Extra Credit Speaker Series

Today, March 30th, I attended the speaker series in the University Center. The woman who spoke was Jeannie Howe. She is an entreprenuer who focuses primarily on non-profit organizations. She started her own business as a private consultant, who's main client is "Every Man's Theater." Throughout her presentation, she spoke a great deal about the importance of networking and creating strong relations between people, whether they are clients or friends. She used these relationships later down the road as angle investors for her consulting business. Ms. Howe also stressed how significant it is to have a strong webpage. She said that having a webpage is important because it's a primary source clients use to research her. Another topic she addressed was having a solid business plan and in that plan she needed to know the fundamentals like how many clients one should have and how much to charge each client, etc. Overall, Jeannie Howe was a great speaker to hear from, especially if you were thinking of persueing a career in the non-profit sector.

Being a Leader

I applied the second Principle of being a leader from How to Win Friends and Influence People this past week on my younger brother.
Before I left for class in the morning, I cleaned all the dishes in the sink and made sure the kitchen was clean from everyone's breakfast (since I'm the last to leave in the morning). When I come home from school early that afternoon, I was greated with a mountain of dishes and crums all over the counter. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. When my brother, who I knew was the culprit, passed throught the kitchen I asked him, in a non-threatening tone, "were these dishes in the sink when you woke up?" He replied with "No" and I could tell he was confessing to his mistake. By using this the tactic of calling attention to mistakes indirectly, it helped my brother realize the mistake without me having to scold or penalize him for his actions.
I then went on to use the rule of the two "yes's" by asking, "You know mom would be mad if she came home to a sink full of dirty dishes, right?" I followed up that question with, "don't you think she would appreciate it if she knew you helped keep the kitched clean for her?"
How to Win friends and Influence People is possitivly helping me to realize the way I interact and speak with people. Overall, the outcomes have been more positive than negative.

Start-Up Financing Options

I started my search start-up finances by looking into my local bank. I know that getting a bank loan to finance a start-up business is a long shot because I haven’t been in business for at least two years, but It’s worth a try anyway. I’m withholding the name of the bank I researched for personal privacy, but I did find out who to contact with a loan application:
Loan applications:

Valarie Samuels
Head of loan department
(*Bank name Withheld*)
P.O. Box 123
Annapolis Junction, MD 20701-0123
301-497-7062 or
800-787-8328, ext. 7062

Secondly, I figured that since my Daycare Center centered on healthy activities for children, that Howard County Recs. and parks would be a strong Angle investor/sponsor for my locations in Howard County. After some research I found that Raymond Wacks is who I should contact in the Budget Office for HCRP. All the budget plans get reviewed by the County Executive who submits the proposals to the County Council each period.

Raymond S. Wacks,
Administrator
rwacks@howardcountymd.gov
Howard County Budget Office
3430 Court House Drive
Ellicott City, MD 21043
(410) 313-2077 (voice)
(410) 313-3390 (fax)

Revised One Year Budget

Updated Enterprise Values

Applying "Secret of Socrates"

I applied the Secret of Socrates method of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" this past Saturday at work. I'm the type of person who really tries to eat healthy, yet all the guys at my work place eat very poorly and everytime we get food, it always ends up being food that's really bad for you. Well, this past weekend I persuaded one of my coworkers to get a salad with me instead of jumping of the fast food badwagon. I persuaded him by asking him simple questions like, "aren't you trying to be on a diet?" and "wouldn't you feel better about yourself if you ate a salad instead of a fast food bacon cheeseburger?" In the end, I won him to my way of thinking and he was actually thankful to me for getting him to eat better food.

Enterprise Values

12 mo. Budget

Reporter Interaction

For this assignment, I spoke with a writter, of "The Retriever Weekly", named Gaby Arevalo. I saw Gaby's article on the fire in the engineer building and was entertained by her story. After I finished the article, I sought Gaby out on Facebook and sent her a message saying how much I enjoyed her story and tried to express genuine interest in her writtings. I used her name at the start of every message and complimented her writting style many times. In her responses to the messages, Gaby was genuinly appreciative of my words and I could tell that she really appriciated my compliments.

Updated Power Point

Marketing Budget can be found here

Enterprise Value

Apple: 890,553,729 x $78.20=6.96 per share

Microsoft: Enterprise Value= 32,000,000 x 3.00=$96,000,000
Outstanding Shares= 10,800,000 x 305.7=$3,301,560,000

SEO

To optimize traffic into my blog site, I decided the best way would be to create a link from my facebook site to my INDS 430 blog. I felt like this would be a good marketing tool for my blog because facebook is so highly viewed and creates unlimited networking opportunities for both friendships and business.

Social Interactions

After further practice using the ten principles of How to Win Friends and Influence People, I’ve learned that people truly to respond to a friendly face and genuine interest. I used the principles this week, the majority of them on Thursday during my time donating blood for the Red Cross. Over a two hour time period, I managed to be acquainted with various people. Most of the people I spoke with were donors, like me. The first guy, named James, was seated on the bed to my left; I introduced myself and after brief introductions, he went on to tell me about his numerous donation stories. Next, Steve, another donor, told me all about his family and his younger brother’s college plans. After more conversation, I learned that Steve and I had a mutual friend. I also talked with a guy on a bed across from me about a previous class we had together and how the rest of his classes were going. Dinisha, my nurse, was who I spoke with about her cell phone. She was texting on her iphone, which is the same phone I use, so I asked her how she liked her phone and the positive and negative attributes it has.
Over the weekend, I used the principles of a few other people, some of which were at work, and some were other retail employees. I used the principles further on my coworkers to try to get to know them better. For example, I learned that one of the coworker’s family owns a pub in Owings Mills. He told me all about the restaurant, including the menu options and stories about some of the regulars. I tried to use the principles for almost every interaction I could. I came to notice that people really do respond positively to friendliness and to someone who takes a sincere interest in them. Taking a few minutes to listen to someone does make them feel good and can strongly enhance networking ties.