Entrepreneurship NewVenture Class

Rhonda and I posted a blog at the end of last year that we would be participating in an Entrepreneurship course called FastTrac NewVenture by the Kaplan University. Midlands Technical College host the current 10 week class, and it has been awe inspiring thus far. We would like to update you weekly on the class. We inadvertently missed last week class because we were sent instructions to another campus location. With work commute traffic taking place, it would of been more than an hour to get there. Reluctantly, we went home, and contacted the Professor.  He welcomed us during the second day of class (Tuesday Evenings) and I'll recap:

• Topic- Market Analysis- know your demographics profile. Understand their spending habits before their initial thought of making a decision. Know who they are; where they live; what they spend and save on; and how they react to various market conditions.
• Know your competitor
• Have a Lawyer, Banker, and Accountant
• In Columbia area- >50% of new businesses fail within first year; >95% of new businesses fail within five years
• Speaker- Fred Monk- ECI Find New Markets
• Have a website and an image/brand
• Investigate, market research, and identify opportunities
• Market research- know where new opportunities are, demographics, where they going, and how they get there
• Entrepreneurs- Understand yourself- Are you a self-starter? Do you get along with different personalities? How do you make decisions? How well do you plan and organize?
• Why small business fail- lack of experience; poor location; insufficient capital; personal use of business funds; unexpected growth; competition; low sales
• Good news- Entrepreneurship allows you to be your own boss; hard work and long hours benefit you and not someone else; earnings and growth potential are great; new ventures are both exciting and risky; challenges and opportunities for learning abound

We ended the day getting in small groups and discussing our business ideas and advice. The advice that We Connected Productions, LLC gave was don't give up day job quite yet; work part-time doing the new business activity; and to build relationships (networking, discount of services, etc). That's what we have primarily done for the past 10 months of incorporation. Yet, the advice given to us was that its great that we spent the first year helping people for FREE, but we CAN NOT run a business this way. We must charge for our services and promote our films, no matter how small. On May 1, 2011 when we start charging for our services and promoting our films, we'll know who our client base is and is not.  And many of them will not be the type of film projects we have worked on in the last year or the customers we promoted our completed films to. Our ideal client is willing to pay because they recognize that filmmaking is a business. Our ideal customer is willing to pay for a film product (Special screening, DVD, Poster, etc). If we continue to offer it for FREE, it will always be a HOBBY. And the IRS doesn't recognize HOBBIES as a legit business. Nothing personal, but purely business.

Our assignment this week is to read Chapters 1-3 in our workbook.  In doing so we will understand ourselves as Entrepreneurs and understand the market (Chapters 1 & 2). Essentially, we'll be able to identify our target market and start going after those businesses and customers. Next week we'll discuss Finance (Chapter 3). More specifically- what to price our services? how to finance the business? and how to maintain our financials? We know there will be some radical changes to our business plan and mental preparation (knowledge) is key. Hence, the excitement continues as we go further along our NewVenture class!!

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