19-A Second Shot at Idea Napkin No. 2

I am Shae.  I am a 46-year-old wife of 28 years to my high school sweetheart. We had 5 fabulous kids that are all grown and raised now.  I am now fulfilling a dream of getting my college degree, thanks to my company paying for it 100%.  I have people skills that are out of this world.  My years of retail have helped me hone my people/customer service skills to perfection. I am a leader who likes to lead, not boss people around.  I would rather be working alongside my associates than telling them what to do and sitting on my butt watching them.  My hobbies include a love of quilting and reading a good book snuggled underneath a cozy quilt. My aspirations in life is to become wealthy so I can travel the world and see different cultures and landscapes.  This crazy business idea would make a great side job to get the savings going so I can achieve that world travel goal.

I am offering my customers a way to get customers back into their parking lots, literally.  I want to make parking spaces easier to navigate into and out of, and around in.  I will come in survey the entire parking lot and make a plan to use the maximum amount of space to give the maximum amount of parking spots in the safest way possible. I will remove old paint and restripe the entire lot appropriately.

My customers are businesses who have lost customers because of unsafe parking spots.  I will focus on customers that are within a 25-mile radius of my home which includes roughly 25 different cities.  I am mostly looking for older parking lots that need my customers will easily agree to update to appeal to their customers.

My customers will buy my services to get customers back into their store so they can make money.  

My secret sauce is my ability to win over the customer with my knowledge of what customers want through my years of customer service.  

These elements fit together and if I can convince the customer that their customers are leaving their businesses going elsewhere because they do not have time to waste having to park further away to avoid possible car damage.  

Feedback Memo:  I took away the fact that many of my comments continually complain that it is a waste of time to have poorly designed car lots for them.  They have to park further out to avoid damage. Or the miss out on a spot because someone in a bigger vehicle made the spot un-parkable because they parked incorrectly in the already narrow space.

18-A Create a Customer Avatar

My prototypical customer is an upper management 50-55-year-old man.  He is twice divorced and has two kids from each marriage. His kids ages range from 20 down to 5.   He recently married his third wife who is only 30 years old.  He has a college degree from the state university where he partied hard and got just average grades.  He drives the lowest priced Mercedes c250, those child support payments keep him from his dream car, a Porsche 911.  He plays golf every Friday at 2pm with his fellow club members.  He is an avid ESPN sports center watcher.  He is a die-hard republican and voted wholeheartedly for Trump.  He reads self-improvement books hoping to find a way to get better at what he does.  

My prototypical customer and I have only a love of sports in common.  My customer and I will never see eye to eye on anything and will not be able to have a very good conversation aside from the business at hand.  I feel this customer cares more about making money than he does about the safety of the cars in his parking lot.  

17-A Elevator Pitch No. 2

Last time I was told that my hook was good.  I was not really satisfied with how well it would hook someone in so I changed it up a bit, but kept the idea the same.

I was asked how the customers would know that the business had changed their parking lot layouts o I added that my business would provide signage so customers could see that things were changing.

P.S. I apologize for the wind and the loud noise outside.  I had no where else to be go that was not a web cam.  I also had no way of putting up prompts to be able to not have to show I was reading my note cards, because the wind was kind of strong today.

16-A What’s Your Secret Sauce

16-A What’s Your Secret Sauce

Describe five ways in which you think you have human capital that is truly unique:

My experiences: 

Motherhood.  I raised 5 kids.  

Stayed in my retail job for 18 years.  I have perfected customer service skills to a tee.  

Marriage for 28 years. I have learned how to work well with someone else for a long period of time.  

My skills:

Sewing.  I can sew and make beautiful quilts.  I know how to teach to others this skill. 

Craftiness.  I am good at being creative.

Leader.  I am not afraid to be the one to lead a group. I take control frequently when leadership lacks.

My emotions:

Passionate.  When I am involved in something, I show strong feelings for it and care a great deal

Obsessive.  When I am involved in something, I become obsessed with it because I want it to be perfect.

Anger: When something goes wrong I am usually quick to anger because I will feel like I did not give it my all, or that someone else did not care as much as I did about it.

I interviewed 4 of my kids, the fifth does not live at home and I do not know how to record via the phone.  I also interviewed my husband.

My youngest daughter Rayven told me that I taught people by my wording of things, and how patient I am.  https://vocaroo.com/i/s15fVCbM5rW4

My youngest son Dakota surprised me with my ability to detect someones emotional state of mind even before they know of their state of mind.  And at the very end he mentioned my acceptance of people.  https://vocaroo.com/i/s0AOP7awYH7o

My oldest daughter Kiyah reminded me that I have a strong sense of putting other people's needs first and being sure they are at their best. https://vocaroo.com/i/s1czRtkRCLcF

My oldest son Michael described me as the Momma I am and how I have this ability to bring people close to me because I display momma like qualities. https://vocaroo.com/i/s1k7CnKGCSTN

My husband of 28 years Scott said I had a tenacious drive to get things done right and a moral center that the rest of the world is lacking. https://vocaroo.com/i/s0yewZbFQuvf

I found it interesting that the kids all noted how motherly I was and how my husband noted how I worked hard to make things perfect.  I think they pretty much nailed how I felt about myself.

15-A Figuring out Buyer Behavior No. 2

15-A Figuring out Buyer Behavior No. 2

My customers want good quality service for a good price.  They felt both were important for them to purchase.  One said that if he had to choose between price or quality, he felt that he would choose price, because a paint job is a paint job and so whoever could do it cheapest would earn his business.  

My customers would choose to pay via financing.  My pricing for removing old painted parking spaces and repainting new ones, as well as the survey will reach upwards of $7500 so my three interviewees said that was definitely a financing purchase.

The post purchase evaluation was a bit tough to nail down in my interviewees.  One said as long as he had customers coming in, he would deem it a good choice.  The other said he would not really like having to redo his parking lot, so he would never really feel good about the purchase.  The final interviewee said he felt he could not really give me a good answer. 

I think it is important to make sure that I do a great job of meeting their needs to ensure that post purchase evaluation comes back positive.  I think the most important impact on a customer is this after purchase evaluation.

14-A Halfway Reflection

14-A Halfway Reflection

1 Tenaciousness is a competency:  This class has me struggling horribly.  I work full time and have another class this summer.  The sheer magnitude of the amount of work due every week makes me have to budget my time down to the nth degree.  I spend more time “schooling” with this one class than I have with any other class I have taken.  I work, come home and work on the assignments, watch the lectures and then try to find more time to read the future reading requirement, and plot out where I am going to go to interview people for the particular assignment due. 

2. Tenaciousness is also about attitude:I have hated this course since about week three. The big giving up moment was on assignment 9-A.  Some kind of glitch made my assignment not go through and I lost all the points for that assignment.  When I asked for help to fix it, I was sent to the help desk who refused to do anything. When I went back to the TA, she refused to look into anything to see what glitch could have happened.  No one cared that something went wrong, and I lost out.  I wanted to throw my hands up and walk away.  The only thing that pulls me through is that I know that no matter what I have to take this class, and there will never be a time I can take it and make it while working full time.  So, I just power through week by week.  To know that this is the half way point makes me smile.  My strong work ethic is what contributes to this attitude.  If I just keep on trucking, eventually it will end. I may not get a good grade, but at this point I just want to pass it and never have to look at it again.

3. Three tips: 

Fostering:

     1)  You will need your people skills to get those good interviews to be able to do the assignments

     2)  you will need your time management skills to be able to do everything required

     3)  find your perseverance skills and cherish them because you will need them to make it through the 12 weeks. 

  

Developing:

     1)  Dig your heels in and grit your teeth and just start counting the days.  

     2) Quite literally take it one assignment at a time.  

     3)  Also, be tenacious about taking pictures when you submit an assignment so you will have proof it was submitted. 

13-A Reading Reflection No. 1

13-A Reading Reflection No. 1

I read “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

What surprised you the most?  Steve Jobs was an asshole.  I had no idea.  I guess I did not become aware of him until the iPhone came out and he was all in my face, because my son, who was 10 at the time, watched everything he could about the iPhone.  I thought he was such a wonderful person, but he was really a cruel, ruthless asshole

What about the entrepreneur did you most admire? His attention to detail and insane desire to make sure it was perfect.  I think, and Walter implies it frequently in the book, Jobs’ attention to detail is what made him successful. 

What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?  What he did to people who he felt were inferior to him.  He was a ruthless man.  Even people who helped him in times of great need, who gave him money when he needed, support when he needed it, he would cut them out of stock options, bonuses.  He was just a man that seemed to not care how he hurt anyone in his way.

Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure?  Oh yes, he did.  He was essentially voted out of his first company, Apple, because of his horrible people skills, his constant berating of people and his inability to lead properly.  He was so angry that he went out and created a new company, NeXT, which 11 years later Apple bought NeXT because the failed at a software system upgrade and needed something quickly and Steve Jobs made them think he had it.

What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? Jobs was really good at being able to see the value of something and then be able to market it to people.  When he marketed Woz’s Blue Box free long-distance phone call product, I was amazed.

Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you:  I did not understand why Job’s left Kottle out of stock shares.  Daniel Kottle was there with him from the get-go and helped him out in so many ways.  It was confusing and I felt like something was missing on why he denied Kottle those shares.

If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

1.  You want to leave a legacy where people are motivated to make great products, everything else being secondary, including profits.  I want to know if you feel after your death the company will continue with this legacy or if they will lose it quickly?

2.  Are you are of your reality distortion field?  If so did you intentionally use it to be hurtful or set someone up for failure? 

For Fun: What do you think the entrepreneur’s opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion? Jobs truly believed in hard work.  He was never afraid to get in and work hard to get things done.  In fact, in the book, he talks about to build a company you had to do the hardest work ever.  I share his opinion.  IF you want something to succeed you have to work your butt off for it.