Lessons Learned Oct 30

Experience

This week was the start of the Graded Team Rounds, I was nervous and excited at the same time. Eagerly awaiting the first two rounds to be submitted. I’m working on team chester, and I’m really happy with my group at the moment. They both put in more than their fair share of work and they really add their two cents even if we disagree. We’ve already changed our strategy multiple times to be able to adjust to industry demand. Its great being able to work on a team that is willing to accept changes as need be.

Reflection

Looking back this week on the team rounds and the practice team rounds I can see that there were several things that we were able to improve on. We noticed that our prices were pretty high because of the product placement in low tech, so we’ve decided to change that up and lower the placement. We’ll be trying for a revision every 3 to 5 years, so we’re trying to get it so the product is right at the edge of the low cut when we revise it and it will have about 4 maybe even 5 years old. We might lose some sales when we revise but we’ll plan on lowering the forecast.

Identifying key learnings

Something that I don’t want to forget is our high tech strategy. Entering high tech and getting the right customer survey score and then getting the right product market share. We are still testing this out in the rounds but it’ll be interesting to see how much market share we can get in the next round. Ideally I’d like 18% but I don’t know if that is possible. If we make it we’ll do great but if not we’ll crash pretty hard.

Action Planning

1. For some specific actions I’d like to apply are first giving more time and responsibility to the other team members. They are very talented team mates and I trust them to make great decisions in the company.
2. For evaluation criteria, I’ll see how they are doing in capsim and help them make the right choices.
3. The measurement procedures are straightforward with capsim we can just see at the end of the round how we did.

Applying

Now, it’s just up to me to apply these things this week as we work through rounds 3 and 4. I’m excited to see what my other two teammates will come up with. I’d like to see how our strategies play out and how well we are able to do as a team against the others. We’ve had some fantastic competition this round and I’m looking forward to see how these group rounds play out.

$100 Challenge

This week on the $100 challenge I was able to sell another 4 bowls for $60 bring my total sales revenue up to 291, and profits to 271. It also looks like I wasn’t able earn more than $500 by the end of October. This is contributed to the lack of time I was able to contribute to the project. In the last few weeks I’ve only been able to put in minimal hours to the project to keep up with the rest of my school work. Again I find myself falling behind in my school work, requiring more work to be completed on the weekends.

I was happy about this sale because Kay seemed very interested in the bowls with the bark on the outside, buying three of them. They seem to be fairly popular. Looking at my inventory I think I only have one bowl left so I’ll need to replenish my stock before I can sell more bowls. It seems like the number one factor contributing to lack of sales is just lack of product. I simply need to make more bowls.

On the plus side I figure that it is okay that I’m not able to put much more time into the bowls to give my other classmates a little bit of a head start. I would like to get busy in the next few weeks to come to take advantage more of the christmas sales. Looking at my schedule, this Saturday is already full, and Saturday’s are really the only days I can turn bowls because of my school work.

Lessons Learned 21 October

This week has gone by very fast. With all the projects and assignments to be done and completed I’m glad I made it this far. As I mentioned last week, working on the $100 project has been a great challenge because of managing time. With my current class schedule I just don’t have time to work on the project, but that’s why I’m writing this on Friday, so my hope is tomorrow I’ll be able to go up and turn some bowls. This week, other than the elevator pitch I have not worked on the project. I figure that this is acceptable at the moment because I am ahead of schedule. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can slowly work on the project and fill the orders that I have. The biggest failure I’m having at the moment is the time to put into this sample company. I’m finding it very difficult to put time into another business, even if that business is making money. The reality is if I could pursue this business I could see it being profitable. My goal would be to create about a thousand dollars worth of profit a month. I’m thinking I should really start working toward this kind of goal because if I can achieve that then I’ll be able to invest more time into the project and also invest more resources. I knew going in that time was going to be the issue, so it's all about now making the most of the little time I have.

Lessons Learned 15 October

The greatest challenge is going to be time management. I understood this going into this class but it has really been a challenge this week. With my business MINDS-i, I’ve worked over 71 hours this week. I’ve been struggling to keep up with my classes and to be honest I’m surprised that it’s only Saturday and everything is practically done minus the discussion board posts. Despite the excellent material in this course I find myself struggling with the material not because it’s challenge but because I believe that most of the work is unnecessarily redundant. The discussion board posts seem to be the worst of it, requiring students to post multiple times and multiple days. I can see how it has a great intention of having an ongoing discussion but it just doesn’t work out that way. I’m a little disappointed in my $100 challenge because I have a great product and business, plenty of work to do and plenty of money to be made but I just don’t have the time to do it because I’ve spend all of my time writing about my plans, commenting on discussion boards, and all the other work in this class. This week I’ve done nothing for my project, except the assignment of setting a budget. I did manage to raise $20 for the project, and print stock certificates but that’s basically a novelty item. I also don’t really need to raise money for the project considering I’ve already sold over $200 worth of bowls with another $100 just waiting to be made. In short, the business is great but I just don’t have the time to make money. At this point I’ve considered hiring someone to just turn the bowls for me and paying them whatever. Considering the high margins on the bowls, if I sold a bowl for $20 and it took 1 hour per bowl I could afford to pay the Washington state minimum wage of $9.47. That would leave me with a contribution margin of 53%, which is not bad. That could be an option, looks like this is all that I have time for today, now to do some discussion board posts.

Lessons Learned Fri 7

Experience

Capsim has been really challenging this week. I made a few mistakes this week mostly in forecasting and it really has not paid off. When it comes to planning for the worst case scenario, I really need to be true to that. In both the 3rd and 4th round I was confident that I could increase my low tech market share by 2% and and in both cases I was wrong. In the second case I even had the best product, but I couldn’t see it because of I was unable to produce the right amount with the revision date so late in the year. I’m sad about that because I had so much automation my R&D times were horrible so the smallest revision, put the product at the end of the year. My second product actually did better than the first, able. Able by the way has a 54% contribution margin in the low tech. That’s with an automation of 10, but I admit I layed off some workers to get that variable cost down.

Reflection

Reflecting on these experiences I hope that I’m able to do better in the team rounds. I feel like I really got off to a bad start in the first round by not taking out loans, which lead to a lower leverage ratio. I was struggling to get that back up and surprisingly, by taking out the emergency loan I was able to get that up to the ideal zone. But after two emergency loans of $20,000 I wasn’t able to make a profit, which was disappointing. I was able to get back market share, so I believe if this were to go to eight rounds I might be able to pull it back.

Identifying Key Learnings

I’d say one of the key learnings was the customer survey score, after the huge disappointment in round 3 I went pack to the drawing board and really looked at why my products and done so poorly. Basically what happened is that I had forecasted for a market share of 22% but had cut back the quality of the MTBF to a minimum. This was a huge mistake in the low tech segment, who relies on quality, so my 20% market was cut back to 15% and the fourth round was 13% even with product modifications. However the fourth round was mostly held back do to a late revision date. Again, in the fourth round I was too optimistic, if I had forecasted at 15% I would have been right on the mark. I would have guessed I’d sell around 1243 including 45 days of extra inventory. I actually sold 995 which would have left me with 248 units of inventory, about 91 days of inventory. A little high but better than the current 200 days of inventory. Which caused another emergency loan. Worst case scenario is now my new best friend.

Action Planning

Planning from here on out I’ll have to go with the worst case. This may mean I’m more likely to stock out but stocking out is better than getting an emergency loan. As I demonstrated in round 4, sometime the worst case is still too high if the product drops market share unexpectedly. To help out with this I’ve made a rudimentary customer survey score calculator. It really only works for for price and MTBF, where it is really hard to tell how many points a product loses with every 0.1 the product is away in the perceptual map and in age. I think I’ll try a few practice rounds to see if I can get any difference.

Applying

As I’ve discussed there are several ways that I can apply the lessons I’ve learned this week. From relying on the worst case scenario, to not discounting the MTBF in the Low tech. I’m excited to try out these new concepts in the next team stage.

$100 Project Progress

I have officially completed the $100 challenge, I’ll have to rename it the $500 challenge because I’ve already passed 100 and 200 so my next goal is to earn $500. I’m sure that I’ll be able to do it by the end of october too. Right now I have at least $120 on custom orders to fill. That’s the worst case, charging $10 a bowl. My average sell price has been around $17.50 meaning that the next 12 bowls could turn into $200 to $300. I could not have had this success without the help of my family and the very generous donations from my customers. I was impressed with the value that they were able to see in my bowls. Their generosity encourages me to make better bowls. I’ve also come up with the idea to include a lifetime warranty on all the bowls. That way if ever one does break, I’d be happy to turn another for them. This week I’ve only sold 5 bowls and from that it’s generated over $200. To be exact my net income as of October 7 is $211.67. I’m excited to donate all this profit to a charity. I hope it will really make a difference is their life. I’ll make sure to find a great charity. I also sent out a few posts to my other classmates because I’d like to know how they are doing. I hope I’m not too far ahead of anyone so I’ve decided to help anyone out. I put my phone number in the discussion board so anyone can call me with any help they need. Hopefully this lead in the $500 challenge will help me catch up with my other classwork. I’ve really been learning quite a few things in this practical challenge, and I hope to continue to grow the business even though I’ll be taking it a little bit slower.

This week the $100 challenge is doing great. I’ve struggled to manage enough time to work on the project with my assignments. As I write this at 6:41PM on a Sunday Night I have struggled to complete my assignments on time. Working to 11PM every night isn’t good enough. I’ll need to somehow work more hours to get all my work done, I’m planning for 16 hour days during the week and I’ll have to extend that to the weekend. That would put me at 8 hours at work and 8 hours after work for school. Coupled with more time I’ll need to manage my time better. I’ll need to get right into the business of my assignments and not waste time. Another big problems is paying attention to deadlines. For the second time in this class I missed a discussion post that was incorrectly marked as due on the following Monday but should have been completed on this weeks Tuesday, and then allow for three days of follow up posts. I had to give up time on Saturday, time I had set aside to work on my business to complete a trivial assignment that should have been completed on Tuesday. On Saturday I was still able to list a few more bowls on the site and do a little a little sharing on facebook.  Tim’s Wood Bowls now has six bowls listed, it wasn’t the 10 bowls I had hoped, but I’ve set aside a few bowls for a few interested customers. If these sales go through I could likely generate a hundred dollars in profit this week, but it remains to be seen. I’m slightly discouraged about the etsy site, because of all the fees involved for listing and selling. Also shipping has been a pain. After taking a look at shipping, it seems that their shipping rates are aren’t working correct. Most of the shipping prices are overpriced, and even with the overcharging, the shipping prices were still inaccurate. For example the first bowl charged $5.54 on etsy but the actual cost was $6.80. I could add more to shipping but that would just lead to overpriced shipping problem. My brother who lives in Arizona came to visit over the weekend pointed out that it would cost over $15 to ship a $15 bowl to his address. This would end up discouraging customers to buy our bowls, when they were expecting to pay around $15 for a bowl but were charged twice that. We came to the conclusion that the prices were over the top for shipping, so we decided to change our strategy. Instead of charging for the bowl and shipping we would offer free shipping, allowing for the price displayed on the first page of the site to be the final price. This works out for us because we have a large supply of wood for the bowls so really the only expense is the shipping and whatever fees are charged by Etsy for listing and selling the bowl. In the end this should work out fine if we can keep the shipping price down and it will help give the customer an honest, square price.

Lessons Learned 9-23-16

It's been an incredibly long week but I have learned many great lessons so let's get started.

Surprisingly one of the biggest lessons I have learn was from the 5 minute video by Guy Kawasaki. He said simple make a meaning and a mantra and through out the mission statement. I believe I've seen this video before but this time it stood out to be. It was just a few months ago that Altek, our affiliate company had taken a day to develop a mission statement, so it was surprising to me to see Guy saying not to was time on a mission statement and instead develop a mantra. A mantra is a short phrase that describes your company. It's different from a slogan, Nike's "Just do It." A mantra for Nike is actually, "Authentic Athletic Performance." I've never head of this before but this captures the essence of the organization. The great thing about a mantra is that it works for both the salesperson and the customer. This has got me thinking about MINDS-i's mantra. I've noodled over this a bit and came up with and came up with: Teaching STEM through Robotics. I'm not completely convinced but it's the best I've got so far and it's better than what I've been using. Just the other day I said that and instantly caught the persons attention.  I'll try it more often.  

The $100 challenge. In my class we have been asked to start a small start-up with $20 with hopes to raise $100 dollars in profit. I think that it will be a great challenge as I have never run my own business or raised that much, so if I can do it, it will be a huge confidence boost. My plan is to turn wood bowls on the lathe. My dad has been turning bowls for a few years and has always wanted to start selling them so I thought that this was a great way to get the business started for him. There is really no cost on my end, except the time to turn the bowls. I really hope that this turns into a successful business. I made a shop on Etsy called Tim's Wood Bowls. Go and have a look and buy a bowl for charity. I sold my first bowl on Etsy this week, to my brother Chris, who was very excited to get started on the shop. I've also had a few other messages about people interested in buying bowls. I haven't had much time to set up the shop, turn bowls, or pursue any leads just because my schedule has been very full with all my classes and work. Right now I have another six bowls that I need to list on the website. The biggest challenge is going to be spending time on this project.

MINDS-i has been busy the past week, this Saturday is the BSA STEM University. I teach the robotics merit badge. We've developed a new inexpensive kit and made it available to the scouts. That in itself is quite the project. Today I took the time to contact every scout to make sure that they were prepared for the class. I was able to help them get the robot kit that they needed to complete the merit badge. I hope that each scout, leader, and parent can know the great service that we are doing for this. I look at this course almost like a college level class, but adjusted so that an 11 year student and understand it. It's important to note that it's not so much that the class is easy, but I am increasingly surprised at the enthusiasm of the scouts. Even at a young age they are capable of understanding this course.  It is a fantastic merit badge that will teach them and hopefully get them excited about the world of robotics. I'm glad I have the chance to teach it. Hopefully, they'll be a bit more prepared this year. Bringing this back to the thoughts from Guy Kawasaki, he mentioned that the purpose of a business is make a meaning. My hope is that both Tim's Wood Bowls and MINDS-i is a part of making that meaning. 

Tim's Tips and Tricks for Elite Dangerous

Ships, and where to buy them:

http://roguey.co.uk/elite-dangerous/ships/

Ship Outfitting/Building:

https://coriolis.io/outfit/imperial_clipper/4pktkFflodpskf4157l27270400080i4k5n2b6l0202002h.AwRj4yrI.Aw18aQ==?bn=Clipper%20A

Thrudds Trading Tool:

http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk/

Systems information:

https://eddb.io/

Route Planning:

http://ed-td.space/

Money Making guide:

1.       Go to the system: Kremainn, and dock at the station: Wholer Terminal.

2.       Hunt for bounties in the “Resource Extraction Site” or RES, This is found in the one of the Ringed planets closest to the station.

a.       Stay close to the security forces as they will help you take down enemies.

b.      When you are low on hit points or want to cash in the bounties head back to the station.

c.       Feel free to upgrade modules and even buy better ships as you earn more credits.

d.      The goal is to gain over 2 to 4 million credits.

3.       Buy and Upgrade the Type 6 Transporter following this guide.

a.       Feel free to modify as needed, you may want shields, a bigger fuel scoop, hard points, or utilities.

b.      If you just wanted to get into basic trading, only 2 million is needed. Search for a system using the Thrudds trading Tool and trade.

c.       You can earn 1 to 2 million per hour doing basic trade missions.

4.       For those long distance missions, head to CEOS and SOTHIS.

a.       It’s around 500ly so prepare for long range. It’s about a 20 jump trip so 20 minutes in travel time.

b.      Run “Boom Data Missions” between the two system to increase your reputation.

c.       When you have enough reputation, missions will pop up giving you around 1 million apiece, take as many as you can and trade between populated space and CEOS/SOTHIS.

d.      You can earn 5 to 10 million per hour doing these missions. (Possibly up to 50 million if you have an anaconda.)

Good luck! This concludes my money making guide.

CMDR TIM MYRRHS