Lesson 7

This week was a great week to learn about leadership qualities. Not only did we study leadership in class this week but I also focused on leadership at work as part of the employee Leadership Academy. If you think about who the greatest leader of all time was most people begin to think about Jesus Christ. He was the perfect example of many things including leadership. He lead by example as shown when he said "come follow me". Nothing was below Christ, he showed this by washing his disciples feet, this simple act also showed how much he loved and cared for those who followed him. One of the things that was brought up was that Christ operated on fixed principles and because of this his leadership was consistent.

As leaders we need to be willing to put our pride to the side and be willing to help our employees and those we lead to really grow and get an opportunity to learn. We also need to be willing to listen to them and show them that we value and trust their opinions. Employees more than anything want to be heard and they want to feel valued. Leadership is how this happens. Through showing love and respect for those we lead we help them grow and develop and this allows are company to grow as well. I really enjoyed learning about leadership this week.

While I really enjoyed learning about leadership I really struggled with my $100 project this week. I launched my website, Facebook page and marketing campaign this week and nothing happened. I was sure that I would get a huge influx of people wanting to buy my product but that is not what happened, I had a ton of people visit my website and I only had 1 purchase. It is really frustrating because I feel like I have a great product to offer but it is not being viewed that way. I have asked a couple of people for suggestions on how to make my website better and I have shifted my focus from social media marketing (which I will continue to do) to talking to everyone I know about my business. I am printing business cards to hand out and I hope by networking and talking to people that I will be able to generate more sales.  

Lesson 6

This week I had the opportunity to learn more about customer service and developing and philosophy that drives your company.  We had the opportunity to learn about Zappos who has developed a culture or philosophy of customer service. When an employee is hired they are put through training and on the first day of training they are offered $2000 dollars to quit.  They use this as a way to eliminate those employees that are only there for a paycheck instead of serving the customers. Each employee spends for weeks of call center/customer service training followed by 2 weeks working in the call center. It doesn’t matter if they are an accountant or an IT manager, there philosophy is customer service and each employee is trained to work with and understand the importance of customer service.

I also found it really interesting to learn about different customer growth focuses. There are 2 ways to grow your customer base, the first is through marketing to gain new employees and the second is to focus on the customers you have and design offerings that meet their needs so you will gain more money from each customer. The second option is the most efficient and cost effective method and that is why customer service is so important. My dad and I were talking about this today. He works for a company that does not value their employees and does not give them the proper tools to offer great customer service. The company has been losing customers because the employees are unhappy and are not offering the customer service needed to maintain customer relations. The success of any company lies in their ability to provide service that keeps customers coming back, if you don’t treat your customers right another company will.

For my $100-dollar project I am not as far along as I wanted to be. I do not have my website completed but I did get professional pictures of all of my products. I have all of my samples done and I picked up the last of the materials I need to produce the products for sell. This weekend I will have my website completed and I will have it linked to a Facebook page I created for my company. While I have not been able to get as much done as I hoped I am happy with what I have done so far and I am excited to start selling my products next week.  

Lesson 5

This week I learned a lot about marketing.  This week I had a lot of time to think about marketing as I start up my own company and as my dad is asking for some advice on the brand we are launching as part of our family business.  The ting I enjoyed most this week was the article about the purple cow. It really showed me that the point behind any successful business is finding a need to fulfill or finding a new way to fulfill a need that is not already being done. The point of the purple cow is standing out and not doing the same boring things that everyone else is doing. It really made me look at my $100 project business. It is not a new revolutionary but there are aspects of it that are. My products are not processed in a huge factory; they are repurposed materials that give new life to wood that would have otherwise rotted away. That does make me stand out a little bit but I will need to come up with something more revolutionary as I prepare to market my product. I also had the opportunity to talk to my dad this week about a new addition we are bringing into our family entertainment company. We are adding a photo booth and as we talked we both realize that it is not something new or revolutionary, it is something that has been around for a while but it is different than any other photo booth in our area.  We talked about how we can turn this opportunity into a purple cow and the thing that popped into my head from the article was, if you could pick any client to market too who would it be. Most companies are focusing on weddings which is big money but that market is pretty saturated. We talked about focusing on corporate clients and focusing on the aspect that we can attach their logo and get client printout reports at the end of the event. By focusing on aspects that no one else is focusing on we can create a purple cow opportunity.

I really enjoyed learning about marketing this week and applying what I am learning, but I also enjoyed working on my $100 product company. This week I got all of my samples together and took pictures to put on my website. This weekend I will finish my website and begin marketing my product. Everything is going well so far. I plan on using a website to sell my product. I will see how much revenue I am able to generate from that and social media. I may end up creating an ebay store as well like other members of the class are doing. 

Lesson 4

This week was another very interesting and beneficial week learning about entrepreneurial business. We focused primarily on funding and fundraising. I went into this week after completing my one page business plan last week and thought I had a good understanding of costs for starting my $100 project business. The funny thing about startup funding is that it really makes you go back and look at the numbers. I began thinking about all the costs and whether the $20 startup capital I put in my business plan would be enough. Through double checking everything I found that I had forgotten to include the costs for one of my products and I had underestimated the costs of my website. It turns out the real number needed was almost double what I originally thought. This taught me a very important lesson, double check and triple check your numbers before going to get funding. You don't want to set yourself up for failure by under funding your business from the get go.

As I really looked at getting a solid number I realized that I had overlooked some important aspects of choosing my website hosting. I had looked at yearly costs instead of monthly costs and I had not considered Credit card processing, tech support, or inventory and order management. I ultimately went with the Hosting that was $5 more because it included a lot of the added features and benefits.

I also really enjoyed reading and learning about fundraising this week, a couple of words of advice that really stuck with me are, "when you go asking for money you will likely get advice, but when you ask for advice you may very well get money." This really stuck out to me, fundraising is about relationship building, by asking for advice and taking time to get to know the people who can help you, you are more likely to build a repor that will make investors more comfortable investing in your idea.   "The second was if you can get venture capital take it, but if you can do not spend it." Guy Kawasaki said that taking money and then spending it can really change a business. If you don't have to use money you get, don't. He said that he made that mistake and warns against others making the same mistake. Over all I learned a lot this week and I am excited to get my business up and going.