Personal Application #3
In high school I took a business class that focused on entrepreneurship. In the class I had to start a few small businesses that ran for about three weeks till it was time to start a new one. Like any business the goal was to try and generate as much profit as possible in the short time frame. In the most successful business that I was a part of involved three other people that made up our team. To start it off our team was made up of different personalities and different ideas of a business. With the different personalities we had a very diverse team, which helped give a lot of different options to think about when setting up the business plan and model. With all of the unique ideas that were given we had a lot to think about. It wasn’t just an over night decision, and took a lot of different types of communication. Because we all were only in high school most of the members had part time jobs or played sports so face-to-face communication didn’t always work out. My team found that texting was the easiest way to get ahold of each other when meeting up wasn’t possible. Because this plan was taking longer than we had anticipated myself included started to loss motivation. I was lucky enough to have a member that filled the role of an energizer. He was very ambitious, and reminded us to get our eye on the goal. He was also very persistent when it came time to set up a meeting. With his help we were able to finally choose a product witch was a homemade chocolate covered popcorn we called “POP n’ Crunch Popcorn”.
After coming up with the plan and product we needed to find a local investor to get POP n’ Crunch Popcorn on its feet as required in the objective of the project. Once again my team hit a little problem, because no one was really willing to go out and ask local companies to invest in something so small. When it came down to it I fulfilled the role of a procedural-technician. While working at a local grocery story during one of my shifts I just decided to have a meeting with the store director, to see if he was willing to invest. Luckily I pithed a good plan and he was willing to invest. Now that we had that step out of the way my team was able to move onto the production aspect of thing. After moving on to the production part we had another problem, no one really wanted to make it. Once again my team was lucky to have a task focused individual who came up with schedule that indicated who had to make what on what day. He also went above and beyond and got enough supplies to meet our projected sales so each member didn’t have to go out and get the supplies needed.
My team as a whole was very adaptive to new ideas that made the whole project much easier. Being open to new ideas and branching off of those ideas lead to a successful product. Another aspect that ended up forming naturally was a structured leadership. With the structured leadership my team was able to cover all aspects of a real operational business. Some of the parts were marketing, finance, inventory, packaging and distribution. Along with the structured leadership we were able to keep up with demand. One crucial aspect that a structured leadership helped the most with was a check and balance system which made sure that everyone was during their role to the best of their ability. Towards the end of the final week one aspect that helped our team the most was individualistic attributes that each person brought to the table. Without each members unique attributes our team wouldn’t have been the same. I believe during this project my team became an effective high performance team. At the end of the three weeks it was time to look at the books and see how much profit was made. After paying back the investor who was kind enough not to charge interest each member was able to bring home roughly one hundred dollars in profit
After coming up with the plan and product we needed to find a local investor to get POP n’ Crunch Popcorn on its feet as required in the objective of the project. Once again my team hit a little problem, because no one was really willing to go out and ask local companies to invest in something so small. When it came down to it I fulfilled the role of a procedural-technician. While working at a local grocery story during one of my shifts I just decided to have a meeting with the store director, to see if he was willing to invest. Luckily I pithed a good plan and he was willing to invest. Now that we had that step out of the way my team was able to move onto the production aspect of thing. After moving on to the production part we had another problem, no one really wanted to make it. Once again my team was lucky to have a task focused individual who came up with schedule that indicated who had to make what on what day. He also went above and beyond and got enough supplies to meet our projected sales so each member didn’t have to go out and get the supplies needed.
My team as a whole was very adaptive to new ideas that made the whole project much easier. Being open to new ideas and branching off of those ideas lead to a successful product. Another aspect that ended up forming naturally was a structured leadership. With the structured leadership my team was able to cover all aspects of a real operational business. Some of the parts were marketing, finance, inventory, packaging and distribution. Along with the structured leadership we were able to keep up with demand. One crucial aspect that a structured leadership helped the most with was a check and balance system which made sure that everyone was during their role to the best of their ability. Towards the end of the final week one aspect that helped our team the most was individualistic attributes that each person brought to the table. Without each members unique attributes our team wouldn’t have been the same. I believe during this project my team became an effective high performance team. At the end of the three weeks it was time to look at the books and see how much profit was made. After paying back the investor who was kind enough not to charge interest each member was able to bring home roughly one hundred dollars in profit