30A – Final Reflection

 1) I thoroughly enjoyed this course. There were a lot of ups and downs and a lot of learning experiences.  The investigative work, the organizational and imaginative work, the reading, and the reflections were tedious but necessary. The peer reviews for every post seemed to be a bit much but it was not too bad. I enjoyed the experience as a whole, however it was a pain at times. I learned a lot and will be able to apply a lot of it to my life going forward. 

2) The investigative and organizational assignments that required us to make calls and find information really motivated me. If I do not know something, I know I can go out there tenaciously and find it out someway and somehow.  thoroughly enjoyed the reading assignments that were a part of the curriculum of this course. I will remember many of the lessons in those books for years to come. I think I am most proud of the full and whole business venture idea. I like how it is fully planned out and every detail was even written out. I also was proud that the course made us present things because I think one of the things that I have wanted to work on the most has been public speaking and presentation and it made me proud. 

3) I do believe that this course has changed my mind set. It has taught me to quite literally "trust the process". It has taught me how to become more organized with my approach to solutions and starting up some of my ideas. It has also taught me to embrace risk and failure with excitement and fearlessness as we can can either learn something or eventually succeed from it all. I do see myself as an entrepreneur now, I know how to approach an issue now and do it in a meticulous way with direction and guidance.  

4) I would tell them not to cut corners with assignments and do every part of each assignment and take in the lessons that you might learn from the experiences this course brings. I think they must think of the course as an entire experience instead of a set of assignments. It is unlike other classes, as it is not so much what is tested on but what you take away from it to use it in the future. To perform best, you would have to be timely with your assignments and have good time management. The work itself is not difficult, it is simple work so you just have to be disciplined to be able to do it in a timely manner. However, to really take away what you should you have to immerse yourself completely. 

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

1) Opportunity- Our opportunity arises in the time of Corona Virus in the United States. Many small business are at risk of going bankrupt as customers fear going to physical locations. They fear contracting the virus and spreading it to their loved ones. Even if the locations are technically safe, they do not feel it. Many small business either do not have online services or are more reliant on person to person transactions. The opportunity arises in the Broward county area of Florida and is specific to small businesses who are reliant on person to person interactions and are typically owned by families. This includes middle aged, small boutique and restaurant owners. Some have put up no precautions of their own, have put minimal, or have transferred online completely. However, they would prefer to have face to face interactions. This is a relatively big opportunity for a college student and can be lucrative. The window of opportunity is for however long COVID 19 remains a problem in South Florida.

Innovation- Spotless Services is a team of people who provide a service and product. We supply store locations of our customers with gloves and KN95 masks and hand sanitizers, offer the instillation of air purifiers and filters, formatting and configure foot traffic in a safe manner, and provide training to employees on how to use safe practices and deal with customers during the corona virus. For the standard of just buying PPE, it is $150 per bundle. For PPE and Instillation of filters or air purifiers it ranges between $400 and $600, depending on the size. For the full package including training and store configuration it is probably close to $1,200. 

Venture Concept- People will hire us due to the fact that this is our specialty. We are an all in one service during the pandemic. They could do it themselves, but it would be more costly, take more time, and take away from efforts of running the business and keeping it afloat during these trying times. It would not be very hard to switch at all, as most would jump to the idea of something like this. The only competitors would be the small stores themselves, to fend for themselves. However, as I stated, it would be more costly for them all around. The customer experience is everything in our business, we provide our customers, and their customers, peace of mind knowing and feeling that they are safe in physical store locations. We are always on call for maintenance or to replenish supplies. We are also about the community experience and showing customers that we care about them as people as well. We will have excellent and responsive services to tend to our customers. 

Minor Elements

Our Secret Sauce- Our most powerful advantage is the psychological tactics we use to get customers to spend money and make transaction in store locations like before. We allow them to feel assured that they are  safe and can conduct business. We also have a very high response rate and 

Next Venture- We could potentially expand to selling some PPE to private customers in bulk or even providing our services to state sponsored businesses or public areas. Some companies may prefer us to employ new policies quickly in certain locations instead of them opening slowly, waiting for the bureaucratic/corporate processes of large franchises. 

What's next for me?- I hope the need for this businesses would not last very long. I hope to make the money that can be made while COVID is still an issue and then be done with it after it is not anymore. However, I expect that business will continue for at least another 9 months. I believe that this will be the norm for a while. I hope to later either invest the money I make in this or use it to finance another business plan down the road, while still giving me the experience to help me later in life.  

2) Some feedback I received from the first venture concept is that my concept has to rival those of the restaurants supply vendors which they typically already have relationships for. I would counter by saying that the those vendors do not specialize in this specific scenario and they have other responsibilities to fulfill. They also can not give customers the level of attention we are able to give them. We will build brand recognition locally with superior performance and customer service.  As far as what is next for our customers, some have suggested that the demand for this sort of business may be greater than I originally suggested. Some believe that continuing my services would still be quite profitable, while some others have suggested home static disinfecting services, which essentially just cleaning private residences with a special device. 

3) In order to adjust to the feedback we have received from others, I have put more emphasis on superior customer service and local brand recognition in order to separate us from established restaurant supply vendors. We should be able to undercut their prices since we should be able to cut travel costs due to our local location and we will provide more attention to our customers than traditional vendors. Also, long term we will provide both PPE delivery and home disinfecting services. 

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