New Venture Creation - a Guide to Entrepreneurship - Essay Example

Business Reflection Report about Food Truck Reflective Learning Essay: Developing New Venture for an Entrepreneur Introduction: In the efforts of trying to venture into any kind of entrepreneurial business, it is important to put the principles of reflection into consideration (OGUNYEMI, J. 2011, pp 13). Reflection for either a new or an already established entrepreneur is of essence because one is able to review the problems as well as the factors that led to the success of a particular entrepreneurial venture (MAKLER, H., MARTINELLI, A., & SMELSER, N., 2000, pp 53). With this information, an entrepreneur can be able to make informed decisions in regard to his/her business. For this particular venture, reflection on an established similar entrepreneurial venture can play a major role towards the development of a successful new venture in the following ways: It will provide an insight for the factors that should be given more attention to ensure the success of the business, as well as those activities that should be avoided to prevent the business from going through a series of losses (BERKERY, D., 2008, pp 16.. It will also help in the estimation of resources that will be required during the development of the new venture. Reflection will also enable the enhancement of knowledge for the new entrepreneurs in the restaurant business( BARON, R., 2012, pp 29). Through interviewing the entrepreneur of an already successful restaurant business, a new entrepreneur can be able to get additional information that might be useful during the new venture development. Those are some of the reasons why it is important to include the aspect of reflection during the process of developing a new business venture. These reasons are applicable to all business ventures. So the principles of reflection should be adhered to by all entrepreneurs for any business venture to be successful. The Entrepreneurial Journey: During the process of developing a Food Truck, our group chose to use the Tullee Food Truck as the business model. First of all, we had to carry out an interview with the owner (Glen Watson) of the Tullee’ Food Truck. There were some information that we needed to gather from the interview. Tullee’ Food Restaurant is a Caribbean Restaurant that came into existence in 2009. It provides all café services, alongside hot food and dining services. The business faced many issues during the start of the business. They include: The high cost of starting the food truck (HISRICH, R., & PETERS, M., 2002, pp 30).. Just like any other business, setting up the business required a relatively high amount of capital. Acquiring the capital was a major challenge. The owner had his own savings, but it was not enough. He had to approach a bank where he was given the rest of the amount that he required, though he had to pay back with an additional interest on top of what he had been lend by the bank. The second challenge is the employee wages. The owner could not operate the business alone. He had to employ people with whom he would be working with. He employed a small group of people to start off with, and then after the business had started picking up, he was able to add a few more employees. The business had to run under legal terms (CASSON, M., 2000, pp 23). This meant that the owner had to acquire licenses and permits. Possessing them is costly. The owner therefore had to set aside some additional cost to cater for the acquisition of the licenses and permits. The business was prone to experience low sales for the sometime just after its introduction to the market. This means that the business will undergo some series of losses before it stabilizes and it becomes popular to the people. So during this period, the owner had to budget wisely for any purchases to be made. Another issue is the supplier costs. The food truck required to be supplied with food stuff and products. All this needed money. So the owner had to put this cost in his budget. It was also a problem for him to get a good supplier who would deliver the products at a relatively affordable cost (TIMMONS, J., SPINELLI, S., & ZACHARAKIS, A., 2004, pp 41). The last major challenge was the cost of the food truck service. The truck is the main part of the business and it had to be purchased for the business to start operating. The cost needed to buy the truck was high, but it was a necessity. Despite of all these challenges, the owner was able to set up the food truck business and currently, it is making a lot of profits from their daily sales. The business gets its revenue from the business currently, but it is looking forward to have revenue streaming from the food truck partying, social media, retail merchandise, and the sell advertisement. Before setting up the Tullee’ Food Truck, Glen Watson had gone through catering school. He came up with the idea to start the business soon after he was though with his studies. He also made up his mind to set up the business because he had studied the environment, and he thought it to be favorable. He thought it to be a perfect business opportunity and so he founded the business (GREGORIOU, G., KOOLI, M., & KRÄUSSL, R., 2007, pp 59). After undergoing the interview process with Glen, we were able to gather the factors that were major contributor towards the success of the Tullee Food Truck business. They include: The contribution of time, effort, and money towards the new business. This was a very bold step that Glen took. Investing a big percentage of your savings in a new business that you are not sure whether it will succeed or not is a big risk. The risk becomes even bigger when the business becomes your only source of income. His passion towards the business was also another contributing factor towards the success of his business. For any company to be successful, the owner has to be passionate about it. When one is fervent about what he/she does, then it means that the owner will be dedicated towards the success of the business Another factor is discipline. Most of the businesses that are started come to an immediate end after running for a few months simply because the owner lacks discipline. Because it is their own business, they tend to come to the business late or not report to their business at all at times. Without discipline, it becomes hard for a particular business to succeed. Glen knew the importance of discipline and therefore he incorporated it to his business and that is why his business has been able to succeed. The owner wants to introduce social media like facebook and twitter to able to assess the social as well as the economic impacts of the business. It is through these sites that the owner is able to interact with his customers and be able to get their views on the services that are being offered. The use of social media is effectual in that it is instant. If there are any problems being experienced by the customers, they are able to air them out to the owner immediately through these sites, and the issues get to be sorted out immediately. This enables the customer to be able to keep his regular customers, as well as attract other customers. In working with the owner of the Tullee’ Food Truck, we chose to go with innovative theory of entrepreneurship. According to this theory, originality and creativity coupled up with the knowledge one has in the particular line of business that he/she want to venture is the perfect recipe for a successful business. In accordance to this theory, our group had to acquire all the relevant information that pertains to the food truck business from the owner of the Tullee’ Food Truck and complement that knowledge with creativity from each member of the group. This is the only way to ensure that the business is able to compete gain the competitive edge that it requires to be able to compete in the market (GINSBERG, A., 2010, pp 31). On top of that, the business will be assured to making a lot of profits. Creativity and innovation in a new business venture is essential because it the only way to ensure that the business brings something new in the market, as opposed to developing a business that is presents nothing unique. So the first thing during this process of developing a new venture is to ensure that the business will provide to the customers some services that are unique as compared to other similar business around (SCHINE, G., 2003, pp 14). The following attributes are important before even starting the development of the new venture: First of all, the strengths as well as the weaknesses of every member of the team should be known to everybody in the group. This will help to ensure that all the group members operate in unison. Knowing the strengths of each one in the group will ensure that each member is given a task that they can tackle comfortably. Evaluation of the risks that are mostly likely to be encountered. A risk assessment is important because it will help in pointing out all the potential risks that could be faced during the process. This will enable the development of counter measures for each risk (CRANE, F., 2010, pp 23). If the event that any of the assessed risks creeps in during the development process, then it becomes easier to be able to deal with the risk before it causes havoc. Risk assessment also helps in minimizing the occurrence of a risk business (TIMMONS, J., SMOLLEN, L., & DINGEE, A., 2005, pp 37). Perceived risk is divided into four major categories according to Stone R. (1993) (Table 5). The groups include: 1. Financial It is a fact that all entrepreneurial startups require a significant amount of capital to be setup. With this in mind, our group had to come up with a stratagem that will ensure the cost needed to start up the food truck business is as low as possible. We had to ensure that only the necessary requirements are budgeted for, while those that we can do without are set aside until when the business is able to finance for them. 2. Time Time is another risky factor. This is because as students we have to strike a balance between our school work and the task. The task of setting up a new endeavor requires a considerable amount of time to be invested into it and as students we need enough time to attend to our school tasks too. Given the situation, it becomes important to learn how to allocate time for the two important tasks. This is healthy because a good entrepreneur has to know how to manage his/her own time well. 3. Performance In relation to performance, the risk of engaging in a new venture could be reflected in the marks awarded in an assignment. When we as a group fail in a given assignment in regards to the task, then this could clearly imply that there is a great probability that we might fail in the venture of the food truck. So the performance in a given assignment is directly related to the success or fail of developing an entrepreneurial idea. In regards to our task, we as a group have to take all our assignments seriously so that it would be easier to develop a successful food truck business. 4. Social As upcoming entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to deal with rejection since it is normal in the field of entrepreneurship. Especially with a new venture, experiencing rejection from the society is very common. We had to learn how to use the rejection as a stepping stone and use criticism from people to better the business. It is through some of these criticisms that a business grows. Most of the people lack the patience to gone on with a business that has a potential to grow simply because they faced many challenges when entering the market. We have to learn the art of patience, which is a very important virtue when it comes to entrepreneurship. The four groups of risks are very common and are usually faced by all the people engaging in the field of entrepreneurship. They are supposed to be taken as learning tools to be able to become a successful entrepreneur as well have a successful business. Evaluation of the market standards. This is a crucial aspect because it ensures that the new venture to be developed meets the market standards. Without this, then the business will end up being totally irrelevant when it is introduced to the market. It will be like those businesses that are run for a short period of time, then it shuts down because it is incurring more loses as compared to profits (SKRZESZEWSKI, S., 2006, pp 25). In this context, the group has to make sure the business goals are in line with the market standards. In the same time, the group members have to ensure that they are constantly informed of the market standards, because they keep on changing according to technology. The process of developing the new food truck business will go through a series of stages or phases. The phases will each be allocated a time slot according to the complexity in order to be able to estimate the time that will be required to develop the business. It is good to work with a schedule because it will ensure that the issue of time wastage is minimized (SILVER, A., 2002, pp 42). A schedule also facilitates a systematic flow of activities as opposed to mixing up activities which may lead to confusion during the process. The phases are follows: Identifying the requirements of the customers in regards to the food truck business. This involves finding out the type of services that most customers expect from the food truck. This activity is gives a clear picture of the services that are popular when it comes to the food truck business. The second step will be to analyze each and service. Relate the service to the business and analyze how profits can be made out of each service when implemented. The next phase is strategizing how to implement the chosen services. Each service is unique from the other and therefore one needs to carefully plan how to implement each one of them. A blueprint of the business is also drawn here to give a rough idea of how it ought to look like once it has been developed. The next phase is the development of the actual business. This will involve buying the truck that will be used. It also involves selecting the suppliers who are going to supply the needed products as well as food stuff. Licenses and permits also have to be acquired. The different services are then implemented into the business to ensure that it becomes complete and ready to be launched into the market. The group members are the ones who are going to work in the food truck as the business starts, then after the business has become stable enough, we can employ other people (BLOOM, P., 2012, pp 23). With the group members working in the food truck, the cost that could be set aside to cater for the wages of employees will be used to develop the business. The final phase is the launch of the business into the market. The business now starts to be operational. As much as it has been launched, it can be subjected to constant modifications to ensure that it delivers services efficiently to the customers. Conclusion Going through this whole practice has made us as a group to embrace the whole entrepreneurship concept. We have been able to acquire the relevant knowledge in regards to the challenges as well as the benefits of engaging in entrepreneurship. Through the task we as a group have also been able to get an in-depth understanding of entrepreneurship (DIETZ, U., KARCHER, E., DANNENMANN, M., & LINDBERG, S., 2010, pp 46). The experience has also contributed into changing us to become more open minded to the opportunities that are at our disposal. It has enabled us to be able to take up tasks that might appear to be challenging (HISRICH, R., & PETERS, P., 2000, pp 29). When it comes to setting up our own businesses, we will be able to know what factors to consider and what not avoid (KERSEY, H., 2003, pp 21). In addition to that, we will be able to venture into any field of business that might be profitable no matter how risky the business might appear to be. Entrepreneurship is about the outcome in the future as opposed to the current challenges that one is bound to face (BRIDGE, R., 2010, pp 26). Though going interacting with Glen Watson, we were able to gather a lot of important information. we were able to know how to plan for a business even before you start actually developing it( OAKEY, R., 2010, pp 11). We also learned the art of budgeting for a business so as to avoid overspending. We were also able to learn how to plan for a business even with not so much startup capital. We were also able to learn the art of discipline when it comes to the management of your own business. The experience also impacted with resource management skills. For example, we were able to know how to manage our time well. We were able to create a balance between the time we will utilize in our school work and the time we would use to accomplish our task. For any entrepreneur to emerge successful in the field of entrepreneurship, the skill of resource management comes in handy. This was therefore a learning process for us, and when it comes to starting our own business, proper management will not be an issue (KURTZMAN, J., & RIFKIN, G., 2005, pp 16). The other most important aspect of entrepreneurship that we were able to learn is the art of decision making. It is important for an entrepreneur to be able to make wise decisions for the business to be able to grow and make profits. Sometime it becomes hard to make some decisions, but for the sake of the success of the business it becomes important to take the most convenient decision. This is the most challenging part of entrepreneurship, but an entrepreneur has to learn the art of making proper decisions for the business. The business should come first, and then other personal factors will follow (KAO, W., KAO, K., & KAO, R., 2002, pp15). Entrepreneurship is a challenging field of venture, but when one is dedicated to it, and then it becomes an interesting field. With a positive attitude, patience, passion, creativity, and knowledge any person can qualify to become a successful entrepreneur in any field of choice. Just like any field, one has to dedicate time, effort, as well as capital towards its growth. The entrepreneur also has to ensure that he/she is well informed about the market so that the business can remain relevant to the market (SAMLI, A. C., 2009, pp 13). A good relationship between customers and suppliers is also essential to the success of any business. The two are a major part of any business and therefore the entrepreneur should ensure that he/she is capable of creating and maintaining a good rapport with them (MARTIN, C., 2002, pp 27). An entrepreneur should also incorporate the use of social networks in the business to facilitate a constant interaction between him/her and the customers (LUSSIER, N, CORMAN, J, & KIMBALL, C, 2014, pp 39). The last most important aspect of entrepreneurship is associating oneself with those individuals that have become successful in the field that one wants to venture. It is through this association that one will be able to get ideas that will enable the growth of the business. The association will also enable the person to identify the possible opportunities in the market and pursue them (MARTIN, C., 2002, pp 25). The individual will also be able to be aware of the risks that he/she can take up that will lead to major profits in the future, and those risks to avoid at all costs. Basically, associating oneself with the already established entrepreneurs in the specific line of interest will enable a new entrepreneur to come up with a perfect strategy to start the new venture. References OGUNYEMI, J. (2011). How to be a student entrepreneur. St Albans, Herts, Scotland, Ecademy Press. TIMMONS, J. A., SMOLLEN, L. E., & DINGEE, A. L. M. (2005). New venture creation: a guide to entrepreneurship. Homewood, Ill, R.D. Irwin. HISRICH, R. D., & PETERS, M. P. (2000). Entrepreneurship: starting, developing, and managing a new enterprise. Homewood, IL, Irwin. MARTIN, C. L. (2002). Starting your new business a guide for entrepreneurs. Los Altos, Calif, Crisp Publications. TIMMONS, J. A., SPINELLI, S., & ZACHARAKIS, A. (2004). Business plans that work: a guide for small business. New York, McGraw-Hill. KURTZMAN, J., & RIFKIN, G. (2005). Startups that work: the 10 critical factors that will make or break a new company. New York, Portfolio. SAMLI, A. C. (2009). International entrepreneurship innovative solutions for a fragile planet. New York, Springer. CASSON, M. (2000). Economics of international business: a new research agenda. Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar. HISRICH, R. D., & PETERS, M. P. (2002). On your own: how to start, develop, and manage a new business. Homewood, IL, Business One Irwin. BERKERY, D. (2008). Raising venture capital for the serious entrepreneur. New York, McGraw-Hill. KERSEY, H. A. (2003). The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale: a pioneer family of New River. Gainesville, University Press of Florida. GREGORIOU, G. N., KOOLI, M., & KRÄUSSL, R. (2007). Venture capital in Europe. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann. SCHINE, G. L. (2003). How to succeed as a lifestyle entrepreneur running a business without letting it run your life. Chicago, IL., Dearborn Trade. Stone R. N. (1993): Perceived Risk: Further Considerations for the Marketing Discipline. European Journal of Marketing [J.] SKRZESZEWSKI, S. (2006). The knowledge entrepreneur. Lanham, Md, Scarecrow Press. CRANE, F. G. (2010). Marketing for entrepreneurs: concepts and applications for new ventures. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage Publications. GINSBERG, A. (2010). Strategies for new venture development. Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar. OAKEY, R. P. (2010). New technology-based firms in the new millennium. Vol. 8 Vol. 8. Bingley, U.K., Emerald. BARON, R. A. (2012). Entrepreneurship: an evidence-based guide. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. MAKLER, H. M., MARTINELLI, A., & SMELSER, N. J. (2000). The New international economy. Beverly Hills, Calif, Sage Publications. BLOOM, P. N. (2012). Scaling your social venture: becoming an impact entrepreneur. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan. SILVER, A. D. (2002). Up front financing: the entrepreneurs guide. New York, Wiley. DIETZ, U., KARCHER, E., DANNENMANN, M., & LINDBERG, S. (2010). The new new. Berlin, Distanz. KAO, R. W. Y., KAO, K. R., & KAO, R. R. (2002). Entrepreneurism: a philosophy and a sensible alternative for the market economy. [River Edge, N.J.], Imperial College Press. LUSSIER, R. N., CORMAN, J., & KIMBALL, D. C. (2014). Entrepreneurial new venture skills. BRIDGE, R. (2010). You can do it too the 20 essential things every budding entrepreneur should know. London, Kogan Page. Read More