Lesson 9

This week has been a really great week for me and I learned a lot of things. The focus of this week was process improvements. I have never paid that close of attention to process improvements or why they are important but as we began learning about it this week I realized I have been a part of many informal process improvements where I work and even a couple of very big ones that were not talked about as process improvements but that is what they are. As we learned about process improvements we looked at the story of Burt’s Bees and how it began. Several years into the business Roxanne who started Burt’s Bees realized that for her company to grow things were going to have to change. They moved to North Carolina where Roxanne realized that to be successful and grow the current processes weren’t going to work. At the time everything was made by hand and required a lot of labor which was expensive. That is when she began automating the processes of her company so that her products could be mass produced quickly, efficiently and as cost effectively as possible. This story and the other information we studied this week made me realize just how important processes are for a company.

For my $100 project business, this week was great. I went from very little in the way of sales to over $100 in profit this week. I realized this week that patience and persistence are key to meeting goals and making your company successful. I really started talking my business up and spreading my business cards around and that made a huge difference. People from work began talking about my products and I began getting more sales. One of my products completely sold out this week and I am beginning to real feel the excitement growing in my company. I am not ready to give it up, I have so many more ideas of products I could add and ways to make my company better. This has been one of my favorite classes I have taken so far and I really enjoy everything I learned while doing this project this semester.