30A- Final Reflection

1) The most memorable experience from this semester were the elevator pitch videos. A lot of times it's easier to write something online versus posting a video of yourself. Making the elevator pitch videos really brought me out of my comfort zone but that's exactly why I'm also proud of them even when they didn't turn out the way I wanted. It was a learning experience and even though we had other assignments that had us flesh out our concepts I felt that the elevator pitches brought them together in a way.

2)At this moment in time I still don't see myself as an entrepreneur. However, I think I have definitely gotten closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the semester. I have also absolutely learned an array of tools that'll help me develop a concept once I feel more comfortable with seeing myself as an entrepreneur.

3) One recommendation I would give to future students is that they watch the weekly lectures instead of trying to cheat in order to pass the cupcakes and in order for them to develop an entrepreneurial mindset they need to take ownership of their ideas that they decide to explore.

29A- Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity: Every year thousands of people undergo oral surgery. It can be for something as minor as having their wisdom teeth removed or for something more serious that could result in getting dentures which could have been caused by dental caries, poor dental hygiene, or even cancer. As part as their post-surgery care, these patients usually get put on a soft-food diet for anywhere between a day to several weeks afterward depending on the seriousness of the surgery. For those that only have to be on a soft-food diet for a day or two, it may not be that bad of an experience since they can probably get away with eating ice cream and jello for the duration of those two days. However, for those that have to be on a soft food diet for much longer than that, it is not nutritionally feasible. For these people, they have to undergo the healing process for much longer and sometimes they don't have additional support in the form of a spouse or kids or some other relative or friend. These people, apart from working, have to come up with nutritious meals that are soft enough to eat all while in pain. This opportunity will continue to exist as long as people keep getting oral surgery. Demographically, this opportunity would probably be targeted to lower income to moderate- income households since one reason for oral surgery is due to poor oral hygiene and that can be a consequence of not going to the dentist until its too late. This tends to happen to those with no insurance or insurance that doesn't cover their needs.

Innovation: My food service is called Simple Delights and the menu would be made up entirely of soft foods. This menu would be accessible online and a paper copy would be available at dental offices. All the customer would have to do is call the number to place the order or order online. My service only provides lunch and dinner with orders being placed anytime between 9AM and 5PM with business hours extending till 7PM in order to provide time for delivery or pickup. Each meal would include an entrée, one or two sides, and desert with drinks being optional for a charge of $1. Most meals are typically between $10-$15 and for that reason each meal at Simple Delights will be $13 (for one side), $15 (for two sides) or $25 (regardless of number of sides) if they order for both lunch and dinner. An additional charge of $3.99 will be added if the customer wishes to have the meal delivered to their home.

Venture Concept: Most people don't follow a soft-food based diet unless it follows oral surgery. For that reason, these people often times don't know which foods to prepare in order to get a nutritious meal. Most people would hear about Simple Delights from their dental office and or oral surgery location (here in Arkansas there are several locations throughout major cities that are under Dental Denture Solutions) and switching to my food service would not be hard since it would be similar to trying a new restaurant. My competitors would be anyplace that serves any kind of soft food, be it soup, jello, mashed potatoes, etc. The only weakness in that is that they would not have a full menu and often times would have a handful of options. At this point, my pricing is based on the average cost of a meal which as stated above, generally ranges from $10-$15. At the beginning I would not have any employees helping me cook. I would start my business at home with maybe the help of my sisters. This would save me start up costs. The only employee would be a delivery driver and if that is unfeasible, then I would try to get a friend or relative to do deliveries.

1. My most important resource would probably be my hard work ethic. Since I won't hire any outside help (at least in the beginning) the brunt of the work would fall on me. If I would like to see my venture succeed then I would have to make sure to work extra hard.

2. What's next for my venture: probably expanding my target market. I would eventually like to include others that are not necessarily on a soft-food diet. One of my main meals would be soups and that could be appealing to someone who is sick or someone who want a hot meal in the winter. I would also eventually expand my business hours to begin at 6AM to include breakfast. For a lot of people this is the most important meal of the day. This would be implemented after surveys dictated what the most popular breakfast food options are.

3. Assuming I launched I would like to see my venture expand throughout the state and neighboring states after the first five years. After ten years, I would like my venture to expand nationwide. With this, I would be able to cater to wider selection of people and would perhaps also increase some of the menu items. The first venture would help me achieve this because every business needs to start somewhere.


II. A lot of the feedback was mostly positive though I did receive some constructive criticism concerning my social capital. They suggested that I partner with more dentists in the area so that they could recommend my business to their patients. As far as the breakfast menu, the main feedback I received was to distribute surveys before implementing it to get an idea of what they customer wants.

III. The way I changed my venture concept was to add more dental offices to (hopefully) increase my market. Then in the what's next part of the assignment I added the extended business hours to include breakfast.


                         

28A - Your Exit Strategy

1) My exit strategy would depend on multiple factors, but assuming my venture is successful and that it sees moderate growth throughout the years, I would keep it running as long as I could and eventually retire with the proceeds. After that I would either hand the company to my kids or sell it.

2) I wrote that I would either hand the company over to my kids or sell it because that would depend on whether my kids wanted the company. I would never want to force anyone into a business that they were not interested in, so if they didn't want I would sell to someone that could appreciate it. Either way, I would run it for as long as I could before retiring.

3) If I'm being honest, I hadn't factored an exit strategy into any of my decisions for my concept. But even if I had considered it beforehand, I don't think any of my decisions would've been different. Because there is a chance that it could be passed down, I would still try to make it as successful as possible. Not to mention that it would eventually become my livelihood, so it would be in my best interest to make it as successful as possible.

27A - Reading Reflection No. 3

1) The general theme of How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big is that failure is a crucial step to success. In fact, the more you fail the better for it can improve your chances of ultimately succeeding in your endeavors, and it can be a tool for increasing personal energy.

2) This book is all about how failure can lead to success. That is a subject that has been covered in our assignments (especially Assignment 26). Just like the title of the assignment, this book is all about celebrating failure and the lessons that can be learned from failure. Adams also talked about how he took what he learned from his failures and applied it to future endeavors.

3) Adams developed a wide range of skills from all the different kinds of business ventures he pursued. He went from designing some computer games to opening two restaurants to eventually becoming a famous cartoonist. Every venture taught him something new. Apart from learning from his failures, he also gained technical skills. Saying that, the exercise I would design would be try a new 'hobby'. Libraries usually hold an array of activities that can include knitting, drawing, etc. There are usually all kinds of clubs on a college campus as well. The purpose of this exercise would be to learn a new skill, whether artistic, technical, or something else, and then write a reflection of the experience.

4) The biggest surprise for me was reading that passion does not guarantee success. Adams said that this is a common misconception. Most high-achieving people in their fields will usually cite 'passion' as one of the reasons for getting where they are. However, Adams says that success tends to induce passion, but passion does not necessarily equal success. Instead the more you succeed at something, the more passionate you feel for the endeavor. I have to say that I was also under the misconception thinking that passion can lead to success, but the way he presented passion was eye-opening.

26A - Celebrating Failure

1) This past semester I struggled with completing the assignments with my original problem. For the sake of the assignments, it was just too broad and ambitious and not feasible (at least for me). While its a subject I care about, I just didn't know enough about to pitch a plan to target a specific part of the problem. For a while I continued doing the assignments, but I could see the quality of my work decreasing and I'm don't think I ever fully recovered from that. Another bad habit of mine that often times leads to failure is procrastination. I let myself leave assignments until the last moment and even though most of the time I'm able to turn in the assignments on time, they're not as good as far as quality.

2) Shortly after I realized that I was really struggling with the assignments, I emailed Dr. Pryor asking if I could change my idea and he responded saying I could. In that email I wrote that I didn't dedicate the time, thought, or effort that I should've into each of the assignments and that is why I found myself struggling halfway through the semester. I learned that you cannot do things halfway, and there are consequences if you do (In this case that would be my final grade). After this, I strove to dedicate enough time to finish the assignments.

3) Failure is a learning process. The hardest thing about failure is getting back up. Just like you can't know true happiness without experiencing sadness, I think you can't know true success without failure. Someone once told me that if you're experiencing failure you have to trace the problem to the root of the cause if you want to a permanent solution instead of a temporary fix. Essentially, you need to look at the big picture. While I say this, I struggle with applying this to myself. When I experience failure, I feel embarrassment and I feel like an idiot because most of the time when I fail it's due to my own shortcomings. Afterwards, I usually let myself wallow in self-pity for a bit before letting myself try again. This class has made me a bit more open to taking risk. I know that a lot of times people say that the things they regret the most are the actions that they didn't take. Of course saying it and thinking it are different from actually doing it. I just hope that when the opportunities present themselves that I'll be able to follow through.

25A What's Next

 Existing Market:

Step 1: What's next is that would have to find other ways of advertisement than just through a dentist office in order to reach a wider margin of people.

Step2: After interviewing my three customers they suggested that I consider offering breakfast options. They also recommended that I eventually get an app in order to facilitate the ordering process.

Step3: Originally my venture is set to be a lunch and dinner food service. Due to the feedback I received I'm considering eventually including a breakfast menu. Of course that would not happen until I could afford additional staffing, that way I won't overdo it. A lot of food businesses have apps in order to decrease wait time and to make the ordering process easier, so that is also something that I'll look further into.

I do think that these suggestions will be applicable to my venture, though it won't be able to be implemented immediately.

New Market:

Step 1: Since my venture targets those who have recently had oral surgery that makes my market consist of either older people or late teens to young adults. But since it'll cater to those that need my product for a longer span of time, it appeals to the older people more. So I'll be targeting the young adult market.

Step 2: In order to try to appeal to this new market, I would add to my menu sweeter smoothies and shakes.

Step3: After interviewing the customer's in this new market they suggested I add a few solid food items so that they could get a meal with the smoothie or shake that wasn't a soft-food item. They also suggested that I increase the variety of ice cream I had available for the shakes.

Step 4: I had a feeling that a soft-food based service would not be really attractive to someone who 's doctor didn't tell them to be on that diet. Even so, I was still a little surprised when they suggested to add a couple solid food items like sandwiches. What they suggested sounded a lot like Tropical Smoothie that I don't think I should take their advice.

I knew that this second market would not be as attractive as my original market. While they are still part of my demographics, young adults are in the minority. And even though I don't think I'll be adding sandwiches to my menu anytime soon, I do think I will add more ice cream flavors and a wider selection of smoothies. In the end, their feedback was still much appreciated.

24A Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity: Every year thousands of people undergo oral surgery. It can be for something as minor as having their wisdom teeth removed or for something more serious that could result in getting dentures which could have been caused by dental caries, poor dental hygiene, or even cancer. As part as their post-surgery care, these patients usually get put on a soft-food diet for anywhere between a day to several weeks afterward depending on the seriousness of the surgery. For those that only have to be on a soft-food diet for a day or two, it may not be that bad of an experience since they can probably get away with eating ice cream and jello for the duration of those two days. However, for those that have to be on a soft food diet for much longer than that, it is not nutritionally feasible. For these people, they have to undergo the healing process for much longer and sometimes they don't have additional support in the form of a spouse or kids or some other relative or friend. These people, apart from working, have to come up with nutritious meals that are soft enough to eat all while in pain. This opportunity will continue to exist as long as people keep getting oral surgery. Demographically, this opportunity would probably be targeted to lower income to moderate- income households since one reason for oral surgery is due to poor oral hygiene and that can be a consequence of not going to the dentist until its too late. This tends to happen to those with no insurance or insurance that doesn't cover their needs.

Innovation: My food service is called Simple Delights and the menu would be made up entirely of soft foods. This menu would be accessible online and a paper copy would be available at select dental offices. All the customer would have to do is call the number to place the order or order online. My service only provides lunch and dinner with orders being placed anytime between 9AM and 5PM with business hours extending till 7PM in order to provide time for delivery or pickup. Each meal would include an entrée, one or two sides, and desert with drinks being optional for a charge of $1. Most meals are typically between $10-$15 and for that reason each meal at Simple Delights will be $13 (for one side), $15 (for two sides) or $25 (regardless of number of sides) if they order for both lunch and dinner. An additional charge of $3.99 will be added if the customer wishes to have the meal delivered to their home.

Venture Concept: Most people don't follow a soft-food based diet unless its following oral surgery. For that reason, these people often times don't know which foods to prepare in order to get a nutritious meal. Most people would hear about Simple Delights from their dental office and switching to my food service would not be hard since it would be similar to trying a new restaurant. My competitors would be anyplace that serves any kind of soft food, be it soup, jello, mashed potatoes, etc. The only weakness in that is that they would not have a full menu and often times would have a handful of options. At this point, my pricing is based on the average cost of a meal which as stated above, generally ranges from $10-$15. At the beginning I would not have any employees helping me cook. I would start my business at home with maybe the help of my sisters. This would save me start up costs. The only employee would be a delivery driver and if that is unfeasible, then I would try to get a friend or relative to do deliveries.

1. My most important resource would probably be my hard work ethic. Since I won't hire any outside help (at least in the beginning) the brunt of the work would fall on me. If I would like to see my venture succeed then I would have to make sure to work extra hard.

2. What's next for my venture: probably expanding my target market. I would eventually like to include others that are not necessarily on a soft-food diet. One of my main meals would be soups and that could be appealing to someone who is sick or someone who want a hot meal in the winter.

3. Assuming I launched I would like to see my venture expand throughout the state and neighboring states after the first five years. After ten years, I would like my venture to expand nationwide. With this, I would be able to cater to wider selection of people and would perhaps also increase some of the menu items. The first venture would help me achieve this because every business needs to start somewhere.