Week 15: Final Reflection

This is honestly one of the most interesting courses I have ever been a part of in my educational career. I feel like this course was very hands on and allowed each student to get anything out of it that they wanted. We were given all of the tools to be successful and just had to get out there and go. I think my favorite thing that we did was asking our friends and family about our qualities. This exercise was really showed how your closest people feel compared to feelings about yourself. Some of the things that were a pain were the interviews of entrepreneurs. That required a lot of time and planning to get it done. I am really proud, though, to have been able to accomplish some of the customer interviews and get the great feedback. I really feel like I have started to feel the entrepreneurship mindset. This course allows you to do things that make you believe it is possible to do anything. I would say that planning is the most important thing to do well in this course, and that rolls over into anything you will do here at UF and in life.   

Week 15: Reading Reflection

Well this is the final reading reflection! I really enjoyed this article, just as I have most others we have read. I usually do not disagree with the author, and most often I do not have many questions, and it seems just about the same for this reading reflection. The information in the article is very important for any business and I am glad to have had the opportunity to see it. Once again, I enjoyed this reading just like most of all the others we had this semester.

Week 15: Venture Concept No. 2

My new venture is my very own financial advising firm. In this brief paper about my venture I will mention things such as opportunity, innovation, my venture concept, and finally I will mention on the three minor elements. These three minor elements are three questions: What are your most important resources? What is next for your venture? What is next for you? In the following few paragraphs I will touch on each of these points to describe my venture.

My financial advising firm will have a great amount of opportunity with the correct amount of advertising and good customer service. The main focus of clients for this business is going to be the middle class to upper class person in their low to mid 30’s and up. It is an obvious fact that everyone is one day going to get old so long as they live. My job is to help people reach financial goals. One of the very important financial goals most people must strive to achieve is retirement. Because of this idea that everyone gets old and people need assistance making good portfolio’s in order to have the best opportunity with the least amount of burden to reach these financial goals, this business is something that will be around for a very long time. Another great point is that in this particular era all of the baby boomers are reaching retirement age and are seeking financial assistance in order to be sure they will retire comfortably.

In addition, innovation in this industry is more or less just based on technologies to make doing the investments easier, or the types of investments themselves are always changing. They could also have some new methods to be more or less risky for a person. What I will be selling to the customer is my time and friendly service to give them my knowledge of the markets and what types of investments would be best suited for that person based on their unique situation. The way that I make money doing this is by charging either commission or some kind of fees upon giving my knowledge and managing their portfolio’s for them.

A very important question that comes up is why someone would even want to spend money on my service? To me, that is a very easy answer. I value someone who is not afraid to do what is right for helping the client at all times. If that involves me loosing that persons business to send them to another firm because I feel they have a better chance at helping them, it is something that I will proudly do. I am a strong believer that if you give unheard of customer service to one person, it will lead to an exponential amount of possible future clients from that one lost clients word of mouth saying how I really value taking care of my clients. Many people have told me that this is what all advisors are offering, but there is a difference between commercials to advertise great customer service and simply doing it and allowing the clients to spread the word for you. I am doing an internship this summer with Raymond James, and in my interview with a 50 year financial advisor there for the firm, he told me that probably a solid 90 percent of their client base comes from referrals rather than any other kinds of advertising. When it comes to giving your money to someone you have never met, it is much more assuring when a life-long friend, or anyone of significance to that person, is telling you that they have an incredible amount of faith that I will be able to take good care of them. Sure, this is a business like all others, and the goal is to make money. I believe that it is not impossible to do the right thing and follow your values all while still being able to make money simultaneously. It is also very important to have enough employees to be efficient while maintaining this family and personal connection with the clients. It is critical to not rush into a hire unless I feel that they are a reflection of my values, meaning, the employees values should line up in a positive way with my own and any other owner in the firm so we are all giving the same genuine customer care and support.

Finally, there are the three minor elements. The first is what I believe to be my most important resource, or what makes my company a better choice than any other in the industry. As I just mentioned in the point above this, my customer service is going to be some of the best and most genuine every seen by a company. If you do something good for someone else, not only does it make you feel good, but it will more often than not allow your company to gain long term trust and maintain clients for a long time. Since in this industry you get paid based on percentages and numbers, if you are able to maintain a long term relationship with a client, or get them to want to give you more money to invest than they otherwise would have, you are still leading the game in the amount of money made. Next is the opportunity that I will tackle next, and I believe that trying to get people to start looking into their financial futures earlier in life (prior to their mid-30’s) could be very beneficial to both the company, and most importantly, the client him/herself. The final point in the three minor elements is what is next for me, and where I would be in the next five years with this venture. I see myself with a growing client base and becoming one of the top financial services firms in the United States. Once I am able to gain the experience needed to become a credible financial advisor, I plan on either taking my own firm to the top, or bringing Raymond James with me as a continued leader operating my own Raymond James firms.

Given my comments from this previous exercise, I was not really able to change anything about the content of my venture idea. The only thing really that was brought up was exactly how I would differentiate myself from all of the other established firms out there. I guess since they have been around a long time already, in order for me to gain the credibility I might have to work for someone for many years to have that experience education that cannot be taught. In reality, that is almost the only way to get into this industry is through climbing up the ladder of experience, therefore, that is what I venture to do. I really appreciate the positive feedback that I received originally form venture one. People really believe that I am going somewhere with this because of passion for other people, and I would have to say that they are correct. It is hard to explain passion in words because at the end of the day, actions are what truly show the passion. 

 

Week 14: Google Gold

During this semester, it was a challenge to get my blog page to the top of the Google search. There was one point where I was at the top, however. I believe it was one of the first couple week’s posts shortly after we heard the tips in the lecture. The key works I tried to use were things like the name of the blog, my name, and even words that I think might be searched in Google. Social media did not affect my blog very much. It may be because I did not focus enough on it, or it just didn’t work out. I think that of my most viewed posts, it would have to be the video interviews that made it on YouTube.  Trying to make the blog the number one page in Google was a fun, and interesting challenge. It is definitely not easy when 500 plus other people are trying to do the same thing within our class.

Week 13: Reading Reflection

This was a very interesting chapter from the textbook and I enjoyed reading it. I think that valuation is extremely important for anyone starting, or continuing a business. One question that I have for the author of the text is why an entrepreneur should perform a complete due diligence. I feel like that would be inefficient to check every single aspect of the venture. I guess that I could also say that I was surprised when I read that. Fortunately, I was not confused about anything in this chapter except why we would use due diligence. As always, I feel that the chapter was written very well and  I followed it easily, and there was nothing that I really disagreed with. I really enjoyed this chapter and its significant importance to being a successful entrepreneur.

Week 13: Celebrating Failure

Just this semester I did have a time where something did not work for me multiple times, as Thomas Edison would have said. This occasion for me was during a time where I was trying to communicate with a Raymond James advisor about me coming into their office and doing any kind of work for them that they would allow me to do for no pay. My intentions were to be around them and ask questions so that I could take a few hours out of the week to learn about the area of work that I desire to do upon graduating. There is no way to learn how to be prepared for this kind of career unless you have experience, therefore, that is what I was doing. Unfortunately, after many email attempts, we could not come up with time for me to introduce myself and come into their office.

I learned from this that people are very busy, and sometimes things really just do not work out. I know that I must keep trying even if it is with other local firms around Gainesville.

In my opinion, failure is a part of life. In sports many professional athletes will say that people don't see how good you really are by seeing you excel at something, but rather the ability to bounce back when things aren't going well. I know that this stretches far beyond the scopes of sports and well into the real world. I feel like this task showed me that hundreds of other students were able to make it through the pain of failure and the awkward interviews and the whole nine yards, so I could definitely say that this course has made me feel a little better with taking a risk.

  

Week 13: My Exit Strategy

1) I think that a good exit strategy for me would be to stay with the financial advising firm until I am experienced enough to be self sustaining, and then move on and expand my own firm around the state and continue expanding branches to reach more people than just locals.

2) I decided that this would be a good exit strategy because I know that this is something that I am passionate about, and I want to be able to impact as many people with my financial service as I can in the time that I am working. It is important to me to be able to train new advisors to support my values in helping many clients in many different locations as I mentioned.

3) I believe that this decision clearly reflects that I value my clients and how I want to make a positive impact on them through my service. I really enjoy my venture and I hope to be able to do it for as long as I can reaching as many people as I can as well.

Week 12: Reading Reflection

I enjoyed reading this chapter because it was a good reiteration of management. If I had to say that I was surprised about something it would be that it is even worth saying cons to making a strategic plan. I feel that it is always important to plan or you have no sense of direction. Fortunately, there was nothing in the reading that really confused me. Also, I did not think that anything was wrong about the author’s chapter. I thought that it was a pretty cut and dry chapter about management. If I had to ask one question to the author I suppose I would ask how exactly it is best to take failure and grow from it. For example, if a company fails, what is the best way to bounce back and grow as a company? This was a fun chapter to read and I enjoyed it.

Week 12: Venture Concept No. 1

Venture Concept

My new venture is my very own financial advising firm. In this brief paper about my venture I will mention things such as opportunity, innovation, my venture concept, and finally I will mention on the three minor elements. These three minor elements are three questions: What are your most important resources? What is next for your venture? What is next for you? In the following few paragraphs I will touch on each of these points to describe my venture.

My financial advising firm will have a great amount of opportunity with the correct amount of advertising and good customer service. The main focus of clients for this business is going to be the middle class to upper class person in their low to mid 30’s and up. It is an obvious fact that everyone is one day going to get old so long as they live. My job is to help people reach financial goals. One of the very important financial goals most people must strive to achieve is retirement. Because of this idea that everyone gets old and people need assistance making good portfolio’s in order to have the best opportunity with the least amount of burden to reach these financial goals, this business is something that will be around for a very long time. Another great point is that in this particular era all of the baby boomers are reaching retirement age and are seeking financial assistance in order to be sure they will retire comfortably.

In addition, innovation in this industry is more or less just based on technologies to make doing the investments easier, or the types of investments themselves are always changing. They could also have some new methods to be more or less risky for a person. What I will be selling to the customer is my time and friendly service to give them my knowledge of the markets and what types of investments would be best suited for that person based on their unique situation. The way that I make money doing this is by charging either commission or some kind of fees upon giving my knowledge and managing their portfolio’s for them.

A very important question that comes up is why someone would even want to spend money on my service? To me, that is a very easy answer. I value someone who is not afraid to do what is right for helping the client at all times. If that involves me loosing that persons business to send them to another firm because I feel they have a better chance at helping them, it is something that I will proudly do. I am a strong believer that if you give unheard of customer service to one person, it will lead to an exponential amount of possible future clients from that one lost clients word of mouth saying how I really value taking care of my clients. Many people have told me that this is what all advisors are offering, but there is a difference between commercials to advertise great customer service and simply doing it and allowing the clients to spread the word for you. I am doing an internship this summer with Raymond James, and in my interview with a 50 year financial advisor there for the firm, he told me that probably a solid 90 percent of their client base comes from referrals rather than any other kinds of advertising. When it comes to giving your money to someone you have never met, it is much more assuring when a life-long friend, or anyone of significance to that person, is telling you that they have an incredible amount of faith that I will be able to take good care of them. Sure, this is a business like all others, and the goal is to make money. I believe that it is not impossible to do the right thing and follow your values all while still being able to make money simultaneously. It is also very important to have enough employees to be efficient while maintaining this family and personal connection with the clients. It is critical to not rush into a hire unless I feel that they are a reflection of my values, meaning, the employees values should line up in a positive way with my own and any other owner in the firm so we are all giving the same genuine customer care and support.

Finally, there are the three minor elements. The first is what I believe to be my most important resource, or what makes my company a better choice than any other in the industry. As I just mentioned in the point above this, my customer service is going to be some of the best and most genuine every seen by a company. If you do something good for someone else, not only does it make you feel good, but it will more often than not allow your company to gain long term trust and maintain clients for a long time. Since in this industry you get paid based on percentages and numbers, if you are able to maintain a long term relationship with a client, or get them to want to give you more money to invest than they otherwise would have, you are still leading the game in the amount of money made. Next is the opportunity that I will tackle next, and I believe that trying to get people to start looking into their financial futures earlier in life (prior to their mid-30’s) could be very beneficial to both the company, and most importantly, the client him/herself. The final point in the three minor elements is what is next for me, and where I would be in the next five years with this venture. I see myself with a growing client base and becoming one of the top financial services firms in the United States. Once I am able to gain the experience needed to become a credible financial advisor, I plan on either taking my own firm to the top, or bringing Raymond James with me as a continued leader operating my own Raymond James firms.

   

Week 11: Reading Reflection

1. "A strategy is nothing more than a commitment to a set of coherent, mutually reinforcing policies or behaviors aimed at achieving a specific competitive goal." This quote from the article is something that I found very interesting. I think that it is a really good idea of what a strategy is.
2. I was not able to come across anything from the article that was very confusing. Some parts of the reading I maybe had to read over more than once to see what the author was trying to say, but I felt like I understood what I was reading about.
3. I guess if I had one question for the author it would be about the connecting innovation to strategy section. My question is pretty broad, but it is how important it is to do this in a business and how it helps the business overall.
4. There was nothing that stood out that I thought the author was wrong about. I enjoyed reading this article.

Week 11: "Amazon Whisper"

The main drivers for my financial advising services revenues are fees from each client that is helped. There are many different things that an advisor can do for their client and the fees all very. I guess if something was to change about my service, it would be the people I target. I think if I could find a way to market towards the younger population and get them interested in planning ahead financially that I could open up even more business in addition to people around 35 years and older. I think that doing this would increase the effectiveness of certain types of financial plans for people depending on what they want to do in the future. This is not something that is found on Amazon because it is a service, but I definitely could see how the article can help you understand in a service or product sales business.

I feel like targeting younger people would be able to create a larger network of clients to work with. Also, and maybe more importantly, it gives me a client potentially for even more future financial goals in the time I am doing business for them which could lead to a closer personal connection as well as maybe more money.

Week 11: My Unfair Advantage

List of 10 resources:
1. Family atmosphere: Many firms say that they have a family atmosphere, but none can really take the amount of time that I will to be more of a friend to the client than anything else. It is really easy to trust your friend to help you with financial situations than it is to hand money to a "businessman".
2. Welcoming office: The office will look like a home versus a traditional business building look to make the clients feel more comfortable.
3. Highly skilled employees: Clients will be able to know that they have very educated and devoted people doing everything they know to reach financial goals with them.
4. "Client comes first" mentality: No other company will take the time to be sure that each person is more than just another client and really take each case seriously.
5. Convenient location: People prefer not traveling long distances, especially for something many would not be excited to do anyways, so if we could make it as convenient for the client as possible over other firms we would have an advantage.
6. Live blog with market updates to educate clients so they know why you may make certain decisions: I cannot think of another firm that would take the time to really educate their clients via blog to keep them up to date easier on what is happening.
7. Often connection to clients: It is very important to keep in contact with you clients so they do not feel forgotten or abandoned. This goes back to the family feel.
8. Events for clients: It is boring always talking about finances with the clients, so I think it would be a good idea to have events to get together and socialize about other things. Again, this ties back into the family feel of my company.
9. Constant education of employees: Education is obviously something very important when dealing with finances, therefore, it is imperative to have continuous education of all employees dealing with clients.
10. Organization Involvement in community: As a family company, it is very important to have the great opportunity to give back to the community. Since advising is to help reach financial goals, why not help the community as a whole reach other types of goals and continue the trend?

My number one resource is my companies family atmosphere. In my other posts, people commented saying how that is not anything different from any other financial advising firm, but I disagree completely. Yes, all firms try to show that they are client first before all, but, it comes down to the root of the actual company culture to really determine if it is a significant difference to sway someone to go to my firm versus another. My values lead me to believe that this resource is what will set me apart in some ways from other firms of the same service. Please feel free in comments to give specific examples of something else that may make my advising service above another.

Week 10: Reading Reflection

This chapter was very interesting to me. I think that it is one of the most important things in owning a business is that you understand how to handle the money to start it as well as keep it going. One thing I enjoyed in the reading is about the budgets and things like that. Budgets are not just something that you need for a business, but also just as an individual. The chapter was rather straight forward to me and I do not have anything that I am really confused about or questions for the author. I am just pleased that I was able to learn a little bit of application to things that you might find in business finance. Things like budgeting and cash-flows are some of the best things to know and definitely cash-flows since that is one of many ways business are valued.

Week 9: My Secret Sauce

1. If I was to really think about what makes me, me and my human capital Id say that I am very friendly, hard-working, dedicated, and other types of things that show that I really care about what I do in my everyday life.

2. The link to my father's recording: https://youtu.be/TMWYvTtPCMM

The link to my mother's recording: https://youtu.be/vTlJYuJl1Ks

The link to my girlfriend's recording: https://youtu.be/5-b645PUFYI

The link to my girlfriend's brother recording: https://youtu.be/nkc5R0JdB4Y

The link to my roommate's recording: https://youtu.be/p5PBwCfuV7A

3. After completing these five interviews, it seems that most of my family and close friends all feel the same about me as I do about myself which is a pretty good thing. I am pretty transparent in my personality so it makes it relatively easy to see what kinds of qualities I have. This was a very interesting group of interviews, and I was happy to hear all of the great things that my friends and family had to say about me.  

Week 9: Reading Reflection

1. One thing that I guess I could say really stood out to me is the great emphasis it seems that online marketing and other forms of new technologies are transforming the way marketing is done overall. Marketing today is definitely not the same as it was, say, ten years ago.

2. During the reading there was not anything really that I found extremely confusing. It helps that I recently took the marketing course so this chapter was essentially a review.

3. One question that I would ask the author of the textbook is very general, but if you are an entrepreneur and you are about to start a business, would you follow these same questions and steps to discover your business plan as you would to seek who you will be targeting to sell your product or service to? This is the only question I really had about this chapter.

4. Lastly, I felt that the reading was very clear and more conceptual with definitions and things like that so I don’t feel that I disagree with anything that I read.

Week 9: Idea Napkin No. 2

My napkin idea is something that most people would not choose to do. It is something that everyone in their life will eventually have to deal with. What is my idea? It is a financial advising service. At some point or another in your life, you will have to decide the best way to invest your money, and just how much you should spend or save. That is my role in the job. I am here to help you make investments and become a part of your family so that you know I am doing everything in your best interest and not my own when it comes to your money.

1. You. My name is Derek, and I am an aspiring financial advisor who is striving for the opportunity to open my own advising practice. What I hope to get out of being a financial advisor is the opportunity to take my knowledge and be able use them to help people live well and grow with their money. It is very important to me that I build a strong relationship with each person I work for so that they are assured that I am working for them and they are not just a dollar sign to me.

2. What are you offering to customers? As I had mentioned before, it is a given that everyone in their life will be faced with financial decisions whether it be having a safety savings account and needing to know how much is enough, to investing in a retirement plan so you do not have to fear outliving your money. My service is to give my educated opinion by using my financial experience and education to help make these life changing decisions.

3. Who are you offering it to? Since money is a large part of everyone's life, I am offering this service to anyone with an income. My clients could be a new family trying to save money for their child to go to college, or an older person trying to make sure he/she can retire comfortably. It is important that people start saving money earlier in life so rather than targeting just the older population, I think it would be beneficial to also target the younger as well.

4. Why do they care? My clients would care because it my service is there to better their lives in any way that I can. I will have a great amount of knowledge in the markets as well as many kinds of financial knowledge to give them that they could most likely not do on their own. Another thing that is of value to the customer is that it takes a lot of the worry out when it is my job to take care of their portfolio rather than them having to deal with work, a family, and any other things that take a lot of devotion on top of taking care of their financials.

5. What are your core competencies? What really sets me apart from the other financial advisors is the amount of time I will take to really get to know the client and how personal I will take each persons situation. Life is about much more than just money and it is a great passion of mine to be able to do what I enjoy and share my experiences with other people and help. This career is a great way for me to meet many different people all while being able to make their lives better as I had mentioned before.

I feel like all of the five elements that I described above came together very well. I think that it was important for me to say how personal I want to be, as well as to describe my knowledge that will be able to do the best job I can for my clients. 

For the most part, I had very positive feedback from the comments. One thing that someone had mentioned was for me to not let my young age hinder my success as an advisor at the beginning of my career. I feel like this napkin idea is a little more detailed to how I am a better choice over competition and I think it is a little more effective than the last.

Week 8: Half-way Reflection

This is a reflection of the half-way point of this Spring 2016 semester here at UF.

1) Tenaciousness is a skill. What are the behaviors that you have used (or developed) to keep up with the requirements of this course? 

I must say that what I learned in this course so far is planning and implementation of the plan. Having to set up interviews, and research business ventures is not something that is easy enough to just throw together in 15 minutes like any normal college student might want to do.

2) Tenaciousness is also about attitude. Talk about a moment or two when you felt like "giving up." What pulled you through? Do you feel like you've developed a tenacious attitude during the past two months? What experience or experiences most contributed to this?

I believe that the elevator pitches were the most challenging thing for me and made me want to quit. The reason this is, is because of the amount of research and the extreme time constraint put on us. I like things to be perfect so it is really hard to make up a business idea and have all of the information you would need for an investors pitch in such a short time. If you have ever seen shark tank you know that some of these people have been doing research for years and even already have their product launched. This is an example of how difficult it is in this class.

3) Three tips. What are three tips you would offer next semester's student about (1) fostering the skills that support tenacity and (2) developing the 'tenacious mindset' ?

If I had to give three tips, they would be the following:
1 Be sure and do all of the assignments early and plan them out because going out and recording interviews takes preparation.
2 Don't give up, because it is all for your benefit and it will pay off.
3 Be as creative as possible because that will allow you to think outside of the box with your ideas and endeavors.

Good luck,
GO GATORS!!!

Week 8: Reading Reflection

1) Not really a huge surprise, but a surprise none the less was when I saw that venture capital firms want to own control of your company and tell you how to run the business was completely a myth. I feel that if the venture capital firms are saying yes or no and approving of the companies big decisions rather than just the everyday things, they have a significant impact on what happens because these are big decisions.

2) More or less I was not really confused by anything during the reading aside from the question that I have in number three.

3) One question that I have for the author is how it works that you could have a greater return on equity if you borrow more? This is the only question I was able to run across during my reading of this chapter. I found it to be very interesting, and I am curious of how this greater borrowing can create higher equity.

4) In number one I mentioned the myth and I do not know that I entirely agree with this statement but otherwise I enjoyed reading the chapter.

Week 7: Free Money

I did my five encounters with random people that I saw walking around the parking lot of my apartment complex and tried to get them to take a dollar from me. At first I assumed that it would be really easy to get people to take the dollar, but then I realized that when people were busy or shy they wanted nothing to do with me or my dollar. Of the videos that I took, only one person decided to take the dollar without question. The other did not. Here are the links to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic1N3UIiPSM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8247NWPezEo

The biggest thing that I realized doing this assignment is that I lost out on four dollars. It was much harder to give the dollar to some people than others. I had two people just take it and move on and then one who just kept asking questions about what it was for and why I was giving it to them. He had asked at what point what the catch was. This was an interesting challenge given I could not tell them it was for class. For the most part my reason for giving the dollar was just because I was feeling like giving a dollar away because I felt like it. This was definitely an odd challenge and I enjoyed seeing people's different reactions.

Week 7: Reading Reflection

1) I think that the most interesting thing from this reading is how much marketing has had to evolve with the way people approach purchasing, and with the technologies. Things are changing so fast now it is hard for marketers to keep up with what people want. Not only that, but the ability to stay ahead of what they want because things are “old” so quickly.

2) One part of the reading that was a little confusing to me was how the author feels that demographics is almost obsolete now. I feel like the characteristics, such as values, as he mentioned tie into a demographic location. Maybe that same area of people all hold similar value and preferences. This also goes along with the question about something I thought was “wrong”. I just cannot say that I completely agree with that because there are many factors going into where to target specific market segments.  

3)  only really have one question for this article, but I am curious as to why adding a model in the commercials is now so effective but it was not as common quite a few years back. People have not really changed their taste that much in the years, so I wonder why it wasn’t used then.

4) This question is answered as well in number 3.

Week 7: Elevator Pitch No. 2

I decided to change my elevator pitch from opening a new Jimmy Johns to something a little more personal to me. I decided to go with my career goal job where I own and operate a financial advising firm. Here is the video of my pitch:

https://youtu.be/V_kObDgmXJk

Week 6: Reading Reflection

The following are the four questions I will be responding too through the reading of this weeks reflection.

1) The biggest surprise for me during the reading was when he said how sometimes the biggest competitive factor could be something that may not be obvious. I thought this was surprising since if it is such a large impact you would think that it would be a clear arrow pointing to what is causing the competition.  

2) During the reading I was not very confused in any part of it. But, I was very interested in all of his viewpoints in reading about the supplier and customer sides of the competitive advantage.

3) Two questions I had for the author were the following: If price war is so bad for companies to compete in that way, why do so many tend to do so? Is it because that is the easiest way to compete? Also, why is government not included in an advantage or disadvantage for companies since they tend to be a big part in how they can operate with laws and regulation?  

4) There was nothing really that came to mind that Mr. Porter said that I believed to be wrong or that I really disagreed with. It was a well written article and I enjoyed reading it.

Week 6: Idea Napkin No. 1

My "idea napkin" is probably a little bit different than most others. A lot of people will be doing things such as a product that might help other college students, or just something that will make day to day life run smoother. However, that is not quite the case for me. Since my career goal is to become a financial advisor being a CFP, my business will be operating my own advising firm.



1) Though I am only 19, and most people would not feel very comfortable allowing me to take their money and invest it for them, I am a person who surrounds himself with others who will be able to help me do such a thing. My aspirations are to learn as much as I can, as quickly as I can so that I can start making a huge impact on people’s lives by allowing them to reach financial goals throughout the milestones in life. The main way that I see this business playing a role in my life is that it will allow me to personally connect to thousands of people and learn a lot about the different styles of living people may have. This experience could help better me as a person as well as the people that I meet.



2) Basically, what I would be offering my customers is an opportunity to talk with me and come up with the best form of investment for them to reach a financial goal they might be shooting for. An example of this might be someone trying to plan on a way to pay for their child’s college in “X” number of years, and it would be my duty to figure out how to do this in a way that suits them the best.



3) Given that most young people are not too worried about making long term investments, such as retirement, or things like that, I would be targeting people who are ages 30 and up give or take a few years. Looking for local businesses and offering these investment opportunities to the company’s employees would be a good way of targeting the correct individuals. But the key is that I need to find customers who all are looking at their future and it is my job to get them thinking about it if they are not already.



4) A big question would be why do they care about this service? Well, if you were to really think about it, how bad would it be if we were talking about retiring and then not knowing if you are going to outlive your money? The people in the world are living much longer than they used to, so retiring at 65 and living another possibly 30 or more years is not unlikely. Therefore, people should care very much that they can comfortably live and have a good time when they stop working.



5) I think what really sets me apart from anyone else is my desire to really get on a personal level with each person I am working for. I think that is one of the most important things in the financial advising business is getting your clients to really trust you so that you are able to take your knowledge and use it to benefit them to the best that you can. That sense of family is what sets me apart from some other advisors when I become one.


All in all, I believe that all of these points go rather well with each other. It is difficult to say everything about this business as of now because it is something that takes much experience to fully understand and have it down. But in this learning process of the business, I am going to take what I can from it and use it to make my very own business.

Week 5: Reading Reflection

1)      The biggest surprise for me in the reading was how big of a deal the lack of business definition is in the success of a new venture. I would have thought that if it works, it works. But I guess that if you design a business and focus on something that people may not actually want when your definition was for something they do, it would be rather important.

2)      Fortunately, there was nothing in this chapters reading that really had me confused! I enjoyed reading about new ventures and the thoughts put into them.

3)      Two questions to the author: My first question is how big of an impact does the HR actually have on the success of a new company since it is only a minimal part of the business? My second question is how ignorance of legal issues is even necessary to put as a possible reason to fail. It is very obvious that illegal activity is never good.

4)   There was really nothing I disagreed with in this chapter except for the inclusion of legal issues because of its common sense reality.

Week 5: Elevator Pitch No. 1

Hello everyone! What I decided to do after speaking with some of my friends about an idea is to open a new Jimmy Johns franchise location near the Oaks Mall. I said this because they have a short area range to which they deliver because of their motto on speed, so the more stores, the more people get to eat their freaky fast, freaky good sandwiches. I think it would be fantastic if this could happen in reality since it was an option for me to live in that area!

If the video is not able to open, here is the link!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj4e2-3pcn0

Week 4: Reading Reflection

1) From the reading there was one thing that really stuck out to me that I found to be very interesting. There was a creative exercise in the book, and I took the time to try it out. It was really amazing the types of things you could come up with for uses and functions to the oddest items. I did an exercise like this in one of my classes at Valencia College before attending UF. The difference was we made a list of as many functions we could think of with a paper clip. It is really amazing when you take the time to do this. Plus, it ends up being rather difficult as well!

2) Something that I found to be confusing in the reading was when I got to the types of innovation. I noticed in that list, there was duplication. At first, I was surprised that duplication was even there, and then when I read about it, I became even more confused. I think of duplication as an exact copy, but here it is a copy that has been changed. I am not sure I understand how this could be called a duplication because of this.

3) If I was able to ask two questions to the author, these would be my two questions:
- If the entrepreneurship mindset is quite as important as it seems to be, why is creativity not taught more?
- This one is not much of a question, but I think that the brain blocks a lot of creativity out with knowledge. In the past I saw a study of people asked to be creative about a "blob" of paint and describe what they saw, and there were two groups; six year olds, and grown people. In the study the results had the six year olds blowing the grown ups out of the water with variety of ideas and quickness.

4) This part kind of goes back to number 2. I don't believe that duplication is a good way to describe something that is innovated because it is not a copy of the previous piece even though we obviously know what is implied.

Week 4: Top 5 World Problems

List of five big problems:

1. Isis is a huge problem for almost all of the world

2. There have been a significant amount of mass shootings in the past several years.

3. In every city, there is some kind of problem with drugs in the streets

4. In other countries there are people starving to death and dying from contaminated water. (even our own)

5. Just down the road from UF there is a large tent city, which is a homeless population that lives in tents as you may assume

List of most possible solutions:

1.  Implementing more food drives and water donations for the starving people is already something that is happening so that makes me believe that this solution would be one of the easier to accomplish.

2. For the Isis problem, an Internet campaign against their recruiting seems like it  could be a possible solution that would just need some brain power and collaboration.

3. The tent cities is another one that people have began to try to fix, but so far nothing has quite worked out to the fullest. I believe giving the homeless an opportunity for a job rather than no opportunity at all, or hand outs even, would help them to get back into society enough at least to have a healthy place to live rather than in a tent.

4. Mass shootings are another big problem, and it is very difficult to handle. My fifth point is about drugs and it goes right along with it as far as the laws only preventing the law abiding citizens from breaking them. I am not sure of a solution, but if I had to make one, it would be doing a better job of screening as well as background checks and things of that precautionary type of thing to be done.

5. Drugs being on the street every day and night is a big problem, and a very difficult one to tackle. It may seem easy enough to say get rid of the drug, and then problem solved, right? Wrong. Laws only prevent those who follow laws from breaking laws. That sentence sounds repetitive, and I am not saying laws are a waste of time and money. But in some cases, the law is just a minor impact on the reality of the situation. I do not even know what we could do to stop this from happening.

 It was no easy task choosing these two top five lists. As far as the first top five, being the list of the top five biggest problems, I chose them because they are issues that are very widespread, as well as a large impact on our everyday lives. Some of them may be things that we see constantly on the news, and others we may not here much of at all even though it is a huge problem that we may be putting on the back burner. Additionally, I chose the top five list of my problems solutions through some careful examination. What I noticed, was the "biggest" problems, I seemed to have an easier solution for rather than the not as big of problems where I could not even come up with an idea. I think that is because those bottom problems have been issues for many years while the others are more recent and people haven't had time yet to get an answer.

Week 3: Reading Reflection

In reading chapter 3 from the textbook, I am a little bit surprised that team building is a listed quality of an entrepreneur. I say this only because just thinking about an entrepreneur, you think of the individual who created what ever it is that they created. You don't really stop and think of all of the resources (the team) that they had to put together to make the entrepreneurial idea take off.

I am not entirely sure why the author uses profit motive as a measurement of risk for an entrepreneur. In class, I believe we said that profit is not really what the entrepreneur is seeking. Of course, why would someone create something that will not make money, but, that is not the idea. I think rather than calling it a profit motive, maybe thinking of it as capital to do another project. An entrepreneur only has so much capital to get an idea off the ground. If they use all of it on something that may they determine to be likely to fail, maybe put less money into it, or not do it at all.

Week 3: Identifying Local Opportunities

This is a list of five local news paper articles I found and want to share with you today that present a problem with an opportunity. Each and every problem in life is simply an opportunity to make it better.

1. http://infoweb.newsbank.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/resources/doc/nb/news/15A7EB54875837F0?p=AWNB

Anti-gambling group targets deal with Seminoles

In this article, the Seminole Indians had a specific deal for gambling in both Miami Dade county as well as Broward. That contract has just recently expired, and they continue to offer their gambling. An Orlando organization called No Gambling is trying to prevent them from renewing the contract and definitely keep them from expanding their locations beyond those two counties.

The problem in the story is that the Seminoles want to keep their gambling rights, while Orlando's No Gambling organization is trying to make the gambling leave the state.

The Seminoles and the Orlando No Gambling organization face this issue.

2.  http://infoweb.newsbank.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/resources/doc/nb/news/15A83F20C6E8A958?p=AWNB
Recent crash at UCF highlights heroin hazards

This article was actually very disturbing as I read it. There was an automobile accident on the campus of UCF and the car was on fire. UCFPD was trying to get the man inside to leave his car, but he insisted on lighting a cigarette inside while gasoline leaked out beneath his feet. The officer then noticed a large syringe that the man had just used for heroin. There has been a bad outbreak in the last few years in Orlando with heroin overdoses so they are trying to take action to stop it.

The problem is the spike in usage of heroin in Orlando, especially near the university.

This problem is the areas around UCF that need to be helped and/or cleaned up to help remove the drug problems so it is safer for students, and anyone else around campus.

3.  http://infoweb.newsbank.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/resources/doc/nb/news/15A83F1FEAF711B8?p=AWNB
Dark side prevails as 'Star Wars' film delayed - Release of 'Star Wars: Episode VIII' pushed back to December 2017

If there are any Star Wars fans out there, you will be upset to know that the next movie was delayed from May of 2017 now to December! There was not a real reason to why it was pushed back, but it now has to compete with the second Avatar movie, which also comes out December of 2017.

The problem here is that one, people have to wait longer for the new movie, but two, it has to compete with another very highly rated movie in the same month!

This appears to be a problem, or an opportunity all in the same for the film makers, and movie theaters.

4.  http://infoweb.newsbank.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/resources/doc/nb/news/15A8936B034785F8?p=AWNB
Garbage, yard waste woes still evident, street by street - County says it's improving service, though

This article is speaking on the side of the homeowners who cannot figure out exactly why they have had trash piling up in their front lawns for the past few weeks. The Garbage company has created a cheaper routine for trash pick-up, but obviously so far it has not been enjoyed by the homeowners.

The problem I see in this article is conflict of homeowners putting the new cans out correctly, as well as the new system missing large portions of their area and a build up of trash.

This problem is directly on the garbage company as well as the homeowners because they are both messing up throwing a wrench in the process.

5.  http://infoweb.newsbank.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/resources/doc/nb/news/15A8E7D71F243AA0?p=AWNB
Millennials increase savings but fall short of target rate

This article is particularly interesting to me given that I would like to be a financial advisor. It is speaking about the millennials, which the article refers to as people between the ages of 25-34. Basically, it says that the percentage of savings done by this group of people has increased a couple percentage points in the last few years. However, according to them, they need to increase it a lot more for these individuals to be able to retire comfortably without fear of living past their savings.

The problem here is that people do not tend to enjoy saving their money. I mean after all, isn't that hard earned paycheck there to spend now?

The problem is targeted at the millennials not having enough to retire, but also, the problem will soon turn to the younger population if they wait a long time to begin saving. Obviously, the sooner you start saving, the more money you will be able to accrue.

Week 3: Very Short Interview No. 1

What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is someone who is able to find needs or voids and then develop a product or process to complete that need or void.  The need could be something missing altogether or an improvement on something that already does exist.

 What do you think I should learn in an entrepreneurship course?

Seems like the basic, necessary skill for an entrepreneur is to be able to identify or create a marketable need.  Then to be successful, one should also learn marketing, budgeting, business finance, time management, communication, and the business start-up process and alternatives.

 What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur?

I think time management is a necessary skill that did not have much focus.  Also, methodology for raising capital and how to create a strategy for growing the business would be important information to learn in school.

The man that I interviewed owns a business that my father also works at. His name is Duane. He is a partner in the firm that his father before him had opened up. He has been a part of the company for about 20 years. Speaking with him let me learn a lot about how a business works, and the mindset it takes to come up with the idea and keep it going. Though he owns part of an engineering firm, I was still able to see what it takes for my aspirations in owning and starting a financial advising firm. I was very fortunate to have this interview and I am looking forward to our next one.

week 3: World's Biggest Problems

10 of the words BIGGEST problems:

1. Isis is a huge problem for almost all of the world

I think a probable solution to Isis would be by going after the issue via campaigns and propaganda. That is essentially their entire recruiting strategy, therefore, if you are able to advertise why 'not' to join Isis, I feel that it may help destroy their goal of gaining supporters. Obviously there is more too it, and much that I do not know, but this seems like a good start in my opinion .

2. Our politicians act like savage animals on the campaign trail.

This to me is a huge problem. I am almost embarrassed for other countries to see how our politicians act while they are trying to get elected. When I first watched the movie "The Campaign", staring Will Ferrell, I thought it was a great mockery to how people look at politicians. Now, however, it appears to represent the actual way they are by a much smaller stretch of the imagination.

3. I love to fish, and it kills me when my family and I go to the coast and see trash in the water.

Even when people know that it is horrible for the oceans to have plastic, and other harmful things in our waters, they ignorantly and lazily toss their garbage right into the water anyways. I have seen waste baskets near the beaches and on fishing piers, so something has been done. It is up to the people now to stop being lazy and just do the right thing.

4. In other countries there are people starving to death and dying from contaminated water.

Though the United States does make an effort to give some of these places food and clean drinking water, it is still seen all to often that there are many people dying each day because of this. I am not sure how this problem would be solved, but it is very sad to know that it is happening.

5.   There have been a significant amount of mass shootings in the past several years.

If I was to give my opinion of a solution, I would say that it is important to allow mentally stable, non-criminals to carry a weapon with them for their own protection. Taking away guns from the law abiding citizens does not stop the criminals who do these hate crimes from continuing. If people are carrying a weapon in most of these cases, there may be a few deaths still, but I am certain that the shooter would be stopped before a large number of innocent people's lives are taken.

6. Just down the road from UF there is a large tent city, which is a homeless population that lives in tents as you may assume.

Many people in Gainesville could possibly go their entire time living here and never know that it was there. I only recently found out because I was looking at an apartment near it and the property manager informed me about it. A solution to this could probably be to find a way to get these people some kind of job for an income. Many of them may have some kind of criminal background, or health reason to why they aren't working, but if we could come up with something to give them an earned income rather than asking tax payers to fund it, I think that this would create a great impact.

7. In every city, there is some kind of problem with drugs in the streets.

I am not sure what exactly could be done to prevent drugs from entering the streets, but I do know that making them illegal has not done very much to help. If I am talking about prescription drugs, one thing might be to tighten up the sales to people by the doctors and pharmacists. Sometimes it is as easy as going to the doctor and telling them you have a symptom of something that calls for that drug and in some cases it is prescribed just like that.

8. Not as big of an issue, but people are always seeming to be attached to their cell phones.

I have noticed that most people, including older folks, are becoming dependent on their cell phones. I am quite confident that if you were challenged to go 24 hours without it, most people, including myself, would have a very difficult time with that. It has become a key part of every day life. A solution to this I guess would be to use more face to face communications or phone calls rather than the typed form of communication that shows know sense of communication skills. The only thing typing does is it shows how grate of a spelar you are. :)

9. My finance professor informed me how little students study now versus how much we used to study just a few years ago.

This is a problem. Students are spending less and less effective time studying, and more time doing other things. This goes back to the cell phones again briefly. It is very easy to be distracted by your phone and put off that boring studying you need to do. It is only natural to find a reason to stop doing something that is not exciting. I think the cell phones and electronics as a whole going away during studies would increase the study time a little bit.

10. Now that I am clearly running out of big issues to talk about, I suppose I will mention fishing again. It is horrible when I am fishing for crappie out on the lake just this past weekend and watch a man take a 5 inch fish and toss it into his cooler for dinner.

There are specific size regulations on certain fish, such as crappie, so that they can have a sustainable harvest. How can people accurately and effectively protect fish, when people feel that it is okay to make their own rules? This is another case where people just need to step up and be more responsible.

This is an image of a tent city to show just what it looks like and how big of a problem this could be.

Week 2: Reading Reflection

During my reading, what I found most interesting was the list of myths. Some of them made sense as to why they are myths, such as the one that states all an entrepreneur needs is money. Some of these were a little bit surprising though. I think that it is great to say that luck is a myth but the way the author stated it an entrepreneur uses their preparation to take advantage of the luck of a situation.

This chapter was more about the basics and understanding at an introductory level of what entrepreneurship is so I was not really confused at this point in the reading. But if I could ask the author a question, this is what I would ask. First off, I would think that we were in more of an entrepreneurial revolution about 10 years ago or more with the development of the new technologies and new things giving many gaps for people to fill so what makes you say now? Also, I would like to know about the Gazelle companies and their survival. It says in the book that no gazelles live and they all end up dying. Though that may be true because nothing lasts forever, how long of a surviving company would be called an unusually long life?

I thought that this chapter was very well written and I found no reason to disagree with things that he mentioned other than some clarifications as I said in my questions.

Week 2: Bug List

There are always things that "bug" people in their every day lives. I have twenty things that I could say bug me and what I believe to be wrong with these things.

1) wider seats on the RTS busses in Gainesville
-The seats on the RTS busses are very close together and if they each were a little wider with an arm rest it would be more comfortable for everyone.
2) There is only one main way in and out of campus, therefore, at 5:00 in the afternoon during the fall and spring semesters the traffic becomes very heavy.
-It would be helpful if there were more lanes, as well as more than one way in and out that is still convenient to get out.
3) The swimming pool at my house in Orlando is solar, but only stays warm when it is sunny.
-The solar panels should be able to absorb energy from the sun and save it rather than only have the water go through the hot panel coils when it is sunny.
4) The lines at Super Walmart in Gainesville are always very long.
-If the stores had not had budget cuts, and had employees working on registers when they are busy, the lines would not be so long all the time.
5) The toilet in my apartment complex always runs and wastes water as well as makes a lot of noise.
-The Maintenance crew could be a little less cheap and use tools that fix the problem rather than temporarily patch it for a few days.
6) In the movie theaters the front row seats are all wasted because of the terrible angle looking up at the screen.
- This happens because they are trying to maximize space, but it can be changed by moving around the design of the seating.
7) Other countries have high speed trains, and the US still has regular railways.
-The advancement in technology is here, we could have a faster railway to make it more convenient to use for everyday travel.
8) Advertisements on TV take too much time during movies.
- They are used as promotions for companies, but there has to be a better place to add them in aside from movie channels.
9) Hit and run car accidents are a common thing that happen on the roads today.
- If we were to have more cameras in cars and at major intersections it would be easier to stop people from getting away with hit and run accidents.
10) The drainage ditch in the front of my house creates a mess when it rains.
- It is a good idea for all drainage ditches to be filled and have a pipe run under the ground.
11) There is always a lot of food that is wasted from restaurant, and plenty that comes from theme parks.
- We could have more ways of recycling the food, or saving it and donating it to something to be more efficient and environmentally sustainable
12) One of my family members cleans office buildings and she does it alone. It takes a very long time because she has to do a lot of work that takes a lot of time.
- If there was a way to have some kind of programmable robotic I-cleaner to do the work of another person to make the process go faster and be more efficient.
13) Having to hear a smoke detector go off constantly when the batteries die is very annoying for anyone have the smoke detectors use a small solar powered charge so that you never have to replace the batteries again.
14) While on the topic of batteries, my father has been having battery problems in his boat. It is a pain having to keep changing out a battery every time you want to start the engine.
- If there was a way to have something other than a battery to turn the crank shaft in the engine, we would never have troubles getting the boat to start again.
15) It is a little bit inconvenient sometimes when playing the lottery because it is hard to tell how much a winning ticket is worth unless it is scanned at the store.
- It would be great if there was a mobile scanner to tell you how much you won right away.
16) It is a pain to get up and open up a window that is, say, behind a couch in your home or apartment.
- The solution is to have windows that are electronically opened by remote inside the home.
17) It is expensive to replace your shoes when they wear them after a while.
- It could be a lot more effective if there was a good way to "re-tread" your shoes. In other words, put new soles on the bottoms to get a possible double life out of them.
18) Mechanical pencils are great, and a lot of college students. Unfortunately, the graphite is very thin and tends to break very easily.
- I would like to see a sharp, but thin stick of graphite and be able to push it and not worry about it breaking.
19) Many people have DVD's, but DVD players are becoming more and more out of date and rare.
- We should be able to save the DVD movie to a playlist right into the TV to select it and watch.
20) I don't like taking my car in to get an oil change every 3,000 miles.
- I would love to have an oil that does not need to be changed, or refilled. It would be cheaper, as well as more sustainable for the environment.

At first, I thought that it would be a really easy task to come up with twenty issues that I could feel could be corrected or made better. It turns out that I was wrong! There was a lot of things that came right to me at first, but after about ten or so, I was having trouble thinking about things that I felt could really be innovated to help with day to day life.

Week 2: My Entreprenuership story

Hello everyone,

In my experiences I have met one person who is an entrepreneur. It might not be the traditional creation of something that is completely different than anything else, but it is a new business in a brand new innovative location. This gentlemen's name is Scott Brown, an independent financial advisor for Raymond James. He worked hard for Raymond James for many years and then decided at some point that it would be a great time to change locations and have his own practice using the name of Raymond James. He has been a successful business owner now for over twenty years.

This leads into the next part of this post. The reason I chose to be in this ENT 3003 course is for the knowledge of the entrepreneurial mindset to be able to do what Mr. Brown has done. As I have said in some other posts, I want to become a financial advisor as well. Taking this class I believe will give me the knowledge to have a better chance of being successful.

week 2: Introduction

Hello everyone,

My name is Derek Foster. I am from Orlando, Florida where I was born and raised. I am a transfer student from Valencia College, also in Orlando. My major here at UF is General Business. Upon my graduation, I would like to become a financial advisor and I am going to strive to own my own practice. One of my favorite places that I have traveled is the Keys. I love to fish, and the Keys are known as the fishing capital of the world. I will put a picture of me fishing in Tampa, Florida last spring.

Week 2: Entrepreneur's Mantra

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