IA: 03 Personal Business Plan

Personal Business Plan
My mission is to create a positive change in my life through the schooling I will receive at college. Enabling myself to become a professional in the workforce, as well as, giving myself the ability to become successful, and support myself in the future.

Business Environment

I will be competing in the job industry for “Company Me.” I will be making myself into a product, to which I will sell to potential job marketers. The job industry as a whole has made a significant increase over the past couple years. The unemployment rate is at its lowest percentage sine 2000. However, dependent on the industry one would want to go into, the availability of the job market will differ. There are many forces that influence supply and demand on the job industry as a whole. The supply side of the market describes how much a business professional can supply to their company and/or their buyers. It’s mainly keeping up with the demand spikes and shortages. In other words, keeping the right ratio. Looking at the Demand side, “It falls to the business owner to find the pricing sweet spot that will capture as much of a profit as possible without causing demand to retract” (How Supply and Demand Impacts Decisions in Business).   

            For my product, I will be competing in the business management/ mathematics field. From the source NACE Web, it has projected Business Administration/ Management to be a top paying field, circling around the $80,000 range (Projected Top-Paid Business Bachelor’s, Master’s Grads). Focusing more on a specific job title, I would like my product to be sold to a company looking for Actuary Scientists, specializing in a company’s data. According to O*NET, Actuaries have a great outlook for the upcoming years. Their median wage in 2016 was $100,610 a year, which is roughly $48.37 an hour (15-2011.00 – Actuaries).

Entrepreneurship and Strategy

As the CEO of the startup Company Me, I do envision some challenges ahead, all of which relate to promoting and selling the product. These challenges include, staying loyal to the accusations made about the product, demonstrating the proper techniques promised by the product, and efficiently selling the product to potential buyers. Some potential strategies I would consider to start out as an “entrepreneur” include taking risks, focus on the goal of making money, and have long term goal for success.

Management
            As the General Manager of Company Me, it is very important to be able to plan, organize, direct, and control the company. For planning, I would make sure to set achievable goals for the company to follow. Organizing relates to keeping the business intact and carrying out its specific plans. Directing entails motivating other employees to keep tem focused and on task. And finally, controlling relates to comparing the actual and expected behavior of the employees and take corrective action when necessary.

            To manage Employee Me, I would make sure she is on task and doing her proper job description at work. Also, I believe time-management skills are very important to have in an employee. To keep myself motivated, I will remember the hierarchy-of-needs proposed by Abraham Maslow. I do believe this is a very effective theory that does work.  Working with others as well is very important to keep yourself motivated. Taking a purposeful break to communicate with coworkers, or even your boss, is effective as well. Also, keeping myself motivated is important because I want to work my way to the top of my industry. So, staring at the “bottom of the ladder” and working my way to the top, is what I intend on doing. To conclude, staying motivated will help me reach my long term goals in the company (Collins, K).

In reading Manage Oneself by Peter Drucker, it taught me to learn my personal strengths, take those, and properly perform them at my job. In addition, I liked this quote from the book because it made me really start thinking and analyze the decisions I make, “Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. I have been practicing this method for 15 to 20 years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised” (Drucker, P.F.).

Also, I read How to Manage our Career by Kevin Granville for this assignment. I learned then basic key factors to be successful in your career. Things such as networking down to assessing yourself. Networking is a very important when you yourself are the product. This article discussed the many different fronts in which someone could network. From there, it goes on to talk about how you need to stay informed when looking for a job and how to keep in touch with the company. To conclude, I thought this quote was a good note to think about and always keep in the back of my mind, “Your career belongs to you alone, to nurture, steer, imagine and reimagine. No one else can do it for you” (Granville, K.).   

Marketing

As the CMO of Company Me, I plan to promote my product in a very simple way.  Product Me will have a well-executed resume with most, if not all, the requirements needed for the customer. Having experience and the proper qualifications, I believe will sell the product the best. My potential customers for this business include companies that are looking for employees in data analytics and who have a slight background in business.

            The Four P’s in the marketing world include product, price, promotion, and place, each of which play a key role. My first P (product), will be myself, making sure I have all the qualifications needed to go into the business management/ mathematics field. Also, I believe it is important to make myself “unique” to the field by having different qualifications than someone else I am competing against. The second P (price), will mostly be centered around the company I would be bought buy. I will not set my price standards too high for myself, so a company will not accept me, or I will not set my prices standards to low, because I would be selling myself short. The third P (promotion), discusses how I could potentially promote myself to future employers. Hence, having a good resume and job experience is important. Adding the digital marketing skills into this, online job websites are very useful. Websites such as LinkedIn and Indeed are two good examples. I plan on filling out these two websites to properly promote and sell my product. Finally, the last P (place), defines the ideal location to sell the product. As stated before, the ideal location to sell my product would be in a large company, looking for someone who specializes in data analytics.

            I would design and develop Product Me to attract the most customers by making sure my product is good at what it says it does. Meaning, everything on my resume will be accurate and will work at its fullest potential.

Accounting and Finance

Balance Sheet for Company Me

           

I plan to manage my own investments by tracking all of them out on an Excel worksheet. Making a cash flow statement and a balance sheet for my investments, are a couple ways to track the records of my investments. Each of these sheets will help me stay organized, and give a detailed breakdown of all my assets, liabilities, and so on.

            As CFO, I would create a financial plan for Company Me by first setting financial goals for the company and learning/tracking where all the money goes.  Tracking the company’s money is very important from a financial stand point, to make sure the company is staying in budget and doesn’t have unrecorded expenses. Every company wants to succeed to its fullest potential, and by setting financial goals this can be possible. Small manageable goals throughout the years are all it takes to be successful. From here, it’s all preparing for the future and unexpected expenses. Finding a way to save money is a critical point in a company, as well as, being prepared for expected incidents that occur.  All of which, this is how I will create a financial plan for the company.

Information Systems and Operations
            There are definitely certain tools and analytics that could be us to further optimize the productivity and operational efficiency in my company. Using the tool Asana, I believe is one way to help the company. I have done some research on this tool for Company Me, and it is mainly a collaboration tool. Asana is used to create specific tasks for team members, cancelling out the emailing process. Asana can categorize the tasks and keep track or related conversation in the shared project folder (Dholakiya, P).

            In addition, using Google Analytics I believe is the simplest and easiest analytic program that gives efficient results. Google Analytics is an analytical tool used to track and report the website traffic. Being able to track sales, lead generation, viewing on a specific page, or downloading a particular file can be very beneficial. All of this resources are important data for a company that I could potentially be working with as an actuary (Google Analytics).

Works Cited

15-2011.00 - Actuaries. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-2011.00.

Collins, K. (2014). Exploring Business. Washington, D.C: Flat World Knowledge, Inc.

Dholakiya, P. (2015, March 10). 4 Tools to Help Optimize Your Company's Culture of Collaboration. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243743

Drucker, P. F. (2008, January 7). Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review Press.

Google Analytics. (2018, April 10). Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics

Granville, K. How to Manage Your Career. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/manage-your-career?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=pay&smvar=guides.

How Supply and Demand Impacts Decisions in Business. Retrieved March 21, 2018, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/supply-demand-impacts-decisions-business-23316.html.

Projected Top-Paid Business Bachelor’s, Master’s Grads. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from http://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/projected-top-paid-business-bachelors-masters-grads/.