Week 10

Acton Hero: Catherine Rohr
     As an entrepreneur we need to learn to turn a no into a yes. If you have challenges and roadblocks, don't give up. You can make it through and when you do you will feel accomplished for making it over that roadblock. Until the next one comes along, but you have to keep pushing through until you get where you want to go! If you as an entrepreneur just gave up as soon as there was an obstacle in the way, your fulfilling of your vision for your business would die pretty fast. You need to remember you need to be faithful to your vision to help it be fulfilled.
     Being a successful entrepreneur you need to try to jump back up after being knocked down.
You need to do your research and ask for help so that they can help you when you have challenges along the way. Seek for counsel from people who are entrepreneurs themselves and have most likely had their fair share of challenges as well.

From my Entrepreneur Interview I learned: 
- remembering to take more out for start-up costs than I think I need in case I run into additional unanticipated costs
- hire staff who can keep the business at the standard I expect (including great customer service and cleanliness)
- have a detailed business plan
- make sure I have good credit and anything else that will make it easier to get money from the bank
- be involved.

From the Franchise Preview Assignment I learned:

- I would make sure to get input from the people I hire, instead of being the only one to make the decisions and suggestions. That way we will feel more like a team and the business will probably run more smoothly
- I would want to hire people with passion and willingness to learn, but not necessarily the ones with the most experience
- I would treat the customers with respect and let them believe they are right even when they are not.

Entrepreneur Tips
- Don't Settle
- Healthy disregard for the impossible- not fear of failure
- Don't be afraid to solve the whole hard problem

The Burt's Bees Case Study taught me that you don't have to go into debt to start a business!!

Process Improvement Notes:

Process Consists of: - Input
- Activity
- Output

Informal VS Formal
- Informal- giving a customer a discount because they asked for one for purchasing a certain amount of stuff. but there wasn't a rule in place about this discount before.
- Formal- call center. you and your team has come up with documented set of procedures for answering customers questions and solving their problems. therefore formal in handling their concerns.

Business Process Improvement (BPI)- a set of disciplined approaches and tools that managers use to enhance their companys performance.

Benefits of BPI
- Understand how effectively your team is meeting the needs of customers and other departments in your company.
- Revise your hiring strategies to improve skill levels and expertise in your team.
- Save time and money by simplifying overly complex and expensive processes.
- Identify entirely new processes that enable your firm to provide top-notch customer service while reducing costs


Don't just improve productivity, improving quality is equally important

6 phases of BPI-
- plan
- analyze
- redesign- envisioning a better process, testing your teams ideas, considering the implications of a potential redesign, documenting your redesign, gathering feedback from stakeholders and refining the redesigned process
- aquire resources
- implemant
- continually improve


Selecting which process to improve first-
- create a process selection matrix- you rate each process according to criteria such as how easily it might be changed and how problematic it may be for customers


Customer satisfaction
quality
costs
cycle time - reduce cycle time

revise your metrics and targets as needed

$100 Challenge Update:
This week I babysat on Wednesday and made $40 and I was there for just under 3 hours. I babysat Saturday afternoon and Saturday Evening. Saturday afternoon the family I babysat for has 4 kids. Usually I have them in the evenings and the older 3 are in bed while the youngest is awake and crying because he wants his brother and parents. But today because it was the afternoon the brother cared for the baby so he only cried a couple times when the brother left the room briefly. That's the secret weapon, the 10 year old brother! For my afternoon job I babysat for 4 hours and I made about $60. Saturday evening I watched 3 kids for 4 hours and I made $60.