Nathan's Blog

29A- Venture Concept No.2               I’ve lived most of my life on the water so the beach is a second home to me and we know in this increasing population that means more trash and sadly our beaches and bodies of water suffer from the pollution and debris that all of us humans make. That is why it is my company and product’s goal is to help preserve our beaches for our own benefit. I want this company to do more than just sell products, I want to make a difference in my own community and others dealing with the same sort of problem. In order to fully achieve and facilitate my idea of the sea sweeper into a reality that would help millions of people, I must create an opportunity for myself and have something innovative that someone has never created before or at least to the same efficiency as my product.               The opportunity that lies up...

28-A Exit Strategy 1) My exit strategy really does come down to if my business is successful or not and how successful it really is. If my business is raking in a lot of money and growing, I think I would keep it and continue to grow it to become a bigger business but if my company is doing okay and I feel as if I cannot make a big difference in the remaining life of my business, I would try and sell it to someone who can grow the business. If I did decide to keep my business, I would keep it to provide for my family until one of my children is old enough to own it, that is, if they wanted to inherit the business. If not, I would sell it and use the money to retire. 2) My strategy relies on what my kids want and how successful I am. I want this strategy because I don't want my children to be born rich and spoiled, I want them to learn on their own, fail on their own so that they can go through the process I went through instead of just being handed money.  3) This stra...

27-A Reading Reflection No. 3 1) I read "The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users" by Guy Kawasaki because in today's day and age, everything from marketing to socializing revolves around social media and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about what I already know about the different kinds of social media. This books main summary is that it is just a compilation of tips and tricks that the author wanted to share with the reader about different strategies of social media and how to use them. The book essentially teaches you how to use the information given to you in order to form social media in your  favor including how to create good content and how to edit and enhance what you post on the internet. One important aspect from the book I remembered was the idea that you can over do it and it was extremely important that you do not post too much because once you do, you lose respect and you just look like you're trying to spam and be annoyi...

26-A Celebrating Failure 1) This past semester I have failed a decent amount of times that I 100% percent could've done better in. The first failure began with my first Accounting exam where I did not study as much as I should have because I thought I would be okay for it when in reality I should've learned the material better. I did learn my lesson though and got substantially higher on my next exam. Another time I failed was recently while I played in the Regional tournament for the University of Florida's Men's Club Soccer Team. I didn't completely fail but I did not play as well as I would have liked in some of the games and I take that as a failure.  2) I learned from these two failures that I need to prepare ahead of time and be ready for essentially a big performance. I can't just half-ass everything and then kind of know what I'm doing, instead I have to get in repetitions from either problems or practice. 3) Failure is hard; it's em...

25A - What's Next? 1) The first customer I identified and interviewed was my old neighbor who has two boats and goes fishing about every weekend. I called him and explained my product along with some diagrams explaining my product and he was interested, especially if it was only $10 because that's not much money to help take care of the place where he fishes literally every weekend. I told him about my business plan and he had some ideas that would help my future such as offering me different ideas for products that I could build off of and ideas of innovation for my current product that may increase price but will increase efficiency and longevity. He also proposed a new idea to put it on mobile vehicles or come up with something for cars or lawnmowers that pick up trash instead of shredding them. Same idea as the boats but for land vehicles to take care of pollution there. 2) My second customer was my high school stats teacher who was interested because his family co...

24A- Venture Concept No. 1               I’ve lived most of my life on the water so the beach is a second home to me and we know in this increasing population that means more trash and sadly our beaches and bodies of water suffer from the pollution and debris that all of us humans make. That is why it is my company and product’s goal is to help preserve our beaches for our own benefit. I want this company to do more than just sell products, I want to make a difference in my own community and others dealing with the same sort of problem. In order to fully achieve and facilitate my idea of the sea sweeper into a reality that would help millions of people, I must create an opportunity for myself and have something innovative that someone has never created before or at least to the same efficiency as my product.               The opportunity that lies...