14A Halfway Reflection

This is a message to anybody who might be taking this entrepreneurship class next semester. 

1) Tenaciousness is a competency. What are the behaviors that you have used (or developed) to keep up with the requirements of this course? 

-By consistently adapting my new life here in Gainesville I was able to do well in the classes here at UF. I have noticed that I have a lot of trouble by not being much of a morning person (to put it lightly.) I readjusted my schedule by clearing my social schedule late at night in order to get work done then, rather than the next morning. Just be open to adapting and light changes in routine activities.

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude. Talk about a moment or two when you felt like "giving up." What pulled you through? Do you feel like you've developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months? What experience or experiences most contributed to this?

• I felt like giving up when I came to the thought that where I stood, I could not get my business idea into anything more than an idea. I didn't think that I would be able to obtain the resources or information necessary to get my idea moving with what little moneyI have now. I realize now that so much information is available to you if you just ask the right people relevant questions. I believe that I am making progress and being tenacious by looking into more ways I can further my plan for my business with what I have now. This is because of all the new information I have obtained so far, and I continue to find new insight everywhere I look.

3) Three tips. What are three tips you would offer next semester's student about (1) fostering the skills that support tenacity and (2) developing the 'tenacious mindset' ?

1.  Even if you're taking this class as a supporting credit to a major that doesn't work as an entrepreneural force, I highly suggest holding on to what you learn here, if not for your everyday work life, then for a side hustle of sorts.
2. Learning new skills that are entrusted to you through your enrollment can be used for many circumstances needing involved decision process and work flow. 
3. Finding your mix between gut instinct and interpretive perception of current situations is what I would describe as the key to exhibiting a good tenacious mindset without pushing yourself past your limits.

13A Reading Reflection No. 1

Over the course of this week, I read the book Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. This was for my first reading reflection of my Into to Entrepreneurship class

1.

• What surprised me the most?
• The fact that Steve Jobs was put up for adoption was what really took me for a spin. This extremely successful man came from humble beginnings, that I couldn't have imagined.
• What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
• I admired that even though he was fired from Apple in 1985, he continued his entrepreneur endeavors and invested a lot of his leftover money to other projects, such as Pixar.
• What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
• I was not an extreme fan of the fact that he manipulated the media in order to get more public coverage for his company.
• Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?
• Steve Jobs was actually forced out of Apple during a timely struggle for power over the company, with the CEO of Apple at that time, John Scully. He merely saw this as a small bump in the road of life and was able to make millions of dollars through other companies. Eventually he regained control of his old company and remained as the CEO for over ten years.

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

-This entrepreneur knows how to roll with the punches, and deal with setbacks. Things no going exactly to plan was always expected by Jobs, and he was able to improvise and overcome most of all his hinderances.

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

-It was confusing to me how Jobs accused Microsoft of copying their OS, when Apple did a similar thing by "borrowing" from Xerox.

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

-I would ask him what his typical work day is, or if he says that he treats everyday like a work day, I would ask him to run me through a typical day of his. I would ask because I would like to get a better idea of the day to day process of this mans life. I would also ask what he thinks I should do as an entrepreneur, because it would be a great asset to get advice from a legendary modernizing entrepreneur.

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

-I would say that working hard was a very large and important part of Steve Jobs everyday life. He always challenged himself in situations where a mass amount of work had to be done in a very short time. After receiving many examples of how hard he pushed himself, I would say that we would share the opinion of hard work being important.

12A Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

The segment that I am picking is in fact small businesses who struggle with and or want to being marketing online, starting out with those in my area.

After reaching out to small businesses from my hometown, I managed to get a few sufficient interviews for my blog. Two of the smaller business owners that I interviewed told me that they do in fact struggle with online marketing, and one other business owner explained that the only online marketing they had done, was very limited. Their needs of a solution are pretty much constantly, but come out especially during holidays or special events. When they want to get the word out that they are having a special deal on pizzas to help support the local high school rowing team, for one example, they only relied on fliers and the high school kids social media to spread the word. Of course this produces some results, but with the right marketing, even more customers would come into their store. These people search things such as "business advertisements," "local ad sales," and "how to advertise locally online." Of course family and friends are consulted, but they can only do so much.

From these interviews I have learned that, not all but, some local businesses are still struggling to expand using the internet. They are doing well enough without the use of the internet, for the most part, but could be so much better off if they knew how to market themselves and their brands. For instance if they implied tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO,) or for one of the businesses, just simply register their shop on Google and Apple maps. Their information search seems to be shallow, and if they really want to improve their business, they should learn how to advertise themselves, which is lot of time and money, or look for online marketers, which can cost some money, but the added revenue from the increase in customers will heavily outweigh the costs. They are aware of their situation, but are unaware of the solution.

11A Idea "Napkin"

I believe that the elements here blend together, but I need to learn more on digital marketing in order to run a digital marketing business... I am currently taking a course outside of college on digital marketing that rewards a Digital Marketing Certificate that is backed by large and very reliable corporations such as Google. The more I learn about online marketing, the more complete this napkin template will be.

Elevator Pitch 1, 10A

What's up to all my bloggers out there,

Unfortunately I'm very sick and traveling right now, so I did not have access to dress clothes. I did, however still record my very first elevator pitch. It would absolutely not upload on Blogger for whatever reason, so I posted it on Youtube with the soonest premiere date possible (Feb. 15, 12am.)

Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRJB7PRZJLs&feature=youtu.be 

It may have had to do with me being on a different colleges wifi, but I did the best I could, thanks for staying tuned everyone!

9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

I have interviewed five people who are involved within multiple different small businesses.

Who: There are some businesses that do no fall into the category of my opportunity, because of already existing marketing services and the fact that some small businesses, even today, refuse to go digital.

What: The point of difference is where they advertise, and or if they have someone (including themselves,) who are digitally advertising successfully for them.

Why: If their need is already met, or the need is not there, then it does not fall within my opportunity.

Inside the Boundary	Outside the Boundary
Who: Small business owners needing digital marketing expertise	Who: Small business owners who don't need or want digital marketing expertise.
What: The way one advertises.	What:The way one advertises.
Why: The inability to market online for one's self.	Why: The ability to market online for one's self or not at all.

The Second-Most Important Part of Entrepreneurship

Hello out there to all you the plentiful bloggers out there reading this,

While looking back at my Bug List, I thought I should tackle a few of them and try to solve some of the easily remedied bugs. My first bug listed, the one about how my roommates leave their dishes on the sink, is what I plan on fixing, and fast. I cleaned the entire kitchen, and talked to my roommates about having some rules, and even negative reinforcement around leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen. They all agreed that we should come up with a way so that we can keep the kitchen clean, so I recently thought of a solution. Each time somebody leaves their stuff in the kitchen when they were supposed to clean it, we mark it down. At the end of the month, we tally up the marks, and whoever has the most and second most marks has to pay slightly more than the other two when we go over our utilities limit. I plan on talking to my roommates and seeing if they will agree to this plan, as they all think that they don't leave any dishes in the kitchen, when in fact, we all do this sometimes.

In terms of this solution, the service is keeping track of who leaves behind dirty things in the kitchen, and holding them to the agreement that we will hopefully make.

7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

What's up blog, today I'll be looking at an opportunity I want to pursue...

Local/small business owners often struggle with having an online presence and don't know how to market themselves well online, presenting the need of someone who can provide them with the service of digital advertisement.

• Who: Local/small business owners
• What: Unable to market their business efficiently online
• Why: Most people are unfamiliar with the online aspect of running a business

My hypothesis has been gathered over approximately the last month, and I know that there are certainly others who have this need, but an easily approachable consumer would be local and small business owners.

While talking to some family friends about how they went about starting their own local businesses, I asked them about their digital advertising aspect of things. Some had a good handle on it, two told me that they pay for the service, and one (a potentially untapped customer,) doesn't even use online advertisement. The boundaries of the what are much larger than the service that I would like to provide, including being in charge of email marketing or setting up a website. 

In terms of why, the family friend who doesn't use digital advertisement talked to me about how their business is doing well without it. When I have my own system set up I will definitely reach out to them and offer them a chance to increase their already successful business. Others said that they learned how to advertise online and told me what they do now in order to fulfill that objective. It seems to me that they do know some kinds of advertisement methods, but don't know about everything, which mean they are still possible consumers to me. 

What is news to me after interviewing people, is that even though some places have somewhat of a handle on their digital advertisement, that doesn't mean that they can't be considered as potential new consumers of the service I want to give them. There are different levels of service, which is something I will have to work on and think about in the future.

6A – Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

What's up to my personal blog readers,

Recently, I have been looking at different economic trends and regulatory changes, and trying to find opportunities within them.

One thing I found was the economic trend of digital marketing and advertisement. This has been a steadily increasing marketplace over the past couple of years, and continues to grow, more specifically social media marketing. One form of social marketing is using display ads on social media sites to attract customers to a business, and I found out about a relatively new social media app that I am expecting to blow up. It's called Byte, and is practically a repeat of an older app called Vine, and my friend introduced me to it. Once Vine got too expensive to upkeep its servers, its father company shut it down, but millions of people have since exclaimed across the internet about how much they miss it. With Byte up and coming, I'm sure there will be plenty of advertisements sold and viewed on the site.

I specifically saw this opportunity because I am heavily interested in digital marketing and want to make a career out of it. At the same time, I was introduced to this app while also working on my digital advertisement endeavor. 

Another opportunity I found out of economic trends would be investing in the stock market. Now, this might seem super obvious to someone who's been immersed in such a concept, but I've only just recently begun looking at the stock market as a possible source of income. By looking at past trends, and future plans, one can put money towards a company and make or lose money depending on how the business evolves after that instance of purchase. Although, it's not as easy as it looks; many people lose hundred, thousands, or even millions of dollars in the stock market every year.

I found out about this opportunity after switching my major to Finance, and have recently been looking over a couple of different strategies involved in investing.

I was scrolling through the news section on twitter when I noticed there was a law that had recently been amended in some areas. This law changed the amount of years that a credit related crime one complete will be able to be held against them for 4 years, instead of 7. This gives those who are trying to get back on track a better chance to turn their lives around. Giving someone financial advice and planning methods will be made slightly easier for those who're in that business, as a plan that would've taken at least seven years may now only take 4.

I saw this opportunity because recently I have been visiting a lot of twitter accounts that help those in financial struggles and offer fee tips and counseling.

Another regulatory opportunity to come up has been the recent band on fruit/sweet flavored e-cigarette and vape products. Once this law was changed, companies had one more month to continue producing their products, and six more months to sell them. One short term opportunity I thought of would be to buy a lot of newly banned flavored vapes in bulk, and then sell them for a lot more money in the future once they're no longer commercially available.

I saw this opportunity because both of my roommates purchase and use disposable nicotine devices, and they also were talking about how they are getting more expensive and have been placed under new regulatory laws.