16A My Secret Sauce

My five unique human capital advantages:

1. Empathetic- I am really good at putting myself in someone else's shoes and understanding where they are coming from. This helps me to be a good predictor when it comes to what people may do, buy, or want and why which definitely helps me understand the needs and wants of consumers.

2. Individualization- I am good at identifying the strengths of those surrounding me and using those to the advantage of a group in order to have the most efficient and effective experience.

3. Learner- I am the type of person who goes out of my way to learn new information and seek out answers. I also just love learning new random facts. It is this love of learning new things that makes me good at researching.

4. Positive- I am the kind of person who is undoubtedly optimistic and I try to find the good side of every situation and focus on that. I also like to joke around a lot and keep things light hearted.

5. Hard working- I am the kind of person who sets my mind on something and does not stop until that thing has been achieved. I work day and night to put my all into everything I do. With me there is no try, there is only put everything I have into something.

All five of my interviews were put into the video below:

Overall I would say the way my interviewees assessed me is pretty similar to my own assessment. Some of my interviewees brought up my people skills and charisma, which I did not directly mention myself. I think that's because being social is so second nature to me, I did not even think to put that on my list of unique characteristics about myself. Also it was brought up that I have solid morals which I never considered a part of my human capital, but that is helpful in a high pressure business environment and would make me stand out. I think they were all pretty accurate in assessing me since they said things very similar to what I had said myself. I do think I might make some adjustments to my list if I were to do it again. Perhaps instead of interviewing two friends, I would switch out one of the friends for one of my siblings just to get another unique perspective.

15A Figuring Out Buyer Behavior Part 2

Considering my segment is consumers who are mainly concerned with saving money, I was surprised to find out that the main concern was not necessarily price, many of the people I interviewed were willing to pay a little more if it meant better quality or a better look considering the machine would have to be sitting on their nightstand where it is highly visible. Price did play a big role, but other factors such as long lasting quality and a aesthetically pleasing design were also important to my consumers.

I also found out that all of my interviewees make their final purchases online. The individuals I interviewed seemed to like the online aspect of shopping for different reasons. one interviewee felt it was a great way to compare specs on the speakers as well as to see all the different design options. However, the other individuals felt it was the best way to evaluate many different high quality options at the lowest prices since services such as Honey can be used to search for coupons online.

My interviewees all agreed that the quality was extremely important in the evaluation of if the product was a good purchase or not. One individual also highly valued the materials used. She said that she once bought a sleep machine and while the design of the sound machine was cute, the material started peeling off after a week and even though the sound itself was being portrayed fine still, she stopped using the product because it looked so bad and cheap on her nightstand. This indicates to me that durability in materials as well as sound projection is important to individuals once they actually get the product.

I originally thought that the main concern of mine would be to keep my product cost effective and inexpensive, but after conducting these interviews I realized my segment also cares about quality and durability as well as design to the point where they may be willing to pay a slightly higher price. This is because my interviewees felt that a more durable product pays for itself in the long run and something that looks nice will actually be used. I also realized selling my product online is absolutely critical and having online coupons available will also help my segment feel as if they are getting a better deal.

14A Halfway Reflection

Over the last two months, I have developed a few strategies to help me keep up with the requirements for this course. The first thing I did was I created a playlist of songs that I really love that help me to stay focused and positive and happy. I play this music while writing the assignments for this course as a way to keep me positive, and to give me something to look forward to while I do my work as a way of motivating myself to get it done. I also like to check through the assignments the Friday before the assignments are due in order to give me a week to preview the assignments and make a plan for how and when I would like to get these assignments completed. I then write this plan in my planner so that I can hold myself to the schedule throughout the week. Planning it out in small bits makes the assignments much more manageable and far less overwhelming.

There were definitely some times when I felt like giving up in this class or skipping a week. The hardest week was when I had three other assignments due for another class, and I had been visiting family in the hospital every day of the week so my schedule was very packed and I found myself extremely stressed. What pulled me through was knowing how proud and accomplished I would feel if I could make it through that week. I also like to keep in mind that the class is point based so, to avoid stressful weeks in the future, I needed to accomplish every assignment in the class until I reach the grade I desire. Knowing these two things is what helps to keep me motivated, but knowing I can tune in to music I love while doing for the work is another thing that causes me to look forward to doing these assignments. Now, when I think about skipping an assignment, I think about how I made it through that extremely stressful week and remind myself that if I could get the work done then, I can surely get it done now.


Three tips I would offer to other students are to find something that motivates them while completing assignments (for me it is the playlist I listen to while doing work), plan ahead and schedule time for you to get the work done during the week, and reward yourself with something you enjoy only after the work is completed (I like to watch one short YouTube video after completing each one of the assignments).

13A Reading Reflection: Elon Musk

Reading about Elon Musk:

What surprised me the most was that he is from South Africa, which I did not know. I have family that live in South Africa so it was cool to be able to connect with him and understand when he was discussing the areas he grew up in and what those areas are like.

I really admired Elon Musk's ability to view the world in such an entrepreneurial way. He has such drive and enters into markets everyone had either given up on such as the automotive industry or enters into unfamiliar territory such as space exploration.

While Elon Musk is very driven and intent on being successful in his ventures, I did not admire the way he handles his business and treats his workers. He seemed to justify it away, but he mistreats many who work in his company and has them overwork and is very critical.

Growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk definitely experienced adversity. He continuously brought up his rough childhood and his extremely tough father. He was also an outsider in school. With his photographic memory and tendency to share his knowledge, people did not jump at the opportunity to be his friend. As a result he was bullied and isolated. He took this time and read as much as he could and developed a very successful video game. He took the isolation and bullying in stride and let it drive him toward his dream of inventing and creating and ultimately moving to America.

Elon Musk definitely exhibits a lot of entrepreneurial competencies. His photographic memory enabled him to be quite knowledgable and good at researching his interests. He was also very driven and imaginative when it came to developing solutions to unmet needs. He is also good with facing risk as a result of the adversity he faced growing up. It is this ability to handle risk that enabled him to invest so much into the companies he runs today.

Something I read that confused me was that one of the few places you can buy a Tesla is in high end shopping malls. As someone with a retail minor, I was quite shocked to find out that fact because shopping malls are dying and continuously losing foot traffic. I was confused by the fact that someone as knowledgeable as Elon Musk would only sell his products in such a dead space. It made me question why he would make such a decision rather than having the cars sold in a different space.

If I could ask Elon Musk any two questions I would ask what first drew his attention to computers and the technology industry. The book frequently referenced how pulled he was to computers and how he was extremely insistent on getting one and how he so quickly learned some of the hardest skills to learn. So I am curious to know why he was so insistent on getting one and what first peaked his interest in computers. I would also ask why he chose to make some of the most expensive places in the US (and California) to base his companies. He mentioned always wanting to move to the US, but significantly increased his overhead costs as a result of where he chose to base his companies. But also he placed the companies so far from each other that he has to travel by jet to reach his offices in both places. I would love to know his reasoning for making such a decision and how he justifies the cost of both rent and travel as being worth the location.

It is pretty clear that Elon Musk is all about working hard. He puts work over relationships and was disappointed by the decrease of staff working on the weekend (even though the factory was very full of staff). It is this mindset that perhaps is what leads to his mistreatment of workers because he tries to push everyone to put in the maximum effort in order to create a successful product. I think hard work is important, but do not fully agree with Elon Musk. I think there has to be work-life balance, and while working hard is important, family and relationships are also important. I think a business can be successful even when people have some time off every now and then.

12A Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

My segment:
Individuals who need sleep aid via white noise who are not necessarily interested in the environment, but more so the segment focused on saving money. Now that I have found a way to include a volume control of sorts into my product by simply adding or subtracting beads from the fan blades, I chose to interview parents of a newborn, a college student who needs white noise to sleep, and a father who owns a house full of young kids who all use a speaker/iPod combination to play white noise at night.

My findings:
Due to the fact that often a baby can add on many expenses to a family, parents of newborns may need an inexpensive way to help the baby sleep a fuller night. I found out that many parenting books and websites online recommend a white noise machine if the baby is struggling to sleep at night because apparently the white noise mimics the sound of the womb and puts the baby to sleep. These parents had searched for ways to help infants fall asleep at night and also looked through parenting books and consulted other parents about this product. Due to not having a spare phone to put in the baby's room, this means families would have to invest in an iPod and speaker for this room, which can get expensive when added to the other costs of having a baby. Marketing this product as being an inexpensive way to help babies sleep at night may help to reach consumers like this by having baby books and other infant related websites write about my product.

I thought that the college student using her phone to sleep at night would be very interested in a way of saving money on her method of producing white noise due to college students having a limited budget. However, she said that she has roommates so she does not see the full impact of using her phone on her electricity bill since it is split four ways. She felt a solar powered fan might be too expensive for her to invest in over the slight increase in her electricity bill she personally sees from using her phone. After being unable to sleep for a while and realizing it wasn't just one night of not being able to sleep, and after noticing an important exam was approaching, she had looked on various websites and read that listening to white noise often helps people, and as a result just uses free videos online to play while she sleeps. She said after trying it for one night and finding it made a big difference, she began doing it every night and it definitely helped. So for people her age, the focus would be on websites and trial programs to convince individuals it is worth the investment.

The father of young girls who use iPods and speakers to play white noise every night said that he has spent so much on the systems for each room and the electricity bill that he would love to try a less expensive alternative, as long as it was still effective in helping his kids sleep. He said his family uses these machines because they bought them when the kids were babies to help them sleep through the night, but now the kids are used to the noise and have continued to use the machines up through age 16. So initially the family found information about these machines through baby books and websites recommending white noise for sleep aid and then just continued using these systems for the other two children because it worked for the oldest. This surprised me because I was expecting the need awareness to be recognized later in the children's lives and therefore discovered through a different information search. I was not expecting the same path as the parent's of the new born. But this did help me to see that users of this product would continue to use it for a very long time and would continue to buy new products for new generations if it was effective when trying it for the first time themselves so again some kind of trial test option would also be helpful here.

Conclusion:
This segment all looked online and at different websites before deciding which machines to get or which videos to play at night, and also used websites to determine if white noise was truly an effective sleep aid option. Another big part of the information search was baby books and parenting websites. Parents often end up searching for the information on behalf of their children by checking parenting websites and books which is how most of these families discover the effectiveness of white noise as a sleep aid. The need assessment was noticing a lack of sleep in oneself, or noticing the lack of sleep of their children. The information search was a culmination of determining the most effective sleep aid, but also the one that would not be too expensive to implement/try out.

11A Idea Napkin

I am a marketing major at the University of Florida, and before that I was a part of the marketing magnet program at my high school. As a result, I have a lot of skill with developing promotion plans and ad campaigns to bring exposure and brand awareness to different products and could bring those skills to the table to help in the launch of my product. I personally love the sound of rain at all times of the day and my whole family uses electric speakers to play white noise as they sleep, and the sound plays all night long. This product could help both my family and myself with filling the room with relaxing noises in an environmentally way where the electricity bill would be much lower.

The product I would be offering to consumers would be a solar powered fan that has hollow beads in the fan blades that would produce the sounds of wind and rain as the fan spins. This product would be offered as both a ceiling fan that could come with installation or a standing floor fan. It will also come in many different colors and sizes so that it could match the aesthetic of any room. There would also be different bead levels for the blades because fans with fewer beads and fans packed with beads will produce different volume levels of the rain noise.

I would be offering this product to individuals who need a sleep aid and find that white noise/rain noise helps them to be able to sleep better. Typically these people use electric devices to produce these sounds, but then have high electricity bills as a result, which my product could help them avoid. My product would be for people of all ages, from babies to grandparents. Any one who is unable to sleep without white noise would need some kind of noise producing product. It would also be a bonus if they were an environmentalist, but you do not need to be an environmentalist to have a desire to save on your electricity bill.

Currently, customers are either using a speaker/ipod system to play this noise or are using their phones to play these sleep sounds. To buy a speaker system costs a lot of money and playing the noise from a phone drains its battery. But the biggest problem with both of these methods is the electricity used to play these sounds every night for a duration of anywhere from thirty minutes to the entire night. This quickly adds up on ones electricity bill so my product would pay for itself by saving consumers these high electricity costs and also potentially saving them the cost of buying an ipod/speaker system.

This product would be adding something new to the market because it is the only environmentally friendly option that does not consume large amounts of electricity to function. Also due to the fan aspect it would give realistic wind noises, and also provide a cooling effect that is known to help individuals fall asleep as well. We could also provide a custom fan creator service where individuals can select the color of the fan as well as the color of the beads inside along with the size of the fan and level of beads they want for their fan to make consumers feel more involved in the purchase.

I believe that these elements all fit together to make for a strong product foundation. There are many ways to create a broad product offering and give consumers options while providing the business with many revenue streams. For instance, having ceiling fans as an option and selling installation as a part of the product. The consumers would definitely benefit from having this product versus the other market options so the product would sell itself. The only challenge with starting this product would be to establish the right promotion plan to get word out about the product, but given that I have competed internationally with promotion plans I have developed as a result of my years of marketing knowledge, I know that the marketing element would be handled well and be a success.

10A Elevator Pitch 1

9A Testing my Hypothesis Part 2

Who: After conducting several interviews I found out that some of the groups I thought may buy my product were actually outside of my market. Many of these individuals want the relaxation, but are opposed to adding sound to their space. For instance, parents of new born babies thought the sound would relax their child and help the baby get a good night of sleep, but were afraid the sound may cover the sound of the baby crying at night, which would be problematic.

I also interviewed two people one who lives in a city and one who is in an apartment shared with roommates and noisy neighbors. However, the city dweller said he liked the sound of the busy streets and that is what helped him to fall asleep at night. While the interviewee who lives in an apartment with roommates and noisy neighbors felt the sound maker would just add to the noise and not help her fall asleep because she needs the room to be quiet in order to sleep so changing the sound from one thing to another would not help her.

I also interviewed a hypnotherapist to see if this kind of device could help his patients to be in a more relaxed environment that may make hypnotizing easier, but he said that he worried it would more so interfere with the process than help it. He did say though that it may help certain more resistant patients to relax, but it would depend on the clientele of the therapist.

What: It was brought to my attention in many of these interviews that one of the benefits to an electric sound machine is a volume control so that many of these markets could be reached since they would be able to adjust the volume to a reasonable level, which was part of their need. These groups did not want the full volume sound the original interviewees wanted. But also, some of these interviewees found the sounds some wish to drown out just as relaxing as the noise of wind and rain so their needs were already met by these noises. The original five interviews I did had different needs because they did not enjoy these sounds, but liked the sounds of rain and that was a key factor that was missing from these five interviews.

Why: The people in the boundary wanted loud noise to fill the room all night, but in an energy saving manner. The people outside the boundary are more concerned with noise level and the type of sounds this product would be able to produce and whether or not these sounds would actually help create the relaxing environment it is supposed to. The inside crowd specifically wanted loud rain noises, but the need of the outside group was in fact different because they wanted different noises (or no noise at all) at different levels of volume.

	Inside Boundary	Outside Boundary
Who	Use electric sound machines at full volume the whole night  Want to drown out sounds of roommates and city Likes amplified sound of rain Eco friendly and need sleep sounds	Enjoy the sounds of the city Need silence to sleep Likes soft element to sound of rain Need low volume noise Eco friendly, but do not need sleep sounds
What	Eco friendly Want to cut back on electricity bill Loud rain sounds Need sounds to sleep	Need low volume Need silence Noises other than rain or wind Do not care about environment or electricity bill
Why	Sound makers can lead to high electricity bills Many people need noise to sleep at night People like the sound of rain and wind because it relaxes them	Some people need noise to sleep, but need different noises like city noise

8A Solving the Problem

My opportunity is the ability to help the environment, those who use electric noise machines to help them sleep at night, and those who need an environmentally friendly way of drowning out city noise by providing an environmentally friendly relaxation sound maker. This will help people save money on their electricity bill, but also will help the environment by providing those who use electricity to power sound makers at night with an eco-friendly alternative.

While not all users of rain noises to sleep use the sound maker all night, many still do use a good amount of electricity by playing these noises via a timer. So this solution would enable even those users to save some power and enjoy the same noises in a greener way.

There are a few options for the products that could be created to fulfill this need.

1. A non-electric fan could be used that has certain beads and fillings put into the blade so that, as the fan moves, so do the beads, and the sound of rain and wind will be provided as a soothing option for those who prefer those noises to the noise of a city or need those noises to sleep.

2. A funnel type product that could be attached to the roof and act as a speaker of sorts to amplify natural noises of rain and wind that occur in certain climates. This option is more limited due to not all climates providing the right weather.

3. A tube that recycles the same beads and can circulate them up and down to create the relaxing noise of rain without needing the motion of the fan to do so.

All of these options could be provided in many styles, sizes, and colors so that the product could blend seamlessly with the interior of any rooms they would be put into. These products would also have optional installation available to consumers so that they do not have to put the products together themselves.