Blog 17- Interview 3 Reflction

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  

• The most important thing I learned from this interview are a managers point of view on the top steps to maintaining a successful restaurant. Which were, Positive attitude, listen to the customers and keep up to date with records. I feel like this part helped me come up with some more potential answers for my essential question. 

2.  How has your approach to interviewing changed over the course of your senior project?

• I feel like my questions were a bit more thorough this time around especially because ten questions is a lot, so I had to do some deep thinking in regards to which questions I should ask. I also feel like i have gotten more comfortable interviewing people. I don't feel as awkward as I did the first time and I enjoy listening to the answers and coming up with follow up questions or adding in my own bit of commentary. 

Link to interview:

https://soundcloud.com/michelle-985280227/interview-3

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

I'm working with my aunt on her start up process, I am getting a lot of meaningful information. Right now my aunts renting out two different houses and building a new house from the ground up, by renting these houses out she'll develop more than enough revenue to make sure she can afford the restaurant and still have enough money to fall back on. This is actually a very stressful project she's going through at this point but she continues to teach me a lot about the whole start up process, its a very personal and helpful approach to my topic for me.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?  

I'm related to my mentor, trust me this hasn't affected her being hard on me when it comes to completing my task in fact I think she is even harder on me because of the fact that Im her niece. It took some convincing at first I had to explain to her what my whole project was all about and I had to promise I would slack on my work duties and assignments just because she's my aunt.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship? 

How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?I'm very comfortable with her, I have learned a lot more about her and seen a more deep personal side,it's been a wonderful experience so far and I'm looking forward to more amazing moments with my mentor. I have been spending every other weekend with her and we have been going over restaurant updates and possible vendors and she has been helping me out on editing my business plan for my personal component.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

I feel as though my mentor was a lot more comfortable this time around, she seemed to have been more in to the interview and more genuine. I could tell from her tone of voice and the way she looked when she talked about her reasons fro starting a restaurant, it's a wonderful and inspirational thing watching people talk about something they love. I feel like I need to ask more in depth questions and some more follow up questions, its just that my mentor tends to add on to the question I had originally asked which is amazing and just means I need to come up with better questions. I will probably research more regarding types of interview questions.

Here is the link to the interview with my mentor:

https://soundcloud.com/michelle-985280227/interview-2-mentor

Blog 5 - Interview 1 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  Is there anything I would do differently for other interviews?

• The most important thing I learned from this interview would have to be that it is important to have extremely open ended questions so that the interviewee has plenty of things to say. In this interview my mentor had actually asked me to see the questions in advance which was probably a good idea. It gave her some extra time to think of what to say and perhaps come up with extra details that she probably would have forgotten if she had been asked these questions on the spot. In my next interview I will definitely send the questions to my interviewee a few more days in advance, I also think it helps them feel more prepared and perhaps less nervous. 

2. Did I get additional resources and contacts?  What is the most useful?  Why?

• I actually did get some additional contacts from my mentor. After the interview she gave me the phone number of one of her friends who currently owns two restaurants and then she had introduced me to this friend and we all had a good talk. I mentioned the possibility of an interview and long story short I'm pretty sure I have my "Interview 2" already set up. 

3. What makes my interviewee qualified to help me?

• Well my interviewee is actually my mentor and she has had  prior experience when it comes to business start ups, with her previous catering business. She has also graduated from business administration with a finance major from Cal Poly Pomona. I feel that this interview has helped me learn a bit more about my mentor and her motivation, intentions and ideas. She also happened to have some connections with some current business owners which helped me a lot for future interviews.  

To listen to my interview please click the link below.                            

• Interview 1

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?

• I plan to interview my mentor, Karina Reel primarily because of her genuine interest and knowledge regarding my senior topic. She has been teaching me a lot and I feel like an interview would allow me to have an even deeper understanding about points that she tries to get across to me. 

2.  Five questions will be assigned to all seniors to ask.  What additional questions do you plan to ask?  Ask open-ended questions.
My follow up questions:

1. Why did you choose to start this restaurant in the first place, like what was your motivation?
2. If any, what was your main fear before making the final  decision of building up this business?
3. What types of characteristics do you feel would be most important to work on if choosing to go in to this type of business, for what reasons?
4. What are the most important risks to analyze before starting a business how do you feel about them? 
5. How do you feel about the obvious risks that accompany starting your own business now after analyzing more information versus when you had first started off this whole business making process?

Here are the assigned questions:

1. I'm interested in studying the process a "business start up". What can you tell me about it?
2. From your perspective, what could I study that would be significant to other people?
3. Who else would you recommend I talk to?
4. What kinds of places or activities do you recommend I do for the mentorship component?
5. What materials should I read in this field? Who else can I interview?