Prepare for Takeoff

This week, the blog entry will be short on word count but not so short on what we need to do.  As of Monday, our website needs to go live.  This is an important step in recovering our startup costs, since it allows us to receive a higher volume of orders and reaches globally to potential customers.  There are a few other tasks we need to complete.  Here’s a list of everything we need to get done before end of business Friday:

• Launch website
• Analyze successful business plan presentations
• Review presentation competition overview
• Attached in folder I shared with you Sunday afternoon
• Request contract funds in portal
• Design business plan presentation
• Draft bullet points to be discussed for business plan presentation
• Create promotional emails to convince customers to purchase from us
• Make sales calls to local VE firms
• Keep records of sales/purchases
• Distribute payroll and back-pay
• This will allow us to purchase from other organizations

Here’s a daily breakdown of what we will do and when it will get done:

Monday

Objectives: Launch website, analyze successful business plan presentations, request contract funds in portal, draft an ideal open for our presentation, review presentation competition overview

Clear Target: We can analyze elements of a successful business presentation

We will begin class with a 3-minute bell-ringer.  Students get out their folders and a pencil, write their name and today’s date on top of a piece of blank notebook paper, and then list 2 things that stand out about the opening of the presentations we watched last week + 3 things that stood out about the rest of the presentations.  From here, we’ll share out answers.  After this, students have 7 minutes to draft their own open for OUR business plan.  CEO will collect everyone’s notes and report to me who has/hasn’t completed the task.  After this, I will read through the file titled “Business Plan Presentation Info for Teachers” to have an idea of how the plan will work.  This year’s rules are somewhat different than last year’s so please pay attention as we read through the file.  For closure, we will discuss whether we need a 6^th participant for the competition while CEO requests contract money from the portal.  See below for email from Cindy Boyd regarding this process:

After submission of your plan, you will be able to use the Payment Request Form in the portal to upload your business partner contract request for 75% of your firm's salaries.  I will be able to grant this request if your business plan has been submitted.  Please note 75% salary requests can include several options: for new firms, part of the money can be funded within the seed money. For all firms, funds can come from open house sales to parents, etc, and business partner contracts. All of these options are a part of the 75% of salary funding.  If you request the total 75% of your salary in a business partner contract, you will not be able to receive additional funds if you have a non-ve open house.  If your student enrollment goes up mid-year, we can always revisit your request.

Tuesday through Friday

Objectives: Complete any tasks not finished from Monday, tend to day to day tasks of the business, complete business plan presentation

Clear Target: We can create a business presentation

Suffice to say, I don’t know whether we’ll complete all our tasks on Monday.  That said, we’ll first have to tackle what’s left from Monday’s tasks.  After we finish this, we can proceed with the rest of our weekly tasks.  For the remainder of the week, the business presentation team will split off from the rest of the group so that they can concentrate on creating a winning presentation.  Remaining employees will tend to the following tasks:

Sales

·      Create promotional emails to convince customers to purchase from us

·      Make sales calls to local VE firms

IT/Web Design

·      Create company letterhead

·      Identify “Item(s) of the Week” to highlight on site

Admin/HR

·      Complete employee profile

·      Create company handbook

·      Update display board in class

Finance/Accounting

·      Keep records of sales/purchases

o   Refer to the REFERENCE FILES in the Accounting & Finance section of the Portal for the journals to be used

§  All purchases from the wholesale marketplace to be updated

§  Sales from contract to be updated

§  Cash payment to be updated when we actually pay for our merchandise

§  Cash receipts to be updated when we receive cash (we already received cash when we received our seed money

·      Distribute payroll and back-pay

o   Refer to this file

o   This will allow us to purchase from other organizations

If you have any questions about your tasks, please feel free to ask me for guidance.  The expectation is that you will refer to the portal first for explanations of your tasks, then check with Google.  If all else fails, though, I’m available as I circulate the room.  Please work diligently and focus on the tasks that need to be completed.  There is zero time to waste on non-VE work, so please make sure you are on task throughout class this week. 

Finally, please check your email daily.  Plans may change throughout the week, and we will need to work on a few things outside of class.  Further, there will be some minor tasks to be completed while we’re on Fall Break, so you will need to stay in contact with me even while we’re out of class.