11-A Idea Napkin No. 1

11-A Idea Napkin No. 1

You-

Who are you? I am Shae.  I am in my Junior year at University of Florida. I am majoring in business, but only because my company is paying for my degree and dictates what I can major in.  I work in retail and manage three departments within the store.  I have been with the company for almost 18 years.

What are your Talents? I love what I do at the retail store.  Mostly because one of my departments is fabrics and crafts.  I have a talent for getting the ideas customers have in their heads out and into merchandise where they can realize their imagined masterpieces. I actually have customers that seek me out to help them get those ideas out of their heads.  I also sew, more specifically I quilt.  I am really good at it. 

What are your skills and experiences? I have great people skills.  I am told frequently by my managers that I have the best customer service skills of anyone.  My years of experience in the retail store have helped me home in and perfect my customer service/ people skills. I also have excellent leader skills.  I am still learning this skill, but then again, we should always be striving to learn better management abilities to keep our associates engaged.

What are your aspirations? My true aspiration is to get rich and be able to retire so I travel the world.

How do I see my business concept playing a role in my life? I see this as a side business.  A way to make that aspiration come true.  It would in no way be anything I would dedicate my whole life to.  I already see serious limitations to it.

What are you offering to customers?

Describe the service I will provide to solve customers’ unmet needs:  I will be giving my customers back their customers by making their parking lots, safer and easier to navigate in.  I will survey the entire parking lot property.  Then I will design and determine the best, safest way to get as many cars as possible in the space allowed.  I will then remove old paint and repaint the lot in the new scheme. 

Who are you offering it to?

Describe the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers:  I am looking for businesses that have poorly laid out, or designed parking lots that have 90-degree angled narrower than 102 inches.  The demographics are anyone within the cities of Far East Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Sachse, Richardson, Murphy, Plano, Wylie and Rockwall.  About a 12-mile radius. 

Why do they Care?

Explain why customers will actually pay you for your service:  Businesses need customers to come to them.  If their customers are not coming to them because of poor parking lot setup my customers will gladly pay up to get those customers back in their stores.

What are your core competencies?

What is your Secret Sauce? There is nothing that sets me apart from others who can design and paint parking lots.  Maybe the only advantage I would have is a special software written just for me that can get the most out of an allotted amount of space but keeping safety of all vehicles and pedestrians in mind. Ultimately though anyone can create this same software.

While the need is here for this business idea, the only person that actually cares is the customer who drives the cars, not the businesses that have the parking lots.  I have a problem, but no one that actually cares who can and will do anything about it.  When I try to talk to businesses, they tell me flat out they do not want to pay for their parking lot to be completely redone, other than a nice repainting of it.  Others tell me that they have no power to even make the call.  Essentially this business is already dead based on the idea that started it.  I could probably make a side business of actually just repainting businesses parking lots in the exact way it looks now.  I would be wasting my time trying to get them to completely change the entire parking lot. 

10-A Elevator Pitch

9-A Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

9-A Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

Who: Business owners that have this problem, but are unable to touch the money, or make the decision for their parking lot is out of the boundary here.  Next up will be businesses that simply do not care if there are disgruntled customers, they are outside the boundary

What: I am unsure how to address this.  HELP!!

Why:  The why here is because there is no access to money, or there is simply no desire to care.

Inside the Boundary:

Who is In Businesses that care about their customer and want to make sure they are as safe as possible in their parking lot.

What the Need Is: Protecting customers from accidents from other cars, or from the hitting other cars.

Why the Need Exists: To have happy safe customers

Outside the Boundary:

Who is Not: Businesses that do not care about customer safety

What the Need Is Not: Customers do not need to be safe

Alternative Explanations: Customers will continue to do as they currently do, park far away, or be stressed when pulling into the narrow spots.

Summary:  While I understand the need for this exercise, to rule out the people who we don’t need to sell to, I do not really understand HOW to do this exercise.  I completely "get" that we have to figure out who out there does not need our service or product, I cannot grasp how to do this in the format provided.  It is beyond confusing to me.  I hope to get a lot of feedback for this because I am quite clueless.

8-A Solving the Problem

8-A Solving the Problem

Fixing the perpendicular, narrow parking spot issue.

In order to fix this problem, I had to decide whether or not I am going to address it with the people who use the parking lot as a customer or to go for the merchant who owns the parking lot.  I really wanted to go with the customer who uses the lot. However, in the interest of fast, ugly and simple, I cannot do this with the customer, as the customer has zero say in how the parking lot is set up.  And the only way to get the customer a fix is to make some kind of gadget that maybe parks the car for them in these too narrow, 90-degree parking spots.  So I must go for the owners of the parking lot and convince them to change the way their lots are set up. 

I am going to create a business that will re-design, set-up and paint the parking lot for owners to give their customers better options than the narrow, 90-degree spots they offer now.    

7-A Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

7-A Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Large vehicles have a hard time getting in, out and centered in small, perpendicular parking spaces because they lack the maneuverability.

The Who: Large vehicles

The What: Have a hard time getting in, out and centered in small, perpendicular parking spaces

The Why:They lack maneuverability

Testing the Who: No, not all who have large vehicles have this problem, because their vehicles may have better maneuverability.  Also, there maybe someone who is just really good at parking in those small spots.

Testing the What: Not all small perpendicular parking spaces are a problem, because sometimes the roadway is wide enough for someone to swing wide to get that large vehicle centered properly

Testing the Why: Larger vehicles have longer wheel bases and smaller turning angle.

Interview #1

I interviewed a young lady who was fairly new to driving.  Her dad has bought her a mid-sized SUV and when asked about her experience with small perpendicular parking spaces she said she has such an issue with them she finds herself avoiding up-close, crowded spaces and parks far away to avoid possibly hitting the cars on either side of her.  She says it is very hard for her to get into the spots without having a small amount of fear of making a costly mistake.

Interview #2

I interviewed a Mercedes s550 driver. He informed me that when faced with small parking perpendicular parking spaces he will only enter one by a left hand turn so he can swing a bit wider into the space to accomplish a good center.  

Interview #3

I interviewed a Ford F-250 pick up driver.  He stated that he was completely unable to get into a small parking space if there were cars on either side.  He simply said it was impossible to navigate the truck into the spot. He stated he stopped trying many years ago and just drove out “into the boonies” of the parking lot and parked taking up two to three spots as he also noted that the small spots were also too short for a pick-up truck.

Interview #4

I interviewed a woman who drove a Ford Focus.  She said she sometimes had a rough time getting out of a small perpendicular parking spot, but only because she usually had larger vehicles on either side of her and she could not see to if anyone was coming down the lane that might hit her as she was backing out. And because those larger vehicles stick out of the parking spots a bit, it caused her to have to continue backing out straight before she could turn the car.  She felt that there should be layers of kinds of parking spots. She felt that there should be small car parking spots, that were designed specifically for small cars, medium sized for regular sized cars and large spots for bigger vehicles.  

Interview #5

I interviewed a man driving a Volvo V-70 stationwagon.  He informed me that the turning radius on his car was not good.  While he loved driving his car, he was very uncomfortable parking it. He also reported that he preferred the outskirts of the parking lot to avoid having to park in small spots.  He said that parking in the small spots were not easy.  His car simply would not turn unless he had a lot of swing room.  

What do I know about the opportunity that I did not know before?

While I found that there are indeed issues with small perpendicular parking spots, I found that little cars are inhibited too by them.  Not because they are hard to get into, but because they make it harder for smaller cars to get out of when other larger vehicles park next to her.  

After I did these interviews, I wish I had been able to talk to an insurance claims person to find out if parking lots with small perpendicular spaces had a higher rate of accidents over the parking lots with larger, angled spaces. 

6-A Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

6-A Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

Regulatory Opportunity-1:

This is an opportunity to get more people to vote in certain smaller elections.

A) I found this news article by googling what my Texas legislature approved to go in to regulation this past session.  

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/25/texas-house-approves-property-tax-reform-package-sending-it-senate/?_ga=2.98610398.1325027228.1559334491-1405843308.1559334491

B) The source shows the opportunity when it states that if a county tries to raise the property taxes more than 3.5% from the previous year, they are forced to hold an election to get approval from the voters.

C) A politician would benefit greatly if on the same ballot as approving/disapproving a possible tax increase was their name for running for a specific office, there would be more people voting, this improving their chances of winning.

D) I think it would be relatively easy to exploit this opportunity.  People don’t just go to the voter’s booth to only vote for one thing.  They feel obligated to fill out the entire ballot.  If a candidate campaigned properly and got his/her name out there for a voter to remember, he would benefit greatly from the opportunity.

Why did I see the opportunity?

 I vote regularly, even the smallest of elections. I get so frustrated when I am at the poll before closing and I am only the 300^thvoter in an area that houses more than 5000 residents.   It just seemed that with the possibility that there may be more on the ballot that actually affects voters’ pocketbooks they would be at the voter’s booth.

Regulatory Opportunity-2:

This is an opportunity to get data from 401(k)’s of people to give them a basic idea what their monthly payout would be if they needed their retirement fund right then.  Someone would need to gather up that data and calculate it and explain it to people.

A) I found this by looking at the govtracking site and seeing something that piqued my interest.  Anything related to 401(k) is on my radar.  

https://govtrackinsider.com/lifetime-income-disclosure-act-would-project-your-monthly-retirement-paycheck-based-on-your-4b976ee2e8db

B)Someone has to gather all this data and compute the information to give it to the customer.

C) I believe every single person who has a 401(k) and plans on using it during retirement would benefit from this kind of opportunity.  I think people who are closer to retirement would benefit more though.

D)  I think this would be a hard to exploit opportunity.  People are not going to want to pay for it, on top of the fees they already pay for their 401(k).  I think if someone could develop a plan to give it to the customer via the company that holds the 401(k) would be able to make more off this idea than to go door to door to the people personally.

Why did I see this opportunity?

  As someone who is fast approaching retirement, and does not completely understand how much I need, or what the payout would be over time so I would know how much my lifestyle would need to change this really stood out to me.

Economic Trend Opportunity-1

This is an opportunity to run for president!!!!!!

A) I originally saw this on the news (with no sound only words) while in the lunchroom at work.  I came home and looked up my Wall Street Journal subscription to verify this was happening. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-stocks-and-bond-yields-drop-on-mexico-tariff-concerns-11559289992

B) The very notion that the current president is abusing his power of office by slapping tariffs on items from Mexico when we have a trade agreement in place is just ludicrous to me.  TO me it just proves that ANYONE can be president.  

C)Sadly, all democrats who even have the slightest bit of notoriety right now will be benefitting big time with this opportunity.

D) This opportunity is so easy to exploit.  The man is insane, all another candidate has to prove now to exploit this is to just point out how awful Trump is.  

Why did I see this opportunity?

I am a department manager in a huge retail box store. Right now, I am running around the store hiking up prices of many items that my company has stated is directly related to tariffs Trump has implemented during his presidency.  I am hyper aware of all the times this man has decided to tariff something, or someone new.

Economic Trend Opportunity-2

This is an opportunity for small house makers to create nice communities.

A) This article kept talking about how housing was one of the reasons people were fleeing big cities.  That a person without a 4-year degree would get paid the same in a small city vs the big cities, but housing was outrageous in the big cities.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/21/business/economy/migration-big-cities.html?auth=login-email

B) Everyone needs housing. If a non-degreed person is fleeing because of housing prices then they might stay if someone went out of their way to make small, decently priced homes.  

C) As the article states the prototypical customer would be a person with no degree, making a much lower living that middle class, but not in poverty.

D)This would not be easy to exploit.  It would take precise marketing to reach the target customer, and it would require a builder to be very careful with costs, and possibly not even have a wish to get rich off this plan.

Why did I see this opportunity?

As I was reading the article, hearing the housing issue being recited repeatedly I kept thinking of the tiny homes I once wanted to buy, and live in.  In my research of those tiny homes I saw a community up in Oregon that kind of did exactly the opportunity I just wrote about.