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Showing posts from March, 2018

Elevator Pitch #3

This feedback was much more helpful this time around. I was surprised somebody said I needed to memorize it more, but it was good advice all the same. I still abhor getting in front of the camera, but I begrudgingly must admit that this has made me better at filming and presenting myself and talking at a reasonable pace so others can understand me. This time it was almost memorized and I suppose my pitch is better now; it's way more interesting now. The visual aid actually was a good bit of advice because it helped me get my point across better to show the specific parts of the dustpan.

My Venture's Unfair Advantage

1. I have a personal relationship with a lot of my customers This is super valuable, because the relationships I have with others cannot be duplicated by anyone else. I guess relationships are not rare, but the kind of relationship I have with all of these ladies is rare because they knew me growing up basically. With that, it’s hard to duplicate unless you go back 19 years and you can’t substitute it with anything else. 2. I’m good at evaluating feedback we receive and doing research on how to make this better A core value of a lot of business is taking feedback and applying it to their product. Because of this, it is valuable, but not rare. Lots of people have this skill, which is what makes their companies so great. Skills are hard to copy unless you have a lot of patience and time. This is probably substitutable by hiring someone with these skills or by running a piece of code through it and automatically evaluating it. 3. A patent on my product Patents are valua

Reading Reflection #2

 I read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 1) There are two different ways of thinking that is performed by everyone and these ways of thinking affect how we act and perceive the world 2) This is important to entrepreneurship because the key to getting people to buy your product is knowing how they think. This way you can manipulate them into having a need for whatever it is you are selling. People often make impulse decisions and you can make your product be the thing they buy. We're constantly talking about knowing our customer and making them think that their purchases are their decision. This book would be a perfect impetus for that. 3) There were actually copious exercises in this book for examples on how our brain works and the amount of ordinary effort we put into thinking. My favorite examples though, are sentences that have something wrong with them but our brains won't even register it because we're focusing on another thing or it actually looks total

Idea Napkin #2

1) You: I love finding the best solution to a problem whether it's getting a stain out or finding out the best way to use this calculus formula and to do that, I do a ton of research I pride myself on coming up with creative solutions to problems as well as my general creative spirit. If I’m passionate about something, I will not stop until my goal is reached. Moms and other caregivers already do so much for us and so my goal is to make their lives a little easier in whatever way I can do that. In order to gain these people's trust, I have to build relationships and so this will be heavily wrapped up in my everyday life. 2) What I'm giving my customers: I’m offering cleaner floors with a better dustpan. Since there’s always a line of dirt left over when sweeping, this would take care of that. The skeleton of the design is a standing dustpan with a long handle and a compartment, but there are modifications, like a bigger compartment for the dirt and other detritus on the f

Elevator Pitch #2

I didn't really get a lot of helpful feedback from my peers. This isn't unusual, it was just inconvenient, so I decided to think about what I didn't like about my last one and worked from there. I made a couple of my own changes including: 1) I changed my elevator pitch to focus on mothers. 2) I changed my opening to look more polished and less awkward. 3) I shortened my script to get my message across more quickly and effectively.

Customer Avatar

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She is a 40-year-old woman with at least 2-3 children between the ages of 0-12, if not more. Most likely, she grew up in the Midwest and was one of those people had dreamed about her future domestic life from a young age. She’s working some side job that requires her to be out of the house at least once a week, but her main job is being a mom and she loves it. On the weekends, she likes to bake cookies and go dancing (if her husband feels up to it that night). Dancing makes her feel young again. Her car is a black minivan (doesn’t show dirt) with copious cupholders and manual doors with some bumper stickers about her kids, like those “My child is an honor student” ones. She doesn’t really get a lot of time to herself, which makes her sad. A lot of the world is slipping by her, so her favorite TV shows are ones that she grew up on (depends on the mom’s age, but could include Happy Days, The Addams Family, and other shows of the like) and as far as books? Well, she now mainly previe

Secret Sauce

What I thought my human capital was: 1 1. I love helping people whatever they need, whether it’s encouragement, physically doing something for them, or listening to them. I've been working on this for awhile and I believe that I've gotten pretty good at this 2 2. I’m able to work pretty well under pressure. I've participated in theatre for a number of years now and although there was a lot of pressure and stress, I loved every minute of it. 3 3. I really really really love to research and find the best, most accurate information. Often I'll find out what the best places to go in a city are or the cheapest place to buy socks or something random like that.     4. In my opinion, I’m pretty empathetic and always try to understand both points of view or see where someone is coming from. I think it's important to keep an open mind and not be stubborn (most of the time) because then it's easier to reach understanding or a look into why that person is th