Day 9- we have only one class period left. Today we looked at chapters 13 and 14. Chapter 13 looked at some of the different types of leadership and management styles. There are many different types of leadership that range from authoritative, where the leader sets goals and has a “come follow me” attitude, all the way to democratic style of leadership, which gives the employees a large say in what the company does. Now, these are two broad ends of the spectrum in terms of leadership, but every person leads in a different way. And, different people need to be led in different ways. Some people need to be told exactly what to do and they are great at following directions. However, there are people like me, who are much more independent- give me task and I will get it done.
Chapter 13 then moves on to other important stages in growing your business, focusing on hiring, managing, and letting go of employees. I think this is a little further than we really need to learn in this class. One of the most important things small businesses need to take care of is human resources, which can be very tricky. I actually took a human resource management class last semester and I was amazed at how much there is to know for human resources. There are literally hundreds and thousands of rules about who you hire, how you treat them, and if you decide to terminate them. At the beginning, you will have to take care of all the human resources and you need to be extremely careful because we live in a very litigious culture and there is always a chance of being sued.
Chapter 14 takes a little different approach and looks at what you need to do if you enter into a franchise rather than start your own business from start. There are advantages to doing both. Buying into a franchise can be more beneficial in the beginning because, often times, they will teach you how to run the franchise and they pay for national TV commercials, however, you often have to follow strict corporation rules and the franchise will often take some of your profits. Like we discussed in class, I researched Jimmy John’s and I believe that they take 6% of your sales. If you start your own business, you have to figure out how to run it on your own and you have to do all your own advertising, but you also get to keep all of your own profits.
We did not watch any more Shark Tank today, instead, we got into our Entrepreneurial Experience groups. Our group, The Briar Cliff Book Sellers, finalized what we are each going to do. So far we have three customers who each say they have a box or boxes of old books. I am surprised that we have that much business already, so I would consider it a success so far. Each of us are meeting with some of the customers tonight and we are going to return and package the books tomorrow morning. In tomorrow's blog I will give the final details and result of our new business.
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