18 A Customer avatar

My “Customer Avatar” is a typical stressed out college student that is in over their head. They are broke even though they work, they don’t always realize they are stressed because they are always stressed. They used to have hobbies but over the past few years they have quickly faded due to the constant pressure of school. Most likely this customer is in their twenties but at times they feel sixty and at others they feel twelve. I am sure they watch some combination of sports, Shameless, Game of Thrones, and many other Netflix shows. The customer hates books but is constantly reading. Thanks school. On top of so many other stress factors now this customer needs an internship to graduate college, but they are sometimes hard to find.

It is not that I have anything in common with this customer but rather I have everything in common with the customer. I don’t believe it is a coincidence as many times entrepreneurs often times solve needs that they also have. I want to solve this problem for future students in my situation. 

19A Idea napkin 2

1. I am a hardworking, sport loving, former athlete that enjoy to learn and continuously get better. I want to get better at everything I do whether it’s a job, a hobby, a sport, it doesn’t matter. I am a thinker. I am a former two sport athlete in football and baseball and a former collegiate baseball player with the aspirations of being a scout and eventually a general manager. I am the type of person that wants to do things to their fullest potential and am always looking for ways of improving and bettering ideas. I am also the type that wants the best for everyone and wants the best for society. I understand the importance of being educated not just in a classroom but being educated about the job being done.

2. This service is mainly for college seniors that need an internship for graduation, or want to gain credible experience. I also want these internships to offer pay to the students who are accepted into the program so that don’t need a second or third job. I hope that through this program that would be added to universities, that they could build partnerships with businesses and companies that would accept these interns.

3. This program is for college senior in need of an internship. Previously I was hoping to offer this to all college students but I believe it is most important to offer it to those in need.

4. This is not an idea that will have paying customers but rather it is valuable to the student, the school, the partnered businesses, as well as society.  It will benefit all parties. Allowing students to grow their knowledge of the potential work field, allowing partners to find potential employees while seeing them in action, and allowing the school to create partnerships and send graduated students into successful futures.

5. What sets me apart from other is my “best for everybody” nature. I am not thinking to make a profit but rather help everybody involved succeed in their own way. I think that will really drive the success of this program. I am a hard worker that does everything to the fullest and would allow that side of me to drive this idea forward.

I feel that my pieces fit really well together. I believe they are ready to be put into reality. There are other aspects that need to come together in order to be a final product but the idea and the necessity are there.

My biggest feedback was to narrow my market to those who need it. Originally I wanted to offer this two a bigger market in college and even down to high school students so that they could gain experience as well. I have decide, at least for now, that this idea should be narrowed down to just those seniors. My other feedback has been about the process staying competitive. With this I have realized that there needs to be a thorough application process.

17 A Elevator Pitch 2

https://youtu.be/YUog3kiMkUI

Please excuse the heavy breathing. I have no problem going up a stair case, but when it takes ten tries it starts to catch up.

The most useful feedback so far is the overall interest in a program like this. With my personality the realization of creating something to help others makes me want it that much more. A lot of the feedback I got from last video was that i was a little redundant as well as my video was too long. For this pitch I tried to shorten this one up as well as get to the point. 

16A

I tend to be known as a unique person for many reasons a lot of which wouldn't apply to this context so I will just give a few that do.

• I am an extremely passionate and loyal person. When I find something I enjoy I cannot not help but to do it to the fullest.
• I am a problem solver. I refuse to just let things be but rather need to understand why they happened and how they can be fixed.
• Although on the outside I seem very to myself and antisocial, I am actually very caring and friendly. I can almost guarantee that there will be comments in the interviews along the lines of me be hard on the outside and soft on the inside.
• I am a student of everything I do. Even if I feel like and expert on the subject i know that there is always more to learn.
• I am very multidimensional. I believe that I am very educated on a lot of subjects and I use the previously mentioned passion to grow in all subjects.

https://youtu.be/Rj6NLsPcYWE
 This interview is of my boss of the last four years and also a woman who helped raise me through the parks and recreation department of Hillsborough County. She has known me for about 13 years and has watched me grow from a little fourth grader to being a college senior and she had nothing but kind words to say about me. She views me similarly to the way I see myself except she gives me much more credit than I would myself.

https://youtu.be/FKsm0e_pEr4
This is an interview of my mom. She always tells me how proud she is and she speaks of me very highly. She mentioned me being very resourceful which is similar to me viewing myself as a problem solver. Laughably it took three takes to get her to do a good interview, I assumed as my mom it would be easy on her.

https://youtu.be/PIJf6NMQAjU
This interview of my dad is very similar to the others. At the point in my interviews I started to realize that they all have pretty similar answers. He talks about me seeming tough on the outside but soft and caring on the inside. I also realized that all of the interviewees talked about me having a good personality, which is very nice to hear.

https://youtu.be/hK6GC8abvLM
This interview with my girlfriend was as expected of a girlfriend. She spoke to my personality, my love for sports and working with children. She to had a similar interview to the rest as I started to feel more confident in my self evaluation.

https://youtu.be/uDDYG_UN4-k
 Lastly I had my brother record himself for the interview, since he doesn't live around me. Apparently he isn't very good at following directions but he did mentioned some relevant things like my personality, while also talking about irrelevant things like my golf game, and my networking achievements even though it was specifically asked to not talk about that. If you dive in deep in break down what he says you can take away from it that he thinks I am passionate about what I do and will make myself successful.

Surprisingly it seems that those who know me best see me in a very similar way that i view myself. The biggest difference is that those people give me more credit than I give myself. I try to be the best person I can be everyday and it is nice to hear that people see that in action. I wouldn't change anything from my list because I was pretty close on everything I said.

15A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

In this interview process I found three new upperclassmen in the sport management field that will soon need an internship. I explained to them about my proposed partnership service for students with the need of internship for personal benefit or for graduation requirements. Similarly to any other interviewees I have had they were very receptive of the idea. In this assignment we were asked to go a few steps further so I did that.

The attributes that are looked for while finding an internship include: Obtainability/Competition, Pay, Variety, Quality of experience, potential for future employment, Cost, and Convenience.

There is not a huge list of alternatives when it comes to this service but rather two option, find an internship on your own, or use my service. When evaluating these options I believe that my service has the advantage when it comes to competition, pay, and convenience. I believe that finding an internship on your own will only have the advantage of being more cost effective as it is free to gain an internship but through the school it will most likely cost an undetermined amount of money. I believe that quality of experience, and potential for future employment are equally positive for both options. All three of my interviewees were very attracted to the convenience and potential for pay as most internships don’t pay.

Customers would “purchase” this service through the school by getting approved for a position that they applied for. The goal is to create a free program, but if that is not possible than the goal is to create just an add-on cost to the actual course that students go through when they require an internship.

For this idea it is assumed that the post purchase evaluation would take much longer than that of a normal product. The things that seem to be most important is quality of the experience gained, potential for future employment, and overall value whether they paid for it or not. If those are not met then they feel that it would be a bad purchase.

From these interviews I feel that this idea is staying on track and getting stronger. I believe that if done correctly with the right partnerships there will be continuously see positive post purchase evaluations which will help grow the program.

14A - Halfway Reflection

A competency that I have always had but has been much more defined over this course has been adaptability. For many reasons I have been able to hone in on this ability. This course is so much different than any other course I have ever taken, between posting our assignments on a blog, declaring that we did it rather than just turning it in, to having most of the course be based around one idea.

At times I felt like giving up because it felt like redundancy. Every assignment felt as if it was exactly like the last, when in reality there were subtle differences. The fact that I am a senior and in my fifth year of college I am ready to be done. That has definitely contributed to developing a more tenacious attitude in all my classes. This class has also helped me realize that even the most subtle differences in assignments or such things like market segments can cause for huge change.

My three tips for next semesters students would be to 1) believe in your idea, 2) don’t be unwilling to change and 3) Be open to criticism.

12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

The market for this service has a few segments our major market is college senior in need of an internship for graduation, college seniors who want an internship for the experience, and lastly other college students looking for a head start on credible real world experience.

For this assignment I chose the most important segment of seniors with the necessity of internship for graduation.

I interviewed three students that fit perfectly into this segment, an aspiring teacher and two hopefuls in the sport management field like myself. My idea has two main factors the first of gaining experience through the internship, but also just as importantly being able to get paid for it. For this reason I purposely chose an aspiring teacher because their need is partially met but not completely. Those in the college of education that want to teach have programs that help them intern at local schools but they do not pay. Where this becomes an issue is that they cannot get an independent internship that will pay. They must go through the school. The sport management students talked about how stressful it is to have to rely on finding an internship on their own and if not they cannot graduate.

Since the need for the future teacher is more about the payment and they don’t have much of a choice to find internships elsewhere their information search consists strictly of gathering information from the schools available options. The sport management major had very similar searching styles. Their first step was simply going into google and searching “sport management internships in my area.” This is exactly what I did before coming up with this idea. After gathering some information there they then moved on to finding out how to get in with their local sports teams. One of them through a friend of a friend has made some connections in the sports world while the other has been doing it all on their own.

This segment is very aware of this unmet need as it causes stress in their lives as they search for answers. When it comes to the information search at times they seem confused as sometimes being too broad doesn’t help you find what you are looking for and rather need to specify their searches.

11A Idea Napkin

1) I am a hardworking, sport loving, former athlete that enjoy to learn and continuously get better. I want to get better at everything I do whether it’s a job, a hobby, a sport, it doesn’t matter. I am a thinker. I am a former two sport athlete in football and baseball and a former collegiate baseball player with the aspirations of being a scout and eventually a general manager. I am the type of person that wants to do things to their fullest potential and am always looking for ways of improving and bettering ideas. I am also the type that wants the best for everyone and wants the best for society. I understand the importance of being educated not just in a classroom but being educated about the job being done. My idea is not a money making business and falls under the service category. I don’t see this as an idea that would benefit me in my lifetime unless it came to life in the next six months. My idea is more for students who come after me. An idea that would help springboard them into their field of work.

2) The service I want to create will allow students to use school resources and partnerships with outside businesses and in my case professional sports teams to find paying internships while in school. This will allow students to gain credible experience in their field while learning and making money to avoid needing a second job.

3) I am offering this service to those in need of an internship prior to graduating. Whether that need is for graduation requirements or the betterment of self, they can go through the school to gain experience.

4) As previously mentioned this is not an idea that will have paying customers but rather it is valuable to the student, the school, the partnered businesses, as well as society.  It will benefit all parties. Allowing students to grow their knowledge of the potential work field, allowing partners to find potential employees while seeing them in action, and allowing the school to create partnerships and send graduated students into successful futures.

5) What sets me apart from other is my “best for everybody” nature. I am not thinking to make a profit but rather help everybody involved succeed in their own way. I think that will really drive the success of this program. All parties will benefit and there are no money hungry pieces.

I think that all five of these pieces fit very well together. With myself pushing the idea I believe that my mindset and my personality fit well with the idea. I also believe we have a huge market with this unsatisfied need. Everything that I believe is needed for this idea to breakthrough and succeed are there. The rest is getting schools to create the programs and find the partnerships for the service being provided. 

10A – Elevator Pitch No. 1