Journal Entry #4

As always, please feel free to give me feed back, suggestions, and your thoughts as I develop my $10.00 business!

Journal entry #4… where to start, where to start…

So, while on Facebook last week I came across a friend’s status, which stated, now a fan of Her Campus. Interesting, I thought and click on the link provided for HerCampus.com. The webpage loaded, and I found myself looking at a site almost exactly the same as mine; but not quite. I browsed the site for a bit and stumbled across a link, start your own branch. Starting a Her Campus RIT has tremendous opportunity, however… there are aspects of the Her Campus site that I am not all too interested in. I wanted my website to be about getting involved, giving back, and being up to date on relevant issues (for college women). Also, this opportunity falls more in a franchise type business than entrepreneurship. So being a Her Campus correspondent is out.

Now what?

New direction… and with only a few weeks left, I think this is my only chance of reaching a large enough audience to count as social impact is to reach out to the pageant people. Yes, the pageant people. Miss America 2010 will be crowned this Saturday and I feel that once the new Miss America is crowned, I will have a good chance of successfully introducing my website, She’s Got Her Head in the Crown. Over 12,000 young women compete in the Miss America pageant system each year. If I play my cards right (use my knowledge of social media) I can capture a large audience, fast.

What will be unique about Crown is I will personally answer pageant questions, offer advice, and help women network in order to benefit their platform and/or pageant experience as a whole. Also, I hope to eventually add a SHOP page where girls can sell their used dresses, and 5% of each sale will be given to the Children’s Miracle Network; The national platform of Miss America.

$1,500 Raised for Hannah's Hope at Skate For a Cause

Skate For a Cause was a HUGE success!!! Thank you to everyone who came out to support this cause. All the money raised from Friday will be donated to Joining Hearts and Hands and used to build an additional classroom at Hannah's Hope in Kenya.

RIT on TV News - Skate For a Cause

This event brought together students, staff, and the local community for a fun night of skating with family and friends. Skate For a Cause was able to provide an opportunity for all of those involved to support and give back to those who are in need.

Hannah Congdon was the inspiration behind this event, and I am proud that my Women in Business club chose to carry on her legacy! Hannah’s hope was that the less fortunate of the world would have a better life.

Learn more about Hannah and Hannah's Hope by visiting the following link:

Joining Hearts and Hands

Skate For a Cause!!! TONIGHT

Press Release by RIT:

Skating Event to Raise Money for Kenya School Built in Memory of Fairport’s Hannah Congdon

RIT’s Women in Business hosts ‘Skate for a Cause,’ proceeds will help build classroom at Hannah’s Hope

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Students from Hannah's Hope, a school in Katito, Kenya

by Kelly Downs, Jan. 21, 2010 —

The promising young life of Hannah Congdon was cut short in 2007 when the Fairport teenager died in a car crash along with four other students from Fairport High School just days following graduation. Thanks to the Rochester-based organization Joining Hearts and Hands, Congdon’s memory lives on through a school built last year in Kenya called Hannah’s Hope.

The next building phase will be the addition of two new classrooms. To help raise money for the project, RIT’s Women in Business Club will host “Skate for A Cause” at RIT’s Ritter Arena from 8 to 10 p.m. this Friday. A $3 donation per person covers admission, skate rental and hot chocolate.

“I remember Hannah as an ambitious, outgoing and friendly girl who was always smiling,” says Heather Knowles, president and founder of RIT’s Women in Business Club and a member of the 2007 graduating class from Fairport High. “Hannah will always be missed by myself and everyone who knew her. While I will never understand why it was her time to go, she has left behind an inspiring legacy. Her legacy has inspired me to help build an additional classroom at Hannah’s Hope. I am elated that RIT’s Women in Business is raising money for such a momentous cause.”

All proceeds from Friday’s benefit will go to Joining Hearts and Hands toward the next phase of construction at Hannah’s Hope. Joining Hearts and Hands founders William and Joanne Cala will be in attendance at Friday night’s event. Students from RIT’s Women in Business Club hope to travel to Kenya with the Cala's in the spring of 2011.

To find out more about Joining Hearts and Hands and Hannah’s Hope, visit www.joiningheartsandhands.org

Look for pictures and an update on how the event goes in my next post!

Journal Entry #3

As always, please feel free to give me feed back, suggestions, and your thoughts as I develop my $10.00 business!

Its official, as of Friday night, I am now signed up with an account through intuit.com After last week’s post I knew I had to get a move on with creating my website! So, with a recommendation from my mom (she uses intuit.com for her small business), I created a username, logged in, and began browsing the hundreds of layout options. This process took me about an hour, before I settled on the one I liked best. To me the feel and appearance of the website is an important element; people often return to websites based off of their first impressions, which include appearance, content, etc.

WHEW.

Wrong. I had decided to take a break to clear my mind a bit after I chose my design, the next day I didn’t like it so much… Back to square one. The problem... After clicking the choose a different design option, a pop-up displayed the message:

Warning:

Changing your Website Design will delete your current site pages and files.

You will lose all the work you have done on your current site.

YIKES!!!! So from here on out changing the design is OUT OF THE QUESTION.

I am most definitely a perfectionist. With that said, I STILL HAVE NOT settled on a business/website name. This is an important element of creating a website and is really holding back my ability to get creative with the site. Unless I get that, yes this is it, feeling in the pit of my stomach, I am not satisfied. I would really like to use an acronym, but finding one that can tie in the words women and empowerment while relating to college women is difficult. I’d like to share some of the acronyms I have considered.

WHEW – women helping empower women

WWW – women who wow

EEE – encouraging empowerment through education (my personal platform)

emPOWER

and literally just now I thought of…

BE –Be Empowered – I like this best and am putting it on the website tonight!

Journal Entry #2

As I said last week, I am going to post my journal entries here so you can follow along with my progress. What am I talking about? Here is a refresher...For my Entrepreneurship class we have been tasked with the challenge of starting a business with $10.oo; Yes, a real business with only $10.00. This project, appropriately named the $10 Business challenge, has a few rules:

1. Business must be new and not a constitution of a previous or existing venture
2. Business must be legal and ethical
3. Business can be for-profit or non-for-profit
4. Additional funding for the business must come from business profits or Fundraising
5. For-profit business must maintain financial records
6. Non-for-profit business must verify social impact and will be primary assessed on extent of social impact

As always, please feel free to give me feed back, suggestions, and your thoughts as I develop my $10.00 business!

Journal Entry #2

I wish there were more hours in the day…

With that said, I have not had as much time to dedicate to this challenge as I would have hoped. To tie my feelings into class material we recently covered, here is an element of creating the business that is causing me some stress.

Need to achieve – Entrepreneurs have a high need to achieve, but having too high of a need to achieve could lead to more stress; unrealistic expectations.

I have a high need to achieve on this assignment because I know if I do well on my idea it is something that I can continue to grow.

As for dealing with this stress, it has been difficult for several reasons. Here are the option we talked about in class and why they do or do not work at this time.

1. Networking – still too early to network with other, but something I can do in the start-up phase

2. Getting away from it all – while it would be nice to take a break from school, there is nothing to “get away from” involving my business at this time.

3. Communicating with employees – what employees?

4. Finding satisfaction outside the company – I am satisfied with several aspects of my life including my club, academics, and social life.

5. Delegating – I do not have anyone to delegate tasks to

6. Exercising Rigorously – this is a MAJOR stress reliever, not particularly from this assignment, but from everyday stresses

7. Patience – I have to be patient with my progress... After researching other existing websites, I am going to set up an account with a web hosting site and create a layout. The next step is going to be to add content and find a way to have users sign-up using an email address.

$10 Business Challenge - Journal Entry #1

For my Entrepreneurship class we have been tasked with the challenge of starting a business with $10.oo; Yes, a real business with only $10.00. This project, appropriately named the $10 Business challenge, has a few rules:

1. Business must be new and not a constitution of a previous or existing venture
2. Business must be legal and ethical
3. Business can be for-profit or non-for-profit
4. Additional funding for the business must come from business profits or Fundraising
5. For-profit business must maintain financial records
6. Non-for-profit business must verify social impact and will be primary assessed on extent of social impact

We are being asked to submit weekly journal entries and I thought it would be beneficial to post my entries for you all to read. Please feel free to give me feed back, suggestions, and your thoughts as I develop my $10.00 business!

Journal Entry #1

Since this assignment was given, I have been thinking non-stop about my options. To be honest, my first night home on winter break I literally lost sleep over this. We talked in class about how everyone has their personal "incubation" or "brainstorming" time when ideas just flow; for Dr. Smith it's in the shower… for me, it is when I am gearing down to fall asleep (which often leads to hours of thinking, and little sleep). So… here is what has been going on in my head.

Profit vs. Non-profit.

The issue with trying to start a profit business is I am a VERY busy individual. My idea for a profit business was to hand paint wine glasses upon customer requests. I recently painted a pair of martini glasses for my boyfriend's parents and they came out FABULOUS! However, it took me 4-5 hours to do both… and I just don't have that kind of extra free time. This got me thinking about what Dr. Smith said in class about starting a business based on something you would wake up and do on a Sunday anyway.

I absolutely love giving back and helping others! So naturally my immediate ideas centered on starting non-profit business. However, finding a way to show impact was tripping me up some. The conclusion I came to was, if I started some type of website and tracked users, I would know how many people are benefiting from my "business". But what to do…what to do?

Options:

1. Website - Hub of information for college women (similar to Linkedin and twitter but with a community service twist)

2. TRUTH (similar to the DARE program we all went through in middle school/HS but with a twist!)

It is important for me to focus on topics and issues that I am already heavily involved in or feel passion about so my next step is to do some additional research on these two ideas, and go from there!