Final Reflection

Reflection

Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had a long the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

I think that, looking back through my posts from this semester, I have enjoyed building this idea of a company and learning a lot about the issue of sexual violence within our country, not only through research, but through actually talking to different people and hearing their thoughts about it or their experience with it. On the other hand, I did not particularly enjoy going through and having to do assignments where we went through different newspapers and articles and had to write about the regulatory changes and economic trends like in assignment 6 or the Identifying Local Opportunities Assignment. This is because in the assignment prior to that, we had already formulated our opportunity belief. So I didn't understand the purpose of doing all of that after we had already landed on the opportunity we were to focus on. That being said I think that it would be much more reasonable to have those assignments due before rather than after. That being said, Solving the Problem, was probably one of my favorite assignments. I really enjoyed putting all of the information I found together and being able to express how important this issue is.

Experience

What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing?

I think that this whole process in general, of creating a blog to record my journey of finding a problem, coming up with a solution and learning how to start building the concept of company was a great experience. I think that the idea that you can go back and see your own train of though grow and change and develop as you complete these assignments is great and I really appreciate that. I think the idea of having a blog made me really nervous at first, because usually you submit an assignment and thats it, you never have to see it again. But with this, not only you see it, but your classmates and really anyone who comes across it online. This is open to anyone, and that is really intimidating. But in some ways I think that it makes you work a little harder to make sure that everything you submit looks nice and is coherent with what is asked of you.

Entrepreneurship

At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset?

I definitely think that I have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset, however, would I say that I see myself as an entrepreneur? I don't think so. I think that this class really helped me in understanding what and entrepreneur is, what they do, and how they do it. I created an idea and many of the step that would be done to ideally start a company, however a lot of it was hypothetical. I mean the problem was real and me talking to and getting the feedback was real, but I don't think that I would consider myself an entrepreneur unless I actually physically go through the process of starting up my own business and run that business to a degree of success for a year or two. That is because until you actually do that, I don't think you can really understand how difficult it is, how organized you have to be, and how much on your feet thinking you have to be able to do.

Recommendations

What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset?

To future students going down this path, think about why you are asked to do each assignment before you do them. Each thing we are asked to do is for a reason and I think that it is really important to know that reason rather than just throwing something together to fulfill the requirement, because it helps you get the most that you can out of this class.

To preform the best you can in this class, I think that you should simply stay organized. This is a class meant to teach you something so treat it as such. It is really easy to get behind on things or treat something as less important if you think of it as an easier class. So stay on top of your work because it will end up catching up with you.

My recommendation for being able to foster that mindset is that you chose a topic that you thoroughly enjoy and put your best effort into each assignment. If you chose a topic that you don't like or you don't care about, you are going to quickly give up putting any effort into the assignments and you aren't going to be able to take away any substantial lesson from completing the assignments.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept

Opportunity

The opportunity is that every 92 seconds there is another American victim to some sort of sexual assault. The rape rate in America had been steadily declining since 1992 when it reached an all time high at 42.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, since 2013, the rate has once again started on this incline that grew from 25.9 to 30.8 in only five years. I feel as though customers needs are not being satisfied which is why this is growing so drastically. They need a company like mine, a group of people there to teach them and to be there for each other. This is a very 'hush-hush' topic that you don't hear many people talking about. The reality is though, that an overwhelming majority of women are afraid to walk alone at night, afraid to go out by themselves and afraid to take a bus unaccompanied. This should not be the case. People should not have to live their lives in fear that someone else might try to harm them. By creating a well marketed and advertised platform for my company, showing women that we are there to help them feel safe, we will have a large window of opportunity. This will show them that they have somewhere to go to help protect themselves, and I believe this window will be open until this statistic is obsolete because all anyone wants is to feel safe.

Innovation

The innovative aspect of my company is incrementally innovative. Many self defense classes involve going to the class, learning some moves, and leaving. My company is innovating on the idea of what self defense should involve. What I mean by this is that we will not only have classes teaching you about how to defend yourself, but we will teach why we need self defense, and how to be aware of your surroundings. We will have a strong focus on these classes and can entice the customers to attend the classes by offering coupons or rewards to those in attendance. Our company will be subscription based, having payments on a monthly or yearly basis (or whatever would work best for our customer). In addition to this, when signing up, each individual will be assigned to an instructor and paired with a buddy. The importance of this is so that way the class does not end when you leave the vicinity. You can keep in contact with both of these people and have them as resource to call when you feel like you are in a fishy situation. This company wants everyone to feel like family, to feel safe when around each other. Loyalty from customers comes when they feel important to an organization.

Venture Concept

Teaching

Competitors to my company are the other self defense companies. However, more than this I honestly feel as though Personal Defense Devices are a bigger threat. This is because people often think "oh i am safe, I have my pepper spray," even though they have never used it, might forget it at home, or don't know how they would react under the more intense circumstances of sexual violence. This is why my company would teach them all of these things. These classes will be offered probably two to three times a week and spanning for only around 30 minutes and each class will cover an array of different information. Customers will be encouraged to attend at least a class a week and if they are unable to attend we can work with their availability or make sure that the information is available for them. There are not a lot of sexual defense companies that are at least well-marketed to have made themselves known. I suppose gyms could possibly be a threat to the company, however, most gyms either don't offer classes or their classes are limited and people with jobs don't have time to attend them. We combat all of these things, as said previously.

Three Minor Elements

1. I believe that my most important resources for starting this venture are my keen interest in what I am doing, my contacts to start up the business and my communication skills. These resources are not only unique to me, because all of these resources are, but they are also what is going to help start up my business, and what is going to make me keep going even when the company faces hard times. I think passion is extremely important, you obviously need more than that, but without passion for what you are doing, there would be no drive in your work ethic and nothing keeping you there.
2. The next opportunity that I think that I would like to tackle with my current innovation would be to aim it at children and have programs where children could use the Buddy system for bullies. We would tech self defense and what to do if they are facing bullies along with giving them confidence to speak up about it. This is because a big problem is that most children who are being bullied, do not tell anyone.
3. In five years from now, assuming that I launched, I would hope that we would have around 33 locations in Florida, spread out to be about 1 location for every other county. I would also hope that it had begun to spread out of Florida. Alaska, Michigan, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, District of Columbia, Nebraska, Oklahoma. These are the states with the highest rape rate in America and so my goal would be to definitely have a least one franchise in each state within five years and grow from there.

Feedback

Most of the feedback that I got was just about how important they think the classes are. "I think that it is important and such a good idea that you plan to teach your customers why self defense is necessary."
This feedback has changed my original in that I made the classes a more focal part of my innovation and venture then they were before. I wanted to make them available to all customers and to entice customers to attend by giving rewards. There will be multiple classes a week so that more people have the opportunity to attend.

Your Exit Strategy

1) Identify the exit strategy you plan to make.

As someone who is as of yet to decide exactly what they want to do for their career, I know that I want to explore. However, this business is important to me. I believe that it is an unbelievably important cause that we all need to come together for a fight. That being said, my exit strategy is that I would startup the company and stick with it for a couple years until I know that it is stable and profitable. I would then sell it to someone who is looking to continue the business. That way I can make a large return for my efforts within the company, the company can benefit for a newer and fresher perspective, and I can pursue a career more towards my field of interest.

2) Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

I have selected this particular exit strategy, knowing that though I believe in this idea and this topic is something that is very important to me, running my own business is not what I necessarily imagine myself doing the rest of my life. I think that this offers a balance in giving me new experiences, starting a company that I truly believe in, and giving me the chance to make a large profit from this company.

3) How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept?

I never had really thought about my "exit strategy" until now, so I don't really think that it has had any particular influence over the decisions I have made thus far. I think that while you are with a business you should give it your all, whether you plan to be with it for 5 or for 25 years. This is exactly what I have tried to do, I have given my all into the ideas that I have put into my company. The only thing that I would probably add to my plan is to find an apprentice to work with me, someone who is aspiring to own a business similar to this or who I can trust to maintain the core values of the company even after I am gone.

Reading Reflection No. 3

The Last Book

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users Guy Kawasaki

1) General theme or argument

The general theme of this book is of how social media is the foundation of advertisement, for not only your business, but you as the business person. In here, the author talks about different ways to maneuver social media and gives you tips on how to sell yourself to through social media to your target audience.

2) Enhance what you are learning

This book connects with and enhances what we are learning in ENT 3003 through showing us, as entrepreneurs the importance of having an online presence and how to profit from this with minimal effort. It talks about why this is important in today's day-and-age and how you can profit as: an individual, an entrepreneur, or a working person.

3) An exercise for this class

Creating an assignment for this class based on this book, I would have everyone take a look at their social media. They would have to go through and remove everything that they don't want to be a part of their campaign for themself. We would then, in class, rewrite our biography and user-tag, to fit this same criteria. Then using the books tips, and in the next week, post at least one picture everyday that follows the guidelines he set.

4) Biggest surprise or 'aha' moment

I think that the biggest surprise for me when reading this book, was about the author. Before reading this book, I had no idea who Guy Kawasaki was. Afterwards, however, I found out that he is Apple's former chief evangelist, and he is one of the developers of having blogs, a twitter, facebook, and tumblr, for a business. Having learned all of this, I think that he is more than qualified to write this book. I also think that this was simply interesting and gave me a new perspective of this person due to their significant background.

Celebrating Failure

Let's Fail, A Lot!

Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed.

I think that somewhere I have failed this past Semester, overall, is just in my Time Management skills. I feel as though as many thinks in my life continued progress: work, family stuff, school, clubs; it left me a little overwhelmed and I wasn't able to do everything up to the standard I expect from myself.

Tell us what you learned from it. 

What I have learned from this experience is that taking the time to sit down with a calendar or planner of some sort, is extremely important. The excuse I tell myself a lot of the time to avoid doing this is 'I don't have time to right now'. The longer you push something off, the more you'll have to catch up on. This is a really hectic time in our lives and it can most definitely be overwhelming, so we shouldn't be putting all of this pressure on ourselves.

Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure.

Failure is defiantly embarrassing, in my opinion. You hold yourself to a certain level, and even if you don't fail in the eyes of someone else, you can fail in your own. It's usually hard to admit when you failed at something because you are partially embarrassed and partially disappointed in yourself. I think the best way to cope with failure is to simply take it as a learning experience. Take this situation and think of ways to prevent it in the future. I think that's really all you're able to do cope with failure. However, by saying that, I think that it is important that we fail. Because only through failure, can we gain a new perspective, can we learn and grow, and can we gain new experiences.I am not saying to not try and succeed, Obviously give your all to whatever you are doing, but if that isn't suitable for a particular situation, this is when you can come back and learn a new technique.

What’s Next?

Existing Market

Step 1

Talk about what you think is what's next in terms of products and services for your venture.
As for what I think is next in terms of products and services for this venture, I think that obviously finding and building the facility for the first location is key. Shortly after is when advertising would begin, to get the word out about our company and get people excited about our grand opening.

Step 2

I interviewed: Dorothy Richardson, Alexia Bryd, and Kari Trozak, to get an understanding about what my target audience would believe is next for this company. I asked them "What should we be doing that we aren't planning to do?" A lot of the feedback was along the lines of: get a starter loan, get facilities and equipment, find qualified teachers and trainers, and and plan advertising technique.

Step 3

What makes the most sense for this venture in terms of growing my existing market, I believe is building a foundation of trust and loyalty. After getting my venture open, I know that it is keen to deliver on everything we promote and advertise because that will be the first impression of the customer. When we begin promoting ourselves, part of our mission statement is that we are a family and we want to be a safe place for people. That said, employee-customer interaction is crucial. We need our employees to remember faces and get to know the customers so that they know we are interested in each of them individually.
There are probably only a limited number of ways to set a path for the future in order to achieve this, so this is what I have come up with: have design layout and profit plan for first five years, pitch case to bank for a loan, break ground and begin construction, start advertising to community and build up online presence, look for qualified and eager employees to train and teach customers, and begin interior work on building, have grand opening.

New Market

Step 1

Identify a radically different market from what you're currently planning to target. If you're currently targeting B2B, think about going after a B2C market. If you're currently targeting an affluent part of society, think about targeting a very poor part of society.
A radically different market from the one I am targeting are older women. My target audience are women ages 12-40, so targeting women ages 50+ would be a huge change in advertisement and in the way we would be teaching.

Step 2

I think that older women are still at risk people, maybe not for sexual assault, but but for assault and theft. Given the age difference, I think that an online presence is not as essential as community advertisements and getting promoted in the paper or certain magazines. I believe that the online presence would be more directed at their children or grandchildren, encouraging them to pass the information along. Finally, in terms of training, I think that there should still be a physical aspect, however I think that 3/4ths of the training should be in using self defense tools and being armed with something like pepper spray, at all times. Finally, I think that the classes are just as important and that everyone should be well informed about the statistics of sexual assault, assault and battery, etc.. People need to know what kind of risk they are in and how to defend themselves or reduce this risk.

Step 3

I interviewed Lucille-Ann Whalen and Donna Richardson to ask them how they think this business might help customers like them. They said that it would make a group of people who are often seen as and depicted as defenseless in most situations, gain some of their confidence back and know how to confidently steer clear of dangerous situations. Some adaptations I might have to make however, are having more on the spot trainers in case anyone needs help, along with medical examiners or nurses in the case of anyone getting hurt.

Step 4

I think that the most important thing to know is that age is not a condition that makes you not human. Everyone can still do things for themselves, they still have fears, they still have ambitions and want to learn. Maybe a few adaptations need to be made for whatever group of people you are focusing on, however that does not mean they can't do something, it just means they can do it in a different way.
This new market, for me is not as appealing as my existing one, and the reason for this is not because the new market shouldn't be focused on, it is only because the threat to the existing market is so huge, that it is hard to turn away from them right now.

Venture Concept No. 1

Putting it All Together

Opportunity

The opportunity is that every 92 seconds there is another American victim to some sort of sexual assault. The rape rate in America had been steadily declining since 1992 when it reached an all time high at 42.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, since 2013, the rate has once again started on this incline that grew from 25.9 to 30.8 in only five years. I feel as though customers needs are not being satisfied which is why this is growing so drastically. They need a company like mine, a group of people there to teach them and to be there for each other. This is a very 'hush-hush' topic that you don't hear many people talking about. The reality is though, that an overwhelming majority of women are afraid to walk alone at night, afraid to go out by themselves and afraid to take a bus unaccompanied. This should not be the case. People should not have to live their lives in fear that someone else might try to harm them. By creating a well marketed and advertised platform for my company, showing women that we are there to help them feel safe, we will have a large window of opportunity. This will show them that they have somewhere to go to help protect themselves, and I believe this window will be open until this statistic is obsolete because all anyone wants is to feel safe.

Innovation

The innovative aspect of my company is incrementally innovative. Many self defense classes involve going to the class, learning some moves, and leaving. My company is innovating on the idea of what self defense should involve. What I mean by this is that we will not only have classes teaching you about how to defend yourself, but we will teach why we need self defense, and how to be aware of your surroundings. Our company will be subscription based, having payments on a monthly or yearly basis (or whatever would work best for our customer). In addition to this, when signing up, each individual will be assigned to an instructor and paired with a buddy. The importance of this is so that way the class does not end when you leave the vicinity. You can keep in contact with both of these people and have them as resource to call when you feel like you are in a fishy situation. This company wants everyone to feel like family, to feel safe when around each other. Loyalty from customers comes when they feel important to an organization.

Venture Concept

Competitors to my company are the other self defense companies. However, more than this I honestly feel as though Personal Defense Devices are a bigger threat. This is because people often think "oh i am safe, I have my pepper spray," even though they have never used it, might forget it at home, or don't know how they would react under the more intense circumstances of sexual violence. This is why my company would teach them all of these things. There are not a lot of sexual defense companies that are at least well-marketed to have made themselves known. I suppose gyms could possibly be a threat to the company, however, most gyms either don't offer classes or their classes are limited and people with jobs don't have time to attend them. We combat all of these things, as said previously.

Three Minor Elements

1. I believe that my most important resources for starting this venture are my keen interest in what I am doing, my contacts to start up the business and my communication skills. These resources are not only unique to me, because all of these resources are, but they are also what is going to help start up my business, and what is going to make me keep going even when the company faces hard times. I think passion is extremely important, you obviously need more than that, but without passion for what you are doing, there would be no drive in your work ethic and nothing keeping you there.

2. The next opportunity that I think that I would like to tackle with my current innovation would be to aim it at children and have programs where children could use the Buddy system for bullies. We would tech self defense and what to do if they are facing bullies along with giving them confidence to speak up about it. This is because a big problem is that most children who are being bullied, do not tell anyone.

3. In five years from now, assuming that I launched, I would hope that we would have around 33 locations in Florida, spread out to be about 1 location for every other county. I would also hope that it had begun to spread out of Florida.

1. Alaska
2. Michigan
3. Nevada
4. Arkansas
5. Colorado
6. South Dakota
7. New Mexico
8. District of Columbia
9. Nebraska
10. Oklahoma

These are the states with the highest rape rate in America and so my goal would be to definitely have a least one franchise in each state within five years and grow from there.