Entrepreneurship in Action

I am in an Entrepreneurship class in which I am learning a ton.  In the course of the class we have learned many of the basic steps to come up with a business idea, validate it, and then take it to the market.

The first step is to identify a pain point, something that is an irritation or pain to customers. A big pain point that one of the members of my group mentioned, is scrapping off the ice on your windshield in the mornings.  So we ran with it.  We came up with the idea of a car cover that would prevent ice from forming on your windshield, preventing one from staying out in the cold scraping ice, freezing their hands off.

My team after doing basic market research (asking people).  We found that for people to be interested in such a cover, it would have easy to put on and off.  After thinking of many possible solutions, and adjusting those ideas we came up with two models.

                   The Sheet Model                            &                      The Accordion Model        

  

Both models use magnets to cover your windshield. The difference is in the putting on and taking off of the products.  One can be wrapped up while the other is folded.  

The thing that I have learned the most from the class is that any business it is all about your customers and what they want.   Too many companies spend millions of dollars in resources and time, in developing products that people don't want.  They could have known if their product would have satisfied their customers if they would have done one simple thing - ask them.  

Most businesses fail, but if you fail fast and fail often, you will eventually find your golden goose.  

That is what I learned the most from this class.  

But hey? What do you think?  Would you rather use the sheet model or the accordion model?

I am probably not going to take this idea to market, but I would still love to hear what you have to say, so click on the link and tell me what you think.

 Share your opinion here

Remote Meeting

This week I had a meeting online using the modern technology of video group chat.  My team used a google program to host our meeting.  It seems common place, but this technology is amazing.  I remember as I child I was in awe when I watched Pokemon and professor Oaks talked to Ash through a phone that showed the other person through video.  Today that technology not only exists but is also common place. 

Online interactivity is extremely useful for many reasons.  One time I found my roommate on a “date” with his girlfriend in Italy, they were watching a movie together through their tablets!  The greatest advantage of group video conference calls is convenience.  Because everyone in my group has different schedules, we couldn’t all be together until 9:45 p.m.  Trying to find and get to a physical location that late at night would have been such a pain, but we were able to do it from the comfort of our homes.

There are disadvantages however.  For instance, it can be really easy to have technological difficulties.  Case in point, I couldn’t get my side of the video chat to work for like 10 minutes, which was very frustrating to me and my team.  Many times things become laggy and it is hard to understand what people are saying.  I think video conferences should be used when the convenience is a very high priority. Through my experience I observed that quality is definitely better in the traditional face to face meeting.

I will definitely try to utilize today’s technologies more often.  I will still be mindful however, that technology brings new good ways to do things, but it maybe does not always bring the best ways.

It's March, and there's Madness

This is probably one of my favorite times of year- The NCAA tournament!  I am not a basketball guru or anything but I love that co-workers, friends, and family can all come together, and unlike most sporting events, everyone can participate.  Everyone is invested. 

So just like every year there are upsets.  For me it Baylor is always a team that destroys my bracket.  I cannot believe it.  Watching the end of the game, the other team made a crazy end of the game miracle deep three.  A shot that easily could have missed; it could be said games are won by centimeters. 

So in my apartment we made a group.  And we made a bracket for our good friend Phil (Phil by the way is a plant in our apartment that we named - yes we are crazy) Well Phil’s bracket got absolutely destroyed in one of the very first games of the tournament.  The team he had winning the entire tournament was upset and lost by one point = why the tournament is known as March madness.

Something I have learned from this is just how useless we are at predicting the future, (granted Phil is only a couple years old so we will cut him some slack).  Even the experts have no clue what is going to happen.  The same is true for my major, finance.  In finance we are constantly trying to forecast the future.  But the truth is it can’t be done.  If it could everyone would be filthy rich.

We can make good guesses but our good guesses are often wrong.  This applies to personal life as well.  It is important to never be over confident that you know what reality is.  I am 21, so I know a lot, right? Well there are 6 billion people, with an average age of 30 that is 180,000,000,000 billion years lived compared to my 21.  This puts things into perspective a little bit. 

I am going live my life making the best choices that I can given the knowledge that I have, but I am going to make a point to not become overconfident in my abilities or in my opinion.  I will always keep trying to figure out what the “madness” of this life is all about, but will expect to get things wrong once in a while. But the good news is that just because I am wrong doesn’t mean I am not learning. 

Coming Home

This week my friend who I trained on a two year mission just arrived home.  It caused me to reflect that I have been back in America for ten months now.  Much has happened in these ten months.  Yet I always wonder what more I could be doing with my life. 

Elder Thompson who got home this Wednesday is going to be going through a transition into non-missionary life.  It was something many people here in the Provo area go through.  I remember on the mission Elder Thompson and I would talk about life back home.  What we had done, and what we planned on doing.  We imagined what it would be like.  Two years is a long time. 

It is really interesting to me to see how things have changed.  I am in the thick of life with classes and such that I rarely take time to have a good reflective view on my life as I had did the mission.  I think that it is really important to always take a good inventory of our lives and our goals.  I want to more regularly consider the larger scope of my life.  To not get so lost in the thousands of things that I have to do.  If we take our lives in perspective more often I think that we can plan for, and end up having more meaningful lives.  

The measure of success

What is success? We measure ourselves, and when we improve on our measurements we feel good.  This is normal but how often do we actually deserve the success that we obtain.  Is there really a measure of merit that correlates with success in this life?

This week I had a finance test.  I did really well, I got 100% on it!  Which is awesome.  I feel really good, life is great, etc. etc.  The thing that I just don’t get is that I studied for half of the time that I did for the first finance test, and on that one I didn’t do so well. 

If it is just luck or the difficultly of the different tests then why do we still feel so much satisfaction when we do really well.  Maybe we need to just detach ourselves, this way when we score poorly we won’t feel upset either. 

I have thought a lot about these things in my entrepreneurship class.  The teacher who has sold businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars, has told us straight, I got lucky.  That luck is a huge part of being successful.  If it is luck, being at the right place in the right time, then what is the point?

While I am not about to quite trying, I am going to avoid stressing myself out about outcomes that I don’t have full control over.  I will do my part, and be happy with whatever is the result-- though it never hurts to get a 100%. 

Salsa Dancing

I learned something new this week! I learned how to salsa dance! Well … pretend to salsa dance at least. 

I have a friend at work who is from Columbia and has been trying to get me to come to Salsa club with her for months, and getting me to come to salsa club is no easy task.  If you were to ask my friends my hobbies, dancing is not something that you’d hear.  I just never have been the biggest fan of dancing.  But my friends persistence paid off and I she finally broke me. 

Well, I still don’t really dance, but it was a lot of fun, or a lot of ‘funny’ rather (for the witness of my dancing crimes that is).  But definitely a positive experience and who knows if that is the last time that I will go to a dancing club, be it country dancing, square dancing or whatever.

The thing I learned is that is good to try out new things.  I’ll admit that I am an awkward person that is often out of my comfort zone, but believe me I don’t going looking for opportunities to embarrass myself.  But maybe I should.  Going out of your way and trying new things can give one a broader perspective on the world. 

I don’t think I am going to try to become a talented salsa dancer or anything, in fact I know I won’t.  But I can now say that I have done it.  I don’t have to say that I would be a horrible dancer, now I have confirmation.   

I am going to make sure that I jump on future opportunities to learn new things, especially things that I have never tried before.  Who knows I may find a passion or hobby that I didn’t know existed.

Cosmic brownie vs. Tillamook yogurt.

At the end of last week I started to feel a cold coming on.  I didn’t pay much attention to it, until the next week.  While I was bemoaning and coughing Monday which was really sad because it was holiday, I began to consider my health.  I realized that maybe there is more that I could do to keep myself healthy. 

Being a college student it can be hard to eat healthy foods and when you are feeling sick it probably isn’t a good idea to go to drink a gallon of Tampico, eat at Waffle Love, and down a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.   –hence I got sick.

I am not a health major but I feel that sugar is really bad when you are trying not to catch a cold.  So to recover as quickly as I could I decided to get extra sleep and restrain myself from consuming sugary foods, it was hard.

My first temptation: A cosmic brownie. 

I went shopping with a friend who bought a box of Cosmic brownies.  After sampling a piece of one I was offered one for myself, which I obviously accepted.  But then I remembered my goal.  This brownie surely would be the end of me.  So I was strong, and I put it away to save it for later. 

Because I had just gone shopping I sat down and pulled out a Tillamook yogurt, harmless I thought.  Out of curiosity I decided to see how much sugar was in my nice little yogurt . . . 27 grams! What? I jumped over and took the box of brownies from my friend, 26 grams! 

I was shocked.  A yogurt has more sugar than a cosmic brownie?

Being healthy is hard work.  I think that we have stigmas with certain foods.  In reality there is so much unsolicited junk food all around us.  I am going to try to educate myself on the foods that I eat.  This will be a good habit that will either lead me to eating healthy, or, realistically, just end up helping me justify eating a good old cosmic brownie.