Two days have passed for the booth and I have learned many things from there. I learned how difficult it is to operate a business without a proper and precise plan to begin with. As far as the sales goes, it is selling quite ok except for my drinks which is rather disappointing. Due to the time constraints that we have during weekdays, I realised that we did not have enough time to properly work on the marketing plan, operational plan, and management plan. As the saying goes “It is not the amount of time you put into the work, it is about the amount of hard work that you have poured into”, however I really do believe that we did not have enough time to go make all this plan and implement it. We got to have passion in what we are doing, otherwise there will be no force of motivation to operate a business.
I believed that if we had worked on the aforementioned business plans, the booth will certainly perform even better than what it is now. However, a good business plan does not equate to profit. And what that means is a good business plan will not guarantee a lucrative profit because it needs to be implemented properly, and therein lies a good leadership. One of the major factor that keeps the business going is the whole workforce. Why I said so? It’s because when your employee does not have the motivation and spirit to help you, then your business plan will fail as a result. I find that, without the feeling of motivation from the entire workforce, it is very tough for me to push out for sales when I see other people is doing nothing. I would say it can be very easily affected to other employee and it is very dangerous for a business person.
A good teamwork will automatically have good spirit and motivation and most importantly they know where are they going. When a business is going no where, then the spirit will go down to the drain. So a good leader is very important for that matter because leader is always the one who keeps the thing going.
I also realised that it is utterly important to have your products and services work as intended because it gives you a sheer confidence and passion to continue with what you are doing. As what I am experiencing now, I wanted to make a carbonated drink for people to give them the freshness feeling. Unfortunately, even though I bought the sparkling water shit I failed to make a nice sparkling drink up for sale. It didn’t live up to my expectations and I completely lost the will to sell it and feel like abandon the whole thing. I wish I could continue to improvise of what I am doing, but then due to the limited time and budget reasons, I do not wish to waste any more money on it because it is really costly. With that being said, what we can do now is to try and sell as much as we can at a cut throat price.
Conducting a business is not all about making plans, a business owner also has to be adaptive to the current condition. Strategy and planning may change overtime, and we have to keep making changes in a rapid pace. For example, I initially thought that selling a sparkling juice will be nice and definitely be a hit but then an unforeseen circumstances made the idea fail. The problems that I encountered was the difficulty in maintaining the CO2 in the drink which is impossible without a proper equipment. Second, is the cost of the ingredient.
To ensure that the idea of yours will work as it supposed to, first thing you must have in your mind is that, do you have the capacity to fund the idea? Then only you start thinking and predict what are the problems may appear, like how are we suppose to keep the ice from melting? Do we have the container? How are we going to make the drink in a most efficient manner? Ah yes.. the cost.. I didn’t realise that calculating the cost of a cup of drink could be so tedious, we had to take the cost of packaging and materials needed into account. That’s one problem, and another problem is how are you going to calculate it since you are purchasing those materials in bulk?! Like I couldn’t determine the exact amount of sparkling water needed and the nata de coco.
As always, my first impression over things is often wrong. I actually felt very confident that my drink will sell like hot cake but turns out to be the opposite. Quite disappointing and frustrating. Really.
I know I complain a lot, but I just can’t stand looking at people who join in the club and actually doing nothing! That pisses me the most but bryan himself did not rant a single word. I’m quite impressed with him though and looking back at myself, I just feel very scary of the way I behave and attitude. I really really want to change these two, selfish and calculative. That is what I want to change first. Looks like the next time when I hear other people’s idea, I must not criticize it before I know anything about it.
Through this project, all I can say is that I actually enjoyed doing things behind the scene rather than standing outside and promote things or deal with people. I tried to step out from my comfort zone, and honestly though it didn’t feel good but I still managed to step out of there and I just don’t feel that I’m enjoying doing all these things. But one thing for sure though, I really really enjoy doing things behind the scene to support the frontline people. When I do that, I feel very fun and happy because I know that what I’m doing is actually supporting them. I can feel that I’m trying my best all the time when I do this kind of thing.
When we talk about business plan that can change over time, what I meant by it was, for instance, while we are doing business, suddenly an idea comes out of no where that can be a good idea at times. I also realised that sometimes when you are too honest with your customers, it will somehow turn them away and you have to suffer the lost. Presentation is also very important in making good impression for customers. It is one of the major source of attraction because customers can feel the sense of professionalism and “richness” of a company. One thing our president pointed out in relation to this presentation is that a booth cannot be empty because it gives the impression of “nothing-to-sell”. When there’s a crowd at a booth, it will naturally attract people to their store because human beings are always filled with curiosity and wonder what is going on with the booth.
I now also can see why marketing is vital because the role of marketing is to inform the public about what is going on with your company and if a company has been actively and aggressively market their product and service coupled with a good presentation that has the sense of professionalism element in it, then the odds of being successful is high.
