Free Money

Mission: Give five random people a dollar. Make it look natural... And here's how it went: 

• Where will you go?
• I will take five random dollars and give them out on campus as I walk to class. 
• What kind of people will you approach?
• I will try to approach five random people, hopefully not all in the same place. 
• What will you say to get the conversation started?
• "Hey, I found a couple dollars on the street & I figured I would pay it forward, here's a dollar, have a good day!"
• What is your plan for the conversation?
• My plan for the conversation is to claim that I found a couple dollars on the street & I figured I would pay it forward. Then I'll ask them to also pay it forward 
• Out of five attempts, how many dollar bills do you think you will be able to give away.
• I think done the right way, I could manage to give all five bills away, but I'm especially broke this week, so it's going to be painful. This had better be worth it- karma points on fleek. Thanks, entrepreneurship. 

Reflection: So this was definitely a bit of an awkward experience, especially since people aren't used to other people coming up to them and offering them money. I will admit though, I left this exercise feeling pretty good about making these peoples' days. There was one person who outright rejected the dollar, but it led to a pretty interesting conversation and making a new friend while I was walking down Stadium Rd. on my way to a class. All in all I think this was a successful project- definitely interesting and a bit challenging, but worth it! 

Week 7 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

• I was surprised to read that concepts like nondemographic segmentation were not around until as late as the 1960's. In my mind, marketing and these business/marketing theories have been around for centuries because business in America is kind of a given, so it is interesting to think about the time period these theories were realized.  

2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

• I had to reread the article a couple of times to understand that the new theory was one that abandoned the idea of segmenting target markets by demographics, and instead categorized consumers based on other criteria. 

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

• What other similar theories exist for predicting consumer behavior?
• Of all of these theories, is there one that has proven to be the most accurate?

4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

• I don't disagree with the author regarding anything, but it did seem unlikely that segmentation that completely ignores customer demographics could be as effective as it seems in the article. 

Elevator Pitch No. 2

(Video Uploading)

1) The pitch. Same as last time, 1-minute long. No Web cams. No sitting. Be dynamic! Upload the video to YouTube (as you do with all of your videos) and post the link.

2) A reflection on the feedback you received from your last pitch. Describe what stood out to you as important, what feedback surprised you the most, what feedback you think was outright wrong or silly.

I didn't get a chance to upload my last pitch video, but I have gotten a lot of varied feedback thus far from various other pitches I have done regarding this project, as well as a lot of very constructive feedback on my blog up to this point. Nearly all of the feedback I have gotten has been positive feedback encouraging me to actually follow through with this project. The most helpful comment I received was one suggesting that I look into applying for a grant to start prototyping the sustainable cafe in an abandoned city building here in Gainesville. Other comments mentioned the possible expenses of the project, but honestly, any start-up like this one is going to cost money, but will absolutely thrive if the passion and motivation is there to push it through to completion. After seeing such a positive reaction to this project, the only question I have in my mind is when I will have the time to really delve into it and start making real time progress. 


3) What did you change, based on the feedback?

Throughout this process of brainstorming, prototyping, pitching, and rethinking this particular project, tons of changes have been made to morph the project into the most streamlined objective possible, and that is: to create a sustainable green space in Gainesville using rooftop gardening and space-saving technologies. After receiving the most recent feedback on my idea napkin, and other project posts, some other things have come to light that I did not consider before, especially the issue of employing homeless people and the legal issues that might be presented through minimum wage issues, etc.