Senior Project Update

(1)
I am currently at a standstill with my independent component. I need to wait to get into the class. I will be allowed to get into the class in the middle of December and will have no problem completing the thirty hour requirement. In the meantime, however, i have been working long hours with my mentor, not only doing flowers but also understanding the financial side of things. I am also working on the Facebook page which will be up soon (www.facebook.com/miasfiore) 
(2)
I was on entrepreneur.com looking for a couple of articles. But for some reason the popular articles that day were about online businesses, how they are the best. I thought these articles were useless because i was dealing with a flower shop, a local flower shop. When my mother asked me to place an order to a customer via email i was thinking well if the customer could see the design already on a Facebook page then we would save a lot of time, and not only does that customer get to see it but others who like the page can see it as well. The article "How to start a Business Online" was extremely helpful because it broke everything down. Including networking. Now i am building the Facebook page for the local flower shop. 
(3)
Mias Fiore , this is the facebook page i started to build. I will progressively add pictures to it. As soon as i get into the floral class i will add some pictures of the work i do there, :)

Science Fair Proposal

1. Flower Shop Administration
2. Sole-proprietorship businesses tend to fail within the first two years due to poor planning and underestimated budget spending. "Business owners underestimate how much money is needed and they are forced to close before they even have a fair chance to succeed. They also may have unrealistic expectations of incoming revenues from sales." (Scahefer, Patricia."The Seven Pitfalls of Business Failure and How to Avoid Them."Business Know-How. A Hard Communications, Inc. 2011. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.)
3. If the budget of the flower shop is low then the flower shop is most likely a sole-proprietorship, owned by a family,
4. To start off my experiment i will locate 22 or more local flower shops in the cities of: Pomona, Claremont, Montclair, and Ontario. I then will interview the owners of each flower shop and ask them questions. They are as followed: 1. Why did you start your business? 2. What was the budget you began with? 3. When did you start to see profit? 4. How heavy is the competition? 5. Did you ever get to the point where you needed to close the flower shop? Why? I would also use my research from different sources such as entrepreneur.com, for-entrepreneurs.com, NOLO, and other statistic based websites to help me organize my data, to see if the problem stated and the hypothesis proved correct. 
5. Behavioral/ Social Science 

Blog 9: Working EQ and Possible Answers

1. My working EQ is "What is the best way to sustain a profitable flower shop?"
2. I am not going to revise my EQ at this time. 
3. Some possible answers might be: 

• Making sure you have a strong business foundation 
• Know your product and how to sell it

Rough Draft of Presentation 1

10 Min Presentation

Independent Component 1: Plan Approval

1. For my independent component i want to build on my mentorship hours. So instead of having 50 hours, i would have a total of 80.

2.Taking the extra time with my mother will give me the extra 30 hours.  

3.By taking the time to learn more from my mother i would have a better understanding of how to make the flower shop more sustainable and profitable. 

Second Interview Questions

1. Why did you want to become a florist?
2. What was the entire process to own your own flower shop?
3. How do you go about your everyday routine?
4. What is the most challenging part of your job? How do you deal with it?
5. What is the next step to your flower business?

Working EQ

1. So far, the relationship with my mother has improved and we can communicate more effectively. For example, we can talk about an order and i can place myself with the same mentality she has.

2. My interview was really successful in showing me that a small business needs to be really organized because all the profit needs to be known and filed because small business owners live off of it. If something goes wrong is the individuals job to find out where that money went. 

3.Working closely to my mentor has helped me understand the importance of time management and the rule of always expecting the worst. 

4.The research i get it very limited. I am more focused on the business aspect due to the limited reports on flower shops.

5.
a.

• What is the most effective way to run a business?
• How can you start a business with limited monetary support?
• How can i sustain a business?
• How can i help my mother's flower shop to generate long-lasting customers?

b.
By the end of this year, i want to able to go onto college and find a business i can start the second i step into the campus. I want to be active and well known as well as respected at a very young age. So by the years end i want to know how to improve my already started business.
c.
i would like to talk to a very well educated entrepreneur, because he or she will guide me on the right path and how to go about my business. I fell that its the only way to go.

Problem Statement

1. Flower Shop Administration
2. This particular flower shop is small, so there is a limited amount of space to place many flower arrangements which in turn makes it difficult to make it look good for customers to be attracted. Once i fix this problem i would recommend other small businesses to expand themselves or teach them some essentials.
3. Usually customers are unsatisfied when we say that the flower of their choice is not in season, they get mad and hard headed. Once the problem is fixed i would have great speaking methods and i will have the flower shop running smoother.

Interview Preparation

1. I plan to interview Guadalupe Avalos, my mother. She runs a successful flower shop and i believe she can teach me more than just the flower aspects of it. She can go in depth with all the administration parts of running a business.

2. Do you think this topic suits me? If so, why? If not, what would you say i should pursue?

Blog 2: Topic Choice

A. What is your topic and why?
My topic, at this moment, is flowers, or flower business administration. I chose this topic because my mother is a very creative and motivating person. I just cannot get enough of her and since it is the family business it was very easy for me to choose it.Not only that but flowers are also very romantic and i would like to know more. To add to the administration aspect, I want to look at how a successful business is supposed to run.

B. And what do you hope to accomplish this year with this topic (connecting your answer to each of the 4 ESLRs).

• iPoly Citizen: I plan to learn how to take criticism from customers and my mother. This is good for me to learn this because iPoly's grading system is very straight forward and it criticises your work and i have to learn how to take it. 
• Effective Communicator: I will learn how to speak to all the different customers and how to get a point across while also learning how to listen to them. In order to be an effective communicator, you have to learn how to talk to a person and just as important, listen to them.
• Effective Learner: I also will attempt to learn everything my mom does. From the budget to the actual flower arrangements, it will be a lot of information but in order to become an effective learner i have to ask questions and pay very close attention at what she has to tell me.
• Effective User of Technology: While my mom has clients that she receives through the store, she also receives them through email, I will be taking care of that. Also, i will use the tools the flowers require which not only makes technology on the computer but hands-on. This, in turn, will teach me different functions on technology and also help me upload information i need for this blog. 

Summer Mentorship Component

Assignment

Mentorship Log

Literal (Need to know)

• What questions were raised because of the 10 hours of experience? List them. 
• Why is time management so important? 
• When do you decide what type of flowers to use? 
• How do you calculate how much greenery you will need for a specific order? 
• When is the right time to buy the flowers, one or four days? 
• When receiving an order, for a day that has 5 or more events, how do you calculate that you will have enough time for the deliveries? 
• Where do you go to buy the flowers? 

Interpretive

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

• The most important thing I gained from this experience was that time management is a must. When you have ten orders for the same day that all involve fresh flowers, you have to see which orders will be first and always account for problems, such as the flowers not being opened. The customer’s satisfaction is the goal and when something goes wrong the florist, in this case my mother, has to do whatever she can do to make them happy. 

Applied
How did what you did help you choose a topic? Please explain.

• My mother started her own business and luvky for her it is very successful. I want to start my very own business, with my mother as my mentor there is no better. My mom taught me time management and how to talk to customers. She also criticized my floral arrangements and taught me how to take it. I believe all the work that I put in this summer was very productive and I want to make my senor project on this.