Thursday, January 23, 2014

Week three

This week I have learned a lot. Many of the things which I have learned are directly applicable with my business. Of the things that I learned I want to apply the following to my business.

-First, I want to have excellent customer service. As part of the top 10 must haves, Frank Levinson talked a lot about the customer. When talking about it I thought about how I could have good customer service. One idea is to provide customers with certain discounts. Another thing was to build a relationship with them which would include writing thank you letters to customers and hand delivering product when feasible.

-Second, I learned about good ways to invest money. I learned that you need to get your own skin in the game. You need to invest your own money and get partners and key players to invest as well. In addition, the “Startup of you” book taught me a lot about how I need to have a “plan Z”. By having a backup plan in a worst case scenario I can be more aggressive with my business.


-Third, through the Yesil article I learned that managing your time will be very important. Along those same lines I came to the realization that managing my time is going to be something that I will really need to consider while starting a business and having a family.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Week two

This week (from the 12th to the 18th of January) while doing the assignments I have been able to contemplate a few principles that are important in Entrepreneurship. While Reading in "The start up of you" by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha I have learned more about how I can apply the principles of Entrepreneurship in all aspects of my life. While reading I have thought about how I can make myself more competitive just like as businesses have to be. This has made me think more about learning basic computer aided design (CAD) in addition to gaining professional skills in geographic information systems (GIS).

The assignments seemed to be based around the idea that dreams drive our actions. For one of the assignments we made a list of 50 things that we wanted to accomplish in our lives. This assignment in concurrence with the other readings and videos made me think about what I really wanted to do with my life. 

In addition to all that I learned and thought about, I really enjoyed the video from Stanford about treating life as an experiment. It helped me realize that failing is fine as long as we learn from our mistakes.