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.