Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

1. Work Ethic

V: Hard work is needed for success in a company.

R: Many people are lazy and not hard workers.

I: You either work hard or are lazy, it is not a teachable thing.

N: Nothing can replace work ethic.

2. Education

V: If you are smart then you will be able to do better with a company.

R: Not everyone is in college.

I: You can only gain it through going to school.

N: You cannot replace education.

3. Knowledge of the campus

V: Knowing the restaurants around campus.

R: Not everyone knows the campus well.

I: You either know the campus or you don’t

N: Can’t replace knowledge of a place.

4. Food Tastes

V: Knowing what people like to eat.

R: Not everyone has a diverse taste for food.

I: You can’t copy it, it is just something you have or do not have.

N: It is not something you can replace with another trait.

5. Friend who goes to Elon

V: He has knowledge about what I want to do.

R: Other people don’t have his knowledge.

I: You can’t imitate what he did for his school.

N: People’s knowledge from a bigger school doing the same thing could be better.

6. My Dad’s friend

V: He knows about the school’s food system.

R: Other people don’t have his knowledge.

I: It’s hard to get the experience he has.

N: This is not replaceable.

7. One of the Chick-Fil-A managers

V: On campus resource.

R: She is a rare find for information.

I: You can’t copy her experience.

N: Her experience can’t be replaced.

8. Leadership abilities

V: Important to run a company.

R: Not everyone is strong enough to lead a company.

I: You can’t copy someone else you have to lead and do your own thing.

N: You either are a leader or not.

9. Compassion

V: It helps you relate with both parties.

R: Not everyone can sympathize with their clients.

I: It is a natural thing that people cannot replicate very well.

N: You either have compassion or don’t.

10. Thoughtfulness

V: People will remember what you do for them.

R: Not everyone can do it for others.

I: You can’t copy it from someone else.

N: You cannot replace that with another emotion.

My top resource is leadership abilities. This is the most important because you need it to be able to run a company. You have to be able to show everyone how to do things and know the jobs of all the people. 

Elevator Pitch No. 3

After reading the feedback from my second elevator pitch, it seemed that my peers thought that I did a great job improving my pitch. They said that I did a great job of keeping my audience engaged and did a great job of getting my points across. Despite all of the positive feedback, I was told that I need to work on closing out my elevator pitch. I did a great job on the pitch until the very end where I had a slight problem closing out with a little stumble since I didn’t know what to say.

Based on my feedback, I improved the flow of my pitch. I made sure to finish strong and keep the audience engaged the whole time. I made sure that I kept doing my hand motions like I had been doing in the previous pitches and made sure to connect with the audience. I feel as though I did a good job with this pitch with how I incorporated all of the feedback I received and continuing to use my style that people seemed to like a lot.

Reading Reflection No. 2

I read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. Adams main theme is that despite taking many failures, there are still so many opportunities to succeed in life. He uses 3 main points in his book which are; using systems not goals, taking risks to apply for jobs, and thinking of activities as time and space. Using these three points he describes in depth how you can become more successful and do better and whatever you are doing.

I think that this book enhanced what we are learning in class because it showed me how to battle through the losses that I may have taken during this class, and how to turn those failures into positive learning experiences.

If I had to create an exercise for this class, I would try to make it something that involves scheduling and developing a schedule to stick to during the class, so that people taking the class could figure out when and how they are going to do their work.

My biggest surprise in the book was when he talked about using systems not goals. This was a big aha moment because it made me realize I have to develop a system on how to reach my goals, not just a goal to set. If you just set a goal, you will not know exactly how to reach it without a set process.

Growing Your Social Capital

Domain: One of my friends who goes to Elon University found that the hours the dining halls were open weren’t very convenient for him. He decided to try to make a change by talking to the school about it. I talked to my friend over the phone to see how he was going about trying to fix the problem at his school. He gave me information about it if I would get him a McDonald’s burger when we get home from school. Using this insight, I will be better able to try and approach the school with my idea.

Market: My Dad’s friend works at a college and knows the details of how the food places work. After talking to him he told me reasons of why the companies may not want to extend hours but he reassured me that it is possible because they do talk about extending hours occasionally. He told me all this information for free but said it would be nice if I did some yard work for my dad in exchange. Using this information, I have reassurance that the school would indeed be willing to change things up.

Supplier: One of the managers at Chick-Fil-A on campus told me that she works with the school with the hours of her store. She told me how it might be easy to get them to extend their hours on Saturday since they are closed on Sundays. She said that it could be possible if I keep working on it and gathering people to support my idea. She gave me all this insight for the promise that I would continue to eat Chick-Fil-A often. Using this information, I am reassured that my favorite restaurant could potentially be open for longer hours on Saturdays.

I think that this experience has helped shape my networking process because I have realized that a lot more people than I previously thought are interested in my idea. I am now more confident in my idea and will continue to work on it so I can prepare it to be presented to the school. This experience was different than others because I was talking to people that actually had pull on the topic and could either help change things or have experience in this field.

Idea Napkin No. 2

I am a college student that likes to hangout with friends and go out. My talents include being a good leader, bringing out the best in everyone, and being able to connect with people. My experiences include leading a club and raising lots of money for our cause. I aspire to be successful and make the world a better place by helping others and bringing others up. This business design for me would play a role in my life because it would be easier and cheaper for me to eat on campus on the weekend, and I can use the money for other things that I would want.

I am offering to my customers the ability to go anywhere to eat on the weekends and be able to rely on the place being open. My customers are college students who live on campus and do not have any form of transportation or would rather eat on campus during the weekends and not have to commute anywhere. The customers all have in common that they want to have extended hours during the weekend to enable them to eat anywhere at any time they want. The customers care because they are tired of paying extra money and giving up extra time to go off campus to get food. These customers would rather pay a small amount of money for extra convenience and cheaper food options. What sets me apart from others is my drive to find common ground between people and make everyone happy. I want the solution in the end to be something that both parties can be happy with.

I think that all of the elements of my business fit together well because I know who I am targeting, and I know what those people want. I don’t think that there are many weak parts because I believe there would be high demand with everything that I am bringing to the table.

The feedback I got was very positive and I was happy that people thought that my idea was well put together and doable. They did say however that they are worried about the price being a turn off for college students. I considered it and I decided to disagree with this idea. I think that college students are also concerned about time, and if I save them time during the weekend then they probably wouldn’t be worried about spending a little extra money. The difference between the money that they would spend at an off campus place and a place on campus would be greater than the simple cost of paying for my service.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

After taking feedback and re-watching my last elevator pitch, I thought that I did a pretty good job overall but there were some things I need to change. I think that I need to be more exact in the points I am making. I did a little bit of talking in circles which was not good, and I need to improve on that. In addition, I think I need to relate to the audience better. However, I do think that I did a good job with hand motions and speaking clearly and loudly. After reading the feedback from my peers, I decided to get right to the point and try to capture the audience and relate to them. Hopefully it is a better pitch and improves upon the things I did wrong at first.

Create a Customer Avatar

My customers have the hobbies of hanging out with friends, playing sports, and relaxing. They tend to drive standard cars or pickup trucks. They watch funny and action filled TV shows like Friends or Game of Thrones. They do not have children, and only some of them are adopted. They like to read their school books and some other classics that are interesting to them. They tend to be conservative and liberal like regular college students. They are in the age range of 18-22.

I have many things in common with my avatar, including our hobbies, our age, and the kind of car we drive. I think that we have these things in common because we are all college students who are trying to get through college without spending a ton of extra money.