Assignment 19A Idea Napkin No. 2

Idea Napkin No. 2

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

• My name is Stephanie Frechette and I am attending UF Online as a Business of Administration major with a minor in Educational Studies.  One of my special gifts is working with special needs individuals.  I currently work with elementary age students with autism.  I find these special children to be amazing and I am fascinated by what they teach me every day.  I have managed a business with my husband in the past and I enjoy business so here I am, in my 50's, back in school and excited to learn more about the world of business.  I also think I have a gift for seeing things through to the finish.  I enjoy other people and I truly feel passionate about making a meaningful difference in whatever I attempt in life.  My aspirations are to be the best wife, mom, citizen, and human being I can be.  As it relates to my next 30 years, I am aspiring to reinvent myself. If I were to start this business, it would certainly be a huge change from the life I live now.  It would still enable me to help people but in a different way. 

• I think something that would benefit me in my business venture that I received as feedback is that I am compassionate and communicate well with people.  This could certainly help me in my business in gaining and retaining customers. I have also learned that through the removal process customers experience some discomfort and would need several treatments so compassion and a gentle, caring attitude is crucial to helping customers through the tattoo removal process. Another thing I learned from my interviews is that I can be relentless which can be both positive and negative, positive because I have a "don't quit" attitude but I also need to know when to cut my losses. 

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

• The service I am offering to individuals is a method of removing unwanted tattoos. The unmet need for the individual is to find a way to remove a tattoo that they regret and do not want to have it any longer.  There may be other unmet needs as well. For example, an individual may want to get a job that does not permit tattoos that are visible.

• The product/service offering is the same but what I have learned from feedback in previous assignments is that I need to get even more specific with my the unmet need, meaning its not enough to have tattoo regret. The customer must have a strong desire to have it removed, the funds to have it removed, and a lot of patience because it takes several treatments to remove the tattoo ink.

Revenue Driver #1  Service	Revenue Driver #2  Product
Laser Tattoo Removal Treatment	Skin Care Products

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

• I am offering a solution to individuals with tattoos who wish to have them removed.    Those individuals who would want to remove their unwanted tattoos. I believe the market would include more women than men and I would be targeting people who are over the age of 30. They would most likely have more disposable income and their attitudes about the way they look, specifically their skin, would be a priority. 

• Based upon feedback I am narrowing my market. More specifically, I would be targeting women between the ages of 34-55. These women may have already had children or they have children and their tattoo has being increasingly bothersome to them and they may be at a point in their lives where they are embarrassed to have their tattoos.  They would be more likely to have higher household incomes as the removal process is not inexpensive. Something that would absolutely be necessary that I would need to acquire is experience.  This type of business requires certified professionals to administer laser treatments. and I would need to have this or hire someone who had the certification.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

• The individual who who cares about his/her skin and has tattoo(s) that are problematic, meaning for that person, it has become a sensitive issue and he/she would be willing to spend the money to have unwanted tattoos removed. I believe customers would pay for my service because it is important to them and they can afford it. I also believe if I offer a product along with the service it would be more appealing to the customer.

• This question was changed only slightly regarding the number of treatments. With laser removal it requires on average, 8-10 treatments to remove unwanted tattoos depending on size and color of ink.  I think if my customer is truly committed to having her tattoo removed  my service would be extremely valuable especially since there are no good alternatives to remove tattoos.

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

• I am a motivated self-starter with a lot of grit and determination. I have been part of a start up before and know the work that is involved with owning my own business.  Apart from my own human capital, I do not know that I have a "secret sauce" yet.  I am still developing this opportunity but I know that I will spend a lot of time researching to help gain competitive advantage in this industry.

• During the feedback process, I learned that others think I have perseverance and I believe this could be a huge benefit  when starting a new business because starting a business is difficult and one must be willing to persevere through challenges.  I also learned that I have a welcoming/inviting personality which could enhance my business in attracting customers. With that said, based on what I have learned about human capital in this class, I do not really possess anything that NOBODY else has.

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 

• I still believe that out of the five elements listed, four of them fit together with the my core competencies, the service offering and products that I have to offer, to whom I am offering the solution and why the customer would want to buy.  Although, the competitive advantage has not been established, I do feel there could be an advantage because there are barriers to entry in this market with respect to start up capital.  If I could use my social networking to help secure seed money for my business perhaps that would give me an advantage.  At this point, I know this is a weak point in my business concept.

• The feedback I have been getting during this process leads me to believe that with a narrow market segment for customers my service is valuable to those customers.  I  think the competitive advantage may be in the type of laser treatment because that would make the service more rare and inimitable.  There are also few substitutes in this market.

Feedback Memo:

The first key take away from this exercise is that I learned that my human capital does not give me a real competitive advantage.  While the characteristics, personality traits and skill sets I possess are important to have when starting a new business they do not set me apart from a lot of other people who have the same human capital.

Another take away is that I needed to narrow the segment of the market to whom I wish to offer my tattoo removal service.  I believe the solution is valuable in so far as the the market segment has the need.  Base on my research over the last two months, I believe there are a lot of women between the age of 34-55 who have tattoo regret and want to have them removed.  I incorporated more specifics to my market segment and to the unmet need in that market.

Based on the feedback I have received, I added perseverance to my list of human capital which is something I know will be essential in starting my new business.  I also learned that while I am tenacious and relentless I must balance that attribute and monitor when to let go of something that may not be in my best interest.  This could prove to be very important in business because I need to be able to know how to make adjustments when something may not be working.  For instance, maybe I do not have the best laser or maybe I need to hire a different laser technician if they were not as experienced as I thought they were.

Most importantly, I really had to think about my human capital and apply the concept of the VRIN framework when evaluating my skills, personality and attributes that make me different. It has helped me to understand that it takes much more than my human capital to make my business opportunity successful. I incorporated more specifics to my market segment and to the unmet need in that market.