Week 15 Reading Reflection

I had heard of micro-finance before, surprisingly enough in a humanities course I took many years ago. What surprised me most from this reading was the size and scope of the micro-finance  industry across the globe. In the article the author claimed that over 140 Million people have been reached through these programs. While this is obviously not enough to eradicate poverty it is a great start.

There was nothing in the article that I found to be confusing. The article was well written and free of any over sue of technical jargon the average reader such as my self would find difficult to understand. 

Two questions I have for the author would include: "How do you think more entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals can be encouraged to take part in such organizations?" and "Since crime is rampant in many of the worlds poorest places, how can you properly protect a lending infrastructure in this type of environment?"

There was nothing I disagree with in this article. It was written from the authors prospective and is based on his first hand experience in this industry. I cannot see how I have any right as an outsider to question anything he wrote.

Final Reflection

This will be my 40th post on this blog. Had I completed every assignment it would be more but here I stand. As I look back through this blog I now have a better understanding of the logic and design of this course. It truly was a journey and one I will not soon forget. This has not been an easy semester for me, both inside and outside of class. I have had to deal with money, health, and car problems almost since the ball dropped last New Years. This class has been frustrating at times and that fact is almost better illustrated by the grade book than the blog. As I look through my weekly scores I can see where I had trouble and point out the moments where it all simply felt like too much. But now, here at the end, I can look back and be proud for making it here.

I can not pin down my most formative experience to a single assignment or blog post. I am can only judge it as an over all experience. The challenges of the deadlines and variety of assignments have forced me to grow as an entrepreneur and a person. The most enjoyable assignments for me were commenting on other blog posts and reading about other students ideas. I came across several over the course of this semester that really peaked my interest. I look forward to seeing if these idea are pursued into reality.

I do feel very strongly that I have grown as an entrepreneur as a result of this course and that I have a much deeper understanding of what makes up the proper entrepreneurial mindset. Besides the actual subject mater in the form of the readings and lectures I feel that the assignments played the largest roll in my growth as they required the application of what we learned in a real world (or hypothetical real world) scenario.

My advice to future students in this course would be the same as it was in my Half-Way Reflection. Time management is the key to success in this course just as it said in our first declaration. Take that assignment seriously and stick to a schedule for this class. Otherwise things will begin to pile up and assignments will be missed. Another key is to double check to make sure both the share and the declaration are completed. I did not receive points for assignments I completed because I forgot to declare. It is a system most of us are not used to.

Elevator Pitch No. 4

For this fourth and final elevator pitch I decided to move the filming to the outside world. This was done to the result of criticism I received with noted that the relatively poor quality of the previous videos made it hard to understand at points. This was an attempt to rectify that. I feel the quality improved by moving outside but the audio is still lacking. I have a very cheap phone and no tripod to mount it to. The pitch is largely the same in the first half and the closing but I changed it a bit in the second half to further emphasize my business's core vision: that quality and convenience aren't mutually exclusive concepts. I feel that of all of the pitches I have made this ones is the best. With a better camera I would be confident enough in the content of the pitch to take it to an investor.

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity 

A business without a sign is a sign of no business. Every business needs signage of one form or another. All existing businesses are potential customers.

Businesses need signage and the options to satisfy that need certainly aren't few in number. There are two other sign shops less than a quarter mile away from the shop I currently work at and at least six or seven in a five mile radius. Online options have sprung up in the past decade as well to help meet these needs. The problem arises out the duality in this industry: Want it cheap? Get it online. Want it done right? Get it from a local shop. Now of course this doesn't always hold true as there are plenty of brick and mortar shops that cut corners, but in the majority of cases this is what can be expected.

Most web-based sign offerings I have seen so far have been produced using cheap substrates and the print is hard to read and overall ineffective at it's intended use. Most of these companies allow little flexibility in the layout of the sign; they provide a set of templates with a choice of a few fonts and colors, then allow you to upload a small .jpeg and off you go. Going to a local sign shop is of course a viable alternative and in most cases a step up on the quality ladder, however most business persons tend to be very busy running their respective businesses. Few have time to take out of the working day to go to a shop and sit with someone and hash out the details for their signage. In my experience signage is a low ranking concern for most business people, usually not thought of at all until it is needed.

In summary, this is my customer:

• Business person of almost any type in any industry. Near universal demand for signage
• Understands that quality is more important than price when it comes to promoting their business, yet still value conscious.
• Has little time to deal with this unmet need, requires a user friendly system to place orders and make revisions

 Innovation

 To meet the above needs my business is formed around the simple idea that with today's technological and logistic infrastructure, a quality sign can be produced and sold at a fair price to a customer any where in the country. Our website will be our storefront and will be designed around ease of used and especially ease of communication with the designer. It will feature a locally hosted file server to allow both the client to provide artwork files without any size limitation and to view high quality layouts without the worry of errors in transmission over fax or email. Once the customer has approved their layout with an electronic signature the production process will begin immediately.


Having real, bonafide, authentic, flesh and blood human designers is a large part of what sets us apart from other online signage offerings. The problem with many of the signs produced by these companies is that their layouts are generated by an automated program. The customer types in their verbiage and selects from a very limited font selection, and boom; the computer spits out a layout and what you get is what you get. What sets apart a quality sign from a scrap of material with letters on it is the details. Just because a sign says what you want it to say does not mean that it is communicating that message to the customer. In order for a sign to properly connect with the human eye and the human mind's eye, it must be designed by a human, and a competent one at that.

 
Venture Concept

By matching a simple and easy to use web interface with a production process focused on efficiency with out sacrificing quality we will be able to meet the needs of our customer. Our customers will come to us for their signage solutions because we provide the middle way, quality and convenience. Our competition is numerous, and fall into the two categories named above: Web based discount signage and local store fronts. The web based discount signage provider's primary weakness is their quality. You get what you pay for and most business owners I have met are wiling to pay for more than what they receive from these vendors. For the local store front the weakness is fundamental to their nature: they are immobile and inflexible, and often inconvenient.

Distribution and customer service are our primary concerns and vital to our success. Shipping costs for signage can be quite high simply because they are so oddly shaped. A normal package is relatively uniform, a sign on the other hand is usually two dimensional and can be quite large. To offset this we must negotiate reasonable rates with a preferred vendor to enable us to ship at a reasonable cost to the customer, otherwise our main selling point of convenience is overshadowed.

To make this business work most efficiently we would need at minimum three designers, and six production workers. This staff would be divided into three 8-hour shifts; a designer too handle both their own work as well as make any needed changes to the artwork during production, and two production workers to run the machines and assemble the product. With three shifts we will be able to run production around the clock which will enable the product to be finished and shipped as efficiently as possible.With appropriate investment in equipment such as flatbed printers, routers, plotters, and laminators we would be able to produce a wide variety of signage. The lack of overhead from a storefront we will be able to keep our prices down without needing to skimp on material.

Secret Sauce and the Future

My secret sauce is my understanding of this industry while also not having come into it by normal means. I had no interest in signage or graphic design before I took my current job. I took it because I was out of work. Being always somewhat of an outsider has allowed me to see things from a different perspective.

I would like to expand my venture into monumental signage. These sort of large and complicated projects have always interested me in my current job but I rarely have the opportunity to participate. I could incorporate this type of work into my current production process with an additional investment in equipment. I can wholesale the finished components to a local sign shop for final assembly and installation, allowing a healthy profit for the both of us.

 Should my business be blessed with success I would hope to use it as a springboard to pursue my longtime goals of operating my own flight school. In five years I hope to have established the business to a degree that it becomes a go-to for signage and I am able to grow and expand. In ten years I hope to be able to leave the day to day operations to an experienced manager while I am able to pursue other projects.


Feedback

The feedback I received from my previous venture concept was largely positive and supportive. One point of criticism however did stand out and that was regarding what differentiated me from my competition. Upon re-reading my post I found myself to be in full agreement with the persons comment. To rectify the situation I added a paragraph to the Innovation section which I felt was to short anyway even on my first post. In it I described how utilizing human designers as opposed to automated programs sets my firm apart from other online sign companies. Its the subtle things in a sign's layout that sets it apart and I will be able to provide these vital subtleties to my customer in a way they are not currently able to receive. Other than that addition my post is largely unchanged based on the very positive feedback. I am confident that should the need arise, I could take this concept to an investor and know that it describes my vision well. 

Week 14 Reading Reflection

What stood out to me the most in this chapter was the need for corporate entrepreneurship in today's global economy. I know all to well how easy it is for a company to become set in it's ways and largely ignore new ideas or anything really that goes against the grain. It is an issue I face at work on an almost daily basis. For a company to survive and stay competitive it must undergo an almost constant and never ending cycle of change.

What I found most confusing was the corporate entrepreneurship strategy process. Initially I was unable to see how such a system would function but after reviewing it and comparing with my own experiences with change and growth in a business I now have a better understanding.

Two questions I have for the author would include: "At what point in the growth and life of a business would you say it becomes necessary to undergo corporate entrepreneurship and ensure that enough changes are made to adapt?" and "Would radical innovation be preferred over incremental in a situation where the existing product still meets customers needs but competition is beginning to take market share?"

There was nothing in these chapters that I found to be wrong. The author has presented this information in an understandable and informative manner.

Going for Google Gold

I will be the first to admit that I did little, if any thing towards search engine optimization and promoting my blog. In truth my main concern was to simply complete the assignment itself and all of my effort went into the quality of the post, not its promotion. The most promotion I did was to provide a link to my own post for the assignment I was commenting on.

My keywords were the week number and the title of the post taken usually verbatim from the assignment. I selected these keywords based off of the instructions in the assignment, as I have said before I have done little else outside of what I was instructed to do in regards to promotion.

I do not use social media in any for personally, so therefore I didn't use social media to promote my blog. Should I pursue my business idea into reality I would certainly use social media to my advantage. While I have a personal distaste for it, I have seen its value both in this class and other marketing, business, and technology courses I have taken.

My most viral post was: "Elevator Pitch No. 2". I do not know why this is exactly. The feedback I received for this post was overwhelmingly positive so perhaps it was spread that way. It had 18 views and four comments.

Searching for both "Luke Logsdon blog" and "Luke Logsdon Week 13" (An arbitrary week number), one or more of my posts came up as the first result. To my surprise there are in fact other out there who share my name but my link still came up in the first spot. 

Very Short Interview Part 2

My first interview revealed a good deal about both my boss and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. I feel like that first interview has helped me in this course as it gave me insight into the entrepreneurial process from someone who has been doing it for thirty years.

For this interview I again sat down with my boss after work. My experiences, and indeed my frustrations in this class helped to influence my questions for this round. First I asked her if she could go back and do it all over again would she. Her response to this was yes. She said that being independent and being able to run her business how she pleases makes up for all of the troubles it has caused. She did say there were of course some details that she would change given the knowledge she has now, but over all she wouldn't choose a different path. I spent a few minutes explaining my business concept as it stands now after a semester of work. I had talked about some details of my idea before to her, indeed before I even took this class, but i had never "put it all together" for her before. I asked what she thought, and she believed the ideas have merit, but were not compatible with her current business model especially given the corporate rules which govern her as a franchisee. My final question was hypothetical given it would require me to quit working for her. I asked if I were to actually pursue my business venture, what my next step should be. She answered with: "Start making connections." This of course made me recall the social networking assignment. She went on to say that her customer database was the most valuable thing her business possessed. Equipment and workers can be replaced, but without that there is no business.

While we of course are not on equal footing in the subject of entrepreneurship, I feel my experiences in this course over the last semester have helped me to understand the world of an entrepreneur a bit better and allowed me to relate to my boss on more even ground, if even by a tiny amount. I could not accurately gauge how well I was coming across to her nor did I directly ask the question, however I feel that I have progressed on my journey, and I would imagine that she would agree.

Week 13 Reading Reflection

What I found most surprising in the reading was the vast scope of factors that determine a venture's value. When I was in my teens my mother had toyed with the notion of selling her business. This was before the '08 crash and the business was doing quite well. I remember her coming up with a valuation that was over inflated and as a result couldn't find a buyer. I know she did not take all of the necessary steps to come up with a truly accurate valuation.

There was nothing in this chapter that I found to be confusing. Valuation is a complicated process but the author did a good job of breaking down the necessary steps.

Two questions I have for the author would include: "When doing a due diligence evaluation, what is a reasonable margin of error to keep in mind between the owners asking price and one's own valuation?" and "When basing value on assets and liabilities, how much value would you put on the experience of the workers themselves?"


There was nothing in this chapter I disagreed with. The author did a great job of breaking down valuation techniques and I feel I now have a better understanding of determining my businesses value.

Celebrating Failure

A time I failed this semester was when my girlfriend and I came to the realization that our plans to move out of state this summer were not to be. I had received a job offer from an old boss now living in Tennessee. This offer and its location seemed to provide exactly what we were looking for so we perused a plan to be moved up there by this summer. I had already made arrangements with my current job to let them know of my plans and we had both told our families, who all live in this area. However about a month ago we reached a point where a decision to stay or go had to be made and we had to accept the fact that we weren't going to be able to leave due to a number of factors, money being the most paramount.

I learned a great deal from this experience. When the offer was first made to me, neither my girlfriend nor I could find any real flaw in our plan. In hindsight we both had a major confirmation bias. The facts that forced us to reconsider our plan were present from the beginning, but we refused to see them. This incident taught me to be much more objective in my decision making and goal setting. I have to force my self to weigh all of the facts, not just the ones that support my argument.

Failure is certainly embarrassing. When I had to tell my boss and my family that I wasn't going I felt almost ashamed of myself. As I stated above I was forced to re-evaluate the way I make decisions and set goals. I try to handle failure by moving past it and focusing on bettering myself. I do not like to dwell, although sometimes it really can't be helped. I think the challenges this class has presented and my own reflections in the assignments has helped my handling of risk to some measurable degree. Next time I plan a major life change I will be able to follow through.

My Exit Strategy

In five years time I hope to have grown my business into a profitable venture and one in which I can pursue one of two options:

1. Sell the business, invest the profits and pursue other life long goals
2. Continue to own the business and focus on hiring and training a managerial staff so I can pursue other interests. 

Which strategy I would take will be based on the condition of my business as well as the condition of the economic environment at the time. The main goal however is to be able to spend my time on other ventures. I do not plan on staying in the sign business forever. I have grown into this industry and know a good deal about it, however it is not where my true passions lie. I have always wanted to own and operate my own flight school, specifically one aimed at Sport Pilot training, and my over all goal is to make enough money to be able to pursue this venture.

I do not think my exit strategy has effected my choices so far in any noticeable way. The amount of work required to make my vision into a reality is the same regardless if I plan to sell in five years or run it until I retire. The opportunity I identified came to me from my current job. My equipment would have to come the way of financing and hopefully the outstanding debts that would create would be paid off in five years time.

Week 12 reading Reflection

What stood out to me the most in this chapter was the lack of planning on the part of many ventures out there. In the chapter it stated that 20% of ventures they studied who had no real level of strategic planning failed within the first two years. I found this figure to be surprising.

I found the section on multistage contingency approach to be a little confusing as I had a hard time differentiating it from previously mentioned approaches to strategic planning.

Two questions I would ask to the author would include: "What is the best way to avoid fatal strategies in the initial planning process with a new venture?" and "If time is limited is it worthwhile to bring in a manger more skilled in planning?"

I do not disagree with the author on any major points. Overall this chapter was well written and informative on the benifits and pitfalls of the planning process.