Half-way Reflection

Dear future ENC3003 student,

Forget about any format that you've seen for a class before, because it will not help you for this one. This class is truly like no other, and you'll love that. You may not love it at first, but eventually you'll get the hang of things and see that its actually pretty cool.

Personally, I have found that in order to be successful in this course, I simply had to attempt those exercises that seemed too difficult, and of course take advantage of the easier assignments that are worth just as much as tough ones.

There was a week, not that long ago, where I felt that I may have to drop the class. Although I liked the class I felt that having more than one assignment a week was unnecessary, and I was falling behind. In fact, I don't believe that I submitted a single assignment that week. Thankfully, I didn't give up, I didn't quit, and I most certainly didn't drop the class. I say thankfully, because this class has taught me what it feels like to be an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs will want to quit, but we must not allow outside forces to deter us from our goals. It is exactly, why I think that the way they have set this class up is brilliant. It has, undoubtedly, taught me tenacity.

Three tips for this course:

1. Keep a calendar of all the assignments due. Professor Pryor, already has all the assignments up on canvas with due dates. It's crucial that you stay on top of things while taking this course. There's assignments every week and if you want to get the best grade possible then stay on top of it. What better way to stay on top of things than to keep a calendar of all assignments? Ensuring that you are aware when all the assignments are due and when they're coming up  will give you an edge and will allow you to plan properly. Especially for those tough exercises that require a bit more time to complete.

2. When you're interacting with "customers" or when making videos with random people on the street, always remember to not give into your insecurities and carry on. Keep on trying, don't give up on those video assignments because you didn't get the response you were looking for this first couple of times...keep up that tenacity!

3. Shake it off. Absorb the negative criticism and if don't agree with it, then shake it off. Those people from the outside probably don't understand the assignment or don't comprehend what it is like to interact with strangers. Just remember to shake off the negativity, as aspiring entrepreneurs we will all fail at some point, and failing when attempting those assignments isn't any different. If you stay on this roller coaster, you will learn some things about yourself and about how the world works that you will never learn anywhere else.

Sincerely,

A struggling, but tenacious, aspiring entrepreneur



P.S. Jack Black isn't really that funny, but he continues to try...

Week 7 Reading Reflection

Rediscovering Market Segmentation by Daniel Yankelovich and David Meer

This week's reading was quite interesting. Its always intriguing to see how some companies make marketing decisions, because we've all seen a commercial at some point in our lives that left us wondering why a company would choose to do something that seems questionable.

When I first saw the title of the article I had no idea what it was referring to, but as I read, the one thing that I found most baffling is that the technique of Segmentation has mostly been a failure. In theory it sounds like it would work, but many companies never see the results they hope for.

The article sort of lost me at some points when it was getting a bit too technical, and at times the authors seemed to assume that they were talking to marketing experts. But overall, their message got through to me.

If I could ask two questions to the authors they would be the following:
Why do you think that companies continue to try to use these methods when it clearly doesn't work properly?

Do you think there's a more effective way of approaching the issues of changing demographics and altering consumer needs?

Overall, I found this article to be quite insightful, and I found myself in accordance with all the points made by the authors, for instance how some beer companies failed to change the view of potential costumers even though they were successful in capturing their attention.

Free Money

For this exercise I decided to go to the Southwest gym on campus. My plan was to target people coming out of the gym, and as they came out I would lure them in by asking them something along the lines of "Can I interest you in free money?" or "do you want a dollar?" etc.

Once I have them talking to me and I have given them the dollar the question I asked was "Now, what would you rather have in your hand instead of this dollar?"

As you will see in the following videos not all of them wanted to accept the dollar right away, and were quite skeptical about someone giving away money.

As you can imagine, not all of my attempts were successful. Personally, I thought this assignment would be a lot easier than it was, and that I would have no problem getting rid of my 5 one dollar bills, but it did take me only about 5 minutes to get rid of the money!

Here are my successful attempts:

Given that I was going to target people that had just finished working out, I had originally predicted that people would say they'd rather have something like Gatorade or a protein shake. I also thought about the possibility of people saying they would rather have more than just one dollar. 

I was correct for 3 out of the 5. Although it was quite surprising that one of my interviewees only wanted $5, unlike the girl that asked for a cool million.

Up to this point this has been the coolest exercise of all! It was a lot of fun and definitely worth the five dollars.

Here are my "bloopers":

P.S.: Can you believe those guys gave me my money back? I thought it was hilarious ! Also, a special thanks to my roommate Sebastian for filming this.

Elevator Pitch No. 1

Having that said, Mobile Campus Grub will attempt to satisfy the food cravings of college students that don't want to leave the general proximity of their dorm and want to save some money by eating good cheap food.