Work I have Completed

This past week in class, everyone has been focused about our upcoming presentation. On Monday or Tuesday we divided each slide up and we are almost done with the presentation. I am doing the third slide titles “Details of Business.” At the beginning, I was unsure about what details of the business meant, but now I understand what is meant by it. Each day in class, we have edited the power point and have been making progress.

I turned in the 360 Evaluation about my group members and was fair to everyone. When I looked back at all the work my group had done, I realized it was distributed pretty evenly and did not have any major complaints to make about anyone. I can confidently say my group was very productive together. Everyone was willing to do work and there were no slackers. In the past, I have been in groups where usually one person just does all the work. This has happened basically in every class, but I am very proud to say it did not happen in my group at all. Sure, some people did a little more work, but there was not one group member who dominated or took control completely. We have continued to make progress on the PowerPoint and plan to work together as a group to have the best presentation possible.

Working on my speech, has been a bit challenging considering my slide is a little bit more vague than others, but I am not concerned about delivering a good speech. So far, I have summarized all the other slides, and covered what we plan to spend on treats and other expenses. This way, the audience can get a good picture of our doggy day care. I also want to make sure my team seems professional. The more professional we are, the better we look to the audience. I believe my group has made a lot of progress with the doggy daycare and I am confident that our audience will see that as well.

Final Blog Post- Book

For my final blog post, I have chosen to write about a strategy that I read a few weeks ago, but it has really stood out to me. It is called, "Always Follow Up."

The author starts off with a story about a friend of his, who is a member of one of the largest and most successful angel investor organizations in the United States. This friend offers advice to Johnson about entrepreneurship and investment strategies. He shares a story with him about a company he was interested in giving a loan to, but the CEO of the company disappeared and could not be reached. Johnson did not understand how someone could ignore such an offer, but he goes on to explain why. He states, "Those who master the art of following up are more successful than those who do not, yet so many entrepreneurs overlook and underestimate this simple rule." He says the number one reason entrepreneurs are afraid to follow up is the fear of rejection. 

I can relate to being afraid of rejection, and I have been afraid of rejection in the past as well. I have learned overtime, that it does not matter what the result of a situation is. Instead, of being concerned about what may happen, it is often better to take action and wonder what will happen. A similar situation happened to me where I was afraid of rejection. Quarter one I worked with the non-profit Organization Hebrew Senior Life. Our job as a team, was to come up with an idea that could help the organization and make things easier for them. After my first meeting with them, it seemed they were a large organization and had everything under control. My team and I were able to come up with an identification system for the residents. At the beginning, I was afraid to share this idea with the staff at Hebrew Senior Life. I thought our idea was not complex enough, and I wasn’t very confident in it. I realized it did not matter. A few days after the meeting, I emailed Laura and told her about the idea my group had come up with. It’s better to follow up and go after success and get negative feedback, then to do nothing at all. In fact, Laura had a lot of positive feedback about our idea. In the end, I was relieved I took the chance and emailed Laura and sharing a rough idea. There is always room for improvement and people feedback is always helpful. We continued to email each other back and forth throughout the time I worked with her, and in the end all worked out well. 

Since this situation, I have followed up with teachers more and just been more proactive about things. I will continue to read The Entrepreneur Mind and apply these strategies to my every day life.

Work I completed 1/5-1/9

During this week, I have completed many tasks essential to our projects. My group has been focusing on extensively revising business parts 1-6. We have all been working together very effectively and have given each other constructive feedback. Each day in class, productive work was done. My group was very motivated to turn in the best work to Dave Gladstone. I know that we all wanted to look professional and legitimate as we are starting to become entrepreneurs. It has been very comforting knowing that I can rely on my team members to complete tasks. At the beginning of this project, I anticipated there would be some issues with this, but so far so good! I was also an active member in the group this week. For Storefront parts 4-6 I completed part six. I was willing to revise it, and I knew I had my group members to help me if it got challenging along the way. For example, part six was quite a challenge for me, and I did not feel that I would give a good explanation of how all the numbers made sense in relation to each other. Thankfully, Sales agreed to help me out. It is great to work together as a time. I worked with Samantha helping her revise part 5 and gave Sales feedback on his write up for part 6, and also edited it and made some finishing touches. I oversaw the group and made sure everyone handed in documents on time. However, I knew that would not be a problem.
Our Doggy daycare is coming along and we are working on generating the best type of Doggy Daycare there is. We have been coming up with ideas and ways to improve what we have come up with so far. I have been in contact with Pat Maloney, a worker at Town Hall who informed me about the different costs and things we needed to start our doggy daycare. We were in touch over email and I contacted him about the kennel application, certificacy of occupancy, and the application for holding animals. He emailed me back with all the necessary documents. Since, he emailed me on Friday I haven't had the chance to show my group members yet. This will be done first thing Monday morning.

We have also been very proactive selling socks. Jack has done a good job contacting his friends and reaching out to people who want to buy them. As of Friday we had two pairs left, and I am pushing my group to order more. I am confident that we could sell a lot more at sporting events and during lunches. However, I do think we would need to drop the price. Most people don't want to spend $12 on a pair of socks. My goal for this week, will be to push my group to order more socks. I will make sure they feel confident about the product. I am also willing to buy a pair myself to help out, and my sister even said she wanted a pair!! I am proud of the work my group has completed this week.

Another Strategy From The Entrepreneur Mind

Each week when The Entrepreneur Mind I always have a hard time choosing a strategy to elaborate on. This is mainly because they are all so essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur. However, I always end up picking a strategy that speaks to me the most. For my blog post tonight, I have chosen to reflect on the strategy, "Move On Fast From a Bad Business Idea."

From experience, I've learned it can be very challenging to move on from a bad idea that one feels they are set on. Johnson explains in this strategy, one's first idea may not always be the best idea. He goes on to say, sometimes one's first ideas/first bad idea can be a gut feeling and are usually unrealistic. I agree with Johnson's point about this. And I have noticed myself, sometimes it feels that the first idea is the only one that makes sense. Johnson also emphasizes that, one should not think this way. He says it is dangerous to be limited when coming up with ideas. I can relate to this completely considering it happened to me in our class this year. I remember at the beginning of the year we had to pitch our first product. I thought I had the most unique, authentic idea. I learned this was not the case and it turned out, there were many flaws with my so called "Kit For Success."  The Kit For Success was going to be a stick that opened up on one side with the touch of a button. When the stick opened, daily essentials would be neatly stacked inside the stick. I honestly thought I had the solution to everyone’s organizational issues with this kit. I really thought it could be successful. I hadn't taken the time to really sit down and brainstorm. Instead I jumped to conclusions and pitched the first idea that came into my head. At the time I had not been so stuck on this idea. If I had known to move on fast from a bad idea, I would have saved myself a lot of wasted time. I think not moving on from this idea, blocked me from coming up with even better ideas. I truly feel Johnson’s tip about moving on from a bad idea, is the best advice (business wise) anyone could share with an entrepreneur.

    Johnson states the fact that entrepreneurs do not settle for anything less than their intended expectations. From reading this book so far, I have discovered entrepreneurs are always searching and acquiring new information. That is why they will not settle for a bad idea. They will continue to brainstorm and attempt to research until they come up with the best idea. Johnson has reiterated this type of thinking throughout the book. This only enhances the fact that moving on from a bad business idea is essential to him. Again, I believe this strategy is the answer. This strategy taught me: it is never acceptable to settle for a bad idea; something that is not your best work.

    I am eager to write my blog post for next week! And I can’t wait to read about how Johnson operates as a successful entrepreneur.

Work I completed 12/22-12/23

My group has been making a lot of progress. We sold all of the socks which is a huge accomplishment for the first order. Everyone has basically been putting in all their effort that is necessary in order to do our best job. Sales, is a new member of the group has been very helpful. In class, he asks if there is anything that needs to be completed and is always willing to help out. Yesterday, he did the write up for part 6 with my assistance. Because there were only two days of class, there was not much work to be done. However, all storefront parts have been submitted with revisions. Today I proofread the write up from parts 4-6 and submitted the revisions. I hope to see substantially better comments. Without having any previous exposure to financial statements, everyone in my group did the best they could. Ms. Steven's comments were helpful, and hopefully pushed in the right direction. If necessary, we will revise again to meet all requirements.

The storefront is coming along and we have been doing all we can do to research all necessary items to open the Doggy Day care. So far, we have spoken to Mr. Gerber who explained the architecture and what the costs would be to knock down a wall. I have been adding suggestions and criticism to the ideas that my group members have. We all spent a lot of time and effort on Storefront parts 4-6 and everyone in the group, besides Jack did work on it. Jack focused on ordering the socks and selling them.

For the $200 project, we are going to order more socks and try to figure out a strategic way to sell them. I believe many people would buy them, considering the cool design the socks contain. Athletes or non athlete the socks are a cool way to show spirit.

I have been documenting all of the groups' work on Trello. I figured out how to use it efficiently, and it helps me. I have mostly been using the "To- Do List" function to check of completed assignments and keep to keep track of what is due in the near future.

Reflection: The Entrepreneur Mind

This book again, intrigues me with the different off beat strategies it contains about entrepreneurs. In this post, I will be reflecting on one different strategy Johnson touches upon. This strategy is not bound to be the key to success for everyone. It is designed to guide a struggling entrepreneur along the way who may need help in a specific area. 

The strategy is called, "Ignorance Can Be Bliss." When I read the title of this strategy, I was quite shocked how Johnson thought ignorance could be a good thing. He explains reasons and scenarios in which ignorance is beneficial, "perhaps your outside perspective enables you to see things in a fresh way, seizing dormant opportunities" (58). I will admit that sometimes your knowledge of something can get in the way. Often times, when a person thinks they know something they rarely do outside research. This can lead to errors in work and not a happy ending. I am sure this is the case with many entrepreneurs. Most of the time, entrepreneurs can be cocky and think they know everything about their field. They expect they will have to do little research about their business because they have so much knowledge about it. After realizing this, I now understand why ignorance can be good. If an entrepreneur is ignorant about the business they are willing to open, this forces them to take another step, to go deeper. Ignorance can force  someone out of their comfort zone. It requires an entrepreneur to do extensive research about a given service. An entrepreneur will continue to do research until they understand, because all they want in life is to be successful. For example, imagine an entrepreneur is starting a hair salon business. They have always been fascinated by hair salons and how they deal with customer service, and have regular customers who come in consistently. Amelia, the entrepreneur starting the business has little knowledge about hair salons. Because I have little knowledge about hair salons, I must do the extra work to understand the business. This forces me to learn everything there is to learn about hair salons. My ignorance just benefited me because, now I know exactly what is behind a hair salon business and what keeps it running. However, say if I thought I knew everything about hair salons, and therefore, did not conduct any research, that would in the end probably cause the business to be a failure. Since the Entrepreneur Mind, is about Entrepreneurs and businesses, ignorance is okay in these cases. Reflecting on Johnson's idea I do not think ignorance is okay in any other fields. I will tell you why. Senior year has a little bit of flexibility with course selection. There are many different math classes to choose from, and I thought why not try a new type of course. For the first few days of school, I was in a math class called "Perspectives of a Mathematical Mind" this class sounded like a good idea because there were few tests and we were mostly graded on homework assignments and projects. I went into this class completely ignorant having no knowledge about any of the math we were doing. I felt like a failure and my ignorance was not a good thing. I ended up switching to Statistics because it was a better fit for me. 

After reading this chapter, I have come to the conclusion that ignorance can be good in some fields, and extremely harmful in others. I am excited to read this book over break and hope I find more strategies that I can reflect on and critique!

Work I have Completed:12/8-12/12

This past week I have completed substantial amounts of work to keep our projects up to date with deadlines. Last week, I wrote about how we were eager to order the socks and wanted to do so at the earliest convenience. However, we still have not ordered them. I have no problem waiting, but I know it would be best if we could order them as soon as possible. Some of my group members are a little bit stubborn and want them to look perfect. I have tried telling them we should just go ahead and order them, but they don’t seem to budge. I don’t think we should go ahead and order the socks without a group consensus. Other than that, my group is working well together and we are dividing up the work evenly.

The storefront project was originally only meant for Dan and Jack, but Samantha and I have started to help out as well. We have met every deadline for the Storefront Project, and have revised business parts 1-3 in order to make sure they are complete and satisfactory. I helped out with parts 4-6, and submitted it on Thursday night. It took a lot of group effort in order to complete this, but after reading Ms. Steven’s comments we will need to meet again to revise it. We worked well individually and everyone did their role. I know I am disappointed with the score we received for parts 4-6 and I am willing to revise my Profit and Loss statement and help out with part 4 and 5 which also need work.

I would like to get moving with $200 project. The socks have great potential and there is no use in waiting around. I strongly hope we order them by the end of this week. The design is set, finally. The original burden was that, Kyle the assistant athletic director had already ordered a similar pair of socks. His order finally came, and I believe we will decide in class tomorrow if it makes sense to go ahead and order another batch. Personally, I think either way we should still order the socks. I think a lot of people would buy them and it is a cool way to show school spirit. I am confident that once we have a set list of buyers the socks will be very successful.

I am also the HR representative and am using Trello to document the groups progress. I thought that I understood how to use it, but am struggling a bit. I plan to get help from Ms. Stevens one day after class this week. I want to make sure I evaluate my group members fairly, and I don’t leave out any details. I have no problem writing comments for each group member, but all of the checklists and other functions confuse me. My group for the most part has been good about updating Trello. I know that once I get help from Ms. Stevens it will be used effectively and efficiently.