30A – Final Reflection

While going through my post, I have realized how good I’ve improved in public speaking because of the different interviews I have done. Doing interviews was a challenge to me at first until I had to do it a couple of times. Also, I have become more organized as I had to do homework every week, and I had to respect the deadlines. Honestly, I don’t think if there are any lows in this class. Everything was fun.

One of my best experience for this class is the way we followed the process. The class was basically training us from how to find an opportunity and the different things you need to do in order to use that same opportunity. The best assignment was the first one which was the bug list. It is very interesting that we can do something about the things that bug us in life. That helped me realized that I can have a lot of good opportunities.

Yes, I can call myself as an entrepreneur now because this class gave me the chance to become one. As I said, this class prepared me from finding an idea, and using that idea to create your business. It also taught me about how to face the different challenges we could face. I have the mindset of an entrepreneur because I’m already working on other projects by using the process learned in this class.

I would advise the future students taking this class to enjoy it and use it to learn a lot about creating a business in future. They should be strict and just do their homework based on the way it was asked, and I strongly advise them to choose their business idea that they have been dreaming about. Again, doing your homework on time will be a guarantee to succeed in this class.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

 As an international student in economics at UF, I’m really looking forward to becoming a successful business man that helps people in future, and I can tell that my company that I’m working on will be very significant for me and will help me achieve that goal.

 I’m going to be offering my customers in west Africa an opportunity to buy newer vehicles at cheaper price by exporting Salvage and wrecked vehicles that can be fixed there because they have to pay a lot of money for newer cars that have not been in any accident. I’m going to export those vehicles to west Africa where my customers have to spend way more money to get a new car from current years. So, my customers will be mostly West Africans that want to buy those types of vehicle with low mileage. Also, most of the cars will be Toyota brand because most of my customers prefer Toyotas.

They will buy my vehicles because they are all brand new vehicles, with low mileage (less than 10k). The only problem is the fact that they have to be fixed because they have been in accidents. Moreover, even if the car has a salvaged title in the USA, the title will be cleaned once it is fixed in West Africa. For example, I’m giving my customers an option to buy a salvaged 2018 Toyota Camry with 2000 miles on it for $15000, and then spending an additional $3000 to fix it and make it look brand new. The other option will be to buy a 2018 Toyota Camry with 2000 miles on it for $35000. Thus, they will definitely choose to buy my product unless you are very rich and don’t like to save $17000.

During the last two months, I’ve conducted a lot of interviews that helped realized a lot of things in my business. Concerning my first three interviews, I found out that my target, which are the rich people in Benin, really need that change which I’m about to bring for them. I think that there will be two categories of them I should consider, those who would purchase the salvaged cars from me at very cheap prices, or those who want to have brand new car that have not been in any accident at a cheaper price. Thus, I have to work on that and identify my two types of customers. Some other interviews taught me that I should include online shoppers in my target group. Thus, they told me that I should be creating an application for my business and get some good photographers that can take clear pictures that are well seen by the online shoppers.

I believe that people in West Africa are spending a lot of money nowadays on newer cars by spending more than 15k than the price in USA, I decided to give them the chance to get the newer cars they want for a cheaper price by exporting Salvage vehicles from USA, which are not expensive here in USA. Those exported cars from USA will be bought by rich people in West Africa that spend hundreds of thousand dollars in car purchase. I believe that they will care a lot because they will save a lot of money, and they will get the vehicle of their dreams by spending less. Moreover, they can do something else with the money they save by investing in a more important asset that doesn’t depreciate.

I believe that my customer service, my price and car knowledge will help achieve my goal and compete with other businesses that are already established before mine. I believe that all these things are connected because it looks like a process.

For my feedbacks, I have received only positive feedbacks that even encouraged me. Also, the different interviews made me realized how good it is to listen to other people. Because of those feedbacks, vie discovered a new market which are the online buyers.

I have changed my concept by improving and being more efficient. So instead of online selling the vehicles in person, I can sell them online, which will expand my company. This means that I will have customers all over Africa.

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

I found the book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” by Scott Adams very interesting.

There are few important themes in the book that are very significant. Some of the most important ones are the fact that he mentioned that we should always be the first people to make the most important decision for ourselves, that to not expect everything to go the way we planned it at first and accept failure as an improvement, and that we should create something that we do every day, like a routine thing, and do it.

This book is related to this class because of the way it talks about routines and decision making. During the semester, this class has taught us how to make decision by helping us create our own business, making us identify the different issues we might face, and preparing us to fight against failure. Also, the weekly assignments that we have to do has become like a routine, which we have to do.

The exercise I would design for this class based on this book would be to ask the students to talk to me about failure and talk to me about a time they failed at something. I would also ask them to tell me the things they’ve learned from that failure and if they fought against the challenge.

Nothing really surprised me in the book. I’ve always believed that failure exists, but I always take it as a blessing. Moreover, my failures in the past have made me the man I’m today.