30A - Final Reflection

1.    I reread my posts

2. I think my most formative experience from this past semester has been interviewing the people closest to me about what they think makes me “unique” and a good entrepreneur. I often have a hard time seeing the positives in myself, and to hear what those who know me best truly think about me was an enlightening experience. That was absolutely my favorite moment of this class and of this semester. 

3. At this point, I am not sure if I see myself as an entrepreneur, but I definitely see myself as more of an entrepreneur than I did at the beginning of the semester. This class has absolutely helped me move closer to an entrepreneurial mindset. 

4. My one recommendation to students in the future is to look further into the future to ensure that you are working far enough ahead. Especially when it comes to the book report assignments. I would recommend, in order to best foster the entrepreneurial mindset, that students watch or read several forms of entrepreneurial media. There are plenty of good documentaries, podcasts and books to watch, all of which will help to turn the students into entrepreneurs. 

29A - Venture Concept No. 2

1.

Company Name: Social Athlete Management (S.A.M.)

Opportunity: As an avid sport connoisseur who is focusing their future career in the world of sport, I was extremely intrigued by the trend of “social media takedowns” that occurred in 2018. Celebrities, especially athletes, had their social media history raided in an attempt to dig up old, unsavory posts. The opportunity to help professional athletes manage their social media is one that has been created by outrage culture and by the growing popularity of social media platforms. Outrage culture has always, in a way existed, but even more now, people are just looking for something or someone to be mad at. The permanence of social media has allowed people to exploit it to the benefit of outrage culture, as many famous people, before becoming famous, do not give a second thought as to what they are posting on their accounts. This market is defined both geographically and demographically. Geographically it is defined and concentrated mostly in the United States, as the popularity of athletes of professional sport here (including the extensive media coverage) makes American athletes more at risk of being at the center of a social media takedown. Demographically, all athletes are at risk, however white male athletes are at a considerable higher risk than any other demographic (at least currently). Most of the outrage at an athlete’s social media postings is based around racist or misogynistic undertones. In the Venn diagram of people most likely to be misogynistic and racist, straight white males are right in the middle. Most customers are currently satisfying this need through their agency or through the professional organization for which they play. Odds are that they will be loyal to those organizations unless proven to be unsatisfactory. This opportunity is a frustratingly small one and needs to be taken advantage of very soon. With how small the potential market is, and the recent realization by many athletes that they are at risk, there is only a short window of time to exploit this opportunity before it is completely filled by competitors.

Innovation: The service of social media management for athletes is only incrementally innovative. There are other companies that currently work with athletes to improve the athlete’s brand through social media and websites, but it is rare that a company actually has any type of control over the social media postings of an athlete. This control allows us to better monitor and improve interactivity of postings by the athlete. It will work by us having close contact with the individual athlete and working with them on a regular basis to best express the athlete through social media. I am selling the management and brand improvement of athletes’ social media accounts. The cost will depend on the time put into the work. For now, the price will be $25/per hour worked.

Venture Concept: My innovation will solve the opportunity by monitoring and managing athletes’ social media presence to prevent future controversies. Customers will buy this product because they do not want to be the center of the next social media scandal that can derail a career. Athletes will switch to this service mostly because they are not currently having their social media optimized by another group in such a way. It will be difficult, without having proven “success stories” to attract customers and convince them to switch. The competitors are all other social media management companies, as well as, in a small part, professional sporting teams and large agencies that offer this service. Their possible vulnerability for teams and agencies is that since they are not primarily focused on social media management, the management provided is lackluster. The vulnerability for most social media management competitors is the fact that a large number of them represent all celebrities, making their ability to represent athletes lessen. I believe that packaging, price points, customer support and customer experience all play large roles in defining my business concept. To organize the business, I will start off with myself as the only employee. Only after I have found small amounts of success would I expand the staff and start to diversify the roles in the company.

Secret Sauce: My secret sauce is my immeasurable about of knowledge of the entire sport industry. My knowledge goes beyond that of a fan and includes all major American professional sports. While it is somewhat simple to become well-versed in a single sport, the knowledge that I have from football to horse racing to baseball and including many other sports is extremely rare.

What’s Next for Venture: The next opportunity I would tackle would be to expand past athletes to reach all celebrities. While I would still keep a focus on athletes, all celebrities could utilize a social media management service.

What’s Next for Me: If I launched this service, five years from now I would want to be representing at least 25 athletes and be working close to full time on this venture. This will allow us to expand at a faster rate following that point. I would also hope to have additional employees by that time. As an entrepreneur, I hope to be running a completely self-sufficient business in a decade. This first venture helps me with that by providing me with a jumping off point to run a complete athlete management group.

2.

To be honest, I received almost entirely positive feedback. From the two people who commented on my first venture concept, the only criticism I got was to list that once I start gaining clients, I can move past my initial plan of looking for five new clients a year. Hopefully, the rate that I gain clients will increase. 

3.

I made a few changes myself, but the only major change I made was adding that the rate at which I gain clients should increase over time.

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

1.    “The Art of Social Media” is a 2014 book coauthored by Peg Fitzgerald and Guy Kawasaki. Fitzgerald is a social media expert while Kawasaki has had numerous pursuits, most notably his stint as an Apple employee in the ‘80s, where he helped the company solidify its approach to marketing. The book offers over 120 tips to its readers on how to properly utilize social media to succeed. It’s hard to pick out a singular message from the book, as it is separated into sections on each tip, however they do talk a lot about how a social media account, a brand, or really any person needs to be treated like a business in order to be run properly.

2.    This is by far the most helpful book for me that I have read in this class. For starters, I am an avid user of social media, most notably my reddit account and my twitter account (@uf_goetz, give me a follow). More notably, my business plan centers entirely around managing athlete social media accounts, so learning all of these tips and tricks is enormously helpful to me.

3.    If I had to design an exercise around this class, I would do one of two things. First, I would ask the class to go through and choose the 3-5 (depending on time) most vital tips that the book offers. The other idea I had was to have the students choose 1-3 of the tips and use them to immediately change their social media accounts to be compliant. Then, I would ask the students to explain why they chose those alterations.

4.    My biggest “aha” moment was seeing just how many tips that I do not follow. I had felt that I run my social accounts fairly effectively, but the book showed me just how many improvements that I can implement.

28A – Your Exit Strategy

1.    For my business, Social Athlete Management, I have a long-term exit plan. I do not intend to sell my business in the near future and would only exit the business if I became interested in another venture, most likely one related to sport. I can imagine selling or passing off the responsibilities of the company in the next few decades, but I do not see my venture as a get rich quick, get out plan. However, this is not a business that I want, at the end of the day, to be the legacy I pass down to my children

2.    My non-permanent long-term exit strategy is based in my personal beliefs in myself, my loved ones and my company. I do not want to run this company forever, as I can see myself wanting to pursue alternative paths down the line. I do not want this to be a family legacy business as I want my future children to pursue their own dreams, not the ones I have passed to them. And finally, I think my business only has a limited amount of total growth, so I would not want to continue pursuing a business if I hit an unbreakable ceiling and business stagnates. To be fair though, all of these are the ideas and opinions of a 20 (nearly 21) year old college student who, at this point, could never imagine doing the same thing for several decades on end. Once I begin working in the “real world”, my convictions and beliefs could very well change.

3.    Honestly, I do not think that my exit strategy has had much impact, at least thus far, on the rest of my work, as the exit strategy is not something I have thought much about prior to this assignment. However, as I finish up the semester, I would be unsurprised to see it influence my future work, as I may start to try and build something that can be sustained without my immediate presence in the long-term.

26A – Celebrating Failure

1.    This past semester, I worked for the UAA marketing department as a gameday marketing intern called “Blueshirt”. While I pride myself on my work, I did make one major mistake during this semester. I was working the football game against Missouri when I made the biggest mistake I have made in my employment. I was on the field prior to the game when one of my supervisors came up to me. She was helping to escort a family that was visiting that game. My supervisor placed their bags by me and asked if I could help keep an eye on the bags. I agreed to, but quickly became distracted by the job that I had at hand. A few minutes later, I realized that I needed to get moving to go to my next destination and job and had completely forgotten about the bag. A few minutes later, I got a call from my supervisor asking if I had seen the bag. In all of the commotion, I had completely forgotten about it. The bag had the clients glasses in them and other personal items. Luckily, after a bit, the bag was found. But I definitely failed in my duty as a customer service rep, and many other employees had to bail me out and utilize their time to do so.

2.    I learned that, even in times of high stress and lots happening, I need to keep my mind and my eyes open. I cannot allow myself to get swept up in the moment and forget my own responsibilities.

3.    I think failure is the greatest tool we have as humans. Without failure, we cannot possibly have success. Honestly, I used to handle failure very poorly. A lot of that was the issues I had with my own anxiety. However, over the last several years, I have learned how to better handle the curveballs that life throws. This class has made me more open to failure. Reading and hearing all the stories of successful people who have dealt with failure has proved to me even more how necessary it is. This class makes me more likely to put myself and my reputation on the line in order to take a risk.

25A – What’s Next?

Existing Market

            Step 1: I believe that what is next is to improve the social media management service that we provide in order to not only prevent controversy, but also to grow the brand and outreach of the clients through their social media accounts. 

            Step 2: I attempted to contact several customers already in the market, however it was extremely difficult to do so, given that I do not currently know any athletes who play at the professional level. However, I did go back to some people I know who play collegiate sport and asked them about what I should be doing next. I approached them as they were the most likely people to enter into the market in the future. The people who I spoke to hit on two major points; one of which I expected and one I did not. I expected to hear that they wanted to see how my service would act in not only a preventative manner, but also a brand-building one. They agreed with my sentiment that this would likely be the next step that customers will want from my company. I did not expect, however, to hear that clients may also be interested in my company having the ability to build and maintain a website for the athlete. Many athletes currently have their own websites which mostly act as a place to sell merchandise. Two of the people I interviewed suggested pursuing the creation and management of athlete-based websites.

            Step 3: The path of my venture is very murky and hard to decipher. The pace at which I create new opportunities for the existing market depends on the pace that I acquire clients. If my company takes off very quickly, I will likely look to implement plans to increase value at a quicker rate. However, if it takes me a while to obtain clients, I will not begin to work on the ideas discussed until a later date. Simply put, we need to get a hold of any percent of the customer base before we expand our services to include more price-heavy ventures.

                        In addition, I think it would be beneficial to begin pursuing the route of athlete website management soon after we acquire a solid customer base. The ability to create and manage personal websites for athletes will greatly improve the value of the company.

New Market

            Step 1:For the targeting of a new market, I can focus on two ideas. The first would be to offer to manage the social accounts of the general public (not just affluent athletes). However, this would be difficult to pursue and possibly devalue the service. The other idea would be to target business. Targeting companies and organizations, especially ones in the sporting industry, would greatly increase the customer base. The company will offer to manage social media accounts for corporations in this idea.

            Step 2: My venture concept of ensuring that the social media postings of the client’s account do not create controversy and damage the value of the client translates fairly easily from B2C to B2B. No major changes to the venture concept would be necessary to add this new market.

            Step 3: I spoke with two individuals, one who works high up for a major corporation and another who owns a small business. I described my service to both of them and asked if they thought it would be of any benefit to them. My interviewee who works for the major corporation did not think that it would be easy for me to get their business. He said that most corporations already outsource their social media accounts to smaller companies or to the marketing department. The owner of the small business did think that the service I am providing would definitely help small businesses to reach customers in anew way. They both said that in order to enter this new market, a large amount of extra time would be necessary, my company would be in more of a “working for” state than a “working with” state that I see in our B2C side.

            Step 4: I learned that trying to enter this new market would be a bit of a beast. It would be extremely difficult to convince major corporations that we could offer them an improved service. I was wrong in my initial assumption that I could offer an improved service to large companies. I was not entirely aware that as many corporations already outsource their social media profiles.

            On second thought, this market does not appear to be as attractive as I initially believed it to be. The fact that only smaller businesses would consider the service really complicates things, as many small business owners have no issue with running their own social media profiles. There is still some attractiveness to the market, it’s just not as much as I initially believed existed.

24A – Venture Concept No. 1 for "Social Athlete Management"

Company Name: Social Athlete Management (S.A.M.)

Opportunity: As an avid sport connoisseur who is focusing their future career in the world of sport, I was extremely intrigued by the trend of “social media takedowns” that occurred in 2018. Celebrities, especially athletes, had their social media history raided in an attempt to dig up old, unsavory posts. The opportunity to help professional athletes manage their social media is one that has been created by outrage culture and by the growing popularity of social media platforms. Outrage culture has always, in a way existed, but even more now, people are just looking for something or someone to be mad at. The permanence of social media has allowed people to exploit it to the benefit of outrage culture, as many famous people, before becoming famous, do not give a second thought as to what they are posting on their accounts. This market is defined both geographically and demographically. Geographically it is defined and concentrated mostly in the United States, as the popularity of athletes of professional sport here (including the extensive media coverage) makes American athletes more at risk of being at the center of a social media takedown. Demographically, all athletes are at risk, however white male athletes are at a considerable higher risk than any other demographic (at least currently). Most of the outrage at an athlete’s social media postings is based around racist or misogynistic undertones. In the Venn diagram of people most likely to be misogynistic and racist, straight white males are right in the middle. Most customers are currently satisfying this need through their agency or through the professional organization for which they play. Odds are that they will be loyal to those organizations unless proven to be unsatisfactory. This opportunity is a frustratingly small one and needs to be taken advantage of very soon. With how small the potential market is, and the recent realization by many athletes that they are at risk, there is only a short window of time to exploit this opportunity before it is completely filled by competitors.

Innovation: The service of social media management for athletes is only incrementally innovative. There are other companies that currently work with athletes to improve the athlete’s brand through social media and websites, but it is rare that a company actually has any type of control over the social media postings of an athlete. This control allows us to better monitor and improve interactivity of postings by the athlete. It will work by us having close contact with the individual athlete and working with them on a regular basis to best express the athlete through social media. I am selling the management and brand improvement of athletes’ social media accounts. The cost will depend on the time put into the work. For now, the price will be $25/per hour worked.

Venture Concept: My innovation will solve the opportunity by monitoring and managing athletes’ social media presence to prevent future controversies. Customers will buy this product because they do not want to be the center of the next social media scandal that can derail a career. Athletes will switch to this service mostly because they are not currently having their social media optimized by another group in such a way. It will be difficult, without having proven “success stories” to attract customers and convince them to switch. The competitors are all other social media management companies, as well as, in a small part, professional sporting teams and large agencies that offer this service. Their possible vulnerability for teams and agencies is that since they are not primarily focused on social media management, the management provided is lackluster. The vulnerability for most social media management competitors is the fact that a large number of them represent all celebrities, making their ability to represent athletes lessen. I believe that packaging, price points, customer support and customer experience all play large roles in defining my business concept. To organize the business, I will start off with myself as the only employee. Only after I have found small amounts of success would I expand the staff and start to diversify the roles in the company.

Secret Sauce: My secret sauce is my immeasurable about of knowledge of the entire sport industry. My knowledge goes beyond that of a fan and includes all major American professional sports. While it is somewhat simple to become well-versed in a single sport, the knowledge that I have from football to horse racing to baseball and including many other sports is extremely rare.

What’s Next for Venture: The next opportunity I would tackle would be to expand past athletes to reach all celebrities. While I would still keep a focus on athletes, all celebrities could utilize a social media management service.

What’s Next for Me: If I launched this service, five years from now I would want to be representing at least 25 athletes and be working close to full time on this venture. I would also hope to have additional employees by that time. As an entrepreneur, I hope to be running a completely self-sufficient business in a decade. This first venture helps me with that by providing me with a jumping off point to run a complete athlete management group.