The Twenty Percent

As of yesterday, I have spent my spring break here in a small town located in North Carolina. Next door, there is a middle aged women whose created a business of her own in which she rents out cabins to people interested in renting them out during the season. Inside her main office cabin, she also sells her homemade soaps, jellies, and lotions. Due to the location, her target customers are those that hike, ski, those that browse airbnb and those that want an escape and decide staying a few days in the middle of nowhere in the mountains is exactly what the needed. She finds her customers online because apparently the river that passes by her cabins has healing powers. She also finds the majority of them via Airbnb. Most come from south florida that are looking to see snow , and college students who drive up from their school for ski socials. The three targeted customers all came up to the mountains for the same reason. They wanted to bring their families to a place where there isn't much things going on and poor cell service that allows them to actually have sincere boding time. Being here is their way to escape the real world. With all the feedback I received, I can say that the entrepreneur does indeed know her customers needs and meet those needs .

Half-way Reflection

During my time in this course, I have developed several behavior that allowed me to succeed in this course. I've developed the skill to multitask and be able to organize my planner in a way that allowed to be able to know when to turn in assignments as well as turn them on time. In this course, I also became more confident at approaching random strangers on the street. 

There has been two occasions in which I almost gave up on doing an assignment for this course. I had an hour to turn in 5 video recordings of strangers giving their opinion on my business plan. Due to being sick, I wasn't in the greatest mood of talking to anyone. With great friends by my side, I was able to turn in my assignment . The following assignment also wanted a video recording but this time it was with me . Sick in bed, I decided to get up and stand by the wall and start recording 20 minutes before the deadline. Although it wasn't the greatest quality, I still turned in the assignment and received credit for it. With that being said, I can agree that I have developed a tenacious attitude during the last two months. 

Three tips I would give a student taking this course next semester are:

- Don't give up when you have to video strangers. They aren't as intimidating as you think they are.

- Plan ahead, download your videos atlas 30 minutes before the due time

- Although an easy class, be sure to be on top of your assignments, and remember this class isn't trying to fail you

Week 7 Reading Reflection

Reading the article, I came upon learning that companies learned that if they advertised someone who consumers wished they could be, then consumers would buy their product. This was surprising to read because I never really thought why they always had good looking people on there advertisments or why they used a certain story to sell there product. The most confusing part of the article in my opinion was reading the section on segmentation and collecting data to figure out how you can better a product or sell products based on the consumers likeness to it and their opinion on it. Working in retail, I know a little about what sells and what doesn't sell, but I never put much thought into how I know a certain product sells more than the other. If I were to ask the author two questions, I would ask is how is being overly concerned on whether your consumer likes your product detrimental to the company? How did this strategy even start in the first place? Throughout my reading, there wasn't one thing I disagreed with the author.

Free Money

During the exercise, I was a little hesitant on offering people a dollar because I didn't want to make them feel like I was soliciting them. To be on the safe side, I decided to stay around my house and confront my neighbors who were walking by. Giving them a dollar wasn't as hard as I thought it would be because if I wasn't making someone smile by offering them a dollar who some would have probably used it for good , I would have bought something that I probably don't need in the first place. The reactions from some of the folks I interviewed were surprising. I didn't realize how just by giving one dollar could impact someones life. I didn't post the video because it was too personal for them to give my permission to upload it. The ones that didn't want to take the dollar were those that were to busy jogging that I couldn't capture a video or ones that didn't want to be bothered because they had to head somewhere. Before filming, I knew one or two people wouldn't take my offer, because there are those that don't think it's right to take someones dollar because there are many people out there that need that dollar more than you whose able to attend UF and have a roof under your head.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

During my third round of videos, I received a lot of useful feedback. Although the majority of them were negative, it allowed me to realize the faults in my bike umbrella model such as the visibility of it if it were to rain. This kind of feedback made me go back to thinking on what ways can I improve my model? Well, I plan on installing small wind wipers as well as a heating system that will be powered by the sun using solar energy. Yes, it seems like the model will be big and bulky, but you will be able to retract it to a more smaller carry on size.

Week 6 Reading Reflection

During my reading, I came upon the topic "Threat of entry". What surprised me , was learning that new entrants to an industry bring the desire to gain market share which then puts pressure on the business's price , cost, etc. Reading this also brought a question to mind? How does a company diversify itself from other companies when there is so much innovation going on as well as how do they predict on whether or not they will out rank their competitors. Upon reading " The power of suppliers, the question on how does the supplier him/herself gain the most out of the value and price of the product compared to the business whose actually selling it to the public dawned on me. Normally I would think whoever bought the product from the supplier would then sell it for even more money unless of course, the company crashes. Although this is a question I'm asking, it is also a part of the reading that most confused me . During my reflection on the reading, I couldn't think of a topic that I disagreed on with the author.

Customer Interviews No. 3

                                       

Compared to my first round of interviews, this was more of a challenge. What surprised me the most was hearing the negative feedback on my product . I never thought to think about the affects of the rain may have on the cover itself such as fog. Without installed wipers or some sort of mechanism to stop the cover from being covered with fog, the rider will face many problems such as crashes. With all the feedback that I received, I hope to better design my product in a way that it will cause little to no problems for the buyer.