Creating and Managing a Business Project Proposal
Basic Information
Full Name: Samantha Reid
UC Email: [email protected]
College: College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning
Major: Fine Arts
Title of Project: Creating and Managing a Business
Thematic Area (choose only one): Leadership
Expected Project Start Date: November 3, 2013
Expected Project End Date: Reflection on March 2, 2014
Project Information
1. Provide a detailed abstract of your proposed honors experiential learning project.
My mom and I have started our own cleaning business called Spotless Spaces, and my goal for this project is to create a business plan, research what steps need to be taken in order to apply to be an Limited Liability Company (LLC) and then take those steps, and any other additional steps needed, to become an incorporated business. I also plan to research all the important components a business needs, such as employee policies, paperwork in regards to payroll, office organization and filing, documentation, etc. I have some books picked out that I am going to read in a few different subject areas including how to be an effective leader in a business, business strategies, and marketing our business. I plan for this project to encompass all areas of a creating and maintaining a business, from making a plan to running the business to marketing our business to help it grow. The project is meaningful to me because it will help to make the business my mom and I created successful and will also help me to learn the different aspects of a business and what goes into it.
This project will be divided into three parts: the planning stages before we become incorporated (creating a business plan; doing research on leadership theories, business planning, and marketing strategies; coming up with an employee policy and handbook; creating a website, etc.), the middle stage while we are waiting for the paperwork to go through and beginning to operate as an incorporated business, and then actually running the business (office work, staff meetings, updating our website, quarterly taxes, promoting our business, contacting clients, scheduling, etc.).
I anticipate for the first stage to last two weeks, but may have to adjust my schedule if it takes longer. During this stage I will spend a lot of time researching leadership, management, and business theories so that I can effectively manage Spotless Spaces and help it grow. I will also work on our website and creating any documents we will need for our employees (employee policy, handbook, etc.) as well as for our business itself (goal, expectations, etc.). While the paperwork is processing (which I believe will take about two weeks) I will continue to do research and work on our website, and in addition start creating documents we will need to help keep our business organized (schedules, payroll sheets, method of tracking payments, etc.—I am anticipating that through my research I will learn more documents or systems that will help with organization). Once the paperwork is processed and we are officially Spotless Spaces, LLC my workload will really start to increase. I will spend time each week on employee and client contact, filing and organization, payroll and getting pay packets ready to distribute at the end of the week. Monthly I will spend time on scheduling, promoting our business, website upkeep, creating agendas for employee meetings, running the meetings, research, and reflection. The research will not be as heavy as in the beginning month or so but I know that as questions come up I will need to do continual research in order to answer those questions. I also want to do a small reflection monthly to make sure we are on track with our goals and that everything is running smoothly. I am sure that as I continue to research and as we start working I will find there are more tasks that I need to do as well.
Clearly and thoroughly address how each of the following elements will be exhibited in your work.
2. Connection to Learning Outcomes within the Honors Thematic Area (identified above)
· Has the ability to relate, communicate and work effectively with peers
Being the manager of Spotless Spaces will require me to communicate with others on various levels. First I will have to communicate with Jean, who is my superior, about what needs to be done, how everything is going, and be a mediator between both her and the staff members as well as her and the clients. I will also need to communicate with the employees to make sure they know what needs to be accomplished, what we believe in as a company, what we expect from them as a part of the company, and to clear up any confusion that may arise due to scheduling or tasks given. Lastly I will communicate with our clients, sending out reminders, making sure that we are doing what they expect of us and again clearing up any problems or confusion that may come up. I think I am in a very unique position because I will be dealing with all levels of the company, and therefor learning how to communicate on all of the different levels which I think will be a great learning experience and that knowledge will be very useful as I take on other jobs.
· Develops a vision of the future and acknowledges the impact of decisions (as applicable to the individual and affiliated organizations)
By creating a business plan I will be developing a plan for the future and working to make sure we accomplish what we have set out to do. As we begin working, I may realize that what we planned doesn’t effectively accomplish what we hoped or we may have forgotten something, and we may need to adjust our original plan accordingly. When I do my monthly reflections, I will see where we are compared to our business plan and how the decisions we are making are affecting our company. By looking over and analyzing how we are succeeding as a company I will be forced to see the actions of the decisions we make during the month and what the results are.
· Possesses knowledge of various leadership theories and identifies with the characteristics of leadership
Through researching different leadership, business and management theories I will gain knowledge in all of these areas. I will apply this knowledge throughout this project to help me be an effective manager of Spotless Spaces. When I reflect each month I will make sure that I am employing the theories I have researched, and I will also analyze how effective I am being as a leader of the company. I plan to make goals for myself each month and make sure I am meeting the goals that I set for myself.
3. Connection to Goals and Academic Theories (include reference list, as appropriate)
A. This project will help me in the future because of the business knowledge I will be gaining. I am focusing on photography and hope to have my own business in the future, and learning how to effectively run a business and work with others will be invaluable for me to know. I also believe that learning to work with others and how to communicate with them on a more professional level (as opposed to the casual conversations you would have with friends or family) is something that everyone should learn and know how to do, because it is useful in any job that a person could have.
B. I decided to choose books that were all written in the last few years because I think those will be the most relevant and up to date, and therefore the most helpful. I chose a variety of formats; some are broken down into tips or steps while others are just straightforward books. I also chose books on both leadership and management so that I would learn both aspects I think are necessary to manage Spotless Spaces and get our business up and running. In addition to books that will give me tips on how to be an effective leader and manager, I also have some that point out pitfalls and things to try and avoid. The list below is of the books I plan to read but I may make adjustments as I come up with more questions or subjects that I feel I need to learn more about, or if I begin a book and find it is not as helpful as I anticipated. I broke the books down into three categories: the ones I feel will be most helpful and are a necessity to read for this project, those that I think will give me additional information on the same subjects as the first group, and those that look interesting and I hope to read but it will not be detrimental if I don’t get to them. I hope to get to all the books on the list, but getting through the first two categories is my main goal. I’ve also included an online article with tips for making a good website for a small business that I plan to read and use to help with the development of our website. After reading this article I may search for others that give more in-depth comments about it, but I feel that pairing this article with Hyder Kabani’s book should suffice for the website aspect.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, Bill Aulet
The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls that Can Sink a Startup, Noam Wasserman
The Strategist: Become the Leader your Business Needs, Cynthia A. Montgomery
The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue, Shama Hyder Kabani
Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed and How Your Firm can Too; David C. Kuhlman
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/23/small-office-website-ent-tech-cx_ml_0923websitedesign.html
Spark & Hustle: Launch and Grow your Small Business Now, Tory Johnson
Just Run It!: Running an Exceptional Business is Easier than you Think, Dick Cross
It’s Your Business: 183 Essential Tips that will Transform your Small Business, JJ Ramberg with Lisa Everson & Frank Silverstein
Run your Own Corporation: How to Legally Operate and Properly Maintain your Company into the Future, Garrett Sutton
Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management is Over—and Why Collaboration is in, Peter Shankman with Karen Kelly
4. Initiative, Independence, and/or Creativity
My contribution to this project will be building the foundation for our business. Without someone to create all the paperwork necessary to keep the business organized and running, as well as creating various items to promote our business and draw in new clients, Spotless Spaces would not be very successful. Even though Jean is the owner of the business, once I get tasks assigned I will be working on my own a lot. I will also have to use my creativity in designing the documents we use because I want to incorporate our logo into everything (especially stationary and envelopes to use to contact clients. I will also have to be creative in the way I decide to let our clients know that we are a green/environmentally-friendly company (explained further under Dissemination). I think that leading a smaller group of girls in my Grace Place project has started to get me ready to lead in a more professional setting because I have learned different ways to communicate and which are the most effective, and I have also researched some leadership theories already in the past.
5. Reflection
During this project I plan to reflect monthly on various aspects of the business. My small reflections each month will consist of looking over the notes I took on my readings and seeing if we are implementing all of the ideas I intended, as well as making sure we are on track and analyzing how successful the business is. Throughout the month I will take notes that I can then review at the end of the month when I choose to reflect. I will look over the notes I took on various books and compare how we are running our business to the notes I took and proposals I made based off those notes. I will also look at how much promoting we have done and compare that to how many new clients we have, examine our client contact and gauge how happy our clients are with our services, create any new organizational paperwork we may have realized that we need, and other similar tasks. At the staff meetings I will also get the other employees opinions on how the month has gone and take suggestions for changes we can make.
For my reflection encompassing the project as a whole I chose to reflect on March 1, 2014 because it will be 1/3 of a year into this project and I want to make sure I am evaluating my work and how the businesses in running after we have settled in to a routine, but in time to catch any problems within the business before they become habit. I will obviously keep my notes on the books I read on hand to continually reference and also continue implementing what I have learned in regards to effectively managing and running a business as we (hopefully) grow. During this reflection I will again look over my notes and see how effective we were at using the various theories and strategies I researched, look at our original business plan and see how well we executed it, and then compose this information into a small presentation to give our employees at one of our staff meetings, so they know how the year has gone up until that point.
I feel that I reflect best when I have all of my thoughts into one place, and so for both the monthly and the final reflections I will create a document to keep all of the information in. It will likely be laid out in an outline format where I have a topic and notes underneath of how we are doing and what needs to be corrected or added in order to make our business more effective and successful. To present the information to our employees I will take the information I feel is most useful for them to know and put it into a PowerPoint presentation (some information may just be mundane observations). I will also use the information from my documents for each month in my final reflective essay. It will probably take me a week or two to sort through all of the information I have accumulated over the four months of this project and analyze/organize that information to make it easy to understand and put it into the employee presentation. I will put the PowerPoint onto my Learning Portfolio as a means of documenting my project, as well as my notes on the various readings I plan to do.
6. Dissemination
I plan on having a few pieces with which to disseminate my project. The first, and what I think to be most important, will be creating an Employee Handbook with all of our company’s rules and policies listed in it. This will be given to all current and future employees, and will show the hard work we put into our business and also let our employees know what we stand for and what we expect of them in order to keep our business professional and making our clients happy. One of the draws that I hope our business will have is that we will be green and I want to do something to let our clients know that. It will be on our website, but I wanted to do something else to absolutely make sure that our clients and future clients are aware of that fact, because I think it makes our business unique from other businesses out there. I am thinking of going out in Cincinnati and shooting some nature photographs to put on notecards and for one month or so use those as our stationary to leave notes for clients and on the opposite side have a message stating that we are a “green” company. Since we work hard to make sure all of our supplies are all natural and biodegradable I think this is a great way to let our clients know that we do this; I think clients with younger children will especially appreciate this fact.
7. Project Advisor (list the person’s name, title, and contact information)
Jean Budke, Spotless Spaces owner
Cell phone: (513) 236-8958
E-mail: [email protected]
8. Budget (if applicable)
N/A
Full Name: Samantha Reid
UC Email: [email protected]
College: College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning
Major: Fine Arts
Title of Project: Creating and Managing a Business
Thematic Area (choose only one): Leadership
Expected Project Start Date: November 3, 2013
Expected Project End Date: Reflection on March 2, 2014
Project Information
1. Provide a detailed abstract of your proposed honors experiential learning project.
My mom and I have started our own cleaning business called Spotless Spaces, and my goal for this project is to create a business plan, research what steps need to be taken in order to apply to be an Limited Liability Company (LLC) and then take those steps, and any other additional steps needed, to become an incorporated business. I also plan to research all the important components a business needs, such as employee policies, paperwork in regards to payroll, office organization and filing, documentation, etc. I have some books picked out that I am going to read in a few different subject areas including how to be an effective leader in a business, business strategies, and marketing our business. I plan for this project to encompass all areas of a creating and maintaining a business, from making a plan to running the business to marketing our business to help it grow. The project is meaningful to me because it will help to make the business my mom and I created successful and will also help me to learn the different aspects of a business and what goes into it.
This project will be divided into three parts: the planning stages before we become incorporated (creating a business plan; doing research on leadership theories, business planning, and marketing strategies; coming up with an employee policy and handbook; creating a website, etc.), the middle stage while we are waiting for the paperwork to go through and beginning to operate as an incorporated business, and then actually running the business (office work, staff meetings, updating our website, quarterly taxes, promoting our business, contacting clients, scheduling, etc.).
I anticipate for the first stage to last two weeks, but may have to adjust my schedule if it takes longer. During this stage I will spend a lot of time researching leadership, management, and business theories so that I can effectively manage Spotless Spaces and help it grow. I will also work on our website and creating any documents we will need for our employees (employee policy, handbook, etc.) as well as for our business itself (goal, expectations, etc.). While the paperwork is processing (which I believe will take about two weeks) I will continue to do research and work on our website, and in addition start creating documents we will need to help keep our business organized (schedules, payroll sheets, method of tracking payments, etc.—I am anticipating that through my research I will learn more documents or systems that will help with organization). Once the paperwork is processed and we are officially Spotless Spaces, LLC my workload will really start to increase. I will spend time each week on employee and client contact, filing and organization, payroll and getting pay packets ready to distribute at the end of the week. Monthly I will spend time on scheduling, promoting our business, website upkeep, creating agendas for employee meetings, running the meetings, research, and reflection. The research will not be as heavy as in the beginning month or so but I know that as questions come up I will need to do continual research in order to answer those questions. I also want to do a small reflection monthly to make sure we are on track with our goals and that everything is running smoothly. I am sure that as I continue to research and as we start working I will find there are more tasks that I need to do as well.
Clearly and thoroughly address how each of the following elements will be exhibited in your work.
2. Connection to Learning Outcomes within the Honors Thematic Area (identified above)
· Has the ability to relate, communicate and work effectively with peers
Being the manager of Spotless Spaces will require me to communicate with others on various levels. First I will have to communicate with Jean, who is my superior, about what needs to be done, how everything is going, and be a mediator between both her and the staff members as well as her and the clients. I will also need to communicate with the employees to make sure they know what needs to be accomplished, what we believe in as a company, what we expect from them as a part of the company, and to clear up any confusion that may arise due to scheduling or tasks given. Lastly I will communicate with our clients, sending out reminders, making sure that we are doing what they expect of us and again clearing up any problems or confusion that may come up. I think I am in a very unique position because I will be dealing with all levels of the company, and therefor learning how to communicate on all of the different levels which I think will be a great learning experience and that knowledge will be very useful as I take on other jobs.
· Develops a vision of the future and acknowledges the impact of decisions (as applicable to the individual and affiliated organizations)
By creating a business plan I will be developing a plan for the future and working to make sure we accomplish what we have set out to do. As we begin working, I may realize that what we planned doesn’t effectively accomplish what we hoped or we may have forgotten something, and we may need to adjust our original plan accordingly. When I do my monthly reflections, I will see where we are compared to our business plan and how the decisions we are making are affecting our company. By looking over and analyzing how we are succeeding as a company I will be forced to see the actions of the decisions we make during the month and what the results are.
· Possesses knowledge of various leadership theories and identifies with the characteristics of leadership
Through researching different leadership, business and management theories I will gain knowledge in all of these areas. I will apply this knowledge throughout this project to help me be an effective manager of Spotless Spaces. When I reflect each month I will make sure that I am employing the theories I have researched, and I will also analyze how effective I am being as a leader of the company. I plan to make goals for myself each month and make sure I am meeting the goals that I set for myself.
3. Connection to Goals and Academic Theories (include reference list, as appropriate)
A. This project will help me in the future because of the business knowledge I will be gaining. I am focusing on photography and hope to have my own business in the future, and learning how to effectively run a business and work with others will be invaluable for me to know. I also believe that learning to work with others and how to communicate with them on a more professional level (as opposed to the casual conversations you would have with friends or family) is something that everyone should learn and know how to do, because it is useful in any job that a person could have.
B. I decided to choose books that were all written in the last few years because I think those will be the most relevant and up to date, and therefore the most helpful. I chose a variety of formats; some are broken down into tips or steps while others are just straightforward books. I also chose books on both leadership and management so that I would learn both aspects I think are necessary to manage Spotless Spaces and get our business up and running. In addition to books that will give me tips on how to be an effective leader and manager, I also have some that point out pitfalls and things to try and avoid. The list below is of the books I plan to read but I may make adjustments as I come up with more questions or subjects that I feel I need to learn more about, or if I begin a book and find it is not as helpful as I anticipated. I broke the books down into three categories: the ones I feel will be most helpful and are a necessity to read for this project, those that I think will give me additional information on the same subjects as the first group, and those that look interesting and I hope to read but it will not be detrimental if I don’t get to them. I hope to get to all the books on the list, but getting through the first two categories is my main goal. I’ve also included an online article with tips for making a good website for a small business that I plan to read and use to help with the development of our website. After reading this article I may search for others that give more in-depth comments about it, but I feel that pairing this article with Hyder Kabani’s book should suffice for the website aspect.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, Bill Aulet
The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls that Can Sink a Startup, Noam Wasserman
The Strategist: Become the Leader your Business Needs, Cynthia A. Montgomery
The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue, Shama Hyder Kabani
Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed and How Your Firm can Too; David C. Kuhlman
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/23/small-office-website-ent-tech-cx_ml_0923websitedesign.html
Spark & Hustle: Launch and Grow your Small Business Now, Tory Johnson
Just Run It!: Running an Exceptional Business is Easier than you Think, Dick Cross
It’s Your Business: 183 Essential Tips that will Transform your Small Business, JJ Ramberg with Lisa Everson & Frank Silverstein
Run your Own Corporation: How to Legally Operate and Properly Maintain your Company into the Future, Garrett Sutton
Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management is Over—and Why Collaboration is in, Peter Shankman with Karen Kelly
4. Initiative, Independence, and/or Creativity
My contribution to this project will be building the foundation for our business. Without someone to create all the paperwork necessary to keep the business organized and running, as well as creating various items to promote our business and draw in new clients, Spotless Spaces would not be very successful. Even though Jean is the owner of the business, once I get tasks assigned I will be working on my own a lot. I will also have to use my creativity in designing the documents we use because I want to incorporate our logo into everything (especially stationary and envelopes to use to contact clients. I will also have to be creative in the way I decide to let our clients know that we are a green/environmentally-friendly company (explained further under Dissemination). I think that leading a smaller group of girls in my Grace Place project has started to get me ready to lead in a more professional setting because I have learned different ways to communicate and which are the most effective, and I have also researched some leadership theories already in the past.
5. Reflection
During this project I plan to reflect monthly on various aspects of the business. My small reflections each month will consist of looking over the notes I took on my readings and seeing if we are implementing all of the ideas I intended, as well as making sure we are on track and analyzing how successful the business is. Throughout the month I will take notes that I can then review at the end of the month when I choose to reflect. I will look over the notes I took on various books and compare how we are running our business to the notes I took and proposals I made based off those notes. I will also look at how much promoting we have done and compare that to how many new clients we have, examine our client contact and gauge how happy our clients are with our services, create any new organizational paperwork we may have realized that we need, and other similar tasks. At the staff meetings I will also get the other employees opinions on how the month has gone and take suggestions for changes we can make.
For my reflection encompassing the project as a whole I chose to reflect on March 1, 2014 because it will be 1/3 of a year into this project and I want to make sure I am evaluating my work and how the businesses in running after we have settled in to a routine, but in time to catch any problems within the business before they become habit. I will obviously keep my notes on the books I read on hand to continually reference and also continue implementing what I have learned in regards to effectively managing and running a business as we (hopefully) grow. During this reflection I will again look over my notes and see how effective we were at using the various theories and strategies I researched, look at our original business plan and see how well we executed it, and then compose this information into a small presentation to give our employees at one of our staff meetings, so they know how the year has gone up until that point.
I feel that I reflect best when I have all of my thoughts into one place, and so for both the monthly and the final reflections I will create a document to keep all of the information in. It will likely be laid out in an outline format where I have a topic and notes underneath of how we are doing and what needs to be corrected or added in order to make our business more effective and successful. To present the information to our employees I will take the information I feel is most useful for them to know and put it into a PowerPoint presentation (some information may just be mundane observations). I will also use the information from my documents for each month in my final reflective essay. It will probably take me a week or two to sort through all of the information I have accumulated over the four months of this project and analyze/organize that information to make it easy to understand and put it into the employee presentation. I will put the PowerPoint onto my Learning Portfolio as a means of documenting my project, as well as my notes on the various readings I plan to do.
6. Dissemination
I plan on having a few pieces with which to disseminate my project. The first, and what I think to be most important, will be creating an Employee Handbook with all of our company’s rules and policies listed in it. This will be given to all current and future employees, and will show the hard work we put into our business and also let our employees know what we stand for and what we expect of them in order to keep our business professional and making our clients happy. One of the draws that I hope our business will have is that we will be green and I want to do something to let our clients know that. It will be on our website, but I wanted to do something else to absolutely make sure that our clients and future clients are aware of that fact, because I think it makes our business unique from other businesses out there. I am thinking of going out in Cincinnati and shooting some nature photographs to put on notecards and for one month or so use those as our stationary to leave notes for clients and on the opposite side have a message stating that we are a “green” company. Since we work hard to make sure all of our supplies are all natural and biodegradable I think this is a great way to let our clients know that we do this; I think clients with younger children will especially appreciate this fact.
7. Project Advisor (list the person’s name, title, and contact information)
Jean Budke, Spotless Spaces owner
Cell phone: (513) 236-8958
E-mail: [email protected]
8. Budget (if applicable)
N/A