HOT SEAT LESSONS CARCHANGE UPDATE!!!!!!

As a result of sitting on the hot seat a couple days ago there are many logistics I need to figure out. One of the most important ideas was to figure out my pricing logistics. This includes how much my company will make on each transaction, will the renter or our company set the price for the cars, and if there should be a fee to list your car on our website or app. These are all significant decisions which will determine whether or not customers are attracted to my company. Other topics I learned about from the hot seat was to find a way to convince my customers it is safe to rent out their car. I plan on achieving this by guaranteeing every renter full coverage on their car if it is stolen or damaged. Lastly, I need to decide where and how the transaction will occur between two people, this is important because customers should feel safe renting from a stranger. Currently, I am working on finishing my website and there has been significant progress since our last update. We hope to get our website up and running asap and listings/purchases soon!!!

A New Way to Exchange Cars? (Progress Update)

Our business, still with no decided name, has progressed greatly since we first started. We have been able to figure out the logistics behind our business and exactly how we should run it to make it  successful. Furthermore, after filling out the business canvas I was able to understand how to acquire, grow, and keep my customers. Planning this section out was the most important as if I do not have enough following my company will die quickly. However, there is still a lot of information we still need to work on. First, we would like to decide on a name for the company so we can begin to start branding. Also, we need to build a professional website or app quickly which is the most expensive and significant aspect of our company. If consumers can not easily navigate through our app or website they will think twice about never using our product again. Therefore from all this, progress has been made, but there is still a lot of information for me to figure out.

                                               https://www.google.com/urlsa=i&rct=j&q=
                                               &esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact.

Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business

Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business

1. Do not pick an idea you aren't passionate about.

When starting a business, be sure to pick an idea or area that you are passionate about. If you choose something that you are passionate about, rather than focussing too much on the bottom line, the results will follow. When working on your business, you don’t want it to seem like work, and it should always be something that you want to be doing.

2. Do not be afraid to pivot or fail

Especially in the beginning do not become too attached to your idea or product. A large portion of the time, your idea could fail. Take what you learn from this failure, and use it to pivot, or completely drop the idea and try to come up with a new one.  

3. Do not spend too much money when you start a business.

Always start small. Don’t invest too much money into your new business idea first and try to locally expand and promote your idea without a large amount of investment.

4. Don't be overrun by the numbers

Always listen to your customers wants, within reason. Especially if you’re starting small, you need to value every customer and focus on them more than the bottom line. If you treat your customer right, the profits will come.

5. Do not underestimate the amount of time it will take to do things.

Starting a business takes a lot of effort and time and you will not be able to create a business within a day, keep this in mind and do not stop the work until the end. Always overestimate the amount of time it will take to do things.

5 Tips for Starting a Business

Coming to the end of the process, we at EZ-Box realize much more than we did at the beginning of the process. To help out future entrepreneurs, here are 5 tips to starting your own business.

1) Create a business that will improve people's lives
Your business with have to be something that grabs people's attention. So make sure that people will actually want to buy your product or service, not a fad that's designed to break down or only appeal to a very small crowd.

2) Pick a catchy name
People need to remember your name. If people can't remember your name, then the business won't spread or will be completely forgotten, doomed to be confined to your garage or the corner of a decrepit strip mall. Pick a name that resonates with what your business is supplying so avoid names that might sound catchy and fun, but don't actually have anything to do with your business. Klunch might sound nice, but if your business is making pillows, the name doesn't fit.

3) Know your competition
It doesn't have to be a business that sells the same product as you. As long as there is a substitute for your product or service, there is competition. Once you know your competition, it's up to you to figure out ways to make your business better than the alternative. If people would rather choose something else than your product, then figure out a way to make your product more appealing.

4) Get feedback
No business is flawless. You make think that you have all your bases covered but chances are you don't and there are many flaws with your plan. It's hard to see these flaws from the perspective of the person who created the business, so pitch your idea to your friends, or better yet, a stranger and get their feedback.

5) Know your investors
Chances are that you don't have a couple hundred thousand or million dollars just lying around. Neither do I. So you're going to need to find someone who does. Find someone who could potentially be interested in your product, and once you do find out their likes and dislikes. Find out how you need to pitch to them. If your investor is all straight business then telling him a joke might not work, but giving him hard information about your business might. Vice versa, try lightening the mood if you think that your investor might like it. Do your research about them beforehand.

Top 5 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

1. Research

• It is important to research the competition in your field, such as any pre-existing names or products.

2. Survey

• Be sure to reach out to potential customers to see if there is any interest. 

3. Change

• Be open to making changes to the product or company if something goes wrong.

4. Advertise 

• Use social media to your advantage. Get your idea out!!

5. Confidence 

• Have confidence in your company and in yourself. If you believe in your products others will too!

Mama's Meals - End of 2016 Post!!

Mama's Meals has made a lot of progress since our last post! Whether the outcome of the steps we took were good or bad, we have received helpful feedback and we are trying our best to think around the obstacles we have been faced with. We sent out our prototype 300 miles away on November 15, 2016. The meal we sent as our prototype was chicken and rice with a side of broccoli. Before we sent the box out, the challenge we were faced with was how we were going to keep the food cold. We foiled and placed the chicken and broccoli in an insulated bad which we then placed next to icepacks inside the box. We found out the next day that our chicken and broccoli were not cold when they arrived in North Carolina. Despite our disappointment, we are lucky that this is a challenge we are faced with in the early stages of our company's development. We have a  Plan B in terms of keeping our food cold for when we send our next prototype so let's keep our fingers crossed that our change in packaging and icepacks will work! Another step we have taken is completing our business plan; which answers the who, what, and why of our company. Completing the Business Plan made us find the answers to some questions that we were unsure of. With the critical feedback we received on the Business Plan we were able to perfect it and Mama's Meals is now ready to tackle the next step to our final pitch. Lauren, Elli, and I are now in the midst of working on our power point slides which we will present on the final pitch day. We are also creating a website to go along with the power point which will hopefully give a better visual as to how Mama's Meals works. Once we complete our website, we will be sure to share the link with our blog readers first and would appreciate any feedback!

Go-Kart Continues to be Developed

Our app, Go-Kart, has come a long way over the first quarter of the school year. Recently, we have worked on our Minimum Value Proposition. For me personally, this was a totally new experience, I had never thought of the value of having a minimum value proposition. Previously, I believed that a business should shoot for the stars from the start, and not hold anything back. After working on our own Minimum Value Proposition, I recognize the value of it. It is important because it minimizes risk, and more importantly cost, when first getting our business out there. Our Minimum Value Proposition would be a design of our app through photos what would detail the way it would work, and design a website. Currently, we have a very basic website that is basically a place holder for the future. Here is a link to our website: http://szhou5.wixsite.com/gokart. The app photos would allow us to help people make sense of how the app would work, so they can potentially give us money so we can hire someone to develop the app. 

Over this quarter, I feel personally I have learned a lot. I now recognize the importance of planning extensively when working on a business. 

Go Kart Week Two Reflection

      The second week of our new business plan has ended. In this week, we successfully completed our first pitch in front of a group of teacher judges. We also worked on our business canvas, which is a thorough business plan for successfully starting up a business. 

      However, we are still facing the trouble of developing the app prototype and contact some stores to get them connected with our app. We also need to receive feedbacks from the surveys that we delivered to a lot of people.

      We will keep working on our business idea and try our best to prepared for the first official pitch, which is significant if we want to further develop our idea.

      Here is a link that lists out five of the best grocery store apps out there. We will analyze them and try to develop a more convenient app based on the comments on these five apps.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/grocery-shopping-apps-save-time-money/story?id=19715447

Hungry Huskies comes to an end

In the beginning, Hungry Huskies was launched with $150 we received from our funders, the Flint Hill administration. We bought all inventory for $128 at Costco. Over the three times we sold, we earned about $150 dollars. We learned that when you are running a business within the restrictions of a bigger organization it is hard to operate as you please. As a business we had to make a lot of sacrifices to conform to the rules and restrictions of our school. We had to operate around the schedule of Flint Hill, which drastically limited our operations. It also made our business inconsistent because of surprise town and class meetings. From this, our team learned that in order to be truly successful in the business world you must be independent. If a business is independent they are not limited by another organization's rules and schedule. Another problem we ran into was when trying to launch a service where students could order snacks ahead of time to be delivered to them. We were faced with space restrictions and the logistics of money being left in boxes unattended. Because of this, that part of the business was never able to launch. The best advice we have for future entrepreneurs is to be flexible and not to limit themselves to running in one defined area. The best businesses are those that solve a problem. Our advice is to find a problem that is faced by many because a limited market could limits your business's success. We also would advise future entrepreneurs to be passionate about the message and purpose of their business. If you are passionate about your business you are more likely to work hard for its success. In conclusion, Hungry Huskies is happy with our ending and hopes that future entrepreneurs are able to learn from our failures and success to thrive in the field of business! 

Hungry Huskies hopes that all the future entrepreneurs CHANGE THE WORLD!!!!

Stress Money $

We have almost sold out of our second shipment of inventory, marking the completion of our second goal of breaking even. It seems that when we do sell, we sell very quickly.  We have 3 stress balls left.  The challenge for us was finding time to set up and sell. It is encouraging that whenever we sell, our sales are consistent. Meaning that people are not getting tired of our project. Many customers bought more than one stress ball at a time. We would like to see people collect different stress balls; driving up our sales per customer.  Our team is content with each other and we still haven’t run into any disputes.  We even sold 16 at one time for a special bulk deal with another business class.

We do it big over at FHStress.

Advice from an Entrepreneur: Ann Dolin Visits

Yesterday we had the privilege of a visit from Ann Dolin, the founder of Educational Connections. She also happens to be the mother of one of our students, Will Dolin. She shared her story of moving from teacher to stay at home mom to tutor to entrepreneur.  Ann talked about how she turned her passion for teaching and helping students into a thriving tutoring business. 

As her in-home tutoring business grew, her neighbors complained that their street was overcrowded by a steady stream of cars coming to her home. She had obviously identified a need in her community and it was time to scale the business.

Ann described the challenges she faced as she went from a tutor to business owner and advised the students to know their own weaknesses and hire the best people to help them. For their businesses to be successful, she said, they must treat them with legitimacy, not as a hobby. Metrics, for example, are an essential tool in terms of growing a business. Track and study customer acquisition methods so they can build on what is working and change what isn't. Ann also suggested that students form helpful relationships with other business to benefit from reciprocal referrals. Especially important for growth is also to set goals and evaluate progress toward those goals, track demographics, and market to key customer types.

Ann's overall message was for students to find their niche and figure out how to make their businesses different. Ann encouraged all of the students to pursue their dreams of entrepreneurship despite the difficult times that they will surely face. She reminded them to take control of their own destiny and put in the work to build a business they can be proud of.

Advice from Entrepreneurs

Last week three students' fathers spoke with our class to offer their advice on entrepreneurship.

Here's a snapshot of what Tom Schuler, Ed Kennedy, and Curtis Anderson had to say:

• People need to willing to take risks
• Being an entrepreneur = being a leader = vision + being able to delegate
• Must be willing to make a decision and move on (let go of control)
• To be a leader = growth potential
• Be aware of what you don’t know
• Understand your customer
• If you don’t know where you are going, you can’t get there
• If you don’t know where you are, you can’t move forward
• “Entrepreneurial gene” is in 3% of people
• Figure out what you want to do
• Figure out what you are good at
• Get really good people around you to grow the business
• What you need: great idea, good plan, $$$
• Cash flow management is the lifeblood of a business; essential problem

Good luck!!