This weeks reading talked about entrepreneurs in the tech industry. First talking about a company like life proof and smaller solo businesses. The company Lifeproof was launched by an individual that saw a need. This is a great time for an entrepreneur to use that need to their advantage and make a product that helps to accommodate that. In the case of Lifeproof. The need was for a very protective case to protect against everyday accident and things that could potentially damage or break a phone. He also saw the need of a waterproof case for people who want to take their phone underwater for filming or encase of an accident where the phone is exposed to water. He saw these needs and built his company around it. Today it is now very successful and still selling to many people around the world. Gary Rayner took a big risk going into business as a phone case company. This was due to the face that it was not a new idea, plenty of different companies offered there protective and stylish cases, but he took a risk and found a need among these cases that weren’t offered. He made the top of the line waterproof, fall resistant, cases, but did not know if they would sell.
It is risks like this you must be willing to take if you want to see any reward. There was no guarantee that people who purchase his products, especially at his high asking prices compared to other businesses. Because of this he had to be smart with marketing and where he sold the cases because otherwise his product would fail. Taking this risk and marketing his idea helped him move from being a small company to a very large one that makes hundreds of millions of dollars.
You must be prepared for unseen obstacles when being an entrepreneur because no matter the size of the risk you take, there are most likely going to be more problems down the road that you have to be able to handle or your business could fail. You need a lot of determination and perseverance to reach your goal.If you don’t put 110% percent of your effort into it it will most likely end up failing or fall short of where you wanted it to be.
Another very important factor in the field of entrepreneurship is your ability to adapt. A timeline shows an array of different inventions throughout the years, each of this changing modern society. If you are an entrepreneur these things could be happening around you, or maybe you are the one making this big change with your product. You must pay attention to these things and be willing to adapt because your product may be completely obsolete in a year to a new unseen invention that could change society.
You must be aware of what your product depends on or if it is independent of other things on the market and everyone will always need. Because of this there is never a long period of time an entrepreneur can sit back and watch his money grow without either making a new product or improvement to the current one.
This can tie in to being a serial entrepreneur where you use the experience you gained in your last business with a new one because you may see a need or promise in that idea at that time. Building off of your business or making other can be the turning point where you really start to make money and turn into a national or worldwide brand and truly reach that top tier level of a successful business
This week's reading was all about the personality and the qualities of an entrepreneur. It talked about two people who took the risk to pursue their own business instead of keeping their campaign job for President Obama. After this story the reading went into talking about the various characteristics and traits of an entrepreneur. The most highlighted were respect, positive attitude, and responsibility. These were the absolute essential thing that the reading talked about in order to be a successful entrepreneur. This section of the reading highlighted the importance of being professional while having a positive attitude. You must be able to get your work done on time and well. This may seem basic, but you also need to respect businesses you work with and your employees because even if you don’t like them it is important to keep a good relationship with them so they will be more willing to put out their best work or be more cooperative. Positive attitude ties in with respect and responsibility because you want to have a good attitude around your employees. If you look like you don’t want to be there or think that the work is boring and meaningless this can quickly spread to your employees. If you remain positive and show some energy you and your employees may be much better in work quality and it is best for building relationships. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who is negative and grumpy.
When talking about how entrepreneurs should act, I mentioned relationships. These are very important. You want to have professional relationships with other businesses and your staff because they will better know who they are working with or for. Most importantly you want to build relationships around others who have a positive attitude and inspire you. This will help you keep your positive attitude and give you a reason to keep going or make something new. If you hang around negative people that can have a big influence on you no matter how subtle it may be so it is important to choose your relationships wisely in entrepreneurship and business. If they are not a friend and they aren’t offering anything positive, it is best to not be around those people or try and spread your positivity to them.
Besides the personality and accountability side of an entrepreneur, there are 7 main skills that are essential to learn in order to be successful. These skills involve: business, communication, technology, decision making/problem solving, math, organization, and people skills. Out of these skills some of them are more tied into your personality, such as communication and people skills. The others are more technical skills that you also have to practice and learn. You will have to work with numbers a lot when making deals and financing. You will have to be organized in order to run the business without schedule conflicts or forgetting something important. Entrepreneurs also have to be skilled in using tech. Almost everything business related involves tech today, so it is very important you understand the basics and then go further to learn more advanced things. Lastly, which is probably one of the hardest for most people to learn and practice are problem solving skills and decision making skills. You will be faced with big risky decisions that you don;t have a lot of time to decide on, so it is crucial that you practice the other skills to help you make decisions better. This involves things like getting to know other big business or companies you may need to work with or buy. This is a people skill and learning more about them could help you make better decisions. Working out the math of cost is very important as well as doing research. These can help you in problem solving for your own company and will help you decide what you need for your business. For example researching materials you may need for your product, finding the best ones and figure out how much they will cost and the quantity.
All in all the reading focused on personality skills and the technical skills that are essential for an entrepreneur to be successful. Practicing these skills can be beneficial in both the short term and long term and will help you build better relationships and know how to get past the obstacles in your way.
This week's reading all focused around giving back. Weather this is just your community, your country or the world the reading focused on all the ways as an entrepreneur you can make the world around you better at the same time as yourself. Some of the main points in the reading were carbon footprint/environmental impact, employees, community, customers, and social responsibility. These are all very important things you need to take care of. For employees you need to set a good impression and build a strong professional relationship. This is the same for your customers, you need to show you care through the quality of your product, and customer support. This will help you keep your ethics in check and be a business people can trust to buy products from. With customers you must be honest and respectful to them. These tie in with giving them your attention. Regardless the size of your business you must prioritize the customer, if your doing something and they come in or have questions, give them your full undivided attention. This will show respect and help set a good image for yourself. You must also be accessible either in store or online to customers with questions or concerns. You must stay open and have people ready for the hours you post. It sets a bad impression if your hours say you are open and no one is at the business. These things go the same for your employees, they work for you so they deserve your honesty, respect, and attention. One of the most important things to note is to be fair with your employees. Whether that be hours, time off, salaries etc... Do not think of yourself as higher of either of these people.
Another way giving back is through the environment. Though you may feel your business might not be that big of an impact, it is. You may have several buildings, employees with vehicles, and trucks to transport your supplies. All of these things produce carbon emissions and using a renewable/clean energy source can make a big difference at least in your community. Change eventually has to start somewhere, and it's great marketing to say that you use clean energy to produce your products. Another important one is recycling and the best way to do this is trey to make your product easily recyclable or eco friendly, This will ensure that your business is having a positive effect on the customers and the environment.
The last big thing you can do with your business is to sponsor, donate, and or have a non-profit business ties into yours. These are great ways of giving back to your community. Sponsoring local organizations and sports teams for kids, setting up donations for a cause you see either in your community or country, or even having a separate part of your business funded that takes no money, but is all for a good cause. If you have a successful product and you are able to follow these guidelines, you may arguably have one of the best businesses out there. Not in the sense of the amount of money you make, but the small-large impact you have on the environment and your community. You have something that will make you want to keep going. Knowing that your doing good for a lot of people around you is something awesome that not a lot of businesses due. If you are financially able to support these things it is a win win scenario and truly beneficial to everyone around you. The point of this reading is, is to find a way to give back. You may not be able to do all these things, but if you start small with one your still going to make some sort of positive difference to society.
One of the biggest risks of the companies I researched was, was starting it in the first place. Instead of making their own individual product they created a better version of one that already existed. The risk is that the companies already in the game were improving as he was starting. They were also well known. He had to find a way to quickly do research and make his own high quality parts that would surpass the competition. He was able to make a small breakthrough finding that you do not need a huge battery with the right motor. He went on to create his design and roll it out to early reviewers. Another big issue was publicity. He was marketing to both the US and Australia and he lived in Australia. He had to make enough money off the business to be able to set up stores in the US. Another big risk he recently took was launching a new smaller board model to compete with other companies. This was a risk because this was not very successful with other business and his companies is a much higher price. He faced setbacks in release due to name changes, but now looks like it is on its way to success after some last minute changes and research.
In this weeks reading it was all about risks. The first thing to practice when taking risks is business ethics. This is done to prevent problems before they arise. You must show integrity by being compliant with the laws and the restrictions of your business. If you are not practicing these, you can be held accountable by the law. Even though you may be getting away with something, it does not mean its right. These things can come back later when you do not expect them or are even involved in it anymore. It is important to avoid these risky situations because most of the time it will be either hurting your employees, or your customers, and then ultimately your business. When dealing with customers and employees, being transparent is a huge part of it. If you are not open with them about everything(or everything that they should know about something) you are most likely trying to hide something from them that would be important for them to know. Weather this be offering a new job positions to an employee without all the details or selling a customer something that seems to be a good deal and it be false advertising, or advertising a warranty or money back guarantee and not honoring it the way stated through deceitful wording or change in policy.
This is why writing a code of ethics for your company is important. This will encourage you and your employees to act with integrity and do the right thing, rather than trying to be sneaky or dishonest to benefit there gain. This will overall help the company and make this business run a lot more open without too much secrecy. This will positively reflect on the money made because practicing these beliefs will encourage customers to keep buying from a trust worthy company. The code should be reflective of your values and how you want the employees to act.
When in a business that is not completely unique to your own idea, it is important that you are not stealing others Intellectual property. This is something that they created. There are different ways to secure this intellectual property. For books, websites, articles, and those types of things you will have your work copyrighted to ensure that no one can steal it to use it as their own. The next type is usually for a physical invention/something unique you created. For this you want to try and receive a patent for some part of the product. This will help make sure that someone trying to steal your idea can't at all or can take some basic parts of it, but not the thing that makes it special. The last ways to secure intellectual property is to trade mark it. This can be seen when the product has a TM next to the name. If the product and business is certified by the government you will have a logo with an R next to the name
In relation to securing your intellectual property, if you are in a business where your product design or taste is unique to others or has secret part or ingredients, you need to make sure to have your employees who are in contact with it be background checked as well as sign a letter of confidentiality in order to have them legally agree to not share or discuss how the product works with other companies or people outside of this. This will help keep your intellectual property safe, especially in cases where you cannot patent or trademark something of yours.
In conclusion it is important to be honest with the risks you take. It may work out fine at first, but being dishonest will catch up to you at some point, especially in the business world. For my entrepreneur it was important he come up with his own unique parts and design and name of his skateboard because other companies were doing similar things. In that business it is important to know what you can and can't use and what names have been used on products. Overall it pays to be honest and do your research.
This reading is all about ideas and opportunities. One of the sections talked about ideas vs oppretunities. An idea may just be a grand idea that sounds really cool or you even consider making a business of. The difference is that for it to be an opportunity, their needs to be a need for it. If no one else is interested in it it is most likely not a great opportunity. If you find something that people need, you must take that opportunity for a chance at success. Using your hobbies, interests or talents and coming up with an idea is great because these are all something you are passionate about. This is known as an internal opportunity. External opportunities would be making a product based on a problem, or changes in society. Out of all the ways that the reading talks about finding an opportunity. I think the by far the best way is to surf the web rather than look through magazines. There are so many more ideas and topics on the web than you may be able to find in a magazine and I think it's the best way to get exposed to potential ideas to know what the current trends and business’ are in society.
There are several ways to start a business and turn your idea into an opportunity. You can be an inventor or an investor, or both.
If you have an idea you can invent your product and build your business off of that through your own money or people who invest in your business. A potential disadvantage of this is having a brand new product that has no traction or that one knows about. This can be hard to market at first, but if you get it out there, you can be very successful because you're invention may be one of a kind that people like and only buy from your business. This is potentially a high risk, high reward scenario.
Another option is buying an independent business that is already successful so you can make money and learn how to run that business and sell it or use the knowledge you gained to start your own separate business or product. This is probably the safer route.
Lastly instead of making something of your own, you can invest in the franchise business. Buying a franchise is a good idea because the business is most likely already very successful and you will be gaining off there already established success. It may cost a lot, but you gain money off a business already successful and get a lot of benefits. You just need the money to buy one.
There are many ways to become successful as an entrepreneur, but it depends on your ideas, opportunity and the business type that best suites you.
This reading focuses on market research method. Some of the main ideas were understanding the market and various different research techniques. To start off the reading said that market research consists of 3 main components, one of them being customers. Customers are very important because you must cater to them in order to sell your product. You need to find out what type of customer you are serving so that you can advertise and design things that peak their interest. It is also important to understand how many people will be utilizing your business. You don't want to be in a situation where you are getting far less customers than needed for the business to thrive. This ties in with location so you need to see where the products are most popular. You wouldn't want your surfboard business in the mountains.
Another Big factor at play is competition. It is important to figure out how to compete with their products via marketing. You have to find a way to make your business better and unique from the others of its kind. To do this you must put some research into other companies and figure out their strategies.
The next step after knowing you need data is how you get your data. There are two main ways to do this. These being Primary and secondary data sources. Primary data is new information that you have acquired directly from your customers. This would be them telling you things they may like or not like about your products(if your business already exists). This can also be from potential customers telling you things that they look for. This method is a lot more time consuming and expensive than its alternative.
Secondary data is when you gather existing information that can help you build/start your business or figure out what to do when launching a new product. This can range from what people like to how other businesses advertise their successful products they launched. You can obtain a lot of these secondary sources from the government who will have records of the different demographics.
Another big way you can do research, and one of the most important ways of researching is through social media. You can go here to see what companies are posting and see how the customers react to it. You can also see what kinds of products people like and don’t like. Overall social media is a very powerful tool for your business to further understand marketing and the customer.
Some primary methods of research are things like interviews, surveys, and observations which are a lot more direct and leave out most of the guesswork. These can be done in person, over the phone, or through email. You can ask the specific questions you want answered and get real responses based off what you say. Again here you can even use social media to conduct these things, or reach out to random potential customers. When creating survey questions you want to make them worded so they will best answer questions you may have, but you may not want to ask exactly the question you want answered. You may have to word it in a different way to get the best results. Keep the questions simple and concise. Make it easy to understand what is being asked and not take too much thinking or information. It is also important to make sure that they will feel comfortable answering the questions. Make the responses easy and order our questions so that the survey flows.
All these different techniques and ideas are very important to have a successful business and market your product well. This will help our team in the business because we must design the things the marketing team will use. It is important to figure out what people like and will get there attention to help the marketing team be able to reach the most amount of customers.
This week's reading was all about business models. It primarily focused on vendor relationships, reducing risk, Securing physical property/information, and insurance.
Fist off the reading talked about how important it is to have a good relationship with your vendors. Your vendors supply your company with material for your product as well as basic necessities. Usually these things are wholesale and it is important to choose your vendor based on price, quality, reliability, location, and customer service. Building a relationship may benefit your priority so it could lead to lower ship times, prices, and better customer service. All of these things being very important when you’re spending your money.
The next thing the reading focused on is reducing risk. You need to manage speculative risks for your business to be successful. These are the very uncertain risks where it is really all guess work. This type of risk has both positive and negative outcomes and are important for business. The next type of risk would be pure risk where there is no chance for a positive outcome. This is a risk where there is no chance of gain and you must figure out how to minimize your losses in these situations and figure out how to prevent them.
Next you must learn to keep your business secure and safe. Investing in lights, security, locks, cameras and various other things can protect your business in case of theft or emergency. Another thing that is important is to screen and background check all of your employees to make sure you won’t have any problems on the inside. This also ties in to keeping your employees safe so they can effectively work and not be injured on the job which can result in a lawsuit.
Lastly, another important thing is to insure your business. This is a great way to combat pure risk or things that are out of your control, like natural disasters, fires, or employee injury. This can protect you from unwanted and unseen fees that may happen. Business interruption insurance and liability insurance are both important and can protect your business against these things. Workers compensation insurance is also very important to protect workers who get injured on the job. This can help them better recover and reduce the chance that your business will get sued or fined for injury in the workplace. It is no fault insurance which pays regardless of who is responsible.
This week's reading as was all about Indirect and direct competition. Some of the main topics in the reading were: Types of competition, calculating market share, and global economy. The first thing the reading explains is what a direct and indirect competitor is. A direct competitor is a business that is selling the same types of products as you and is the same type of business. An example being Burger King and McDonald's. Both of these businesses are in the fast food market and sell burgers(as well as other items). Indirect competitors sell a product or service that is different than your business, but fits the same need. An example being taco bell as a competitor with Burger King and McDonald's in fast food, but they do not sell burgers. Other types of competition are businesses who provide a service along with their product such as an oil change. This can also be completed if there customer just bought oil, but then they have to do it themselves.
Another thing to consider when competing with other businesses is market share. This shows what percentage of a target market population is buying your product. This can be very useful to know to understand how many people you are reaching vs. your competitors, but also to figure out which groups of people by your product the most to market to them more. To figure this out you can divide total money made by the amount of money your target market spends a year and see what percentage of the market share you make up.
Lastly, the global economy is very important to understand because you are not necessarily just competing with your country for market share. Depending on the product, you may be competing with businesses in other countries, who have a much different economy than you do. Along with this it is also important to form global connections because you need to buy and trade materials and products for your business. This is probably the most important part of understanding the global economy. There shouldn’t be too many foreign direct or indirect competitors who are competing with you, unless you are a large scale business who does things internationally or has a similar business to another. Foreign relations can help with the ease and the price of importing and exporting goods. It is always important to look our for trade barriers when making deals internationally.
In this weeks blog post I watched a video on how to make a catalog. The YouTube made an example product catalog using adobe Photoshop. He used basic techniques to make a page of products with prices. He also made a banner for the page and included if the products were in stock or sold out. This is a great way to make an online catalog but for a direlights catalog we will probably just include product images and names and organize it nicely because we cannot update a physical document to include what is and isn't available. He showed how to space out the products and how to keep the page both symmetrical and properly spaced for it to look professionally done. Most likely we will use a similar layout to the design online, but most likely a different design to make it look more appealing. We will be organizing the catalog by our candle collection. We will feature our seasonal collection at the top followed by our other year round collections. We will make the prices more prominent on the candle bundles because they are cheaper if you buy them all together instead of individually. This will incentive people to buy the “collection” and that way we can sell more candles. We can also advertise things like the winter collection as great gifts to friends and family. To make the catalog more interesting we will be taking pictures of all the candles in the collection together with the different themes involved. This will make the catalog more eye catching and hopefully increase sales. We want the catalog to be one of our main forms of advertisement sent out to the parents of all the students around different seasons of the year so they are more incentive to buy candles because they are limited time items. We want people to be excited for the new catalog and new scents to come out so advertising the catalog will also be something very beneficial. I am not sure if it should be free or have a cost. This would be dependent on how premium we make our catalog and how appealing it looks. We could add various other incentives for purchasing or subscribing to the monthly catalog if we chose to make it that frequent. All in all the video showed how to make a catalog and this supports the various ideas we have in our team for a direlights catalog.
For this week's reading I decided to look further into making a catalog for Direlights. Last week I learned how to make a catalog so I decided to look for some of the do’s and don’ts of making a good catalog. The first tip I found was color coding. The catalogs color should fit with the theme and what goes inside. For our catalog a rustic brownish tan look would be appropriate. Next tip had to do with font. Font should be kept simple, no more than 2-3, but the headers should be different than the content writing about the product(not too different though). Moving on from font there is the product photography. All the images should be high resolution and should get the attention of the consumer. Since we are a candle company putting different theming elements behind the candles would make the different scents stand out more. To tie into this there should be emphasis put on the new products or the ones that are on sale. Placing them at the top and making them bigger to be more eye catching is helpful when doing this. Also making it known next to the product that it is new. For our business we can do this whenever we release new candles or new seasonal collections. When placing the picture in the catalog it is important to keep the design similar. Having a pattern and a flow to it will make it much more appealing to the consumer. While there should be a pattern it should not all be identical this would make it boring and not entertaining for the consumer to look at. It is also important to make sure that the layout doesn’t leave too much white space. Spacing can be good, but too much can make the catalog appear empty or incomplete. Lastly it is important to keep the catalog focused on the product while writing compelling product descriptions. The description should intrigue the consumer, but not be too in depth or move too far away from the product. The main thing to remember is the catalog is used as a marketing tool to get people interested in the product and then hopefully purchase after seeing it and learning about it.
For our company it is important to have pictures of our products for our company website. The product photos are important because if the photos are low quality it may discourage the buyer from purchasing the product. Having high quality product photography will make your business look more professional and customers are more likely to buy from you. You can also make the photos more interesting. In our case we can add different things to the picture that goes with the theme of our candles. For example our Christmas collection for candles could be in front of a Christmas tree or a fire with stockings. This would make the product more eye catching and appealing to the consumer.
When doing product photography all you need is a DSLR camera or smartphone camera. Camera quality is important but both of these should do the job fine, You do not need a ten thousand dollar camera in order for your photos to look good. The next important part of product photography is the lighting. If you have poor lighting it will make you look unprofessional and it will make your product look bad. The sun can be unpredictable so it is important to have an area indoors or outdoors where you can light it to make sure your product is visible and looks good.
When taking the picture of the product having a tripod can be useful. Especially if you are taking a long exposure shot. This will help make the image less blurry and help get a better angle on the product. Product setting is also very important. If you are theming the photos it is important to theme all of them to have a consistent pattern. If not, shooting in front of a white background is the best alternative.
Lastly it is important to check for any weird shadows or fingerprints on the product. Making it look brand new and clean will give the best impression. You do not want the product looking old or dirty because it shows a lack of care and it will be what is expected from the product and company. You wanna set a good image for yourself quite literally.
This week I decided to learn a little more about product photography since I will be doing more of it this semester for our catalog and website. Some of the basics of product photography are as follows. There are two things that are most important when doing product photography for a business. The first being transparency and the second being trust.
It is always important when you are doing product photography that you are truly showing the customer what they are going to get. You want the images to be high quality, but you do not want to alter it or falsely advertise the product to get more customers to buy it. You must be honest with your customers because you want to build trust and reliability. This will encourage them to continue buying from you and maybe encourage others to do the same.
To show off your product you want to have high quality images and you want to have a regular product photo as well as your product in use or the environment it would typically be in. For example the article shows product photography for a sleeping bag against a white background so you can clearly see the product. The next picture it shows someone with a tent setting up the sleeping bag for use, to give the user an idea of what the product is used for.
For basic white background shots you want to set up an area with white paper and lighting that you can put your product in front of. Everything around it should be white and the only thing in frame should be the product. You can lay a sheet over a table and against a wall or a canvas so everything in the frame is covered by the white paper. You always want your product to be on a flat stable surface. The lighting should not be too harsh so you can use a softbox to soften the light on your product so it is visible yet not overpowering. You can use natural light, but this can be difficult.
Lastly you want to always have a tripod to keep your camera steady. Camera choice is also important depending o0n what it is it may be more beneficial to use a high quality camera and lense and other times a good smartphone camera will do just fine. After the picture is taken it is important to touch it up in an editing program like Photoshop or other photo editing softwares. This can make it so you can remove any extra things from the image such as a mannequin if you are shooting clothes, as well as touch up the white background so it is a flat consistent color and does not distract from the product. Using these basic tips can help make any product photography look more professional and more appealing to the customer.
This weeks reading I chose to look further into product photography. I found another article that showcased different ways you can do product photography. Since our tech and media department is planning on making a catalog I wanted to find out creative ways I could showcase our candles in the magazine.
The article showed various techniques and ways you can shoot a product. Last week I looked into the best way to do product photography for a website. This mostly talked about shooting straight on against a white background and talked a little bit about taking photos with the product in action. This article went more in depth on how to shoot different types of products with different angles to best showcase what it is. This does not really apply to our product because we still want to shoot it head on so we can see the label. The most beneficial things this article talked about were showing size and scale for your product and action/grouping shots with the product
For our catalog I was hoping to shoot the candle in front of a background related to the theme/scent. This would be the “action” of photography since the product itself is not action related. For example our summer themed scents can be taken with the things they are related to and we could have a group shot of the product in front of the ocean. This could be the featured section of the article and I think it would make the product look very appealing since we can’t give customers the sent of the candle, but we can give them an idea of what it might smell like with a picture of what its related to
For this weeks blog post I decided to do something different. For the past few months I have been doing research then I blog about. For this weeks post I decided to do something different and I decided to take pictures of our products throughout the week in order to get an idea of what our product photography could look like.
I decided to take pictures of different candles, but also the process behind making them. This way I have good practice of product photography for our website as well as have cool pictures that can be posted on our social media. A few of the pictures I took were of the new 4 oz jars before the wax was poured in them as well as all our materials used for production. I then proceeded to get pictures of our operations department making the candles. I got a few shots of them heating the wax, stirring the wax, and finally pouring the wax int the jars. After the candles cooled I took pictures of the finished products with the new pink wax we are using.
These pictures would be a great example to put on our website or the catalog to give a demonstration of how our candles are all student made and hand poured. This pictures would also make a great social media post and would help show the public how they are made as well as publicize our new pink candles that will be used for the breast cancer donation baskets and Valentines day. Next week I am hoping to get a cool time lapse video of the candles being made and then cooling. It wold be a cool video to put on our website and/or post on social media.
This week I decided to continue to go with a different style of post and instead of explaining an article, I would go through what work I have accomplished with what I have learned. For the past few weeks I have been looking through different articles about photography and product photography and have finally gotten to put some of that information to the test.
This week I wanted to get some cool product shots for our social media and hopefully even for our website to show consumers the process behind making a candle. I wanted the photos to look interesting and have a more unique look to them, so I decided to use more ordinary angles for the shots. The first shot I took was of the empty jars that were going to soon be filled. They were all lined up with the wicks in them, so I though a low angle close up shot in between the jars looking down the row would look really nice. The next shot I took was an overhead of the candles just after they had been poured. Its a unique shot because the wax is actually a dark red before it cools to pink, giving a cool perspective on the candle cooling process. Finally I took a picture of our rows of the final products with the name of their scent in front of them. This can be used for advertising our scents.
After taking the pictures of the candles I was also able to help out my department and the social media department with naming the two candle scents sold for valentines day. I wanted to incorporate the name/scent of the candle with a valentines theme. The two names I came up with were sentimental citrus and flourishing flowers. This was just a little bonus thing I got to do and help with after I finished shooting. I am planning to send the photos I took to the social media team so they can add them to their valentines day post.
The week I was out sick during class so I was unable to work on shooting the candles for the website or doing the catalog. Instead I decided to think more about what the best settings would be for the themed pictures of the candles. I focused mainly on the themes for our collections of candles. Our collections we are planning to make are the Summer, Winter, Fall, Year round, and a few more undecided.
To start off the Summer collection consist of a lot of our beach, tropical, and citrus scents. For these candles I was planning on going to the beach with them and organizing them in a pyramid in the sand. I was thinking of putting a log in front of them and having them in front of the ocean. It would capture the idea of the scents and would be an appealing photo for customers. Another Idea I had for the beach collection was doing the same thing except moving the candles to the wet part of the sand where the tide comes in and take the photo while the tide runs through the candles. The Photo would have all the scents lines up with the tide/small wave rushing through them. This would also fit the idea and mood of the candles and would be an appealing photo for customers to see in the catalog or on our website.
The next next collection I would do is the year round and get things related to each scent and place them next to the candle. This shot would have an array of different items involved and would capture the idea of the diverse arrangement of year round scents. Next would be the fall collection and for this one I was hoping to do a nice shot of the candles on a wooden table either outside or inside in dim yellow lighting. I would have fall leaves leaned against the candles and laying in front of them. I would also have apples(preferably fresh from and orchard) leaned against the candles. Lastly I would have a pumpkin or two in the background behind the candles bringing the whole theme of fall together.
For the Final Winter Collection I have a few different ideas. The first being arranging the candles under a Christmas tees as presents wrapped in bows and various other dire lights things underneath. This shot would preferably have the tree and maybe even a fire place in the background to give it more of a cozy winter time feel. Another idea I had was to arrange the candles in front of a fire place with different Christmas items like stalkings, ornaments, and candy canes or any other related items. I think this would also help give the customer the right feel behind the theme for the candles and would make them further inclined to purchase from our winter collection of candles.
For this weeks blog post I decided to watch an Interview of the very successful and famous Entrepreneur Elon Musk. It was close to a 3 hour conversation/Interview with him about many different topics, ranging from his ideas of building tunnels all the way to if AI will take over the world. I decided to watch this interview because I was very interested in how Elon Musk comes up with his ideas, how they're approved, and how he became so successful. I thought that listening and learning from someone who is successful in this current day and always Innovating may boost ,y knowledge and understanding of business and ideas and would be perfect new skills for our Entrepreneurship course.
The first thing that I was interested in was how he came up with ideas. Many of the ideas he has are problems he sees on a day to day basis and tries to find a solution in order to improve his quality of life. He then sees that his solution to the problem applies to other people and he could provide this solution to people through his business. For example. Elon Musk lives in LA and sits in heavy traffic on a daily basis. Because of this he wondered how he could reduce traffic or get to a place he wants to go faster. Noe most people would think one of 3 things, they would think to either take a different route, use a different mode of transportation(if available), or try and navigate through as best as they can. Elon on the other hand thought way outside of the box and came up with a solution that most people would never have thought of or thought couldn't be done because of its ridiculous nature. His solution to the problem was to create tunnels underneath LA to transport people all around the city. Essentially they are underground freeways and they would reduce congestion and allow people to get to their destinations quicker and with fewer accidents. Even though this seems outlandish he said he went and got a permit to dig a big pit and began digging the tunnel because he stated that there is around 10,000 feet of unused real estate under the earths surface being wasted. He thought that his idea would not only solve the traffic problem, but it also provided a great business opportunity to him. The only cars that could use the tunnel are his Tesla cars because they must be electric. He then talked about programming the cars to be in sync with the tunnels and they would just be able to use auto pilot and drive themselves through. This was very interesting to be because it was very thought out and sounds like a perfect solution and business idea. He went on to state that he thought it through and the tunnels would be several piece connected by flexible joints so the tunnels could adjust in the event of an earthquake. I found it impressive how thought out the idea and figured out solutions to potential problems to make it not only viable, but an amazing innovation. He went on to talk about several other of his ideas and potential ideas and they were all so thought out and unique ideas and were very exciting.
Using this information from the interview I am hoping to try and think of some of my own ideas and not shut down the outlandish ones. Often times we let ideas go or don't think through them all the way because we think they aren't possible or are ridiculous. This interview showed me that sometimes those are the best types of ideas and it pays to let your mind wander and be creative. Hopefully I will be able to come up with something unique and interesting that will benefit our dire lights course.
This week I took pictures for our catalog and website. These were individual photos of the candles taken across our campus in various different places. Since our campus doesn't have much of a variety of natural elements for our themes, I was not able to do many of the candles yet. These were mostly test shots to present to the class and most of them will actually be used. Due to this lack of interesting environment we had to use what we had, so we got creative. We have a few planter boxes and a small rock garden on our campus so we utilized these and places the candles in the bushes, in the succulents, next to the rocks, and even in a tree.
All of the photos were chosen because of either the color of the background or the angle. The succulent shot was great with color because it was a nice yellow to compliment the brown jar. In this shot the sun was hitting both of them making them pop out. Another shot that was interesting was the tree photo. We were able to get underneath the tree and reach up inside to put the candle on one of the branches. After this I moved the camera away from the candle and moved some branches and leaves in front. I made sure that they were surrounding the camera and the candle was in center view. This made it look like I was shooting through all the leaves and branches and the candle was the focus.
Some of the other photos that were taken were great for our social media and our website. For these photos I had to direlights employees holding the candles in different positions. For example I had a shot of an employee smelling the candle and I had another shot of an employee holding out two candles smiling. One was a Still shot and the other was a shot during action. I did this so the photos don't all look still. It helps show life and movement by capturing an in the moment shot involving moment. The shot ended up look very genuine and helps show that our employees are happy and have fun doing their work. The still shot was more about angle and showing someone enjoying the candle. These two different types of photos are both great for our publicity.
This week was just the begging of the catalog product photography. I got a feel of different angles, lighting, and environment. I will hopefully be taking a few more product photos and bring some of the candles to different locations to fit their collection and theme. Unfortunately I will not be able to do this for all the candles because we are starting a new project and I will not be able to devote my entrepreneurship time to making the catalog. This project will be continued again next year and rolled out early on. I am still hoping to get some work done now so there is less work and more implementation next year.
I decided to read an article form Harvard business review about how the CEO of Verizon is leading his 132 billion dollar company from home. This article featured an Interview with Hans Vestberg who is the CEO of Verizon. In this interview he was asked many questions about how things are different for the company and how it was being run at home. This Interview was very effective at showing readers how you can still run a business under these current circumstances and that you can still be successful. In the interview He was asked how he has adapted his leadership style in this time. He answered that everyday he has a webcast at noon for all of his employees where he gives them fill transparency about what he is doing and whats going on. He believes it is important for all of his employees to know about the new rules and guidelines. He proceeds to mention that he also has a meeting with his leadership team in the mornings because he sees it as crucial for running the company. This is a great way he is able to manage the new circumstances because he is still able to talk to his team and the rest of his company. This helps him get multiple perspectives on what things to, as well as share with his employees whats happening.
The article then goes into how the pandemic has affected the company itself. For Verizon it is actually a pretty positive outcome. He stated that the amount of internet and phone call usage is up by a massive percentage and their noticing an increase in call length as well as a 20% increase in web usage and a huge 100% in gaming usage. Much more people are on their phones at this time and are using Verizon services. This then brought up the question if Verizon is able to handle all this increased usage. He then explained in the Interview that Verizon was already prepared for a massive increase in usage like what is happening now. They have had no problems with the increase and everything is running smoothly. They actually increased everyone plans by an extra 15 gb per month because of the scenario. This was just a nice perk the company did for its consumers and is helpful because everyone is more active on their phones.
Lastly the interviewer bring up the question of: how is Verizon maintaining balance in this difficult economic time? He then answers that Verizon actually increased their spending and investing instead of decreasing like many other businesses may have had to do. Ge goes on to say that they actually increased their spending around 1 billion extra dollars because they felt that they can invest at this time and it will be good for employment as well as consumers, and it is the companies responsibility to do so.
This Interview was very helpful for understanding how CEO's and big corporations are dealing with the new circumstances. This is all very helpful to know because many people right now are wondering what will happen to certain companies and how they are responding. I think that based of this interview Verizon is handling the situation very well ans is prepared to continue through this pandemic.
This week I read an article about how perfectionism will slow you down during a crisis. In the article it broke this idea down into three key pieces. These ideas were: distractions, ego, and empathy. Each of these things can negatively affect you if you do not manage them properly. First off the article started with talking about how distractions can be harmful to you in an ever changing time. If you get focused on every little short term thing that happens or become overwhelmed by the abundance of news and new responsibilities, you’ll get caught up and lose sight of the long term. This is very bad when running a business because you still need to be planning for the long term and not adjust everything to fit the short term. Although there are things you need to change, you must go into it with a game plan. You can’t just be making decisions as you go along because it is a recipe for disaster. Instead you need to plan and figure out what you are doing before in order to reduce these distractions and not fall behind.
Next the article talked about ego. Ego is something that you must keep in control as a business owner and you must know how to control it so you know when to listen to others as well as ask for help. In a time like this you may need to be more open to receiving help and listening to advice because if you go into it with a very egotistical mentality and you do what you think is best, you may end up causing yourself problems and costing yourself in the long run.
Finally the last thing that the article talked about was empathy. Empathy can be a very big challenge for you especially in a time like this. You may care a lot about others, especially your employees, but you have to do what’s best for you and your business to survive. This means that you may have to lay employees off which is something that may not be easy to do. Your empathy for others may make this very hard because you realize that you have to maintain your business, but they are trying to keep their job to support yourself. You may have to make this tough decision and you must realize you're not doing it in a personal way, but you have to because it is necessary to keep your business alive. Compassion is very important to have, but you must realize that some things just have to be done, especially when running a business.
For this week's reading I decided to read another article from the Harvard business review. In this article it talked about three misteps for executives and boards to avoid in a crisis. Number one being a narrow mindset. As the article explains, in times of crisis you would think people would become more innovative and creative, but in reality the opposite happens. People are uncertain so they stick to the things that work for them. Because of this they become very narrow minded and have a fixed mentality on what they are going to do. To help counteract this mindset it is best for the leaders of the companies to think about what other companies who are competitors doing to manage the crisis right now? As well as try and find if there may be new competition. Another thing you want to be sure and do is see if your disaster plan worked for this scenario and how it could be revised to help for a future event.
Next the article talks about deferring to the leader. With so much uncertainty everyone may turn to the leader of the company to ask what to do. This can be very hard for the leader to manage and it will cause them to do all the thinking. It is best to still collaborate and get other perspectives from their board. Keeping a balance between how things are decided on is great because if one person is doing it all it is more likely to fail.
Tying into this idea is the negative of group decisions. Conformity is something very common in a situation like this because if a group decision is made it is likely everyone will try and be influenced to go with that idea or to not share their own because they don’t want to differ from the group. This can be dangerous because you aren’t truly getting the perspectives of others and instead conforming to a group mentality. To help solve this problem make sure that everyone has received the full set of information and has their chance to form their own opinion before hearing others, as well as make sure all experts share their expertise.
These are all great tips to help the leaders of companies make proper decisions in a difficult time
For this week's reading I decided to read a Harvard business review article about if the corona virus was leading us to another economic depression. Fortunately the article states right away that covid-19 has very negatively affected the economy, but will not lead to something as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The reasoning of this was established with four ideas. These ideas being things that must happen in order for a depression to occur.
The first of the ideas is policy error. Policy error is explained as a policy put forth to counteract what is happening. In our case we did have a 2 trillion dollar care act put forward which is counteracting some of the economic problems the virus has caused. If we were to have no policy put forth or a non helpful one, this could potentially lead us toward an economic depression. The second idea that the article talked about was political willingness. This is the willingness of politicians to do something about the problem in order to combat it. Where this can go wrong is if no solution is created in the first place or the solution is not approved. An example given where this happened was the TARP act. They explained this as a situation where both happened and showed that they can cause a problem. The next of these ideas is policy dependence, which does not concern the US because of monetary sovereignty. This moves on to the final idea of Policy rejection. This is similar to the second idea the article touched on, but this portion heavily focuses on inflation. The idea here is that we are stable enough now and are able to adjust to things instead of rejecting them and continuing as normal. The article says high levels of inflation are very unlikely and would be a several year process to even happen at all. The entire economy would have to break down before something like this could happen and based on all the other things the article talked about, it was deemed very unlikely these things would happen. This article helps assure people that we are not in a good economic state, but are very far from it being an economic depression.
This week I decided to write a blog on another Harvard business review article. I have been reading these for the past few weeks and they always have some sort of advice or precaution for CEO's and business owners. This week I decided to read an article on what Covid-19 data and information you can trust. The reason I chose this article is because there is a lot of false, exaggerated, or just a general lack of information that is being spread around in the world right now. Knowing what is true can be very important when trying to run a business because if you are misinformed or don't know enough it could really harm your business.
The article decided to highlight three main ideas when looking at Covid-19 related information and data. Things to especially look out for is if the data is too broad, too specific, or if it lacks context. To start off with the first point, information that is too broad will not be helpful if you are trying to make an evidence informed decision for your business. Just knowing a general statistic of the outbreak or reading an article about an increase in a specific area without any further evidence to support that claim may just increase fear and media coverage rather than help you understand what is happening. A lot of the information is also speculation or things that have potential to happen so it is important to look for actual evidence when looking at data.
Next is data that is too specific. Although it may sound contrary to what I just stated, information that is too specific may be useless or even harmful to you if you aren't careful. Finding out a staggering statistic may stand out to you, but you need to find out the context of the situation. That is a theme that is important to follow in each one of these ideas. There may be a new regulation, symptom, or spread increase, but it could just be in a small little town states away from you that will have absolutely no affect on you. If you read about a new regulation put into affect, you must check where because it could just be state or county wide and you may receive misinformation because you believed it affected you.
Lastly the final thing to look out for as I stated before is just a lack of context. This could either mean the article or data you found doesn't provide context or you looked over it. Context is key with everything constantly changing and the federal and state governments having different regulations. It was left up to the states and counties to decide for themselves and proceed with what they though was best, so knowing the context of a statistic or new law or regulation that may affect your business is absolutely crucial for the survival of your company during this time.