Hannah O'Day:Entrepreneurship 2014

140502

Success at Last

          Arguably the most nerve-wracking moment I’ve had was today right before my team went on to present. We were chosen randomly as the first team to present to the sharks, which was terrifying. All four of us were waiting to go out and were literally shaking and hyper-ventilating. As soon as we started our presentation, however, I think we calmed down a bit and just tried to relax. Our presentation went perfectly as planned, nobody stumbled, nobody messed up, the videos worked, and everything went smoothly. When the time came for the sharks to ask their questions, I wasn’t even nervous anymore because we got the worst part over with. I felt like our team answered their questions perfectly and did not hesitate. Then, when Mr. Desmond said, “Sharks, it is now your time to make any offers,” the room was silent and my heart sank. For probably five seconds, nobody said anything and so I thought they hated our company were not going to offer anything. But then the first shark said he was out. After that, we got two great offers, and then the last shark was out. Our team had one minute to decide what offer to accept. We quickly agreed on what we thought the better offer was, and then informed everyone of our decision. When we all shook hands with our investor, and the audience all clapped, it was exhilarating. My team and I could not have been happier. When we left the room, we went and all hugged each other and jumped up and down. Our hard work finally paid off and we were happier than ever.

140430

Grateful for the Opportunity

          I had a realization today. I realized truly how much I’ve learned in this class and how grateful I am that I had the opportunity to take it. When my team and I were putting together our final presentation, I realized that five months ago I would have had no idea what a “go-to market strategy” or “comp” was. However, at this point I know all of that in addition to so much more that even college students don’t always know. I know that if I take business classes in college I will essentially be two steps ahead of everyone. I actually learned so much legitimate knowledge during this course that I wouldn’t have learned anywhere else. This class forces me to learn differently than I do in history or math, which is why it’s so unique. It’s interesting because a lot of times people will ask me about the course or how it works and it’s so weird/difficult to explain because most people don’t understand. This type of course is unheard of, which is why I am extremely grateful for being given the opportunity to take this course. Whether I go on to major in business or not, I feel prepared beyond my years for the real world and for real life business situations. In that way, this course has been the best and definitely most realistic class I have ever taken.

140428

The Home Stretch

          The level of productivity that is needed this week in order to have a shot at being successful on Friday, is at an all-time high. I am pleased to say that today was a good Monday; we got lots done in just about 2 hours and are all busy working at home tonight. We definitely have more work than ever this week both at school and at home, but we must keep in mind that it’ll all be worth it.

          We began this week by deciding the format of our presentation in order to be sure we fulfill the requirements and we tell a compelling story. Telling a great story is key to our success with this pitch. We then looked more into what parts of our presentation were lacking depth and decided to do more validation and research in order to back those up better. By laying it out first and including everything we want to know and be solid with by Friday, we know what we have to do between now and then. I think this is a good way to ensure our progress throughout the week and make sure we will be very thorough for the shark’s questions.

          Our goal is to have our physical presentation basically complete by Wednesday afternoon, and then we can begin actually practicing what we will say. Our mentor is planning on coming Wednesday afternoon to approve our presentation and help us tweak it wherever needed. Then on Thursday he will be coming to role play as a shark and make sure our pitch is solid and doesn’t have holes. That way, we will be sure to be ready for Friday.

140424

Tell Me a Story

          Today Team Showtime Sports focused on our presentation that is tomorrow. It is the same format as last time, and last time our presentation wasn’t great, so we know we have to improve dramatically. Last time something I think we failed to do effectively was to tell the story. Our teachers always emphasize getting all our information across but doing so through the story of our company. So we focused on creating a good flow for the story and making sure it made sense. As of now we have a sort of rough draft presentation. Tomorrow we will need to touch it up by making it more visual and not so wordy. In addition, we will have to practice a lot so that the story flows and is logical. I believe this is our main focus for tomorrow.

          There are a couple things we must look into in the next week. We need to finalize our comp and how we can present that to the sharks. Also, we have to look more into NAYS insurance; how to obtain it, how to afford it, and what it is/does. Insurance is crucial in order to rent out fields/gyms. Going along with the topic of rentals, we have to find the average price for field and gym rentals in order to make our cost and revenue data more accurate. We have a ton of work to do before the final presentations and before the sharks can attack.

140423

Comparable is the Key

          We were fortunate enough to have Mr. Gerace speak to us today about valuation and financial matters that we would need to know. He taught us all about return on investment, comparable, equity, an angel investor, venture capitalists, market capitalization, and much more. For me, this was all brand new material I knew nothing about, so it was really very intriguing. I think what he taught us will be extremely helpful when going into the shark tank. He told us about typical questions the sharks may ask and how they will attack us basically. Something interesting he said that caught my attention was this; the financial community, especially VC’s and angels use all these fancy terms just to scare us and intimidate people like us. They feel like they have leverage over us already when they use these confusing terms. It’s good to know though that they really don’t, because we understand the terms. I think that this presentation made me feel more prepared for our final presentations next Friday because I understand more of the financial aspect. In addition, Mr. Gerace gave us a great example for a potential comparable for our company, so we can compare and sort of base our company finance and things off of theirs. Fortunate for us, Mr. Gerace even knows some of the investors of this comp and so he is planning on contacting them for us. I am very thankful for the presentation today because it is imperative for my team and me to understand the “scary” financial world.

140422

Why Come Back?

          Today we focused in on why customers (the kids) would want to come to our company and continue coming back, and why high school athletes would want to coach through our company. Initial thoughts for as to why kids would insist on training with our company include; the progress tracking system, they improve their game, etc. Then we had a realization and realized those were not the answer. Kids are going to want to train with our company because they will build a solid relationship with their coach and will love to be trained by that coach. Not only are the kids then training with a person they like which is a lot of fun, but they also have that older athlete as a role model or mentor. They can look up to the older athlete for guidance, wisdom, advice, and just a nice friendship.

          Why would a high school athlete take several hours out of their busy schedule every week to work for us? Well for one, they will be getting paid. They can play the sport they love while getting paid for it. If that isn’t incentive enough, this job will look great on college applications or job resumes. It demonstrates not only their leadership and ability to teach, but also their ability to hold a steady job while managing school and other sports or extracurricular. In addition to all this, they get to build a relationship with a younger athlete who can look to them for guidance and they can serve as a big brother or sister.

140417

It’s a No-Go

          Sometimes you become emotionally invested in an idea just to have it not work out. I really wanted this test clinic to work, but due to insurance issues, we had no choice but to cancel it. I learned something here, though, and that is that you cannot become emotionally attached to any idea, problem or outcome in the business world. People pivot and sometimes things can’t work out and you have to be able to be just as successful without that. That is what a good entrepreneur does, I think. I remember a couple weeks back when one of my classmates mentioned to all the teams that it is important not to become so attached to our companies because chances are, they will change a ton. He noticed that many people were really becoming attached to their companies, which can be ultimately be devastating. The lesson here is, in the business world, an entrepreneur cannot become emotionally attached to his company or product when it has not even launched yet.

          On the bright side, our team definitely learned some important things. We learned all about the process of setting up a clinic and many minor details we would have otherwise never considered. For example, we learned how to reserve a field and when, we need to limit the number of people to attend a clinic, we need waiver and registration forms either electronically or physically, we have to start with just doing a couple of sports, and much more. It was definitely a great learning experience.

140416

Will it Work?

            Team Showtime Sports is on track after today.  We had a very productive day and determined two major things.  The first was our plan for AB testing and the second was our cost structure and revenue streams.  With regards to our AB testing plan, we initially wanted to conduct testing at both Hawken and Laurel, but we don’t have that many weekends to conduct these tests unfortunately.  As a result, we decided to just conduct ‘A’ testing, in other words we are testing our company solely at Hawken.  Next weekend there will be a lacrosse clinic for middle school aged girls run by four varsity lacrosse players from Hawken.  We are not allowed to charge anything but the parents think that they will be paying $15.  This way, we can test their interest.  Not only will we be testing people’s interests but also how parents prefer to pay, how to create lesson plans, how long to make the clinics, how they should be structured, etc.  There is a ton of validation we are hoping to make clear with this test clinic.

            Our second major accomplishment for the day was determining the cost structure and revenue streams for outdoor sports lessons.  We have a temporary plan to charge $15 for clinics and $25 for individual lessons.  Along with other cost and revenue details, we essentially need just one customer per week to make minimal profit.  Having indoor lessons will be a little more costly, but I think we will be able to handle it.  Overall, I’m glad with the progress we made today, but we are worlds away from being ready for the Shark Tank.

140414

Where to Go??

          For me personally, today was a day of confusion. I’m at that roadblock in our business where I don’t know which way is up and which way is down. For example, our mentor gave us tons of great ideas that I mentioned in my last blog, but I just don’t know where to start logically. Like Ms. Korda said, we need to have one person specialize on revenue/costs, somebody else dive deep into customer acquisition cost, and the other two people really learn two other important aspects. That way each person knows everything about at least one thing rather than everybody knowing something about everything. It is more effective that way for the Shark Tank style presentation at the end. Getting back to my main point though, I feel like we just need a little push in one direction so we know what a good place to start is. By start, I mean with all the information our mentor and teachers have given us, not literally starting the project. (we did that several weeks ago) We, as students, just don’t have the experience needed to know what comes next in this process. I feel like until we get an idea of where to go from here, we are just doing surface research and not accomplishing deep dives. However, once somebody just guides us a little I think we will be off and running.

140411

Friday; the Good, Bad, and Ugly

          You know when you recreate your presentation ninety minutes before you present, you’re in trouble. This is our day in a nutshell. We had several minor disagreements regarding our presentation which caused us to start over with minimal time to prepare. We only practiced twice before we presented for our class and mentors. Overall I think that these rough, sort of tense times made our team closer because we somehow managed to overcome that all and present very well. I am proud of everyone for sticking it out.

          After the presentations were complete, we got to meet with our mentor so he could tell us what his thoughts were. This meeting was absolutely the most helpful thing that we have experienced thus far. He gave us so many ideas and things to think about we never had considered before. I truly am thankful for our mentor. One thing that he said that really excited me was that he actually believes that our company can become successful and huge. One of our visitors earlier in the week said the same thing to us. Not to get ahead of myself because obviously we are an eternity from taking on the world, but when a real entrepreneur says that my company has great potential, I get excited. It just makes me want to work that much harder, honestly, and moving forward I know that my team and I have to work our tails off in order to be successful.

140408

Not Only Mr. Desmond & Ms. Korda

          For once in this class I am super thankful for teachers other than Ms. Korda and Mr. Desmond; these teachers being Mr. Nemeth, Mr. Keyaha, and Ms. Capuana. To begin, Mr. Nemeth is our team’s mentor and is super knowledgeable. The other night he sent us a very long email with ideas to consider along the way, and in fact these ideas were extremely important. This is why I’m so thankful for Mr. Nemeth our great mentor. Mr. Kehaya sat in on our class for the past 2 days, but today he really gave us some awesome advice. He told us different resources we could potentially use to create, manage, and maintain our website. In addition, he genuinely told us that our company was viable and had the potential for huge success. It made me feel good honestly that an expert would say this about our new startup. Last but not least, Ms. Capuana ran a session all morning that taught us to develop new, innovative ideas as a team. This session was extremely relevant to the stage we are on in our project, so I am really grateful that we had this opportunity. All in all, I now know that helpful sources and knowledgeable people don’t always have to be our two teachers, but rather can come from outside.

140407

Break the Rules

          Today our class was given a unique opportunity to tour and learn about Nottingham Spirk. This is a business innovation firm; in other words, companies come to them with ideas or potential product ideas and Nottingham Spirk designs the products and creates models for the companies. One of the coolest parts of the tour was the fact that their office building, engineering and design center were built in an old church building with a rotunda in the center. It made a really cool workspace area. Honestly it was so amazing to witness how these typical products such as the Spin Brush and the Health Spot came to be.

          I learned many things from the opportunity we had today. First of all, I learned that it is good to think outside of the lines and just sort of ignore the rules when in the designing and innovating process. In addition, I learned that in order to have a successful team everybody needs to stay open minded to all possibilities. Mr. Nottingham also reinforced how overly important it is while in the innovating process to reiterate and make changes to the existing design. I really enjoyed the tour today and hope to work at a place like that someday.

140404:

The Back of the Napkin???

          The first book I chose for our required 2 book reading is entitled The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. This book initially caught my eye because of the title; I was unsure as to why a business or entrepreneurs book was called that. So I began by doing a little research on the book to find out if it was applicable to my business. What I found was Dan Roam’s website that was not only ‘hand-drawn’ but was also interactive. There were no long paragraphs that summarized the book, but rather there was an interactive napkin that I could learn several lessons from. This definitely pulled me in and made me want to choose this book. After reading a little more about the book, I learned that it teaches in a visual learning manner, which is extremely appealing to me. Therefore, this is the first book I chose and I am really looking forward to reading it.

140402

Batter Up!

          Today was the pitching and founder dating day, which was huge. I pitched two ideas, but I felt way more confident about my second idea. Funny story though; when I pitched my idea and came back to my seat Eliza was so surprised. She said she basically had the exact same pitch! So we talked a bit and really the only difference between our pitches was that mine was specifically individual sports lessons while hers was more of group clinics. We decided though that we would combine in hopes of being co-founders. After everyone voted and Mr. Desmond tallied the votes, turned out Eliza and I had been selected as one of the four companies. I was overly excited because I honestly am really passionate about this subject. Then we chose Lauren and Michelle as our team members. This is because not only are they hard workers but they both play sports and are very athletic. Overall, today was super successful and I am so excited to hit the ground running with our company.

140331

What Will Happen?

          I am honestly so excited for the final project of entrepreneurship class. I can’t wait to pitch my ideas to the class and hope they like one of them. I pray that one of my ideas gets chosen because I would be one of the people to run the business even after this class ends, if it is doing alright. I am super passionate about my ideas that I’ll be pitching so I know the company can and will be successful.

          Looking forward, I really have no idea what to expect. I don’t know how everyone else’s ideas will compare to mine, how the class will like my ideas, if my idea will get chosen, how the founder dating works, and everything else. I just don’t have any idea of what to expect from this final project. At this point I don’t really understand what the mentor does for our team, but I am eager to find out. While I don’t know what is going to happen during this final project, I am super optimistic that it will be a success.

140307

Spunky Queens Coming in Clutch

          There was definitely some drama at entre today, but our team managed to avoid any thankfully. Our team has disagreements too, I’m not saying we are perfect, but we are able to easily work them out without getting angry. Our team presentations went smoothly and just as we had planned. One of the more common pieces of feedback we received was that we needed to explain what the PAM SAM SOM TAM model was and explain what the blue ocean market was for the parent’s sake. This is something I kind of struggled with because we were so limited on time that there was no way we would’ve been able to explain it all; however, I do realize it is important that the parents understand our presentation as well. I wish there was a happy middle but I really don’t think there is. In the future I think I will stick to what we did just to make sure there is enough time for everything. Another piece of feedback we got multiple times was that our slide show itself was dull and boring to look at. I partially agree; I think that our background was dull but the content on the slides was intriguing. Looking forward, I am definitely very nervous for final presentations not only because they are our last ones for working with companies so the expectations are very high, but also because Mr. Cashman, the founder and CEO of Health Spot will be there. Just the thought of presenting to him is very nerve-wracking; however, our team has a full week ahead of us to perfect the presentation and make sure we have tons of new data to share with him. One week until spring break!

140306

Friend Teams: Downfall or our Fortune?

          Team Spunky Queens is really evolving as a team and learning how to work together nicely. This team, more than any of my other teams, has gelled together quickly. Contrary to some people’s belief, I think it definitely helps when your team is made up of friends. I know that some people think the team would be very unproductive and not take things too seriously; honestly it is the exact opposite. We are super productive as a team of friends and I think it is partially because we are so comfortable with each other that we aren’t afraid to make a mistake or tell somebody they’re wrong. Given this, I can definitely say that a team made up of friends is a great thing and will be hugely successful.

140304

Getting into the Mind of the Elderly

                I love the feeling of being productive.  It is always good when you look back and think ‘wow, I got a lot accomplished!’  This is what happened to me today; Sydney and I visited Pearl Crossing, a senior community, and had great success.  We then observed senior citizens at both McDonalds and the mall.  We learned so much just from watching the elderly and figuring out their tendencies and such. 

                At Pearl Crossing, the very nice manager told us all about their community and what they offered in regards to health care and transportation to health care.  It was extremely helpful and exactly what we were looking for.  We then were given the opportunity to talk with the residents that were just sitting around drinking their coffee.  As Sydney and I had expected, the senior citizens were super nice and very willing to answer some of our questions.  Moving forward, Health Spot definitely has a market in senior communities like this one.

                This sounded crazy to me at first too, but observing elderly in their ‘natural habitat’ is actually very useful.  We were pleasantly surprised when we found the mother lode of elderly people at the mall.  The theme of ‘pleasant surprise’ was kind of how our entire day went.  Sydney and I accomplished so much and made huge strides today which makes me feel like we are in a good spot moving forward.

140227

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

          Entre class today was super productive which is always a good thing. Team Spunky Queens has been very organized about what we are doing and assigning roles, which I really appreciate. We have been working really well as a team and got along perfectly. A major chunk of our day today was spent calling retirement communities and assisted living villages to inquire about their transportation provided to and from doctors appointments as well as if there were any upcoming events open to the public that we could possibly attend. We called eight or nine places and were pretty successful I thought; several didn’t answer but many gave us lots of interesting, helpful information. A couple even invited us to visit so that we could get a feel for what their services entailed. We figured that this was a very effective way of getting information quickly rather than driving to each place because some are pretty far away. Of course we will be visiting several communities to talk to the residents there and find out their pains and if we could solve them. This was a good start, however.

          In addition, an entrepreneurship teacher from Arkansas came to visit our class today to observe how it works. He was actually extremely helpful and I wish he could be there every day. He told us so much about entrepreneurship and business that I felt like I was learning a ton. Not only was he super nice and informative, but he also was very generous as he gave us contact information for a man he knows that could help us with our project. I really appreciated this. Overall, today was very productive and I feel that Team Spunky Teams is in a great place moving forward.

140226

Conducting Interviews the Right Way

         Entrepreneurship class today was different than usual; we had a speaker come and give a talk to us. She taught us all about conducting customer interviews and how to make them the most effective and accurate as possible. I learned that you must begin with a problem and from there, determine if that problem is worth solving. Also, there are three main parts of a problem statement; the goal, the problem to be addressed, and the explicit request for improvement. Something I found interesting was that she mentioned that if there is no problem to solve, then there essentially is no product or service you can create that will do well. There has to be an actual problem that people need a solution to. This speaker also emphasized that we must understand the people, and it is all about the people. The biggest thing I got out of her talk today was the empathy map. I can definitely see our team using these moving forward. They are extremely helpful in pinpointing an archetype.

         As I move forward in the process of learning business and marketing, I think interviews are definitely a factor that I can improve. It is important that I come up with very strategic questions for the interviewees before I go out to conduct the interviews. These questions have to be open-ended and encourage the person to talk and explain themselves. In addition, I now know that it is ideal to conduct interviews one on one so that the interviewee doesn’t feel overwhelmed. In the future, these skills can be applied very meaningfully.

140224

Drum Roll Please…

        Today my class went on a mystery excursion to Columbus, Ohio. Most of us, including myself, had no idea what our next company was going to be so we were anxious to find out. Ms. Korda had told us to look nice and to act very professional, so this kind of made me wonder what kind of company it could be. When we arrived at the company’s headquarters, it was just a large office building which did not indicate anything about the company itself. We finally found out the company we will be working with is called Health Spot. The actual Health Spot product is difficult to explain but it is basically an in-n-out doctors appointment. The idea behind the product and all of its features were super innovative and really very appealing. I honestly believe that the Health Spot station is the future of basic healthcare. Anyway, when we went to the company’s headquarters we met the founder and CEO, a really down to earth, nice man from Kansas. He showed to us all the behind the scenes of the company and where the idea initially came from. All the information he poured on us will be crucial to the success or failure of our task.

         Splitting up into four teams was done a little differently than usual, for this company. There were four questions that meant one for each team. We each ranked our number one, two, three, and four choices and from there, Ms. Korda formed the teams. On my team is Michelle, Sydney, Meredith, and me. I was really very happy when I learned that this was my team for these three weeks. I am good friends with each person which means that we will be comfortable criticizing each other (constructively, of course) and won’t be afraid to speak up in this group. Overall, I am really looking forward to these next three weeks because of the great company we are working with and also the great team I am on.

140220:

Team Bangladesh: Chutney Rolls Rollin’ Out

        How do I feel coming off the three weeks with Chutney Rolls? I don’t feel like I accomplished what I wanted, to start. I have so many more ideas and suggestions I wish we could employ or work out but we just ran out of time. When we first learned about this company and our task at hand, I had so many ideas and thoughts that would be very beneficial. However, we did not get much time because of the long weekends along with snow days. I just really wish we had three more weeks to work on this company’s business plan so it could be flawless and effective. We essentially spent the first two weeks on interviewing Case students and others trying to pinpoint our customer archetype, which was very difficult. I think we put such an emphasis on the customer segment, which was necessary, that we didn’t leave much time for the actual marketing plan. We didn’t get around to creating an actual 12 month plan which I hope Hrishue isn’t upset about. Overall, I think Hrishue will be satisfied because we are suggesting some really great ideas for his businesses future and definitely some effective methods of marketing that he has never thought of.

140210:

Calling All Ducks

          Today we had presentations on a company through the business model canvas. I chose the company Duck Commander because not only am I a big fan of the show Duck Dynasty, but I love all of the products that Duck Commander produces and sells. For this presentation we were not given any directions really which made it very difficult; however, I embraced the challenge. It really bothers me when people in my class complain a ton about how there was not a specific recipe for this project; they need to just figure it out on their own and stop complaining. We all faced the same challenge, and I think it reveals a person’s true colors when you look at how they embraced the challenge and how that reaction effected their presentation. This is why I believe that I did pretty well today because I was not complaining or worried or freaking out; I did all I could.

          The actual presentation seemed to go better than planned for me, but obviously not perfect. I really had a hard time finding the cost structure and the revenue streams but I think I did alright. Ms. Korda loved my intro from customer segment to value proposition to customer relationships. In addition, the only clarifying questions I received were about the product itself, not about the canvas I created. People didn’t really know what a duck call was, what it sounded like, or what it was used for so I briefly explained that to everyone. Overall I was satisfied with my work on this presentation, but am anxious for next time when I think it will be even smoother.

140207:

Team Bangladesh Bengals

          Today we had our first presentations for the company Chutney Rolls with our new teams. I am part of Team Bangladesh which consists of Ali, Henry, Lauren, and me. Overall, our presentation went very well and everyone seemed to like it for the most part. One of our main problems was actually several typos we had on our PowerPoint slides. This was unfortunate because it was an easily fixable mistake, but we can’t dwell on that.

          One piece of feedback that we received multiple times was that we really need to confirm all our hypotheses because we have many. We have hypothesized our customer segments and our value propositions, but in order to accurately market this restaurant and understand who we should target, we must confirm these. We can accomplish this by going out to the Case campus and nearby hospitals and conducting interviews. Once we have confirmed or denied our hypotheses we can then move on to our specific marketing plan.

One question we received several times was, does Hrishue really want Chutney Rolls to become the Indian Chipotle? Honestly, we do not know if he does or not; however, when Sydney asked him if we could refer to his restaurant as an Indian Chipotle, he approved willingly. So we do know that he liked the idea of it, but we have not yet confirmed that he actually wants to take after Chipotle in an Indian fashion. This is something we must ask Hrishue about in order to make sure our class and him are on the same page in those regards.

          In conclusion, the presentations today were better than expected but could still be improved. Both the live feedback and the feedback Ms. Korda gave us directly after the presentations were very informative and helpful for the future.

140206:

Starting from Scratch

          The customer segment is a thorough understanding of the customer persona or archetype which you are specifically targeting. The customer segment is the very important building block for a company, because in order to market the product or advertise it, you need to understand the target demographic. For our company, Chutney Rolls, we began by hypothesizing what we think our segment would be. We thought; college students because it is on Case’s campus, people who work in the area (hospital), companies with 15 or more employees for catering purposes, adventurous people, and people who are active on Yelp! Or Four Square. However, these are not yet confirmed. Another key piece of information we need to know about our customers is the customer acquisition cost. This is basically how much it takes to acquire a new customer. We have yet to figure this out for Chutney Rolls.

          In order to confirm our customer segment we must conduct many interviews. While we have done several, we need many more in order to get an accurate understanding. We are interviewing people on the Case campus because they would be the primary customers we assume. Examples of the questions we ask these people are: Do you normally walk or drive to lunch? How much do you usually spend on lunch? Do you like Indian food? Once we conduct a ton of interviews we can then combine all the info gathered and confirm our customer segment.

          The value proposition is a key part of the business model canvas. Value proposition is the features, product, or service you are creating and what problem it solves. For Chutney Rolls we figured the value props were; the atmosphere of ‘delivering joy,’ they cater, they accept Case Cash, it’s a change from the Little Italy Italian food, they deliver, and they also feature local artists’ pieces. These value propositions are solving a problem for our customers and making the company more appealing.

140204

Life or Death for Chutney Rolls

          Lots of pressure. We have lots of pressure. My class has lots of pressure. Why? We need to create a success story for this company. Chutney Rolls is an Indian bistro considered fast casual that was founded in 2012 by an Indian man named Hrishue. This restaurant offers catering, dine in, or take out. It can be considered the “Indian Chipotle” however I don’t think it’s quite to that level yet. This is where we come in; we are tasked with creating a 12 month business plan and a business model for this company, under a budget. Unlike past companies, this man has put his heart and soul into this single investment and is in dire need of its success. If we cannot help him grow the business and make profits, he will be forced to shut it down.

          Hrishue came and talked to us a few days ago to explain his company and the task we were given. We learned a ton about his company that will be helpful in solving the problem. First of all, his main focus in this business is to “deliver joy.” He wants his customers to have a truly remarkable experience when they eat at Chutney Rolls. He told us that his employees are instructed to engage in conversation with the customer before they even place their order, and to make sure that the customers are constantly satisfied. He has fired over 30 employees because they just weren’t the perfect people for the job. That says a lot about his idea of “delivering joy” because he clearly wants employees that are friendly, joyful, helpful, and will do anything to satisfy the customer. Another line he said that stuck in my head was he wants “food that matters.” He wants to serve quality food for a low price, in an upbeat environment that is his restaurant. I found this especially promising for his restaurant because it just demonstrates the potential this restaurant has.

140202:

Team Spicy Mice behind the Scenes; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

          While working in teams was very enjoyable, there were times when it wasn’t all that fun. For example, I learned that I must be patient with my teammates because they are the only ones helping me. I learned this valuable lesson when we were reviewing our final presentation slide show and I did not like the way our ‘what we did’ slide looked. However, when I tried to tell my teammates to change it they didn’t really listen. This is the part of my story where patience played a big role. I had to be patient and try to explain to them why and offer a solution. By doing this, it kept me from snapping at them or getting frustrated. Patience is always key when working in teams.

          Throughout the team process I also learned that sometimes I have to find different varying ways to share my ideas. Sometimes people just wouldn’t listen to my ideas, and so I had to go about telling them from a different angle. For example, I thought that the final slide of our slide show should be a ‘what we learned’ type of slide, but really none of my teammates agreed. So instead of pounding that idea on them until they finally agreed I decided to show them. I made the slide that I thought would be a good ending, and then they were able to see what I meant rather than just hear it. Finally, they agreed to what I was saying. This made me realize that sometimes I need to find multiple ways of expressing my ideas so that everyone can understand clearly what I’m saying.

          Last but not least, I learned something about the presentation process; that is that the team needs to practice their parts all together before they actually present. This ensures good flow and transitions for the presentations. Team Spicy Mice’s first presentation was not rehearsed as a whole a single time before we did it in front of the class and teacher. As a result, we had very poor transitions and costly mistakes. In addition, practicing as a team beforehand allows for peer criticism to be told, which ultimately enhances the presentation. Team Spicy Mice practiced our final Findaway World presentation as a team multiple times which is why I believe it was our best presentation.

140128:

Left in the Cold

          Being an entrepreneur is much like being in freezing cold winter weather. Take this for example; if it is below zero weather, there is nothing I can do to change that. Similarly, when my boss/teacher leaves for reasons unrelated to me, there is nothing I can do to change that. Unfortunately, I have no control over these types of situations. I feel like I am being left out in the cold.

          In these cold weather situations, I can bundle up and do my best to stay warm, but if I stay in the cold long enough, I am not going to be warm forever. Eventually, I am going to be cold. Similarly, our new teacher/boss told us that things will basically remain the same as they were with the old teacher; however, this just is not possible. I know we will not use the same terms for things, nor will our class be as fast-paced and up-beat as it was in the past. The way our old teacher taught us was un-paralleled and really cannot be replicated, in my opinion. Believe me, I know our new teachers will do their best and be fantastic teacher, but I also know it will never be the same.

140124:

Hard Work Pays Off

          Our second round of team presentations was today, and overall they went well for Team Spicy Mice. Our presentation was a big improvement from last week which shows we are learning. My slide was “what we are doing next…” and I talked about 3 major points; 1. Continue to promote through social media 2. Continue to check rafflecopter 3. Find our precise target customer. Through these tactics we will hopefully find success for Bookopotamus. One of my personal goals moving forward is to find the mass of people out there that basically make their living on rafflecopter. These people enter tons of contests trying to win prizes for free, so if we can find these people then our contest will have much success. At the end of the presentation when people asked us questions, I felt that we had accurate, professional answers to each and every one of them so that was great.

          We also had the chance to briefly meet with Dean and Jaime from Findaway World to discuss our progress in the social media campaign. In this meeting we told them all about what we have done thus far and our temporary plans for the future. The more important part of this meeting, however, was what they told us. We learned that our target customer basically was book-lovers and library-goers. This helps us in the process of narrowing down our target consumer. In addition, they told us that sometimes they have success by tweeting at celebrities about Bookopotamus. Occasionally if you catch the celebrity at the right moment, they will retweet your tweet which will gain the product huge publicity. Also they told us that we could email them anytime what we thought they should tweet or post on their social media sites in order to gain publicity, and they would do it. Overall, I feel like the result of this meeting is we learned that the people at Findaway World are willing to work with us in this process and are taking our advice.

140123:

Freezing my Hands Just to get an A

          Today was a fairly productive day in entrepreneurship, at least for team Spicy Mice. We finalized our presentation for tomorrow and then rehearsed many times. This presentation is really important for us because last weeks didn’t go so well. We learned our lesson last time and this time actually created the slide show on a google docs deck, instead of Microsoft Power Point. For our presentations we try to include as few words as possible, but lots of relevant photographs we have taken. Today we took a team photo for our first slide of the presentation; we went outside in the negative thirty thousand degree weather and took a photo of us throwing snow into the air, similar to the classic LeBron James photographs. It was definitely not worth it, my hands froze!

          Trying to remember all the points I must hit on my slide of the presentation should not be that difficult because I only have 3 of them and this time I don’t have to fill in for Bryce. My slide is about what we are doing next; I talk about how we are continuing to promote the app through various forms of social media, how we have a contest on Rafflecopter right now that lasts through next week, and how we desperately need to find who our target customers are.

The task of finding who our target customers are is an extremely tough one. This is because there are very few customers using this app because it is so new and unheard of still. Basically we are given the task of finding the main consumers, when they don’t actually exist. However, our plan is to go to several local libraries and find the demographics of the Playaway users, and from there figure out who might be interested in the app.

140120:

Technology is Killer

          Today was very interesting because we had our first presentations. Going into the presentations I felt pretty confident and was not very nervous. She told us we could use notecards plus we had the Power Point so I didn’t think it would be bad at all.

Literally twenty seconds before our team began our presentation, Ms. Cho told us we could not use our notecards. This was a huge shock to us and we had not memorized all of our facts. Prior to the presentation, I had read through my notecard one time and so when she told us that we could not use them, my heart sunk. Of course Ms. Cho being her experienced, confident self told us we would be fine and we knew the material and whatever, but this was our first one EVER. Had I known that notecards were not allowed, I definitely would’ve tried to memorize all the points I had to cover because not only did I have my part but I was also covering for Bryce as well. Her part was less familiar to me.

          As the presentation started, we had some technology issues. The presentation wasn’t playing from her Google drive because I had created it in Power Point and they just didn’t seem to be compatible. Secondly, it screwed our entire presentation up because the Power Point was being moved from a PC to a Mac; the words were hidden behind the pictures which is not at all how it was on my computer’s Power Point. It was a disaster. In the live feedback comments section, many people said the Power Point was bad because the words were hidden behind the pictures; this was so frustrating because the words had not been hidden on my computer. Secondly, many people said the pictures were of bad quality; this is because they were coming from a PC and being shown on a Mac…bad photo quality is inevitable. Every single Power Point up there had bad photo quality. Some of this type of feedback just made me frustrated.

          While this does sound awful, there are several positives I can take away from our first presentation. First of all, our team now knows of different ideas or suggestions to take into consideration moving forward in our campaign. I think we can do a lot better and so now we have other ideas to work with. The other positive piece I can take away from this experience is that I know what these Friday presentations are like and so I feel like our team will be so much more prepared next time and just nail it!

Social Media Manager 140117

#SocialMediaManager #Hawken #Entre #2014

          Today ended my week of being social media manager. Honestly, I loved being social media manager for several reasons. First of all, it was a responsibility I had to keep track of, but it was not overwhelming like OM. Secondly, I had access to our classes Instagram and Twitter accounts where I was given permission to post anything from our class. This I really enjoyed because I got to take photos of things going on in our class and post them. My job was to keep people updated, and this was a lot of fun. Lastly, it almost gave me a reason to be on my phone quite often because I was constantly tweeting and updating Instagram for our entre class.

          My recommendation for succeeding SMM is to always have your phone/camera out and be engaged in the class activities. I found it very important to take photographs of all the activities, team time, inventions, and special moments that happen in this class. Occasionally I’d get the, “Hannah, take a photo and tweet it!” from Ms. Cho reminding me of my responsibility, but for the most part I took photos of all the activities. Therefore, my advice for the next SMM is to just constantly document our class happenings and keep our followers on Twitter and Instagram updated. We do not want to seem like a dead, boring, dull class that never tweets; there are constant interesting happenings occurring in our class and we need to be sure to record them somehow.

140114:

Pleasant Surprises

          Today was only half a day of Entre, which is unfortunate. The other unfortunate piece we had to deal with is having to switch classrooms for each block; whereas if we were at the Gries Center, we would not have to move. I have tried and tried to persuade people to vote yes on going to the Gries Center for afternoon class. This is still a lively debate though.

          Going into today, the Spicy Mice team thought that we would continue to get the word out about Bookopotamus on social media sites, but hopefully get in contact with local libraries. Thankfully, Alex, Michelle, and I had time to drive to the local Mayfield library (super nice btw) and make our pitch. We wanted this library to hang up our Bookopotamus flyers around their library, and so we began by explaining what this app is and how it is beneficial. The manager of this library agreed to post our flyers around his library...success. However, moving forward we need to contact the head of the entire Cleveland Public Libraries system to request our app advertised on either their facebook page, their website, or both. We must keep in mind that this may not be possible, but we did have a success in getting our flyers to be hung at a local library.

          On a separate note, I would like to talk about CodeHS and Karel. Much to my surprise, computer programming (in the form of Karel) is really fun. I love the way this site teaches us all these unique skills I never thought I would have learned. The Karel activities are challenging but I think that they are at an appropriate level for my beginner skill set. I actually enjoy having to do Karel activites for homework, and I;m excited to see how advanced we become just with Karel.

140113:

                                   To be at the Gries Center or Not to be at the Gries Center?

          Today we were at the Gries Center all day, which I really like.  I think that we are most productive when at the Gries Center because it is like our 'home.'  When we have to be at the Gates Mills campus, we do not have all of our tools and resources, and often have to classroom hop.  On the days when we only have entre in the afternoon, I really wish we would go to the Gries Center for that afternoon.  However, this was a big debate of ours this morning.  Several people want to have afternoon class at Gates Mills, which I do not agree with.  Moving on, during the mid-morning today, we did two design challenges.  These were so much fun!  We were given a problem and then 3 random materials and we had to create a product using only those materials to fix this problem.  For our first design challenge, my group was Corey, Hannah, Sydney, and Henry.  This group worked very well together and we came up with Mammoth Ears, to keep your ears warm.  We actually won the design challenge through the Applaus-o-meter.  However, the second design challenge was not as successful for me.  Our group came up with the Head-Brella to keep your head dry in the rain.  It was a cardboard helmet covered in play-dough.  As you can probably imagine, that did not work so well.  Overall, today was a very successful and fun day.  I am really enjoying this class!

140109:

                                                Social Media Campaign Take: 1

          Todays class was only half of the day, and it felt so short.  In that amount of time, however, I felt like we got a lot accomplished.  My favorite part of the day was definitely meeting Dean and Jen from Findaway World who came to give us a presentation today.  They told us all about their company and their marketing strategies, which was extremely informative.  After, they showed us their brand new Playaway Light which came out today.  It is sort of an upgrade on their original audio book device.  Then, they told us about their new app called Bookopotomus which is available for smart phones in the iTunes store.  This app is fun for all ages; basically, it reads part of a famous classic novel or best-seller and then gives you options of different novels and you have to choose which you think it is.  Every time someone plays this game, they donate to a foundation that donates books to children and schools in need.  So not only does it support a great cause, but it also benefits Findaway World.  Moving on, our class is given the challenge to design a social media campaign for the Playaway Light and a social media campaign for the Bookopotomus app as well.  During Dean and Jen's presentation we of course asked many questions because as our clients, we need to know as much about them as we can.  We found out that the Playaway audio recordings are mainly targeted for circulation purposes such as libraries and the military.  This is because each Playaway has only one books audio on it and that cannot change.  So once someone reads that book, they have to find another Playaway to read another book.  We also found out that Findaway World does have a Facebook and Twitter, but our class is hoping to boost their popularity because, as you can imagine, an audio recorders Facebook page is not exactly booming.  This is our task in our teams, and the great part is that if Findaway World actually likes our ideas, they may be implemented.  This is the sort of real world experience I was hoping for from this class.  I'm absolutely enjoying it thus far.

140108:

                                      Entre at its Best

          Heading into the first day of entra,, I honestly had no idea what to expect.  From what Ms. Cho had been emailing us the days leading up to the first class, I knew this was going to be a really interesting yet confusing experience.  As the day progressed I slowly began to get the feel for what this class is going to be like.  Although, I know I probably don't know a quarter of what is going to go down in this class, it is just that unpredictable.  Anyway, I really liked how we all brought in snacks and cereal because having the freedom to just eat breakfast or snack during class is really great.  I am really excited for getting a class Keurig machine because coffee is my life.  And for that I am thankful.  In addition, I really enjoyed how we played music of our choice all day really because it made it feel more relaxed and not so school-like.  Moving on, tomorrow we are having some sort of stand and deliver 'quiz' which I honestly have no idea what to expect because I've never taken a quiz in that format before.  The reading we are being quizzed on I found pretty intriguing because there is so much to learn about start-ups and business and everything.  Speaking of reading, I thought the interviews we read in Founders at Work were all very informative and I surprisingly did not mind reading them.  I'm very excited with how this class has started and can't wait to see what other surprises it holds.