Opportunity Belief Cultivation

1) I believe there is a growing need that is not being looked at in the agricultural growing sector.

2) The unmet need is fresh, locally produced food for people to eat. Everyone in the world has the need for food, as they need it to survive. The need has always existed and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. Currently we have done a good job in optimizing our food production through the development of large scale agricultural operations and the introduction of GMO's. These are large sources of contention however, and present an opportunity for large scale, locally, organically grown food opportunities to enter the market.

3a) Prototypical Consumer 1: Father, family of 5

4a) What is the nature of your need for fresh food?
Well, you know, I'm a single father with 4 kids at home that I need to feed and make sure they get all their vitamins and minerals so fresh food is important in our household.
When do you become aware of this need?
We usually notice an uptake in our eating of fresh foods around flu and cold season. These are important times to make sure everyone is eating healthy and getting things like Vitamin C to fight colds and keep their immune systems strong. 
How long have you had it?
We are a pretty health conscience family. We tend to be pretty active with sports and outdoor activities so we take an interest in what we put in our body's to make sure we have the fuel to perform. 
When did you first become aware of it?
Back in college I got into weightlifting a lot and realized that you could workout all you wanted to but it wouldn't make much of a difference if you didn't take a stand in your diet. That's when I first really started watching what I ate and have kept it up since. 
How are you currently addressing your need?
Currently we shop around from Aldi, Publix and Fresh Market to try and find the best deals on fruits and veggies that we like. There is always questions brought up about GMO's and organics but I don't really see the difference, never have, so we just go for our favorites like broccoli and peppers.
How satisfied are you with this solution?
We do great with our health! Our diets and fitness have kept us in shape and healthy and we also go to annual physicals to make sure with our physicians. All in all we need it and are happy with what its done for us. 

5a) I did not expect the very first person I talked to to be very up on their health and knowledgeable on the essentials they need in their body. However, I can't say that this convinced me that people knowing about healthy fresh foods are in the majority. I couldn't see this man spending a little extra to make sure that his foods were organically and locally produced.

3b) Prototypical Consumer 2: College male, 22

4b) What is the nature of your need for fresh food?
Haha define fresh food? I eat food thats made right away that's like fresh right? I guess I need fresh food to survive, can't be eating stale old food out here.... Oh, vegetables and stuff? Yeah I don't really cook too much on my own so I guess I don't get too much of that. Just so easy to walk over to Chik-fil-a or McDonald's and get a cheap sandwich you know?
When do you become aware of this need?
Ummm I usually get hungry around about 1:00 because I wake up at like 11:00 and thats like my breakfast. I don't ever get cravings for vegetables and stuff like that though haha. 
How long have you had it?
Honestly dude, I don't think I've had a vegetable since I've come to college. Maybe like some guac in my Chipotle bowl or lettuce and tomato on a burger but that's like it.  

When did you first become aware of it?
I always feel like I need to eat more veggies when my mom calls though, always telling me I need to to be healthy and stuff. 

How are you currently addressing your need?
Whenever she says stuff I just kinda brush it off. It's not that big of a deal, I'll just take some vitamins or something when I'm older. Plus that food just doesn't taste that good and is'nt filling. 

How satisfied are you with this solution?
I'm doing well so far my man, I never get sick except like the annual flu and I play basketball everyday to be active. Always playing sports and stuff to at-least keep moving, that's important but my diet is fine, I'm happy with it. 

5b) This was very typical of most college students I talked to especially guys. They have fast metabolisms and can eat whatever as long as they stay a little active. But the real nature is that they are only conditioning their body onto this high sodium high sugar food and that is why they feel like vegetables don't fill them up. In reality they are just missing essential vitamins and nutrients and are the prime targets for locally fresh grown food to make the biggest impact, once they are educated on the subject. 

3c) Prototypical Consumer 3: Grandmother, late 70's, fit

4c) What is the nature of your need for fresh food?
Oh, fresh food is the secret to health! I've been telling my children and husband for years that that is the way to stay young! Your skin doesn't stay this healthy and vibrant if you aren't eating the right foods, after all you are what you eat!
When do you become aware of this need?
Whenever I'm feeling a little low on energy or need a pick me up I feel like some veggies are in need! You can tell when your body is low on minerals, it talks to you you just need to learn how to listen. 
How long have you had it?
Well I'll tell you, growing up we were always expected to eat everything on our plate so denying veggies was out of the question! My family owned a small corner-store supermarket and we would always make sure that the produce was from local farms and growers, we wanted to support our fellow neighbors of course that's what you do. Fresh produce has been a staple all my life since I remember seeing the carts come in on Monday's with the fresh produce for the week.

When did you first become aware of it?
""

How are you currently addressing your need?
Currently? I start my mornings with some eggs and spinach and a fruit shake. I'm a bit of a health nut haha so I like the exotic fruits now like acai and goji berries, they are superfoods! For lunch I usually focus on salads filled with veggies like cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, beets- oh beets are wonderful and good for so much!- umm carrots, to keep my eyes up haha, and some tree nuts for protein. Dinners are usually a hearty size of grains and veggies with a small meat to go with it like steak, chicken or oooo salmon!! I just love salmon, it has essential oils!

How satisfied are you with this solution?
Honey, I am living my best life and my body is right there with me! I play competitive tennis 3 times a week and walk along the beach in the mornings. I am always full of energy and have no aches and pains. I'd say I'm doing alright for someone at my age!

5c) This was incredible. These people are the ones who have a true need for fresh local grown foods and are willing to pay for it. It's necessary to be able to find these niches and where they exist in order to exploit the opportunities and provide for a need. There are people out there who take interest in their health and it is important to educate all who don't because it is literally your life that you are caring for with what you put in your body.  

7) Overall, I believe the opportunity is there for locally grown, fresh food sources. It takes a bit of logistics in finding areas that are able to support local farms to provide food for their communities but with the advancements coming from vertical and urban farming almost anywhere can have local fresh produce now. I think that the opportunity is only going to continue to grow as more people take an interest in their health and trying to be the best versions of themselves and live long, healthy lives. I think that entrepreneurs definitely should listen to their consumers feedback as it is essential in curtailing products to meet consumers exact needs. At the end of the day though, it comes down to you and your vision of what you want to create and you have to go with your vision to see it through. 

The Beginnings

My family has always been the controllers of their lives. My father has always been a huge role model to me as he controls his life and does not take direction from anyone but himself. He is a serial entrepreneur and small business owner along with his brother and father. I have always admired his flexibility in his work and his ability to make his own hours and attend events whenever he wanted. The most important thing to being an entrepreneur is having the drive and passion to work hard and know what you want, something he is very avid about. Due to this I have always been surrounded by an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that has pushed my to be passionate in the activities that I undertake. I believe that you cannot learn to be an entrepreneur, but are either born as one or pushed to be one.

My main reason for taking this class was to fulfill an elective requirement, at least it was. The past couple assignment's and the modules have started to stir something in me that has been nagging to get out but hasn't had an opportunity to be brought to light. I hope that this class allows me to use the summer as a honing for my skills and passions to become laser focused on my goals and how to achieve them.

Love-bug Season

BUGS

In the past week I have been focusing on "bugs" that surround me in my everyday life/ thoughts and this list is the 20 most "buggy" that have come up more frequently than the rest.

1. Always running out of phone storage. It seems like every time I go to download an app, or take a picture or save a book that my phone has no storage left despite how much I delete or try to limit downloading. I think the reason for this is most likely attributed to everything we download constantly growing in size. Pictures are higher quality, therefore requiring more space. Apps have more software and take more space to run.

2. Traffic. This is multilevel, first being on the highway and traffic that happens for no reason. Parts where you are driving on the highway and suddenly everyone comes to a standstill and there are no accidents or stops don't make sense to me. The only why I can surmise is that people brake and it eventually piles up.

3. Traffic- unskilled drivers. It bugs me when people are not focused on driving. Not even if they are just texting, changing music, looking away; but when people are doing nothing but driving and somehow still completely oblivious on the road. I think this is because people find driving to be a relaxing activity that doesn't require mental stimulation whereas I see it as an engaging act that you need to be focused and aware the whole time.

4. Traffic- patterns. I feel like current traffic patterns just are not as efficient as they should be, or people are not as conscientious of the rules of the road as are needed. Reasons for this are because civil engineering and city planning are complicated endeavors that require the consideration of many factors, its hard to get all of them.

5. Travel at airports, security specifically. People take so long in the security line and it simply baffles me. You know what you are supposed to do, take off, put in bins etc. it is listed everywhere. People who blatantly ignore the signs and end up going through the detector 3 times because they left their phone and wallet in their pockets, belt and shoes on are just the worst. This is just caused because people are not aware of the rules, or do not think to plan ahead for efficiency.

6. The time it is taking us to shift from oil to more renewable sources. It is evident that fossil fuels are detrimental to the environment and unsustainable, if we focused a fraction of the money from this sector into research on renewables they would advance quick enough to catch up to the levels of the oil. The reason for this lagging is there is simply too much power and money in the hands of the large oil companies.

7. Farming's exhaustive and unsustainable use of water. The current large scale farming that we have is using extreme amounts of freshwater and arable land that is not good for the environment. The reason for this is the amount of fixed costs for these large farms is so high the companies must use them to recoup their investments or risk losing substantial amounts of money.

8. Deregulation in the financial services sector in extremely risky asset classes. Current regulation being proposed to deregulate risky investments to "stimulate" growth in the economy doesn't work and it led to one of the worst financial crashes we have experienced. Following these same tactics is not productive and will only hurt us in the future. The reason for this is the lobbying power and money that the large investment banking firms have and control.

9. Dealing with the phone companies on upgrading your phone, phone plans, data usage. They have developed these plans that lock you in and have so many penalties for you if you try to deviate that they are trying to lock you down into their revenues for life. The reasons for this are clear, just corporations trying to ensure and increase their profits.

10. Cell service being intermittent in many places still. I feel that we are at a point in time where we should have universal coverage from satellites for all communications and no dead zones across the entire planet. The reasons for this are again the astronomical fixed costs to start this industry and the time it would take to recoup them.

11. Scanning items at stores when checking out and barcodes being in strange or hard to scan areas. I feel as though there should be a universal spot on the front of a package in the same spot for every package that you don't have to search around for to scan. It irks me every time I'm at the register and it takes 5 min to find and another 5 to scan the barcode. I guess a reason for this is it's bad for marketing to be put on the front or sometimes not feasible.

12. The seating situation in the libraries at UF. It is very simple, all the students want are tables with lots of outlets and comfortable chairs with fast wifi available 24/7. For some reason this is very hard for the university to understand. I think the reason being they want to be very forward embracing and design oriented but sometimes seem to overlook the needs and functionality of spaces, eg. Newell Hall.

13. The Southwest Recreation center. How is it that a university of over 50,000 students is to support the exercise needs of all of them with one facility. There never ceases to be crowding at the gym and surrounding areas and is clear that we need more places to spread students out to be active. I don't see a reason why this has not been addressed and while a particular response may be student rec. center, that is not a suitable addition when compared to SW.

14. Lagging on video games and video buffering. We have services for extremely fast internet to be available but yet somehow it is one industry that has kept a monopoly on its services and controls its quality at high prices. The reason for this again is the high investment costs to enter the wireless market with the laying of cables and fiber optics everywhere. It is expensive and hard to get permitting for such work.

15. Speed limits on highways and not following them really gets on my nerves. This will also be a multiple post. When people drive under the posted speed limit, I understand. Going 65 because your not comfortable going 70 is alright. It is not alright when you drive 60-65 in the left lane, when there are signs every where posted for slower traffic to keep right, as well as being common sense driver etiquette! Reasons for this is I think they are just old and unaware, or young and inexperienced drivers that cause this.

16. We are at a time when cars have become much more technologically advanced and are capable of handling much higher speeds much safer. I think speed limits should be more of suggestions and while reckless driving rules should be enforced, if you are comfortable driving at 120 then you should be allowed to. The reason this is not allowed is it's not safe enough yet. For this to work I think we would need to employ separate lanes for high speed travel that are restricted to experienced and capable drivers.

17. Government services, The DMV. This is the slowest place on the planet, I am convinced. Whenever you have to go to the DMV you must set aside a couple hours at least, just for whatever might be a holdup. The reason is the people working there are doing a public good and have no incentive to increase their efficiency. The fact that it is a government office does not help as their revenues do not depend on the quality or speed of their work, but rather the only place that the task can be accomplished.

18. The underutilization of trains in the United States really bugs me. Traveling to Europe one encounters a public transit system that allows them to cross an entire continent cheaply and with extreme ease but in the US we never really got on that train. I think one possible reason is the sheer size and distance between cities in the US. Since everything was so spread out and we had so much land we only focused on connecting the main metro areas or portions in cities.

19. Battery life of everyday materials. I think I am just all around bugged with the energy sector. The battery life in electronics really irks me as I feel like at this day I should be able to watch a movie on my computer and not have to be out of charge right when I finish. This goes back to newer shows and movies being better quality, requiring more processing power and more energy but I feel as though the battery's should have progressed much faster than they have to this point. We should be having batteries that last days by now.

20. People's continued use of plastic water bottles. BUY A REUSABLE. We are suggested to drink 8 cups of water a day, so you would get plenty of use out of it. The initial cost decreases literally with every sip as well as reducing your consumption of plastic that is awful for the environment. I would say the reason is overall convenience but it's more convenient to have your own refillable bottle. There is no reason for this one.

Overall, I didn't find this list to be challenging at all. I am constantly looking at my environment and seeing ways that things could be improved or made more efficient. I really enjoyed this activity as I am always meaning to actually write my ideas down but never take the time to sit down and do it.

Test post

This blog post is a test to ensure that it is working correctly.