Business Plan Development – EasyStartUp!

Our mini project focused on constructing surfboards. Information was set up online so that collecting the necessary data was easier but not too easy. Things were spread out amongst a dozen or so “mock” sites. Everything from financing, to how much a production line costs to make a surfboard could be found. 

Today was a long day, I’m tired as hell but we had our Business Plan Development (BPD) course today in which we had to present our business plans (practice model) to the professor, who just happens to be head of the Business / Economics school…Prof. Kremser. Very very nice professor who stresses punctuality which is custom in Austria along with Germany and Switzerland. Although we had several mistakes on our business plan he was more than generous since it was only two of us working on the project and not the usual 3 or 4. This is only the second BPD course I’ve add all year. The real course load and work starts October 27th. Course’s and course load is very different over here. I think I’ve done more presentations in the past month that I’ve been here than my entire college career at LC combined.

But I must say I am ever grateful to some of my greatest mentors such as Garry Briese who taught me the “ins” and “outs” of PowerPoint presentations and giving presentations in general. Garry always had very clear thoughts and ideas about how he wanted a presentation to look and go while also being open to suggestions and change! These things (corrections, editing, and learning to be concise) sometimes can only be learned through experience (as he was my editor for my Eagle Scout project..but this is a whole other story lol).  He allowed me to assist him on several big presentations both to large and small crowds. I feel that this has definitely paid off as I tend to be very comfortable when presenting.

Since most of us have no idea, or very little at best, of what it takes to really create a business plan having several classes before the real class makes sense. This mock business plan development was actually kind of fun and several other students here told me the same which was a surprise. I was so tired today that I wasn’t able to enjoy it much but that’s because my brain wasn’t really working well. 8:10am does not play nice with college students no matter where you are.