"A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step" - Lao Zi

26 September marks the first entrepreneurial day for Raymond. It was his first time meeting the team in person. He has come prepared for this meeting and the ET9135 class with many business ideas and concepts. He was particularly fond of his business idea of "pop up jobs" which sought to match gig job-seekers with errand work.

The first brainstorming session with the team was fruitful as new ideas were "bounced off" and stacked to create new ones. Armed with some business concepts from his polytechnic coursework, Raymond voiced his opinions on the feasibility of a few ideas raised. He was heartened to know that his opinions were valued and amazed by the great team synergy.

On 3 October 2020, the team achieved a breakthrough in ideas, moving from the notion of a "NTU thrift shop" to a business with a scope in birthday packages.

As it was the first time that Raymond has engaged in any entrepreneurial practicum, he was unsure how he could apply what he has learnt to the real world applications. Planning to run a business was not as simple as he thought! There were many things to consider: firstly, the team would need to decide whether there will be a product-market fit. This could possibly be resolved with a Google Form that would be disseminated to the hall residents (mainly our friends for now!). Secondly, we would need to think whether it is practical/feasible in terms of our own passion/motivation, time/bandwidth and the capital to be injected into the business. We eventually agreed that a business model with a "tangible product" will best suit the preferences of the majority of the members.

As we continued to jot down our points on the whiteboard, an idea struck us! How about we do something about birthdays for hall residents? There is potentially a demand as there is a social need to celebrate one another's birthdays in the halls. A birthday package business model it is then!

Wow this week was remarkably hectic! To present a business plan on a website was definitely novel for Raymond as PowerPoint has always been the norm. What made this week more challenging was that some of us had other tests and commitments to prepare for. However, in my opinion, the team has definitely bonded over difficult hurdles and became closer as a result.

How did we do it?

We broke down the different portions of the business plan and distributed the work according to each strengths. I was tasked to do my part of the business plan and the formatting of the report. We also constantly updated each other and discussed our work with one another through zoom discussions. Teamwork was key!

31 October 2020 is not a significant milestone/date for the business but I think it is still worthwhile writing a post on this. After a short hiatus after the presentation (it was tiring!), we resumed our regular discussion on the business. This zoom discussion was meant to plan the initial groundwork for the business. For example, who to do what and whether things like call forwarding will be necessary. Tentatively, Raymond became in charge of customer service - he will be attending to customer inquiries on both Instagram and email.

This post is just for me to say how happy I am that the Instagram page is up! Time for me to rally my peers to follow and share the page. It was a really proud moment to see that we have our logo and name/account on Instagram. It was a baby step for the business but one worth remembering! One of my friends even said that this inspired her to consider setting her art business. So exciting!

5 December 2020: Our first consultation with Professor Roderick and the Marketing Lady really revealed a lot of things to be worked on for the business. During the meeting I was mainly involved in taking notes for the consultation. A meeting minutes will then be crafted to remind us on the happenings during the consultation and to keep those who missed the meeting in the loop. Suggestions were given mainly on marketing as Professor Roderick alluded that logistics was not a big problem for us.

How can we secure our first customer?

Some ideas raised were that we can go door-to-door to persuade the students, pasting posters, having promotional events on our Instagram, etc. I also made an important note which the marketing lady mentioned - we need to give our friends some perks for them to help us! It was so simple yet so easily neglected.

7 December 2020: We have received our goods. We have an Instagram page. We have the team.

It is finally time to get our hands dirty and start to prepare for the social media content and look-board. For someone who does not do decorations, woah pumping balloons and tying them up was no easy feat! This definitely enabled us to understand the pain points of our customers more. If we are struggling to set up the hall lounge (venue for this social media content preparation) then it is likely that the consumers will face a similar situation as well.

To elaborate on what happened on that day aside from just balloons, we pasted on the tinsel on the projector screen but we subsequently tore it down as we realized that it was better to paste it and the balloons on the white wall instead.

We realized having our products being showcased like this wasn't quite enough. Thus, to generate more content for our Instagram Page, we had to make use of other props. We did a brainstorming session on the spot and decided to have Nandika to serve as a model for our products. What does this entail? We need to change the ambience of the surroundings and utilized props like the sofa.

Some of the things that we did were cover the lights (could not be switched off) with trash bags and cardboards. Nandika changed to a different set of clothing to match the background and the atmosphere. We hang some fairy lights (part of the product package) on her. We took a photograph of her pose. A boomerang was also taken with us throwing balloons!

It was honestly a fun experience for me.

Time for us to announce to our friends, relatives and the world that we are ready and open for business.

To me, a soft launch can be seen as an engagement ceremony. It is almost as important as a wedding but it does not have the formality or legality implications as the latter. Like a couple keen to receive "blessings" from their friends and relatives, we are sincerely hoping that we will be able to acquire new customers.

I also followed up with the Request For Quotation for stickers ,cards and boxes.

P.S. Nandika and Khushi did great in designing the advertising materials!

25 December 2020: It has been disappointing so far as we have not had our first order. To boost sales, we have decided to launch a Christmas promotional event. In this promotional event, we will be giving away a package to one lucky winner and 25% discount will be given to our first 12 customers. We hope that the word of our business and product will be spread further from there.

Fingers crossed for this to work!

I managed to interact with one of the participants over Instagram Message. It brings me joy to see someone actively participating in this promotional event.

3 January 2021: The team had a solemn and candid discussion about the running of the business so far. The winner for the giveaway was determined during the meeting. We also discussed about the "threshold" to pivot considering the situation. We considered the next festivals to target such as Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year. We also thought about riding on Tik Tok gift trends such as the explosion box. However, we will still continue to do the birthday packages.

15 January 2021: It is a joyous day for our business as we got our first customer. The customer is Anushka's friend. This shows how important it is to have the networks and contacts. The customer bought an "adapted" version of our packages - one which excludes the cake. Thus, the team has considered to include such packages in our product offerings as well.

18 January 2021: We received news that our logistics items, paper bags have gone missing. However, it is possible that the janitors could have helped to safekeep it. Hoping that we can find our items back!

(Photo credits to Customer, Aroma. Picture shows her birthday decoration using our package.)

29 January 2021: During the consultation, we updated Professor Roderick and Adrian on our progress and they provided feedback accordingly. A striking suggestion is for the team to do more and try out creative things including new partnerships. Raymond prepared the key notes from the consultation.

P.S. Update: the paper bags are really gone for good.

1 February 2021: As a follow-up to the consultation on 29 January 2021, members of the team gathered for an offline meeting . During this meeting, all of us brainstormed ideas and action plans for our business (until March 2021). We came up with the ideas of anti-Valentine's day and to work with other stakeholders for various purposes (hall decorations, etc).

Professor Roderick mentioned in the last consultation that a typical response to a stimuli could be fight, flight or freeze. Hopefully, this meeting can help to "thaw" the semi-frosted state that we are in.

Picture shows the notes taken by Kim during the meeting.