Shawn Davis

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

            The autobiography I read was “Shoe Dog”. What surprised me the most while reading this was how big people perceived Nike to be today compared to how many times he has failed along the way to get Nike off of the ground. Another thing that was surprising to me is that Nike just started out with just shoes and that it started with a fifty dollar wire from Phil’s dad. While reading his autobiography what I admired out of Phil the mot was that he never gave up even when things seemed to have no hope and was in a huge financial hold. The thing that I least admired is when Phil thought that he had to lie to the people in japan in order to get more business from them. The entrepreneur did face adversity and failure throughout his journey to becoming Nike. One part of the reading that did confuse me was hoe Phil kept blowing through money and how he was able to function without the employees that you would assume a company like that to have in order to function. If I were able to ask Phil two questions I would ask him how this impact did on his family and if he has any regrets regarding that.  

Shawn Davis

28A – Your Exit Strategy

            My exit plan of my business would be me staying with the business for several decades and when it’s time for retirement I would keep my business within the family to protect the venture and keep it as a family business passing it down to my children. I’ve selected this particular exit strategy because I want to keep a constant income coming in to provide for my family for a life time instead of them just having a pile of money sitting there that can run out at any time of their young lives. This influenced my growth because before this class I would have said something like I would sell my business for a larger amount. But now the smart thing would be to keep my business because it would make more money than what I would sell it for.

Shawn Davis

26A – Celebrating Failure

            Celebrating my failure when I was younger I tried several times of attempting to do a back flip. When I was in elementary I would always hang out with the older kids, they were either in a high grade or in middle school. All of us went to after school care together and once we get there and finish our homework we would be free to play and all of the older guys knew how to flip and I wanted to learn how to flip so bad but every time I attempted to flip I seem to never control my body to do the flip. For weeks straight I failed at trying to get my body to flip until one day I tried to do a back flip I controlled my body to flip but It was a half flip my body wouldn’t go straight back my flips would go sideways. I never gave up I would practice flipping every day I had free time, as weeks go by I just stood there and jumped high as I can and threw my body backwards and I did a perfect back flip just to see if I can do it again before bragging about it I tried it again and I landed my second time, the next day in after school camp I was bragging about me knowing how to flip and all of the bigger kids came running saying let me see flip. When I went to show them I jumped so high and did the back flip everyone started flipping celebrating something I failed at for weeks. I learned that if you really want to do something and you are eager to learn to do it never give up.

          

         Failure to me is something you continue to fail at and you give up on it letting failure get the best of you. The way I handle failure is if I fail at something I would emotionally get myself together and do things differently from the first time I failed at what I’m repeating. this class has changed my perspective on things because dealing with our venture concept I continued to come up with ideas to make my idea better and hoe to be successful and I never gave up on coming up with ideas so I could stay away from my business failing.

Shawn Davis

25A – What’s next?

            Exiting market

Step 1. What’s next will be that there will be enough college housing provided for the college students to live in places without having trouble finding a place close to campus to live.

Step 2. After interviewing my three customers they gave me the idea of plan to always have extra connections than you think you need also to have a better understanding of the city to be able to build and expand upon college house in what’s already in a limited space. The things they might want next is cheaper housing once they have the simply that they have they’re going to want housing to be cheaper.

Step 3. Based on my expectations and feedback I’ve received form customers they most common things that make sense to me is to continue to create housing for college students, also to not only create housing for one college but also create housing for other colleges in numerous cities or even states at lower rates than the other expensive housing. Also due to the feedback I’ve receive in the future it will help me know the things that the customers will be interested in so for future housing that I will be providing I can expand and put extra thought into it.

            

            New market

Step 1. The part of society I would target is the poor. Where the funds aren’t coming from government funding and needs.

Step 2. The way I would create value for people in the market is by showing them why the need is there. The value would be helping the community and also helping the people that needs the help.

Step 3. The feedback I got from my interview that can help me be successful in this market is by providing people housing for the people who are having trouble with finding a job and provide them with a place to stay until they find themselves a job to where they can pay a certain amount of money.

Step 4. The thing I learned about this new market is that it’s really a great opportunity to help people that needs to be help until they get to a place in life to actually live not yet a perfect but a great life to give back to those who helped them until they were on their feet. I was surprised from the feedback I got from the people I interviewed on their thought of helping people that are struggling that are trying to find a job. My expectations and assumptions were correct. The new market is attractive as my second because you are helping those to bring more value to your businesses by looking out for those that will possibly promote your business to others.

Shawn Davis

24A – Venture Concept No. 1

My venture concept is based on the need of college housing in college towns. This opportunity comes from the analysis that in college towns it is hard for college students to locate an affordable college housing close to campus. This opportunity typically applies to those who are your typical undergrad but specifically students who are pass their freshman year of college. The changes are that colleges are admitting more and more students through the flexibility of online classes. With this trend there are more students then campus housing can hold which is why students tend to look for affordable housing close to college campuses. This is only happening in college town demographically the population is made up of 18 – 25 year old college students that are still financially being supported by their parents when it comes dealing with paying for housing. Typically while their undergrads parents are still paying for their housing due to them being full time students and not being able to have enough time to work jobs. Customers are satisfying this need by getting friendly referrals. Students that are still not familiar with the college town often go live in neighborhoods that they know their friends already live in or somewhere that their friends recommend them staying in. They are still loyal because they often stay in that place until they are getting ready to graduate. They are more loyal to the referral and not the product itself. This opportunity is big because there are colleges everywhere with students that are from 50 to 60 thousand plus students. This opportunity will be last for years because cities and colleges can only get so big so eventually we will run out of space. The product that I will be providing is more spacing for college students to be able to live closer to college campuses at a price that can be affordable for them to live great and also enjoy it. My plan is to work with other people on campus that will promote the college housing that I’m going to be setting up at affordable rates. Also I would partner with a group that would be willing to share my vision support my business plans. The reasons for me to think that customers will switch to my product is because it will be close to campus also it will be affordable for them to live in. It wouldn’t be hard due to the help I would have from my peer by promoting the product and giving them information on how cheaper my product would be compared to the others. The competitors are the other business people that own other college housing. They don’t have the option to provide people with different housing opportunities. They only have so much to offer they can’t over sell things. For packaging, price points, customer support, and customer experiences I would have a person that has patients, interact with people and someone who knows the system well to work with customers to guide them with things they want to know, need to know or anything they need help with. I would organize my business by having employees that understands my vision and value. I would have a number of 5 employees for different things. The roles are someone who would be able to explain what I need in my product to students who are looking for housing, another person will explain to me what will be the best set up location for my product, and my role will be to give a reasonable price that will meet needs for college students to switch to this new product.

Shawn Davis

23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

   1.      Connections I have made

   2.      Personable

   3.      Previous costumer

   4.      Social capital

   5.      Well-known name

   6.      Good understanding of the market

   7.      Able to give people things to their interest

   8.      Easily to interact with

   9.      Great understanding the need of this type of market

  10.  Social understanding to keep providing in this market

Based off of my VRIN the most valuable resource that I have is my social capital. Social capital is important because you need a group of people that also understands the market the same way you do or even understand it a little better to help with things and also give ideas and feed back to things that would make you sell things more. Also you need a group of people to invest and want to support you as a person.      

Shawn Davis

21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

            “How to fail at almost everything and still win big” by Scott Adams is about how one should be able to invite failure into their lives and how to embrace it and how to have it do the most for you that you can. There are parts in the book that are very real bout how not everyone success is going to be the same and how to achieve your big goals. Thins book enhanced what I learned in ENT in many ways specifically with the idea of being creative in what you do. Just like in class with the activity of the idea napkins it is always best with ideas to be blatantly creative with them. One of the ideas that was addressed in this book was that you need to be able to depend on people for being responsible in the process of achieving your goals. The biggest thing that I learned from this book that surprised me that in the promotion it is sometimes necessary to be selfish and that to me was shocking to because some people would deter you from being selfish saying it’s a bad trait to have. But he author of this book is saying that it’s something you’re going to need to have in order to be successful.