27A Reading reflection 3

The book I chose was Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. The general theme of the book was the creation of the company that eventually became Nike athletic apparel. The book details the start and development of the company. The theme of the book in my opinion is that it wasn’t really rocket science it was an idea that turned in to an action by people who really didn’t have any competitive advantage. They did things that were bold and took risk and worked hard at it and it paid off big.

The book highlighted what we are learning in class. We really don’t need a competitive advantage or special talent to create a successful venture. We just need an idea and the guts and the grit to give it a couple dozen tries.

If I were to create an exercise for this class based on this book, it would be to make a video where you must make up a crazy sales pitch for a product that doesn’t yet exist and pitch it to an exec.

My biggest surprises were many but a couple that stand out were that the company was originally blue ribbon and that Phil Knight went into the CEO in Japans office to get a contract to make shoes without anything to back up his ambition.

28A Your exit strategy

My exit strategy is a little different for this venture. I don’t feel like it’s my baby like my own business, so I don’t have an attachment to it. The reason I wanted to start the security company was because no one was implementing anything to stop people from getting guns in to our schools. If somebody was I wouldn’t care about starting it.  

My exit strategy is that I would create the business as a temporary cash flow with the assumption that it will dissolve itself. The reason I believe it will dissolve itself is because of the bureaucracy of the school system and the bureaucracy of the government. I believe if I were able to get it in to a hand full of schools immediately other vendors would step in to other areas where they have connections with decision makers at schools and possibly the federal would create legislation once it gained popularity to make it a federal requirement. Once it’s a federal requirement the contracts will be offered to people with connections to those decision makers. 

My exit strategy has been based on the politics and inefficiency of government. It would influence my willingness to invest an abundance of my own money in the venture knowing that I would most likely be paving the way for other people to get contracts with the government.

26A Celebrating Failure

A time this semester that I failed was in implementing my service schedule in my business. Every year I tell myself that I want to see my clients more often face to face. So, every 6 months or so I go through my client base and I organize a new more ambitious service schedule of how often I am going to see each client. I try to implement the schedule and find it is just too many meetings in too little time. I end up not being able to get all the work done that I need to do each week.  

I’ve come to the understanding that I like to bite off more than I can chew. I set goals that are challenging knowing that they will be hard to meet. Eventually I believe I will make the perfect running service schedule just maybe not this year. Emotionally and behaviorally it doesn’t bother me too much. After years of the same behavior I recognize that I provide more value to my clients through my increase in effort and my business does well because of it.  

This class has reinforced a lot of things that I have learned in business and one of the most important ones is that without risk or uncertainty, the reward is nowhere near as sweet. I was able to grow my current business after I sold my house and invested the cash and took out a loan to expand my practice. Small failures are important to reach a larger level of success and this class reinforces that.

25A What's next?

Existing market:

After speaking with existing market customers about my venture the feedback is all based around implementation. What I am not doing is implementation of the service in to the school system. What customers would like to see is action. My next step should be to meet with the entrepreneur contact that has already made it into the school system and seek his advice or assistance in getting in to meet with school system people. The first step would just be requesting access to information and a facility to prepare a proposal for a school and putting together the options and pricing of the improvements.

New Market:

My new market approach was to totally change the venue to a business location, so I chose a movie theatre. After interviewing a couple of people about the movie theater security, they didn’t seem to have the heightened anxiety of parents of school children. They recognize again that the theatre is a soft target that needs more security and acknowledge that there have been mass shootings in theatres. I think that because it isn’t as recent as school issues people lose their motivation to improve things.

This market for businesses like bars and movie theatres where ever there are crowds of people gathering are a market and may be a much easier target to get in to and implement security upgrades. It would also be possible to have the landlord or building owner shoulder part of the expense with the business. The biggest problem would be the introduction of competition in to the market place once businesses start implementation. The school system has barriers to entry consistent with government, so it is not as affected by competition.

24A Venture concept #1

The nature of my opportunity is based around security. In recent years our culture has changed. There is a problem with angry people often suicidal deciding to kill or injure as many innocent people as possible. They typically gain access to a firearm or bomb and enter a highly populated location to inflict as much carnage as possible. People argue whether the murderer wanted the media or social media attention or if there’s some type of mental disorder caused by medication or the entertainment industry driving this awful behavior and some just blame firearms and access to weapons. This market is unlimited geographically, demographically it would require money to pay for the service and the implementation. Currently there is no market solution to this need in these locations, but there are government buildings who address this need through similar means of protection like court houses and police stations. The window of opportunity will be open until the culture changes or a solution is implemented.

I believe changing the cause or the culture is a much greater task and communities have a responsibility to protect their communities as well as they can now. The nature of my innovation is starting a security consulting company that brings together all the necessary experts and implementation to make spaces safer or “harder” targets.

The service would start by a consultation with security experts. We would come in to your location and identify all the weak areas that a bad actor could use to effectively carry out an attack. We have a security expert, a technology expert that specializes in security and surveillance equipment and we have a building contractor. Once we go through and identify the weak areas, we put together a comprehensive list of improvement that should be done to effectively protect your customers and prevent a bad actor from entering your location with a weapon designed to inflict murder. Once a proposal is drawn up to protect the location we bring in the companies to do the work also.

My venture concept is to harden targets that are appealing to mass murderers. When people enter one of our locations such a s a bar or a school, they must walk through a secure area where they pass through metal detectors built in to the walk way and pass by security to get in to the secondary location where the main population is. The secondary location is separated from the initial entry point. Inside the location has either private or volunteer security observers (as they probably have now through monitors or bouncers) and locations have technology to monitor open doors windows and have cameras for outside and inside surveillance. We also train staff to respond to different scenarios and how to best keep their customers protected during different scenarios.

There are currently no real competitors as a complete service and the customers would respond well knowing that their kids or themselves are safe in secure locations. Price points are important for completing the work. We would have to be competitive with other companies willing to install security hardware or complete construction projects. I would start this venture with four people. Myself for the business and contact side of the venture and three experts in technology security and a licensed contractor.

My most important resource is my contacts and backgrounds. The next innovation I would like to develop is mobile security. A service based at taking security to a location for events. If this venture launched I would like to curb mass murders and have it spread and become the norm in society. I would transfer that business over to someone else to manage when it became successful. I already run a successful business and don’t want a second large scale business to run. I just feel a frustration and an obligation to try and get this moving because no one is addressing the issue.

23A Your ventures Unfair advantage

10 Resources I already possess

I have a security expert.

Valuable Yes
Rare somewhat. It is not common to find people with this his background.
Hard to imitate no                          
Organized around it no

I have a building contractor.
Valuable yes
Rare no
Hard to imitate no
Organized around it no

I have the financial resources for any needed startup money to begin a project.
Valuable yes
Rare somewhat. Not a lot of people have the resources to spend on a startup.
Hard to imitate no
Organized around it no

I have a contact that is an entrepreneur that has already been in schools with projects.
Valuable yes        
Rare yes, it is not very common to get a project in to the school system            
Hard to imitate yes, it is difficult to get in to the school
Organized around it no

I have several local contacts that I can use to get in to talk to people.
Valuable yes
Rare yes it takes a lot of years in the community working with people.
Hard to imitate yes it takes years.
Organized around it yes, the contacts are very important to the project

I have experience running a business.
Valuable yes
Rare somewhat not a lot of people have run successful businesses
Hard to imitate no
Organized around it no

I have a good reputation I the community.
Valuable yes
Rare somewhat it takes years to develop
Hard to imitate no                          
Organized around it somewhat it is important to the project

I have grit (motivation and determination.)
Valuable yes
Rare somewhat Without grit nothing gets done
Hard to imitate somewhat you either have it or you don’t
Organized around it yes you must be motivated to get a project moving and developed

I have children with a lot of contacts in the community and social media that can be utilized.
Valuable yes
Rare no
Hard to imitate no
Organized around it no

I have schools and educators that know and trust me.

Valuable yes
Rare somewhat they are important contacts from years of business
Hard to imitate somewhat it takes years to create
Organized around it no

After conducting the VRIN analysis I observed that my most valuable resource is my social capital. Over the years I have developed relationships with so many people in business and in the community. I have the ability to get people to cooperate and contribute to a venture.

22A Elevator Pitch 3

I didn’t receive any feedback on my elevator pitch, so I am critiquing my own.

What I decided to change was my audience.  I changed my audience from the parents of students to the school administrators. I figured they are really the obstacle or decision makers to getting to implementation.  With regard to cutting the videos, what has changed is that I am much better at giving a video pitch than I was when I did my first one last year. My first one took me hours to complete, and for this class the first one took me about a half an hour and now they take me around two minutes.

 This pitch I slowed down a little and showed more compassion.

https://youtu.be/3klm5FpaK5E

21A Reading Reflection No 2

My book that I chose was How to Fail at almost everything and still win by Scott Adams.

The general theme or argument of the book is about the journey and grit to get to success. It involves ups and downs and many failures. It is not a secret or a special talent it is a behavior and a persistence to reach success.

The book enhanced what I am learning in ENT3003 because we have been told that failure is good and it is learning and is part of reaching the goal. It reinforced what we have been learning about in this class.  

The difference between what we are learning and what we are doing in this class is that we aren’t meeting failure in our exercises. This book involves learning from failure. If I had to design an exercise it would be one that involved failure. We continue to move forward with our ideas, I would have a couple of exercises where the people in our group give the person obstacles or criticism based on their idea and their assignment is to find solutions for overcoming the obstacles.

The biggest surprise that I had reading the book was that Scott Adams was diagnosed as having a mental illness and kind of blew the diagnosis off as being silly. I often hear that many of the most successful people would be diagnosed as being ADD and other disorders that our school children are consistently medicated for in today’s age. It makes me think that these high energy personalities are valuable in business for motivation and persistency and maybe we are suppressing these personalities in our children, so they can sit still at a desk for 7 hours.

20A Growing your social capital

Unfortunately for this assignment there isn’t anybody that I have found that is engaged in the type of business I am trying to create. I have found a couple of services that are trying to help with active shooter training etc. for schools but none close to being like what I am proposing. Since there wasn’t I chose an expert that would have the knowledge for my business. For the expert on my market I used a person that is deeply involved in the market I am trying to penetrate and for a supplier I contacted a person that has been involved in selling other services to municipalities.

The first person that I interviewed is a law enforcement officer and military veteran that has combat experience. He was my choice for an expert for my business. I consider him to be the domain expert.

I have known many law enforcement officers for years and constantly interact with them on a regular basis.

I asked him for feedback for my idea and I included him as a person I would like to have as an expert in my project. He was very positive with his response and showed sincere interest in being an expert for my business. I felt it would benefit him greatly to be a part of the project.

The goodwill would be mutual. We would each get benefit from each other. I receive goodwill for bringing him in as my expert and he receives goodwill by providing expertise to my project. 

The second couple are a teacher and principal that are married.

I consider them to be experts in my market because I need to get it in to the school.

I found the person by contact in our neighborhood. We met and talked one morning.

They were very pessimistic about getting anything done in the schools. They were very negative about the process and ability to get in and get things accomplished. The favor they did for me was they talked about their experience and I have them as a contact to find others that may be able to help me in the system.

The return expectation is that I talked with the briefly about the housing market and finances and our children. I let them know I had contacts that may give their son assistance and advice with his career and I was willing to make contacts to set those up if he was interested. 

The third couple is a business owner that sells products to the school system. They lease products so that they come out of the operating budget instead of selling them items as capital expenditures.  

I found him through my contacts from my business I know his background.

I consider him to be my supplier expert.

I spoke with him about my idea and the service I would like to create. He showed interest in the project and would like to help with it. Because he has been involved with the school system he has any contacts inside that could allow us to evaluate our service.

The goodwill that he gave me is interest in being involved and using his contacts to get in to the system. What he would be getting in return would be the project going in to his district and his community.  

I consider myself to be very social and I enjoy talking to people. It drives my wife nuts because I will see somebody and start talking and before you know it were creating a bond. I think the bonds are always valuable. I think if you create the bonds only for business it is disingenuous. I would never join a church for marketing for my business. In fact, I stay out of business involvement in anything in my church. I just think people need to get out there and meet people. It’s interesting and good things happen.

19A Idea Napkin 2

My talents are that I can get things done through a mixture of talents that I have. I am both analytic and I am social. I can analyze and evaluate situations and the ability to organize motivate others to be involved.

In my background I have always been around patriotic people and military families. I grew up in some poor areas and saw a lot of crime and violence and have instinctively always wanted to help and protect others. 

Regarding my business concept, I would like to be involved but really don’t care about the profitability side of the equation or the control side. I already have a successful business that I enjoy running. I would gladly have others come in and take responsibility. I would still like to be involved on a limited scale. I just want to see the problem fixed and be a part of the solution.

What I’m offering to customers is a service for security services for schools. Evaluation and implementation of the location and the recommendations on how to harden the target primarily by keeping weapons from making it in to the school.  

I am offering it to the schools but indirectly am offering it to the people of the community. The parents the students the teachers. The biggest obstacle is that the schools must allow the community to propose solutions and it doesn’t seem as if it is very easy to get a school to change anything. The downside of dealing with government bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The school cares they just seem to have a terrible time changing and solving problems. The community cares because they want to protect themselves and their loved ones. 

I don’t believe in most cases a person is able to accomplish things because of a special talent. I typically believe it is a combination of characteristics that allow the person to be successful at what they are doing. My talents is that I have a combination of characteristics. I am smart, I am motivated, and I like interaction with others. I have a desire to help and protect others that is part of who I am.

The feedback I received only stated that they did not understand the product or service I was offering. It was not a person from within our group and the napkin didn’t ask for detail on the service, so it wasn’t included. I changed my idea napkin slightly to focus more on the resistance to implementation or the school as the customer because they are the decision maker that is needed for implementation. Even though I consider the community to be my customer.