Blog 6 - Advisory Prep

1. What has worked well for you concerning senior project this year?  What has made it a positive experience for you?   

My mentorship and research has worked very well for me during this whole senior project process. My mentor really does help out when I need it and I feel like there is an abundance of research available for my whole "Restaurant Start up" topic. Especially because there's certain laws and restraints that a restaurant needs to follow before officially opening and I can write down and learn all about those. Ny mentor has also provided me with a significant amount of books that I can use for research checks which I am extremely grateful for.

2. What are you finding difficult concerning senior project?  How can you adapt to make that portion work better for you?  How might the senior team help?

As of now there aren't many problems regarding my senior project unless you count the possibility of changing my topic. One of my cousins is an environmental engineer and I was telling him about this whole project and apparently he recently got a job at a company he use to intern at and he could possibly mentor me. The only issue is that I'm not quite sure what I should officially call the topic and since engineering is actually something I consider doing in the future I'm afraid I'll get tired of it throughout the year. Even so it's a possibility. 

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 4 - House Advisory Prep 1

1. Write a short explanation of what you are hoping to accomplish through your senior project topic. 

• I want to take my senior project topic and turn it in to something more than just a project. I want this to be a life experience, because after all this gives us the opportunity to explore something we find intriguing and then be able to decide if this is something we would like to work around even after graduation. So with that said my goal is to really get an in depth experience about the social, mental and physical amount of energy it takes to start up a business on your own. I mean with starting your own restaurant there are so many factors you have to consider and chances you have to take, and you don't always know whether or not your gonna come out successful. Ever since I got my first job as a waitress and I got to know the owner of the place I worked at I would often find myself talking to her about her business experience and the responsibilities to maintain a restaurant of her own. I always thought it was an amazing thing that this very restaurant that I worked in and people ate in was once just an idea in this woman's head. She said she always felt a sense of accomplishment because the process really does take a toll on you. So my goal is to feel something close to that sense of accomplishment and I feel that my mentor can help me get there by allowing me to accompany her on creating her own restaurant. I want to experience the fun and the hard parts of making an idea come to life. 

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?

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.  

Blog 1 – Senior Final Lesson/Interview Reflection

1.What three lessons were most helpful for you to see, and why?

The three lessons that were most helpful for me to see were the ones centered upon Business Management, Engineering and Negligence Law. These were the main topics that I was considering when thinking of my senior project, I wanted to know what sort of mentorship they took on and what their role was and if they actually felt like they learned something while "on the job"

2.List one thing that you learned about the senior project in interviews that will help you get off to a good start?

One thing that I learned from the senior interviews that will help me get off to a better start would be when they told me "it's not easy getting a mentor, you have to be very persistent or they just forget about you". I hadn't originally thought about how hard it would be to find a mentor, I thought that all I had to do was find a nice community service area and perhaps find someone working there that is well credited in the line of work that I am looking for, ask them if they would mind mentoring me and they would most likely say yes. I now have to subtract that "most likely" part. If I had gone in to summer with my original mindset that mentorship would be easy I probably would have placed finding a mentor to the last month of summer.

3.What topic(s) are you considering, and why?

My number one topic as of now would be business management, mainly because I am working at a restaurant right now and I am good friends with the owner so I sometimes see how she runs things around the place and ever since I first started working there I had been wondering how she can run a business all by herself. My aunt had also started her own catering business a while ago, she was successful but it only lasted about two years before she had her baby and other stuf with work came up and she could no longer find the time to run her little business, but I had always admired how she was able to begin something from the ground up.

4.What EQ do you think might be interesting to consider in guiding a project like this? (Please don't worry about any sort of formula...we want this question to come from your genuine interest).

I had started thinking about an essential question ever since Ortega walked in to Edwards class to explain the senior project, so far I have, "What is the most essential quality needed in order to open a successful restaurant?". It is still a work in progress but some potential answers include location, customer service, management or media advertisement.

5.What are some ideas you have about finding summer mentorship?

Like I had stated above I am good friends with the owner of the restaurant I am currently working at, I could always ask her for her guidance, but she might be too busy. Another option would be asking the manager of this other venue that my brother works at, they are good friends and I am sure that if I introduce myself, state my project goal and with my brothers recommendation the manager wouldn't mind being my mentor.