Idea Napkin No. 2

Idea Napkin

Note: I didn't receive any feedback on my original Idea Napkin post, so I will be revising my napkin to reflect what I have learned about myself and my idea through this class.

1) I think some of my greatest talents have to do with my human skills. Personally, I enjoy talking to people and getting to know them. I consider this a talent because all entrepreneurs should know how to effectively communicate with others. This allows you to receive good feedback about your product/service and form relationships with others who could help you out later on down the road. As far as experiences are concerned, I consider the interviewing part of this class to have been a very formative experience. I think it was formative because it gave me the opportunity to hone my ability to communicate with others and form some budding relationships with local business owners. Also, it gave me insight as to what an entrepreneur with a similar idea to mine has to do in order to be successful. As far as my business concept is concerned, I am aspiring to provide all businesses with an affordable and easy way to achieve and manage their online presence. Based on all of the interviews I have done, I understand that not every business has this need. However, there is still a great number of them that still do. Some of the information I have found showed that approximately 46% of all small businesses don't have an online presence. Even if I'm not able to provide an online presence for all businesses, if I can provide one for the 46% of businesses that don't have one, I'll consider my business a success. Personally, I think that this will satisfy a huge need that all businesses have and will have in the near future. For that reason, I would want this business to play a large role in my life because I know that I would be doing some good by providing this service. However, I think I want to gain some work experience that I could apply to the business before I start it. For instance, I am a finance major, and if I knew how to do more of the technical skills associated with finance, I think my business would be much more successful.

2) Many small businesses don't have an online presence, approximately 46% of them. The service I'm planning on providing is going to provide small business owners with an easy and affordable way to obtain and manage an online presence. By providing them with an online presence, these small businesses will be able to expand their reach and sell to customers who don't physically enter the store.

3) The people I will primarily be targeting are those who own small retail stores and those who own small gift/"knick-knack" shops. By doing more interviews, I was able to narrow my list down more. Previously, I had said that maybe private practice physicians or small marketing firms could use it but the more people I talked to, the less it seemed like those were going to be a good group to target. I think I could still provide my service to them, but I will be primarily providing my service to small retail and gift shops. The shops that I would be targeting would preferably not have an online presence because they couldn't afford one or they couldn't figure out how to manage it, or a store that is looking to improve their existing online presence. I think the thing that all of my potential customers have in common are that they are looking to reach their customers. When you don't have an online presence, you can reach your customers unless they walk into your store. If you are looking to improve your online presence, it means that you are not effectively reaching your customers over the internet.

4) I think the reason these small businesses care is because many of them are at risk of closing because of the coronavirus. Government restrictions because of the coronavirus are hindering small businesses' ability to sell to customers. So, businesses that once sold all of their products in-person are now no longer able to that. One way to get around this would be to sell to customers over the internet. By using my service, these small business owners will now be able to sell to customers during the pandemic. Even once this ends, I think they would be happy to continue using the service because they will see that they now have a much larger reach than before.

5) I think the thing that'll set my business a part from others that do similar things is that I will take a cost-leadership approach. My idea is that if I can provide this service for less money than other businesses, then I can reach the 46% of small businesses that were not able to afford an online presence. In a different post, someone asked how I would go about doing this. I think that I would do it similar to how Uber does it. I think I would pay independent contractors to make the websites. I think this would help lower the costs associated with making the website and would allow me to charge customers a lower price. I think some of the competencies I possess that would help me be successful are my human skills and my hard working attitude. I think I addressed this in the other "Idea Napkin" assignment, but they still hold true. I think my ability to communicate will help me a lot because it will allow me to form relationships with potential customers, employees, suppliers, etc. Having these types of relationships will make running a business much easier. Also, I think that I am very hard working. I think this will take me very hard when it comes to running a business. Many entrepreneurs work more than 40 hours a week, and I think this trait will give me the ability to do that and make the best of my time.

Evaluation

I think that the elements of my business concept fit together for the most part. I think the skills I have and the nature of the business I plan on running fit very well. For instance, my business hinges on making relationships with small business owners and trying to satisfy their online presence needs. I think that my human skills will allow me to create and maintain those relationships with business owners. In my opinion, this business I am coming up with is just as much about customer service as it is about creating websites, so human skills are especially important. I also think narrowing down my target customer to just small retail/gift shops has created even more fit. Now that I know these customers most need my service, I can focus all of my efforts trying to market my service to this particular group of customers. The one place where there really isn't much fit is in the technical part of my business. I don't know how to make a website. As previously said, I plan on outsourcing most of the programming, but it would still be good to know how to program and make a website.

Feedback Memo

Like I said at the beginning of the assignment, I didn't receive any feedback on my original assignment, so I'll be talking about how my research and lectures have affected my Idea Napkin.

One main point that I've taken away from lectures is the importance of narrowing down the list of who you are selling to. It is important to figure out who needs your service the most because they contribute to your revenue the most. In class we learned that this was called the Pareto Principle. By identifying the group that needs my service the most, I figured out who I need to market my service to the most because they will contribute the most to my business' revenue. I incorporated this point into my idea napkin by adjusting what I had written in part 2. Originally, I had included businesses like private practicing physicians and small marketing firms. After conducting interviews, I realized that the customers who truly needed this service are those who own small retail/gift shops. The other point that I've taken away from class and my research is that human skills are extremely important when it comes to running and starting a business. I think I've kind of always known this on a subconscious level, but never to the extent that it actually is. If I'm remembering correctly, Dr. Pryor said something to the effect of "relationships are what keep customers" when he was talking about patents. I think this is definitely true. Relationships are what allow you to get customers to be loyal to your business. Ever since then, I have tried to emphasize that idea in my assignments. In this idea napkin assignment, I talked about how my business was more about customer relationships than it is about making websites. Even though my business is about creating an online presence for small businesses, I can't create it for anyone if I don't have any customers.