Good to Great

Particle Principles

Confront the brutal facts

Stocdale Paradox

The hedgeconcept

A culture of discipline

The fly wheel and doom loop

Building Vision

My goal when i am older is to be the owner of a skateboard company that not only creates skateboards but creates other skateboard accesories that skaters use for example hats, shoes, clothes, stickers etc. I also would like to create skateparks in cities and somehow help out skateshops in towns that arent really big and need a little boost to get them going.

Ray Kroc - McDonalds

Ray Kroc tried joining the army to try and get out of school but was to young so he joined the RedCross and as soon as he got shipped out the war ended so he came back right away, When he came back he tried going back to school but only lasted one semester after he dropped out.

After school Ray went into the paper cup business and started selling paper cups for 13 years.  After selling paper cups he moved to selling a multi mixer machine.  Convinced that he could sell mixers to every new restaurant that opened, he partnered with the McDonald brothers to open and franchise additional McDonald's restaurants.

After a while Kroc started getting upset with the McDonalds brothers because Kroc would have to get their approval before making changes and sometimes the McDonalds brothers would say no so he later bought out McDonalds for 2.7 million dollars.

By 1961 there was around 200 McDonalds around the country, he used everything to advertise his company, he created a clown by the name of "Ronald McDonald" which became the spokesman for the company as it would bring in kids and their families which is a great advertising method.

Orville Redenbacher Popcorn

Orville was born in Bazil Indiana, He started out by developing a fertilizer and made a small fortune.

Orville passed away on September 20, 1995 at the age of 88.  His mentor was his partner Bowman before 1970,

When Orville started out he did not have a business plan as business plans where not praticle back then because most business where based out of peoples homes.  Orville ended up selling his business but still stayed as the spokesmen for the company.

Today the popcorn company is one of the largest popcorn companies ever even after the owner has passed away.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg is the creater of the blogging system "WordPress", For his personal blog he uses his own blogging program, I feel that if your into the whole blogging thing that you may find his blog interesting as all he talks about is blogging and other community programs.

Novel Shopping Experience

 If i was the Brand Manager of BMW I would make it so when ever you would purchase a car from BMW a certain percentage of each sale would go to a charity of the buyers choice, this would defiantly increase sales as people would be helping out a charitys.  Another thing I would do is introduce new eco-friendly cars to BMW which in my opinion would attract more customers.

Soul Calling Inc

In todays episode of shark tank we watched a lady pitch a business called Soul Calling, The business is about providing colorfull products such as sandals, umbrellas, bracelets and other products that have happy messages on them to try and make people happy. 

She wanted 150,000 for 25% of the company, the sharks denied her offer because the numbers of sales she was making was very low and they could not see her idea as a business but more of a goal she had.  The sharks even stated "Numbers never lie, emotions should never get in the way of  business."

When she was pitching the idea she did make a good point about walking down the street and only seeing black umbrellas but as stated already her numbers where very low and it would be hard to actually make a profit in the business.

Jump Forward

In todays episode of shark tank we watched two entrepeneurs that owned the company/website Jump Forward pitch two offers to the sharks, the first offer was 15% for $150,000 and the other offer was was $600,000 for 50% of the business.  The end offer was $600,000 for 50% with two of the sharks involved in the offer.

They took the offer because they realized how much experience the sharks have in online business and they could use their expepertise and money to make sure the company goes forward.

Mr Poncho and Uro Club

On todays episode of shark tank we watched Mr Poncho which was two people pitching an idea about a iPod case that had a round plastic thing on it that allows you to wrap your headphones around it so you dont tangle them.  I think it was a pretty bad idea as they looked very tacky and it would be easier to just wrap your headphones around your ipod instead of waisting 18$ on the case.

The other episodes we watched was about Uro Club, The Uro Club is a golf club that allows people to easily use the washroom while out on the golf course.   I think its a pretty bad idea as it would be hard for people to take the product seriously and it would hard to get the product at golf courses as i dont think they would want you doing that on their course.

Eric Van Maren

On Friday we had a guest speaker named Eric Van Maren which is an entrepeneur from the Chilliwack area.  He talked to us about 6 key points about being an entrepeneur.  These key points include:

Work hard: Be prepared to work harder then your employees

Passionate at what they are doing: Love what your doing
Learn from mistakes: Make mistakes and learn from them Don't make hasty decisions
Reputation: Guard your reputation, You can spend a lifetime building a reputation and you can loose it very quickly.
When they need more employees they will hire the best: Hire smart people
Select partners carefully: What does your partner bring to the table that you don’t have?

He also talked to the class about No knowns, Unknown knowns and Unknown Unknowns.

Evan Williams - Twitter

  Twitter is a simple website that allows people to easily stay in touch with each other by making 140 character posts on their pages, users that are following you will instanly get your message on their page.

 Twitter is a great tool to use for your business because you can keep your fans/customers up to date by the minute easily and effortlessly which is a great thing in todays world.

Sam Walton

Sam Walton the creater of Wal-Mart was born on March 29, 1918 in Kingfisher Oklahoma.  In school Sam excelled physically winning both state titles in Basketball and Football.

In 1945 Sam got a loan of 20,000 from his father in law plus 5,000 that he had saved up and started his own department store,  He made sure that the shelves where always stocked with different items daily.  He would purchase wholesale items and sell them for cheaper than what his competitors would sell them for.

The first Walmart was started July 2nd, 1962 in Rogers Arkansas, soon after him and his brothers teamed up with Stefan Dasbach which soon led to many more stores.

On April 5th 1992 Sam Walton died of bone cancer called multiple myeloma. 

BobblePlace

Todays episode of SharkTank we watched some guy try to pitch an idea for having a kiosk in different stores and malls which would create Bobble Heads of people by using a picture of them.  The guy that was pitching the idea had another part of the business that was all online and was doing great success, but he did not want to give up any part of that pre-existing business and only wanted to give up part of new business that he was starting.   The sharks where not happy about that and wanted part of the sucessful business and part of the new one incase the new one doesnt go good.  Of course the owner of the BobbleHead business did not like that and declined the offer.

 If it was me that was giving him the money i would not take the risk of giving him the money unless he was willing to give me part of the pre-existing business. The reason for this is because if the new business he is starting doesnt go good then i would loose my money, but if i had part of the pre-existing business i would still have that as a back up.

Atomic Tea

 The last episode of Shark Tank was about the Atomic Tea business, i feel like they got ripped off and believe they should have declined the deal and just done it all on their own.  I think they gave up a lot to get their business going and i think they could have easily done it on their own, yes it would have taken longer to make the company big but they wouldnt have had to give up over 50% of the company,  if they have a good product and they have a store in the right area they could easily get big and eventually get a much better offer.

Blue Ocean Strategy

The Blue Ocean strategy explains many different things about businesses such as what happens when businesses directly compete against each other, Teaches you how to build new businesses where none existed,  this is all great information to know if you really want to make a successful business.

When businesses directly compete with each other everything becomes over crowded, so all the businesses eventually suffer from reduced market share, growth and profit which is why its a good idea to differentiate your self from other businesses.  Instead of copying already successful businesses you should work on creating a business that stands out from the rest which is what the Blue Ocean strategy is all about and explains to you. Some examples of Blue Ocean Businesses are Cell Phones and Biotechnology, these companies never existed 30 years ago but now are some of the largest companies today.

 When creating a business you should always focus on the overall view of the business and not at the stats, if you focus on the stats you will start to loose what you where going for at the beggining and you will start to see your business quickly change.

 You should try and focus on potential costumers instead of focusing on your already current customers. If you  want to make your company grow you should focus on getting more potential customers.

The four "Get the Strategic Sequence Right" steps are:

1: Why should anyone buy your product?

2: Is it fairly priced to appeal to a large audience?

3: Can you create it at the right cost to create a profit?

4: Are there any impediments to discourage the market from accepting your product?

These four steps are crucial to follow when creating a new business or product as just having something fancy will not make you successful, you got to make sure you are doing things right when promoting your product and when selling your product, because even if it's the best in the market no one will purchase it if you over price it.

A company that i feel is Blue Ocean Strategy company is Apple

I feel Apple is a Blue Ocean company because they are always producing new ideas for products, for example the iPod, iPhone both of these are great examples of what makes Apple unique from their competitors, for the iPod they where the first to create a small device that can play videos you can watch, the iPhone allows people to easily call friends, play games, surf the web and tons of other great things.  Those are only just two products from apple that they created to be different from other companies.  I feel Apple is a great company that comes up with new and great ideas that other companies soon start to copy.

Pitching Element Bars

1) Doesn’t Give up

2) Features Benefits

3) First person to name a price losses

4) Force others to make an offer

5) Meet in the middle

When you are pitching an idea to potential investors you should never give up even when they say they are out, you should still try to convince them that your product is good and show them that by them saying they don’t want to invest in your product that its a bad idea.

A good idea is to force the other person to make a offer as most of the time its the first person that names the price that losses, so in that case you can try and make a better offer.

If you are not getting what you want try and make a deal with the investor that meets up in the middle of the offer. So make sure that its a good deal for you and also make sure that its ok for the investor.

WiSpots

 I feel it is important that when you are starting up your own company you should never put your family, friends and even your house at risk with money.  You should try and have a group of advisors that can review your idea before you put all of your money into it because if you put all of your money into it and then ask and it turns out its not that great of an idea then you basically lost all of that money you put into it.  If it is a great idea then you can talk to that group of advisors and see if they would like to invest into it because if its a great idea chances are they will.

If you have put allot of money into a company and have had many groups of investor tell you that it isnt a good idea you should stop working on it and quit on the idea instead of digging your self into a bigger hole than your already in.

Mr. Todds Pies

At first Todd wanted to give away 10% of his business but the sharks wanted much more than 10% because they didnt want to take a chance of having Todd do the same thing he did in the past.   They came to an agreement of 50% of the company.

I feel that Todd agreed to 50% because he wants to see the company grow and in order to do that he has to give up some of the company, in this case 50% of the company along with the great knowlege from the sharks, so since he wants to see this company grow he made the deal of 50% of the company.

At first Todd was over evaluating his company by only asking for 10%.

Google

Google is a great company that does many different things that most companies don’t do. One rule is don’t change your company logo, but Google goes against that and changes their logo every time there is an event happening in the world.

Another great thing about Google is that they give their employees great benefits and allow their employees to have time to relax and have a good time while working, they also allow their employees to make a difference to the company no matter who they are, so if an employee has a great idea for a product at Google they allow them to work on that which is great as most companies only let employees do one specific thing which tends to get boring after a while.

I learnt from Google that allowing your employees to have a good time at work by giving them good benifts such as sports, free food, playing games etc. will allow them to have fun at work and look forward to coming to work and not only receive those great benifits, but also make a change in a large company that not thousands but millions of people around the world will notice right away.

Greed vs Get it done

In order to start a successfull business and bring in a good income you you have to be willing to give up a reasonable portion of your business to investers to help get your business going, you cannot be greedy and expect investors to give you money if your not willing to give up a reasonable portion of your company/business.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook is a social networking website that almost everyone knows about but much people are not aware of how it started and what went into the making of facebook.  Facebook was started by Mark Zuckerberg along with fellow classmates in their dorm room.  Facebook was first started as a way for classmates to easily get in touch with each other as some people do not have cell phones.

Mark Zuckerberg has inspired me because he started his business at such a young age which is really cool because most people wait untill they are older so they have more experience but him and his friends just went for it and started it in a small dorm room and now its one of the largest companies in the world which i think is awesome.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs the co-founder of Apple computers built the first user friendly Mac computer in 1980.  In 1985 Jobs lost a power struggle between the board of directors and was fired from Apple inc. he then founded the company NeXT which focused more on the business markets of computers. 

In 1986 he started the company Pixar Animation Studios and remained the CEO until its acqusition by Walt Disney in 2006.

In 1996 Jobs returned to Apple as Apple annoucned it would buy NeXT for $429 million

Richard Branson

Richard Branson is the owner of the brand Virgin which runs over 300 companies and over 55,000 employees.  At the early age of 15 Richard Branson dropped out of school and had a learning disorder called dyslexia, even with this disorder he battled to succeed as a successful business man.  Branson first business venture started at the age of 16 when he published a magazine called Student.

In 1999 Richard Branson was knighted for his service to entrepreneurship.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Biography

Before watching the biography about Arnold Schwarzenegger, I only knew a few things about the man, for example I obviously knew that he was a legend in the sport of body building, a major movie star and now the governor of California, But after watching the movie that was presented in class the other day I have found out some more interesting information that i did not recently know about, and i now know that it wasnt easy for him to get the title he has today.

Did you know Body Building was not as popular as it is today, and that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the one that really popularized it within 10 years of him being in the sport of body building.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was younger he had an older brother which received all of the attention from his parents. At a very young age he already decided what he wanted to do in his life and made goals for him self which he would later achieve, one of those goals where made at a young age of 15 which was to be the very best body builder in the world and as everyone knows already he achieved it.

Personality Assessment

For the Personaltiy Assessment assignmnet we did 3 assessment tests "Personality Assessment, PersonalDNA.com Assessment, and VIA Survey of Character Strengths.

From taking these three assessments i have found out that i have the following personality types:

Sanguine
Phlegmatic

And i also found out that i have the following 5 strengths

1: Modesty and Humility
2: Humor and Playfullness
3: Hope, Optimism and future mindedness
4: Capacity to love and be loved
5: Gratitude

This new knowledg allows me to know what kind of person i am

If my financial life fell apart..

If my financial life fell apart and i had to create a business with the tools/ideas that i have currently i would create something that has to do with skateboarding.

There are many different business opportunities that revolve around skateboarding that require little money to start such as skateboarding lessons, to start something like skateboarding lessons you can basically have no money at all, all you would need is your skateboard and a home phone to take in calls.

Business that require money to start for skateboarding can be starting your own Board, Wheels, Bearing, Shoes, Clothing company but all those would require quite a bit of money to get your company going.

First Post

Girl skateboards