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