Lesson 3

The Hard Part

This was the week in the $100.00 challenge that I was somewhat dreading.  One thing that I have always struggled with in my life is planning effectively.  I have never been the best at correctly judging time, cost, or milestones to judge where a particular project might be.  So, for the business plan assignments,  I was in an uncomfortable place because I knew I would need to draw upon these skills to effectively complete this assignment.

One thing I realized about the business plan, when it comes down to the specifics, for example, the sales targets, I am nearly guaranteed to be wrong.  Because of my mathematically-focused brain, it makes me uncomfortable to think that I cannot be certain, I guess I found a skill to work on when it comes to entrepreneurship: managing uncertainty.

There are a few ways that I think I can work on this. The first is realizing that there is a plethora of uncertainty in any start-up, and that it is my job to manage it.  The second way to deal with this uncertainty, is to surround myself with the right people who can understand uncertainty and offer ideas on how to manage it.  Third, I need to understand the market and my customers, since customers are the driving force of any business, understand the customer's needs is crucial.

Lesson 2

What a Pain!

So, it is now lesson 2, and this is my first blogpost, however, it will certainly not be my last.

This week has been overwhelming.  The content presented was time-consuming, enlightening and difficult.  The most difficult part of this week's material for me was the 40 business ideas.  The reason this was so hard for me was getting the creative juices flowing.  I have business ideas often, but they generally are the product of observations in my life and I can't write them down on command.  Also, I had more ideas that would be on the scale of the "Big Idea" type of business rather than the 100.00 challenge business.  However, once I struggled to get around 1 ideas, more came to my head as I began to 1) think outside of the box and 2) breaking down the walls of hesitance and reluctance.

As far as the $100.00 challenge is concerned, I have made some progress, although I am still in the idea-generation stage.  I have settled on an idea but I am exploring its efficacy or possibility because of food safety laws and regulations.  The advantage I have is that it will a product I truly believe in because I ask my mom to make it every time I see her.