-term success of their organizations.

Shaping the company's future requires a board that regularly evaluates the company's performance against its value creation objectives.

Never give up an old tried friend, who has waded through all manner of toil, for your sake, and throw him away because fools may tell you he has some faults.

Bartering has a suite of business applications in today's economy.

Every business should be thinking about their flywheel and the way that value is upcycled internally.

The boardroom is not merely a conference room; it's the bridge of a corporate vessel, guiding the company through the turbulent waters of the business world.

I don’t care how great your products or services are, if the company’s finances aren’t managed well, it’s doomed to fail.

Effective board meetings encourage active participation from all board members, fostering a culture of open communication and respectful debate.

ESG ratings impact profitability - regardless of what industry your company is in. People like to know that the companies they interact with and buy from are companies that do good in the world.

By embracing a holistic approach to risk management and conducting regular risk assessments, board members can ensure that their company is prepared to face a wide range of challenges

Business is a lot like gardening. And you have to tend to your business the way you tend to plants in your garden.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we like to invest holistically. We consider profitability, we consider peoples wellbeing, we consider the environment and so much more.

A good investment is a productive investment.

Fortifying the company involves managing supply chain risks to ensure continuity of operations and avoid disruptions.

Fortifying the company involves incorporating risk management considerations into strategic planning and decision making processes.

In business, profitability is a non-negotiable.

Effective board governance hinges on adapting strategic direction based on changing market conditions and emerging opportunities.

Fortifying the company may involve diversifying suppliers and establishing contingency plans to mitigate supply chain disruptions.

In the permaculture economy, recycling isn't good enough. It's more about upcycling - because as resources cycle through the system, they should continue to add greater value to the system.

The important consideration is not how long we can live but how well we can learn the lesson of life, and discharge our duties and obligations to God and to one another.

Equity without income is unnatural.

The nearer a person approaches the Lord, a greater power will be manifested by the adversary to prevent the accomplishment of His purposes.

A good business adapts it’s strategy and approach as the economy continuously evolves.

Investing requires vision, patience, research, and strategy.

Shaping the company's future requires a board that fosters a culture of innovation and agility to adapt to changing market conditions.

Diversity should not be pursued solely for its own sake but as a strategic advantage. A diverse board brings a wealth of perspectives, experiences, and insights that can enhance decision-making, innovation, and problem-solving.

Our Investments should be consistent with our values.

Investing, like spirituality, has a lot to do with the flow of energy.

Fostering a thriving board is akin to orchestrating a symphony of aligned vision, shared success, and measurable progress.

We can only have a Permaculture Economy when we systematically begin to treat waste as a resource.

In this global economy of rapid change, innovation is not a nice-to-have anymore - it's a necessity. Every employee in the business needs to be innovation capable or innovation adaptive.

Perhaps I am meant to swim in deep waters.... better deep than shallow!

One of the greatest joys of leading a business is providing jobs to other people.

The economy is always changing. So your business should always be changing. Managing a business includes adapting to change, evolving with change and sometimes pioneering those changes and evolutions.

The success of a strategy largely depends on it's implementation. You can have a good strategy, you can have a winning game plan, but ultimately you and your team have to implement the strategy and execute and put the game plan into action if your business is going to succeed.

At its core, ethical governance is about doing the right thing, even when it's difficult or costly. It's about prioritizing values like honesty, fairness, transparency, and accountability in all business dealings.

The board's vision sets the standard for leadership throughout the company. By actively promoting and embodying the vision, board members hold management accountable for aligning their actions and strategies with the company's long-term aspirations.

The business landscape is a constantly evolving ecosystem. Changes in the macro environment, such as technological disruptions or changing consumer preferences, can rapidly alter the competitive landscape. A high-performing board needs to be adept at strategic foresight.

A vision alone ain’t enough. To truly thrive, the board must also align on a concrete definition of success. This involves a meticulous process of identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), setting SMART goals, and establishing a robust framework for measuring progress.

The financial statements are just a starting point. By asking the right questions and actively engaging with the data, board members can gain a deeper understanding of the company's financial health and position themselves to make sound decisions that will ensure the company's long-term success.

Mayflower-Plymouth is a company, and it's an ecosystem. We are an Investment Holdings company that holds mostly small and medium sized businesses in our portfolio. And we also provide a variety of resources and business services such as consulting - in the interest of helping businesses to be better.

Our Investments should be consistent with our values. It’s simple. If we value health, we shouldn’t have our money plugged into businesses and systems that promote disease. If we value spirituality, we shouldn’t have our money plugged into businesses and systems that promote a perversion of the spirit.

Investors, creditors, and regulatory bodies rely on financial statements to make informed decisions. When internal metrics align with recognized standards, it enhances the credibility of your financial reports, fostering trust among these stakeholders.

Nature isn't transactional. Nature is is about relationships and processes and systems. Transactions happen, but they happen within the clear context of relationships, processes and systems. Business should be like that. Markets should be like that. The economy should be like that.

The board, in collaboration with management, crafts a strategic roadmap that defines the specific steps required to achieve the vision. This roadmap translates the company's "why" and "when" into a practical "how," outlining key milestones, resource allocation, and performance metrics.

God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with Himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits. (King Follett Discourse)

The profit motive is the most potent source of collective motivation and the most efficient means for society to solve its problems. Anywhere you insert a profit motive - people will self assemble groups, leverage resources, and implement processes all in the effort to satisfy that profit motive.

Productivity is about turning valuable inputs into valuable outputs. Individual people are more productive when all the elements of the permaculture economy are at work in their lives. When individuals are productive, then businesses become productive. When businesses become productive, the nation becomes productive.

Our Investments should be consistent with our values. If we value the environment, we should have our money invested in businesses and systems that improve the condition of the environment and add value to nature. If we value health, we should have our money invested in businesses and systems that help people to live healthier lives in some way.

A good investment is like a good fruit tree. From its conception, it grows exponentially larger consistently and reliably. It’s required input in a small percentage of its output. It regularly gives back to the broader ecosystem, helping multiple other lives to prosper. And it produces an abundance of fruit for the enjoyment of its owner.

A business is like a living being. It’s more of a process than a stagnant thing. The way you manage your business today shouldn’t be the same way you managed it ten years ago or even ten months ago. Because your business should have evolved and changed and adapted in some way during that time - just like living beings evolve and change and adapt to their environments.

Ultimately, Investing is about holistic ROI. It’s not about just owning stocks or crypto or flipping for quick income. When we talk about holistic ROI, we are looking at our long term profit, short term profit, income security, cash flow, social impact, environmental impact, spiritual impact, stability of the permaculture economy, and more. That’s how we see it at Mayflower-Plymouth.

The key to having a permaculture economy is ensuring that the waste from every one is a resource for another. When every ones waste is a resource for another, interesting truths emerge - no waste exists in the system as a whole, resources become abundant and easily accessible, businesses become generally more profitable, and wealth becomes more widely distributed. This is a circular economy. This is a permaculture economy.

Maybe it’s not metaphysics. Maybe it’s existential. I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it’s not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than “die,” “pass away,” the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday—’ ‘And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what—a hundred years? two hundred?—and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.

And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God. And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.' -Alma the Younger (Alme 7:10-12)

Every problem that we have in society has a suite of relative solutions that are also business opportunities. Agricultural waste is a problem. But solving that problem is a business opportunity. Energy inefficiency is a problem. But solving that problem is a business opportunity. The abusive treatment of animals is a problem. But solving that problem is a business opportunity. Reduced biodiversity is a problem. But solving that problem is a business opportunity. Plastic waste in the ocean is a problem. But solving that problem is a business opportunity. And the list goes on indefinitely. We just have to think creatively and fluidly and we can solve all of these problems that plague Earth and we can grow businesses and earn money and provide for our families in the process.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong. I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're starting to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat , and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we're still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that's only spelling" It's much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face. The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star. (Logan Pearsall Smith) Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around. (J.R. Moehringer) You could be standing a few feet away...I could have sat next to you on the subway, or brushed beside you as we went through the turnstiles. But whether or not you are here, you are here- because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist is you weren't here in some way. At last I had it--the Christmas present I'd wanted all along, but hadn't realized. His words. The dream was obviously a sign: he was too enticing to resist. Wow. You must have a lot of faith in me. Which I appreciate. Even if I'm not sure I share it. I could do this on my own, and not freak out that I had no idea what waited for me on the other side of this night. Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened. Because I'm So uncool and so afraid. If there was a clue, that meant the mystery was still intact I fear you may have outmatched me, because not I find these words have nowhere to go. It's hard to answer a question you haven't been asked. It's hard to show that you tried unless you end up succeeding. This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of finding eachother. It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that is humbles the present. Don't worry. It's your embarrassment at not having the thought that counts. You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's ahint- ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy- all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know--this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtship. They want to know immediately. Be careful what you;re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head You should never wish for wishful thinking