30A - Final Reflection

1)  Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had along the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

I have enjoyed this class very much. I enjoyed getting to know the class through the blog posts and feedback. It’s been fun to share all these processes along the way. Some were fun, and some were painful, like the elevator pitches. I might have just as well been singing on camera, a nightmare in itself. But they were a necessary evil, to make us take a look at how we present ourselves and how it can even be improved and with practice, over time, not so bad. My first elevator pitch was the one you reviewed, and it was dark, long, and drawn out with no motivation on my part and your were still kind. I watched the review with my hands over my eyes. Dr. Pryor, it is a riot to watch your lectures as well as informative. I have learned so much about entrepreneurship and how it’s not easy, but it is obtainable with the right solution to a problem for the right customer at the right time.

2) What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing? 

I didn’t realize at the beginning of the class we would actually create a product to satisfy a need that would then be addressed to real people and businesses for feedback. I was slightly terrified when we started the process. I have always wanted to fix problems when I hear about tragedies in the news and otherwise. I never thought I might be able to help. This project gives me hope that maybe I can help even if it turns out to be in some small way. That just gives me motivation to try again.

3) At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset? 

I absolutely think I have more of an entrepreneurial mindset that I did at the beginning. I think a lot of thought must go into each venture. It cannot be a quick idea, really, it must be well thought out, well planned, fine-tuned, and researched.

4) What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset?

For the new students, I would suggest working one week ahead so you have more of a flexible schedule. I would say to just take each assignment one at a time to get used to the idea of entrepreneurship, used to your venture concept, and to the blogging process, etc. Have an open mind and enjoy the class.

29A Venture Concept No. 2 Description

29A Venture Concept No.2 Description (Please see the new text below in blue)

Opportunity. The market opportunity is the need for a safety device for parents of young children that cannot get out of a car by themselves (specifically a hot car). The need is currently not being addressed and has come to my attention because of the continuous reports of this tragedy occurring repeatedly as reported on the news stations where the child has perished. The child’s age for this opportunity ranges from 1 minute old to 2 or 3 years old depending on when the child no longer requires a car seat. Once that has transpired the child has matured enough to speak up and can most likely alert someone who has left them behind in the car. The parents of the child, specifically the mother of the child or children, is my focus. They live in Florida, make a medium household combined family income of $40,000 to $150,000 annually. They are moderately to highly educated, may or may not work, possibly use day care facilities or child care sitters and may have other children either younger or older than the focus child. They come from all different ethnic backgrounds. They may have lots of responsibilities that may make it hard for them to complete every task they are required to tackle each day and they may become forgetful. They also may have multiple children (think of the movie Home Alone) where they think the whole lot of children are with them, but one may not be. They may work full time and rush off to work each morning, doing the same routine each day. This customer will also be caregivers of young children that would be in a situation where they would be giving them rides in a car.

Innovation. I want to stop completely all future hot car deaths. The product needs to alert parents or caregivers if a child is in the back seat so that they are heard and removed from the car. It would need to always be implemented, ready for action and would never be a burden to use or an annoyance. It must have a cost that is reasonable and that is offered at the appropriate time so that the parents will purchase it along with other baby products (in the heat of baby spending) usually just before a baby is born.  It would be best applied as part of a baby car seat design. The initial customer would be the parent of the child, and the subsequent customer would be the car seat manufacturer.  

Venture Concept. The product has been simplified to just address this need of hot cars deaths. The product will be a pad that is applied to a car seat that would alert the parents or caregivers if the car has stopped so that the parents would be gently reminded that the child is waiting for them to get them. The weight of the baby would implement the pad, and the car in the off position would set off a sensor to start playing a soft tune to remind the parent. The product is designed to be helpful. It would act as an alarm (soft tune instead of a loud buzzer) that would need to be turned off so that it would automatically reset once the baby is placed back in the seat such as a phone alarm. The venture concept has been modified yet again and is a direct hit to the problem at hand. 

Parents would easily switch to this product because it would be offered on new car seat designs for not much more money and would be a natural part of the buying process that already exists. The product would cost the manufacturer pennies on the dollar, maybe at a price of approximately $10.00 or less per car seat. There would be a patent on the design and each car seat manufacturer could advertise its car seat as a safety seat. They could sell it through their own advertising efforts, and they would come out looking like a hero. I would just get a portion of the profit that my product generates.

There would be no competitors because I wish to sell this product to all the top car seat manufactures. Should one company only agree to purchase the product from me if they were exclusive, then their competitors would be the other car seat manufacturers. The other car seat manufacturers would be forced to substitute the item to offer their own version. This could cause them to make a better, more improved idea starting with our idea as a base bypassing the patent.

I would start the business in my own home by myself by working to design a seat pad much like an adult car seat comfortable cushion pad. I would use existing technology to have it be implemented and then reset. This seat pad could evolve to have additional features on it such as a heated element for winters.

My most important resource will be using my human capital. I believe I can get the idea started myself, create a sample product to then present it to the proper decision makers at baby car seat manufacturing companies. Should they not want to come aboard, the back up plan would be to sell the pad separately and added to a car seat in a standard size. I hope to have negotiating skills to present and sell the product. I can also design it to be aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. The idea is an easy one, so it is imitable. I would have to get a patent or have a contractual agreement between me and the manufacturer(s) to either offer it for years to come or to buy the idea from me.

My next step in this venture would be to investigate a patent to protect the idea. Then I would like to contact car seat manufacturers to discuss the idea with them. In five years from now, I would be like to be making pennies on the dollar for each car seat sold that had my safety pad on it as standard.

Previously my product was vastly different so the feedback was also vastly different. The product started out as a health stat monitoring device, which already existed, but did not address the hot car issue. The product was rather expensive, and it didn’t narrow down to a specific need that new parents had except worrying that their child might become ill. The concept had ventured far away from the original goal. Then the product became part of a child safety seat.

I had a lot of great comments on how the product is best served as a B2B product and how manufacturers of child care safety seats already knew that market, that customer and how they think. Most of my feedback at the beginning was positive, they just seemed to like the idea and what it would accomplish. My nephew was afraid the music would play when the car was in a stopped motion, like at a stoplight. I reassured him that the car would have to be turned off. My brother thought the music should get louder to some degree so as to really bring the point home to get the child out of the car already.

The feedback that stuck with me the most was from Dr. Pryor addressing how the product had (in my own words) become complicated. He was quickly able to narrow down a great, simplified solution to the problem/need I was solving for with For Kid’s Sake. (I was afraid previously that I would offend someone right out of buying the product with a message of who buys this product may be capable of leaving a baby in a hot car. They might think, “Why would I want to buy this? I’m not capable of that” So, I kept adding features to it. But, with Dr. Pryor’s quick wit, in about one minute he had a solution.

Describe how you changed your venture concept, based on what you learned from the feedback. Dr. Pryor said, “Just offer it as a seat pad that is triggered by body weight.” (Hmmm, yes, that is great!). How seamlessly simplified and smart. Now, how would we connect it to the car stopping and with someone exiting the car? It would have to be connected with the driver somehow. Then it struck me that it could also be triggered by the driver’s seat belt. When the belt is released, and the driver is getting out of the car, the music plays! It could be blue-tooth enabled and connected with the car seat.

Or…better yet, it could be part of the car’s manufacturing and something to sell to car manufacturers. When you sit in your car and turn the key once, and the seat belt isn’t fastened, the sound starts to remind you to put on your safety belt. Why not have a different sound start when the car is turned off or when your seat belt is released to remind you to check the car for precious cargo. It really is just a reminder that is needed. I would like to further explore this idea and venture concept because it is getting more and more simplified and will be easy to do!  I may not make any money, but if I save one life, I’ll be thrilled! I will still try to patent the idea if it is novelty enough.

So, the idea may have been solved. If I just speak with a car manufacturing company and ask them to add a sound or music that plays to remind someone once the driver’s seat belt has been released or when the car is turned off, to check the car for precious cargo, the problem would be corrected. It would take advertising to bring the point home so that people would learn what it is all about. Then every car manufacturer would need to jump on the band wagon. The idea would cost them pennies on the dollar to do it and they would be heroes saving babies. It would be nice to get a couple of the pennies for the idea.  

28A - My Exit Strategy

28A – My Exit Strategy

What my plan is with For Kid’s Sake is to see how far I can take it. If it works out, then I’ll keep it going for as long as it’s profitable, helpful, and enjoyable. I want to make a difference, so I hope I can help at least in some small way. When it stops being those things, then I’ll know it’s time to move away from it.

I’ve selected this strategy because I want to let the idea and the opportunity speak for itself. If the community finds it useful, then I’m all for it. If not, then I’ll look to another new idea that might be. You cannot force an idea to work. It either does or it doesn’t. But you do have to give it every chance and help it along the way.

In some ways, it has influenced my thinking about the opportunity. I’m not at a place where I can pour large sums of money into the project. I would have to rely on investors which is tough. If I sold the product idea to a company, like Graco, for example, I would be out right away. I would see if a patent of the idea is feasible, and if so, that will charge me up to take it further.

I had a business once before, a freelance graphic design business that kept me very busy part time. I never was able to take it on a full-time basis though, since I still worked full time. I didn’t have enough money in savings to go further. The projects they needed were due immediately, and I had to work the next day. I wasn’t able to complete all of them on their time frame. Until I could make it my priority, it just wasn’t going to work. The business finally settled into a hobby and then I shut it down to make it an official hobby. So, it failed at the time due to different things. I thought I may start it up again one day if the hobby generated enough money to claim it on my taxes, then I would take it to that next level again and more.

26A Celebrating Failure

26A – Celebrating Failure

It wasn’t this semester, but it was just before. Yes, it was Banko’s class. Business Finance. I started the class late due to another class’s instructor that quit after the first week, so I switch to another class. You never want to start late in John Banko’s class. As I went through the class, and did the math problems in the book, I understood them, they made sense, and all was well, or at least I thought. First exam came, fail! I thought, well, the first exams are always tough until you see what the instructor is like and what he is looking for exactly. Second test came along, fail!  So, I dropped the class. 

I, of course, had to retake it right away and I thought after researching the class that if I had just studied the old exam problems, it would be a piece of cake! So, I came back armed with that knowledge, studied until I thought my head might explode. First test, fail!  Oh, this is awful, I thought. I understood arbitration, I even liked it, but he threw in a third dice instead of rolling two and seeing the outcome, now there were three. I had no idea of what to do with that. He supplied old test problems to study, all 800 pages of them! I must have missed that one. Second test, fail!  Oh well, I guess UF is over. Couldn’t take the class with another instructor, couldn’t take it off-campus, I was stuck. Third test fail! But then a miracle happened, and Banko curved the grades. I was in… Thank God!  

I'm telling you about this most embarrassing time for me with the hope that I might help someone else. My advice, if you haven’t taken Banko’s class yet and you’re not a finance person like I’m not, Study the old exam problems, watch his lectures, but, mostly, study the old exam problems, the Real Deal pre-exam quizzes, and the segment quizzes. You can even elect to use Study Edge. Do the quizzes over and over since they regenerate the problems to give you new ones. This is a key point. You cannot study the Real Deal one time. It's just not enough. You won't cover enough problem types. Keep in touch with him. He really will do everything he can to help you with anything you’re confused about. Then pray for a miracle!!  Lots of student’s passed his class just fine.  I learned that you must give challenges everything you have, don’t let up for a minute. You never know!

This Entrepreneurship class along with past experiences have taught me so much. Failure is part of life. It's stinks, but, there's only so much we can do about it. The best thing to do is to move on and forward to a new project, class, product, etc. We all have so many good business ideas, and I'm sure they're not the only ideas we have that are viable and strong. I am more likely to take a risk now, and I don't overly stress about that one thing being perfect. Life isn't perfect and neither are we. Life goes on and we have to just breathe and keep going, and enjoy the ride along the way. 

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3 “Inbound Marketing,” Brian Halligan

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3 “Inbound Marketing,” Brian Halligan

The general theme of this book was how to use the internet to get the most bang for the buck in advertising. How you can do most of your advertising today without paying for a click or an ad. This was written in 2014 but is still pretty relevant today. It also points out how fast things change. Things you expect to be around forever really cannot be. It reminds us to keep up with the times in order to not get left behind.

He talks a lot about blogging as a free tool to gain relevancy and therefore customers. Since we started and maintained a blog during this class, it has taught us all a helpful tool that isn’t hard to do at all and on a regular basis isn’t very cumbersome as I thought it would be. This connects the book to this class in that same way, to save money as an entrepreneur, to stay in touch with your audience, and to connect in ways that are seen as valuable to your customers to keep them engaged.

If I had to design an exercise for the class based on this book, I would at the beginning of class ask them to send out direct mail pieces and email blasts to potential customers. I would also set up a blog and write compelling content for my potential market to hear about. For my market of For Kid’s Sake, I would write about baby safety etc.  For the second part of the exercise, at the end of the class I would have each student evaluate their efforts to see which worked he best. It would point out that staying relevant and rolling with new trends would be the way to go.

My ‘aha’ moment was reading about how Obama set up a blog for people to see and engage in while Hillary was using the old style of direct mail pieces and the like. How he didn’t have deep pockets and needed to play it efficiently but effectively in order to succeed, which of course, he did.

I want to read more about what Brian Halligan has to say. I have a marketing background and used Google Analytics, etc. I want to hear what he thinks about keeping things relevant today, in 2019. Naturally, social media is the way to go, but the tides will be changing again soon, or already are as we speak. And we must all keep up or risk failure in our ventures.

25A What's Next - For Kids Sake

Existing Market:

To grow this business as a B2C product, the consensus is to build a prototype piece to then try to sell to stores such as Amazon or Walmart. There would have to be sections of the stores for selling baby products. It would have to be low cost and have to be something that would make a consumer want to spend the money on it. After speaking with my nephew Brian (new father), my Brother (new grandfather), and Amanda (new mom) -there are two new babies in our family, we had some collaborating ideas: Brian thought it might activate while the car is stopped, not off. He said only if the car is in park. I said, the motor would be off. But we wondered how to connect it to a motor that is off. I thought it would be better to connect it to the driver’s seat belt when it is unhooked. Brian liked that idea. My brother, Jeff asked if the sound could grow louder if the baby is not removed and we all agreed that that was a good idea. Since the activation is connected to the seat belt being unhooked, that would take some additional thought. This brings me to the new market.

New Market:

After discussing this venture, I think it is best presented as a B2B product. The reason is selling this product to a manufacturing company that already produces child safety seats would be the easiest way to gain their technological skills, piggy-back on their coat tails, and gain their momentum. Since I have changed my product drastically, the interviewing process was almost like a new venture. Everyone I spoke with is passionate about the idea of saving children and about a simple way of doing so. The next step of the business is still looking at the idea as a viable product within the market and to make a prototype sample to show it to potential manufacturers and investors. I spoke a woman with the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Administration) and she gave me this website for further exploration: www.volpe.dot.gov/sbir. It is the US DOT Small Business Research Program. (Dept. of Transportation). I also reached out to IMMI’s team Indiana Mills and Manufacturing Inc. (https://www.imminet.com/industries/childcare/) about the product as well as Safe Kids Worldwide. I will next try to reach Evenflo and Greco’s manufacturing departments. Finally, I looked at getting a patent on the idea and it would cost about $100 which isn’t bad for piece of mind. One of the patent websites said you should not discuss your product idea because it could take away the novelty aspect of it which is a requirement for a patent. 

24A Venture Concept Description - For Kid's Sake

Opportunity. The market opportunity is the need for a safety device for parents of young children that cannot get out of a car by themselves (specifically a hot car). The need is currently not being addressed and has come to my attention because of the continuous reports of this tragedy occurring repeatedly as reported on the news stations where the child has perished. The child’s age for this opportunity ranges from 1 minute old to 2 or 3 years old depending on when the child no longer requires a car seat. Once that has transpired the child has matured enough to speak up and can most likely alert someone who has left them behind in the car. The parents of the child, specifically the mother of the child or children, is my focus. They live in Florida, make a medium household combined family income of $40,000 to $150,000 annually. They are moderately to highly educated, may or may not work, possibly use day care facilities or child care sitters and may have other children either younger or older than the focus child. They come from all different ethnic backgrounds. They may have lots of responsibilities that may make it hard for them to complete every task they are required to tackle each day and they may become forgetful. They also may have multiple children (think of the movie Home Alone) where they think the whole lot of children are with them, but one may not be. They may work full time and rush off to work each morning, doing the same routine each day. This customer will also be caregivers of young children that would be in a situation where they would be giving them rides in a car.

Innovation. I want to stop completely all future hot car deaths. The product needs to alert parents or caregivers if a child is in the back seat so that they are heard and removed from the car. It would need to always be implemented, ready for action and would never be a burden to use or an annoyance. It must have a cost that is reasonable and that is offered at the appropriate time so that the parents will purchase it along with other baby products (in the heat of baby spending) usually just before a baby is born.  It would be best applied as part of a baby car seat design. The initial customer would be the parent of the child, and the subsequent customer would be the car seat manufacturer.

Venture Concept. The product has been simplified to just address this need of hot cars deaths. The product will be a pad that is applied to a car seat that would alert the parents or caregivers if the car has stopped so that the parents would be gently reminded that the child is waiting for them to get them. The weight of the baby would implement the pad, and the car in the off position would set off a sensor to start playing a soft tune to remind the parent. The product is designed to be helpful. It would act as an alarm (soft tune instead of a loud buzzer) that would need to be turned off so that it would automatically reset once the baby is placed back in the seat such as a phone alarm.

Parents would easily switch to this product because it would be offered on new car seat designs for not much more money and would be a natural part of the buying process that already exists. The product would cost the manufacturer pennies on the dollar, maybe at a price of approximately $10.00 or less per car seat. There would be a patent on the design and each car seat manufacturer could advertise its car seat as a safety seat. They could sell it through their own advertising efforts, and they would come out looking like a hero. I would just get a portion of the profit that my product generates.

There would be no competitors because I wish to sell this product to all the top car seat manufactures. Should one company only agree to purchase the product from me if they were exclusive, then their competitors would be the other car seat manufacturers. The other car seat manufacturers would be forced to substitute the item to offer their own version. This could cause them to make a better, more improved idea starting with our idea as a base bypassing the patent.

I would start the business in my own home by myself by working to design a seat pad much like an adult car seat comfortable cushion pad. I would use existing technology to have it be implemented and then reset. This seat pad could evolve to have additional features on it such as a heated element for winters.

My most important resource will be using my human capital. I believe I can get the idea started myself, create a sample product to then present it to the proper decision makers at baby car seat manufacturing companies. Should they not want to come aboard, the back up plan would be to sell the pad separately and added to a car seat in a standard size. I hope to have negotiating skills to present and sell the product. I can also design it to be aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. The idea is an easy one, so it is imitable. I would have to get a patent or have a contractual agreement between me and the manufacturer(s) to either offer it for years to come or to buy the idea from me.

My next step in this venture would be to investigate a patent to protect the idea. Then I would like to contact car seat manufacturers to discuss the idea with them. In five years from now, I would be like to be making pennies on the dollar for each car seat sold that had my safety pad on it as standard.