Inventive ways to run a company

This week I learned so much and thought in new ways!  I enjoyed learning about different companies that do inventive things to run their company.  Zappos pays new employees to quit after the first week of training.  It sounds so crazy, but it's incredibly smart!  This ensures that those employees who stay with the company are more than likely there for the right reasons which ensures that the company culture stays in tact.  JetBlue chose to focus their resources on providing things other airlines don't such as live tv and helping passengers put their bags away.  I thought it was a brilliant move to recognize that trying to provide food would be waste of resources.  These companies set out to improve a service and to stand out from other companies and they have done just that.

I believe that customer service is vital to any company.  I personally expect to get good customer service because I have provided it to others when I have worked.  To me it's simple and so I can easily get frustrated when I don't receive basic service from an employee.  As an employer we need to make sure we are providing the employee with the ability to do their best job and feel empowered to represent the company as they see fit.  Once we train the employee in the company protocol we need to develop a bond of trust to allow them to serve our customers to their ability.

$100 challenge

I am very excited to report on my challenge.  It is going very well!  I receive a lot of orders and fulfilled them this week.  My total sales so far is $96.50, with a cost of $31.50 which gives me a total profit so far of $65.  I have new orders for this week and plan to put another promotion out on my Facebook page.  The gluten-free cookies turned out very well which was exciting.  I will add this option to my offerings since the process is the same with just one ingredient change.

I have learned a couple things from this week so far.  First of all I didn't plan for packaging.  I had no idea how I was going to package my product, how much the packaging would cost and how much it would eat into my profits.  I have found some simple and inexpensive ways to get around this problem, but would have like to have had it figured out ahead of time.  I also learned to stick to my plan and say no when people ask for items that are not part of my offerings.  A lady asked me to make one dozen cupcakes for her and deliver them to a function for her.  She was trying to find a way to support me in my business venture and was willing to pay more than I was asking.  I agreed to do it.  The problem is that I had not priced out making cupcakes.  I also did not have the process streamlined and they were more time consuming.  I need to stick with the products I planned on doing only until I decided if/when I will add more offerings.  I don't regret doing the cupcakes, because I learned a valuable lesson.

A great week!

I’ve had a great week of learning!  First of all I have come up with an idea to apply what I am learning about business development from the E-Myth book to my personal life.  I knew the minute I read it last week that it was what I needed to use for my Mom role.  The problem that I’m having is that everyone relies on Mom to remember everything.  I have reminders going off on my phone multiple times per day and most of them don’t even apply to me.  They are just reminders for me to remind other family members to do something.  So my idea is to still remind them (because they are very important items, like taking medicine) but to also give them back some of the responsibility.  I am making up a family spreadsheet tomorrow.  It will have everyone’s name and their reminders for each day and a place to mark off that they have done the item.  This way the only thing I or my husband has to remind them to do is to check the spreadsheet.  I also have a way to make sure they have done what they need to do.  I’m very excited about this.  I am franchising myself! Ha!

I enjoyed learning about innovation, quantification and orchestration.  Quantification was the most intriguing to me because I think it is the area I have the most to learn about.  However, I am a numbers person so that could be why it intrigues me as well. I look forward to finding ways to apply these principles to my $100 challenge.

Speaking of my $100 challenge I am really excited about the progress I have made!  Originally I had planned to have an event here at my house today where people could taste and order and even have some product available for purchase.  However, it has been pouring down rain for the past three days and I ran out of time to prepare product.  But, the business must go on!  I posted this evening on my personal Facebook page and let my local friends know what I was selling and how much it was.  I had a last minute idea to offer delivery in my local town for an extra $2.50 per order.  This was a great application of up selling because I can profit at least $2 from that.  Within a few hours I had several orders which I can fill and deliver by Monday evening. 

I had one friend request for me to try making my cookies gluten free.  She said there are products available to replace the flour with a 1 to 1 ratio and she would pay more for the cookies.  I told her I was willing to try anything.  If these turn out well then I will have another product I can add to my business which will make me more competitive.  Such a great opportunity that fell into my lap!

With the orders I received just from today I anticipate a profit of $30.  Very exciting!

I also enjoyed the Purple Cow reading.  It reminded me of a restaurant that we used to go to in Fort Worth.  It had the same name, Purple Cow.  It was just a regular diner with regular diner food, but it served vanilla ice cream that was purple.  That’s it!  It tasted like vanilla, but it was purple.  They had delicious pies that they would serve ala mode with their purple ice cream and they also served shakes with their purple ice cream.  The kids loved going to this restaurant.  They found one way to makes themselves stand out and it worked!

Lots of great reading material this week!

I really enjoyed the chapters I read from the E-myth book this week.  Basically the idea is that your business is the product instead of the product itself.  This makes so much sense to me but is not something I had ever thought of before.  I think too often we (especially me) keep our ideas and processes for doing things close to our chest.  That works out fine until we need help.  I find times when I might need help from my family members it is almost easier to just do it myself rather than have to explain to someone how to do it.  This is the wrong idea.  I should at the very least have my process written down and even better yet would be to teach my process to another family member so I am not the only person being relied on to perform the task.  As the mom, aka chief operating officer, of my family I can find a lot of personal application with this idea.  I really love that it’s such a simple concept and yet a common mistake not to implement it into your business and life.

The case study this week was an interesting read on how a new restaurant venture was conceptualized and opened and the unforeseen problems that came about.  I enjoyed learning and thinking about how they stayed true to their standards and researched what type of restaurant would work best.  All good learning tools for me.

Elder Wirthlin gave me some great thoughts on finances and tithing when it comes to opening a business.  I will have to determine as I continue down this entrepreneurship journey as to whether I want to go the funding route or supply my own funds and limit what kind of business I can open.  Again, these are not areas I had previously thought about.

My $100 challenge is coming along.  I have been perfecting my cookie, choosing what kind of packaging I want to use and setting a date for my first event which will be next Saturday the 24^th.  I will let my local friends and family know about my event through Facebook.

A great week with a lot of wonderful new knowledge!  I worked ahead a few days because I am currently on route to a family juvenile arthritis camp with my family.  We go once a year and it’s a wonderful experience.  I’m blessed to have been able to get my work done so I can truly relax and enjoy the experience.

Making Plans

This week was a crazy week for me personally but I still enjoyed the reading and learning that was available from the course.  The case study on Heather Evans was eye opening.  I learned that even though it’s important to have spontaneity, we must think through each aspect of a business before we try and launch it.  Acting on impulses can be dangerous and very costly.

Through my reading I was able to hear about a lot of examples of what not to do when starting and running your own business.  This made me think of my sister and I growing up.  I was the younger of two daughters by 6 years.  My sister was inevitably the first to do everything and I was able to learn from her mistakes.  The same concept can be applied in business and in life.  We should research and learn from what others have tried.  We can either choose a better way to do something or choose a different direction but we should not venture into something that has already been proven as not plausible.

Writing the business plan and answering the defining dozen questions for my two business ideas was a wonderful exercise.  These documents were able to help me pinpoint exactly what I wanted to do and how I would be able to accomplish it.  Through working out these assignments I now have down on paper what to do and what order I should them in.  They have given me a vision for my ideas and clarity on why I want to do them.

$100 Challenge Report

This week I created my business plan for my $100 challenge.  It was a great activity to help me nail down more details of my idea and figure out specific ways how I am going to make my plan work.  I decided on the name of Allyson’s Cookies Etc. since my main focus will be chocolate chip cookies but I will also sell chocolate cakes and wheat bread.  I also determined I would set up specific event dates to sell my items at the end of my driveway and I would let people know through social media.  It felt very good to get these details set up and I am getting more excited about the idea of my small business venture.

I look forward to learning more next week! 

Innovations and Ideas

This week was a great learning week!  I mostly enjoyed the opportunity to learn how to come up with new ideas.  I already find myself looking at the world differently.  I find myself thinking more outside the box and watching for ways to improve the world around me.  I'm looking for new things to discover and find myself being more inquisitive.

My Mom had two storage sheds put up a couple days ago.  They were the type where the parts were already put together and then the men mostly were just assembling them here onsite.  I found myself wondering about the process of how the parts were manufactured and put together.  Why was that the most cost effective ways to build a storage shed?  What were the pros and cons of building a storage building this way.  I have never thought this way before.  It's exciting to me!

The Entrepreneur power point was especially interesting to me because it gives some concrete ideas on how to come up with ideas and innovations.  Carrying around a notebook really stood out to me because my husband and I were just discussing this.  He has ideas all the time and then doesn't remember them.  He has the entrepreneur mind naturally.  We don't need a notebook but will dedicate a page on our phone note page to listing and keeping track of new ideas and innovations.  I also really liked the idea of thinking in opposites.  This made such wonderful sense to my logical brain and I plan on working through some of these ideas.

The idea of changing the way you do things will be a hard one for me but I appreciate the idea behind it.  I don't deal well with change but I can see that it could be a very exciting format to figure out ideas.  Marissa Mayer was very inspirational in her talk about how ideas come from everywhere.  We cannot afford to limit ourselves when trying to come up with new ideas and new ways to do things.  Being able to think creatively is what will help us to stand out from the rest of the world and be successful entrepreneurs.

The HMM activity was a great learning tool as well as the chapters from the E-Myth book.  From both I was able to learn and reflect about how it takes all roles to run a business and to come up with new ideas.  I think it's commonplace to know that you need a variety of thinkers for a creative team but I had not thought about that being different parts of one person.  However, I feel that I am already working on developing different parts of my personality that are not as strong.  It is fun to envision which percentages I would give to each member of my team.  I think I am 70% Manager, 20% Technician and 10% Entrepreneur.  This is why I want to go into business with my husband because he would compliment me in my weak areas and collectively we would be close to an even ratio.

Edited to add: I forgot to update on my $100 business challenge project.  My family is all trying to convince me to sell cookies for my business.  This is an exciting idea and one that I would enjoy doing.  My problem is that I'm not sure where I would sell my cookies at.  With that said it is the only business idea that has me truly excited so I will find a way to make it work.