25A

25A – What’s Next?

We've been talking about growth. Growth in new markets, growth in existing markets. For this experience exercise, you'll need to set a course for growth for your business and develop plans for how you will grow in both a new market as well as in the market you have already identified.

What you need to do. Again, you'll need to hit the pavement and talk to potential customers. This time, you'll be armed with your "venture concept" description. Break your post into two pieces:
• Existing Market
• New Market

Existing Market.

Step 1: Talk about what you think is what's next in terms of products and services for your venture.
I think that I can offer more services for people that do not have a membership such as renting out the facility for basketball, softball, baseball, and football tournaments.

Step 2: Interview three customers who are already part of the market you have identified, and ask them what they believe is next for a venture like yours. Describe to them your business, and simply ask "What should we be doing that we aren't planning to do?" Next, ask them about your ideas of what customers might want next.
1st – You should be bringing in people with certified experience that can teach these students the skills that they need to be successful. A good way is to have times where students are required to choose a couple of professional topics to be engaged in such as table setting in a professional setting.

2nd – You need to branch and expand out to other locations instead of just one. We need to find a target market to address the situation of everybody.

3rd - When this becomes successful ,brand yourself into an academy so that you are responsible for curriculum as well.


Step 3: Based on your own expectations and the feedback you received from customers, set a path for the future. In two to three paragraphs, describe what makes the most sense for your venture in terms of growing in your existing market.
New Market.

Step 1: Identify a radically different market from what you're currently planning to target. If you're currently targeting B2B, think about going after a B2C market. If you're currently targeting an affluent part of society, think about targeting a very poor part of society.

Step 2: Once you have identified a radically different market, describe how you think your venture concept might be able to create value for people in that market. You may have to get creative with this -- that's OK -- and perfectly welcome!

Step 3: Interview two people from this new market. Again, describe to each interviewee what your concept is. Then, ask them how they think your business might be help to meet customers like them. What kinds of adaptations to the product/service mix do they think you should make to be successful in this new market?

Step 4: Reflect, in two to three paragraphs, on what you learned about this new market. What surprised you the most? Were any of your expectations/assumptions correct? Does this new market, on second thought, appear to be as attractive as your existing market? And so on.




I think instead of just targeting individual consumers, I should start targeting other businesses as well. Not only can I use this to target people for different travel basketball tournaments, but I also could use this to enhance the other side of the facility. This facility is not only a sports facility but also a place to grow yourself personally. I think that we have many professionals that are also struggling in these key areas of how to lead, how to be professional, and how to problem solve.

I can create value for people in this market by offering less fortunate students the tools to be successful. I also found out when interviewing people that I need to focus on an ability to reach people who are fortunate but just are not given these type of skills either. Just because you have money, doesn't mean that you are receiving the correct resources to be successful.


This new market definitely feels like an area that I can attack but it is long-term after actually opening and starting the facility. The idea of an academy always came to mind but that is not the first step of the process that I want to take. I think that I have a lot more foundation building to actually reach this point.