18A – Create a Customer Avatar 

(changing my idea to a Butterfly Pea Flower Vegan Mylk-Shake)

My prototypical customer is a 24 year old female student at UF. She has beachy hair with natural highlights because she likes to surf in her free time. My avatar does not have a car, she uses her bike or skateboard to get around most places. She has tangled anklets and bracelets. She watches Broad City. She does not have any children. She uses Buddah Butter lip balm. She is more on the liberal side.

I do have a lot in common with my avatar. This is not a coincidence because when I was brainstorming ideas for this class, I mainly thought about needs that I personally feel in general and specifically here in Gainesville. I noticed a few vegan places such as Karma Kream (even though they don't make the vegan ice cream that they sell..) but I still noticed a lack in health awareness and fun healthy options.

 

16A –What’s Your Secret Sauce?

 1) 5 ways my human capital is unique!

- My knowledge for health and wellness is definitely unique. I have not met many people that know as much as I do about health trends, vitamins, supplements, and food nutrition as I do. Many people come to me when they are sick, don't know how to make something, or just want to get healthier.

- I grew up seeing many businesses get created and executed. I have seen the creative process of coming up with the ideas and then saw what it took to actually prepare for an opening. I think what was really valuable in these experiences were the failures because I was able to see what caused my dads businesses to succeed or fail. 

- I have an eye for design. I was in theatre throughout middle and high school so I had to study publicity design (designing tickets, fliers, etc) along with set design, costume design, makeup design. I also had to learn about the use of words and colors and how they effect people. I also have good over-all style and I know how to organize things very well. 

- I am incredibly open-minded. Although this can be a fault at times, it causes me to be open to all sort of ideas and think outside of the box. There's not many things that I'll immediately turn down without giving it a chance. I usually go through a process of consideration over an idea and try to learn as much as I can from every experience I find myself in.

- I have been told and I agree that my communication skills are on point. I think I have a way with being understandable and relatable to people in person and through writing. People often feel comfortable around me and confide in me due to this. I know how to give constructive criticism and lead by example.

2) My friends, for the most part, told me that what makes my human capital unique is my ability to care about my relationships with people even if its just friendships. Most people do not put that much thought into their relationships but apparently I give everyone in my life equal attention whether I'm romantically involved or just friends with the person. My friends believe I am incredibly insightful and that I don't care much for material things, how I look, or how people think about me. Also, that I am a positive person.

3) I definitely didn't think that I am a positive person because I always thought of myself as a realist and a logical person. I often worry that I am not grateful enough and that I view the society in a pessimistic way. Going back I would add my ability to love as something that makes me unique (as cheesy as that sounds). I believe my ability to care, love, and pay attention with all my being to multiple being is very unique.

12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

- Pick a segment.

The segment I am choosing is undergrad college students at UF. I am not sure if I should be more specific than that. 

- When does the need become salient?

At a restaurant, due to the lack of healthy beverage options. They usually have water, sodas, and alcoholic beverages but a lack of stuff in between. The people I interviewed expressed this need becoming salient when friends are getting unhealthy options and they don't want to consume something so high in calories. 

-Information search.

Many people just resort to water as the healthiest option. However I do see an expressed need for something sweet and healthy.

- Findings and conclusions!

I think I may need to change my business idea?!?!? 

Although some people have expressed this need, others have pointed out that healthy people do not really go to unhealthy places and expect to find healthy products to suit their dietary needs. They obviously do not expect much from them. Also, people do not often feel the need for lemonade or crave it. Lemonade definitely doesn't motivate someone to go and get it besides if they're already in a restaurant or establishment. However maybe if my idea was blue vegan ice cream or a blue vegan milkshake (made with almond milk) that would be something that a person would actually have a craving for causing them to go and look for it. This may have a more solid market because this would target specifically people looking for vegan options so it may be a more clear venture. Many people have expressed the need for more places that meet their dietary restrictions and I've noticed a pretty large vegan community here in Gainesville.

11A – Idea Napkin No. 1 

  1. ME
- I am Ellie Ben-Zion. I grew up in Miami with a health-nut for a mother and a father who owns restaurants and night clubs. I have a good eye for design since since I used to be in theatre and photography. I'm also really good with people and communication. I worked at my father's restaurant in high school and I was able to see all the intricacies of running a business. My aspirations are to create my own businesses that keep the well-being of humans and the environment in mind while maintaining its integrity as a product or service. For example some of my business ideas involve health and wellness such as the one I am using for this class. If I were to really start this business, I can see it playing a role in my life as a personal venture. It would start off with me doing all the work and probably be really small batch and supported by my small network of friends, classmates, and family members along with hopefully some degree of a social media following. For the most part, this business idea in my head is quite low-key and local.

2. What am I offering to customers?
- I am offering a healthy blue/purple lemonade beverage by using dried butterfly pea flowers to add pigment and attract people with some visual effects such as Boba Tea or nitrogen icecream. My lemonade will be changing colors since the pigment is affected by the pH balance.

3. Who are you offering it to?
- I am offering this product to Gainesville's locals and students here that care about a cool, fun, new health trend and to local businesses here that have some sort of health initiative and care about supporting other local businesses such as Grill Fresh, Karma Kream, other cafe's and fast restaurants and some local bars.

4. Why do they care?
- People will pay money for my product because it will be so visually enticing due to its blue and purple hues. Also people will pay money for this product because they care about their health and want to quench their thirst with something that isn't bad for them.

5. What are your core competencies?
- I think what sets me apart is going to be the bright colors of this lemonade and the fact that it'll even change color. And if I make it in a certain way the colors will be layered in the container giving the customer the choice to shake it for a homogeneous color effect or keep the colors sort of all over the place. Also I haven't seen any butterfly pea products in stores or in restaurants or bars. It can even be used in alcoholic beverages.

9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

Identified Need: Healthier fun beverage options-- (made with butterfly pea flower)


WHO: People that do not want to spend a lot of money and assume that products with unusual herbs or organic ingredients or unfamiliar terms are expensive. There are businesses that prefer more simple beverages such as sodas and juices like most fast food places and the majority of places that don't really have a health-conscious approach because usually the level of food matches the level of drink.

WHAT: The need of drinking a beverage like this is very different from the need of just being thirsty and wanting anything refreshing. People who do not particularly care for the health benefit may just not have the need to purchase this product. People who can afford it but do not particularly share this need may still be attracted by the color and the ingredients of the beverage.

WHY: The reason for the difference in needs between the outsiders and insiders of this opportunity is upbringing, financial situation, genuine care for personal health.

14A - Halfway Reflection

14A - Halfway Reflection

To keep up the requirements of this course I had to use and develop behaviors such as...

- paying attention to the environment around me and identifying basic and complex needs/desires/problems that can be changed in some way to be make things easier or more accessible to people. The ability to think of business ideas out of any situation because there is always an unmet need or desire.
- Asking questions! Being curious! Conducting research/interviews in order to understand the customer/market better and then taking the information to better my ideas.
- Letting go and taking the risk! Understanding that things wont always work out and letting failures happen to learn from them.
- Controlling my creativity... being able to access it when I need to and out it to work but also put it to the side when other things need to be a factor.

"Giving up" Moment...

I felt like giving up when I heard Dr. Pryor say that nobody would want my ugly baby. It made me feel like my first business idea is likely to fail and that terrified me at first. It made me want to give up as opposed to putting so much of myself and energy into something that'll just appear to be my ugly baby to other people. What if people don't think my ideas are as cool? That would suck.
What pulled me through was realizing that I can gather information to find out if people are interested in an idea before I catapult myself into the market. Also, taking risks is a learning process but I am working on it and working on just being fearless with the idea of putting my ugly baby out in the world without being insecure.

Three Tips...

1. Learn from every business related situation because that information will help for the next.
2. Be outgoing with your ideas and marketing strategies. Marketing is everywhere! There are opportunities everywhere! Take advantage of that.
3. Remember to be curious and humble. Ask questions because something can be learned from everyone and everything.

13A - Reading Reflection Pt.1

13A - Reading Reflection Pt.1

• What surprised you the most?
• What surprised me the most about Yunus' story is that he created a bank (The Grameen Bank) that completely revolves around trust. In order to do this he had to completely revolutionize the way banking is done in order to have it be accessible to poor people in Bangladesh.
• What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
• Besides his undying trust for his people, Yunus is one of the few people in the world that would tackle such a wide scale problem. He chose to make it his own personal responsibility to educate poor communities in Bangladesh to take care of their finances better. I admire his incredibly strong compassion for his people and using every bit of what he's gotten and received over his relatively wealthy life to give back to people and help break the cycle of poverty.
• What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
•  What I least admire about Yunus' process is when he got in over his head and created his own political party as opposed to becoming the prime minister of a caretaker government when the offer was proposed to him. His political party was of no success.
• Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?
• Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina never forgave him for creating his own political party and believed that he did it on purpose to remove her from politics. This put Yunus on the Prime Minister's bad side and led her to bash his name.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 
 Yunus studied hard all of his life and even came to America to learn about economics and used all of his education and compassion to go back to his hometown to help the poor people with micro-finance.
3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.
Something about the reading that was confusing to me was the drama that happened between Yunus and the Prime Minister and how there are different governments and prime ministers. I am also generally confused about how a bank can function when its just based on trust. How is it possible that so few people in Bangladesh are taking advantage of this system.
4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?
1. Did you know that your bank was going to be successful? If not, were you scared?
2. Why didn't you choose to stay in America, what about your life did you have to leave behind?
5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?
I believe Yunus' opinion about hard work is working together as a community by investing a small amount of money into something larger to benefit the community and create a chain effect. I do share this opinion with Yunus. This will create success in the long run and help people dictate their lives and beat the vicious cycle of poverty.