Top floor, please

When it comes to making it big, the prime objective should be getting people’s attention. This task can be nearly impossible with the ever-fleeing attention span of people today. In order to get consumers interested in a product, do away with the lengthy infomercials and introduce the elevator pitch.

I tackled this difficult job of summarizing an entire business idea into a short 90 seconds. This had its challenges since I had to brainstorm which parts of my plan were the most essential to include in that minute and a half. What grabs people’s attention varies from person to person, so finding that sweet spot that intrigues a vast majority is not easy. When considering what would get people to pay money to use my service, which is a website that teaches beginners how to do fashion projects, I thought of the shock value. I did my research and figured out the drastic effects on the environment that clothes have when they are thrown away and used that to my advantage. People are much more likely to act if you can evoke an emotion out of them.

While doing my elevator pitch, I found it so easy to slip into an awkwardness and not know what to say. I had to keep doing it over and over to finally come up with a pitch that sounded enticing. This made me realize that in order to make an idea believable, you have to believe it yourself. If you would not buy your own product after hearing your elevator pitch, then why do it?

As a journalism student, I have had experience with learning ways to grab attention, but not so much how to make people buy a product. This exercise had me think more critically into what drives consumers to buy and the best way to reach them. Now, it is time to open those doors and start working.

You Gotta Sell This!

There has probably been a time in your life when you are with a group of friends and one of you proposes a business idea that you swear will be the next multi-billion dollar company. I know I have dreamed of being successful, myself, but the truth is, it is so hard to make it as an entrepreneur.

In order to get people to buy your product or use your service, you must know of a market that will want to participate. This was essential to Sandra Oh Lin’s success with her company, KiwiCo, Inc. She outlined her major success of over 30 million subscription boxes sold in Guy Raz’s podcast, How I Built Resilience. Her company sells boxes to people of all ages from newborns to adults that include projects that are both science and art-based. The pain point she addresses with KiwiCo came from a problem in her own life: She wanted her kids to be more than just consumers.

The sad truth of today is that many kids are just seen as money-makers for companies, as opposed to being true potential. KiwiCo puts the control in kids’ hands and teaches them to create.

Something that surprised me when listening to Sandra Oh Lin’s story was her readiness to adapt to what life threw at her and her business, including COVID-19. Something remarkable that KiwiCo. accomplished was the ability to still have real kids test their products among a pandemic. The company would have handoff locations and ask the children to go home and hop on a video call to show themselves using the product.

Going in, I did not know much about this company. I assumed Lin’s story would be similar to many I have heard, the typical story of starting out small and making it big. What set her story apart for me was that she truly wants to make a difference with her product and cater it to people of all backgrounds. She included in her interview that she wants to do more work with welcoming opportunities to provide for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. I believe that is the most important thing you can do with a business. People should not miss out on education opportunities because of money.

Trying a change of pace

Many businesses typically follow what is known as “the waterfall model.” A business presents a product answering to the needs of a customer without involving him or her in the process until the end. Although this is a popular method, it can bring about a lot of catastrophes as well. Since there is no input from the consumer throughout the building of the product, it means a large amount of work can go to waste if it does not provide satisfaction.

A method that avoids this hurdle is known as “the agile model.” This method makes customer feedback a prime priority when developing a product. Steve Blank states in his article “Why the Lean Start-up Changes Everything” that although this method is fairly new, business schools have already started changing their curriculums to teach this new way of conducting businesses. I found this exciting to hear that schools are making changes to how things have always been. If businesses want to be conducted more efficiently, a shift definitely needs to happen.

Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/devops-business-process-improvement-3155972/

Another feature of agile that Blank outlines is the idea of an MVP. No, it is not the most valuable playable. MVP in agile means the minimum viable product. I had never heard of an idea, such as this until I learned more about agile. In simple terms, it is a product with bare-bones presented to the customer to receive feedback. Often times, the opposite is encouraged. It is normal to want to present an idea as pristine and polished as possible, but that is, frankly, not a good use of time if the customer ends up hating it.

In my opinion, agile brings up many more pros than cons. It requires a team to be more involved with each step of the process and get more feedback along the way. Although it may require more steps than the waterfall method, it will save much more time and effort in the long run. I used the agile method at my internship over the summer. We would do daily stand-up meetings, as well as be expected to complete training to become well versed in agile. I think a disadvantage of it is that it can be hard to conduct when one is working remotely like I was, and as many are today during COVID-19 times. However, I did like that projects were overseen by many different people. Agile works to make employees communicate better, not only with each other but with whom they are delivering the product to as well.

The Elusiveness of Success

Success in a world of information overload is difficult to achieve. Many startups fail and lack the resources they need to gain traction.

The most important thing to know when creating a business is the audience one is catering to serve. Without knowledge of the audience, the product is destined for misfortune. Delving into this process can be separated into three steps. Michelle Ferrier frames this process in her chapter of Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship called “Ideation.”

Step 1: Inspiration phase – The best way to learn about an audience is to talk directly to them. Figure out which needs are most important to address.

Step 2: Ideation phase – Break down what input was given, and divide it into opportunities for design and potential prototype ideas.

Step 3: Implementation phase – Create the product and deliver it to the appropriate market. Keep the audience involved in every step of the process.

Source: https://pixabay.com/vectors/business-idea-strategy-marketing-4271251/

In order to create an idea, it is also a good measure to take a look at others’ creations. Some of the best businesses have come from young people, like Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook.

Other business ventures from college students include:

-Uber for Nurses

-Empowering Immigrants

For the first business, the service offers a great value to consumers. It takes away the worry of nurses having to find a way to get to their patients’ homes, and it gives them a car service that allows them to focus on what is truly important. The market is also large enough to sustain a company such as this, and avoids being too “niche.” Customers’ needs for the app seem to have been met by the creators exceptionally well, even including a feature to match nurses with patients based on personality. This is just another way life is able to be made more customizable.

Empowering Immigrants also provides an essential service by pairing up juvenile immigrants with volunteer immigration lawyers. It was created by Impowerus at Yale University and is backed up by plenty of research. Having an app, like Empowering Immigrants, is an innovative way to solve a problem that is sadly affecting too many people. Many juveniles are being placed in harsh conditions, and the lawyers they are paired with help to alleviate this conflict.

Unfortunately, not every business can be promising like the prior mentioned examples. More specifically a business that does not seem likely to thrive is Shockingly Sweet. The idea behind it is to trick coffee drinkers into thinking their black coffee is actually sweet by having an electric current shock the customer through the coffee’s lid. The market for a business like this is too niche and has a low probability of people actually wanting to pay for it.

Another not so spectacular business venture is Seeing and Doing. The idea behind it is to provide vacationers an opportunity to see a location through the eyes of a filmmaker and shows picturesque views to spark that travel bug. This audience also seems too niche and is not solving a problem that people have. If people want to spend money to better their vacation choosing experience, they will most likely go with a trip adviser.

The most important thing to keep in mind is answering to the needs of an audience and evaluating the sustainability of a company. It is impossible to make money if the product does not command attention and work to better troubles in everyday life.

Revoking the death sentence of journalism

With the fast-paced nature of the media world, it can be hard to keep up. What it means to stay relevant is constantly evolving, and trends get changed like underwear. In order to be in the know, one must adapt themselves to how things are currently. Journalism is nowhere near what it used to be. It is no longer enough to be a good writer; you must be an innovative creator as well.

What is praised nowadays is being able to find areas where improvement is needed and coming up with a solution for it. That is where media entrepreneurship comes into play.

Source: https://www.maxpixel.net/Work-Finance-Business-Documents-Office-Desk-3139127

The beneficial, yet daunting, part of media is that there is a market for everything. In order to be successful and stand out, creating a niche market is key. This also aids with the need to have the audience participate in the content.

In addition, being a skilled writer definitely helps with being a marketable employee. However, what truly sets someone apart is being able to integrate research, write and have digital and business skills as Jan Schaffer describes in Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This assists in accurately providing an outcome that will work for the business that one works at. Being a valuable asset to a company has become especially important with how jobs are today. People no longer stay at the same company for their whole career until retirement, especially when it comes to media jobs.

In reference to deciding on a career path, it is important to differentiate being an entrepreneur and being an intrepreneur. In Mike Green’s chapter of Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he describes being an entrepreneur as having a pursuit of a conceptual idea and in search of a viable business model that will do well in a certain market. Intrepreneurs, on the other hand, are employees at an existing company who think entrepreneurially to evolve an existing brand or corporation.

I, personally, know of a few entrepreneurs. Something that I have noticed from them is that they created a product that is high in demand and made it an individual experience for the consumer. My uncle and aunt, for example, have created their own coffee shop. This is a product that many people want, and they make efforts to differentiate their business from similar places. One of the ways they do this is by engaging with media, both social and with a local newspaper.

I think the exciting thing about entrepreneurial media is that it can take on so many forms and give all kinds of people a voice. The scary thing is making sure that voice is heard, among all the others. What works with media is somewhat of a guessing game, especially with social media. Something expected to do exceedingly well could totally flop.

I, personally, see myself as an intrepreneur. I tend to look for where changes need to be made in already established systems. Looking for something to be more efficient is always my go-to. I’m not trying to turn things on their head, just trying to straighten the picture frame on the wall. Not taking things as they come is of utmost importance for being an entrepreneur and an intrepreneur.

Being Sentenced to Public Shaming

Public shaming is nothing new. However, it is much more amplified with the creation of social media. Society today holds people much more accountable these days. We have developed a “cancel culture,” in today’s world. It is much harder to make a mistake nowadays since so much is in the public eye nowadays. Some bad choices are easier to forgive than others. One of the cases that is much easier to forgive is the case with Monica Lewinsky.

As many know, Monica Lewinsky was an intern who worked for the White House under the Clinton Administration. Lewinsky took part in an affair with the President, which the dishonesty of would lead to Clinton’s impeachment. It is simple to quickly blame Lewinsky for the scandal since our society tends to point fingers at the women and call her names like whore or bimbo like Lewinsky stated she was called in her TED talk. What should be taken into account that it takes two to commit adultery and consider Lewinsky’s age. She was twenty-two at the time, yet what she did with the President has made her notorious for the rest of her life. After discussing with my peers, we all were able to say who Lewinsky was and what scandal she was known for even though it took place in 1998 and most of us were born after that time.

Part of the reason Lewinsky’s history is still so precedented in our culture is because of the backlash she received online. This was one of the first cases where a person was humiliated on a digital platform. It was before the times of social media, but Lewinsky stated that people were still able to comment and email about the situation. She now advocates for there to be a stop to cyber bullying.

Other cases that were not so forgivable were that of Justine Sacco and Aaron Calvin. Both of these cases dealt with tweeting out things that were racist. Sacco’s tweet was much more intense talking about the possibility of contracting aids on her trip to South Africa while Calvin, a journalist, tweeted out racist song lyrics. His tweets were discovered after doing a feature on someone and stating that the person had racist tweets of his own. Both of these instances cost them their job. The question is should public shaming follow you forever? How long should the sentence to be?

In my opinion, with Sacco’s case, that tweet did not seem like a simple mistake. One does not accidentally tweet something that horrific. So I believe she should have received the repercussions of losing her job. Where the line should be drawn is when the person starts to receive death threats. I think that our culture can get caught up in the idea of contributing to hating a person without taking into consideration that they are still a person.

It’s also common for people to look back in others’ old tweets to find things that they should be canceled on. I think the question of doing that and whether it is morally acceptable to denounce someone for an action they did in their youth is evolving and depends on the circumstance.

The Problem with Facebook

A hot button topic lately in the social media world is the Facebook algorithm. An algorithm can be difficult for those to understand that are not familiar with how they work. I think the misconception is that algorithms are all controlled by artificial intelligence, yet the Slate article clarified that algorithms are actually made by people. If there are problems with it, the people are to blame.

One of the reasons that the Facebook algorithm is currently being challenged is how it handles political advertisements. Right now the algorithm cannot compensate for differentiating what is true and what is not in political ads and that has sparked some debate recently. What the algorithm can do, which surprised me is pick out posts that will make us feel certain emotions. It can calculate what will make us feel happy or sad and spark a reaction out of us.

The idea that social media has such a drastic effect on our emotions is frankly terrifying. In fact, The Guardian reported that 40% of girls who spend more time on social media have higher rates of depression. Social media has strayed past from a friendly way to connect with people and is having detrimental effects on our society.

Something else to consider is the secrecy behind Facebook. This is why there is such a feeling of discomfort around Facebook these days since we do not know much about what it is doing as consumers. Many people blindly give Facebook their information without realizing that it may have long lasting effects. This secrecy was confirmed with Will Oremus’ experience at Facebook. He was even followed to the bathroom when exploring the business, which seems rather suspicious.

The inner workings of Facebook go beyond just individuals. It also affects businesses. The article stated that newspapers are starting to plummet in readership as websites like Vox and Buzzfeed skyrocket. Newspapers just do not have that ability to handpick stories for each individual reader like the Facebook algorithm does.

Facebook originally started as a way to connect college aged students and now it is starting to upheave things essential to our democracy like the press. Such a change as this is wild to think of. However, social media is becoming more and more powerful and it should be investigated.

Muting the Siren of Capitalism

For this week’s blog, I listened to a podcast called Hashtag Authentic. This podcast is created by Sara Tasker. She is an Instagram expert and shapes her platform to promote a conversation about it. The particular episode I tuned into was called, “Lessons Learned from Taking Time Out.” I was intrigued by this title since I believe our society is much too fast paced and does not have enough of a focus on doing what is healthiest for the individual.

Tasker’s main concern in her podcast regarded taking a break from one’s own business. She had recently done so after the publication of her book, Hashtag Authentic. Taking this break for Tasker was terrifying since she had not heard of other people doing the same with their businesses. Although the idea of parting from her business temporarily was nerve wracking, she deemed it necessary since she was dealing with a crisis of confidence. After her publication, she thought, “I have said enough,” and that the world needed time apart from her. Tasker realized that her having these thoughts probably stemmed from the societal factor that women are often taught to not take up too much space or speak excessively, which motivated her not to trust her thought of being too much for the world.

After some self-reflection, Tasker realized she had not taken a true break in about seven years. Even when she went on vacations or had sick days, she was constantly on social media. The publication of her book was a true turning point for her and she realized that she needed to transition to a time absence from commitments temporarily. This was a difficult time for her since she felt like the lack of interaction was equivalent to her business failing, yet she realized later on that taking a break was the best thing she could do for herself, personally.

Part of the reason taking a break is so hard for many of us is because it is not widely publicized that it is healthy and recommended. Our society is heavily focused on capitalism and the idea that a lack of content being constantly generated is the same as failing. Even Tasker’s mom thought that she was declining since she was not constantly posting on Instagram during her break.

However, having time off can be extremely beneficial for us and help us to avoid burnout. Like Tasker mentioned, creative careers take this to heart like when an artist will put out an album and then take time off before putting out more work. She also talked about the “Adele Effect,” which means, “It doesn’t matter how long you’re gone as long as everything you put out is brilliant.” Sometimes making people wait for content amps up the hype for it and is a helpful tool to use.

For me, I believe that this podcast reinforced the idea that taking a break is healthy and recommended. I also learned that having that fear of being apart from one’s work is normal and to be expected. I thoroughly enjoyed the message and definitely believe in the points it was trying to convey. This podcast would be very helpful for college students to listen to since they tend to believe their lives have to constantly be in motion and often do not take time for themselves. I recommend this podcast for anyone feeling burnout or unmotivated by their work, and hope that it will provide a fresh start for them.

How to Summarize a Lifetime

Ever since I started my time at Creighton, I have been encouraged to consistently self reflect. Knowing who one is makes it easier for that individual to create relationships with and understand others. Right when I think I know who I am, something seems to change. I guess it would be accurate to say that no one exactly knows who they are.

Who do you see when you look into the mirror?
Source: flickr.com

I am a friend, daughter, sister, student, writer and much more. Everyone I encounter has a particular lens that they see me through based on my experience with them. I aspire to have a positive impact on each life I come into contact with but know that that is not a probable expectation to have.

A Better Synopsis of Me:

My Top Three Personal Strengths: Empathy, futuristic, creativity

My Top Three Talents: Writing, making people feel listened to, and language-based activities

My Core Area of Expertise: Anything to do with writing

What My Target Audience Needs and Wants: To feel valued and that they matter

The Value and the Experience I Can Deliver to Meet Those Needs and Wants: Being an active listener and giving advice to help my audience with their troubles

What I Can Do Better Than Anyone Else: Think about every little detail when it comes to planning something

What Services I Offer That Differentiate Me and Set Me Ahead of My Competition: I’m able to look at things from a perspective many people do not take into account and have the ability to speak up for those who do not have a voice.

Part of my desire to make people feel like they are listened to and valued comes from my Jesuit education here at Creighton. In particular, the Jesuit value of men and women for and with others has had a large impact on how I make decisions.

So if I were to think of a way to encapsulate all that I am within a sentence, it would be:

She encourages others to feel validated and uses her creativity to find solutions in difficult situations.

Stepping into My Digital World

My introduction to social media began when I was twelve years old. I started off with Facebook, which was what most of my friends were on at the time. After I created a Facebook account, the other channels of social media followed suit. Before I knew it, I had an Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Twitter page. I was definitely making my digital footprint known without knowing all too much about what it meant to make my life so public.

Over the years, I have shed some of the social media I used to use and now most regularly post on Instagram. I think I use Instagram the most since it is picture and video-based and I am a very visual person. It has a wide variety of posts and helps me keep up with everyone from close friends to my favorite celebrities. I still use Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, but tend to post less frequently since most of my social media needs can all be satisfied with Instagram. With the introduction of stories on IG, I stopped posting on Snapchat, and Facebook is starting to become less and less a place for people my age, so I have started to also follow that trend. Twitter is more my place to look, but not talk a whole lot. I would rather communicate in pictures rather than think of a witty Tweet that probably will not receive much engagement anyways.

Social media takes up a large portion of my day. It is rather natural for me to scroll through all the new posts anytime I have a second to myself. The benefits of social media for me are that I get to keep up with what is going on in the world and it is an easy way to keep myself entertained. However, social media has plenty of downfalls as well. One of the things I dislike about social media is the crave for perfection. What is typically posted are the highlight reels of people’s lives as opposed to what is actually going on with the individual. This causes people to compare themselves to others and feel not good enough with their own achievements.

Although there have been some downsides to the addition of social media, there have been revolutionary things that have occurred as well. It has had a large impact on how I communicate with others. One of the most beneficial parts of social media is that it allows me to keep in contact with my friends all across the world. I was an exchange student in Chile, and before the dawn of social media, it would have taken weeks for a letter to reach my host family there, but now I can easily just send a Facebook message.

Another part of social media I like, are the different tools that they inhabit. For example, with Instagram, it has really evolved to become not only a place to post photos and videos but also to edit those photos and videos. I am able to add filters and play with how the image will be displayed. This allows me to be able to use my creativity and create a brand for myself with how my photos are edited.

How I present myself on social media has certainly changed over time. When I first started on social media, I would post whatever I felt like without much concern with what my posts said about me. Now, I am constantly wondering what future employers would think about my posts and tailor them to remain professional. With this class, I hope to improve how I operate social media and gain skills on how to use social media in the professional world.