Activity 10: Entrepreneur Journal

This week, I gathered a lot of ideas about what business to do and how to go about it. There were many options that I had and I decided on going into the service industry. I want to offer the service of training people or teaching people to play piano. I chose this idea because it is something that I love and I have experience in teaching music for years. I am still putting lots of things;what I would need to run this business successfully and to achieve the $100 profit at the end of the semester and beyond.

The ideas that I had were many and I had to look at the relevance to the society and economy in which I live. Some of these ideas included buying and selling stuffs as I have seen around me most people loves this idea because you get to do a lot things in one situation. But this service idea weighs high because of my passion and interest.

Activity 03: Capstone Journal Final Entry

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” - Vince Lombardi, head coach of the Green Bay Packers (1959-1967).

Starting and growing a business is not easy and nobody has ever said it was easy. From personal experience, I have learned that it is good to plan and plan again even when all appears to be perfect. This would help you know what things to fix and what things to make better.

It takes firm courage and determination to hold on to an idea and fight on and continue with it until it becomes a profitable venture. Failures are sure to come, obstacles or hindrances would surface. The way you handles them and the way you face them would help determine whether you would be successful or not.

I have also learned that there are good ideas but the good ideas don't alway work good at times. A good idea may not even work at all in the best way you would plan it. Dont be discouraged. Think and plan again and move on with the good ideas and surely you would get somewhere.

Studying from other well established entrepreneurs has taught me that doing what your are interesting in would help you survive dispiriting times. Most them never had the kind of success they dreamed of at the beginning but as they continued and developed more on the idea, they had great successes. Being an entrepreneur does not happen in a day. some of the best entrepreneurs that I have read of, had to learn some new skills and develop new habits to help them survive in the business they have chosen. So do not deny yourself such efforts to learn new things and grow better. Always remember to start small and dream big.

Reflections For Week 12

This week has been a very interesting week for me. I learned about two great entrepreneurs. As I learned about them, I thought about ways I can include such lessons to make my $100 project better and to have increase in my business. I was able to identify areas that I can improve upon. Although my set target for the class is almost achieved, however, I am looking at moving forward beyond the class duration.

Tom Nall was the first person I researched on. He was a man who believes in being himself. Be you and you can be different. Tom Nall, was the man who helped build Wick Fowler’s Two-Alarm Chili mix into a national brand, teamed up with Ken MacKenzie, a longtime student of tequila history and technique to come up with Republic Tequila and its unique, Texas-shaped bottle.

Everything he has done in life including position he held has given him something valuable. Taught school and sold insurance. He did lots things that are considered as internship today. He went out of insurance and became a market and sales person. Have to do things differently and imagine in order to compete with the big guys. He loved what he did. He is optimistic even in times of great risks because he believed that risk takers are entrepreneur and he wants to be one. His retirement lasted two days. It is his dream to give opportunities to people who wants to be successful and he believe they can if they work hard. Learned new technologies for networking. Likes to get people who have little experience, but wants people who don’t think they have to do it the way industry does it. Honesty, integrity, and hard work are the top priorities. Golden rule, treat people the way they want to be treated. It does not matter who it is, everyone deserves the golden rule.

I did also some research on Steve Job of Apple. His life and story is so inspiring and the experiences he went through are so motivating that I decided to research on him for this assignment. I have learned a lot about him and the things he did as I work on this assignment. He never had things going easy for him but at the end, things worked well for him because he was determined and focused on that he love and what he wants to become. 

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor, and his mother, Joanne Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents. His life as a child was not easy for him but he went through them knowing that things would get better.

After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.

He wrote "When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

Steve Jobs summarized his guiding principle in life in 2005 at the commencement at Stanford in a talk titled “How to Live Before You Die.” He said, “You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.“ This is one of the finest lessons I have learned from this great innovator of our time.  

Weekly Reflection

This week I have learned about links and how I can link my page with other pages like social media pages to get more traffic. There are other ways of creating links but my own for the now, I will be the one to do the work and I will do it when the link is created.

The links would get whoever clicks on them to my page-my business page and direct them to where they can see samples of goods and possibly make purchase. when they click on it it would take them to the page directly. the links would be gathered on the front page of the business site and some of them would be be on the purchase page.

I was able to record some good results on my page this week I got some very exciting and interesting information on my page. As I look at the report that Google Analytics gave to me, I could tell that lots of people visited my page for the first time and these visitors tried visiting other pages in my site as well. The sad part of the report is that most of these first time visitors never returned. Only very few persons visited again. Out of hundred percent, I had 98.9% first time visitors and only 1.1% of these visitors made it back.

I think it may have been some of the words I used in my ad. I know I was told not to use "special" in my key words but I insisted and now it turns out to be my worse word.

Over all, the week has been interesting and comments or feedbacks made by my classmates have been of great help to me in making my site better.

Lesson 11 Reflections

This week I have learned about family business and the things that should be done to have a great family business. I really like the reading on Val and Chris on the efforts to have a business of their own. I think Val and Chris would be a grad "A" team.  Their profile and interest tells me they would a great team."It had been a year since they’d begun trying to build a chain of upscale drycleaners. They had become industry experts. Chris and Val were classmates in the MBA program at Harvard Business School. Val had spent four years as an investment banker in New York, and Chris had sold capital equipment in Cincinnati for his family’s company." They put in lots of efforts researching the industry together and that to me is the mark of a great team.

"[They] were determined not to go back to our former careers, and the on-campus recruiting choices seemed unsatisfactory. We both wanted to run our own business." They have worked for some years in different fields and have gained lots of experiences that I think are more than enough for them to use to start the business. as it is stated if they are really determined to have their own business, I think they should start rather than seeking to buy one, This way, they can put the training and experiences into action. They have the contacts as well that would help them raise the amount of money they would need for the business. So instead of going place to place looking for business to buy, they should just start one.

As I read, I noticed that the experiences they each have had from their previous occupations gave them the knowledge on how to research the industry they are interested in. and I must say that they did a really great job putting facts and figures together for the business, I would invest in the business because I know that they know what they are going into and they have the ability to manage things in such a way that my investment would not be a waste. Besides, they have contacts that can help them grow. they already know what opportunities that exists in that industry and they already know what changes to put in to get customers.

Another thing I learned this week was about Erick Slaubaugh who was 19 years old when he became one of the main people in the family business and later become the CEO at Absco after working for many years. It was the same place he refused to work when he was just 15 years of age. His family sold their house to keep up with business because they  lost a major client. After the revival of the business Erick Slaubaugh bought 25% of the family business. Things were not going fine but he was willing and made lots of sacrifices. It took courage to make those sacrifices. He was not getting the kind of outing especially someone of his age would expect to have with friends and peers. His friends thought he was really missing out. He says that anyone can run a business. In his teen years he did not know it all. He did not like to ask questions because he felt like it showed weakness towards his coworkers and clients. He now looks back and wishes he would have asked questions. He says that mentors are important at whatever age you are at. He is always asking questions and for advice. He does not know everything. He says that what he does is very rewarding. In tough situations, make sure that your values be your guide. I so much love that advise.

After going through the reading this week, I am thinking if I should make my business a family one or something of mine alone. My $100 project is going fine and I am happy for the moves that I have been able to make this week. I am very positive that things would go fine.

Lesson 10

This week I learned about Nicole Donnely. Her story is inspiring and motivating as well. Nicole Donnely was a great entrepreneur who spent a lot of time trying to understand her environment, living in poverty, she was compelled by necessities that confronted her as a mother. While in this situation, she discovered what would later make her great as an entrepreneur. She discovered a cure for her baby daughters diaper rash-something that was loved mothers all over. Nicole later found out that she needed to overcome her fears to enable her do what she need to do. And so to help her in that she visited a friend who was in charge of a large successful business.

This week, I was able to complete another lesson with one of my student and hopefully within the next week or two, I might be getting my pay check. I am feeling excited for this development. My goal is to get more customers, so I have already began building relationship marketing with my clients-building trust and confidence with them and offering them more help than needed so that they can recommend others of their friends and family members. I believe if I work hard on this, it would get me more positive results.