21A-Reading Reflection No.2

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

1. The book is a living biography that focuses on the life of Elon Musk from his childhood up to his ascension in the business world.

2. Musk didn't just jump in with his first idea, he spent months studying the aerospace industry and the physics behind it before presenting his conclusions. This is how he figured out that rockets could be made cheaper than the Russians were offering and this is how Musk would get people to think about exploring space again. Similarly, with our last assignment, we had to expand our social capital and I think this goes hand in hand with what Musk did. By learning more about the industry, Musk was able to broaden his original idea.

3. If I had to design an exercise for the class based on what I've read it would be to build a model of our product. Sometimes you don't realize how impractical something is until you try to do a sample of the actual product. Or, you'll see your creation and see the areas that need the most work. It wouldn't have to be something big, but if your idea included an app, for this exercise you could look into what would go into creating a new app. If your idea included food or something physical, you could look into making a tangible item.

4. I knew before reading the book that Musk was a brilliant man and a successful businessman, however I did not expect the part of the book where it said that Musk ran out of money at the end of 2008, or that he depended on friends for a while to make payroll from week to week while he negotiated with investors. His tenacity is also surprising. Not a lot of people would've been able to resurface after a setback like that.

20A Growing Your Social Capital

Domain Expert:
1. Juan Robles, he is a cook for the Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock.
3. I met him by chance on one of my translations jobs. While we were waiting to help others, he told me about his day job and how he loves to cook.
4. He told me that he's always looking to try new recipes and is up for a new challenge.
5. He would be an asset to my new business idea, for several reasons: one he knows how to optimally prep food in order to cook it in a short amount of time and my goal is to deliver within 45 minutes. Two, since he cooks for people everyday, he would know best how to season a dish so that the majority of people will be pleased.

Market Expert:
1. Wendell Thompson, he is a dentist in Little Rock.
2. I met him several years ago when we first started to go to church together.
4. He was helpful in determining the kinds of foods most people are able to enjoy after oral surgery and giving suggestions in others that I hadn't thought about.
5. Since my product would target those that would be sensitive to solid food, knowing a dentist and their network would be beneficial in aquiring a clientele pool.

Supplier Expert:
1. Sara Martin, she is a driver/deliverer for online groceries.
3. I met her at my job when I had to help dispense orders and I gave one to her for a home delivery instead of a pickup.
3. She was really nice and informative about how the home delivery system works and the distance from the store that she usually travels.
4. I am considering delivery my homemade meals to people directly to their homes and if that was the case I would need access to a third-party delivery service unless I was able to do it myself and she would be a good initial contact.

All these people were people that I already knew, however this exercise made me realize that someone I met by mere coincidence turned out to be someone who could be extremely beneficial for my service and made me realize that we're always networking, whether we acknowledge it in the moment or not. Due to this exercise, I will be more conscience about how someone will affect my network and be more considerate to those that I would not have previously considered important to my network,.

19A Idea Napkin No. 2

1.  My name is Katia Bautista and I'm a Business Administration major. I love to cook, and I've always enjoyed watching my mother and sisters cook as well while learning from them. I know that oral surgery can be tough on others and being restricted on a soft food diet can be difficult. However, I believe others will enjoy my food especially since it'll include some traditional spanish foods that will be easy to eat.

2. I am offering homemade soft food meals for those that are sensitive to solid foods. My service will include more than just mashed potatoes and soups and will offer a variety of desserts including jello, pudding, and arroz con leche. It will have a variety of options for lunch and dinner and will only be $15/day.

3. My service is targeted for people that have just undergone oral surgery, whether it was having their wisdom teeth removed or needing to get dentures. For this reason, either my customers will be older or a young adult.

4. Customers that are just getting their wisdom teeth taken out may not care as much since their recovery time is a lot faster than those getting dentures. The older customers, however, will enjoy this service because they won't have to come up with creative meals to enjoy on a daily basis. Especially since up to this point these people have probably eaten solid food everyday, my service will take care of the uncertainty of scrambling to whip something up that they are able to eat while providing a full meal.

5. I saw the process that some of my family members went through while readjusting and I just want to make that readjustment period easier for other people so they can focus on healing instead of what they can eat.

I changed my original business idea, not because I no longer believed in it, but because I want to explore a different idea. Because of that, it's difficult to apply the feedback I received last time to this post, but some feedback I received was how it was nice to have a niche target audience and I hope I kept the same sentiment with this idea. Compared to my last attempt I believe that the elements go together a bit better this time around.

18A Create a Customer Avatar

My customers would be your average working adult that had just obtained some dentures and are on a soft food diet. The only thing they all would have in common is that they never had to think about whole meals containing only soft foods. Since they and their spouse  probably have full time jobs, they don't have a lot of time to come up with creative  and filling meals which is why they utilize my service. They need a warm meal ready for them for when they get off a long day at work and just want to go home and relax by either reading a book or watching tv. And since they are still in some pain (at least the first couple of days) they don't want to do more than they have to. Since they needed to get dentures and these days a lot of people have moderately good dental benefits, most of my customers will be 50+ years old. That means that their kids are probably grown and moved to another state and they live by themselves, maybe with their spouse if they have one. While my customer's could have family members that would help them out, my service would appeal more to those that don't have any immediate family in the area.

What I have in common with these customers is that any one of them could have been a family member. They could have been my mom or dad, grandmother or grandfather, and so on and so on. Speaking from previous experience, I felt utterly useless when my family member had to get dentures and they were in pain. The first three days they hardly ate and when they finally did, they complained about the bland food or how it wasn't filling them up but they couldn't stand the pain in order to keep eating. As far as it being a coincidence that my customer has something in common with me, it's not. I remembered what it was like for my family member and based it off of them.

14A Halfway Reflection

1) In order to keep up with this course, you need to be able to set time apart each week in order to complete the assignment. In other words you need to be self-disciplined and proactive.

2) If I'm telling the truth, there have been several moments when I've felt like 'giving up' both in life and in this course. I usually get that dreaded feeling of 'giving up' when I feel overwhelmed and I just want to hit the restart button and just wipe the slate clean. But then, I get a moment when I'm able to reflect on what's happening and I push myself to keep going by telling myself that my goal is just within reach and if I keep going I can achieve it faster. Also giving up gets you nowhere, and you end up losing more than just your credits. You lose all the time you invested in the class and you have nothing to show for what you actually did. Having a tenacious attitude is something that I have to work on every day and sometimes the only thing that keeps me from giving up is knowing that someone else is able to do the exact same assignments and remembering something that my mom has always said "If someone else can do it, so can I". She said this when she was raising my brother and sister and I as a single mother. There were several times when she thought she couldn't raise us by herself but then she would see another single mom with four kids and she would think, "If she can handle four then I can definitely handle three". From this I draw the same mindset: if someone can do school, work full time and still be a good parent to their kids, then I definitely don't have room to complain when I only have school and a full time job.

3) The first tip I would offer is to keep yourself as organized as possible. You can do this with a planner. I personally like that mine says 'Chaos Coordinator' because most of the time it really does feel like that's what it's doing. This will also help keep you from forgetting to do any assignments. The Second is to not procrastinate: this will ensure you have plenty of time to complete all assignments to the best of your abilities. The Third, is to really pay attention to everything Dr. Pryor says. This'll help develop a tenacious mind which is something you'll need as an entrepreneur. It's very likely that you won't succeed the first time you try to set up your own business, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn in that failure. What really show's a tenacious attitude is being able to pick yourself up and try again.

13A Reading Reflection No. 1

1) You read about an Entrepreneur:

• The first time I heard about the Wright brothers (which was several years ago before I even learned about WWI) and I learned that they flew the world's first successful airplane I was surprised by the year they were able to accomplish such a feat. In my head, up till that point, I had thought that all this took place in the fifties. Imagine my surprise when I realized they accomplished this in 1903.
• What I most admire from the Wright brothers is their fearlessness. They knew they were risking their lives every time they tested their contraptions, yet they did it anyway over and over again.
• What I least admire is how hypercritical they were, of each other and of others. I understand that sometimes criticism can lead to growth but too much of one thing can be counterproductive.
• The Wright brothers encountered adversity and failure time and time again. Each time they would pick themselves up (sometimes literally) and try again.

2) What competencies did you notice that the Entrepreneur exhibit?

The first and obvious one is that the Wright brothers were hard workers. They obviously also had vision and great observational skills which came in handy when they observed the way birds angled themselves in flight. But apart from that, the Wright brothers also had a mechanical background. For years, before attempting flight, they worked on bikes. But I would say that their biggest competency is that they never stopped learning. 

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you?

The lawsuits surrounding the patents. I just got lost and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

• The first thing I would ask is how did your personal experiences impact your decisions when it came to your projects? I would ask this because I believe that experiences mold people in different ways and is what causes them to make certain decisions they wouldn't have before the experience.
• What did you feel the first time that your airplane successfully stayed in the air? I know that they must've felt exhilarated the first time they successfully flew but I want to know what they felt immediately after. Where they disappointed that they no longer had something to perfect? Did they immediately start thinking about the next thing they should move onto? Or did they feel contentment and think they could finally rest?

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

Based on the book, I would say the brothers thought hard work was something everyone should engage in six of the seven days of the week. The book even says at one point that the brothers were almost always doing something and it was a rare occurrence when they did nothing. For them "hard work was a conviction, and they were at their best and happiest working together on their own projects..." 

I agree with their opinion though I will admit that I find it hard to work enjoy work everyday, although I attribute that to me not finding 'THE' perfect job. I once had an art teacher who said that she got paid to play and have fun and that the best job is the one that doesn't feel like you're working even though you are. I hope to find that one day, to find a job that enjoy so much that I don't feel like I'm working.

11A Idea Napkin No.1

1) Hi, my name is Katia Bautista and this is my first year at UF. I am a Business Administration major. I aspire to be able to make changes in my community and continue or add on to the great work that other wonderful people have already started in making Little Rock a more eco-friendly city. This would, of course have me acknowledge the aspects of my life where I can reduce my carbon footprint.

2) With this type of service it may be easier to partner with an existing organization so that we could pull our resources together. In this case I would reach out to iMatter Youth Movement which has members all over the country and just bring some of their base models to Arkansas.

3) In this case I would start by offering this to other students through the Mayor's Youth Council (which is a volunteer organization that I am a member of). I do believe that our youth has to be better educated on the effects of climate change so that they can start making more conscience decisions on the aspects of their life that have a lingering effect on their personal greenhouse gas emissions.

4) They would care because this is not an issue that affects only one person or a specific group of persons, but it affects everyone. If they're not feeling those effects right now, then they will at some point in their future. The severity of those effects depend on the steps we take now in order to reduce the worst of it.

5) What makes this different is that by partnering with iMatter Youth Movement, I would be able to take something that I know works (because it was successful in their city) and tweak it in order to make it meet the needs of my city. I could focus on the aspects that Little Rock hasn't already addressed. Arkansas is called the "Natural State" and  "Keep Arkansas Beautiful" is something a lot of people take seriously, and the way to do that is to make Arkansas greener, by implementing more eco-friendly solutions to our everyday life.

While I have an idea of where I want to start, I know that I need to flesh out exactly where I want to focus a green initiative idea here in Arkansas. I know the group of people I want to work with, but as far as do I want to focus on more on a program that will make accessing energy efficient equipment more affordable or do I want to focus more on awareness. I think once I decide that, everything else will become a little easier.