There were many things that I learned from taking the Business Plan Development class this semester. Some of the biggest takeaways from the class for me were the importance of intellectual property (IP) protection, the importance of testing products before putting them out there into the market, and the importance of knowing and scaling the future goals for your company. We learned a lot about the importance of IP protection when reading and discussing the X-It vs. Kidde case study in class. IP protection can truly make or break your business. If you have an idea, slogan, product, etc. that is unique to your business, you must take the proper time and correct process toward getting it protected and prevent it from easily being stolen without consequence. In class we talked about testing products before launching them into the market and how key of a role it plays. Doing this allows for you to gain feedback on the product and altar it as needed to then present the best possible product to the public market initially. Lastly and probably my biggest takeaway from the class, the importance of having and idea of future goals for the company and scaling them realistically. I never really realized how much you need to think about the future plans of a business when looking to just start it up, so this topic really helped me to better understand that future growth and expansion plays a big role in the initial start-up as well.
I think our group had its fair share of successes and failures within the work we put into starting and running a business this semester. Some of our successes included acquiring new athletes to train, making some new connections with local coaches, and reaching the goal of 200 dollars of income from running the company over the semester. Although I don’t believe our group will continue with this business venture in the future, I believe that Todd will continue to do kicking training as a side gig. Hopefully the acquired new athletes will continue to train with him after this semester is over and the possibility of local coaches contacting him for training purposes within the future as well, so I viewed these as successes for the group. Obviously reaching the goal of an income of 200 dollars was a success as well. In terms of failures, I would say the fact that we were only able to acquire one new customer and weren’t able to acquire any team sessions could be looked at as a failure. Some of this had to do with the fact their seasons were practically over by the time we had reached out and got in contact, which also could’ve resulted from our group initially wanting to start a possible consignment shop, before pivoting toward the kicking training.
In terms of what I think I need to know more about to continue my entrepreneurial journey isn’t as much about learning as it is experiencing. After taking Innovation and Entrepreneurship and now Business Plan Development, I have gained a lot of knowledge of what goes into the startup of a new business and I’m sure there is plenty more to learn as well, but going out and experimenting could be one of the best ways to learn, even if it is a smaller scale. If I had to choose one thing to learn more about, it would probably be the IP protections and such because it not only helps to protect you, but it helps you to better understand where you can look at other products and come up with ways to innovate them without illegally breaking IP protections.
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