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.