Reading Reflection No. 3

Berry Gordy - To Be Loved; The Music, The Magic, The Memories of Motown

1. I think the thing that surprised me the most about Berry Gordy was his rising from nothing. This surprised me and didn’t surprise me at the same time. Many stories of fame come from humble beginnings. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say… He was impoverished and was raised at the poorest time in our Nation’s history. He had a large family, but they made it work.

The thing that I admire the most about him is that he kept all the values that his mother and father instilled at him from an early age. He was humble and often humbled by his peers in the later years of Motown. He kept that sense about him even though those values may have been misplaced at times. As with most entrepreneurs, he has an amazing story, but there are also things lacking. His familial relationships suffered from the relentless pursuit of his dream. After reading this and Coco Chanel, I am seeing this theme of these major players in entrepreneurship losing spouses or never having spouses due to their pursuits. If there is anything to not admire about them, it would be that.

Berry Gordy did experience adversity and failure. He came from the poorest of circumstances, but learned at an early age to use what you have and keep going. He learned not to give up. I think that seeing his “Pop” do what it took to take care of the family, always picking up odd jobs and making decisions with the family in mind taught him to do the same in a way. He knew that there was better out there and come hell or high water he wasn’t going to let people tell him that he can’t do it.

He was incredibly driven and resourceful. He was a teacher. He learned and educated so many others on every aspect of music from writing to producing to mixing, singing and performing. He seemed to be able to do it all, and was not hesitant to learn from others along the way to be able to teach so many.  

2. I felt that this book was pretty straight forward. Nothing really stood out as confusing to me, other than keeping all the children straight.

3. If I were able to ask 2 questions I would ask how it feels to be part of such a profound movement, how does it feel to be a part of or the one who brought African-American music into pop-culture?  And my other question would be to ask if it was worth it. Were all the years and struggles and frustrations worth going through to have been a part of Motown. I have a feeling that they answer to that would be an astounding yes, but a follow up to that would be to ask what he would have done different, what were the parts that weren’t worth it.

   

4. In this book, Berry Gordy said that his Pop was his hero. I think that Pop showed him what it was like to be a hardworking man from the time that he could understand what it was that he was doing. I believe that his view of hard work is doing what you can, whatever you can to make it work, to make your dream come true no matter what that dream is. And my honest answer to this is while I do share this opinion in my head, it is easier to think it than act on it. I do work hard for what I want, but there is a point where I draw the line and I think that is the difference between true entrepreneurs and myself.

Making It Real

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DYRVlUF6sCvItFrWUteDX_xbb3zMagFrcUOfxic-i44/edit?usp=sharing

Venture Concept No. 2

VENTURE CONCEPT NO. 2

Opportunity:

I have identified an opportunity, a need, for parents in the sporting community.

• The need is to get the children of busy parents to the sports events that they need to attend.
• Parents are busier these days with the rising cost of living and the economy. They must work longer hours, they have more demanding jobs, they have more children. These parents have demands that need to be met and not enough time to meet them.
• This market is targeted for families ranging in ages that are located in cities and towns where there are numerous sporting activities outside of school, city sporting leagues for example.
• Customers are currently satisfying this need by using friends to take their children to these practices and by taking off of work, if they can.
• This is an ongoing opportunity. My personal opinion is that if more parents were willing, this would be a huge opportunity for business growth, however in today’s society parents are justifiably skeptical of these types of services. This would be more of an opportunity for older children, middle school age up to the age of being able to drive themselves. There will always be children who are involved in sports.

Innovation:

The service that I am offering is a transportation service designed to meet the needs of the children and the parents.  My plan is as follows:

• We would have a website that allows the parent(s) or guardian(s) to schedule transportation for their child(ren), either on a one time basis or a recurring basis. You would be able to schedule a simple pick up and drop off to practice or the parent would be able to schedule a pickup and drop off to and from practice. This website would also include the additional feature of purchasing a drink, snack or drink/snack combo for the child(ren). The drink price would be $1 for water, $2 for Gatorade, $1-2 for the snack, depending on what they chose, and the combo would likely start out at $3-4.
• My drivers will be clean cut, female college students that have been through a thorough screening including driving test, drug screen and level II background check. All drivers will be required to wear a uniform shirt so that they will be easily identified by both parents and children as employees of this company. The employees, I feel, would be the greatest resource to the company.  
• I would start off with a small fleet of vehicles that I would strategically use car wraps on for advertising and identification.  
• We will go to great lengths to provide a safe service. We will have a mobile application to accompany our website. We would have an alert system in place through this app to notify the customer, aka the parent, of when their child was picked up from the designated location and dropped off at the designated location. We are looking into the addition of webcams in the vehicles so that the parent may log on and see that their child is safely in the vehicle that they are supposed to be in.
• The price for this complete service is undetermined at this time.  There will be options to purchase individual rides, a set of rides, i.e. to and from practice, or you can sign up monthly if a parent knows that they will need this service on certain days of the week through the month. I do have the plan to offer discounted rates for those that sign up for a longer time frame of transportation, for example a month of service or a season.  

Venture concept:

The Mom-Mobile Service is an innovative way to get your child to and from sports practices and games when the parent(s) cannot get them there.  It is not uncommon for parents to struggle with getting their child to practices and/or games on time. By using this service, the parent’s time is relieved of the rushed and stressful feeling of getting their child or children to the sports facility. They also can benefit from a structured schedule while being assured that their children are safe with the implemented safety features.  With little professional competition in the Gainesville area market, the only other alternative is to have friends or family members transport your child to these events. Having spoken to some parents that take advantage of that opportunity, it is not always ideal and can leave them with a feeling of burdening the transporting parent or relative.

The competitors in this market are two small companies that provide transportation for children. One such company has been in business since the mid 1990’s, however not many people know of their existence. Neither of these companies have strong marketing campaigns, this is a weakness for their business. With my vehicles wrapped with my logo and catchy slogan “Let me be part of your village,” it will catch people’s attention and create traffic to my website.       

With Mom-Mobile, the customer is our top priority. We would strive to give parents peace of mind with someone whom both the parent and the child can be comfortable with. We would like our driver to be viewed as an extension of the family. Our prices would be competitive with the other companies, but affordable enough for most to take advantage of.

With employing college age females as drivers, I anticipate incorporating services such as scheduled babysitting and tutoring. Living in Gainesville, a college town, the possible employee pool is in abundance.

In my current 5 year plan, I will have successfully introduced these additional services and would have started a franchise. This is a need, not only in Gainesville, but in cities and towns across the nation.   


Summary on Feedback:
Due to a mistake, on my part, on the way I posted my Venture Concept No. 1, I had no feedback on that, but I had a large amount on feedback on my What's Next assignment, so I will work with that. All of my feedback was positive. I had no negative feedback. There were a couple suggestions made. One of those suggestions to instead of hiring college age females to drive my vehicles, I could hire already vetted Uber drivers. If I were to incorporate that, I would have to research the qualifications for Uber drivers which I have not done. Since that research has not been done, I am staying with my college age female drivers. I am unsure as to how many female drivers Uber uses, but statistics show that there are less females committing crimes involving children and I believe that a parent would feel more safe with that type of driver. Another suggestion was to switch to my new market and solely work with senior citizens. While I agree that this may be a lucrative market, it would not solve the need that I, and so many others, have as a busy parents.

As I stated, I had all positive feedback on this assignment. I do realize that it is hard for people to have knowledgeable input on an idea like mine when they have little to no life experience with children. With that in mind, it was refreshing hearing that they could have used this when they were younger or that this service would have been of great benefit to their parents. It assures me that I am on the right path.

I understand the two suggestions that I was given, and agree with them to an extent, but I do not agree that it would be wise for me to change those two aspects of my concept, therefore my Venture Concept remains the same.

Final Reflection

I have to say that I have really enjoyed this class.

What sticks out to me as the most formative experience is the interviews. Interviewing people, whether they are strangers or friends, is quite an intimidating experience. You want feedback and you want to collect that data for your venture, but it's almost like baring your deepest darkest secret. I think that was the scariest thing for me, sharing my idea with people and getting their reaction. They might not be as excited as I am about out idea. Those interviews stick with you and they teach you that it's okay to stick your neck out and it gives you confidence for the future. I don't know that I had a joyous experience, but the one that I was most proud of was the What's Next assignment. It was the last set of interviews, I feel that no one really wanted to do them, but I had to to make sure that I got all the points I needed for the class. I ended up having my most amazing interview from the entire semester. I didn't want to do and it was a struggle, at the 11th hour I pulled it all together and got it turned in. It may not be a traditional feeling of being proud, but I was so proud of myself for getting it done and not passing it up.

I somewhat see myself as an entrepreneur, but I don't know that I would want to do it as my only source of income. I don't feel that I am in a stage of life where I can be as creative as I would need to be as an entrepreneur. I can say that I have definitely moved closer to being to one and have started to develop the mindset, but I don't think that I would want to be one at this point in my life.

My suggestion for anyone taking this class is to just do it. Just do the assignments. Just read the assignments before deciding whether to do them or skip them. Just do the interviews. Just do it! It's a great class, it's an easy class if you do the work. It can be overwhelming, but in the end you will learn a lot from it. You will learn about yourself and learn from others. I said this before in another assignment, practice helps too. I would tell students to practice in the mirror or practice with friends. It can be unnerving interviewing people, so practice!  One last thing that I would add is to keep an open mind.

Goodbye ENT 3003, it's been fun!  

My Exit Strategy

My plan for Mom-Mobile is to cultivate and grow the business as much as I can. I would retire and pass the business to my daughter if she chose to do this. I think this is the most fitting since I would be creating this business to benefit her and other children and families in our position.

It is my belief that the exit strategy should be in place from the beginning so that you will know the direction in which you want to take your business when an opportunity presents itself. Any decisions that I make either in the beginning of the process or during the lifetime of the business will be made in the best interest of the business and my daughter. I would like for her to have a successful business to work at while going through school and a place that she can one day own and manage. I am almost certain that as she gets older, different opportunities will present themselves, perhaps ones that I have not even thought of, that I may incorporate into my line of services. Having a business goal for her helps me to set, maintain and achieve goals for myself and the success of Mom-Mobile.

As a parent, I have found that it is always important to have a back up plan in place. If this business is not something that my daughter would like to acquire, then I would sell the business once it was time for me to retire. I would try to find the right fit for the company, someone who cares about the community and families as much as I do and hopefully sell for a large return.      

What's Next

Existing Market:

My target market are families with children between the ages of 6-16. These families would have their children active in extracurricular activities such as sports. I had thought that maybe what was next was branching out with different services, such as child care, but after interviewing a few people, their ideas seemed much more like franchising.

For this part of the experience, I interviewed 3 women who fit my demographic.  All three of these women had excellent ideas that I had not thought of up to this point.

At this point, I see the future of my business being so much more than I had originally planned. I had originally planned this very low cost start up business. It was suggested to me that if I spend a little more money in the front end, my business would perform better and be more profitable sooner. What I had imagined and put into my plan was stay at home moms, but after speaking with Erika, who is a local business owner in Gainesville, she pointed out some serious flaws with that decision. She also pointed out other flaws in my business plan and made some suggestions  for low cost advertising. She also gave me other suggestions that I will implement in further planning.

In speaking with these three women, I have thought about more revenue drivers to add to my business. I would be adding more services to the main service that I would be providing. I would not add any more products at this time, but I would be adding more services such as babysitting, tutoring, different options of pick up, maybe not just for sporting events. I have also changed who I would like to hire. Instead of hiring the stay at home mothers to be my drivers, I would hire college students with clean backgrounds. The more parents I talk to, the more I am finding that they love a parent driving their child or children, but they don't mind a college student as that is usually who they hire to babysit already.

New Market:

The different market that I started to target was those in their "Twilight" years. My current market is targeting families with children, the other end of that are those over the age of 60 who need rides. This is not an innovative idea as there are these transport services in abundance. It is simply a radically different market that I do believe I could incorporate into my business plan and if planned and executed properly has the potential to profit.

For this portion of the experience, I interviewed 3 people who could have used a service like this in the past or are facing needing a service like this in the future with a family member or themselves.

I would have to make a few changes to my current plan of providing a service for children to accommodate the older generation of clientele. I would need to consider hiring older drivers, as it was suggested that someone in their 60's would probably not like to "hang out" with a college student. My services would need to change as well, such as helping carry in groceries, small repairs or moving small items around the house. These services would be extra and would vary in price. It was also suggested that types of vehicles would probably be different for seniors than for the children. Accommodations would also need to be made for walkers, canes and possible wheelchairs.
Through this experience, I learned that it isn't only parents with children that are in need of extra help, it is many people.

It was also suggested that for maybe the seniors that are still very active and young at heart, they might prefer someone younger, college age up to middle age, to drive them around. The interviewee felt that they would know more about what was happening around town and might be more intune to the happenings around town. I think to fit this need, I would give the client the option of the type of driver that they would want.

As a stressed out parent, I am often consumed with my own issues and my unmet needs as a parent, that I overlook my surroundings. There are so many unmet needs that a service such as this could provide, from transportation to companionship. I am not surprised that this need exists or that people would be willing to pay for extended service for the seniors as many of the caregivers for this group are the working, struggling people who need this service for the children, the "sandwich generation" as one of my interviewees called it.


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByQcuOmoc-ZnaG1KcmJSRHp1dDg
https://soundcloud.com/user-855894863/kristi-whats-next
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQcuOmoc-ZnNHNLWjRjaGpoR0k/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQcuOmoc-ZnMThMMW5sWTlZa2s/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQcuOmoc-ZnZVVNd2lTUkN5SjA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQcuOmoc-ZnamtSSWZ3QWFmNUk/view?usp=sharing

Venture Concept No.1

Venture Concept No. 1

Mom-Mobile

Venture Concept No.1

VENTURE CONCEPT NO.1

Opportunity:

I have identified an opportunity, a need, for parents in the sporting community.

• The need is to get the children of busy parents to the sports events that they need to attend.
• Parents are busier these days with the rising cost of living and the economy. They must work longer hours, they have more demanding jobs, they have more children. These parents have demands that need to be met and not enough time to meet them.
• This market is targeted for families ranging in ages that are located in cities and towns where there are numerous sporting activities outside of school, city sporting leagues for example.
• Customers are currently satisfying this need by using friends to take their children to these practices and by taking off of work, if they can.
• This is an ongoing opportunity. My personal opinion is that if more parents were willing, this would be a huge opportunity for business growth, however in today’s society parents are justifiably skeptical of these types of services. This would be more of an opportunity for older children, middle school age up to the age of being able to drive themselves. There will always be children who are involved in sports.

Innovation:

The service that I am offering is a transportation service designed to meet the needs of the children and the parents.  My plan is as follows:

• We would have a website that allows the parent(s) or guardian(s) to schedule transportation for their child(ren), either on a one time basis or a recurring basis. You would be able to schedule a simple pick up and drop off to practice or the parent would be able to schedule a pickup and drop off to and from practice. This website would also include the additional feature of purchasing a drink, snack or drink/snack combo for the child(ren). The drink price would be $1 for water, $2 for Gatorade, $1-2 for the snack, depending on what they chose, and the combo would likely start out at $3-4.
• My drivers will be clean cut, female college students that have been through a thorough screening including driving test, drug screen and level II background check. All drivers will be required to wear a uniform shirt so that they will be easily identified by both parents and children as employees of this company. The employees, I feel, would be the greatest resource to the company.  
• I would start off with a small fleet of vehicles that I would strategically use car wraps on for advertising and identification.  
• We will go to great lengths to provide a safe service. We will have a mobile application to accompany our website. We would have an alert system in place through this app to notify the customer, aka the parent, of when their child was picked up from the designated location and dropped off at the designated location. We are looking into the addition of webcams in the vehicles so that the parent may log on and see that their child is safely in the vehicle that they are supposed to be in.
• The price for this complete service is undetermined at this time.  There will be options to purchase individual rides, a set of rides, i.e. to and from practice, or you can sign up monthly if a parent knows that they will need this service on certain days of the week through the month. I do have the plan to offer discounted rates for those that sign up for a longer time frame of transportation, for example a month of service or a season.  

Venture concept:

The Mom-Mobile Service is an innovative way to get your child to and from sports practices and games when the parent(s) cannot get them there.  It is not uncommon for parents to struggle with getting their child to practices and/or games on time. By using this service, the parent’s time is relieved of the rushed and stressful feeling of getting their child or children to the sports facility. They also can benefit from a structured schedule while being assured that their children are safe with the implemented safety features.  With little professional competition in the Gainesville area market, the only other alternative is to have friends or family members transport your child to these events. Having spoken to some parents that take advantage of that opportunity, it is not always ideal and can leave them with a feeling of burdening the transporting parent or relative.

The competitors in this market are two small companies that provide transportation for children. One such company has been in business since the mid 1990’s, however not many people know of their existence. Neither of these companies have strong marketing campaigns, this is a weakness for their business. With my vehicles wrapped with my logo and catchy slogan “Let me be part of your village,” it will catch people’s attention and create traffic to my website.       

With Mom-Mobile, the customer is our top priority. We would strive to give parents peace of mind with someone whom both the parent and the child can be comfortable with. We would like our driver to be viewed as an extension of the family. Our prices would be competitive with the other companies, but affordable enough for most to take advantage of.

With employing college age females as drivers, I anticipate incorporating services such as scheduled babysitting and tutoring. Living in Gainesville, a college town, the possible employee pool is in abundance.

In my current 5 year plan, I will have successfully introduced these additional services and would have started a franchise. This is a need, not only in Gainesville, but in cities and towns across the nation.