11A – Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?
     I am Arthur Nascimento. I was born in Brazil and moved to the US at the age of 17 to learn English. Liked it so much so I ended up staying here. I met my wife in my first college class ever, about 7 years ago, and we've been happily married for almost 3 years now. If there is one thing my father taught me was to never be satisfied by working for other people, he always encouraged me to pursue my own dreams, according to him, if I don't do it for myself, I will end up working for someone else making their dreams happen.
     I have started a couple ventures but those were just trials that permitted me to gain more knowledge and hand-on experience. I do have a consulting business but I don't plan on expanding it too much since it would probably mean I would have to do all the work myself. I'd rather build something which will not require me physically in the business 100% of the time.
     I am a very organized, determined and methodical person. Like everything in life, there are pros and cons, however I have found that my determination has and continues to be a great advantage. I like challenges and confrontations when it comes to work, and I certainly do not give up easily. I have been working in the same company for almost 9 years now and have gone from a assistant position to being the general manager, the hard work has paid off (while I help build someone else's dream). The time to build my own dream will come in the right time.
     The idea of building this application is one of the many business ideas I have had. I thought it was appropriate to use this one as a plan for this class. Who knows, it might actually become something lol. My wife is a SLPA (Speech Language Pathologist Assistant) and is currently pursuing her master's degree to become a SPL (Speech Language Pathologist). This is how I was able to see this opportunity. If this idea works out as a actual business, I still would probably not make this my main business but rather a side business.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 
     I am offering a less expensive way for parents to have speech therapy done for their children. However, a lot of people think that speech therapy is only for people who have a speech delay or autism, which is not true. Any health child who has not being diagnosed by a doctor as someone who requires speech therapy, can definitely benefit from having therapy. It will only advance the child's communications skills which will be a great advantage for child. The earlier they start, the better.

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?
     I am offering this mainly for (1) parents who have children that need speech therapy (2) parents of children who do not need speech therapy, but would like to improve and advance his/hers child cognitive and communication skills.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 
     They care because it will help their child. At the end of the day, if a parent is careless for his child, the child may even need therapy and the parent will either not care for it, or think that therapy is unnecessary.
     However, if the parents love, care and want the best for their child (which I hope most parents in society are this way) they will want to have therapy done for their child.
     For the parents that have children that need therapy, they will be able to save money as opposed to paying a fortune for it. For the parents that have children who does not need therapy, it a very inexpensive method of helping their child further develop communication skills.

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has?
     I love business, learning about different things and helping people. When it comes to anything related to health, there is a part that plays a vital role which is regulatory environmental forces. ASHA, FDA, DBPR (Florida), etc. All of these regulatory branches have their own rules and laws and anything related to health requires one to have vast experience in dealing with these government agencies. Because of my current job, I am already very familiar with these agencies, it may not be the same subject and the same laws, but the same principles applies. To be honest, this part is the boring one, but I know I can handle.
     I am also computer savvy when it comes to building applications and databases, which would be required for this project.
     On the speech therapy subject, my wife is already going to her master's program with this idea in mind, so it is something we are able to study in depth and with time, so we can fix or adjust anything needed for this project.

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 
     I do believe these elements fit well together. The one element that is weaker at this time is further studying ASHA regulations. I need to spend some time reviewing these laws, to see what I am allowed to do and what I am not allowed to do when it comes to this project.