Growing My Social Capital

1. Domain Expert- UF Nutrition Major
• I contacted a nutrition major as my domain expert since she definitely would know more about nutritional facts for different foods than I would. In the domain of dietary restrictions, I believed that someone that was learning all about nutrition must give them a decent understanding of what these different diets/lifestyles often do to peoples bodies. I also thought this would be a good contact because when they graduate they could possibly refer clients to my business (if I were to open this bakery). I thought this would be a good future contact to have as we both went on to develop in our own fields. I've mentioned in previous posts that my bakery is more than just for people that have dietary restrictions, but for people that care about what they're putting into their bodies (including those people with dietary restrictions since they obviously are forced to care about what they're putting in their products). I just asked some basic questions about what the differences were between the three diets that I was focusing on was (gluten-free, sugar-free and vegan) and asked a little bit about any recommendations she might have for achieving these three dietary foods while also using the best quality ingredients. The student that I spoke to was very helpful and gladly told me some ways that I could make such different dietary foods without forgoing the quality of the food. In fact, it seemed like most of these diets force you to use only high-quality ingredients.
2. Market Expert- Chef Brookes
• I emailed a local chef from my hometown who owns a vegan restaurant and teaches vegan cooking classes. I deemed her a "market expert" as she already owns a shop somewhat similar to the one I've described. I emailed her and asked her how if she had any tips from being in the same industry that I told her my potential business was in. She replied very vaguely and didn't really give any insight. She asked me to be more specific but I honestly had no idea how to be more specific as I just wanted to know if there were any random tips that she had never thought of but had learned over the course of owning her business.
3. Supplier- Publix/Happy Healthy Treats
• For this one I wasn't really sure who I should contact, so I first called Publix to see if they had different ingredients that my type of bakery would need. I asked if they had key ingredients such as gluten flour and bananas (which often act as eggs in bakery goods for vegan food). They had a lot of products that I would need that I wasn't even aware that they had. I also decided to email a woman who has a tent in my hometowns winter-farmers market. Her tent sells vegan baked goods and I was lucky enough to meet her because my mom is a very frequent client (my mom is vegan). I'm still waiting for her response (and I'll update this when she replies), but if I remember correctly this past winter when I was talking to her she told me it's not very complicated and she uses simple ingredients that you can get from any grocery store. She said that this isn't a hard lifestyle like many people think it is.

Reflection: I was very happy to learn how possible opening this kind of bakery could be. All these different types of diets seem so foreign and mystical and as though they'd be hard to keep track of, but in reality all the ingredients are right under our noses and in fact require very little differentiation from our "normal" diets. Especially with these diets becoming more and more popular in today's society, the knowledge is really endless in lists of recipes online, as well as facts to attain these diets. 

Week 10 Reading Reflection

In the section on revenue, something the author stated surprised me. I had never even thought how revenue could be overstated; you sold this much at this cost, how could you have found a bigger number than what was true? But I had never even thought to take into accounts returned items or discounts. I especially always had thought of discounts as helping a company as it's advertising that draws clients that may not have normally been clients, but it completely makes sense how this could affect your true revenue amount.
Many parts of this chapter were a little confusing to me because I'm really bad at math and financial terms. Luckily the author did a decent job explaining many things, but it was almost an overload of information and by the end of the chapter I'm not sure if I really understood how to factor all of these different pieces together for a successful business. A lot of the parts that talked about taxes I didn't understand because I have very little experience in paying taxes so far in my life, so I didn't really understand what taxes were paid for (what things you had to pay taxes on/didn't have to pay taxes on).
Many parts of this chapter the author talked about how there were these different "projected costs." There were estimated taxes, projected sales, advertising costs, etc. How do you determine these numbers and how do you determine which things you should assume, or do you just make assumed costs for every single category? Another question that I was wondering throughout the chapter was how do you decide if advertising is worth it or how much advertising to use? It's hard to see the payoffs of advertisements, so are you just supposed to use surveys and hope customers will take the time do fill these out for you, or are there other methods to determine your best advertisement methods?
Being that this chapter was all about financials, I have no idea if the author was wrong about things or missed any part of the financial side of having a business since I've never had a business. It honestly seemed like he must've hit every single detail because of how many things the author kept listing off that I have no idea how one person (or a team of owners) could even maintain all of these actions. This chapter really made me realize how hard it must be to be a small business-owner where you don't really have the funds or space for a financial department and it falls on you.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

I was very happy to have very little negative feedback. The primary thing that many people commented to change was my use of filler work, like "um." I think I did a decent job on cutting back on these words this time. The only other consistent comment that I got on my last elevator pitch was to also discuss how I would pay for all of this. Obviously I couldn't go into too much detail in a one-minute video, but I did throw in a short little explanation on my thinking for this at the end. I really appreciated everyone's feedback on my last pitch and I definitely think it really improved this one (it definitely cut down on my time!), so thank you and I really hope to get even more great feedback on this one!