Assignment 27A – Reading Reflection No. 3
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw
1) This is an extremely long book, so I did not read it verbatim. I did however, acquire many takeaways from this book.
What surprised me most – I have heard of and learned of Andrew Carnegie in the past; however, I was shocked to read how much impact he had on the political world. Carnegie is not simply a self-proclaimed businessman and philanthropist, but he lived the life of both. He did not keep to himself, but instead corresponded his beliefs with key politicians.
What I most admired - Andrew Carnegie came from a background of poverty and through entrepreneurship, he became very wealthy. I most admire that Mr. Carnegie did not forget where he came from. He became perhaps the world’s most well-known philanthropist and gave tremendous amounts of money in effort to aid others.
What I least admired – From what I read, I find little to not admire about this entrepreneur. Although I am not sure that he did anything wrong with regard to the environment, perhaps he could have been more considerate regarding the steel industry’s effect on the environment.
The entrepreneur’s adversity and failure- I believe that Andrew’s childhood is a great example of the adversity that he faced. He grew-up in poverty but was a very ambitious young man, whom wanted to have a lasting effect on the world. That he did. Carnegie kept his eyes fixed upon achieving his goals and he certainly did.
2) I noticed that Carnegie exhibited essentially every entrepreneurial competency. Most notable to me was his competency to network. Carnegie had lasting relationships with key politicians and businessmen in both the United States and England. He developed very respectable social capital throughout his life.
3) Much of this reading was confusing to me. I do feel like this book was unnecessarily long. It being so long does show how much Carnegie accomplished in his life time. I found some of Carnegie’s writings to politicians hard to fully understand.
4) If I could ask this entrepreneur two questions, I would ask the following two questions:
Do you have any regrets regarding your life?
Which of your goals do you feel you did not successfully accomplish in your 83 years of life?
5) I think Carnegie was naturally a hard worker. I feel like it was “in his blood” to work tirelessly to achieve his goals. Carnegie learned from his failure and refused to be kept down. I hope that I will be able to develop a work ethic like his.
Monday, 15 October 2018
26A - Celebrating Failure
Assignment 26A – Celebrating Failure
1) This past semester, I failed several times to successfully hit a 405-pound deadlift. It has been a goal of mine since high school to pull the said 405lbs. Ever since my junior year of high school, I have lifted weights with consistency. I have trained hard and often deadlifted heavy, but until recently, I had never been able to meet this goal of mine.
After failing to deadlift 405lbs on over 10 different occasions, I started to become very discouraged. I had hit a plateau and had yet to break through that plateau and hit his personal record (PR). For the past 6 months or so, when friends would ask me what my max deadlift was, I would respond, “I’m stuck at 390lbs right now.” They would often respond with something along the lines of, “Haven’t you been stuck right around that weight for quite a while now?”
All my other lifts had improved with consistency, and I could not understand why my max-deadlift had hit a plateau.
2) After having failed time and time again, I finally decided to ask my friend Jacob for some advice. My friend Jacob is a powerlifter, whom has a max-deadlift of 567lbs (257.5 kilos). Jacob gave me a program that involved doing lighter weight and more repetitions to build further strength before once again attempting to deadlift 405lbs. His advice worked and within a month of following his program, I was able to hit 405lbs and my current max-deadlift is 431 lbs.
I learned two valuable lessons from this experience:
1. Don’t give up just because you aren’t yet seeing the results that you want to see.
2. Sometimes your social capital comes in handy. At times, it is necessary to request the advice of someone who has more expertise than you in a certain area.
3) Failure is no fun. It can be very embarrassing, and it certainly was for me. It is important to be open to change to overcome failure. I handle failure by adopting a mindset of determination. When I face failure, I form a strategy to overcome that failure, and I give 100% to do so.
Between this class and MAN3025, I have learned much about failure. I have learned the importance of learning from failure and even “welcoming failure” at times. Having an organizational environment that welcomes fear is very beneficial when it comes to fostering a culture of innovation. I do believe that I am less afraid of failure than I was a few months ago. I thrive in risky environments and welcome uncertainty/contingency.
1) This past semester, I failed several times to successfully hit a 405-pound deadlift. It has been a goal of mine since high school to pull the said 405lbs. Ever since my junior year of high school, I have lifted weights with consistency. I have trained hard and often deadlifted heavy, but until recently, I had never been able to meet this goal of mine.
After failing to deadlift 405lbs on over 10 different occasions, I started to become very discouraged. I had hit a plateau and had yet to break through that plateau and hit his personal record (PR). For the past 6 months or so, when friends would ask me what my max deadlift was, I would respond, “I’m stuck at 390lbs right now.” They would often respond with something along the lines of, “Haven’t you been stuck right around that weight for quite a while now?”
All my other lifts had improved with consistency, and I could not understand why my max-deadlift had hit a plateau.
2) After having failed time and time again, I finally decided to ask my friend Jacob for some advice. My friend Jacob is a powerlifter, whom has a max-deadlift of 567lbs (257.5 kilos). Jacob gave me a program that involved doing lighter weight and more repetitions to build further strength before once again attempting to deadlift 405lbs. His advice worked and within a month of following his program, I was able to hit 405lbs and my current max-deadlift is 431 lbs.
I learned two valuable lessons from this experience:
1. Don’t give up just because you aren’t yet seeing the results that you want to see.
2. Sometimes your social capital comes in handy. At times, it is necessary to request the advice of someone who has more expertise than you in a certain area.
3) Failure is no fun. It can be very embarrassing, and it certainly was for me. It is important to be open to change to overcome failure. I handle failure by adopting a mindset of determination. When I face failure, I form a strategy to overcome that failure, and I give 100% to do so.
Between this class and MAN3025, I have learned much about failure. I have learned the importance of learning from failure and even “welcoming failure” at times. Having an organizational environment that welcomes fear is very beneficial when it comes to fostering a culture of innovation. I do believe that I am less afraid of failure than I was a few months ago. I thrive in risky environments and welcome uncertainty/contingency.
25A - What's Next?
Assignment 25A – What’s Next?
Existing Market
Step 1: I will pursue further growth in this venture by beginning to sell hair products to my clients. Instead of paying retail prices for hair products, I will do research and find top-end products for wholesale prices and order them online. I will make sure that the products I buy are the same products that my clients will buy from me. I will then “mark-up” the products prior to selling them to my clients. This will ensure that I make a profit.
Step 2: I interviewed my friends Reed, Ian, and Tyler. All three of these friends are likely to be interested in my barbering services. I described to them my business and asked the initial question, “What should I be doing that I’m not planning to do?” I did not receive much feedback from these interviewees. I had to continue to ask further questions to spark ideas from them. At first, the consensus was that I’m doing everything that I should be doing.
Upon further questioning, one recommendation that I received was that I might wash my clients’ hair after giving them haircuts. Tyler said he would like if I did this, since his barber back in California provides this service. Unfortunately, I do not have a practical way to offer this service and I don’t believe that the majority of my clients value that extra service very highly. Reed and Ian expressed that giving fresh fades should be the only focus of my business.
Step 3: In terms of growing my existing market, I still plan on purchasing and reselling hair products to my clients. Due to the lack of interest expressed regarding this service from these three interviewees, I will execute this extra service in a conservative manner. I will purchase minimal products and will then attempt to sell these hair products to my clients.
If I succeed in the reselling of these products, then I will continue to do so. If my clients are uninterested in buying my hair products, then I will use them for myself over the next several months/years. I will be careful not to get stuck with excessive inventory and a lack of customers.
New Market
Step 1: In my previous, existing market, I targeted Marines, whom live on the same military base as me. These Marines make approximately $20,000 per year. Although they do receive benefits in addition to this salary, they are in a very low-income bracket. I have identified a potential new market target of wealthy, affluent businessmen.
Step 2: Although my current venture concept may be ideal for Marines, whom are looking for cheap, convenient haircuts, I do not believe that my current venture concept will be found attractive by wealthy, affluent businessmen. I suspect that I may have to remold my venture concept to earn the business of these high-class citizens.
I do not believe that I have the skills necessary to give satisfactory haircuts to affluent businessmen. I suspect that these men may also prefer their hair to be cut in a more professional environment than my barracks. I do still believe that the principles of my venture concept can be beneficial to meeting this new market. I will have to take the principles of my venture concept (providing barbering services) and build off these principles to provide what this new customer market demands.
Although exploiting this new market would be a very time-consuming and require much effort, it can be done. I believe that the best way to do this would be to learn everything possible about the barbering market. After and while acquiring this knowledge, I would learn as much as possible about starting and managing my own business. Once I had the skills and financial capital necessary to do so, I would open my own barber shop. I would hire very skilled workers and provide a rather high-end, professional environment inside my barbershop. I would expect that I could charge more than $20 per haircut and having employees under me would increase my profits if this business was established and managed in an efficient and effective manner.
Step 3: I interviewed my step-grandfather, whom is an affluent small-business owner. I also interviewed the owner of a local coin store. This man’s name is Louie, and he is very wealthy even though the average person may not be able to tell that from looking at his store.
After describing to these men my “new” venture concept, they were both very intrigued. My step-grandfather expressed his frustration with trying to find a barber shop that provides quality haircuts in a professional environment. He stated that he hates walking into barber shops and hearing “the sh**ty music” that us “kids” listen to these days. He suggested playing classical music in the barbershop and hiring good, professional barbers. Louie wasn’t so concerned with the environment in the barbershop but emphasized the importance of my barber giving quality haircuts.
Step 4: I learned a lot about this market. I learned that wealthy, affluent businessmen tend to be pickier with their haircuts and harder to please. I also learned that if my barbers can please businessmen, the businessmen are willing to pay premium prices for their haircuts. This was certainly a market that I never planned to exploit; however, it is a market that may be worth exploiting after a lot of knowledge is acquired and a lot of networking is done.
I believe that my current market is much easier to exploit, but the potential that lays within this new market is much higher than the potential of my current market. I was correct in assuming that these wealthy, affluent businessmen care very much about the quality of their haircuts. I was at least partially right that they also care about the environment where they receive their haircuts.
Existing Market
Step 1: I will pursue further growth in this venture by beginning to sell hair products to my clients. Instead of paying retail prices for hair products, I will do research and find top-end products for wholesale prices and order them online. I will make sure that the products I buy are the same products that my clients will buy from me. I will then “mark-up” the products prior to selling them to my clients. This will ensure that I make a profit.
Step 2: I interviewed my friends Reed, Ian, and Tyler. All three of these friends are likely to be interested in my barbering services. I described to them my business and asked the initial question, “What should I be doing that I’m not planning to do?” I did not receive much feedback from these interviewees. I had to continue to ask further questions to spark ideas from them. At first, the consensus was that I’m doing everything that I should be doing.
Upon further questioning, one recommendation that I received was that I might wash my clients’ hair after giving them haircuts. Tyler said he would like if I did this, since his barber back in California provides this service. Unfortunately, I do not have a practical way to offer this service and I don’t believe that the majority of my clients value that extra service very highly. Reed and Ian expressed that giving fresh fades should be the only focus of my business.
Step 3: In terms of growing my existing market, I still plan on purchasing and reselling hair products to my clients. Due to the lack of interest expressed regarding this service from these three interviewees, I will execute this extra service in a conservative manner. I will purchase minimal products and will then attempt to sell these hair products to my clients.
If I succeed in the reselling of these products, then I will continue to do so. If my clients are uninterested in buying my hair products, then I will use them for myself over the next several months/years. I will be careful not to get stuck with excessive inventory and a lack of customers.
New Market
Step 1: In my previous, existing market, I targeted Marines, whom live on the same military base as me. These Marines make approximately $20,000 per year. Although they do receive benefits in addition to this salary, they are in a very low-income bracket. I have identified a potential new market target of wealthy, affluent businessmen.
Step 2: Although my current venture concept may be ideal for Marines, whom are looking for cheap, convenient haircuts, I do not believe that my current venture concept will be found attractive by wealthy, affluent businessmen. I suspect that I may have to remold my venture concept to earn the business of these high-class citizens.
I do not believe that I have the skills necessary to give satisfactory haircuts to affluent businessmen. I suspect that these men may also prefer their hair to be cut in a more professional environment than my barracks. I do still believe that the principles of my venture concept can be beneficial to meeting this new market. I will have to take the principles of my venture concept (providing barbering services) and build off these principles to provide what this new customer market demands.
Although exploiting this new market would be a very time-consuming and require much effort, it can be done. I believe that the best way to do this would be to learn everything possible about the barbering market. After and while acquiring this knowledge, I would learn as much as possible about starting and managing my own business. Once I had the skills and financial capital necessary to do so, I would open my own barber shop. I would hire very skilled workers and provide a rather high-end, professional environment inside my barbershop. I would expect that I could charge more than $20 per haircut and having employees under me would increase my profits if this business was established and managed in an efficient and effective manner.
Step 3: I interviewed my step-grandfather, whom is an affluent small-business owner. I also interviewed the owner of a local coin store. This man’s name is Louie, and he is very wealthy even though the average person may not be able to tell that from looking at his store.
After describing to these men my “new” venture concept, they were both very intrigued. My step-grandfather expressed his frustration with trying to find a barber shop that provides quality haircuts in a professional environment. He stated that he hates walking into barber shops and hearing “the sh**ty music” that us “kids” listen to these days. He suggested playing classical music in the barbershop and hiring good, professional barbers. Louie wasn’t so concerned with the environment in the barbershop but emphasized the importance of my barber giving quality haircuts.
Step 4: I learned a lot about this market. I learned that wealthy, affluent businessmen tend to be pickier with their haircuts and harder to please. I also learned that if my barbers can please businessmen, the businessmen are willing to pay premium prices for their haircuts. This was certainly a market that I never planned to exploit; however, it is a market that may be worth exploiting after a lot of knowledge is acquired and a lot of networking is done.
I believe that my current market is much easier to exploit, but the potential that lays within this new market is much higher than the potential of my current market. I was correct in assuming that these wealthy, affluent businessmen care very much about the quality of their haircuts. I was at least partially right that they also care about the environment where they receive their haircuts.
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