What's Your Secret Sauce?

1. My human capital
1. The first thing I think of under this list is my ability to constantly be multitasking. A lot of my friends can be busy, but if they try focusing on too much at one time, then they have a hard time and I’ve found that I function pretty well while nonstop multitasking. I like staying busy, so it kind of just ends up happening naturally. 
2. My networking skills. One of the most positive aspects of my life is the large net of friends that I have all over the country and work. As a kid I moved a lot and I still travel very frequently, so my friends come from all different backgrounds and places. I think this is part of what makes me the way I am though is because I do have so many different types of friends who are all loving and supportive so I’m able to learn about all different types of people and see the world differently than if just looking at it through my own personal view or experiences. 
3. I’m pretty crafty. In the conventional sense and the funny sense for this one. I enjoy all arts and craft projects, and this has taught me about the importance of seeing things for what it’s made up of. For example, it’s pretty obvious that a painting is cool, but I can look at a specific tiny bottle of paint and see how important that’s going to be in the long run for the finished product. 
4. Humor. I’m pretty sure most people genuinely enjoy laughing and to be entertained, but the part I like almost more than that is the actual making people laugh. For me, if I am able to better someone’s day and bring just a little bit of extra light to it, I feel better about myself knowing that I could make a difference because sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest impacts. 
5. My curiosity. Curiosity overarches into pretty much every aspect of my life and while the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” has been true a couple of times with me, most of the time it’s led to great new skills or discoveries. For example, it’s led to me not being afraid to rope swing across a giant river or making friends over something as simple as asking what their tattoos mean. I think a lot of people have questions that pop up throughout the day, ad they simply just ignore them and don’t say anything. I try not to be that was, and looking back for this assignment I realize just how much I actually question things and how my curiosity can lead me into radically different ways of thinking and acting sometimes. 
2. The interviews:
1. Tiffany- The thing I found the funniest and also most endearing about this interview was her mentions of “how I live life through movie quotes.” After hearing this interview, I realize that I really do make nonstop movie quotes and I’m glad to know that I can be entertaining and she can always count on me for that.
2. Alicia- I know Alicia from a photography class, so it kind of made sense here that she talked about my creativity. Even though, I still appreciate her nod to my willingness to always learn a new trick with the camera or printing process.
3. Jewelia- This is a friend I have that’s a few years younger than I am, so my relationship with her has always been a lot of me being supportive and trying to sort of mentor her through things. That’s why it was especially sweet to hear her say that I’m one of the most supportive people she knows and dedicated to helping those I care about. I’ve had some great friends in my life, so I just try and be as good of one as the new I have. 
4. Montana- I know Montana from art classes as well so she mentions my creativity and ability to do several things at once, but she also said that I make the people around me feel greatly at ease. The idea that I can just chat with people and bring them comfort is something I’m taking as an accomplishment because I do enjoy being so social with a lot of different people. 
5. Belle- As one of my longest friends, I’d say Belle knows me just about as good as anybody and I 100% consider her family. She talked a lot about my having “crazy ideas,” but not necessarily in a bad way. These ideas include feeding a hedgehog in middle school peanut butter pretzels because, hey why not, and it turned into something we’ll always fondly remember. Another thing she mentioned was my love of travel and t always try and see the world as what it can be instead of exactly what’s right in front of me, so I’m going to say that one goes with creativity too. 
3. Final Reflections- In a lot of these interviews my friends talked about me being fun-loving and creatively adventurous. I’d have to agree with this because I think I’m more on the “free spirit” end of the spectrum, so it’s also good to know that my friends think of me seriously too. Especially my friend Jewelia that I sort of mentor, just her acknowledgment of our relationship made me feel like I am actually making a difference in the peoples’ lives that I care about. I didn’t really talk so much about school and typical book smarts in my original assessment of myself, but that did come up a little in the interview section. I think I’m pretty real about the kind of person I am alone and the person I am with other people around, and that was something that I was glad to see reflected in these interviews. 

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

1. Interviews- My segment for this interview section fell into the sort of “suburban-type family with kids and the white picket fence” vibe. 
2. Alternate Evaluation- I kind of started out more general with the questioning here so as to just include all service/item purchases to see how they would weed things out. As far as services go, most people said that they would me more willing to subscribe to a service if it was highly recommended or if it was specialized to a need that was very particular to them. One example I got here was a busy mom using a grocery delivery service. 
3. How/Where do they buy? For this one, it kind of ranged all over the place, although I will say that online shopping was probably the most common. I did get a lot of local stores/markets too. As far as the how goes, one of the interviewees actually answered this question with “Basically I buy whatever’s worked in the past for me because it usually keeps on working.” 
4. Post-purchase evaluation- When my interviewees think back on their purchase, it’s usually considered a good purchase if whatever they bought gets a lot of use or more importantly, if it went over well with their family/pets. (That last particular point was about a tennis ball canon that was a hit both with dogs and children alike apparently.)
5. Summary of interviews and conclusions- Apart from what I’ve already said, I think the trademarking thing of this segment was kind of a lot about usage and avoiding flashy products just because they’re “cool.” These people in the segment are practical as far as their purchases go generally, and after some pointed questions, I realized that they might spend a little bit more money on a product that they really needed or just for extra convenience. Most of them don’t have the post-purchase buyer’s remorse because they tend to think through their purchase a bit more beforehand. And as far as services go, some people in this segment definitely have the “time is money/time is precious” mindset, so any service that aligns well with that way of thinking would probably be appealing. 

Halfway Reflection

1. A habit I've developed for this course is keeping a calendar in my planner and actually checking it. I've found that if I just wait for Canvas to pop up with the assignment notification it either doesn't, or it doesn't leave enough time for me to actually complete the assignments in addition to my other coursework.
2. A moment specifically in this class when I thought about giving up was involving the first elevator pitch. I had had a really long week and I was having technical difficulties with getting my video filmed and uploaded, and I almost decided to call it and give up rather than keep trying to figure out how to get it all to work properly. With Webster's second definition of "tenacious," I definitely feel like I developed a tenacious attitude with the elevator assignment alone, and I hope that the attitude continues to carry over.
3. Tips:

• To develop a tenacious mindset I would say practice good habits in your personal life, such as eating or sleeping well, because then once you're disciplined in that, I feel like it will be a lot easier to set a goal and go after it relentlessly. 
• Another tip to develop a tenacious mindset I'd say would be to take ideas or things that catch your eye randomly, and actually pursue the line of thinking to see what ideas it may lead to. For example, if you're riding around with friends and you're looking out the window and notice something going wrong in a particular at a restaurant or something, actually keep thinking about a way maybe to fix whatever went wrong. It'll train your thinking differently. 
• In order to foster skills that support tenacity, practice both thinking outside of the box and pitching ideas to close friends. I've found that if I've talked an idea over a little with people close to me, then I'm much more apt to be able to talk about things I normally wouldn't with strangers, which leads to just being more confident in general. 

Also, this was 100% me trying to figure out how to post the elevator pitch. I feel you, Patrick. 

Elevator Pitch No. 1

Hey guys!
Here's my link to my first elevator pitch with an intro to Project Pet Shelter, Hotel Rescue!
https://youtu.be/rjELpHaHY1c

Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

TABLE

Inside the boundary:	Outside the boundary:
Who is in- In this boundary are unadopted pets in the US, and animal shelters	Who is not- This boundary does not include private animal breeders or animals living is stores like Petland that breed/ adopt their own pets to sell
What the need is- The need is to have an alternate solution rather than euthanasia to deal with excess pets going through the animal shelter system	What the need is not- This need is not a pet adoption system, it is meant to be more of a temporary solution just to deal with a surplus of animals
Why the need exists- This need exists because there are so many stray animals, especially in large cities, that just live on the streets and end up getting rounded up by animal shelters with no other solution in sight, and then the shelters get way too full and must find a way, even if it’s undesirable, to deal with the extra animals	Alternative explanations- Some animals could be terminally ill, or combative to the point where they are harming other animals and humans, and they’re influencing a part of the percentage makeup of animals euthanized in the US

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEWS

For my interviews, it was actually kind of hard to find people outside the scope of the unmet need at first. I think I talked to close to a dozen people before I could finally get 5 that actually qualified. One of the people I talked to works at the Petland in Pensacola, Florida, and even though they are a pet company, they still wouldn’t fall into a category of people who would benefit from my idea because they don’t really deal with strays too much. I learned that they often have private breeders supply the pets for their stores. Another person I talked to is my roommate, and she didn’t fall in the category of people who would benefit either. She explained that while she thought it was a big issue that needed dealing with, she would not personally like to be in one of the pet hotels because she thinks it would distract her and get her too attached to a pet that in the end, she could not adopt for her to keep. This got me to talking with some of my other interviewees about the “what” part of this assignment. The need that I identified was to find an alternate solution for animal shelters to place their extra animals that did not involve euthanasia. In the interviews, I was reminded that this does not include finding homes or permanent places for the extra animals. And while it may make sense to try and go that route, I feel like that is a completely different problem with a whole other set of solutions. Finally, I came to realize that while the outsiders saw merit to my solution. their needs didn’t quite align with the solution. More specifically, some of them just still would not be able to easily be a part of the hotel type program, but they may be able to be part of helping the animals in general in other ways such as blanket donations. Overall the interviews got me to stop and think a lot more about just how my solution would work logistically and that it still may be decently difficult to find a large enough group to make it work. 

Solving the Problem

The selected problem/opportunity I’m dealing with here involves the issue of pet euthanasia in American animal shelters. After the last exercise, I did some more researching into the statistics of how often euthanasia actually happens in animal shelters. One of the biggest problems I ran into was because shelters aren’t required by law to record all numbers of animals that come through their system. However, i did find out that in 1997, 64% of total animals that went into shelters were euthanized and as recently as 2008, it’s estimated that around 3.7 million animals in shelters were put down over the course of the year. I think that we can all agree that this is a problem that needs to have a better solution, which is where my idea comes in. My solution to this is more of a service than a product, and it has to do with an alternate way of pet fostering. For those of you that don’t know, pet fostering is something many shelters offer where you can become a sort of foster parent to a pet or pets for a set amount of time. The animal comes to live at you house perhaps while its owner is doing an overseas tour with the military, while waiting to be adopted into a forever home, or a variety of other situations. But what if you want to foster on a shorter scale, or you can’t have the actual animal kept at where you live? This is where my idea comes in. It’s a sort of foster homing meets Hotel for Dogs-type idea. I propose a service that teams up local motels with overcrowded animal shelters. Each motel room would be assigned a pet that lives there semi-permanently, and in exchange for taking care of the pet, the room’s fee would be paid for for as many days/nights you decided to stay and take care of the animal. For each room that did have an animal, profits for the hotel would come from sponsorships and donations. Ideally, some big-name sponsors like Petsmart for example, would be brought in to have a more permanent stream of income. This arrangement would also work for out-of-towners with a love for animals simply looking of a place to stay, or college students who miss their own pets at home who want to spend some quality time with an animal in need. With this service, the animals would have a place of their own that they’re familiar with, and the motels would have an increased amount of customers. Eventually, this could maybe even turn into a chain of new motels if the idea catches on and works!

Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

1. I’d like to pursue an opportunity within animal shelters in some states having to deal with their euthanasia policy. 
2. I want to try and find a way to cut back on shelters that still have euthanasia policies, or maybe find an alternate solution for overflow pets. 
1. The who: Animal shelters in the United States.
2. The what: With many shelter, as they get too full, they are forced to put down some of their stray animals to make room for more. 
3. The why: Many shelters in big cities like Chicago fill up quickly, and there’s not technically a national law that says shelters have to report the number of found animals as well as those put down or re-homed.
3. I believe there’s an opportunity here simply because there has got to be a better solution that putting down so many animals due to lack of space or resources. I’ve seen many nonprofit organizations tackle issues like not having clean water or schools for some third-world countries, so I believe there’s a way that the animal shelter issue could be solved. As far as the “who” for this, yes, most animal shelters either deal with this issue in their own shelters, or they are trying to prevent neighboring shelters from having to resort to such extreme measures. For testing the what, I kind of mentioned this before when I said that if a shelter doesn’t specifically have this problem themselves, then they know of other shelters nearby that do, so in that effect it kind of affects them all. It happens with dogs and cats alike also, so there’s not a certain bias there to worry about. For the whys, most people that I talked to had the same basic why: because killing animals is something that needs to change and no one wants to admit that it happens as often as it does. A few other whys in the range that I got were from past shelter employees who just hated dealing with the process because it was so sad, and also people that had a pet go missing and were so worried it might end up getting euthanized at a shelter before they could find it. 
4. Interviews- After my five interviews, I;m happy with the opportunity I selected. From the responses I got, people do realize that this is an issue that needs fixing, most people just aren’t sure how to go about it. In all honestly, I understand why they would think that because after looking at some statistics, there are millions of animals that are put down on a yearly basis. However, a few of the people I interviewed made the point that even if one shelter makes the change, there could be a slow spreading effect which could end up helping lots of animals. 
5. Given my interviews, I now know a little bit more about animal fostering, which I was kind of oblivious to before. Some shelters (including the Alachua county one) I feel like this could be a good part of a solution to explore, perhaps with an extended network of animal fostering. Overall, the interviews gave me more of a feel on the state level of animal shelters, because all of the people I spoke with only really knew about Florida, so branching off to other states could be something to expand to later on. 

Identifying Opportunities in Economic and Regulatory Trends

ECONOMIC TRENDS:

1. Aftermath of natural disasters promoting more activity in certain areas for the first half of the year. PART A- Since hurricane season is right around the corner and we’re already feeling the effects of it, I started coming across articles from the first of the year having to do with a surge in relief and rebuilding efforts from both Hurricanes Irma and Harvey from last year in Florida and Texas. PART B- I think an opportunity exists here because we still aren’t even a year removed from all the damage the hurricanes caused, and a lot of places just didn’t have the means to start rebuilding quickly. Reversing the damage is still very much a work in progress, so I believe there’s absolutely an existing opportunity. PART C- I feel like for this, the customer with the opportunity would be people displaced in last year’s hurricanes or maybe construction companies in those areas still feeling the effects of the damage. PART D- This opportunity is easy to exploit because until the area is 100% rebuilt from the storms, work will still need to be done.        I saw this opportunity because my dad is military and is being stationed in Hawaii next month, so I’ve been a little obsessive about monitoring natural disasters, like the volcano situation in Hawaii currently. In my research, I’ve come across several articles about how parts of the country are still rebuilding from last year, and I have an uncle who works with a contracting company focused in natural disasters, so it’s kind of just a thing that’s on my radar. 
2. Inflation starting in gas prices across the country. PART A- I found this opportunity online after a search of trends in gas prices over the last 6 months. PART B- I believe opportunities exist here because a few years ago when was was $4+ per gallon, tons of people were looking into ways to get around or deal with the inflated pricing. PART C- I think the most likely customer for this would be commuters or transportation companies like Uber or Lyft. PART D- This opportunity would probably be easy to exploit simply because I live in a college town which always has people going places, and even with gas prices increasing slightly, people still have to commute to and from work so the demand will remain constant for the gas itself.      I saw this opportunity because I like to travel a lot, and I’ve recently been on several long road trips. I drive a pretty gas-efficient car, but a lot of my friends and family don’t and while I’ve noticed that it has steadily been costing more to fill up my car, they have to pay significantly more and I’ve been hearing about it frequently. 

REGULATORY CHANGES:

1. Regulatory changes for EMS from Health and Human Services about their reporting equipment and policies. PART A- I found this on an online medical journal that just publishes a lot of news updates about little changes in the field. PART B- I think that an opportunity exists here because the medical field is always changing, and the changes they make are to improve the quality and speed of care given to people, and I believe that’s always something to work towards. PART C- The ideal customer for this opportunity would be hospitals and emergency medical providers/workers. PART D- I think this would be a semi-easy opportunity to exploit. Easy because as long as there are people they’ll need to be taken care of medically, but hard because a lot of the time, medical updates or opportunities take a lot of time and effort to get through regulations and red tape.       I saw this opportunity in particular because I’m currently training to be an emergency medical responder. My head instructor is all about staying up to date with what’s going on in the field both locally and in general, so I’ve been looking into a lot more regulatory things that I never paid much attention to before I started my training. 
2. Health care providers in Hawaii are now allowed to refuse certain kinds of health insurance they previously weren’t allowed to. PART A- I found this on an information page about differences in Hawaiian living than the mainland US. PART B- An opportunity could exist here because now with some insurance policies not being accepted, there will be people looking to make ends meet with their healthcare. PART C- The customer for this opportunity would be probably lower-income hospital clients with less-than-ideal healthcare plans. PART D- This one will probably be pretty hard to exploit, because most insurance companies and/or hospitals don’t budge at all as far as their coverage is concerned, even if it causes some problems in the lives of people they service.        I saw this opportunity because as previously mentioned earlier in this post, my immediate family is in the process of moving to Hawaii so lately if I have some free time, I spend a little of it just looking up how things are ran differently on the islands than they are here. Also, my plan for after college is to go into the medical field and since there’s been so much controversy in recent years about health insurance, I figure it would be helpful to stay up to date and knowledgeable about the topic.