Final Reflection (ENT3003 Assignment 30A)

1. What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing? The best experience I've had was surprisingly the videos that I had to record for the elevator pitches. While they were also my least favorite throughout the semester due to me being uncomfortable with recording them at the time, I noticed myself being much more comfortable with them. That is something to be joyful about and also serve as a reminder that repetition and criticism will only help you along the way.
2. Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset? I wouldn't say that I see myself as an entrepreneur just yet. However, I am much more further along than I was in the beginning of this course. I can confidently say I am closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset.
3. What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset? My recommendation to prospective students will be to just be open to getting out of your comfort zone and receiving criticism. As long as you are able to apply it to your ideas and adapt it into a better one because of it, then you are on your way to becoming an entrepreneur yourself.

Venture Concept No. 2 (ENT3003 Assignment 29A)

Opportunity:

• Who has the need? Student-athletes, mostly in the collegiate level have this need.
• What is the nature of the need? Nature is very important as student-athletes often find themselves misrepresented, or even not represented at all, and suffer legally and financially because of it.
• What are the forces/changes in the environment creating this opportunity? The NCAA being forced to implement the Pay For Play Act to finally give student-athletes the opportunity to market themselves and reap the rewards.
• How is this market defined geographically and demographically? This market is far-reaching across the nation geographically to athletes who are in college.
• How are customers currently satisfying the need? And how loyal are they to whatever they use now? Customers are currently going through illegal measures to profit from their likeness, and are often caught and put their eligibility to play in jeopardy. They are not loyal to whatever method they currently use, as it is currently illegal and just a way to get as much as they can before getting caught.
• How big is this opportunity? This opportunity is huge and potentially very lucrative, as the NCAA generates around a billion dollars per year.
• How long will the "window of opportunity" be open? This window of opportunity will not be open for very long and will surely be filled soon after the act is passed allowing for student-athletes to publicly and officially seek out representation.

Innovation: 

My venture is an agency that is solely focused on this market of collegiate student-athletes. While being well versed in the Pay For Play Act, as well as the rules the NCAA are sure to add and enforce to accommodate it, my venture will focus on the best interests of the player. As a student-athlete in college, they need someone who is not only focused on getting them as much money as possible, but to also do it within the structure of who they're playing for so that their eligibility does not come into question. As a result, my agents will receive anywhere from 25 to 35% of the athlete's endorsement contract.

Venture Concept:

• What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product? How hard will it be to get them to switch? This is an agency that is directly tailored to them rather than one that is just focused on getting them paid by any means necessary. If they value their eligibility and the legality of their deals, it should be a seamless switch.
• Who are the competitors? What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? The competitors are the agencies who represent more than just those in this new structure at the collegiate level. As a result of this, they may have a hard time knowing the boundaries of what they're able to do for their representative exactly so that it is also in their best interest as far as being available to play.
• What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept? The concept of my business is to focus on the customer as a whole, not just the finances they can bring in regardless of if it puts them in jeopardy of playing or whatever. With that being said, customer support plays a vital role in the success of my agency and what makes us stand out.
• How would you organize a "business" to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? How many employees? What roles are in the venture? My agency will run the same as any other agency, but the focus will only be on college athletes. We will start off with a handful of quality agents, each handling certain regions, and taking on multiple roles. We will surely expand, as we see fit, to accommodate where there will be more help needed. 

3 Minor Elements:

1. Unfair Advantage? My secret sauce is my social capital. With my network built through the military and beyond, I am able to reach and relate to any type of customer there is.
2. What's next for the venture? The next product I want to develop is an app that will be easily accessible by the customer. This will give them a tool to track the progress of their marketability and give them further reassurance as to how much they're worth and what they're making.
3. What's next for me? As far as my business, I would like for my agency to at least have served as the model for how agencies within the NCAA should operate, if not also be the leading agency in collegiate sports. As an entrepreneur, however, I envision this opportunity only growing my network even further, creating even more opportunities to break into.

Feedback:

• Look into how and what other agencies are doing.
• Figure out who my target audience is directly and how to reach them.
• How will I cater to the athletes more specifically, through face to face, social media, partner with NCAA, etc.?

How I Will Adapt:

• I will certainly study how other agencies have performed and focus on emphasizing their positives while also doing something different to offset their weaknesses and incorporate all of that into my agency.
• My target audience is student-athletes who are in college, which hasn't changed but I will have to be more clear about that since it may still be illegal to target high school athletes at this point in time.
• I will cater to the athletes in any and every way that I can to help build that personal relationship with them. Face to face is always good as it is getting as personal as you can get, but trying to get too personal can be a bit creepy. Social media is a great way to stay in touch and check in but too much of that and not much else just doesn't make the relationship as personable. Partnering with the NCAA can give the players a level of safety that it is a legit business tailored for them, but being involved too much with the NCAA can also give others caution and make them feel like we're just another puppet of the NCAA. The key is to incorporate a good balance of all of these to give the customer a good feeling of how we're able to communicate in multiple facets. One way that we will cater to them specifically will be through the use of our app that will let them know what they're worth.

Exit Strategy (ENT3003 Assignment 28A)

1. The exit strategy that I plan to make withe my sports agency venture is to protect it as a family business and pass it down to my children eventually.
2. I have selected this particular strategy because it makes the most sense in every aspect. If it grows enough in only 5 years to command a high return then the chances are that it still has room to grow so you're not really selling it at its peak anyway. On the other hand, as an entrepreneur, these ventures should only open more doors to expand and get into other businesses so I am not interested in simply focusing on this venture for decades and then retiring. Building it enough to then pass it down to a competent family member to keep it going, while I explore other opportunities and am able to still serve as an advisor for this one seems like the most beneficial and lucrative strategy to follow.
3. I feel like my exit strategy hasn't and shall not influence the decisions I make in running the business. Regardless of my exit strategy, I will still operate to the best of my ability and utilize my resources as I see fit to give me the best possible return. Having that good balance of knowing when to take risks and when to be safe will make you successful no matter what the long term plan.

Reading Reflection No. 3 (ENT3003 Assignment 27A)

1. The message that Peter Drucker tries to convey in his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is that the most important way to be a successful entrepreneur is to be customer-focused rather than focused on the product. Identifying the market first and then tailoring the product to fit them is how to succeed.
2. The book preaches to focus on the customer, which is what we've been learning in this class. We have been taught to identify an opportunity and create our ideal customer for that opportunity before we go on and develop a product that tailors them and fills that want/need.
3. An exercise for this class, built around the teachings of this book, would actually be very similar to the customer avatar assignment. Focusing on the customer and learning everything there is to know about them is essential to being able to provide them with a product that will benefit them and that they will see equal value in.
4. Even though we already learned this in class throughout the semester, it is still quite surprising to see other professionals share this approach of being innovative in a product that tailors a specific audience rather than one that can bring in and create its own audience.

Celebrating Failure (ENT3003 Assignment 26A)

1. Just this semester, I feel like I failed in procuring an internship for the summer. There were plenty of opportunities available to me to network and even though I sent out emails and applied to the few that interested me, I have yet to get an interview or even a simple response. Granted, I am doing the UF in London: Study and Intern program for the Spring 2020 Semester and am also a veteran with over 4 years of work experience in Supply Chain Management, so I'm not desperate for an internship or experience. However, more experience would only help, so I am definitely still on the hunt for a summer internship for when I get back from London.
2. I have learned that even great profiles and people get overlooked for opportunities all of the time. That is not a reason to doubt yourself or get down, but instead to continue to grind and push yourself to reach that goal. Greatness always gets recognized, we just have to be patient sometimes and wait for our moment.
3. Failure is definitely hard and makes you look at yourself in a bad way. However, after that initial stage of being down about it, you should be able to reflect and find ways that you could have done differently and then go out and attack the same goal or a different goal in a different angle that you didn't see before. That is how I handle failure, as fuel to power me in a slightly different direction to achieve the same goal or a similar one. I am able to look at failure more as a risk worth taking, because of this class, because it showed me that all successful people are the ones who failed the most at one point in their lives.

What's Next? (ENT3003 Assignment 25A)

Existing Market:
Firstly, what makes the most sense right now in order to grow in my venture is to be patient. I have to do as much research as possible to learn everything there is to know about this new structure that the NCAA will implement. Seeing as how that has yet to be decided upon, the best I can do is be patient and soak up as much experience as I can in what I know will be needed, and to soak up as much knowledge on the additional potential needs, even starting to get the experience in those skills as well to get ahead of everyone else.

Another thing to focus on is finding ways to cater to my potential customers and make them feel as comfortable as possible with having me handle their finances essentially. One way to do this is to start developing that application now that is easily accessible by the customer and shows them how much they're worth. So, upon the new structure being implemented by the NCAA, we will have an easy way to draw the student-athletes in and show them that we are in full support of their individual growth in building their brand.

New Market:
The new market that I have identified is the professional level of sports. I feel like my agency can also cater to professionals because we can provide the necessary focus and tools to specifically cater to them and make them more comfortable to have us as their representatives. I will surely have to learn the difference in the structure they compete in versus the one that the collegiate athletes fall under, but seeing as though it is not as strict on paying players, it should be a seamless learning curve.

What surprised me the most in this approach is that professionals also value tools that can easily explain things to them, such as my app that will show them their worth. While these athletes make millions and have much more room for error, they would still understandably prefer not to learn the hard way and lose out on much more money, especially when this could have been remedied by simple apps that track and forecast their worth. My assumptions and expectations were correct in feeling that my agency can also benefit professional athletes, and on second thought, this new market appears to be as attractive (if not more) than my existing market because of the much more lucrative revenue and seemingly less work to that will be required of me to market these players since they're already established. However, there is the threat of much more competition, so that is something to take into account as well.

Venture Concept No. 1 (ENT3003 Assignment 24A)

SmashBro Sports

Opportunity:

• Who has the need? Student-athletes, mostly in the collegiate level have this need.
• What is the nature of the need? Nature is very important as student-athletes often find themselves misrepresented, or even not represented at all, and suffer legally and financially because of it.
• What are the forces/changes in the environment creating this opportunity? The NCAA being forced to implement the Pay For Play Act to finally give student-athletes the opportunity to market themselves and reap the rewards.
• How is this market defined geographically and demographically? This market is far-reaching across the nation geographically to athletes who are in college.
• How are customers currently satisfying the need? And how loyal are they to whatever they use now? Customers are currently going through illegal measures to profit from their likeness, and are often caught and put their eligibility to play in jeopardy. They are not loyal to whatever method they currently use, as it is currently illegal and just a way to get as much as they can before getting caught.
• How big is this opportunity? This opportunity is huge and potentially very lucrative, as the NCAA generates around a billion dollars per year.
• How long will the "window of opportunity" be open? This window of opportunity will not be open for very long and will surely be filled soon after the act is passed allowing for student-athletes to publicly and officially seek out representation.

Innovation: My venture is an agency that is solely focused on this market of student-athletes. While being well versed in the Pay For Play Act, as well as the rules the NCAA are sure to add and enforce to accommodate it, my venture will focus on the best interests of the player. As a student-athlete, they need someone who is not only focused on getting them as much money as possible, but to also do it within the structure of who they're playing for so that their eligibility does not come into question. As a result, my agents will receive anywhere from 25 to 35% of the athlete's endorsement contract.

Venture Concept:

• What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product? How hard will it be to get them to switch? This is an agency that is directly tailored to them rather than one that is just focused on getting them paid by any means necessary. If they value their eligibility and the legality of their deals, it should be a seamless switch.
• Who are the competitors? What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? The competitors are the agencies who represent more than just those in this new structure at the collegiate level. As a result of this, they may have a hard time knowing the boundaries of what they're able to do for their representative exactly so that it is also in their best interest as far as being available to play.
• What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept? The concept of my business is to focus on the customer as a whole, not just the finances they can bring in regardless of if it puts them in jeopardy of playing or whatever. With that being said, customer support plays a vital role in the success of my agency and what makes us stand out.
• How would you organize a "business" to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? How many employees? What roles are in the venture? My agency will run the same as any other agency, but the focus will only be on college athletes. We will start off with a handful of quality agents, each handling certain regions, and taking on multiple roles. We will surely expand, as we see fit, to accommodate where there will be more help needed. 

3 Minor Elements:

1. Unfair Advantage? My secret sauce is my social capital. With my network built through the military and beyond, I am able to reach and relate to any type of customer there is.
2. What's next for the venture? The next product I want to develop is an app that will be easily accessible by the customer. This will give them a tool to track the progress of their marketability and give them further reassurance as to how much they're worth and what they're making.
3. What's next for me? As far as my business, I would like for my agency to at least have served as the model for how agencies within the NCAA should operate, if not also be the leading agency in collegiate sports. As an entrepreneur, however, I envision this opportunity only growing my network even further, creating even more opportunities to break into.