You Really Want to Change the World? Study Abroad

Below is a memoir of my experience studying abroad. It's raw, it is uncut (except for a few italics for clarity), and it is real. This experience changed my life and it changed the way WOOband will change the world. You have one shot at life. MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

"Finally back in the US of A after nearly two months abroad in Dubai and South Africa. When looking back on the experience that was EESA (Entrepreneurship and Empowerment in South Africa), I can’t help but take another look at what I expected to get out of the program. As the name suggests I thought it would be about Entrepreneurship, Empowerment and getting to experience S. Africa. My feelings entering the program were that what I personally wanted to get out of it was the chance to empower people. To do something more than just volunteer or donate money, but to actually get my hands dirty and make a long lasting difference in the lives of those less fortunate then me. I focused on this aspect of the program the most during my decision to join because I thought that I had already learned a lot about entrepreneurship through my MSE (University of Florida's Master of Science in Entrepreneurship Program) experience. And as much as I heard how beautiful S. Africa was, I just assumed that was a little added perk of the program.

Wow, was I blown away by how much more I got out of the program than I would have ever expected.

EMPOWERMENT

First and foremost, I absolutely felt that I empowered people in the world, but in so many more ways than I had originally expected to. And the confirmation of that empowerment via the final client meetings and the closing ceremony was so much stronger than I had expected. Getting to hear Kutta (a client) discuss how our team helped him. Listening to Dr. Skosana (another client) tell us how much we had changed her perspective on what it really takes to be an entrepreneur, that it takes more than just passion to accomplish your dreams: it also takes discipline, the construction of systems/processes, and the ability to come at obstacles from different angles so as to overcome them.

So much of EESA tends to blur together, but seeing the smiles on our clients’ faces is something that will always stand out as a distinct moment in my life. To know that in just six short weeks, four young adults could make such an impact is simply astonishing. But I guess it goes to the point that truly anything is possible in this world… making the impossible, possible (entrepreneurship). We always read and see stories about how people have achieved the seemingly impossible, from Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, to Felix Baumgartner literally jumping from outer space to land on his own two feet on Earth. Many things seem impossible until they are done. The experience of actually achieving some small impossibility through EESA has given me confidence going forward to achieve so much more in life. I now have personal evidence that big dreams and hard work can change anything.

The other big thing I learned from EESA is that entrepreneurship is so much more than just big dreams and lots of passion. It requires disciplined processes and busting your ass at all hours of the day to make those dreams come true. Because, as much as our unique brainstorms and approaches to client issues mattered, none of it would have really mattered if we didn’t take massive action at all times to make them real.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

So I came to EESA, certainly not thinking I know everything about entrepreneurship (far from it), but I didn’t think I would learn as much about entrepreneurship as I did. Maybe it’s for selfish reasons, but I know going forward what I did in EESA will help me with so many challenges in my life. It will help me to build businesses, teach others how to start and manage businesses, and help me to feel more confident about the entire process of owning a business. Sometimes I find it hard to convince people that what I learn in a book or in class is true about entrepreneurship. But now that I’ve actually used those entrepreneurial skills to create something in real life, it’s hard to question those policies and systems that I know work. What was learned in EESA can be translated into almost any business situation. In fact I have realized that all businesses, big or small, all have many of the same issues, just at different magnitudes.

SOUTH AFRICA

And then there is South Africa: more beautiful and magical of a place than I could have ever imagined. The sites we got to see and the people we got to meet was really the icing on the cake for the EESA experience. But more than just the beauty, it was the people that make me want to go back. Working among people in the townships who could have every right to complain about their situations and struggles and yet instead of complaining they decide to push forward and make a difference in their communities. It’s so different than most underprivileged whom I’ve met in America who like to sit back and complain about the rich, the banks, the government, etc. Here in America people spend so much time blaming others for their issues instead of going out and changing their own lives, taking responsibility for their own lives. Complaining is certainly easier than challenging yourself everyday to be something greater, but in South Africa complaining isn’t an option, it is about survival. The other quality I found different about the township entrepreneurs is that they don’t want to just make money and “get out”. They actually want to stay within the townships and grow their businesses within the townships. In America it’s always about “getting out” of a poor neighborhood. How amazing could this country be if more poor people created businesses and changed the communities around them?

In America it seems that so many people see the success of others and get jealous; almost as though the successful people were nothing but lucky. In South Africa the people view successful people as the type of people they need to emulate, such as Luvuyo. Everyone at EKASI wanted to emulate the great success of Luvuyo and Silulo. Those entrepreneurs could take the easy road and just sit back and call him lucky, but they don’t, instead they attempt to learn from his successes. The entrepreneurs in S. Africa choose to take the harder road, the one “less traveled”. The passion I got to see from people who had seemingly nothing but a dream and hope was astounding. It has brought me back to America realizing how many resources we have at our disposable that we waste everyday. Anytime I want to make an excuse about why something isn’t possible, I will look back to the EESA experience and realize I’m being a fool for making that excuse.

SUMMARY

In summary, EESA truly was a life changing experience, all of it. To be honest I thought Dr. Morris was being a little dramatic about how life changing it was going to be before we left Gainesville. Maybe I felt that way because I was older than most of the students in the program, or because I had some real world work experience. But the reality is that nothing can truly prepare you for the EESA experience, and I think that is what makes it so special. You are forced out of your comfort zone in so many different ways. Traveling across the world, interacting with a completely different culture, asked to help real people change the world around them, and not doing any harm to the their businesses/lives in the process. The task is daunting. It’s an experience that just about anyone, at any age, at any experience level would find life changing. It was all summarized for me when Kutta stood at the podium in the final ceremony and said; “Now I feel like a businessman”. At that very moment the impact felt surreal. That we could all come together as consultants and make a human being a “businessman” in only six weeks. EESA isn’t just a program; it is truly an EXPERIENCE, and one that I will never forget. Seeing the other side of the world, learning, working, and changing the world. An experience that when looking back on the pictures, the journals, the people, and the memories makes me want to be something bigger than myself. Simply… Amazing.”

Start Up Business Model - WOOband Case Study

Make Your Business Model Work For You

If you want your business to be successful, you must at a minimum have a strong business model. Your business model will consist of four distinct sections.

Four Sections of a Business Model

Product/Service Offering

What unique product or service are you offering the marketplace as a solution to a common problem?

Any new product or service should offer customers a unique way of solving a problem. Every problem in the world should be viewed as an opportunity, an opportunity to come up with a solution (a new business) to solve the problem. When we started WOOband, we started with one of the most common problems on the planet today, losing your phone. From there we came up with what we thought was the best solution for solving the problem and then tested it in the marketplace. We were simply sick of losing my phone and hearing endless stories of phone loss in the world. Problem = Opportunity.

Target Market

What specific target market is going to buy your product or service?

With WOOband we originally thought our target market would consists of only highly intoxicated (drunk) college students. However, we began to think bigger and realized that one of the best markets would be a market with more buying power and the same issues. We came to realize that nearly 1/3 of all elementary students own expensive smartphones. Armed with this knowledge, we decided to target the parents of young children as well as our original market. Remember it is okay to have more than one target market when starting out, but do not get carried away with having too many. Target no more than three markets when starting out so that you can get to know everything you can about them: where they buy, how they buy, why they buy, who influences them, etc. It will also help you to keep your marketing costs much lower. Below is how we define our two main target markets for WOOband.

Target Markets

Target Market Buying Cycles

Each of your different target markets should have a distinct customer buying cycle. Essentially you need to understand the buying process of your potential customers. What steps do they go through before purchasing your product or service. If you have not made any sales than you can look at the way the customer purchases similar products or services. Below shows how we distinguish the buying cycles of our two different target markets.

Mike and Carol Brady Buying Cycle

Zach and Kelly Buying Cycle

Marketing Plan

How are you going to market to your defined target market? How are you going to make them aware of your product or service, and how are you going to get them to buy your product or service?

The marketing of a business is where he real magic of a business starts to happen. To be honest with you, it’s easier than you think to come up with a cool new idea, but if you can’t convince people to buy it, you have no business. Just think about how many different brands of successful athletic shoe exist today, the list is endless. The reason most of them continue to be successful is that they all have their own target markets and targeted marketing strategies. You cannot, I repeat CANNOT have a successful marketing strategy if you don’t first have a target market. Marketing needs to be tailored specifically to your target market. Just think about it, will a retired husband and wife living in Florida be reading/watching/visiting the same things as a newly wedded couple in Ohio? Absolutely not! Hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted all the time on expensive marketing campaigns. Some of the most wasteful marketing dollars are in media advertising. Your marketing campaign must be frequently in the face of your TARGET MARKET. At WOOband we use a highly targeted social media campaign for the High School/Young College Students. For our parent market (elementary school students), we rely more heavily on parenting blogs and product review sites (see below). We also target PTSO and orthodontist newsletters. As I mentioned earlier, it is completely okay to have more than one target market, as long as you realize that your marketing campaigns should be different for each market.

Example - Matching Buying and Selling Cycles

Economics of the Business

How is your business going to make money?

When you get someone to buy your product or service you have a business, but you don’t have a successful business until you have a positive bottom line (net income). You need to know four key numbers at all times in your business.

• ·    What price are you charging for your product or service?
• ·    What are the variable costs associated with your product or service?
• ·    What are the fixed costs associated with the business?
• ·    What are your startup costs associated with the business? How much money will it cost you to get the business up and running and sell your first unit?

Conclusion

Armed with the answers to these four basic questions, you can take your business into the marketplace and test your business model assumptions. As you take feedback from what the market is telling you, then you can adjust the business model as you go. Perhaps you have a great product, but the target market you thought would be buyers turns out not to be the right market. You can then adjust the target market, which should change your marketing plan to make sure that it is applicable to that new target market.

While I would recommend having a fully fleshed out business plan before going into business, having at least a business model to start with will drastically improve your new company’s ability to be successful.

Dreams & Challenges

One of the first things you learn in an entrepreneurship Masters program is, get used to dealing with ambiguity because in entrepreneurship nothing is certain. In the real world, things aren't black and white, getting a product from being an idea in your brain onto the shelves of stores and into the hands of customers is one of the most complex, grey, ambiguous and difficult processes I have been through. Now imagine doing this remotely while working 80 hour weeks in Africa. 

Needless to say we have our challenges, but I think it says a lot about this team that we push onward. I think the most motivating and energizing thing in the world for me is that we are taking the leap and doing something different. Every rational mind would think, get a job.. forget this crazy idea and run to the safety of a cubicle. But we won't. We won't settle. Creating the WOOband is our dream and we are willing to sacrifice and live life in ways that many people will never experience in order to get to that dream. I think their is beauty and power in risking it all. 

Famously, in 1519 the explorer Hernando Cortez arrived on the shores of Mexico with a small army and the goal of conquering the Aztec Empire for their riches. When they arrived on shore, Cortez commanded his soldiers to burn their own ships. This was the ultimate motivation. He left no fall back plan. It was do or die, quite literally for them. 

Jarrod and I are both burning ships in our own right. As we burn the ships, we motivate ourselves and fuel our own passions and this company forward. I am extremely optimistic about getting back to Gainesville and for the first time having to opportunity to go full-force 210% pushing WOOband forward. 

WOOband in South Africa

Both WOOband founders are currently in Cape Town, South Africa working as part of the Entrepreneurship & Empowerment (EESA) Program through the University of Florida. The program sends students from 5 American Universities to work alongside students from the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to serve as consultants to entrepreneurship in the townships surrounding Cape Town. The EESA Program is extremely intensive requiring 12+ hour days but between client meetings and exploring a new country, we are finding time to get inspired about WOOband.

Making Wearable Tech Actually Wearable

Design. It's all about design. Products with beautiful design speak for themselves, they market themselves and they sell themselves. Why? Because people get excited about them, people tell a friend, people don't have to be convinced. If you can create something that is actually designed from inside the mind of a customer, then I believe it will take on a life of its own.

This is what we are trying to do at WOOband, and it is extremely extremely difficult. The wrist is prime real estate on the body, so in order for a user to wear a phone loss wristband, it has to really be aligned with their image. 

How do we make a WOOband that stands out from other wearable products?

How do we make a wristband in a style that will delight our customers? 

How do we make a wristband that you will actually enjoy wearing? 

These are the questions we ask, over and over and over and over because I believe these questions can make or break us. 

Preparing for Kickstarter

WOOband seeks to launch a Kickstarter campaign at the end of August 2014 however we know this takes much preparation. It is not as simple as logging on and letting the donations flow. We need to take time to understand a reasonable goal that we think we can reach, but will also allow us to fulfill our promise of a great product. We need to identify rewards we think people will be interested in and develop a marketing plan for our campaign. Preparing for a Kickstarter campaign has become a full time job. Before the launch of the campaign, we are trying to have all of our 'ducks in a row' so to speak. We want to be able to put this product into product and deliver as quickly as possible for our backers when we get funded.

 It's all worth it because I believe we have what it takes to really make it, to take this funding and build an amazing product that people will love. 


Hopefully we can one day add this to our website:

Live from OneSpark

We are blogging live from Mad Men Marketing in Downtown Jacksonville at OneSpark the worlds crowdfunding festival. We are hoping to wow the crowds, score some votes and gain our share of $200,000.

Demo-ing at Starter Space

The Gainesville Startup community really came out and showed us their support. We had a small intimate crowd for our demo, which turned out more like a candid conversation. The audience asked us great questions and offered us strong feedback and encouragement. Its amazing what you can do with support from your community. It is truly great to be a Gainesville Startup!

Prepping for One Spark

We have been preparing to attend One Spark, the world's largest crowdfunding festival in Jacksonville, Florida.  One of the biggest questions as a lean startup has been, how do we spend money on promotional materials that create value for our customers? 

Yes it could be nice to buy every pen, foam finger, t shirt and rubber wristband you can find online, however most of that will just end up in the trash. How do we stand out from the crowd and offer people something that they would really enjoy? 

Its a difficult question, especially as a startup, when we spend dollars, we need to expect those dollars create value and generate revenue back to us. 

Since it will be blistering Florida heat, we decided to opt for some sunglasses with our website on the rim, hey who doesnt love a nice pair of free glasses? Especially when the florida sun is blinding them. We also used the back of our business cards as a place where people can write down phone numbers incase they lose their phone. People may or may not use this, but I think its a clever way to say, "hey don't throw away this card right away!"

Follow us on Instagram @WOOband

The Dread and Necessity of Doing a Business Plan

Currently the WOOband team is in the process of putting the final touches on our business plan. And let me tell you right now, there is about 0% fun in doing a business plan. It is a ton of work if you do it properly. It's page after page of endless web research. It's page after page of writing. It's page after page of editing and formatting. And the really fun part is when you change something in one section of the plan; it will affect almost every other section. It is truly a grueling process. But you know what? In the end, having a good plan is a necessity to running a successful business. It forces you to answer the really tough questions in detail. It builds you a living breathing roadmap to follow. And when things get tough in your business, you can target what was wrong with the plan and adjust accordingly.

The pitfalls of people who don't do plans is that they end up jotting down a few cool ideas, then decide who might buy them, figure out one or two really cool ways to reach the customer, and then say Price - Cost = (hopefully) Profit. Anyone can do that. And that is why so many businesses fail and usually fail after committing substantial amounts of money to the idea. Do you really understand the market you are going after or are you just assuming because you are the market that everyone behaves like you? Do you understand the markets buying behavior? How big the actual market is or could be? What about reaching that market (marketing)? Have others done it successfully before you? Do you have something unique to offer the potential customer? I could list question after question that needs to be answered before going forward and building a business. The fact is, you must have a plan or odds of success are highly against you.

Two things to understand:

1. I do believe that actions speak louder than words and that many people can build map after map and never actually take the journey. The same can be true of business planning. I'm not saying plan to death. But would you go on the football field without practicing and planning? Of course not! And hopefully you would put a decent amount of time into practicing and planning before going out on the field. The same should be done for your business.

2. There are exceptions to every rule. I know plenty of successful people who never had a formal business plan. But just think, what if they did have a plan? Could they have been even more successful? Give yourself an extra boost to being successful and build the plan; because trust me, when it comes to building a business you should take any boost you can get.

There are a ton of great resources out there for free that can give you an outline of what should be in a business plan. Just do a quick Google search of “business plans” and see what you get.

Write the plan. Know what you are selling; know who will buy it; know how you will convince them to buy; and most importantly know how your business will actually turn a profit. Once you do that, TAKE ACTION, TAKE MASSIVE ACTION!

Jarrod Schilling

Co-Founder/CEO – WOOband

Dream Big or Die Small

Reformed Broker Turned Entrepreneur

Texas Born, Florida Grown

Great Advice

Click Here to Read the Full Article

Addicted2Success.com offers advice from 20 unstoppable entrepreneurs.. here are some of my favorites for morning inspiration: 


“People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that’s a myth – and it’s often propagated by venture capitalists. Find something you love and do it better than everyone else.” –Gurbaksh Chahal – Serial Entrepreneur, Net Worth $200 Million

“There is only hard work and luck, which are really two sides of the same coin. The search for a secret sauce is a futile waste of time. Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.” – Guy Kawasaki – Venture Capitalist & Best Selling Author

“One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this. The beauty of success, whether it’s finding the girl of your dreams, the right job or financial success, is that it doesn’t matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once.” And, “then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” – Mark Cuban- Billionaire Investor & Owner of the Dallas Mavericks


“Never stop asking yourself whether you can do things better. Keep testing every aspect of your business to the nth degree, and challenge every one of your assumptions. The tougher you are on yourself now, the tougher your business will be out there in the real world.” - James Caan - BBC’s “Dragons Den” Investor

WOOband getting a rebrand...

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"Start small. Think big. But most importantly, do something."