Celebrating Failure

As a student, we continually search for better ways to do things. We are constantly trying to cut down our wasted time and use it for better things. Of course, I have fell to this often and it has made me very burnt out. 

1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed:

I am a member of a Christian ministry on campus, CRU, and I love to meet up with people and help mentor them through their times in college. Like I said earlier, I often am looking to limit my time that I am wasting and optimize the things I do. I have the desire to meet up with people and get to know them better and try and mentor them, but I want to optimize my meetings so I have tried to limit the time I spend with people. The other day someone told me that they felt that they weren't actually friends with me because I was always on the go or trying to push the speed of our meetings instead of letting them be authentic. I failed because I want to mentor people, but they felt it wasn't natural and called me out on it. 

2) Tell us what you learned from it:

I learned that you have to choose and value your friendships instead of optimizing your time and trying to do everything perfectly. I want to do great in school, build great relationships, and serve the community, but its impossible to do all those things perfectly and that I will have to sacrifice certain things for the things that I value the most. 

3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure:

I think that failure is natural and that you have to fail in order to truly find the things that you are pursuing and the things that you loved. When I got to school, I was mechanical engineering, but I never wanted to be an engineer. I failed a few classes and had to switch majors and I switched to Sports Management. Failure led to me finding the major that I love and that I have truly flourished in. I do not handle failure well, but I embrace that it will happen so I am not upset when it happens. I feel that this class has made me realize that I can accomplish more than I think I can, but I have to be prepared for failure and be willing to pursue the next idea. I feel like this class has made me more of a risk taker because I have seen the different things about my business idea and how those things were wrong and had to make adjustments. 

Week 13 Reading Reflection

Biggest Surprise: The thing that most surprised me was the idea that the value of a business isn't determined by its short-term success, but by the value of its potential earning power. Naturally, I would assume that short-term success generally mean long-term success, but that may not be the case because of the time necessary for something to be marketed correctly, to increase awareness.

Confusing Part of the Reading: The most confusing part of the reading was the table about the different kind of ventures that are available and what those different ventures look like.

Two Questions for the Author: 
1) Why is due diligence so important in this chapter?
2) What made you create the "checklist for analyzing a business"? Why was it created?

Anything that was Wrong or you Disagree with: I didn't disagree with anything in this chapter because I had no background knowledge of this topic.

My Exit Strategy

As with any good idea, it may start off doing well, but can fade quickly if you are not aware of your opportunity and whether or not it will consistently be there. With this in mind, my exit strategy would be more short-term than I wish. I wish I could keep my company open for the long-term, but technology is making it more difficult for a venture to stay open for long.

My exit strategy would be to grow this company and see how it goes for about 5 years and hopefully it would be excelling and there would be outside interest in purchasing the company. I would look to sell this company after 5 years because more technology is being developed that would potentially allow for smaller cars that could make parking not an issue on our campus and eventually, flying technology that would solve the problem of parking and transportation issues on our campus. I hope that by selling my company, I would get a large return because I am weary of how long this venture will be available.

As I stated before, I am weary that my venture would close quickly due to all the new technological advances and I am scared that when I look to sell, there will not be as much interest and I will not gain a large return on my investment.

I think my exit strategy mainly influenced my thoughts to make my company a private venture instead of working with the government and being public. The main reason that I chose this was because being private allows me to sell and get out quicker than it would be if the company was public and had more influence from outside of myself. It also makes expansion not as important, other than possibly expanding to more locations around the nation, particularly around college campuses.