Week 1: Adjusting Professionally and Socially
Monday — May 21, 2018
Today I got to meet with the team. I was reversed on the purpose of the company and given materials pertaining to entrepreneurial business canvas and lean business modeling. I told them about my need to develop a research project and asked if their perspective could lead me in anyway. Dayle Moore told me as a part of my job she would want me to go through the startup process at the incubator. She told me that I should consider either my Jamaican fast-casual company or simply a company dedicated towards sharing social justice principles of inclusivity and empathy through workshops which was awesome.
I was speaking with the Senior iOS Developer of Echo, a tech agency, using our space who gave me advice about moving up in the corporate world. On lunch break, he told me that regardless of location, look at the skill set and tasks. If they are the same, why go further for the same transferable skills, especially if the city is not one that you dream to spend your life afterwards. He told me about the importance of a job title and how to leverage salary and other benefits like vacation time and paid-time-of. Lastly, he told me to always documents what you did, how long you did it, and with whom you did it with.
Tuesday — May 22, 2018
Today I learned about unbundling businesses to be more customer driven, inbound management and marketing, and affiliate marketing. Unbundling involves structuring a business in a way that is capable of thriving in a globalized market of lean organizational growth and competition. It involves seeing how you can efficiently improve customer delight and brand loyalty by focusing on 3 different business imperatives of a corporation: product innovation, infrastructure, and customer relationships. Economically speaking it is maintaining and growing client base by prioritizing in house operations on consumers and finding ways to utilize resources to handle other operations cost-effectively — which also benefits the consumer. Inbound management, as opposed to outbound marketing, is a way companies market and focus operations on customer growth and benefits as a way to engage clients and find ways to innovate. It includes customer relationship management which are tools used to develop culture, learn customer personas, and improve the confluence of the two. Machine learning and AI with CRM assist customers at their convenience and help businesses automate tedious details and have meaningful conversation with customers. Affiliate Marketing is earning a passive income in the form of commissions on sales of merchant products that you help to facilitate. I learned that many entrepreneurs in the area use this as a form of bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is using your skills and abilities as a source of income. Many of them do this to make money while focusing on their businesses. Later that night we held a community Pitch Night. During the event, participants in our accelerator program talked about their business models and sought possible networking and investment opportunities. One of my coworkers, Casey, then extended the opportunity for me to attend one of their meeting tomorrow for a new facility to relocate their division of Starter Studio that serves the Parramore community.
Wednesday — May 23, 2018
Today I woke up feeling terribly sick. I took some benadryl,but my throat was killing me. I have a water pick floss so I decided to fill it with peroxide and shoot it to the back of my throat and tonsils. Apparently the device has a lot more pressure than I thought. When I shot the spray into the back of my throat I immediately moves the flosser out of my mouth and the peroxide started spraying everywhere, but I was too focused on the pain of my throat. It felt like the mix of a needle at the dentist used to numb your gums plus the feeling of popping a zit on your upper lip. Tears immediately filled my eyes. I choked up flem, peroxide, blood, and foam — a product of the two forms substances. I took a throat lozenge to soothe my throat and a Redbull so that my energy could be us for the meeting. By the time I got to work a slight fatigue had changed places with the malaise I had woken up to.
During the meeting we road to with the boss to a 45,000 square feet property with a selection of facilities ranging from 3k to 15k square feet. The project was being described as the Wynwood of Orlando that would not be commercialized like its counterpart but remain a creative space for the locals and visitors. They wanted to uses their resources to make a space that was creative, innovative, inclusive, and sustainable. During this meeting I learned about property acquisition, city ordinance, and challenges of being a non-profit. After the meeting my coworkers Casey and Haley took me on a tour of downtown Orlando. Afterwards, we went back to the office and I worked on my social justice workshop series.
Thursday — May 24, 2018
This was the first time I got to work and it wasn’t raining. It was also the first time I did not have to refer to Google maps on my way to work — or at least on my way to the free parking a half mile from my office building. Today, I got to focus on one of my workshop projects, which will be developing a 3 part social justice series. During lunch break, I went to starbucks to work on my Business Model Canvas with Casey. It was really cool. I talked with her about my dream of developing a Jamaican restaurant and social enterprise. She also challenged me to see how I could make a living of social justice training for businesses. After lunch, I continued working on developing my programs.
I know it’s only my fourth day, but I also started to think about how I show up in the space. My team knows I am gender nonconforming and gay. But, I feel inauthentic-ish. Though being gender nonconformity is an identity and mentality, more so that expression I feel like I am hardly creating a space for those like me. I am certainly feeling a bit of the impostor syndrome,I would say, as well. I mean, maybe I just don’t feel as much contrast to the group as I feel in Tallahassee or in more conservative spaces — considering Starter Studio is moderately quirky and progressive. We are in a casual-wear culture. All, I know is I try to bring as much of myself into spaces, especially when I am talking about social justice. I know it’s not necessary. But, I like making people feel comfortable to question my identity from a point of conscious, productive curiosity. I’ll keep you posted on this.
Friday — May 25th
Today, I learned how to work the front desk. I also got trained to give tours of our facility to prospective clients. Afterwards, I sat in a couple meetings with past participants in our accelerator program to here about their progress. Lastly, I was briefed in Canva, a graphic design online software for creating a number of content mediums. I spent the rest of Friday working on my community workshop series which we planned to start in July.
