Blog 13: 10 Hour Mentorship Check in

1. Where are you doing your mentorship?

I am doing my mentorship with my aunt, Karina Reel usually in her home office. At times we do go out to observe different possible locations for her specific restaurant start up or we talk to some people who can help her perfect her personal recipe. 

2. Who is your contact? What makes this person an expert? 

My contact would be Karina Reel she has has the appropriate degrees to have a start up with business administration and finance major. She has also previously had her own catering company in the past. 

3. How many hours have you done during the school year? 

I have done a total of twenty-five hours of mentorship during the school year.

4. Succinctly summarize what you did, how well you and your mentor work together, and how you plan to complete the remaining hours? 

My mentor and I sometimes  go out and do some investigation on different restaurants/fast food places and right down the "do' and dont's". I also sometimes organize my mentors papers and she asks me to take a look at her final business plan we actually went through a couple of names, which was funny because we were so set on "Yummies" in the beginning but with time that changed. My mentor and I have gotten very close over the days that we have been working together, it's fun and interesting to brainstorm with her. I plan on continuing my work with her by this summer she will hopefully have her business up. 

Blog 2 - Summer Mentorship

Senior Project Hours 

*Above is the title and table of contents of the business plan I have been working on- I'm not allowed to share the actual business plan*

1. List the contact name, phone number, and organization of the person with whom you volunteered.

• My very own aunt Karina Reel gave me the amazing opportunity to join her on her journey of building up her restaurant, below I listed the information as needed. 

Karina Reel 

Business Administration 

Finance Major 

(626)922-2074

Yummies

2. What qualified this person as an expert in your topic choice?

• Mrs.Reel studied at Cal Poly and graduated from Business Administration with a Finance major, giving her an abundant amount of knowledge needed to actually start up her very own business. She had also began a catering business a few years back with the same name, "Yummies", which had actually taken off for quite a while. Sadly she started getting more preoccupied with her other job and could not make her business a top priority at the time. Now she's ready to start up again and judging by the progress we have made Yummies will soon be a dream come to true. 

3. List three questions for further exploration now that you've completed your summer hours.

• Having started up a business plan, what are the most important pieces of information needed to insure future investors?
• Since starting up a new business is essentially a "venture in to the unknown" type of ordeal, what are some systems used by other companies to keep track of future business expenses so we do not spend more than we may actually may have? 
• When releasing the restaurant out to the public, what are the best advertising methods? 

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

• The most important thing that I gained from my summer mentorship would have to be that one seemingly minuscule and unreachable idea can prosper in to something more with the right amount of dedication, passion, and most importantly creativity. I started off by helping with the Business Plan, and the first obstacle we ran in to was the mission statement. We had come up with several different mission statements beforehand which involved doing a lot of research. In the end, complex thinking and an overload of information wasn't enough to come up with a satisfying mission statement. We needed something that would catch an average consumers attention, so we reached in to the right side of our brains and put ourselves in to our "future customers" shoes. Asking questions like,"Why should I eat here?", "Why would I choose to eat here instead of the place right next to it?". Passion, you really need to want this to happen. It is so easy after two hours of research and typing and backspacing to just give up, especially in today's world where it's so much harder to catch peoples attention since it seems like everything has been said, done and cooked. You cannot let yourself get discouraged you have to keep that passion up in order to truly succeed. Dedication, once you start up on this idea there is no going back that is the mindset you need to have. Karina has had this Yummies dream for about six years now and it takes so much courage and dedication to make it happen. You cannot let distractions pull you from your main goal and Karina learned this from her first attempt. 

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did mentorship help you make your decision?  Please explain.

• My senior project topic is most likely going to be restaurant management. I have worked at a restaurant before and being in the actual environment gave me a pretty good idea of how a restaurant is managed throughout the day, however I had always been curious as to how  any of it started. My mentorship gave me a very broad idea on how a restaurant starts up and provided me with more of a "behind the scenes" type of information. Mainly on what important obstacles need to be passed before you can really set your restaurant out for the public. So far the journey has been quite intriguing and I have been wanting to explore the "business side" for some time now. I'm ready to find out if this is something I would consider doing in the future or maybe its not for me, the excitement continues.