The GEM Model

This week’s lesson material included a lot of good information. As I was reading, one particular article stood out to me. “The GEM Model” by Stephen W. Gibson was a clear cut article outlining three things that “can help your business grow and grow”: Gathering, Enhancing and Marketing. Gibson explains this using a lemonade stand business as an example. In the gathering phase, the raw materials such as sugar, lemons etc. are purchased. The enhance phase is where the lemonade is made (the raw materials are enhanced). The marketing phase is where the signs are put up, the stand is built and friends are sent out to wave down cars to buy some lemonade. This was a simple straight forward article with three necessary steps for business growth. I thought about my small business for the $100 challenge as I read. I would like to open a small gift shop online selling handmade unique knitted gifts. As I read the article I checked off the steps that I had accomplished. I currently have my raw materials ready to go. I spent a week winding yarn getting it ready to be knit and making sure I had all of my needles in order. I now need to enhance my raw materials by deciding on the patterns I want to use and start establishing my inventory. Marketing will be the last and toughest step for me. Of course I will use word of mouth and start it myself, however, I’m not sure how else to go about advertising my business. There are many small knit shops on the site I am going to use so I need to figure out how I am going to market my particular shop to make it stand out from the rest. That is a challenge in and of itself.

Be Specific, Keep it Simple, Ask Women

This week’s lesson material contained good reading and videos. Something that stood out to me was Guy Kawasaki’s video called “The New Business Model”. He said there were three main components to the new business model. The first was to be specific. He said it used to be about capturing as many eyes as possible and somehow you would have a customer base to buy your product. Now it’s about targeting a specific set of people. The second thing he said was to keep it simple. Create a product, put it out there, people buy it, that’s it. The third and last component was to ask women. He went on to explain that men have a genetic flaw; they want to kill things. His point was that many men will go into business simply to “kill” their competitors. Women do not have the same nature and his suggestion was that their business plans would be better thought out. When Kawasaki suggested asking women it reminded me of research that was done at a retailer I used to work for. While trying to determine who their customer base was, the found their most valuable clients to be women. Regardless of age, they were found for the most part to be the ones who held the purse strings. This retailer did a complete overhaul of their branding to make it more feminine and target women. There is something to be said about asking women.

For the $100 Challenge I have been working on a couple different patterns for my small knitting business. Once I come up with some designs I like I will be able to narrow down what I would like to offer.

Intro to Small Business Creation

I just finished a class called Intro to Entrepreneurism and I am now taking a course called Small Business Creation. In the first unit we have been introduced to all of the projects that we will be working on during the semester. To be honest I’m both overwhelmed and excited. Something that I know will force me from my comfort zone is the $100 challenge. The challenge is an assignment we have to create a small business, generating $20 start up and then working to make $100 or more in profit. I have never been in tune with my inner entrepreneur. I don’t find it exciting to think about being my own boss and creating my own product to sell to the world. I know this project will stretch me and that I will learn a lot.

This week we had the opportunity to read and discuss quite a few great business blogs. They are all written and maintained by entrepreneurs. Already I have gained some good insight into what it means to be an entrepreneur and found some great tips for becoming successful. One post that made a particular impact on me this week came from Seth Godin’s blog. He wrote an entry called “Hiding” in which he talked about how all of us our hiding when we avoid things that will change us and when we let up people speak up to lead. He said that we live in fear of feelings. It is simply put but so true. I love how he ended the post, “We rationalize in extraordinary ways to avoid coming out of hiding. When in doubt, look in the hiding places. Olly olly oxen free.” I am someone who can be found hiding, especially when it comes to putting myself out there and embarking on the path of an entrepreneur. I will certainly be following Seth’s blog and several others throughout the course for guidance in addition to the insight of my teacher and fellow classmates.