Final Reflection

I had a lot of experiences in this class that I attribute to my growth as an entrepreneur and a student. The most formative experiences that I had in this course were performing elevator pitches. My first pitch was very bad and I love watching my final pitch and seeing how far I’ve come. I imagined speaking in front of crowds or investors and I think that I grew a lot of confidence by doing so. I grew as an idea developer in this sense as well. I kept growing my idea more and more so that I could give the best elevator pitch and tell people exactly what I want them to know. I think that this experience is also the experience that I will remember years later. I think that the elevator pitches are great videos to look back at and to summarize my progress in this class. It is great to see how far I have come as a developer and a speaker, and I know that I will remember the pitches, and my A WEAR PODS invention, for years to come. My most joyous experience in this course was the assignment titled “What’s your secret sauce?” because I got to focus on my positive traits and realize that I am valued and have a lot to offer. I loved hearing what my best friends had to say about me. Their ideas about me made me really happy and opened my eyes up to my true potential. I am most proud of accomplishing my venture concept because I love seeing how far I came among this whole process. I am proud that I can describe all aspects of my business idea and enjoy reading about what I’ve created.

I do think that I have developed an entrepreneurial mindset over the course of this semester. I see things now as issues that I can fix, which makes me feel like a great entrepreneur. I think that the skills I learned from this class prepared me to one day be a great entrepreneur. I think that a lot of people just go with their ideas sometimes and don’t know how to truly work with what they have and make it better, but I have learned a lot about how to do that in this class. I think that my mind functions as an entrepreneur now and I am very excited to be able to say that. I took this class with that end goal in mind, so I think my progress is great. 

For the students entering this journey, I think that the best way to truly receive what you need to from this class is to do each assignment with 100% effort. There is a lot to learn in this course and if you don’t put in the effort to learn, you are just wasting your time. This class is not about the grade, although it’s easy to get a high grade. You should disregard the grades and take each day in this course as a real learning experience. The work you put in will be worth it in the end! You have to have the mindset that this course will truly change the way you see things and it will ultimately help you as an entrepreneur or businessman. 

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

Many people across the world have this need. The need is mostly seen in bikers or people that exercise alongside roads or need to be alerted when motion is near. This need comes about because of the danger of biking alongside the road with cars going past at 25-50+ mph. With so many people currently riding their bikes to get fresh air, it is a great opportunity. A lot of people want to listen to music when they are exercising this way and it would help if they could also be aware of the motion around them. This market will most likely be in the warmer areas geographically. For places where it snows and rains a lot, it is almost impossible to bike around and my product would not be as useful in those areas. Also, I think my product would be best for 18-65 year olds as this age range exercising publicly more than other age ranges. Currently, many people are biking with music systems in their backpacks or while playing music on their phones. I don’t think that people are extremely loyal with this idea because they already have these devices and are just using them more than needed. I think that these people could definitely use my product since there is no definite need to use phones and stereos to play music. This opportunity seems to be huge due to the many people that are biking right now. I think that I could really sell this product as the time of the Coronavirus specifically since people are only allowed to leave their homes for a few reasons. If biking/exercising is one of those few reasons to leave the house, I’m sure people are more inclined to do it. I feel like I especially am. This product would be great for the current times and situations. This specific opportunity that I have described should last a couple more months, but I also think that it could prevail long after this virus as well. I think that people will see the reality of this product and keep buying them even after this virus. 

Innovation

The innovation is a version of earpods that are motion sensored. They turn off the music playing when motion is near, which is perfect for bikers alongside the road. As a car or motion is nearing the headphones, the music turns off. This either leaves the biker to silence or an alarming sound that truly alerts the biker of motion. I am selling earbuds with a charging case. These will be similar to Airpods and have a case that can be charged in order to charge the headphones themselves. They will retail around $100. 

Venture Concept

This product increases bikers’ safety because it makes them more aware of the motion going by them. Customers will buy my product to increase their safety while biking and exercising alongside roads. Customers will switch to this product because it is both a way to listen to music and an added safety feature. Customers can realize that it saves space while also advancing their experience.  It should be easy to get customers to switch to this product because it is easy to see its safety benefits. The main competitors are Apple because of their Airpods and Samsung because of their earbud products as well. It may be hard to get people to leave their Apple products behind and begin using my product since Apple is such a big company in the world right now. For my business concept, I think these things are very important. I think that packaging definitely changes the way that people see your product and I would make my packaging look as nice as possible. My price points will need to be up to par and my distribution will need to be centered around mass selling companies such as Best Buy, Walmart, Target, etc. Customer support will be easy to reach and the overall experience should be great. I would also love to give refunds if people are not happy with the product within the first 30 days. I do not think that the business location plays a part at all because the distribution is the key to the business and not where the products or ideas are really being made. I would need to hire a lot of people to wire the earbuds and create the actual product and insides for me. I would also need to hire people to work in a factory to mass produce these earbuds. I would probably need to hire thousands of employees. There will be investors, factory workers, engineers, designers, distributors, marketers and many other employees working with me on this product. I want to focus a lot on networking and expanding my marketing strategies. While hiring employees, I want to hire and partner with people who will only make the brand better and focus on the necessary changes that need to occur so that the product can help millions of people throughout the world. 

Three Minor Elements

My most important resource is investor connections. I have a lot of contact with investors and it would be easier for me to get investors to back my product than the average person due to my connections. Next for my venture, I hope to mass produce this product. Hopefully, this product can save the lives of many bikers that experience difficulties when biking with cars and other motion. Since this opportunity is so high, I would not try to go out into another venture right now. I will really try to perfect this product and make sure that it can create a legacy among bikers’ safety. Next for me, as an entrepreneur, I want to continue to network my product and explore more opportunities that I could come across. I will definitely work on slightly developing my product so that it will be able to reach multiple groups of people within the market. I want the end result of the product to be attainable for all different groups of income and wealth. I want my product to be loved by all, and not just my original market. I would love to have the product become successful and have it open doors for other products. 

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I am thankful for my peer’s comments on my Venture Concept No. 1 and my What’s Next? posts. While most of the feedback consisted of positive comments, there were some great points that could make my ideas better. One commented that I should focus on networking when continuing my idea. I also think that this is very important since connections are everything in the business world. It is hard to get anywhere as an entrepreneur without the support from others, and many times it's best if this support comes as connections or partnerships. Another comment that I received was to not be worried about selling to multiple markets, including poorer markets. This was important to note because my peer said that with effective marketing strategies, I would still be successful. It was important for me to realize that my business could still be successful even outside of the markets that I had projected to be best for my business. 

Because I received this feedback, I changed my ultimate current goal more to focus on networking a little more. I also changed the ending of my venture concept that describes my next steps. I added in that I would like to branch out and develop my product more so that I can reach different markets. 

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?

It is definitely interesting making an exit strategy before seeing the full potential and success of my product. For this post, I am going to assume that the company succeeded and a lot of people got behind A WEAR PODS. My strategy is to sell the business in 10 years for a large return.

2) Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

I have selected this strategy because I think that the success of A WEAR PODS will not always be growing, and I would like to sell the company to new minds who can think of another product that will grow in the world. I think that it is most beneficial to me and the buyer to exit this way because I am getting able to experience a different life outside of the business and the buyer can finally focus on running a successful business that he or she had most likely hoped for. They would have to do slightly less in the beginning due to the already seen success of the business and I would love to give that opportunity to someone.

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 do not think that the exit strategy affected many other decisions throughout the semester. I had never really thought about the way I would exit and I think it is important to. If I were to do this again, I would have the mindset of selling the business while I am working toward perfecting the company, but I think the way that I set up all of my ideas were fine in accordance with this exit strategy as well. I think that I would still look at resources the same and still analyze each problem with the same strategies so that when I sell the business I can give the new owner the ideas and success that I had created. Overall, my strategy of selling after 10 years for a large return would get to benefit both other people and myself, which I like to imagine, and the other decisions of the idea would not be that greatly affected by this.

Reading Reflection No. 3

I chose to read Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki.

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The general theme of this book is how to use social media to its full extent. It included tips and tricks to find each benefit within social media today. The book explains how to create the best social media presence and have the best experience while doing it. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

The book connected to this course when it discussed blogging. This was the first time I had ever made a blog and now I am acquainted with how Blogger works and could probably make another one for other uses. The book also opened my eyes a lot to how social media can be used for marketing my product. I knew that advertisements were important, but now that I know how to grow more of a following and have a larger presence on social media, I think that I could really use these tools to grow my business. Reading this book while also taking this class enhanced my knowledge on a lot of ways to succeed online. We are all using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to check up on our friends, but I now know the great value of these sites, as well as blogging, in the real world.

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

If I had to create an exercise for this class that related to the book, it would be called “Social media awareness”. This exercise would make students list out what social media sites they are on, how long they spend on each site per week, how they spend their time on each site and what they remember seeing from their current week’s site scrolling. These features would prompt the student to focus more on social media and its true potential. I would then have the students follow 5 businesses on one of the sites and check up throughout the week to see what they post and how they are promoting their product or company. After a few days of watching this, the students would write about how social media can be used for many things in the business world. Once again, I think this would really open the students’ minds to all of the true potential of social media.

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

The biggest surprise for me while reading the book was reading all of the things that you can use social media for. I knew that it was more than just connecting with old friends, but it surprised me to read that I really wasn’t using social media to the fullest extent. There are so many things that social media can be used for and I think that if we step back and look at all the positives, everyone would be surprised. I previously had the opinion that people were on social media way too much, which might be true, but it opens my mind up a lot now knowing the many things that people may be doing while on social media that benefit them and/or society. 

Celebrating Failure

This past semester, I failed at changing my photography work to be more remote. My goal was to do more work in Gainesville and not drive 4 hours south to do all of my work in Naples. I missed a lot of opportunities and I am not totally happy about that. For example, I should have been promoting Valentine’s Day photoshoots as well as graduation shoots for college students, but instead I would drive down to Naples and shoot there. I still got to work on my hobby, but I failed at opening more doors for my photography. I still love what I do and I just wanted to expand my business a little more. I have had a hard time getting out of the usual funk of working in Naples and I am going to try harder next semester with this. I do realize my failure with expanding this semester and I learned that I need to be more open to new experiences. Sometimes I stick with what is normal to me and I lack a sense of newness, but I am going to work on it. I learned that if I really want to succeed in my goal of expanding, I need to try harder and work with a mindset to expand and grow. I think that failure helps one grow, no matter the circumstance. I do believe that you need to fail many times before you succeed. Just like I learned in Scott Adams book on failing and succeeding, the process and journey is important and each step in between matters, whether that includes failing or not. I usually handle failure with the wrong mindset. Sometimes failure emotionally drains me and I take it as a stopping point on the road to my goal. This is not the mindset that I should have, though, and I’ve learned a lot about that during this course. This class has definitely changed my perspective on failure. I have failed many times in my business idea, but I understand that those failures are just steps to my success at the end of this. I have learned a lot about dealing with failure and using it to step back up and fight toward my goal. I also think that I am definitely more likely to take a risk because of this class. Failure does not scare me, like it did months ago. I am more aware of the benefits of failure and know that I can succeed even after loads of failure.

What's Next?

Existing Market

Step 1: I think that the next steps will be to spread my business and become successful. I think I need to promote and expand my business. The product could definitely be a big hit and save/change many lives. The product just needs to get out there!
Step 2: When thinking about responses to interviews that I would have conducted, I think people could have pointed out a lot of important things. I couldn’t conduct these interviews due to the virus. 
Step 3: Based on personal experiences and interviews prior to this assignment, I think I need to make big connections with this product. I think that it will be very hard to surpass Apple and make my earbuds a hit while they still sell their Airpods. Although mine are motion sensored, the products are very similar and I think that may cause challenges. Also, I think I need to really focus on the needs of the customers when designing the product. The main part of this product is the motion sensors and I need to hire great designers to make sure that the product looks nice and works perfectly.  In my future path, I will focus on not only the designs for the product, but its insides and its competition. 

New Market

Step 1: If I were targeting buyers in a poorer area, I would probably have to make the earbuds into headphones or some other device to make them more cost effective. I think that people would not want to spend $100 on a pair of headphones, like I have listed in my venture concept. This would drastically change how many I sell because I think that my product is almost more of a luxury product more than a necessity.  With this approach, if I were to sell directly to buyers and not go through distributors, I think that would also greatly impact my business. I think that I would have less business because I think having my product in retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target is the reason that my product may be so successful. 
Step 2: With this described new market, I think it would create an extra safety feature for those less fortunate. I think that this would actually be very beneficial because maybe the poorer communities are those with more bikers due to transportation troubles. I had never thought about it like this, but maybe this product would actually be better for the poorer people and be more helpful in those communities. 
Step 3: I could not do the interviews for this part of the assignment, but I do believe that people in my new market will see the need for this product, or at least it's great benefits for the community that they live in.
Step 4: Once again, since I couldn’t do the interviews, I am going to assume some information that I would have gotten out of my new market. I think that they would have enjoyed this product and I think opening my product up to a different market greatly changed my mindset on the product. I do think that this new market is just as attractive as my existing market. The only major issue that I see with going for this market, or maybe even both markets, is changing the product to be more cost effective. I’m not sure exactly how cheap I can get motion sensored headphones to be while still making good profit. The price may determine the ultimate market, but it was still interesting to think about both sides.

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

Who has the need? Many people across the world have this need. The need is mostly seen in bikers or people that exercise alongside roads or need to be alerted when motion is near.

What is the nature of the need? This need comes about because of the danger of biking alongside the road with cars going past at 25-50+ mph. 

What are the forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity? With so many people currently riding their bikes to get fresh air, it is a great opportunity. A lot of people want to listen to music when they are exercising this way and it would help if they could also be aware of the motion around them. 

How is this market defined geographically and demographically? This market will most likely be in the warmer areas geographically. For places where it snows and rains a lot, it is almost impossible to bike around and my product would not be as useful in those areas. Also, I think my product would be best for 18-65 year olds as this age range exercising publically more than other age ranges. 

How are customers currently satisfying this need?  And how loyal are they to whatever they use now? Currently, many people are biking with music systems in their backpacks or while playing music on their phones. I don’t think that people are extremely loyal with this idea because they already have these devices and are just using them more than needed. I think that these people could definitely use my product since there is no definite need to use phones and stereos to play music. 

How big is this opportunity? This opportunity seems to be huge due to the many people that are biking right now. I think that I could really sell this product as the time of the Coronavirus specifically since people are only allowed to leave their homes for a few reasons. If biking/exercising is one of those few reasons to leave the house, I’m sure people are more inclined to do it. I feel like I especially am. This product would be great for the current times and situations. 

How long will the “window of opportunity” be open? This specific opportunity that I have described should last a couple more months, but I also think that it could prevail long after this virus as well. I think that people will see the reality of this product and keep buying them even after this virus. 

Innovation

What is it? The innovation is a version of earbuds that are motion sensored.

What does it do? They turn off the music playing when motion is near, which is perfect for bikers alongside the road. 

How does it work? As a car or motion is nearing the headphones, the music turns off. This either leaves the biker to silence or an alarming sound that truly alerts the biker of motion. 

What exactly are you selling and for how much? I am selling earbuds with a charging case. These will be similar to Airpods and have a case that can be charged in order to charge the headphones themselves. They will retail around $100. 

Venture Concept

How will your concept solve/address the opportunity you identified? This product increases bikers’ safety because it makes them more aware of the motion going by them.

Why will customers buy your  product? Customers will buy my product to increase their safety while biking and exercising alongside roads. 

What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product? Customers will switch to this product because it is both a way to listen to music and an added safety feature. Customers can realize that it saves space while also advancing their experience. 

How hard will it be to get them to switch? It should be easy to get customers to switch to this product because it is easy to see its safety benefits. 

Who are the competitors? The main competitors are Apple because of their Airpods and Samsung because of their earbud products as well. 

What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? It may be hard to get people to leave their Apple products behind and begin using my product since Apple is such a big company in the world right now. 

What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept? For my business concept, I think these things are very important. I think that packaging definitely changes the way that people see your product and I would make my packaging look as nice as possible. My price points will need to be up to par and my distribution will need to be centered around mass selling companies such as Best Buy, Walmart, Target, etc. Customer support will be easy to reach and the overall experience should be great. I would also love to give refunds if people are not happy with the product within the first 30 days. I do not think that the business location plays a part at all because the distribution is the key to the business and not where the products or ideas are really being made. 

How would you organize a “business” to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? I would need to hire a lot of people to wire the earbuds and create the actual product and insides for me. I would also need to hire people to work in a factory to mass produce these earbuds. 

How many employees? I would probably need to hire thousands of employees.

What roles are in the venture? There will be investors, factory workers, engineers, designers, distributors, marketers and many other employees working with me on this product. 

Three Minor Elements

What is your most important resource? My most important resource is investor connections. I have a lot of contact with investors and it would be easier for me to get investors to back my product than the average person due to my connections. 

What’s next for your venture? For my venture, I hope to mass produce this product. Hopefully, this product can save the lives of many bikers that experience difficulties when biking with cars and other motion. Since this opportunity is so high, I would not try to go out into another venture right now. I will really try to perfect this product and make sure that it can create a legacy among bikers’ safety. 

What’s next for you? Next for me, as an entrepreneur, I want to continue to network my product and explore more opportunities that I could come across. I would love to have the product become successful and have it open doors for other products.