Texting In Business

Droid-HandCent SMS App

On 2/11/10 Beth wrote a blog about texting that was well received. One of the commentators,  Craig Hasbargen, an ENTR200 student in my 10:30 section, noted that his parents use texting in their business. This is not common so I invited Craig to submit a blog post about this business use of texting. His submission follows:

Previously there was a blog entry about teens and texting (SMS).  I commented from another point of view- that of my parents’ business.  The background for this business includes owning and operating multiple dialysis centers for patients with kidney failure plus starting a physician practice.  My mom was the regional manager for the dialysis units and my dad had two jobs when they opened in June, 2005.  Initially, he was the only doctor in the practice and a Brigadier General in charge of six state regions based in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, during wartime operations.  He later (2006) was promoted to Major General with responsibility of 28,000 soldiers throughout the US.  This responsibility meant he was taken away from his civilian job 4-8 times a month.

To boost productivity, while my dad was away on Army duties (funerals, welcoming home troops, etc) I taught my mom to start texting my dad about the pages he was receiving from the hospitals since it was only a regional pager plus the information could be sent and easily retrieved depending on what my dad was doing at the time.  My dad would then call the number received to return the hospital’s page.  This worked very well as the workload continued to grow.

A second doctor was brought into the practice to lighten the load in June of 2006.  The practice secretary started sending a morning text sent from a computer to all management staff explaining the workload for both doctors and their intended itinerary for the day. This helped decrease confusion about the location of the doctors and their availability.  Example- If one of the doctors is performing a kidney biopsy, the staff needs to know not to bother him unless it is a big emergency.  The management staff receives the texts in two formats, computer and SMS message because of poor cell signal at the dialysis locations plus the staff is already using the computer for other functions.

The texts are gradually including more information including mid-day updates about the doctors’ whereabouts, which hospitals they are rounding at, vendor meetings, clinic schedules at various locations, and special procedures with current time lines. The texts are also being sent to the unit secretaries so they can forward calls accordingly.  In addition to the message being sent out in the SMS format, it is also hand written on the white boards in the nurses’ station each morning.  Between the white board, text messages, and computer notifications, the staff is well informed where the doctors are between the four hospitals at which they practice. This entire application is due to the fast and cheap availability of text messaging.

There has been no negative feedback about the process so far.  The staff likes knowing where the doctors are so they can get in touch with them as easily as possible.  The practice is eventually moving towards Blackberries but there is not a huge rush because neither of the doctors have the need, time, or ability to text back to the sender.

Good insights by Craig how texting is used in this setting. I see no reason why the concept couldn’t/shouldn’t be extended in a disciplined manner to other business settings. Hank

We are a nation of dreamers

From USA Today

Entrepreneurship 200 student Sloane Lehman brought this article in the USA Today online issue to my attention a couple of weeks ago.  I hadn’t had time to look into it until now.  After reading it I realized that this has great learning potential for Entrepreneurial students, and anyone interested in starting their own business,  so sharing it in this blog seemed like a good idea.  Thanks Sloane! Beth Carroll

Over the next six month’s USA Today will follow the lives of five start-up businesses,  owners aged 34-56,  highlighting in video the successes and challenges they will face.  Readers may interact by voting for the business they believe has the most likelihood of succeeding.

1800 small businesses applied to be featured in the USA Today Small Business Challenge but only five were chosen.  Each business has its own story which describes why they “want to be like the millions of entrepreneurs who had the guts and drive to push their big ideas into businesses that they own and operate.”

Keep in mind the daunting statistic that nearly 50% of all start-ups fail in the first five years.   It’s never been easy for a new business to stay in business, especially in today’s economy.  “Remarkably, even in dire economic times, the desire to own a small business doesn’t diminish.  Annual business creation in the U.S. has remained consistent for nearly 30 years, even during downturns, according to a new study from the entrepreneurship-focused group Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.”

“For a lot of entrepreneurs, when they have an idea, it becomes a passion, almost an obsession,” Schramm says. “They cannot not do it.”

WINE BAR: Passion for vino leads Michael Matthews to open a new business; see VIDEO

PEANUT SELLERS: Airport bar leads entrepreneurs Hughes, Goldberg to mixed nuts; see VIDEO

VACATION RENTALS: Layoff prompted Kathy Standage to pursue something new and exciting; see VIDEO

HOME INSPECTOR: Threat of pink slip motivated Carl Edmunds to start a business; see VIDEO

BOTOX PROVIDER: Dr. Susan Riegg sought less stress, more control over her life; see VIDEO

Shake A Hand

Coming up this Thursday, students in my two ENTR200 classes at Purdue University are scheduled to turn in their team efforts at generating a viable business Concept Statement with Primary Research to back up their concepts.  In advance to Thursday, this blog is about downfalls  the majority of entrepreneurs make – shaking hands – see video bottom – with their proposed target markets. Sramana Mitra in an article for Forbes.com titled “Entrepreneurs: Getting To $1 Trillion” writes:

“…A good 25% of the entrepreneurs don’t bother validating their ideas. They build products without talking to prospective customers first, and hence, more often than not, they build the wrong product. If we can simply plug this basic gap, we can enhance their chances of success dramatically. [In other words, go out and interface with your potential target market - da?]

Another 25% are immediately interested in raising money. Again, raising money without validating the business [emphasis mine] is pretty much impossible. They go bumping from door-to-door, getting refused repeatedly, their emotional energy draining each month, their resilience eroding slowly but surely. This is a pattern I am seeing constantly. If we can address it, we have a chance at significantly impacting infant entrepreneur mortality.

So how do we check this excessive infant entrepreneur mortality? Such immense entrepreneurial energy, instead of being squandered through these failed ventures, needs to be harnessed and put to GDP-building and job-creating work.

The answer: education.[Which is why ENTR200!] [Emphasis provided]

We get them to adopt the best practices and help them avoid common mistakes. Mistakes in financing strategy, mistakes in positioning, mistakes in go-to-market strategy. People often think being an entrepreneur is about raising money ASAP. Wrong. Being a successful entrepreneur is about crafting a business that can have customers, revenues and profits. ….”

To paraphrase Sramana, without this kind of early validation, you have no idea how to position your concept, you cannot figure out the value proposition of your product and cannot develop a go-to-market strategy. You are wasting your time and mine which pisses me off to no end.

So boys and girls, no matter how pretty your Concept Statement is Thursday, no matter how sexy it sounds, no matter how passionate you are about the concept, if you haven’t  bounced it off a significant number of potential customers and received positive feedback that it solves their pain in some way that they are willing to pay for, it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Hank

Purdue Entreprenship-related Activities + America’s Cup Home!

Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program

Certificate Program Spring 2010 Schedule of Events

• Entrepreneurship Event at Purdue Research Park – February 16, 2010 at 6:00pm

Purdue Research Park and Blue Chip Venture Co. are hosting an information and networking event on February 16th at the Kurz Purdue Technology Center. The goal is to make students and future entrepreneurs aware of the entrepreneurship-related resources Purdue offers. Scheduled speakers include Jeff Ready, founder and CEO of Scale Computing Inc.; Joseph Pekny, Purdue professor of chemical engineering and co-founder of Advanced Process Combinatorics Inc.; and Jim Bartek, business development manager of the Purdue Technology Center of Indianapolis and co-founder of Seyet LLC. Register online today.

• There’s a blog for that?  Social Media Resources for Women – February 17, 2010 at 3:00pm

Learn about various social media outlets for people who want to become more educated on women’s issues. Learn how to use these tools to join the public conversation about women’s issues.  The seminar will be led by Rebecca Dohrman a PhD candidate from the Department of Communication and sponsored by Purdue Women Lead, Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, Women’s Resource Office, and Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. The seminar will take place at the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, RSVP.

• 4^th Annual Elevator Pitch Competition – April 2, 2010

Present the value of your business idea to a panel of judges in two minutes or less and win up to $1000! This event is organized by the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program and is sponsored by Otis Elevator Company and Bose McKinney and Evans LLP.  For more information and registration visit http://www.purdue.edu/dp/Entrepreneurship/elevator.php, or email smharrel@purdue.edu.

• Leadership Luncheon with Matt Painter and Gene Keady – April 14, 2010

Approximately 100 Entrepreneurship Program students and other invited guests will be treated to a lunch with Purdue’s leading coaches to hear their views on leadership and success. It will be held at the Burton Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.  More details to follow as the event draws closer.

• Entrepreneurship and Innovation Student Recognition Event – April 14, 2010

In celebration of our Certificate Program graduates (December 09 and Spring 10) the Certificate Program will host a student recognition event at the Discovery Learning Center located in Discovery Park . This end-of-the-year event will recognize student’s participation in entrepreneurship- and innovation-related programs at Purdue, including Interns for Indiana, the Discovery Park Undergraduate Research Internship, and the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program graduates.

• Senior Send Off – April 23, 2010

This is event is hosted by PASE (Purdue Alumni Student Experience), a student organization within the Purdue Alumni Association. The Certificate Program will join other Colleges/Schools in hosting a table where our soon-to-be Certificate Program graduating seniors can come and pick up gifts, giveaways and information. 

• Are you a Certificate Program alum?

If so, we want to hear from you. Tell us about yourself, your current endeavors, and how the Certificate Program has prepared you for life after graduation.

To complete the alumni survey, simply click on the Web address shown below (or copy the Web address into your browser): http://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9YzN8GywKHJFGXa&SVID=Prod

• Get Connected!

Join the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Facebook Group, get the latest news and see what other Certificate Program entrepreneurs and alumni are doing.  Get connected today!

My thanks to Sascha Harrell for providing the above info. Hank

Thanks Larry!

2/14 Sunday: Update Video Greenhouse

I’ve blogged in the past that Brutti, our Golden, often goes out to our mailbox where our newspaper is delivered, retrieves it, and proudly brings it to us in the house. The first part of the video below shows the path he follows to accomplish this. Then there is a shot of the south side of our greenhouse where the solar panels I blogged about yesterday will be installed. BTW, the first of the four LED growing panels ordered from Amazon.com vendors arrived yesterday FedEx. I’ll bring it to class Tuesday for a show and tell. The remainder of the video is a quick update of the growing things inside the greenhouse. Hank

Brutti Boy

Solar-powered, LED-based, greenhouse growing system

From previous posts and class discussion, my ENTR200 students and others know that we have a full-time greenhouse in which many plants and flowers flourish, even in the current brutal weather. However, during the winter, many mature plants and new seedlings suffer from lack of light and either don’t bloom, or get leggy – especially seedlings. To get around this problem, many commercial greenhouses, and Purdue also, use various forms of “grow lights” to provide sufficient light for plants to grow. Most of the current lamps have several shortfalls – they consume large amounts of electricity, produce heat which dries plants, their ballast hum, and they don’t provide the full spectrum of lighting that plants need. This blog is about an experiment I’m currently working on to solve the electricity, heat and spectrum part of current greenhouse lighting applications as applied to our greenhouse. Think innovation.

Recently Menards had a sale on the Sunforce brand of solar panel kits selling a 4 panel, 60 watt unit for $299; I bought one. [See left.]For reference, the four panels measure 38 1/2″ wide and 56″ high with each panel producing in reference conditions about 15 watts of power @ a nominal 12v, or 60 watts from the array. The unit purchased comes with interconnections to hook to a battery, an inverter to convert the output to 120vac, frame etc as shown in the right picture. To make a usable source of power for lighting in the greenhouse, I need two additional components – batteries and a lighting source.

While car batteries would serve the purpose, such batteries are designed for high start-up current. A lighting load will pull a constant current from the batteries [being charged by the solar panels]. Golf cart and RV batteries are designed for such loads so that’s what I’ll buy in the near future, a pair of them hooked in parallel. At Walmart, 125 amp-hour batteries that would serve this purpose run $75 per plus $10 core deposit. Now to lighting.

I have 1500 watt “pot lights” which are extremely bright but pull a bunch of current and get extremely hot. Just now coming on the market specifically for greenhouse applications are LED panels that have both red and green spectrum LEDs to meet most plant lighting spectrum needs. I bought four such panels [specs @ <-- link] from Amazon.com vendors, three for $21 each and one for $29.99 plus shipping. They each contain 225 LEDs and are a foot by a foot and 1 1/2″ thick. Each panel [see left] consumes 13.8 watts of power, so four will provide a 55.2 watt load which is less than the rated output of the solar panels steady state. Additionally, for every hour that the sun provides 60 watts of power to the battery bank via the solar panels, is an hour that the lights may be operated sans sunlight without drawing down on the batteries. On paper at least, we have a balanced system.

Now for some numbers. The total system, solar panels, batteries, LED panels is about $700.00. Assuming lighting from the system is used for 5 months/year = 150 10 hour  days per year.The LEDs and the solar system are rated for at least 10 year life, which is 150X10 years or 1,500 ten  hour days total. Our power is on the order of 10 cents/KWH, so we would NOT be using from Duke Energy about 6 cents per day[run a 60 watt load for ten hours = 600 watt-hours=0.6KWH times $0.10per KWH=$0.06] to run the LED panels. 1,500 “days” X $0.06 = $$90.00 saved by the system over 10 years. Compared with the $700 initial cost, we are way in the hole over a ten year period. I have assumed a constant cost of electricity over the next ten years which we KNOW will not happen, but still, the system is not even close to paying for itself. Now that you have the numbers, you can play around too.  I’ll post some shots and data when the system is up and running. Tomorrow is a video walk of the greenhouse. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Thoughts on economy

The economy is so bad that…

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I ordered a burger at Mc Donald’s and the kid behind the counter
asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”

CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call
them and ask if they meant you or them.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

Mc Donald’s is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their
children’s names.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal.

Oh Great!!
The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the
people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!

And, finally….

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my
savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide
Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was
suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck

Teens & Texting: A market untapped by entrepreneurs

According to a recent Nielson Report, “American teenagers send an average of 10 text messages per hour they are not in school or sleeping….By analyzing more than 40,000 monthly US mobile bills, Nielsen determined American teens sent an average of 3,146 texts a month each during Q3 2009. Their counterparts 9-12 sent an average of 1,146 monthly texts each, or four per hour not spent asleep or in school. In comparison, the average number of monthly texts sent by all mobile users combined was a little more than 500. In Q4 2009, users 9-12 increased text usage by 8% and almost doubled their text message volume.”

From this data, it is obvious that in the 9-19 market, texting is in heavy usage and growing. I’ll leave it up to students of entrepreneurship to figure out how to monetize this phenomena. Meanwhile, some adults find texting useful also. See the video embedded below. Hank

Join Freecycle and save the world!

“People from all walks of life have joined together to turn trash into treasure”.

So maybe Global Warming isn’t really a serious problem, but excess garbage and landfills still are.  Freecycle was established in 2003 by Deron Beal as a way to reduce waste and help prevent land from being used for landfills.  This website, similar to Craigslist, enables you to get and give stuff for free.  The rule is that everything posted “must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages.”   Food fits in with that rule; say you buy a new box of cereal thinking you’re going to like it, but you don’t?  Post it on Freecycle and give it to someone else instead of tossing it out.  Really, someone else might want it!

Freecycle is now active in over 85 countries and has millions of members. keeping over 500 tons of garbage out of landfills every day.  “This amounts to five times the height of Mt. Everest in the past year alone, when stacked in garbage trucks”.

Freecycle doesn’t generate much revenue:  http://www.freecycle.org/about/funds They say they’re in it for the cause not the cash.  But, controversy and criticism often follow success.You decide. BbB

Not what you buy, but Why is the question for marketers/entrepreneurs?

The following was excerpted from here:

Consumers are most interested in brands that offer value for the dollar, and not just low price, according to the Brand Keys 2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.

The Index, which tracks 518 brands in 71 categories, demonstrates that consumers are becoming more brand-conscious and looking for established “real” brands that offer value, as opposed to brands which are endorsed by celebrities or heavily publicized.

Brand Keys 2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index Selected Top Brands

Airlines: JetBlue
Athletic Footwear: New Balance/Nike
Automotive: Hyundai
Beer (Regular): Budweiser
Breakfast Cereal (Adult): Cheerios
Breakfast Cereal (Children): Lucky Charms
Clothing Catalogs: J. Crew
Coffee: Dunkin’ Donuts
Computers (Laptops): Apple
Computers (Netbooks): Acer/Samsung
Digital Camera (SLR): Canon/Nikon
Digital Camera (Point-and-Shoot): Kodak
DVD Player: Samsung
HDTV (LCD): Samsung/Sony
HDTV (Plasma) Samsung
Laundry Detergent: Tide
Long Distance Providers: Verizon
Online Books & Music: Amazon.com
Online Travel Sites: Expedia.com/Kayak
Paper Towels: Bounty/7th Generation
Pizza: Domino’s
Quick-Serve Restaurant: McDonald’s
Retail Apparel: J. Crew
Retail Discount: Wal-Mart
Search Engine: Bing/Google
Soft Drink (Regular): Pepsi
Vodka: Grey Goose
Wireless Smartphone: Apple
Wireless Carrier: AT&T Wireless

About the Survey: For Brand Keys’ 2010 survey, 33,500 consumers ages 18-65, drawn from the nine US Census Regions, self-selected the categories in which they are consumers, and the brands for which they are customers. They were interviewed by phone, face-to-face and online.

I’m certain readers will find exception(s) to this listing. For instance, why AT&T? They certainly haven’t done iPhone users any favors – dropped calls + no legal tethering etc – and consumers will get more of the same with iPad’s wireless service. But data is data. Go figure. Hank