Capstone

For anymore looking into starting a business, I applaud you. Starting a business is hard work. Whether you are franchising or making a startup it is hard! But the good news is, its not impossible!

The first thing to remember is to plan! Don’t just jump in. Research your market, your product; decide how you will market, and what you want your business to stand for. But it is also important to not get caught up on planning, you could plan for years and never get started, so try to find the balance!

Next thing to remember: Don’t give up (not yet at least). I highly recommend reading the book, “The Dip” by Seth Godin. He talks about when it is good to quit and when it is bad to quit and how to tell the difference.

Get advice! The world is full of successful entrepreneurs! Find some! Talk to them! Find out their secrets, their advice, and soak up everything you can from them. Smart people learn from their own mistakes, but wise people learn from other people’s mistakes!

Lastly, remember that if you are doing what you love, you never work a day of your life! Try to enjoy yourself, there will be good days and bad days, but in the end, if your doing what you love it will be worth it!

Week 11

I am realizing that selling an online product is a lot more difficult than I had previously thought. In the past I have had a couple products on Amazon, mostly just personal items I was selling, and they all went fairly quickly. So I assumed that selling a product, via e commerce and various sites would be simple enough, since I did not have time between work and school to do something more time consuming. But after making a website, putting it on Amazon, and even running Google Ads I have been unsuccessful. I am also learning that I am not very good with marketing. My husband is an online marketing guru and I tried to learn a lot from him, but it was harder for me to do than it seemed for him. When it comes to running my own business I think I am better at management and planning than I am to actually selling. Knowing this can be very good because it can help me know what to focus on and improve in the future, and possibly, know what to hire other people to do for me in the future. Overall this assignment has really taught me that there is a lot more to a business than I originally thought.

Week 10

This week there has been no progress with my $100 challenge. I haven’t had time to change anything, and I still just have some Google ads running, a website, and my product on Amazon. I really thought this would be a lot easier. But I have only made one sale thus far. At this point I don’t know what else to change, so I have stopped developing.

One of the things I learned this past week was how important it is to have a passion for your business. I am starting work at a Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, it is a franchise, and I have had the opportunity to talk to the owner a lot. This is the second franchise he has owned and the third business he owns. He started telling me about why he chose this particular franchise. It is because Menchie’s motto is that they don’t sell yogurt, they sell smiles. It is a company owned by a religious family, and it is all about helping people and helping people smile. And Jim, the owner, was very passionate about that. You could see that passion transfer to everything he did in the store, and even to employees. It was really neat to see that an owners passion really can impact a business.

Week 9

This week there hasn’t been much change in my $100 challenge. I made one sale, but the website and Google ads don’t seem to be making a difference. So I am feeling a little bit discouraged. At this point I don’t know what else to do to improve the business and bring in more sales. What I did enjoy doing this week though, was writing my entrepreneur interview report. I did the interview about a month ago, and thoroughly enjoyed talking to Mike Collier. He is my Alumni Mentor and I have already learned some amazing things from him. But when I interviewed him I learned so much more! He started his business not with some huge goal or vision, he didn’t have a business plan, he did it because he didn’t have a job and needed to feed his family. Which I feel like a lot of people can relate too. He grew his company from his basement to a large warehouse in Salt Lake City five years later. Five years later he is starting to expand to not just reselling but also engineering producing products of their own. Mike truly shows what persistence and hard work can accomplish. And also proves that anyone can be successful.

Week 8

Well this week was a little more successful. I had my first sale, I lowered the price to $20, which only gave me a $7 profit margin, which is unfortunate but I had my first sale. I think that this showed me that maybe I was pricing it too high, and I need to find a happy medium, and sometimes these things just take time. So I need to be more patient.

I really enjoyed reading the E Myth book. What I got out of it the most was that there are technical people who open up a business to work for themselves doing what they love to do and then there are entrepreneurs who are business people who see opportunities and take them. Most technical people who just open up their own business fail. Unless they let the entrepreneur part of them have some control. They need to focus on running their business successfully, and not just on carrying out their technical skill. Like the lady at the Pie shop in the book. She was focused on making pies and getting the job done, and by doing that she suffered with money, time, employees, and almost lost her business. She even lost her joy in her work. That is where letting the entrepreneur part of you and the manager part of you have some say about it rather then just getting the job done comes in handy.

Week 7

I am starting to get very frustrated. I have had my product up online for weeks now, about a month I think, and I still have had no sales. I know people are viewing the product, but no one is buying it. I believe it is a good product, and I can't understand why people are not buying it. This week to try to help business I created a website for the speakers, it is called thedayofthedeal.com and the speakers are the only thing on there, and I believe the price is a good deal! And I can't lower it more because I need to cover my expenses. The website also came with some Google marketing things, and so I've had ads on Google and I can track who has seen my website, and I have had plenty of views, but still no one has bought it. I just feel like I'm at a wall, I am doing everything I can do and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I am marketing, I am on several websites, I am not charging to high (at least in my opinion), but people are still just not purchasing the speakers. I know I can't give up and that a lot of the time it just takes finding the right niche, but waiting is hard.

Week 6

This week has been very frustrating as far as my $100 challenge is concerned. I had my husband to SEO and make up Google ads for the speakers, which lead the clicker to the Amazon website, I also but them on another e-commerce site called bonanza. We got 37 clicks in 2 days and still no sales. So from there I guessed that since 37 people saw the speakers and didn’t buy, something must have been wrong. They are good quality and I believe priced fairly, but maybe the customer was hoping for something cheaper. So I lowered the price to $29.99 instead of $39.99 on the second day of running the ads, but still no sales. I am not exactly sure what else to do. Today I have been working on a website to sell them from that makes them look more professional. The website will say that it’s a one day sale, and that there are only 7 left, (I only bought 7), and I’m hoping this will give the customer a little motivation to buy. Paying for a commerce package on the website builder also gives me $375 more for running Google ads. So once the website is up I am hoping that this is successful. The speakers have now been up for several weeks with no sales.