Lesson 6

Lessons Learned

My favorite part about this week was learning about how Zappos hires their employees. They put everyone through a lengthy hiring process and then offer them a few thousand dollars to quit. This helps to weed out the people who aren’t dedicated or have a passion for what Zappos does. These people would rather take the money and find a job elsewhere. I think this is a great concept to apply to any business. Even though it may be more costly, I’m sure they’re better off with the employees who truly see themselves working in the Zappos culture and environment.

$100 Challenge

Unfortunately, I haven’t progressed much on my small business. Last week I realized that people are willing to pay more money for a product if they know the money is going to a good cause. This is great, but I also want people to want to buy my product because they like it. Maybe once they taste the baked goods, they’ll start to want to buy them ‘just because’. I have decided that I’m going to sell 18 very large cookies for at least $10 because they’re homemade from the finest ingredients. I also use my homemade brown sugar, which takes time but dramatically adds to the taste and wow factor.

Lesson 5

Lessons Learned

This week I appreciated learning about how to upsell and bundle products. Before I had my baby, I was a sales associate at a high-end retail shop. Every day we were encouraged to upsell products. If someone came in wanting a jacket for the cold weather, we would suggest ‘add-on items’ like scarves, hats, and gloves. We would do exercises where we would pretend to be shoppers with our coworkers. Many of us got the concept and were able to put it in practice during our shifts. We were always told to give the customer what they wanted, and not try to push a sale. They would appreciate the comfortable service and return when they needed something. I believe these tips made me a better salesperson. I wish all of my coworkers could read those articles!

$100 Challenge

This week I got the chance to conduct some casual interviews with friends about my $100 business challenge. Explaining that I’m going to start selling baked-frozen goods, I asked them how much they’d be willing to pay for a dozen cookies. Their answers were not what I was hoping for. Most of them said about $3 because they could just buy cheaper cookie dough from the grocery store. I quickly realized that I won’t be able to make much profit if people won’t be willing to pay more. Towards the end of our discussion, I mentioned that 100% of the profits will be donated to the Kiva organization. Almost all at once, they said they’d be willing to pay more if it was going to such a great cause. This taught me that I really need to angle my product to appeal to the philanthropic side of people. I need to make it very clear, before anything else, that they’re not just buying baked goods. They’re buying supplies for a woman in Zimbabwe to start her own business and support her family.

Lesson 4

I thoroughly enjoyed Elder Wirthlin’s talk, “Earthly Debts, Heavenly Debts”. He talked about how we should pay our tithing before anything else. Maybe it’s because I’ve never started a company of my own, but I had never thought of tithing as being a part of business. It made me ponder about where and when it should come into place. I decided that we should pay tithing on all revenue that comes in, even if you’re putting that money back into the business. I don’t know it there are any church guidelines or not, but I’ll just go with that. He ended with saying how we should teach our children to use money wisely. Since I am a new mother, this was a great message. I thought that it would be nice to always teach my children about business and finances by having them create their own. We could do simple lemonade stands, growing and selling our own vegetables, and things like that. This would teach them about business and how money should be valued.

I can’t believe that I’ve already changed my $100 challenge business idea! While I initially decided to create and sell canvas art (transferring photos onto canvas), I decided that I wanted something that I could scale and grow. With canvas, each project would be unique and take many hours of my time (which I don’t exactly have due to my precious newborn baby, school, work, and basic household duties). Instead, I’ve opted to create a frozen goods line. I’m going to sell frozen, pre-shaped cookie dough and frozen pre-made brownies and cake that just needs to be thawed and enjoyed. 

Lesson 3

This week I wrote a business plan for my $100 Challenge. It was a very eye-opening experience and I was able to learn a lot about the type of business I want to create for the next three months. It was actually really fun coming up with how I want to price and promote my product. I used this equation: Cost x 2=wholesale price. Wholesale price x 2=Retail Price. I was surprised at the ending price I’ve decided on…but I can always lower it once I feel out the market. Concerning promotions, I tried to think of what some of my favorite small businesses have done in the past. I came up with a contest idea for the first few people who place order with me. I’ll have a drawing for one free canvas of their choice. Hopefully this will encourage people to place orders with me sooner rather than later.

I really appreciated the Heather Evans case study. I was able to learn a lot about the process of gaining investors through her written experience. It is way harder than it sounds, especially if you’re starting a business that is relying on your unproved and untested creativity. It also gave me a chance to think about what I can offer to future investors. It can’t be all about me and what I want, but I have to make people want to join me instead. 

Lesson 2

A quote by President David O. McKay in The Creative Journey powerpoint really stood out to me. He said, “Meditation is one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.” Meditation is such an important partner to prayer that is so often forgot about. We should take the time to meditate before and after we pray so that we’re giving an opportunity for the Spirit to speak to us directly.

I loved being reminded of Tom Monaghan’s story. I am still in awe of his dedication to his faith and how far he has taken it. There aren’t many people who are so touched by a book that they completely change their entire lifestyle so dramatically.

The Entrepreneur Report, while very lengthy, was so interesting to me! I read it over a few days in my spare time and I’m so glad I did. I realized that I love learning about business in other countries. It was funny to me how China has simply copied all of our popular websites to use over there. But the point was right, you don’t have to recreate things that already work. Sometimes you just need to make it better and easier for the public. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I start my business. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary, just better than everything else.

I’ve decided to do canvas art for my $100 challenge. I believe that there are lots of people in my circle of friends that would buy them, especially since the money is going towards such a great cause. First, I’ll have to buy the art supplies needed and make a few example canvases so that I can show people what they’d be buying. Then I can start advertising!