Week 15 Reading Reflection

This week we had to read an article in the Harvard Business Review. I liked the switch from a reading in Kuratko because it gives us different business perspectives. After reading the article, the biggest surprise was the gang of bad guys trying to extort money and SKS walking away from $285,000. I feel that the author, Akula, was confusing with his transitions. If I could ask the author a question it would be why did his company, SKS Microfinance, didn't think of the problem before hand. Overall I think it was an interesting read into Microfinance, I think the author was insightful and I enjoyed his examples I don't believe he was wrong about anything.

Final Reflection

1) Reflecting on the highs and lows this semester in this course was interesting. I started the semester off strong, I had every assignment written down in my planner. However, as the time passed I still wrote my assignments down but I lingered to a few days before due date to complete my assignment. This procrastination was a low point for me in this class. My high points were completing the assignment, I really enjoyed how the assignments in this class are structured. I like to write so creating my own blog was exciting.

2) The experience that I'll remember forever was the first time I tried to give an elevator pitch. I thought I "had it in the bag" but when the camera started recording I choked. However I tried again and eventually was able to present a great elevator pitch. I am really proud that I learned to not be afraid of having to speak on the spot.

3) I do see myself as an entrepreneur. I feel that I have developed the entrepreneurial mindset throughout this class. I believe everyone thinks like entrepreneurs but some just take their ideas a step further and turn it into reality.

4) I would recommend that future students now how to time manage well. This class will be good to you if you make time for it. This class has a lot of assignments and if you get lazy they will creep up on you. I would recommend buying a planner to write down all the course work for the week so that you never forget an assignment.

Elevator Pitch No. 4

For my last elevator pitch I decided I would give it my all. I worked hard to use all the criticism I received on my previous elevator pitches and make this last elevator pitch great! I tried not to seem nervous( which was one comment I received) and be direct and on topic. Hope you enjoy my elevator pitch. In my elevator pitch I mentioned that I have a website for my buisness venture "Rent A Scooter". I don't have a website but if I took my venture into reality I would have one and would use it for an elevator pitch. 

Venture Concept No. 2

Good Evening Bloggers,

    The business venture I have conceptualized is Rent A Scooter. I believe Rent A Scooter is a great business idea around large universities. The customers we would be attracting would be students. From the data I have collected on previous assignments on asking random students survey questions on my concept, I have come to the conclusion that transportation around campus has become a problem. According to students, parking on campus is impossible. Parking has lead to tardies in classes and parking tickets. There are many times I wish I could rent a scooter on campus to get to my destination. The feed back I received on my Venture Concept No. 1 was very helpful.
     I received comments that stated that they believed that my venture concept would thrive around college towns and that it had a lot of potential. Another person commented saying that they liked my concept but suggests that I add renting bikes to my store. Almost every person commented on how expensive it is for not only students but teachers too to park on campus!
   Based on the feedback I received I have thought about different ways to go about the price of Renting A Scooter. I was thinking possibly $5 on hour. I don't think that is too expensive. I also would really want to initiate the monthly membership. Those who buy a monthly membership pay less per hour than those that don't have a monthly membership. I don't know the specific cost yet for that but I think it is a good idea.

Week 14 Reading Reflection

This week we had to read chapter 3 & 4 titled The Entrepreneurial Mind-Set in Organizations-Corporate Entrepreneurship  / Social Entreprenuership and the Ethical Challenges of Entrepreneurship. These chapters took me a long time to read but I learned a lot. Though both chapters were interesting to read, chapter 4 caught my attention. I love social media (Facebook, Instagram, snapchat) so I was most interested in what Kuratko had to say about social media being a great source for recognition and optimal opportunities. The biggest surprise to me in the reading was the section on environmental awareness. I think this is a great way to positively use social media to help society. I can easily think of an example of this that I encountered recently via one of my other classes. Honey bees are used to help grow a majority of the U.S crops. Honey Bee's pollinate thousands of flowers a week making them a great source for farmers. Recently honey bee's have been disappearing due to pesticides and diseases. Johnson and Johnson and Bert's Bees have used Youtube and Instagram in their campaign to save the bees!I think these companies positively used social media to help the honey bees.  Moving back to the chapter, the section that confused me was ecovision. I have a couple questions for Kuratko, has any companies strive to gain recognition via social media gone south? How easy was it for the company to recover? I could not disagree with any of Kuratko's work I believe he was correct and social media is a great way to gain opportunities.

GOOGLE GOLD

My strategy to make my website have the best SEO was to make my blog interesting and appealing for readers. I wanted to make my blog posts similar to reading a short story. I tried to make my readers feel that they too were building my business venture. That was how I wanted to attract readers back to my blog. Based on my strategy I detailed, I didn't choose any keywords that I used over the course of my blog. Using Youtube to help me spread the word about my blog, didn't help me as much as I thought it would. I felt that the social media outlet didn't help gain my blog much SEO. My most viral post was The Twenty Percent, gaining a total of 7 comments and 21 views. I was very happy with this outcome. I think that The Twenty Percent gained the most traffic because of the photos I included of my home town as well as the videos. I searched in google : beauty obsessed blog business venture. I was on the first page of google! I included a screen shot of my blog in the google search page. 

Very Short Interview, Part 2

 Looking back on my initial interview with Mr. Mansour,  I feel that the interview went well and I learned key concept on the principle of entrepreneurship. From my initial interview I learned that as an entrepreneur one must be independent to be able to pursue ones goals and dreams. One must be confident in his/her ideas as well as confident in running a company.
  I was able to visit this entrepreneur again and ask him a couple questions. Here are the questions I asked as well as Mr. Mansour's answers.

• 1st Question:Where you confident that your first product your company produced would succeed. 

           Mr. Mansour: " I was confident. I developed a product that I believed was necessary in the market."

• 2nd Question: Did you prepare for the possibility of your company not succeeding?

          Mr. Mansour: "I tried not do think about failure too much. I hoped that my product would succeed....also I had conducted a lot of research on the demand for my product. So although the failure rate is high for start up companies I relied on my research and support to follow through with my goal."

• 3rd Question:  How do you deal with failure? 

          Mr. Mansour: " Failure is part of success....success doesn't come without bumps in the road. Failure teaches me to fix what I did wrong and better my products."

Reflection: Compared to three months ago I feel confident in the questions I asked him this time around. I know that failure is a big part of starting a company because not everything will go smoothly in the beginning.