First Blog of the year! I am so excited to be getting back into the entrepreneurship course and begin to start creating and figuring out some of my own business ideas, as well as continue on the project that I started last year. Due to the current learning situation we are going to have to figure out new ways to run dire lights and continue to have business. This means that the tech department will be playing a very important role in this school year, in order to ensure our business continues to operate. A lot of what we we were working on last year will be perfect for the current circumstances. We were developing a better and updated website, as well as making an awesome catalog to be sent out showing off our products. These will both be more relevant and important than ever because they will be the main ways we will be able to market and continue to make money as a business. We will try and get this out as soon as possible so we are able to start making sales. It is very unfortunate that we cannot sell at events for now because that was our biggest source of income. We will need to work extra hard to publicize and market our candles so that we can keep the business alive.
The other thing I want to focus on this year is my business idea I came up with last year. I want to learn more about the competition, how to succeed in the market place, and learn the necessary skills to execute my idea. This is what I will be devoting my time to because I believe that my idea could be very useful and a strong relevant business. To do this I must first learn how to build the app, test it, get it started, and then do the hardest part which is publicizing it and getting people to use it. This is so important because even if all the hard work is put into it, it may all be for nothing if no one knows about it or decided to use it. I have many ideas of how I will be able to do this and great ways to keep expanding my business and keeping it relevant. I cannot wait to get into it and I really hope to create a successful app that everyone can use.
This is going to be an awesome year for entrepreneurship and I am greatly looking forward to it!
For this weeks reading I decided to do some financial research related to business. This is something I am very interested in and I think it will be very beneficial for direlights, my business idea, and my future career. The thing I decided to look into this week was how to get started investing. The article covered many of the basics and went over the different things you can invest your money into. The first and most important thing that I got out of the article is to start as soon as possible. This is due to the nature of stocks and compound interest and how they work. The earlier you start investing the more the money will be able to accumulate and compound in the long run. The best way to do this is through stocks, savings accounts, and and compound interest accounts.
The different ways you can invest in stocks are through individual stocks, mutual funds, and the S&P-500. These are all different risks/rewards and you should decide which to invest based on the amount of money, experience, and time you have. Individual stocks can be a lot more risky, but can also have a bigger payout. It really just depends, so you have to know what you're doing. The other options are less risky and can still be just effective. a mutual fund is a combination of a bunch of stocks, put together so you can have assets in different areas, which helps ensure you will always be doing good somewhere. the S&P 500, it is less risky and it can make you a lot of money in the long run. The idea should not be a get rich quick scheme, but rather you should be thinking about the long term and around 20 years in the future. This allows you to have ups and downs with your stocks and will give you time to accumulate a lot of money and experience.
This same principal applies to savings accounts you may be opening. While they are a much safer option, they increase in money a lot slower and unless you are investing the money or it is in a compounding account, your money in a savings account can be losing value due to inflation. This is why you always should always being trying to do something with your money to keep in it circulation. If your company offers a 401k program it is very wise to use this as an opportunity to save and make a lot of money. Often times when you invest in this, your company will match what you invest, effectively doubling your return. This is a great system in which you and the company benefit off one another. If this isn't an option a Roth IRA account may be the choice for you, but it is a completely individual account.
Using a method from each area(stocks, savings, compounding) early on is a great way to set yourself up for success in the future. I am planning to go further into these concepts next week and continue researching money and finance related topics to help expand my knowledge in business.
This week I decided to follow my Interest in the financial side of business. Last week I researched and blogged about finances and the best ways to invest and save your money. I talked about different ways to invest and different bank accounts you can have. I thought that the next thing to look into is how to even open and get a bank account going in the first place.
The first thing to start off with is what type of account you're looking to open. There are many accounts that are offered and once you pick a bank you will have a selection to chose from. These accounts/services are: Checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, Certificates of Deposits, and Loans. Based on what you're looking to do with your money you may use a different combination of these services. When running a business it is wise to expand for jus the basic checking account and also have various savings accounts, and possibly a money market account and some certificates of deposits. You can think of the last two as essentially investing options.
Once you decide on what you want from here, the process of starting the account begins. You will need to provide all of your personal information and verify your identity. You will also need to provide your financial history(which can affect the accounts you are opening) and then consent to all the terms. Once all these things are done, the account is almost set up, but to get it going there is one more step. This step is funding the account. To get all accounts going you will have to make an initial deposit. Deepening on the bank, the account, and the terms, there may be a certain amount for this, but essentially all that has to happen is money needs to enter the account to get it going. From here everything is good to go and you can start using the account.
Personally I think I would start off by opening a checking account and 2 savings accounts. One basic one that I allocate a set certain amount of funds to every time I get money, as well as another savings account that is a compounding one. This is where I'd be putting the majority of the money I save into. The compounding interest accounts make a ton of money over time, but it just takes awhile to get there. The regular savings accounts will be more for seeing immediate results and some increase in the money that was put into it.
With just these accounts it would be a great way to start off a business and start to get money saved while I learn to and start investing my money into stocks and other things that will let my money make money.
The week I decided to dive deeper into one of the financial topics I had covered in my previous posts. This topic was compound interest. I watched a video on what compound interest was and how it worked. In the video it covered several examples. It explained that compound interest is essentially interest on your interest. Meaning that the long you stay with it, the more it compounds, and the more it compounds on the compound. I know that sentence may not have made a lot of sense, but essentially the interest you get on your money is then added to the money you initially invested. From there that money is then the new amount that the new interest is taken from. Meaning that every time you receive interest the money you have in the account increases and the next time interest is taken it is taken form that bigger number.
While this may do very little at the start and may seem like you are making no money, the real money is made in the later years after it has been compounding for some time. Meaning that it is very important to invest in compound interest as early as you can so it can start compounding earlier on to get the bigger numbers later. Not only this, but you also want to make sure that you are not taking money out of this account. Only adding to it. If you take money out not only are you taxed and penalized, you also greatly affect the money that you have been compounding and it completely defeats the purpose if you take the money out.
The best strategy for compound interest is to invest in a personal account you setup or if your company you work for offers a 401k, that is a great route to go. I will not be getting into 401k or how that works now, but I plan to devote an entire post to that. Nevertheless, it is a great way to invest in compound interest. The thing to take into account is that if you switch companies you will need to transfer this money somehow so you can continue you compounding and making money in that account. Overall the important thing is to start early and only add to the account and maintain it, this way when you are ready to retire, you will have plenty of money waiting!
Continuing to follow my current theme of finance related posts, I dove into a topic that I briefly touched on in my last post. This topic being the 401k. This may be something you have heard and probably sounds familiar if you have ever heard people talking about finances or their jobs, but it may not be completely clear what it is. A 401k is an investment/retirement plan that is potentially offered to you by the company you work for and is in place to help you save money for retirement while you help the company out.
If a company offers a 401k there are different types that will be offered depending on the company. These include: Matching, Non-Elective, and Profit sharing accounts. The matching 401k which I think is the most recognized and common plan, works by the company investing the same amount of money as you into your account to “match” your investment. This is great because it is essentially doubling your investments and savings. The next type: Non-Elective works by the employer placing a set amount of money contribution into each employee's 401k amount. This means that everyone is getting the same contribution at a flat rate, regardless if they are contributing or not. Finally the last account I mentioned is the Profit sharing account. Basically if the company makes a profit, some of this money is then contributed to your plan and there are formulas that determine how much goes to who.
Now that the different types are covered, lets focus on the first type that was mentioned(Matching). There are a few more things that go into investing into a 401k besides the plan you chose. You also must decide(if you are given the option) if you want to pre or post taxes on your 401k money. This means do you want your money taxed before you put it into your account, or when you take it out. There is a strategy to this, but the basic thing to keep in mind is when you are in the middle to the end of your 401k investing(when you should be making more/the most money), you should be investing pre tax contributions. This is because the tax rate should not be as high when you go to take it out. Earlier on and when you are making less, you should probably opt for the other option.
These are some of the basics of 401k, but I will be covering the rest and continuing to dove further into 401k in my upcoming blog posts.
The past few weeks in entrepreneurship we have been working on hiring our new EM1 students. How this works is the EM1 students chose a department that they would like to join and be apart of and then they undergo an interview by the EM2 students who hold positions in the team. I conducted 2 of these interviews with the CTO of the tech department. we interviewed two EM1 students. One applied for the position of photographer, while the other applied for the web developer position. We prepared a several questions that we asked each student to get an idea about them and how they will work and interact with the other students on the team. These questions consisted of what experience they have related to the position, if they work well with others, and what they are planning to contribute to the team. We got great responses from both of the potential tech team members. They were very professional and I was very impressed by how well they answered the questions.
After finishing both of these interviews it was almost an instant yes to accepting both of them. They were very passionate about their positions and answered all the questions in a great way. I am greatly looking forward to working with both our new photographer and web developer on our upcoming projects and entrepreneurship work. I have changed my position from the photographer to the CTO of the tech department. I will be working in conjunction with our previous CTO and we will both hold this position. This will be helpful because we are both able to do the job well and have more people to oversee. Hopefully with this team we will be able to reach our goals we have set for this year and output very high quality work!
I am going to be focusing on the catalog with our other CTO. the 2 web designers will be focused on creating and tweaking our website, while our photographer takes photos to use for our catalog and our graphic designer makes the catalog designs and possibly the shirt design. We will all be contributing to the catalog in some way, but the CTO's will be the head of the plan and overseeing how everything will look and work. We want this catalog to be physical and on the website to help get sales for our business this year.
This week in entrepreneurship, we ran a get to know us style workshop in out departments. Each member of our department had something to share about ourselves and out position. The goal of this was to help the new incoming members to get to know us. I shared about my position of photographer and what I did last year and what a normal day would look like. I then briefed our new photographer on what kinds of things to expect to be doing as the photographer of dire lights. These were some of the things that I did last year and consisted of: taking photos of candles, staff, events, and the candle making process. Though some of these may be hard or not be able to be done yet, I am confident he will be able to find a way to get around these issues and produce great quality photos. After we were done sharing, it was then the new department members turns to share out. I heard a lot of great things from both our new photographer and web developer.
After we concluded share outs we went right into briefing our new team on what projects we are planning on working on and continuing from last year. We decided to focus on our catalog idea. We gave the team a summary of what it is and how we are planning on doing it. This is when we gave them an idea of how they will be contributing to the project and what we are hoping for. Everyone seemed very interested in the idea and we hope to get working on it soon. This will be our main goal throughout this year and this project. WE have to get this catalog on the website at the very least so we can have an appealing and functioning area of the site for our customers to shop and purchase our candles. As one of the CTO's I will be involved in each part of the project, but I will most likely be focused on helping the photographer and giving the web team info on how we want the site to look and be formatted.
Overall we are going to be working out best to get this up and running so we can have business this year. I will be reaching out and talking to the operations department soon to see what their thoughts are and figure out how the whole situation is going to work.
Over the past few weeks I had been looking into a lot of the personal finance side of business. This week I thought it would be interesting to look into what majors are related to these topics and what business type of major yields the most successful or highest paying careers. When first looking into this I came across several different articles with different results and information related to the question, but a trend that I commonly saw was that people who go into economics/finance/marketing and then pursue an MBA end up being the most successful on average.
This is a great route to go for many reasons. These majors are very useful if you are looking into a career in business and having an MBA is a very very sought after thing for employers in the business/career world. Having this can help set you apart from others and if you are good at what you do, you can really excel. Not to mention this will help you be more likely to receive promotions and receive them faster.
However, this is not the only statistic that is looked into. It is also important to pay attention to the percentage of people who get hired based on these majors. All of them are definitely useful, but there is a different amount of demand for some majors over others. For example, at the bachelors level there is a much higher percentage demand of someone with a finance degree over someone with a human relations degree. This is why it is important to look into the numbers and the specific field your going into to figure out the demand for your major and level of education. Overall the higher level of education and the more experience you have will help you excel in the business world when working for a company.
At the end of last week our department was tasked with ordering our new company T-shirts for this year. Last year I reached out to custom ink and was able to negotiate a great deal on the shirts for our company. This year I am hoping to do the same. I am going to try and find the name of the employee who helped us last time and see if they can offer us another deal since we are returning customers. I am hoping we will be able to receive some sort of benefit from them again so that we are able to save money.
This upcoming week I plan to make the call to the business after I look over our plans for the shirts. It is important that I know all the details before the call so that I can provide them with as much information as possible. If I do not have all the necessary information I will most likely have to call back and it can make it a hassle for whoever is helping us. Having everything ready to go and knowing what we want will be very helpful to the employee and hopefully they are inclined to help us in return.
Hopefully the call will be productive and I will get an estimate on the prices of our shirt order and when we will be able to receive them by. I know that we want them as soon as possible so it is important that I can figure everything out on the call with the business. Once This call is made and everything is figured out I will be talking to Ms. Stillitano to get any extra input and information and get the order approved. I want to make sure everything is the way we want it since we are spending a lot of money. I look forward to getting these shirts ordered and having brand new company shirts to wear this year!
After watching the cuesta webinar I learned about small business and local entrepreneurs. They all started out with an idea and or passion and though they didn't become millionaires overnight, they were able to learn and grow their own business and pursue what they wanted to do. They all had varying levels of success, but they all had unique backgrounds showing that wherever you might come from or whatever the idea is, you can put in the work to make it what you want and become successful. There may be a lot of trial an error and changing things, but the goal shouldn't be money. Most of them didn't become crazy rich, but they were their own boss and doing something they loved. It is very possible to become super successful with it also. It was just very interesting to see all the different people and backgrounds that ended up becoming entrepreneurs.
This week our department reached the final stages in ordering our EM2 T-Shirts. The previous week I had talked to a customink employee and submitted our designs for the shirts. I was able to receive an estimated quote and get a look as to what the shirts would look like. Unfortunately I was not able to find the same representative, but our design is still uploaded and ready to go. We have 2 design choices, both averaging around the same cost depending on the brand we decide on . All that is to choose the final design, reconfirm the sizing, and then order the shirts with the current holiday discount they are offering. The shirts are looking great, but the most important part of the process right now is to get the opinions of all EM2 students. We need everyone or the majority to vote on the shirt designs since we have two. I am hoping to get these results by first thing next week so that we can order the shirts and have them as soon as possible. I am not sure if receiving them before break is an option anymore, but they should be ready when we return.
Once we get the final decision I will be working with Ms. Stillittano to order the shirts. We will go over size and design final choices and then call custom ink to place the order. I will also be trying to see if we can receive any additional discounts or incentives because we are a returning customer. I am looking forward to getting these new shirts and hope they turn out well. I think they will correspond nicely to our existing entrepreneur shirts. I am hoping we will receive use of our shirts and get to wear them for company pictures and for potential selling events. If not they will be a great way to remember the class.
This week we started off operations again after our winter break. This week we had several meetings within our team and talked about plans we had for the upcoming semester and completed our presentation on the tech department. The presentation went well and the meetings were very informative as to what we want to do going into this semester. I will be working very closely with my Co-CTO in order to successfully get the catalog started and the page up on the website. My goal is to coordinate with both of our web developers to have them start making a template that is compatible with our website so that we can work smarter transferring out template. After we plan out the template I will be working with our photographer in order to take pictures of our different scents individually and in group shots. In order to do this, we need to get labels on our candles. Unfortunately I already reached out to the operation department and found out that none of the candles have labels. Because of this I will be talking to Ms. Stillittano this week and asking her how I get can get candles with labels to take pictures of for our catalog. This will be essential for us to be able to complete our catalog.
In addition to getting the candles to take the pictures we will need to figure out the backgrounds for our photos. I am hoping to to get some photos for our upcoming seasons for publicity. I am really hoping to focus on selling the candles from the current season to make the catalog more themed. For spring I am thinking of pictures of candles in the fog and then on a sunny day just after the rain. With all these plans I am going to need to get to work next week talking to a lot of people in our company. Once our team is able to figure our how we're going to accomplish everything I'm sure we will be very efficient and will accomplish our goal of finish the catalog
Very excited for what's to come in the next few weeks of entrepreneurship. Last week we started up our individual business projects again and I got back into my idea for last year. After starting to think about it again as well as some of the additions I wanted to make to my business design, I pitched my idea to the class to see if anyone else was interested in helping me with my idea. Even though I didn't have everything quite figure out yet I had a lot of people say that they were interested in my idea through the survey during class. I was actually very surprised that there were multiple people interested in helping me with my idea for my business. I am looking forward to working with my new team and figuring out how to turn the business into a reality.
Currently I have most of my ideas down and some detail on them, but I still need to figure out the more technical details and figure out how to create the app. The app is going to be the biggest thing that needs to be done in order for my idea to become something real. I am hoping to do research myself as well as work with one of my new teammates on how to code an app and what way we can go about it. I am looking forward to learning about it, but I am also unsure if we will be able to make a high quality app that is able to compete with other options on the market. Luckily I think my idea is very useful and it is unique to other apps and I would really like to see it become something that people will enjoy using and help out there needs. In these next weeks weeks I will be planning and working on my idea with my goal of getting all the groundwork done by the end of the project. I will be continuing to use my blog posts as updates to my business progression as well as the plans of what to do next. I am really looking forward to making my idea a reality!
The T-shirts have finally been ordered! After weeks of waiting we were finally able to get the T-shirts ready to go and ordered. This has been something on our list of important tasks for awhile and I'm glad we finally got it done. Hopefully it won't be too too long 'till we get them, but I'm hoping they'll be worth the wait. Other than this not a ton happened this week, but I am sure next week we'll be seeing more things to do. I am guessing I will be getting to work on my business idea and pursue my goal of making it a reality. I am really looking forward to doing this and I want to be able to figure out how to get a lot of my idea going and lay out my business plan. Luckily I have already laid out the groundwork and the ideas for what I want for my business, but I am sure I will add to what I have now. As of right now, I am curious to see the teamwork will play out and how the others interested will contribute to my idea.
At first I was not thinking about the idea of having teammates and I was planning on more of an independent route. I think I will play this one based off how it goes and how the dynamic will work. I love that I have teammates interested and wanting to help, but I am unsure as to what they can help me with that I wouldn't have to do myself anyways. I don't want to turn away those interested, but It might be more of supporting what I am working on and coordinating the things outside of my expertise or more specific aspects I need help with while I work on the idea. I think this would be the best way to go with having a team and I think that it would be most effective for them. I also think that if the roles are divided up this way we can see optimal results. I'm excited to plan my first business.
After thinking more about my business design, I decided to continue brainstorming so and try to find the clear vision and goals of my business. I already had a set idea before, but overtime I kept thinking of several directions I could go and what other things I could include in my app. Currently I am still unsure what I want to keep in and leave out, but this upcoming week, If I have time, I am planning on laying out my plan and deciding what I should prioritize and focus on first for the app. I need to decide what its core function looks like and branch out slowly.
I am thinking this because when I look at other successful businesses, they started off small. They didn't take on everything at once, but instead grew little by little and started explaining their focus and their business model to new ideas and concepts. For me, a lot of those concepts are there, but I think I need to start off with the app being much more basic with the same premises of what I was hoping of, but just simpler to it works and it does its original intention. However, I plan to expand the app and slowly introduce new ideas to keep the users engaged, as well as bring in new users. My hope is that each new idea implementation will be a bonus for the people already using the app and then for the new users who just became interested it downloaded it.
As I stated above I am basing this plan off what I observed with successful businesses. Amazon along with many other business started out independently run out of a garage. On top of this amazon started off as an online book store with its main focus of selling and delivering books like an online library in a way. Then it became more virtual with the e books, but slowly it started becoming a common place where many other companies wanted to advertise and list their products. It transitioned from an online bookstore, to an online everything store, with subscriptions, incentives, fast shipping, you name it. The original business that was shown to the world transitioned into something much greater as the company saw what was working and what would work well. Now it is one of if not the biggest company in the world that everyone uses today.
My takeaway from this is that it is okay to start small and let your ideas flow once you get going. You don't have to stick with an idea if it isn't working or you see room to adapt and improve. I am hoping to start small and overtime work y way to my ideal version of my app that everyone can find use from.
This week I decided to switch things up a bit. We only had one day of class this week so their isn't much to talk about, but the day we did have class I decided to go work in person with the operations department. I have been working in the tech department since last year and during class I got to observe all the other departments, but I don't really get to see what's going on anymore. This in mind, I wanted to join the operations department during class and watch and help make candles.
The setup at Nathans house is cool for not being able to use the classroom at school. He has tables and all the equipment setup in his garage and has his team come over to work there. He opens up the garage doors and has chairs to sit around by the candles and tables for all the equipment and computers. The day I went we made several candles over the course of the class. I was checking the temperature every couple minutes as we were listening to Ms. Lackie present. Its a pretty fun process to be a part of. We got to hangout with each other while making the candles, watched the presentation/talk with the class and had some food. Overall it was a fun time and I'm glad I decided to take a break from tech for a day and work with operations. I also got to talk to them about the candle production and scents to get some of the info I needed for the catalog. In addition to this, they are part of my team for the business project that we started so I will most likely be going over there a bit more frequently to work with them on my business design.
For this post instead of reflecting on the events of last week or something I learned, I am instead going to explain my plans and my hopes for the upcoming week in entrepreneurship. Starting the week off I am hoping to get some good work time in and get all my benchmarks complete in advance. I have already figured out and have what I need to write my blog on, I just need to get them done. Fortunately, I learned valuable information that will be very helpful in the process of starting up my business. In addition to this I want to get in contact with all of my teammates that were interested in being a part of my project. I want to check in and see if they are still interested and then talk with the ones who are interested about how they can help and what they would like to do. I don't just want to delegate and run the whole project like everything is mine and they are working for me, I want them to also enjoy the process and be able to help in a way that they can excel in.
With this in mind, I'm hoping to get a good sense of what everyone wants to do next week and get started on the business idea. I am hoping that I will be able to explain my business more in depth and help everyone reach more of an understanding so they know what we will be working on. This will serve as somewhat of a secondary brainstorm because I'm sure a couple new ideas or changes might get added in for us to consider. Even if there aren't as many teammates interested, or even none, I would still really like to get going on my business plan and start to begin making it into a reality. I'm looking forward to seeing everything play out and come together.
Over the past few weeks, as I've been transitioning into working more on my business idea, Entrepreneurship two students were tasked with conducting an interview to gain valuable information in order to start a business. I interviewed an entrepreneur as well as watched an interview of a very successful entrepreneur in order to compare the two and see the similarities and differences from their respective levels.
I Interviewed Denny Reynolds for my personal mentor interview and I learned a lot of useful information about setting up and running a business. A lot of the conversation had to do with how it got started and getting it started because that's the stage I am at right now, so a lot of the conversation was about money, investing, investors, and startup. The information about money and rentals and used equipment was very informative, but sadly I won't be utilizing it much because my business is an app. However, we did talk about the responsibilities of having your own business as well as how to pay for it. We talked about the fact that since I am running my own business and I am my own boss, I am responsible for making or making sure that everything happens and happens correctly. This also means that I am even more so responsible for my own earnings. Because of this, it is important to have money or assets elsewhere to help benefit you, but also as a safety in order to have some sort of accumulating or stable money. He never had an issue with this but did see a great benefit in investments he had elsewhere.
He was an investor in the stock market and would constantly watch the market to know when to buy and sell shares. I do not believe he was constantly involved and quickly buying and selling for fast cash, but instead waiting for the investment to increase over a long period before he sold. He did this in conjunction with his own business so he could earn money while having his money make money. something interesting I learned from him was that he had a total of three businesses. His game wasn't staying in one long term, but instead starting it, growing it, and then selling it off for a lot of money and proceeding on to the next one. He said this was a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for him to get to grow something and then sell it off.
I hadn't put much thought into this, but I have become even more interested in it. I would love for my business to keep going and grow huge, but at a point, it may be advantageous to sell, which I want to do more research in. To further support this I watched a several-hour conversation/interview with Elon musk talking about all his ideas, businesses, how he runs things, etc... In the interview, I learned that he has multiple businesses currently that he owns simultaneously, but even before this he would create or help create businesses and then sell them to keep making large amounts of money. Both mine and this interview supported this idea and it has made me interested in having multiple businesses as well as buying and selling.
Getting back into the main focus of start-up, I was given a wise piece of advice. It is crucial that you "Do your research and move carefully, but decisively". This goes for business startup, running the company, and selling. I will need practice at this and I will need to learn through the process, but I think this advice is very helpful to avoid getting stuck in bad situations.
All in all, I learned some really valuable information through both of these interviews and I really hope to apply a lot of what I have learned once I get my business up and running. I wish I was could have learned more about startup, but because I am doing something very different from them, most of the specific start-up information isn't the most useful. I will try and use the general ideas and principles I learned from them in order to successfully go through the process myself. I'm sure I'll mess up, but I'll learn from it and gain a better understanding for myself of what it's like to start, own, and run a successful business.
For the past few classes, I have been working on my business in a breakout room with Caleb. I have gone over a few things that I am hoping to see for the app and talked to him about things that he might know about or could help do research on. He has been helpful in doing research on different app creation software that we can use for our app. He documented his findings in his blog post where he listed the name, the selling points, and how much it cost. This will be helpful for the future when I need to actually start creating the app from the business model. For now he is continuing to do research and we are beginning to work on our business model document to make sure we have checked the boxes for crucial information we must have in order for the business to have the most chance of success.
The business model template doc is quite extensive. Unfortunately I am really filling it out myself due to the fact that I started the business and know all the details, while my teammate is here to assist in seeing the plan through/modifying it. Many of the questions on the doc are not things I know off the top of my head and I had to do some research on. Though it is extensive it will be very helpful to have all the information and all of it in one place. Each section has something that is very important to know and through researching these pieces I think I will find other important information that will expand my knowledge on the marketplace and my model itself. Though I am not looking forward to filling the doc out, I am looking forward to learning all about the different aspects that are important for making my business plan happen.
This week was business plan week! My teammate and I decided to go through and finish up the business plan after doing some research the past couple weeks. Although he could not answer many questions, he was able to help by doing more research while I filled it out. The document was very long so it did take awhile, Most of the questions were pretty straightforward for me to answer at first, as I knew the answer because they were about things I knew about the business I created. The sections about the idea, the plans, and key pieces were easier to get through. However, as I began going through I came across two sections that were full of important questions that I did not have the answer to. These questions were mostly about finance and finance plans, along with other very specific questions.
I decided to start looking into them first to see if I could find some answers based off of where I was at in the planning stages. I was able to find some suggestions and answers to a couple of these questions, but most I was still unable to answer. I would say this was a big eye opener for me realizing how far into things I need to get and how much I need to plan on and know. I also know that this doc is still just breaking the surface for the amount of information I will need to know and it acts as a guide to looking into those other pieces. I realized when looking at these questions and researching, that I still have a lot of the way to go in figuring out and getting started on my plan before I can answer these questions and get the app prepared for even having a chance. I want to set myself up for the highest chance of success, so I believe that it is advantageous to check all these boxes and gain an understanding before moving into a crowded and extremely competitive marketspace.