Reflections on Being a Green Entrepreneur
It has been over a month since we started this team project. During this time, team members were all serious and completed their parts excellently. Also, I fully understand the process of starting a green venture through this team project, but I now have a new understanding of myself and my teamwork.
I became very interested in starting my own business and becoming my boss as we decided on the topic, searched for information, and slowly learned how to start a venture. I have so many marketing ideas that I cannot wait to use them. However, I have also found my shortcomings. I am so unsure of myself that I am often questioning myself. Is my idea workable? Will they want to communicate with me because my native language is not English? Fortunately, I have a group of thoughtful and supportive people. They listened to my ideas and gave me affirmation; they did not laugh at me because of my poor spoken English, which significantly increased my confidence.
Furthermore, every member of the team is helpful. As long as someone asks a question, everyone will actively answer and help. In the weekly group discussions, we solved problems together and came up with ideas. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the team, like we were building a company. This group project has given me a new perspective on teamwork. It also made me realize the importance of teamwork. It takes more than one person to set up a green business. We need to work closely with the team members to fulfill their respective responsibilities to achieve this goal.
Another significant advantage of this group project is that I have a good understanding of the process of launching a green venture. We’ve learned to be a green venture. We need to meet the following criteria: the core business must be sustainable resource utilization; business exists to enhance the environment; business products or services must be environmentally friendly. First of all, we decided what kind of environmental issue we would like to solve and address it. Accordingly, we have defined the nature of our company, our products, and our services. Then we started to identify our target market and set up our marketing strategy. We need to list the consumer segments and find out which segments have the most revenue. After that, we set up our channels. Find ways to connect with our customers and let our products reach consumers. The customer relationship is also important. We need to know how to represent and sustain a relationship with the consumer. Then, we set out our main activities to decide what we should do to run our business. After key activities were verified, we were going to find key resources to run our company. It requires financial resources and human resources. Determining the key partners is also a point that needs to be considered. We need to decide if we need partners in conjunction with the company’s operating model and sales model and, if so, who is the right partner. Finally, we have to list our cost structure by looking at activities and list the revenue streams to ensure our interests.
When we were developing our business model, pricing our products and services has been a big challenge. Because most of our consumers are households with mortgages and lower-middle incomes, our services should not be priced too high. However, if the price is too low, our partner suppliers would not agree, and we still need to make money, so the price issue has bothered us for a long time. After several discussions, we concluded that the price should be the market price, but we will work with the government and try to get the government to offer some subsidies to these families.
At the beginning of this course, I was reluctant to become a green entrepreneur. Personally, a large part of my motivation for starting a company is to make money and gain financial independence. But if you want to set up a green business, making money is no longer the company’s heart; the company is bound to give up some of the profits. However, I had a change of heart after the project had been completed. I’ve found that as long as the ideas are good and original, and as long as you do your market research early, the chances are good. Since in today’s world, people are paying more and more attention to saving the environment, so that people have a high degree of favor with green enterprises and can help green enterprises. The government is also very supportive of green businesses, and if your idea is good enough, the government might even give you money to get started. Having known this stuff, I intend to become a true green entrepreneur and contribute to global environmental conservation in the future.