I never thought that I would ever take a business class in my college career. I work with clothing and dance! Not money. But, as I'm coming to the end of my college career, I am realizing more and more that what I am currently learning through my career of choice, is one that really won't do me a whole lot of good, unless, I have something that will back it up. And although I am just starting, I have already learned so many tricks that will help me in the future, if I ever decide to create a clothing line or open a dance studio. And those tricks that I am getting a glimpse of will help me make the right decisions when it comes to promoting my product to the right target market, it will help me know where to even start!
Currently, we are learning about other business men and women and how they have made the success happen. I am learning that I have very big shoes to fill in the business world should I decide to take my ideas to that level of actually starting a business and whether or not it would be worth doing. One of our assignments that we have to complete is called the $100.00 challenge. We have to start a business, making at least $100.00 profit, and then donating our profits to Kiva. I think my biggest challenge with this assignment so far is that I am having a hard time thinking on a smaller scale. I would love to start a clothing line or something in the fashion industry, but, I need to make myself think smaller than that. At least for now. I am trying to think of something that will really work and take off in a small town like Rexburg, Idaho. Something that will be inexpensive, but wanted by the students and locals of Rexburg. Am I completely wrong for being in that mindset of big? Or am I right, and do I need to scale it back. This is my dilemma. I know I will think of something, but I also don't want to think too small.
We have been reading a book of our choice this week, and I am reading Good To Great by Jim Collins. Something that I just recently read that stood out to me are located on pages 39-41. He says this "Start a "Stop Doing" list". He talks about Kimberly Clark in particular, and mentions how they have come from a good to great company. They eliminated things that essentially, were not bettering them in any way, and now they are a "great" company and one of the leading paper companies. He talks about how we have "to do" lists and that we should also have "to stop doing" lists. We have to learn how to eliminate things within our companies that may be holding us back and not helping in pushing us forward. I thought that that was an interesting concept and awesome way of thinking. We have to learn how to "de-clutter" in a sense.