Quarter 3 Reading Reflection Week 4

In this section of Start Your Own Business, the members of Entrepreneur Media discussed in detail the advantages and the means of creating a business plan.  It's so strange when I compare this book with my last novel.  Chris Guillebeau, in 100 dollar start up preaches immediate action, while these authors want careful examination of plans and statistics.  It's like hearing two different arguments of the same story.  Anyways, the members of Entrepreneur Media, treated the business plan as if it was a constitution.  They referred to it often as a "living document", in the sense that it should either be referred to or updated constantly.  I have a feeling that this action heavily limits creativity, but I can see the advantage of it.  Sometimes having goals and plans provide a clear path for the road ahead, and that is invaluable.  However, sometimes a plan doesn't work.  If a plan isn't working, you can't forever adhere to it.  You have to change.  This is why I don't revere the business plan as much as these authors do.

Although I am not as in favor of a business plan, I do agree that some sort of initial documentation is an essential step.  The authors break down the business plan into several aspects, including marketing, management, product, development and several more.  This seemed tedious to me at first, but it's actually a great idea.  Having such organization in a business statement boosts confidence both in the company and for investors.  As an investor, I would love to see such knowledge and organization within the company I am investing in.  Foreseeably, the authors also revered statements like the Income Statement and the Cash Flow statement.  The way these authors portray business is lifeless and boring, but I'm sure it is the right path to success.  No one wants to document numbers religiously, but coming to terms with your numbers is a crucial step for each business.  Yes, this book's professionalism seems dreary, but most of the points they've been making are well thought out and accurate.

Quarter 3 Reading Reflection Week 4

In this section of Start Your Own Business, the authors discussed two important preparatory steps for creating your own business. The first step they discussed was the name of the business.  In my previous projects, I never really gave the name of the thing much thought at all, but after reading this, I see the name of the business in a much different light.  The name is such a large portion of the brand, thus it's essential that your name both fits the business and provides positive branding.  The staff of Entrepreneur Media even recommend spending several thousands of dollars on a company to name your company for you.  They claim, depending on the budget of the business, a new business should spend anywhere from $5,000 to $80,000 dollars on a company who will spend weeks developing the perfect name for your business.  Interestingly, the authors recommend a name that is not a real word.  They instead suggest using real prefixes that create mental association.  For example, Acura has the prefix acu, which indicates precision.  I actually like the idea of spending money to develop the perfect name.  I wouldn't spend $80,000 on a name, but I definitely see the value in it.

The other topic they discussed was the legal structure of the business.  The two major structures they compared were proprietorships and corporations.  Like a lot of things in start ups, it was a comparison between cost and security.  Although proprietorships offer a way out from many taxes, they put a tremendous amount of liability and risk on the owners.  Corporations on the other hand are taxed both on the federal and state level but have very limited liability on the owner.  Personally, I think the risk of a proprietorship may be too much for me, so a small corporation may be my best choice.

Quarter 3 Reading Reflection Week 3

This section of Start Your Own Business dug into two important preliminary steps for starting your own business.  We've gone over both these steps several times in class, but it was still nice to be refreshed and to read from a new perspective about these actions.  The first step that the authors discussed was writing a mission statement.  Initially, I could see why this would be an important step, but the authors further elaborated on how essential it can be to a new start-up.  The first benefit is obvious.  Having a mission statement clarifies to your customers what you're all about.  Often, customers are edgy and tentative to interact with businesses they are unfamiliar with.  Having a mission statement decreases much of the unfamiliarity, which, if done right, will ease a lot of the hesitancy of the customer.  The second benefit was somewhat unexpected for me.  The authors claim that having a clear mission statement helps the owner understand what he is to do day in and day out.  It provides somewhat of a pathway for the business.

The second preparatory step the authors discussed was market research.  Of course, like everybody, they stressed the importance of market research.  However, what I think set them apart, was how creative they were in terms of finding easy methods of market research.  Most start-ups don't have the funding to conduct huge research projects. Thus, the owner must resort to different methods of learning about his customers.  The authors offered several solutions that seemed resourceful and useful to me.  They recommended checking both government data bases, using websites like hoover.com to research competition, and even presenting yourself to universities and seeing if they will do the research for you.  Although most of this stuff was old to me, the section was still very interesting and impactful on the way I view preliminary start-up steps.

Quarter 3 Reading Reflection Week 2

In this section of Start Your Own Business, the staff of entrepreneur media talked about buying a business instead of starting one by yourself.  I appreciate this change of pace.  The last book I read was entirely about starting it up all by yourself.  I'm happy that in this book, they acknowledged other methods of running your own business.  They talked about two options.  The first was buying a business out, purchasing a business that's for sale and then running it by yourself.  Although, I don't really know much about this type of business approach, it seems like something I could be interested in.  You already have the foundation set, however, you can add to it and alter it to make it more personal.  My only problem with this method is that you have to find something similar enough to your vision.  This could be a very hard task if you have a strong and specific vision.  On the other hand, if you want to run your own burger joint, buying out the neighborhood one seems like a pretty viable approach.

The second approach the authors discussed was franchising.  In other words, this is the acquisition of the brand of a name brand chain and starting one of their stores.  The most common example of this is McDonalds.  The pros and cons are pretty similar to buying a business.  The only major difference is that you have less freedom.  When you buy a business you can go wherever you want, but if you buy a franchise, the franchisor can impose strict regulations on you.  This, for me, would make the work seem rather meaningless and boring. I want to have freedom, so maybe franchising isn't the right path for me.  I would consider buying, but franchising seems to monotonous to me.  Either way, this section was a much appreciated change of pace and very interesting.

Quarter 3 In Class Reflection Week 1

This week, I spent quite a lot of time planning.  I attended seminars, I met with the two of you several times, and I started filling my trello calendar until the end of march.  I'm starting to feel much better about my project, and my goals are far more reasonable and clear.  All of this is good, and I feel like this was a great week for learning, but I would like to start taking action.  I've started designing the website and I've drafted a survey to show that a market exists for my service, however, I need to recruit volunteers.  I faced somewhat of a setback this week, as my plan to send a mass email through the guidance office failed.  However, I should be able to maneuver around this by just being personable and getting volunteers by myself and possibly through the advisory announcements.  Our group did the same thing with calendars, so I'm not overly anxious about it.  As I've stated before, I would be satisfied with getting 50 volunteers, which would be enough for a test run to see if the program functions continuously.  I feel I can do better than that though.  I don't want to set unreasonable expectations, but if things workout I could maybe get 75-100 volunteers.


I was finally able to get in contact with Mr. Schiff this week, and he is willing to be my advisor.  I don't think I will be needing much from him, but I'm happy that he is there for me if I need him.  Throughout my four years of high school, he's been a great guidance councilor and a really nice guy.  It's a huge relief to have such a good advisor for my senior project.

Quarter 3 Reading 1 blog

This week I have been reading Start Your Own Business by Entrepreneur Media.  It's a fascinating book, and it seems to be touching on very similar issues as the book I read last quarter, $100 Startup.  Interestingly, although they touch on the same topics, they pick different viewpoints.  While the whole motto of $100 Startup is to simply go out there and start your own business, the members of Entrepreneur Media caution careful advance and a lot of planning.  They literally advise that you make a chart about how the business is going to impact every single area of your life.  It's incredibly meticulous, and frankly it makes being an Entrepreneur seem tedious, demanding and stressful.  This is an odd approach for people trying to sell books that provide aid to up and coming entrepreneurs.  The authors even say that you should talk to several failing entrepreneurs before you start your own business, so that you are aware of the possible consequences coming your way.  However, at the same time, they advise that you stay optimistic at all times.  They appear to believe in some idealistic combination of optimism and realism, and although they present several good points, their argument feels contradictory at times.

One aspect of the book that I found particularly insightful was the analysis on part time businesses.  The authors viewed it as both a "cushy support system" and "the straw that breaks a camel's back".  Again, this appears like they are contradicting themselves, but I can see how this is true.  Running a part time business while having a job means that you are experimenting while maintaining some financial security.  However, the stress of two things at once may simply be too much for people.  Thus, it is best for the more worrisome people to pick which ever one they prefer.  Personally, I would rather focus on one task, so part-time businesses aren't for me.  Either way, I'm glad the authors discussed it so thoroughly so I know that I wouldn't be particularly happy pursuing that field of action.

Reading Reflection Week 5

As I wrapped up the final section of The $100 Start Up, I realized that I've kind of been reading a book I din't have to read.  Of course, I'm happy I read it, and it was a fascinating book.  However, I'm starting to recognize that outsiders can only give broad advice, while only you really know how to move the business forward.  Chris made a point of understanding this too.  He articulated that, as the owner of a business, it is your job to understand what you want to get out of this.  Chris, again, stated that some just want to sell their business, some want to keep it small, and some want to manufacture it to a global industry.  That decision has to be made by you, not some author who doesn't even know the name of your business.  Although Chris devalued himself, I think this actually made this work stronger and more true.  Chris basically changed the novel from a rule book to an advice column.  His message was to figure out your aspirations, and than to use this as a helping tool.  It's kind of like saying, here's all this advice, make of it what you want.  If I were to ever build a business, I would want to stay local.  I would want to be in touch with the community, and not solely concerned with the numbers and profitability of the business.  Thus, I'm happy that Chris acknowledged that there were other options than to build a franchise.

I found this book extremely interesting, and I would recommend it to all future students who take this class.  It's truly an easy read.  Chris takes the most complex ideas and condenses them into something understandable and even relatable.  It makes starting a business seem much more feasible and far less scary.  All in all, I'm very happy I chose this book, and it's broad audience makes it a good read for anybody.

In Class Reflection Week 5

This week in class, we worked on two major things.  Primarily, we were concerned with our practice presentation.  We've done a lot of work on the storefront project, and we want our presentation to show that.  I think the presentation went fairly well.  We had a few criticisms about numbers being hard to understand and a lack of valuable images, but overall, I think that we can fix these problems and move on with a great presentation.  I trust our group, so I'm not overly worried about fixing the presentation and presenting successfully in front of our judges.  However, it was rather the second thing we worked on this week that concerned me more.


Last week, we each put together our own 360 Eval sheet.  This meant evaluating and basically grading the members of your group.  This was a point of tension.  Although everybody in the group contributed, not everybody contributed equally.  I think all of us, or at least 4 out of 5 of us reached that conclusion.  The work that our group did was spread out mostly amongst four of us, the other shall remained unnamed for the sake of privacy on the internet (you'll know who the 5th is when you read the eval).  As the 5th member learned how we all felt, he obviously felt hurt and disappointed.  There was actually a whole class period where we basically argued over what was going to happen for the evals.  Each of us, including me, gave him a lower percentage than the rest of us.  I felt really bad about this, because he was a pleasure to have in the group, and he did do work.  I felt as if I had just thrown him under the bus.  I hope that everything turns out ok for him, and during our meeting I think it's important that we all show that we did value his contributions.

Reading Reflection Week 4

This section of The 100 Dollar Start Up was by far the most interesting and valuable to me.  Although the section, as usual, was about specific start ups and unique things that made them successful, the overarching theme of it was about how to sell.   Guillebeau really brought some interesting philosophical points and changed the way I think about business.  I've always kind of thought of salesman as fast-talking wizards, who hit you with a thousand words a minute.  However, after this reading, I'm starting to see that's not exactly true.  In selling, less is usually more.  Guillebeau made an interesting point, as he noted that when you force your customers to think, you leave them with doubt.  Thus, you want to make your value proposition as clear and concise as possible.

Because of this, our group really has to change the way we sell our calendars.  Typically, we've been pressing kids hard in the library to buy our calendars.  We really oversell it.  Guillebeau said that customers want to buy; they don't want to be sold to.  I actually tend to agree with this.  When I buy something, I like to make my decision.  When a salesman approaches it me, it makes me feel like I'm being tricked in some way, even if I'm not.  I think I should just show the kids the calendars and see what they think. It's kind of like laissez-faire.  I want to empower the customer not intimidate them.  Our group has already made profit, so this is no urgent matter.  Nevertheless, I want to see how this tactic works.  Hopefully, it will bring more profit to the school and allow us to present even greater profit in our presentation.

In Class Reflection Week 4

This week, things are finally starting to come to a close.  We've paid back all of our investors for the calendar project and are continuing to make profit.  In our storefront project, we've mapped out our costs and expected revenue, and have finally managed our costs so that we can reasonably expect good earnings from our coffee shop.  We are starting to put our presentations together, and it feels good to be able to show the amount of work we've put in.

In the past, presentations were rather stressful.  I attribute that somewhat to the inexperience I had in presenting, but mostly to the insufficiency of the work that my group had put in prior.  However, this time I'm excited to display what we've done. As opposed to having to oversell ourselves in the presentation, I feel that we can just confidently show the facts.  I'm proud of what I've done, and I'm ready to candidly answer all of the judges questions.  Our group really owned these two projects.  We embraced the challenges, and put something together that's wholesome and impressive.

Previously, I wrote about some of the anxiousness I had about what might cause us trouble in the upcoming weeks, but I feel like through each challenge we found a solution as a group.  I look forward to presenting with my teammates, and I hope that this is a group I will get to continue to work with in future projects.