30 A Final Relfection

When recalling this semester the one thing that continues to haunt me is the nearly ancient bug list. This assignment drove me nuts. It was incredibly hard to think of 5 or 6 bugs but we had to do 20. After that it became a little easier because we knew what we were in for.

Again I will always remember the bug list because from the first assignment I had to figure out what bugs me while only think about how much the assignment itself was bugging me. The experience I am most proud of is the ability to take on a class in which I knew nothing about and create an idea to last me the entire semester while also building on that idea.

I do believe that I have more of an entrepreneurial mindset than before but I wouldn’t say it is a total mindset. This sort of mindset takes a very special person and I believe they develop that mindset over a long period of time.

In order to succeed in this course and the necessary mindset it takes, I would say to embrace the “weird”. This course is most likely different in every way from any other course you have ever taken and that can easily effect you as a student. Once you buy in and embrace it you will start to enjoy it and have fun.

29 A Venture concept 2

This idea came to me as a senior student that needs to secure an internship in order to graduate. Although this is very common it can be difficult to attain one that is meaningful. It is also uncommon to get paid for these internships. As a Sport Management major my opportunities for internships fluctuate depending on the semester because different sport seasons are taking place. It became apparent to me that this was going to be a stressful process and I wanted to find out if others were in the same situation.

Opportunity: Through many interviews and seeing many friends go through the same issue I realized this was an opportunity throughout the college community. I found many senior who are in a scholastic program that requires the student to independently find an internship, and I have also found students who have limited choices of internships. Since internships can help springboard someone into their career path it is important that they have choices and opportunities that will push them in that direction. The market for this opportunity is incredibly large and replenishes itself every year. Since most students are doing this independently of the university there is no loyalties in which we would have to compete. I also have encountered another opportunity in using this same concept to help high school students. When in high school students are expected to perform a certain number of community service hours. Also students are wanting to decide on a major for their college education but often never get to experience it. I believe this market can be very large as well.

Innovation: The way this service is designed to work is to create partnerships between the universities and outside businesses to plug in feeder programs to these businesses. These internships that are supported by the partnerships will have and application process much like scholarships do. The idea is that these partnerships will create a more effective and efficient way to get students the experience they need while also thrusting them into the workforce. Unlike most products and services, this is no created to be monetized. We are not selling this service but rather finding a way to benefit all parties.

Venture Concept: This service will help eliminate some of the stress of finding and internship for college students. Since we are a new concept we will only need to help students realize that we are more efficient than them doing this own their own. We do not have to get them to switch from something else. Although we do not have a product to package we will need to educate students on our system. In teaching the students about how our partnerships are beneficial to them they will want to use our service. The high school service will be very similar but rather than being paid they will earn service hours while also being able to test out field in which they may wish to study. 

The secret sauce of this venture is that I want this to benefit the students. We will be hard to copy because I don’t want this to become a service that causes students to reach deeper in their pockets to finish school but rather use the partnerships between university and business to benefit everybody.

The next step for this service is to expand into high schools in a similar concept but yet still different. What I mean by that is that many students in high school are unsure of their future major, and with this our program will help them narrow it down and gain experience. Rather than getting paid they will receive community service hours while gaining the experience which will also help with when applying for colleges.

For myself I honestly don’t know if I see myself as an entrepreneur. I would love to get this program off the ground so it can help students all over the country. After that I hope to work for either a baseball or football team. I one day would love to be a coach or GM.

Unfortunately I didn’t receive any feedback on my first venture concept assignment but I have received great feedback throughout the semester. For the most part it has been positive with ideas of how I can make this a successful idea. At first I received negative feedback on the idea of having this program in high schools as well so I eliminated it. Once I realized it would be better to make it more of an experimental thing in which the students receive community service hours I feel it works much better. This was the major adaptation I made to this idea.

27A Reading Reflection 3

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big By Scott Adams

1) The Theme of this book is that you can face a lot of failure in life and find a way to learn from it and be successful. This is a book that is about the life of Scott Adams who tried the entrepreneurship route multiple times and failed. Scott Adams tried inventing, investing, a corporate job, and even tried to open two restaurants. All of which failed. He then became the creator of the very popular and successful “Dilbert” comic strip.

2) I believe this relates to our course because it is a constant goal of ours to get better at what we are doing. Not only does Adams speak write about goals but also about improvement. His improvements for the most part are life improvements while ours are based on our business idea but they are very relatable. In this class we have always been taught to embrace our failures and learn from them and to give maximum effort. Adams writes about how his entire life he has tried to embrace his failures and that has been a huge part of his eventual success.

3) If I was to create an assignment for this course, related to the book it would be similar to our celebrating failure assignment from this week. I would put it at the beginning of the semester to help students understand that failure is part of this process. I would ask the students to think about a sometimes in which they tried something new and failed. This will be a great intro to this class since it is unlike any class most students have ever taken.

4) My “aha” moment of this book was how relatable it was for me. I have faced struggles and failures but I have always found a way to keep going. In the span of 18 months, both of my grandmother’s passed away, my childhood dog passed away, my brother moved away to Georgia for school, I was cut from my college baseball team, and I lost one of my closest friends because he was drunk driving. All of these things caused me to struggle in school and lose all of my motivation. I struggled to finish my AA degree in medical sciences only to realize I didn’t want to study that anymore. I was lost in my failures but found a way to get a two year business degree in one year and get in to my dream school that I failed to get in out of high school and here I am today a semester away from graduation. My aha moment has also allowed me to be proud of myself for being able to relate to someone who has struggled and succeeded. 

28 A

I would expect to exit this business within the next five years. I don’t know that I would be selling it to anyone for a large return but rather trusting someone else to run it as I pursue a career in sports which is my true passion. I have chosen this exit strategy because it will give me enough time to really get the business rolling but allow me to move on to my real love of sports. I believe this strategy has helped me make my decisions throughout the semester. I never wanted to create something that I could do forever because of my dream to work for a sports team. It has helped me see this as an immediate opportunity and once the idea is in place I will no longer be needed. 

26A Celebrating failure

This past semester I failed a few times with my focus and time management. I often times find myself telling others that I love to learn but I’m not built for school. I love to learn on my own and work on my own schedule. Sometimes I work ahead and other times I procrastinate. A few times this semester I would start an assignment and forget that I didn’t finish it. Most notably for myself was just before Thanksgiving. I was excited for break so I lit up a cigar on my back porch with the intent of taking a quiz and celebrating the near end of the semester. My computer couldn’t connect to the internet while I was outside. After finishing my cigar and turning my attention to cooking dinner I never got back to my quiz.

I learned again what I have learned many times, and that is that my mind races too much for me to remember everything. The crazy part is I can do many things at one time but not if schoolwork is one.

Failure is very hard at times and depending on the situation can be very embarrassing. I, like everyone else has failed many times in my life on both small things like a quiz and big things like being cut from my college baseball team. What I have learned is that small or big they are the same. When it is all done and you have fail you must make a decision to keep grinding to improve your situation or give up. When making this decision the big picture is most important. I had to make the choice to give up on my baseball playing career because I already beat the odds at my size for even making it to a college team. I had to look at the big picture and I decided to find success elsewhere in my life. I have learned that often times you learn more from failure than you do success. With my personality I only take calculated risks in my life.

25 A Whats Next ( Student Experience Services)

In the existing market I decided to interview three of my coworkers who find themselves in similar situations as myself. These are people that have been interviewed before and are believers in my concept. When refreshing them about my service idea they all seem to be thinking the same way. I told them that my goal was to implement this program at the University of Florida and they all said that my next step is to start this program all over the country.

Much like my interviewees I see this being a program that is nationwide. Universities and colleges all over the country have students in this situation. The issue that would arise is that the University of Florida would most likely have a much better chance of creating partnerships than some smaller colleges. Also many of the larger universities have a large network already that can be accessible for this idea.

With that said this program would find the most success at the larger universities that already have a pre-existing network to tap into. What makes the most sense to me is not trying to scale too quickly. I believe it will be easier to learn from mistakes if they are only made in one place rather than hundreds. Reaching out to other large Florida universities would come next then spreading throughout the country.

Because of the nature of this service it is difficult to find a radically different market. The next market to reach out to would be high schools. Many high school students are trying to find what they want to do as they grow older but don’t have many opportunities to try it.

I interviewed to high school students to find out their feeling about this market. I actually ended up interviewing them twice. My reason for this was that the interviewees are busy students, one a cheerleader and the other a football player. At first they had a little bit of interest but realized that their busy schedules wouldn’t work with the idea so I adjusted it. I made the adjustment to make this a summer program and they were much more interested.

Prior to this assignment I had already eliminated high school students as a market. I did so because some of the feedback from fellow students. They were right. But with the adaptations I made I believe they are a market that can benefit from this service. I was very surprised that the two students were willing to give up their summer for an internship program with no money.

I think that the main reason this can be successful in high school is because it is reward based. The reward for this to the student is they receive community service hours that can be beneficial to getting into college when the time comes. Finding the most success in high schools is still a work in progress but does have potential to be another market for the service.

24A Venture Concept 1

This idea came to me as a senior student that needs to secure an internship in order to graduate. Although this is very common it can be difficult to attain one that is meaningful. It is also uncommon to get paid for these internships. As a Sport Management major my opportunities for internships fluctuate depending on the semester because different sport seasons are taking place. It became apparent to me that this was going to be a stressful process and I wanted to find out if others were in the same situation.

Opportunity: Through many interviews and seeing many friends go through the same issue I realized this was an opportunity throughout the college community. I found many senior who are in a scholastic program that requires the student to independently find an internship, and I have also found students who have limited choices of internships. Since internships can help springboard someone into their career path it is important that they have choices and opportunities that will push them in that direction. The market for this opportunity is incredibly large and replenishes itself every year. Since most students are doing this independently of the university there is no loyalties in which we would have to compete.

Innovation: The way this service is designed to work is to create partnerships between the universities and outside businesses to plug in feeder programs to these businesses. These internships that are supported by the partnerships will have and application process much like scholarships do. The idea is that these partnerships will create a more effective and efficient way to get students the experience they need while also thrusting them into the workforce. Unlike most products and services, this is no created to be monetized. We are not selling this service but rather finding a way to benefit all parties.

Venture Concept: This service will help eliminate some of the stress of finding and internship for college students. Since we are a new concept we will only need to help students realize that we are more efficient than them doing this own their own. We do not have to get them to switch from something else. Although we do not have a product to package we will need to educate students on our system. In teaching the students about how our partnerships are beneficial to them they will want to use our service.

The secret sauce of this venture is that I want this to benefit the students. We will be hard to copy because I don’t want this to become a service that causes students to reach deeper in their pockets to finish school but rather use the partnerships between university and business to benefit everybody.

The next step for this service is to expand into high schools in a similar concept but yet still different. What I mean by that is that many students in high school are unsure of their future major, and with this our program will help them narrow it down and gain experience. Rather than getting paid they will receive community service hours while gaining the experience which will also help with when applying for colleges.

For myself I honestly don’t know if I see myself as an entrepreneur. I would love to get this program off the ground so it can help students all over the country. After that I hope to work for either a baseball or football team. I one day would love to be a coach or GM.