Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Course: Maybe your dream is to
become an entrepreneur. You can already see yourself as the next Jeff Bezos
or Mark Zuckerberg. Someone who creates a
new product or service that changes millions of
lives across the world. Or maybe you're
here because you're currently in an
entrepreneurship class for your business
degree and you want a different explanation
so that you can better understand
the concepts. Hello and welcome. My name is Robert and in this course my goal
is to give you a fundamental understanding
of entrepreneurship. This isn't a course that's
designed to teach you how to become a millionaire overnight, or
anything like that. We are looking at the
fundamentals of entrepreneurship. What is an entrepreneur? What are the advantages and disadvantages of becoming
an entrepreneur? What are the skills required? What mindset does
an entrepreneur have that's helpful
for them to succeed? But we also need to be aware of some of the common
challenges that new businesses face that can lead many new
businesses to fail. But best of all, at
the end of the course, we're going to talk
about coming up with your business plan. How do you take your idea and
make it become a reality? How do you gain confidence
and credibility with investors so that they
are willing to support you on your journey
of entrepreneurship. There is a lot of stuff to
talk about in this course. I'm excited to start this
learning journey with you. So let's go ahead and hop
in and start learning.
2. What Is Entrepreneurship?: Hello everyone and
welcome to the course on the fundamentals
of entrepreneurship. I think the best place
really to start is by asking ourselves what even
is entrepreneurship? And when someone asks
me this question, the first thing I think of is a show in the United
States called Shark Tank. If you live outside the US, you might have heard
the show Dragons Den, which is very similar. An entrepreneur will
come up with a product or service or a business
idea and they will have to pitch their proposal to various investors who will either give them funding or
send them home with nothing. So that's in my mind, what I think of when it
comes to entrepreneurship, but there are many
other examples. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, People that have created
the products that we use every day clearly
are entrepreneurs. But what about if you
just want to open a small pizza parlor
in your hometown? Would you still be
an entrepreneur? What if you're in
college full time and you drive for
Uber on the weekends? Could you be considered
an entrepreneur? Well, according
to your textbook, the definition of entrepreneurship
is multi dimensional. And there's no one
key characteristic that says you're either an
entrepreneur or you're not. Let's take a look
at this definition. An entrepreneur creates
a new business in the face of risk and
uncertainty for the purpose of achieving profit and
growth by identifying significant opportunities
and assembling the necessary resources
to capitalize on them. Wow. If I didn't know what entrepreneurship was prior to reading that definition, I would be even more
confused after reading it. So let's break it down
here into simpler terms. Basically, what an
entrepreneur is doing is they are
creating a new business. They recognize that there's risks that it might
not work out. But they have a goal of achieving profit
and growth, right? They want to do something new. Despite the risks, they are identifying
opportunities that are the most likely to succeed. And then at the end of the day, they are bringing
together a team, the resources to make
that dream a reality. And speaking of
entrepreneurship, there's actually lots of different types
of entrepreneurs. We don't necessarily
have to create a completely new business in something known
as entrepreneurship. We are essentially reorganizing an existing organization with a new idea or a
different department, changing the production process. We could have a social
entrepreneurship focus, right? Doing something that supports a social cause or that
helps our community. Even something like opening a small business could be
considered entrepreneurship. So now that we have a understanding of what
entrepreneurship is, I think the question we
need to ask ourselves is, is entrepreneurship
right for us? What are the advantages and disadvantages of
entrepreneurship? And we'll answer those
questions in the next video.
3. Pros and Cons of Entrepreneurship: We have all seen the videos on the Internet of someone telling you that you
can be an entrepreneur, that you can retire
by time you're 30. Drive a Lamborghini on your yacht while you're also
flying your plane, right? These crazy success stories that people have of
entrepreneurship. But we've probably also
known someone who has lost their entire life savings in
a failed business venture. And it's important for us to understand that there are both benefits and risks associated
with entrepreneurship. Before jumping in,
we should analyze these to decide if
entrepreneurship is right for us. First off, let's talk
about the good things, the advantages of
entrepreneurship. One of the most common reasons that people become
entrepreneurs, or own their own business
is independence. They are the boss. Imagine not having someone
tell you when you have to be at work or denying
your vacation time. When you are an entrepreneur, you are the one calling
the shots, your lifestyle. You can decide when, where, and how you work. Do you want to open
a new factory in the American Midwest
or do you want to run a Youtube business
off of a tropical island? The choice is up to you. Financial rewards. How many of us go to
work every single day, And we know, no matter
how good we do, no matter how much we
stand out above our peers, we're going to get paid the
exact same hourly wage. As an entrepreneur, your
potential is limitless. You can scale your business
and continue growing, have constant opportunities to learn to turn your
passion into a profit. And most people don't
think about this, But being an entrepreneur
can also deliver an incredible sense of
accomplishment beyond the money, beyond the dollar bills. You have the satisfaction
of saying, I built this. I created something where
nothing used to exist. There are a lot of advantages
of being an entrepreneur, but we also have to
understand the disadvantages. One major disadvantage
is financial risk. When you're an entrepreneur, you don't have a
steady annual salary. You are out there trying to create something
from nothing, maybe putting your
life savings at risk, maybe taking on lots of debt. Also think about the stress. Yes, we know work is stressful, having to go into the office and listen to our co workers, but we know we're going
to get our paycheck. As an entrepreneur, we might know that we're
going to do our best. But maybe the business fails, maybe not the first year, but maybe after 15 years of hard work, the
business fails. And that's a lot of stress. Having to hire, having
to fire employees, having to balance
time commitments, our business versus our
family, versus our friends. And then also when you
are an entrepreneur, you're sometimes
going to have to do the undesirable duties. If you're the only
person in your business, you're going to
be the one taking out the trash,
cleaning the garbage. You're going to be the
one that has to call clients trying to get them to buy your product or service. So there's advantages and disadvantages with
entrepreneurship. My goal in this course isn't to tell you which
is right for you, but to give you a general idea of some of the
things to consider.
4. Generating Ideas: Congratulations,
you have decided, after considering
the pros and cons, that entrepreneurship
is for you. You've decided you want to
start your new business. But where do you come up with ideas for
your new business? Well, in today's video, we're going to talk
about a couple different sources of ideas. Now, these are coming from
people that are influential in the world of
entrepreneurship. One framework. And keep in mind there's lots
of different frameworks. Some entrepreneurs, they just get an idea out of the blue. Some of them have an idea that they've been
working on for years. When I'm giving you
these examples, don't think these
are the only ways you can come up with an idea, but if you have no idea
what you want to do, these can give you a
good starting point. So the first is
search questions. Looking within ourselves for something new we
could do differently. So think about you just
sitting at home one night. You say what's bothering me
and what could fix it, right? So maybe you are bothered because you don't
have a yummy meal, you don't want to go
to the restaurant, and you don't really want to pay someone to
deliver it either. What could you do?
Well, maybe you say, you know what, If I had
better cooking skills, this wouldn't be a problem. I could cook a yummy
meal from my home. So maybe you come up with on demand cooking classes,
right? Something like that. How could I do this differently? Again, this is something that you can look at your own life to come up with ideas for a new
business or a new service. You're changing your oil
and you say, you know what? I cannot get off
this oil filter. There needs to be some tool that makes this easier.
This is a good one. What more would I like to have? Don't all of us want
something more? Something bigger.
Something better, right? This is where you
say, what do I have? What more could make
my life better? Right? So maybe this
is a faster computer. Maybe this is an entirely new
type of instrument, right? Whatever the case may be. What could make
your life better? Then we have
encounter questions. These are the types
of ideas that come to us based off some
kind of interaction, usually with a customer. So let's suppose you
work in customer service for some kind of
subscription service. And you find out that every single time a
customer calls in, they are always
complaining about your business and
how they operate. Well, that's an idea for you. Wait, what if I started
my own business and we didn't do this thing
that the customers hate. Customers would
love my business. We also have
evaluative questions. So these are things
where we ask, could I do this myself, right? Maybe I don't need to go to a restaurant to have a
meal prepared for me. Maybe I can buy a meal kit. Right. This is a new
idea and what I'll do is I will package
various spices, herbs, preportioned
amounts of food. And I'll even give a link to
a QR code where you can have a professional chef
teach you how to make the food on your
cell phone, right? That's an idea of something
you can do for yourself. Could people here want it also? This is really big when it
comes to opening new markets. So if you think of the growth of various different types of food in the United
States, right? We have Japanese food, we have Chinese food, we
have Mexican food, right? All of these different
types of foods. That is an opportunity. Now, of course, many of these restaurants are
well established, but go back decades. What if you were the first
pizza place in the US? What if you were the
first Italian restaurant? What if there was a product in your country that no one knew about in the
rest of the world? And you introduce that
to those new markets. Now just because you have a
new idea doesn't necessarily mean that it's guaranteed to succeed in a business
entrepreneurship context. So I really like how
Shumpter gives us five combinations of things that we might want
to think about. The first, is it a new or improved good
or service, right? And when we say new or improve, we don't mean a menial
incremental change, right? If I have a computer
that goes from 3 gigahertz processor
to 3.1 that's progress. But are you really
going to change the market with such
a small change? We want this to be
something meaningful, something that is truly different from what
currently exists. Now, this doesn't
have to be a product. This could be a new
method of production. Think about going from
building cars one at a time to making cars on
assembly line, right? So we can make them at
considerably cheaper cost. Again, as we talked about, we can expand to
new markets, right? So think of Pokemon, right? It comes out in Japan. It moves to the
US market, right? That's a new market. That's a new opportunity. We could have a new
supply of inputs, right? Things again, similar to the
new method of production, but basically making it cheaper for us to produce our product. And then lastly,
reorganization of an industry presents
an opportunity. So right now, almost
every computer is made with either an AMD
or an Intel CPU. Now let's suppose the
government breaks up these computer
chip manufacturers, and now the market
is fragmented. Now we have an
opportunity, well, maybe not realistically,
but at least in theory, we have more of a
chance of breaking into this market because it has
been shaken up, right? These are all things that can help us to come up
with new ideas. Now, the most important is that you as the individual
entrepreneur, you know better
than anyone else. What you're passionate about, what you think there
exists an opportunity for, These are just some general guidelines and
things to consider. I hope you found the video useful and I'll see
in the next one.
5. Blocks Entrepreneurs Face: Congratulations,
you have decided you want to become
an entrepreneur. You have come up with
your new business idea, and you are ready to jump in and start changing the world. But would you believe that the vast majority of
new businesses fail? It's an unfortunate reality, but as an entrepreneur, it's important for you to
have an understanding of some of the blocks to
entrepreneurship. So why do
entrepreneurship ventures sometimes not work out well? We can have the issue of money. Maybe they can't get
an initial loan, maybe they do get a
loan and then they figure out that
hiring employees cost a lot more or maybe
just don't make the money from the product or service that they
were expecting. Money is a massive
cause of failure for many new
entrepreneurial ventures. Also, competition are we trying to break into a
market where there's already big name players that
have distribution channels that can deliver at
lower cost. Also. Now this one wouldn't
happen to you because you watched the previous video about coming up with new ideas. But some entrepreneurs, they
want to be entrepreneurs. They just never have a good
idea that they believe in. Or they might not
have the motivation to push through and make
that idea become a reality. Now you could think of 1,000 different reasons
why a business would fail, but there's a couple
that I want to highlight from your textbook. And they break this into
five different categories, Perceptual, emotional, cultural, intellectual,
and expressive blocks. So why are we talking
about all this negativity? I think it's important
because if we understand what
challenges we face, we can come up with
ways to overcome them. So let's think about
perceptual blocks. These are things where we can't really see the
other perspective. So we might have a great
idea and we're saying no one would ever pay
$50 for a watch, right? No one would ever
download my app. No one would ever pay for
me to come walk their dogs. Right. Whatever the case may be, we simply can't see things
in a different way. We only have one idea in our
mind that isn't changing. We can also have
emotional blocks. Maybe we have a good idea. We want to be an entrepreneur, but we simply can't live
with that uncertainty. We don't want to say, what
if this business fails? What if it doesn't work out? Maybe we have a
lack of patience. So the business is doing good. But we say, you know what? I've been doing
this ten years and I'm still not making what
I was at my old job. I'm going back to my old job. Cultural blocks, right? Maybe we have a good idea. We want to see it succeed, but we don't want things
to change or we can't imagine that it could ever gain widespread adoptance
intellectual blocks. Maybe we have a lack of information, the
wrong information. Maybe we don't have the
technical, financial, or business skills that
are needed by our product. And then lastly,
expressive blocks. We have a great idea, we have the passion, we
have the motivation, We can't communicate that plan, we can't present it to
potential investors. Or maybe we can't
design a prototype. We can't give examples, right? All of these things are items that can be
potential roadblocks, but the good news is, they are things that we can
avert with proper planning. So if we aren't a
good communicator, we can take courses
on communication. We can hire someone,
an employee, to be our presenter if we don't have technical
expertise, right? I don't have an
engineering background. If I wanted to design a
new physical product, you better believe I'm going
to be hiring engineers. But in order to overcome
these challenges, we need proper planning. So in the next video, we're going to be
talking about several of the important planning
considerations for entrepreneurship. I hope you'll join
me in that video.
6. Entrepreneurial Planning Process: Planning for success is one of the most important things
that an entrepreneur can do. In today's video,
we're going to talk about the four categories of planning that are absolutely essential for entrepreneurship. So let's think of all
the different things that we might want to cover
as an entrepreneur, right? How are we going to hire people? What product are
we going to offer? Right? There's all these
different categories, but I'd like to consider
it in four main aspects. The first is the opportunity. This is what even is it that we're doing as
an entrepreneur? Are we giving a
product, a service? What is the opportunity here? The second is the market. Does the market want
or need our product? Are there competitors
in the market? Is there regulation in the market that affects
what we're going to do? The entrepreneur and their team, do I have experience
in this area? Do I have a good team? Can we work together? And then lastly, the resources. What resources do I need to
make this dream a reality? How am I going to get
those resources right? So these are the four broad areas that we
need to consider. Let's talk first about
planning the opportunity. Now, I will apologize, there is a huge wall of
text on your screen. I know with
Powerpoints you're not supposed to have
just a wall of text. But I think it's
important because each of these is something
to be considered. So when we think of
the opportunity, remember talking about the
product idea several videos ago and we said it should be something that's truly
meaningful, right? We're kind of asking
the same thing here. What need is not being
met in the market? If we are offering a product, it should be meeting some need that isn't
being met, right? We don't want to be duplicating
something that already exists unless we can
substantially improve upon it. What conditions create an
opportunity for my idea, right? So maybe my business
idea is great, but the time hasn't come. Something needs
to change, right? Maybe I'm waiting on the government to come up
with a new tax credit. Maybe I have a idea for a big
in person music festival. And it's still in the middle
of the pandemic, right? So I need things to open back up before I can
start my business. Why do people want and need
something new at this time? Not only do they want something, but why are they wanting this? What factors have opened
up this opportunity, and I love this one. Is this an enduring or
a fleeting opportunity? In my past, I had
the opportunity to work for a business
and what they were doing was essentially
financed by a one time allocation of money. It was a great job. It
had some potential, but I knew this was an
opportunity that it was really existing just based
off a one time grant. I was worried that it
might not be able to generate its own
revenue moving forward. On the flip side, if it's
a fleeting opportunity, does that mean it's
something that if we don't take advantage of it
today or this month, that by time next
year comes around, that some other company will
have captured the market. This is really
important. We need to think about the timing. And then also, if
we are correct, if we have identified
an opportunity, can I satisfy that need in a way that will generate durable
margins and profit? So it's not just about, I want to give consumers a new product. We are a business. Is
this something that we can deliver a long
term profit with? Also, we need to
plan the market. We need to think what
is the solution, right? Because at the end of the day, an entrepreneur, they are
someone that solves problems. So what problem are we solving? And what is the solution that
we want someone to pay for? Is it a product,
is it a service? Is it some combination
of the two? Also. This is a huge one.
Who are we selling to? Who is the end user
of our product? But also who is making
the purchasing decision? Because a lot of
times the end user of a product might not be the person that's
purchasing it, right? So think of buying gifts for your spouse
as an example, right? The gift might be for them, but if you're making the
purchasing decision, we need to take
that into account when we are marketing
the product to you. What is the customer's problem
and how are we solving it? I know we've said that
same thing multiple times, but it's because
it's that important. Also need to think about
not just the market, not just the product or
service we're offering, but we as a team, do we have the skills, background, personality, and understanding to
overcome obstacles? In the previous video, we did talk about some of the disadvantages of
entrepreneurship. It can be stressful, you
perhaps have to take on debt. Is that something that we
as a team are prepared for? Do we have the expertise? Is this in a field that
we are familiar with? Right? Can we collaborate under difficult conditions
and can we deal with conflict and
come to an agreement? How many teams have we
heard of that? Broke apart? Bands are a great
example of this. Some of my favorite
bands, right? They'll break up because the members just can't get
along with each other. So a little bit different
than entrepreneurship, but still a good example. And then lastly,
planning the resources. What kind of
investment do we need? How much do we
need? Are we going to need multiple investments? What does our cash
flow needs look like? How much do we have
to make every month, every year to stay operational? At what point do we break even? Also, what kind of expertise, resources do we need? Do we need to hire accountants,
legal professionals? Do we need a compliance team? Do we need to rent, purchase, or build facilities, buy equipment, have
transportation, right? These are all things
that we need to consider when we're
determining whether or not or how we want to go about this new
entrepreneurship venture. But it's not enough just to think about these
ideas in our head. At the end of the day,
we have to take all of these planning considerations
and put them to paper. We need to make a
business plan and present our ideas to investors, which is what we're
going to be talking about in the next video.
7. Business Plans for Entrepreneurs: Everyone and welcome back. This is my favorite video in the entire course because we are talking about
the business plan. This is where we take all of our ideas, all of our planning, and present a cohesive idea
of what our business is, what it's going to do, how
it's going to get there. Now, before we start this video, I want to say that if you are in a different
business course, every business professor, every business textbook
is going to have a slightly different idea of what a business
plan should look like, what format it's going to be. And so if you have a
professor and they want you to write a business
plan in a specific way, be sure and do that. However, what I'm
going to share in this video is some
overarching ideas, some topics that
you're going to want to think about putting
into your business plan. Just make sure to adjust it to the specific format that
your instructor wants. So when it comes to
a business plan, we should cover the
expectations as an investor, What am I getting into if I give you money
for your business? I want to know what I'm
getting into, right? I think that's
true for everyone. So we want to explain
our vision in a way that the reader
aligns with, right? So what are we doing? What can they expect if
they become our partner? We should communicate a couple key pieces of
information to them. Number one, we should
communicate that we understand what it will take
for our business to succeed. So it's not enough
to say we want to be a successful soft drink company. No. What does success look like? What percent of market
share are we going for? How many units of sales
are we going for? Also, that we
understand the risks. If you go in and tell an investor a risk
free business idea, they're going to laugh
and send you home. You need to quantify and show them that you've
done your research. You understand that
this is a risk, but it's a risk that you
were prepared to handle. You have to explain that
you understand the market. Again, that you've
done that research. You're building
their confidence. We have a strategy for commercialization
and profitability. This one is huge because it's not enough just to
launch a new product. It's not enough just to get 1 million or even
1 trillion sales. At the end of the
day, we have to commercialize and profit
because the investors, they want their money back, they want to get a return. So we have to show them it's
not just making a product, it's making a product
and then making that product profitable.
That matters. Also, can we establish and protect a
competitive position? This is important because
if we have something, a new product, a new service, and our competitors
can just copy it, because we don't have
copyrights or patents, that is a problem. So we want to show people
what they're getting into. Now, we also want to point
out specific milestones. So we want to anchor
the plan with specific financial and
quantitative values. This is absolutely key because a common shortcoming in business plans is
that people will say, I want to become a
leading vendor of this. At the end of the
day, when you're pitching this to investors, you're trying to get them
to put their money at risk. Your vision, the milestones that you have set out
for them should be something that they
can measure from a financial or
quantitative perspective. So what are our
financial targets? Do we want to sell 1,000 units? Do we want to do $10
million in sales? Why is that number important? Not just 1,000 units is
a nice round number. That maybe is the point
that you need to break even where your costs
equal your revenue, right? So not just what
are your targets, but why do they matter? Now, this is something
interesting about planning, is that your plans are
always going to change. The market today
could be different from the market tomorrow. The issue here is
that you have to realize that the market can certainly and definitely change. But you need to do
your research, right? So balancing planning with
the openness to be flexible. You need to, again,
show that you understand the importance
of quantitative events. And then of course,
make sure that you demonstrate the linkages
between events, right? So we need to sell this
many units because we'll make this much profit
so that we can buy X, Y, Z to continue funding
the business, right? You want to show that you
have a solid understanding of what your business is doing. Also the opportunity itself, the competitive landscape
is always changing. So you want to be realistic about what is this opportunity. Is this a new pizza place
that you're opening in your local hometown and your end goal is just to
make this a family business, that's perfectly fine,
or are you trying to take on Facebook and become the next social
media giant, right? Those are two very
different goals. I'm not saying one is better
or worse than another, but if we are presenting
this to investors, we need to have an idea what is the scope of the opportunity
so that they have an idea, again of what they're
getting into. We need to be aware of
market growth trends. And this is one of the major things I see with
a lot of business plans. We need to talk about the market share or what we expect to get
out of the market. But be very careful, because a lot of times
people say the market for pet food is $20,000,000 If we
could just get 1% of that, we would make however
much the market for X, Y, Z is this. If we could get a
half a percent, right, where's that
percentage coming from? Right. I think a lot
of people say, oh, if I could just get 1% that's a small number, it's
totally doable. Look the big retailers, they're at 40% 30% 5% 7% It should be easy for
me to get 1% Keep in mind, none of this is a given. If you think you can get
a certain market share, you should be able to
explain and justify why. And then lastly, talking about the context that the
business is operating in. So keep in mind the environment your business will operate
in can change, right? Think about pre
pandemic versus in the pandemic versus post
pandemic, right? Think about if you're trying to do something with green
energy and the government is giving a tax credit for green energy versus if
they get rid of that. So all of these things
are items that you should consider when you're thinking about your
business plan. But at the end of the day, regardless of what's
in your business plan, you've got to build
up credibility with those investors so they will
support you in your venture. In the next video, we are
going to be talking about building up that credibility
as an entrepreneur. And then lastly, the
entrepreneurial model. This is where we
take everything and turn it into a reality. So what product are we offering? Who's paying for it? How
much are they paying? And when the activities
the company must perform to produce the product
deliver and earn revenue. So this is where we say, look, we need this many employees. We need this factory. This is going to be our costs. This is how we're actually producing and delivering
that product. It's not just an idea. If we get the funding, we can make it a reality. And then, of course, defending the viability of the business. So look, we know there's risks. We know there's
competition in the market. We've done our research,
we are aware of the risks, but this is how we can win.
8. Building Your Credibility: You have done a lot of work coming up with
your business plan, researching the market,
and now you're trying to gain credibility
as an entrepreneur. You're trying to
convince investors to get on board
with your project. What are some of
the steps that you need in order to do that? Well, one of the first things
is to have a credible team. You need to think
about your team as one of your greatest assets. What do we collectively,
as a team know? Is this an area that
we have a lot of expertise in or are we
complete beginners? Is it something that we've
done projects before? Do we have experience with a company in a similar industry? Not only what do we know,
but who do we know? Do we have connections with suppliers,
with manufacturers? If we're trying to start up
a new manufacturing company and we have no idea where
to order raw materials, that's going to be an issue. If we're trying to recruit the top talent
scientists, engineers, and we have no
experience recruiting, we don't have any contacts
at major universities. Again, that could be an issue. Just as importantly,
who knows us? Do we have a good reputation
Or a bad reputation? Would people want to
work on our team, right? These things are
important when we think about building
up credibility. Also, the task feasibility. When we are explaining
these different tasks that we have to do for
our business plan, we want to break them
down step by step. What specific strategies
are we implementing? It's not enough to
say I want to be the largest distributor of
soft drinks in the world. Well, there are some
big name competitors already in that industry. What specifically are we going to do to
compete with them? Right? And again,
give specific steps, action plans, things that demonstrate you have thought
through your business idea. Also something known as
scenario integration. So what this is
basically saying is think about how the
future can change. Think about how what
you plan today as a business could be very
different tomorrow. You have to be aware that your business plan
is going to change. How do you adjust to that? Show that you have
contingency plans. Show that you've
done these analysis. What if X changes? What if Y changes, right? That you're planning for
different contingencies. And then at the end of the day, you have to close the deal. Remember that your
business plan must create added value
for investors. That's why they're here to
make a return on their money. So we should address the
viability of the business. Is this something
that can even work? Is it something
that's technically possible to build this product
given current technology? Is there a potential for profit? What is the downside risk to these investors,
to the business? What is the life
cycle of the venture? Is this something that's a
short lived opportunity? There's a huge world's
figure is coming into town and I want to
sell merchandise, right? That could be a
profitable venture, but it's short lived. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it's just that we need to have that expectation that it
is a short lived venture. And then areas to improve. Where do we recognize
that our business could improve and become
more competitive? And then when it comes to the actual business plan itself, keep in mind that the
details do matter. So if we're delivering
a physical hard copy or even digital version of the business plan,
doesn't look attractive. Is it formatted properly? Does it have good
spelling and grammar? Most importantly,
is it cohesive? So if we're developing a business plan that's
talking about soft drinks, we shouldn't go ahead and start talking about the market
for pet supplies. If we're talking about
a nonprofit business, we want to stay focused on the goals of the
nonprofit, right? So the business plan
should be cohesive. All parts should align
with each other. The calculations, if
we're doing math, we should make sure
that all our facts and figures add up. If we say that we want 1%
of $100,000 market share, and that that's going
to give us $150 profit. We've done our math wrong, and that damages
our credibility. Use clear terms, support
every claim that we make. If we say that the market
for pet supplies is $20,000,000,000 where's
that number coming from? Right? Cite your sources, also be specific with
what we are doing. So those are just a
couple ideas that can really help as
far as establishing, gaining credibility
as an entrepreneur. I hope you found the video useful and I'll see
in the next one.
9. The Entrepreunerial Mindset: Everyone and welcome back. Before we close out the course, I wanted to give you some
of the characteristics of entrepreneurs. Now, this certainly isn't
an exhaustive list. And not every entrepreneur fits every single one of
these characteristics. But in general, I think there's some important things that can
really help entrepreneurs. Number one, the need
for achievement. When you become an entrepreneur, you're really saying, I want
to do something different. I want to create something
that doesn't exist. Also, you're saying that I believe I can
control my destiny. You are stepping out
of the comfortable, out of the familiar, and
into a completely new world. So you need to have an
internal locus of control. If you don't think
you can do it, chances are you're
going to be right. Which leads us to
the third point, a risk taking mindset. Now keep in mind, this
does not mean reckless, It doesn't mean we're just doing whatever we want with no regard. It means we are taking
calculated risks. We've done our planning,
we know there's a risk and we're still
going to go for it. Also, a couple things
that can be useful for an entrepreneur to
consider, Our prior knowledge. Do I have experience with
this subject matter? If I do a lot of
computer programming, that's going to be
helpful to me in a information
technology business. If I have no experience
with animals, then maybe opening a new zoo might not be the best
business idea for me. Doesn't mean that
it's impossible, but it's an
additional challenge. Motivation, Why am I doing this? Remember, it is tough to be an entrepreneur.
There is stress. There is money involved. We need to know, why am I doing this? Is it something that I truly care about? Having attention? Being able to focus
our attention and divide it among
competing priorities. Family, friends, business, and
then emotional regulation. Business is going to
have its ups and downs. Are you as an entrepreneur prepared for this
when things go well? Are you able to keep a level perspective
when things go bad? Are you able to prevent
yourself from overreacting? Just a couple things
that may be helpful. I hope you found
the video useful. Come back for the next
one where we will talk about the course project.
10. Course Project!: Hello everyone and welcome
back to my favorite part of the entire course that
is your course project. This is your opportunity to take everything that
we've been learning about in the course and put
it into practice to come up with your own
entrepreneurship venture. So let's go ahead,
in this video, we're going to talk about
what your course project is. I'm going to give you an example of what your course project can look like and then
I will give you some resources that can
help to assist you. So the goal in this
course project is to put the skills you have
learned into practice. Now remember, this course was
all about entrepreneurship. And there were some
advantages and disadvantages of becoming
an entrepreneur. So your first step in the course project
is to ask yourself, do you even want to
be an entrepreneur? If your answer is no,
that's perfectly fine. But you don't necessarily get
out of the course project. I still want you to reflect, why don't you want to
be an entrepreneur? It's totally fine if you don't want to be
an entrepreneur, But I still want you to write a one paragraph essay talking about why you think entrepreneurship
isn't right for you. But let's suppose you do
want to be an entrepreneur. Then you move on to the next
step in the course project. Which is creating a very short, very concise, one page
or less business plan. So you get to think
about what new product or service you are going
to bring to the market. Now the first thing
that I want to point out is that
in the real world, a business plan can be a book, it can be very thick. There's a lot of research, there's a lot of planning
that goes into it. This is a fundamentals course. I don't want you to go out into your local
community and start interviewing producers
or manufacturers just for this project. This is a general idea, it should be a page or less. Think very high level
for your business plan, but I want you to think through all of the important
questions that you would want to document in your
business plan opportunity. What are you going to
offer to the market? Is this something
that is truly unique, that customers are really going to care about expectations? When do you expect
to be profitable? How will the market react
to your business idea? What are some of the key financial and
quantitative milestones for your new business? Is this a certain
number of subscribers? Is it a certain dollar
value in sales? What does success look like for your new business
venture context? What environmental challenges or opportunities will affect
you as an entrepreneur? Is the government
giving a tax credit? Are you in a highly
regulated industry where you're going
to have to think a lot about compliance issues? And then lastly, what is
your entrepreneurial model? What is the final product?
What are you charging? And what do you
need to produce and deliver that product or
service to your customers? So let's look at an
example of how that might look if I was doing
a sample business plan. So what is my opportunity? I'm going to have a
decorations delivery service. Think about it. Every year, you go out and you buy decorations for all of
the different holidays. And then you either
throw them in the attic for the rest of the year or you throw them away. You either waste money
or you waste space. So what I want to do is have a subscription service where
you go to an online website. You pick what
decorations you want, we deliver them to you, and then at the
end of the season, you send them back and get your decorations for
the next holiday. So it saves storage space, it gives you convenience. There's a lot of positive
advantages of this model, and at least as far as I know, this is something that
doesn't currently exist on the market
expectations. If I was doing this business
plan, I would say, look, I'm going to have
to spend a lot of money the first year to get
all of these decorations. But once I purchase all
of these decorations, I can use the same decorations year after year after year. So my initial cash
investment is pretty high. But after that, it falls to basically just delivery and
storage costs, milestones. I want to have at least
1,000 subscribers. Why? Because this allows me to cover my fixed costs and
repay them within a year. And 1,000 subscribers
allows me to cover all of my variable
costs such as shipping, labor, warehouse,
everything like that. Again, when you're going
through your business plan, I don't expect you to have an exact idea of how much money you're going to rent a certain warehouse for. Think big picture. Think the things you
would need, right? So I need a warehouse,
I need delivery. The exact details. Again, this is a
fundamentals course. It's not a master of
business administration, so keep it high level context. What environment
am I operating in? Well, I look around
me and I see that subscription services
such as Netflix, Spotify are really popular. I also see that delivery
services are really popular. So it looks like a subscription
delivery service could do well based on
other market trends. And then my
entrepreneurial model, my final product is $135 per month decor on
demand subscription. That is purchased one year at a time and allows people
to rent these decorations, return them, and then get more decorations for
the next holiday. I am going to
contract with X, Y, Z manufacturer for
my decorations. I'm going to rent storage
space from ABC Warehouse and I'm going to use a
certain distribution channel. Again, I don't
expect you to have the exact name of the warehouse that you're
going to use for this. Think big picture,
this is your project. It's designed for
you to have fun, to really let your
creativity shine and come up with your
own business idea. If you do need a
little bit more help, feel free to leverage the resources that we've
talked about in this course. So the first is your textbook, this is by Katherine
and Jonathan Carpenter. It's titled Introduction
to Entrepreneurship, and it's completely free
online for you to use at open. You can also leverage the United States Small
Business Association website. It has some great templates for coming up with
a business plan. They are a little
bit more lengthy, a little bit more in depth than what we talked
about in this course. But if you're really trying to turn your business
into a reality, leveraging some of
those templates can be helpful for you. But remember, this
is your project. One page or less. Keep it simple, have
fun, and don't forget. This is your chance to let
your creativity shine. I can't wait to see what
ideas you come up with.
11. Course Exit: Hello everyone and welcome back. I just wanted to give you an absolutely huge
congratulations for making it
through the course. I know that sometimes
we get busy, it's hard to sit here
and go through all of the lectures and do all of the assignments.
But you made it. You made it to the
end of the course. I sincerely hope that
you learn something. It was a privilege to be a part of your
learning experience, and I wish you the best in all of your future
learning endeavors.
Robert Reed
