Q3 Blog post week 3/29

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

Oren Rosin 3/29/15

As I stated in my last blog, I looked into Making Ideas Happen as a way to find inspiration for ideas. One could find that they are lacking in something that they want. One could also want to try something new. However many will find more success in sticking to something they are familiar with, thus it is better to look for inspiration in categories you are already knowledgeable about (which is something I generally do when I need an idea). The advantages of this are that you will need less research and can start working on your idea sooner, while the disadvantage may be that your idea is limited either by difficulty in execution or lack of practicality.

In Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, Belsky does not go into depth about the creative process (beyond what I said above), so much as what to do once you make it past the inspiration barrier. What Belsky does emphasize about making ideas happen is that the following things are necessary to execute your ideas: organization, leadership, creativity, and support of community. Of these, organization, as well as creativity (for obvious reasons) are needed to come up with a strong, practical idea in the first place. One should come up with multiple ideas and organize them, listing all the aspects of each idea, including pros and cons. Creativity, unlike organization, is more abstract since there is no guaranteed way to come up with a brilliant idea. Even the smartest people struggle to come up with great ideas, which is why this book is meant to help people take their ideas forward.

Q3 Blog Post 1

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

Oren Rosin 3/8/15

In Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, Belsky discusses the correlation between ideas, actual development, and execution. He emphasizes that success does not just come from good ideas, but also a number of other factors. One’s ability to organize and lead are key to executing potentially good ideas. To organize well, one should approach an idea they want to work with as a long term project that they break down into multiple parts: Action Steps, which are fully planned out actions that bring the project forward and get tasks done. Backburner Items, which are potential actions that may need to be taken in the future when the chance is available. References, which are items related to the project which a person may refer to if they need to. Additionally, communicating with people around you a, finding support, and publicizing will largely increase your chances of bringing an idea forward.

Despite all this, most big ideas are never put into fruition. Most often, ideas fail because the creator failed either failed to meet some of the steps above or lose to something out of their control (i.e lack of available people, resources, too much competition, etc…). Additionally, it is difficult to actually come up with innovative ideas. This is something I have personally struggled with when wanting to start projects. I have a hard time thinking of ways to use my best talents and ways to innovate. This is one of the reasons I went with this book; I am trying to find ways to better come up with ideas and I feel that this book may help me in the long run.

$100 Startup: Business Consultant

In Chris Guillebeau’s $100 startup, chris discusses the consultant business. Chris starts with the story of Gary Leff, a part-time consultant who earns money through airline promotions. His business is to set up flight trips for others, including location, distance, airlines, and any restrictions that are needed. He sets up flight trips for a fee of $250 per traveler pair, which sounds extremely expensive when that kind of planning can be done by yourself, but the convenience of his business earns him a lot of attention and money. For this, Chris discusses how Gary follows a few very basic guidelines for his business, and then highlighted them for everyone else: 1) “Pick something specific as opposed to something general. Don’t be a ‘business consultant’ or a ‘life coach’ --get specific about what you can really do for someone.” 2) No one values a $15-an-hour consultant, so do not underprice your service. Since you probably won’t have forty hours of billable work every week, charge at least $100 an hour or a comparable fixed rate for the benefit you provide” the $100 per hour is a somewhat arbitrary number and it varies from business to business, but the point is to not undervalue your service; make it look professional. 3) when you help your clients they will receive some listed benefit. For that benefit you will charge some rate that you deem fair for you and your client. This process is supposed to be relatively simple and allows almost anyone to enter the business effectively, with creativity and promotion being the biggest barriers.

Weeks 01/05 - 01/18

Weeks 01/05 - 01/18: Since I didn’t make a post last week, it would probably be more practical to make this post twice as long to cover our general progress this month.

In general, our group very much struggled to work to the same level as other groups for a variety of reasons. However at least we made progress in some things.

The good news is that we had progress on the $200 project. We decided to start selling a second product in addition to our refurbished violin, which is a bunch of iphone 5 cases we made. David and Chris designed these phone cases last thursday and started creating them by using a 3D printer available in the basement of the UA building. Rizheng stated that he found potential buyers for these cases (who expressed specific interest) in addition to the violin. These buyers looked promising, although I’m not certain that the transaction has gone through yet.

The bad news is that, although we have made basic progress on the storefront project, we have a lot of work to do for it and, to be honest, I don’t think our group can bring the presentation up to the same level that other groups will have by the time the presentation is due. I partially think this is a result of how well our group works together, but also due to how little time we have left until our presentation, in addition to midyear exams. We still have extremely important decisions to make, such as our value proposition and what major roles people will take during the presentation.

Thoughts and other things:

For the storefront project, I really liked the idea of it but I didn’t like how we basically jumped right in without much knowledge or experience of how to use our available space (aside from the short home lesson and quiz on finance and income statements). I could tell that some of us were surprised by how costly our project was overall when we started working on parts four through six. It seemed very difficult to make any profit with how many expenses we had, which resulted in an initially very unrealistic value proposition (basically $200 per month for something you can get very cheap otherwise).

Additionally, having to work on both the $200 project and the storefront project made us (and probably most groups) much less focused on the $200 project. For example, my initial idea for the $200 project was to purchase computer parts in order to build a computer. However, nobody else in our group had any tech experience, so we didn’t go through with it. Since we ran short on time, we decided to go with fixing something basic like a violin and tried to put it on craigslist while we worked on the storefront project. We ran into trouble when we couldn’t find any buyers, but we didn’t realize this until almost the end of the project since we were preoccupied with getting caught up on the storefront. At practically the last minute we decided to create phone cases using a 3D printer and tried to sell those. Overall I was disappointed that we didn’t really get to spend as much time with the $200 project as I thought we would since we focused so much on the storefront. For both projects, I wish we had more direction than we started with, which I think would have led to our group being more productive with both projects.

$100 startup: key ideas to success.

        In $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau emphasizes the necessary components to a successful business: 1) A convergence between what you like to do and what the rest of the world is interested in. 2) Development of business skills by using skills you already have to learn how to be professional. 3) A combination of the above: skill, passion, usefulness, and understanding of general demand (in business). For when you actually wish to start your business you need a product/service, people who demand said product/service, and a way to make money off product/service. An example Guillebeau uses of product/service demand is how restaurants are successful. In a restaurant, you are not just paying for the product (food), but you are also paying for a luxury, namely a fancy atmosphere, seating, and for them to cook the food for you. Many services are in demand because customers find these services more convenient or enjoyable when done for them.

This lesson actually relates a lot to our work for our $200 project. Our goal was to find a product (that being a broken violin in need of fixing) on craigslist, use our skills to fix the violin, and then sell the fixed product online. In this case, we are not only selling the violin, we are essentially selling the service of fixing the product for them and assuring them it is functional. In my opinion, the hardest thing about a business is probably finding that customer that demands your service. Although it is much easier than previous years to find customers due to the existence of websites such as eBay or Craigslist, finding and attracting customers is difficult and also determines whether or not your business is successful, which is something I wish the book would go a bit more in depth with.

class stuff 12/21

This week has been interesting for our group. Although some of us were still absent/late to class, I feel that we have made a decent effort at getting our group back on its feet. To start, we have made several revisions to parts 1 through 6 of the storefront project, such as the approximate costs as well as revenue from our business model, which we put into two spreadsheets made by me and Gerald. Chris and David put a lot of effort into creating a sketch for our storefront building. Rizheng and David helped us get information from the Architect as well as about permit fees, which helped me complete the cost spreadsheet and helped Gerald complete the P&L.

However, there are a lot of things our group still needs to improve and work on to help us complete the storefront project. For example, our project leader David has made certain revisions to our business model without explicitly telling us (such as changing it from office based to open workspace based) , which has made it more difficult for us to calculate specific and total costs. There have also been a few instances of our group going off topic, although we are improving our productivity much more than the last few weeks.

My thoughts: for us to be more productive overall, it may help to document our plans for the project, as well as our business model. I will ask David on monday (If he’s there) what our final business model is and what our plans are to finish the project in time to present, and I or someone else will type it up.

The $100 Startup, by Chris Guillebeau.

The $100 startup, by Chris Guillebeau, talks about the vast amount of opportunities today to make money by yourself without the constraint of long term commitments and with the freedom to work on what you want to work on. The idea Guilllebeau emphasizes primarily in this book is that anyone can work towards what they want by themselves and aren’t required to borrow a lot of money or go to business school. He examplifies this throughout the book with various stories of people starting their own business.

Guillebeau first talks about a man named Michael Hanna, a sales professional in Portland, Oregon, who upon losing his job gets contacted by his friend with a proposition. Michael’s friend offers him a large amount of closeout mattresses for him to potentially sell on Craigslist. From there on, Michael researched the mattress market and made a very surprising profitable business off of selling mattresses for the next two years. Additionally, Michael’s store neighbor named Sarah Young also started a yarn store called Happy Knits. Despite practically no prior experience in entrepreneurship, Sarah’s store became profitable within six months.

What I take away from this book so far is that the author tries to express how much opportunity most people have to be able to start their own business without much experience or a large investment. I was surprised by some of the examples he gave of start up successes, but I think that the author left out certain details about starting up businesses when describing his “$100 Startup Model”. For example, he stated that he expects a small business to gain at least a $50k yearly income but he doesn’t give an example of how one would gain that much through a startup. Overall though, his book is interesting and eye opening about how startups can become very successful.