30A – Final Reflection

I believe that the most interesting and formative experience this semester in this course was the assignments on buyer behaviors. This helped me to see how customers act, and how to decipher who is most likely to buy your product or service. This was also one of the most fun and "joyous" assignments. I am most proud of my venture concepts. I believe that through this course I have definitely developed more of an entrepreneurial mindset and have started to look at situations in a different way because of that. I would recommend that students on this path in the future keep their heads up, manage their time wisely and don't look at failure as negative, but look at failure as a learning experience. Keep pushing forward.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

My opportunity lies in the customer service industry, with retail and restaurant establishments. The opportunity is in the customer service and hospitality training of employees for businesses, as businesses struggle with training and keeping friendly employees. This opportunity has become more prevalent in the past several years as the pace of the world seems to have become faster and faster, and people have become more concerned with being fast than with being friendly. People just are not as friendly as they used to be, but people visiting retail stores and restaurants still expect great service. The typical customer of my business is other businesses. There is no specific demographic, just any business with the need of friendly employees. Currently most of the businesses that would be my customers are simply trying to train their employees themselves in house. This is something that I believe many of them are struggling with and would like to stop doing. I believe that the opportunity for this business is very large. There are many businesses that are struggling with customer service training, and I believe that they would be very interested in the business that I have proposed as a solution to their problems. I believe that the window of opportunity will be fairly short for me. I believe that when I start my business, I will need to grow and succeed quickly if I am going to make it. 

Innovation

My service is an outside team of professionals that comes into businesses and trains employees in customer service and hospitality. My business’ reason for being is to train up the next group of customer service and hospitality professionals. We will go into businesses and train their employees exclusively in customer service. We will work one on one with employees and actively coach them in how to treat customers not just as customers, but as guests. We will also offer classes for businesses to send groups of employees to learn more about customer service. We will charge our one on one services at about $50 per hour per trainer. For classes, we will charge $100 per person, with a discounted rate of $75 per person for groups of 20 or more people. The classes will be about 4 hours in length and will have a maximum capacity of 75 people.

Venture Concept

My business would solve the needs of other businesses by assisting them in improving their customer service. Businesses would choose to come and use our service as an alternative to wasting their own labor and time trying to train on customer service. Since we are professionals in this area, we would be the ideal choice, in comparison to wasting their own employees time in training. There are few other companies that offer this type of service, so competitors would likely be few. We would capitalize on our experience in the industry to try and outweigh any competition. We would likely employ about 15 trainers and have a home office where they can organize their materials. We would also have space in our office for classes to take place. The one on one training would take place on site in the businesses who hire us.

I believe the most important resource is the experience as well as the financial stability as I enter into the industry. 

Next I would like to offer training services based on food safety for our restaurant customers. 

In 5 years I would like to see my business thriving, with up to 50 employed trainers, and with a strong reputation in this field in my geographic area. In ten years I want to be pursuing new businesses, possibly a coffee shop, and flipping real estate on the side. With the experience I gain through this venture, I can have better knowledge to start future businesses and make future investments. I believe that I can pursue my passion through this passion and make my vision a reality.

I received some great feedback. Most of the feedback was positive, and constructive. Throughout the process I was reminded how much experience I have and how great my idea was. This helped boost my confidence going into this process.

I mainly changed my prices, I believe that I was rather low on those, so I would now plan to charge more for my services. I also now believe that in this market I have a smaller window of time to get my business going. 

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

Book: Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

1) You read about an entrepreneur:

• What surprised you the most? His childhood. Having heard a lot about Steve Jobs throughout my life, this was something I never heard about, and it was just somewhat surprising to me. 
• What about the entrepreneur did you most admire? His tenacious determination. He never gave up until he achieved what he was striving for. 
• What about the entrepreneur did you least admire? He seemed pretty full of himself.
• Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it? He encountered many failures along the way. He continued pushing forward and developing new and improved systems. 

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 

Obviously he was very tech savvy and had a lot of know how in that area. He was very competent in this area, and was great with technology. 

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

Nothing was overly confusing to me, but there were parts of his childhood that were surprising and somewhat "confusing" to me. 

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

How did you find the motivation to keep going after failure? Do you have any regrets?

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

I believe that Jobs knew how to work hard and believed in hard work in order to achieve success. I agree, I believe that hard work is how to achieve success. 

28A – Your Exit Strategy

1) Identify the exit strategy you plan to make. Do you intend to sell your business in the next 5 years for a large return? Do you intend to stay with the business for several decades and retire? Do you intend to protect the venture as a family business, and pass it down to your children?

I plan to own my business for 5-10 years, and grow it to a point that I can sell out for a nice profit. I would like to build the business and move on to something new-a new adventure.

2) Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

I would like to move on to another venture, probably either real estate or my ultimate dream of opening a unique downtown coffee shop/study space. I hope to be able to use the profit from selling this business to start my next venture.

3) How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept? For instance, has it influenced how you have identified an opportunity? Has it influenced your growth intentions or how you plan to acquire and use resources?

I believe it has effected some of my decisions as I am not trying to build a business to keep and pass along to my family. I am trying to make a difference in this area of business, make a profit, and move on. This has made me see things differently and identify my opportunities in a different, less personal manner. I believe it has also mad me more reluctant to take as many risks, as this is not my dream business. 

26A – Celebrating Failure

1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed -- whether in this class, or outside of this class. Don't spare any details! It'd be even better if there was something you tried several times this semester, and failed each time. 

This semester I continually failed with my time management strategies. I decided at the beginning I would just wing it, make a mental list of what needs to be done, and I will just get through it. This provided failure within the first 3 weeks of classes. I missed an assignment and had to take a major grade deduction on it because of the fact that it was late. So then I decided to keep up by just watching canvas closer. This too failed me, as I continually looked over things. I ended up realizing that for me I have to put the extra effort into making a list of my assignments due in order to keep up most effectively.

2) Tell us what you learned from it.  

I learned that for each person there is a different method of time management that works better. For me, I have to make a list of my assignments and keep a calendar. This way I know what is coming and when to start working on the tasks.

3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. Failure is hard, isn't it? It's embarrassing, sure, but it also means that we have to change something about ourselves. Talk about how you handle failure (emotionally, behaviorally). Finally, talk about how this class has changed your perspective on failure -- are you more likely to take a risk now than you were just a few months ago?

Failure sucks. Failing at something and feeling like a failure is absolutely awful. I have a tendency to take things personally and emotionally, especially failure. This tends to make me depressed whenever I fail at something. But it does not have to. If you look at it differently it does not have to hurt so bad. If you look at it as a learning experience, then you can just get stronger from the failure. This class helped me to realize that more. Whenever we start at something there is a good chance that we will fail. And that's okay. If we fail, we can't just get in a funk and give up, we have to get up and try again. Learn from mistakes and move forward. I believe that I am more likely to take risks now, than I was before this class, as I realize these points more so. 

24A – Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

My opportunity lies in the customer service industry, with retail and restaurant establishments. The opportunity is in the customer service and hospitality training of employees for businesses, as businesses struggle with training and keeping friendly employees. This opportunity has become more prevalent in the past several years as the pace of the world seems to have become faster and faster, and people have become more concerned with being fast than with being friendly. People just are not as friendly as they used to be, but people visiting retail stores and restaurants still expect great service. The typical customer of my business is other businesses. There is no specific demographic, just any business with the need of friendly employees. Currently most of the businesses that would be my customers are simply trying to train their employees themselves in house. This is something that I believe many of them are struggling with and would like to stop doing. I believe that the opportunity for this business is very large. There are many businesses that are struggling with customer service training, and I believe that they would be very interested in the business that I have proposed as a solution to their problems. I believe the window of opportunity will be open for quite a while as this issue is not subsiding much at all lately. I believe the time restraint I would be up against would be how long after I start my business would I start having a positive cash flow.

Innovation

My service is an outside team of professionals that comes into businesses and trains employees in customer service and hospitality. My business’ reason for being is to train up the next group of customer service and hospitality professionals. We will go into businesses and train their employees exclusively in customer service. We will work one on one with employees and actively coach them in how to treat customers not just as customers, but as guests. We will also offer classes for businesses to send groups of employees to learn more about customer service. We will charge our one on one services at about $30 per hour per trainer. For classes, we will charge $75 per person, with a discounted rate of $60 per person for groups of 15 or more people. The classes will be about 4 hours 

in length and will have a maximum capacity of 50 people.

Venture Concept

My business would solve the needs of other businesses by assisting them in improving their customer service. Businesses would choose to come and use our service as an alternative to wasting their own labor and time trying to train on customer service. Since we are professionals in this area, we would be the ideal choice, in comparison to wasting their own employees time in training. There are few other companies that offer this type of service, so competitors would likely be few. We would capitalize on our experience in the industry to try and outweigh any competition. We would likely employ about 15 trainers and have a home office where they can organize their materials. We would also have space in our office for classes to take place. The one on one training would take place on site in the businesses who hire us.

I believe the most important resource is the experience that we have in this industry. This is something that I would capitalize on.

Next I would like to offer training services based on food safety for our restaurant customers. 

In 5 years I would like to see my business thriving, with up to 50 employed trainers, and with a strong reputation in this field in my geographic area. In ten years I want to be pursuing new businesses, possibly a coffee shop, and flipping real estate on the side. With the experience I gain through this venture, I can have better knowledge to start future businesses and make future investments. I believe that I can pursue my passion through this passion and make my vision a reality.

23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

Resources:

1. Valuable experience in the customer service/training industry. This is extremely valuable for my business, it is not overly rare but also not super common, it is somewhat inimitable as many people can have this experience, and it is non-substitutable as it is necessary for the business.

2. I have many personal connections within the industry. This is very valuable, it is not very rare, it is very inimitable and it is definitely non-substitutable.

3. I have a strong passion driving me. This is highly valuable, the level of passion I have is rare in my opinion, it is no inimitable and it is definitely not substitutable.

4. I  have training methods already developed from my previous job. This is very valuable, rare to already have, non inimitable, and not substituable.

5. I will have an education from the #7 public university (Go Gators) which I am currently working on. This is extremely valuable, rare, not inimitable, and definitely not substitutable.

6. I have a very good record of success in customer service training and references to back that up. This is very valuable, pretty rare, not very inimitable, and not substituable by anything.

7. I have connections that are prospects as employees in this business. This is pretty valuable when I start, somewhat rare, not inimitable, and not substitutable. You gotta have employees!

8. I have good credit to be able to get a startup loan. This is very valuable, moderately rare, not inimitable, and not substitutable unless I have the cash to start up on my own.

9. I have the support system of family and friends to help with starting the business and supporting me through the startup process. This is extremely valuable, rare, not inimitable, and definitely not substitutable.

10. I have a desire to own my own business and succeed that is beyond description. This is extremely valuable, very rare, not inimitable, and definitely not substitutable.

I believe my experience and passion are the most important two resources. I have extremely valuable experience that sets me apart and will be a major boost to my business. I also have a very strong passion for this area of business, which drives me and pushes me as I embark in this business.