Week 3 EOC: Miranda

What Miranda did wrong. First I'd like to address the fact that she was completely unprepared showing the banker what he demands, like a business plan, profit and loss projections, "The projections you provide should clearly be your best estimate and based on the detailed breakdown of sales, pricing, cost, and other data contained in your plan. It is helpful to show best-case, worst-case, and expected scenarios for income." pg 53 or even a mission."The function of a mission is to clarify what you are trying to do, and it can provide direction and motivation to those who are involved in the business." p 46.
The second thing is having her mom be her associate. Her mom hasn't even the first clue of how to help open a business, just like Miranda. Both of them should have had Miranda's friend help them to see what they need in order to satisfy a banker so they can give them the loans that are needed.

Not only were they unprepared to showing the banker the business plan, but they also made fun of his name, Dick Twist. That is severely unprofessional and that will unlikely get you the loan that you need from that bank.

When it came to the maraca dance, that was a plan that wasn't thought out for customers. It's a good idea, but the idea should be tested out before making it an official service. "The product or service should meet or create a customer need. The distinctive features and benefits of the product or service must be clearly stated. Remember, the packaging is also part of the product." p49.

Week 2 EOC: Eating Raoul

Initially, the couple wanted to name their restaurant Bland kitchen, that takes after their last name. That is a pretty bad idea. They also said, after killing the first swinger, that they won't be serving perverts. After they've gotten all their money they decided to name their restaurant a country kitchen. That would mean that they would serve country folk serving hearty food. "It is important to understand that the audiences for your business concept and the industry in which it will compete have a lot to do with what will work best." pg 41. I think that would make them a Niche market. When it comes to reaching out to customers, that isn't necessarily mentioned in the movie for their restaurant. However; they did come up with an idea for bringing in the swingers to collect money. They had a newspaper ad, and that would have worked the same for their restaurant. In fact, the did show an ad for their restaurant at the end of the movie showing that they're running a country kitchen. Through their sales, they established getting money through the swingers by killing them when they try to do any funny business with the female. They also tried selling wine, but the man ended up getting robbed for his thousands of dollars of wine. When it comes to key resources, you have finance as a resource because their restaurant start up needed a few thousand dollars. After handling their perverts, they were finally able to open up their restaurant. When handling your resources, it's important to note just how much you have exactly as stated in the book, "Many businesses have some combination of debt and equity financing. The variety of loans and investments is quite large and growing. One challenge you may face is determining what type of debt financing to pursue, based on your business type and life-cycle stage, your personal finances, wealth, preferences, and the options available to you." pg 321.
When having a partnership, in the movie, they had Raoul, who would sell the cars and the dead bodies for food, selling the cars is fine but selling the bodies for meat is what really disgusted me into thinking that actually happens in society, which hopefully it doesn't. This makes it a strategic alliance between noncompetitors for their win-win situation of money, and more money, plus a 50/50 cut. This is a partnership, stated in the book is "a business with two or more owners that make decisions for the business together and share the profits, losses, assets, and liabilities." pg 355.

Week 1 EOC: New Business Pitch

My business pitch has to deal with pens. I've lost so many pen caps as a child, still do today. I'd hate to have the ball point dry out and have the pen essentially useless. Why not just have a bunch of universal pen cap replacements for when you lose them? One size fits all, just keep a bunch in the drawer for when you've lost your pen cap to the great beyond.

This way, we are using Schumpeter's fifth rule of opportunity for entrepreneurs. This rule stated, "Developing a new market for an existing product" pg. 16. With the idea that so many people lose pen caps, taking the inconvenience and taking the opportunity to fix a problem got me to this quote, "This is in alignment with Schumpeter’s definition of entrepreneurship but explicitly takes it a step further—to take advantage of circumstances." pg. 16.

The question now is "where do we start selling these universal pen caps? It's quite simple really. Where to people mostly use pens? Work and school. Selling these to schools and workplaces would be great, but even if that wouldn't work, people usually buy things when they see it as they need it. If someone is working and is brought the idea of buying pen caps, they may not need it, but if they go to an office supply store to buy more pens because their pens keep drying out from the lack of a cap, they can just buy a pack of universal pen caps. I'd hate to end up like Blakely and her Spanx, but everyone is bound to not be successful the first time around. "hosiery mills repeatedly turned her away, often rudely. Her eventual manufacturer initially turned her down." pg. 124.

Week 1 EOC: The Voice

Cooking came easy to me as soon as I read my first recipe: Chili. Seeing all the other cohorts struggle, I looked at them and questioned “how and why is this so difficult.” Seeing as how cooking came natural to me and how I breezed through the recipe, I knew at that moment that this is going to be my passion and something that I can make my profession. Over the years I have been cooking, I’ve truly escalated through the skills after starting from little to none. After 10 years of experience, I would love to travel to Europe and learn from the foundations of the culinary craft. What I see coming into the culinary world is a lot of stress, screaming, anger, and many barriers to go over. This is something I can do and I look forward to it. As a culinarian of the future, and technology advances, there might be even more challenges, or make the job even easier to perform. Sometimes technology can’t perform what humans can, or machines will take our duties, making finding a job that much more difficult. All of that, to me, just means I have to work that much harder to combat the unknown. We have to push ourselves beyond the limit, break down, and try harder next time. I wouldn’t have it any other way.