idea napkin #2

1.     My name is Cody Wheeler and I believe that I am very good at sales. I spent one summer doing a sales internship and at the end of the internship all of the interns were ranked based on how well they performed and I earned the #1 spot. Through the skills that I developed during the internship I have become very effective at showing a potential customer the upsides to my product and convincing them that they would be better off with it, even if they do need it. My aspirations are to complete my masters by Spring of 2019 and then land a well-paying. I believe that if I were to start this business, it would be my life. I would do everything that I can to make it successful and most likely devote all of my time to it.

2.     The product that I am offering will save customers money by allowing them to show fewer ads, but the ads that they do show will be put in-front of people who have searched things online that would lead us to believe that they may have a need or want for the product, similar to what amazon does when you are shopping on their website.

3.     I am offering my product to business’s. Business, such as Doritos or Sprint, that are large enough and have the resources that are necessary to do research and collect the enough data to be able to tell whether a person is a potential customer.

4.     It is simple, they care because they are saving money because they are not showing their ads to people that have no need or interest in their product.

5.     What sets me apart is no one else does this for television. Facebook and Amazon do this on the internet but, no one has brought this marketing strategy to television.

-       Yes, I believe they all fit together. This concept has been proven effective online and as long as the technology that will allow that concept to be brought to television, I believe that it will be successful on all fronts. Perhaps the biggest obstacle will be forming all of the B2B agreements.

-       I gathered a few things from the feedback, perhaps the biggest, this imposes an ethical dilemma. Many people have questioned whether it is ok to go into someone’s search history and show ads based upon what they have looked up. They said it may not be fair to impulse buyers. However, I believe that if big companies like Amazon and Facebook do it, society must have decided that it does not cross any ethical lines. The other point is that it will be difficult to make all of the B2B agreements. However, I believe that if a few companies do this and the others see the effectiveness of my product, they will put-forth the manpower to makes the deals happen.

Customer Avater

My product is intedened for business to business sales. So for this, I will focus on a business executive.

            He lives in Tampa, Fl and is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of his company. He believes hard work is the secret to success. He earned his undergraduate degree in business from the University of Florida and his MBA from the University of Chicago. He has a wife, two kids, and a golden retriever. On his free time (the rare times he has it), he enjoys going deep sea fishing, he finds it extremely relaxing. During the winter, he and his family go to their winter home in Colorado to go skiing. It is very difficult for him to balance his work and family life but he somehow manages to do it. He leases a black 2017 Mercedes, his kids always beg him to drive it but he thinks they will drive too recklessly. He is 45 and planning on an early retirement 10 years from now. Once he retires, he wants to sell his Tampa home and move to Boca Raton and by a 36” Yellowfin boat.

What do I have in common?

            We both studied at UF and both of us are business oriented. We both agree that hard work is essential to succeed. I think everything that we have in common is coincidence.

Reading Reflection #1

The book that I chose to read was "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance.

1.     I was surprised that he was fired from PayPal. It is very hard to believe that a man of that stature and importance had workers that went behind his back to get him fired from the company.

      i.         I admire Musk’s passion the most. It is unlike anything that I have ever seen before. The man was broke at one point because he used all of his money to help build the company SpaceX. It has become apparent that he will do everything possible to make his goal a success.

     ii.         What I least admire about musk is his side effect of his intense passion. For his projects, he wants everyone to work as hard and be just as obsessed as he is. This has led to him being a manager that many don’t like to work for (also why he was forced out of PayPal by his own employee’s). Even the Wall Street Journal noted that he likes to micro manage the tiniest details with everything Tesla related.

   iii.         I kind of touched on this earlier but yes, he has encountered both failure and adversity. He was fired from a company that he started by his own employee’s. He has had several other failures from high school all the way to current times.

2.     Musk has a never quit attitude, which I think is very admirable. I cannot imagine how horrible it must have felt when he was kicked from PayPal but he pushed on and created two of the most recognizable companies in America.

3.     I was not really confused about the writing itself but more so why he did certain things. I understand his intense desire to succeed but I don’t get why he is so brutal on his employees.

4.     The questions that I would ask musk would be what is he going to make his next major project and when he thinks the Hyperloop will come to fruition.

5.     I think that he has a harder work ethic than 99% of the world’s population. I believe that he thinks it’s essential to success and that it hard to find in this day and age. I also believe that hard work is necessary in order to succeed but not to the extent that he does. I believe that there should still be a work-life balance.