The En-10th-eneur

[tenth-ann-modanza]

The Finale

Alas, we have come to the last phase of our business journey: our final pitching.

Unlike the previous venture proposal, we have now come to realize the cruciality of marking our products with reasonable and profitable prices to come to a point where all our expenses would become worth the sacrifice. During this time, we hypothesized that increasing our markup percentage would yield sufficient sales for us to continue with our business for the next few years.

To test this hypothesis, we took the initiative to draft a profit chart and we saw that we would eventually become “lugi” after a few years if we pursue with only 30% markup on our food items. In fact, we would not gain anything considering the production and administrative expenses we shall be incurring during the first venture, and will only begin gaining a little profit on the fourth year of our operation. And this, we figured, will not be able to sustain our business, considering we will be in constant need of supplies of fresh ingredients daily to cook our food combos.

Considering this dilemma, we came up with two options to choose from: either to increase the markup we were imposing on our unit products or increase the number of unit products to be sold while ensuring we use the least possible prices we could find of still-good-quality materials and ingredients of our products.

Upon deliberating and solving for the potential profit, however, we found that increasing the number of unit products would yield us profit at a longer period of time (1.5 years shy of our first operation). Similar to the previous issue, we realized that this would not be able to sustain us, and thus, have opted for the other remaining option: to increase the markup on our products.

At first, we were concerned that the prices may turn out a little too high for our student-customers; upon calculating, however, we found that they are still affordable and competitive in the market, for one complete meal in a bowl that costs P49.00 in our store would equate to roughly only one viand in our direct competitors.

It is for this reason that we rose to a 70% markup which will help us earn adequately, all while maintaining the affordability to our customers at only P49.00, P59.00, and P79.00 price per food combo, respectively. These prices with the markups, multiplied with the minimum allocated number of units to be prepared per day (50 pieces per food combo), would yield us a profit of approximately P49,000 during the first month of operation, contributing to a total of P800,000 gross profit for the first year, and our first million within five years of operation.

From this experience, we have realized that inasmuch as we want to help give the best food at the lowest possible price to our customers, particularly the students, to help them manage their expenses while studying at Central Mindanao University, we must also consider the practicality that falls on our side. After all, business is not the same as charity and sometimes, helping other people does not necessarily mean only considering their benefits but also ours, so we could sustain our forces and be able to help more customers who need saving both from business and hunger.

[tenth-ann-modanza]

Halfway Through

Preparation for the BMC Proposal had been a very challenging experience, not only because as a student nurse, I do not find it in line with any area of my field of expertise, but also because I was not able to allocate enough time to work on it to ensure good results. However, in the small amount of time that my groupmates and I crammed this activity into our jampacked schedule, we were able to at least apply the major corrections that our panelists pointed out: to carry out a more comprehensive validation method for our venture, and to emphasize how we are different from our competitors, particularly one other group from our section that has the exact same concept as ours.

Because of these recommendations, we were able to come up with questions that ultimately led us to the clarity of the once-murky waters of our proposal that we were traversing on which were asked through physical interviews and Google Forms survey. Among these is the major question: Would you approve of a food truck that provides ready-made meals? Considering a lot of responses were collated, we determined the three most prominent locations that would not make it a hassle for majority of our customers to approach us because going for more than three locations would make it difficult for them to determine where we are parking to obtain the food they crave for.

From this, we were able to determine from which colleges the most of our would-be customers would come from to strategize where in the campus we would park our truck during its service hours: (1) in the vacant lawn a few meters shy of the College of Nursing, (2) in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and (3) in the intersection near the College of Agriculture.

Additionally, we also drafted a detailed expense list so to determine the actual pricing we will be imposing on our products to visualize whether we would be profiting from our proposed business. From these, I have learned how to adjust the prices in a way that would make it attractively cheap for the customers but adequately profitable on my end with 30% markup. The prices for the three different combos are: P49, P59, P79; all with different combo compositions our customers could choose from – an emphasis on our difference from our direct competitors: being able to choose the different components of the meal just like a shawarma store.

Incredibly, this is also related to one of the things I have learned during the Entrepreneurship seminar at the University Convention Center which stated that competitors are inevitable in this field; however, it does not mean I would immediately lose because I am a newbie; rather, it is a challenge for me to make my business different and more aromatic and attractive to those who have first heard of it. After all, the end purpose of the business is to earn money just as much as we want to help our customers with the services we provide.

[tenth-ann-modanza]

The Beginning

“Kapoy baklay padung market”; “Taas kaayo ang pila ig magpalit pagkaon.”

Two sentences from almost all our interviewees that lead us to arguably one of the most prominent problems being faced by students in CMU: the availability and convenience of purchasing food within the campus. In fact, one respondent verbalized that she does not eat breakfast anymore because cooking would cost her a lot of time preparing in the morning and ready-to-eat food are not easily accessible from her boarding house. Another interviewee reported experiencing occasional headaches due to inappropriately timed meals; all of which point to hectic schedules, limited time, and long lines in the market, the university’s primary source of readily cooked dishes. The same goes for a group of respondents who have classes on 12 noon, and therefore, have no time to go to the market anymore to purchase their meals. Moreover, a respondent, when asked about a potential solution that would solve her problems related to this, revealed that she wanted her college to have their own canteen so she would not have to go to the market anymore and queue in long lines just for her to eat.

From this suggestion, we have devised several plans to address the students’ concern regarding food purchasing. Initially, we planned to create an all-around delivery app for products sold in the market yet found it hard to earn money from huge startup expenses. Furthermore, most of the students we interviewed did not want to have additional fees charged to their meals due to tight budgeting, so if an app like this will be launched, they would only avail if it was free of charge – which is concerning not only on the earning prospect of us as entrepreneurs, but also to the accessibility of our app to all members of our target market. Instead, we now plan to convert a mobile vehicle into a Food Truck so to address this issue of different students from different colleges within the school without having to think about very huge startup expenses and can be maintained by providing a variety of food from which students can choose from without the need of building an actual canteen for every college and is still accessible for those within proximity of the parked truck.

Ideally, the truck would serve pack and go and dine-in meals and a “Sulit 59” combo composed of 1 cup of rice, a meat, and vegetable viand/ fruit of their choice to ensure the customer’s satisfaction and the entrepreneur’s profit. This idea is based on an interviewee’s remark that ever since he began boarding at the campus, he could only rarely eat healthy and well-balanced meals due to his tight budget.

From all these, we have realized that conceptualizing a business is really challenging. It needs us to pour a lot of our time and dedication into the work to obtain beautiful results – things that are almost always absent to us, nursing students, due to our very hectic schedules. Accordingly, we have realized that though our schedule is tough, we should use every ounce of our time to work on this closely not just for the benefit of getting good grades, but for its and our potential to help the people we choose to help, in this case, our fellow students at Central Mindanao University.

[tenth-ann-modanza]

How I ALMOST Lived Miserably for Nineteen Years

Every day for nineteen years, I sat in front of our good ol’ television watching boring soap operas and channel shows that could not be paused. Whenever I have to pee or get the door, I’d be missing A LOT of what’s been going on with the show. This was sad, but I was used to it. Because who wouldn’t, when you’ve been doing this same old routine, watching the same old television for ages?

Well, until one glorious day, when my dad’s 60-inch Sony Smart TV – the liger of the smart phone and our good old TV – has finally arrived and shed light upon our miserable souls. And this was when two things crossed my mind: first is that I’ve been living like a caveman my entire life; second is “hey, rebellion isn’t always a bad idea.”

Yep, rebellion, in this case, is TRULY amAzing.

(1) I didn’t realize that “A STARTUP IS AN ACT OF REBELLION”-Ken Singer

Imagine if there was no one who bred together the Smart Phone and television; or worse, if no one even thought of making them at all. Well, I think it would be pretty miserable. We would all be in our primitive skin and grass clothing, looking at one another until we got bored.

The thing is, I never even thought of this until I had my first Entrepreneurship classes this year. My teacher told us a quote from somebody named Ken Singer saying that “a startup is an act or rebellion” which is great. It made me realize that well, yeah, making money isn’t just about selling, but a lot, lot more than that. It is about being creative and not contented; constantly looking for angles that could be developed. For if I stay contented with what I have been used to doing, such as watching the poor and the rich kids fight in Filipino dramas on television, I would never have experienced the joy of having YouTube, Netflix, Google, and so much more on Smart TV. And the same goes for the people who are behind these fantastic innovations.

(2)  I didn't know the difference between “The EntrepreNURSE vs Businessman”

I always wanted to get rich FAST. I mean, who doesn’t, right? But pursuing my lifelong goal of becoming a nurse then a doctor made me want to slowly let my grip fall from my dream of having a lot of money. Good thing is, I have learned that these two dreams of mine aren’t all that astray from one another; in fact, I could be both all at once, all at the same time! Now going back to our new TV, looking at it makes me realize how fantastically creative and innovative the creators of it were to try and merge two separate electronics into one glorious innovation. This is doubled by the thought my Entrep teacher put into my head that businessmen are not entrepreneurs.

At first, I got really confused because I thought entrepreneurship was all about earning money and letting it circulate the national and global market, even, to support the economy. However, this clearly was not the case. Businessmen are largely invested on this concept of earning money from selling common, usual, mundane things for the sake of profit. Yet real entrepreneurs want change. They hatch the freshest ideas by improving what’s already existing, rather than merely selling what’s existing. This is how they make profit out of them, pretty much how the Smart TV was birthed into existence.

(3) “Keep Your Enemies Closer” – (I’ll keep this in Mind)

True enough, being in on this field of work, having competitors is not news. In fact, it is what makes you want to strive more to be different and rebel against what’s common. However, I never knew that for us to earn, do, and be more, we need to keep becoming closer to our enemies / rivals such as what Samsung and Sony had been doing. Not for the cartoonish act of knowing all their secrets and using them against them; rather, reaping benefits out of them through allowing for the creation of the world’s first QD-OLED 4K TV, one of the flatscreen predecessors of the first Smart TVs available globally.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that entrepreneurship has changed the way we live, through making our lives easier and more comfortable with the availability of gadgets to make living more convenient. From the Smart TV sitting placidly in our living room, to a universe full of innovations we could never have imagined. But more than that, the principles of entrepreneurship that makes the entrepreneur different from the conventional businessman; business strategies such as partnering with your rivals; even the slightest spark of creativity that pushes the innovator to rebel, altogether set the economy ablaze with the spirit of the true backbone of society – entrepreneurship – all these and more, I will still have to learn all throughout my course with this subject.