Blog #16

Okay, this was originally in my post before, but I thought this summed up internship pretty well. It shows the variety of things I did and the resources I used. One of the main things I remember from internship is, of course, the main project. It is right next to my laptop and part of it is on the left side of my screen. I remember this mostly because of all the calling I had to do to competition and I honestly felt a little nervous, hah. Even so, I was able to sound not-so-sketchy and get the information I wanted. I think attitude over the phone was a big impact on me too. There were some people that sounded irritated, some who were nice, some who were awesome, and others.. who had thick accents that made it hard to understand them. This taught me the lesson that Service jobs are mostly about customer service. Another highlight I had were the newsletters. One of them is shown on the right side of my screen. This was something that was sort of a side project after I finished my POL and main project, but it was still fun. I learned all these fun facts I didn't know before and I also got to do some designing when it came to where to put things (Sometimes the template looked okay but the font choice and color were horrible!). There are A LOT of other things I liked about internship, but it's much easier to just read my past posts. Some things you should look for is my interview with Christine. Her life experienced really fascinated me because it gave me some input on a life almost opposite of mine. You should also look in the previous post for the water cooler. That thing really just.. made my day being there.

Blog #15

1. Resources—Post a series of photos that show the technological resources, natural resources, economic resources and/or human resources that are connected to your internship.

Picture 1: This is a picture of the calendar on Christine's Desk. I thought it was a good desk ornament because the pictures were nice to look at. Some of the writing, eh, it's was okay. It was the overall structure of the calendar and the pictures that made me like it.


Picture 2: This is just a small area in a corner that has a lot of importance. This company is green so they use the both sides a paper. I thought scratch paper was an interesting resource because I don't think a lot of other companies really look into printing use for both sides of a paper who's information can be completely unrelated to one another.


Picture 3: This is my lovely laptop. There focus here was just to have it busy. The whole story was how I did my final project. It was first a pile of paperwork (Top) and then it turned into a digital document (Right) then it turned into a booklet of information which is funny because that is considered paperwork. I thought it was a cool reoccurring circle about how information went from print to laptop and back to print.


Picture 4: I don't think the effect I wanted for this picture came out right. I wanted the bottom to fade a little more in black and have that spark of light illuminate the water inside the water cooler. But anyway, this is probably the best resource in the office. At home, I always fill up 2-3 water bottles because I have this issue with drinking room temperature water. To have cold water available gave me a home feeling which made me feel like.. I wouljd always be hydrated. I must have a water cooler in my next job office.


Picture 5: Here are some basic supplies I used. I didn't use much paper clips but I didn't use the stapler a lot to put information together. The paperwork on the very top is what I found useful for doing my job so that was influential. I like how the pens were availble to me because sometimes, in this office, you just have to write some quick information anywhere with anything.

Blog #14

So, since I forgot my camera battery at home, I didn't have a chance to take a picture of Christine. Instead... a Googled an image. This one if from Arcsi.org. If I ever get a chance to meet Christine in person again, I will make sure to ask for a picture. But for now, this will have to suffice. Unless a picture I draw would fit well too O:

Name: Christine McDannell
Job: Owner
Company: Cleanology and Adopt a Christmas Tree
Location: 4682 Iowa St. Suite 107, San Diego, CA 92116
Highlights from mentor interview:
What was your educational background?
She was mostly a C average student junior high. By high school, her grades improved to a 3.7 (A's and B's). Her dad would've paid for college but Christine got into business as a kid. Her dad owns his own company so she had experience there. She was interested in real-estate and got her license at 18. For 5 years she was in property real-estate. She saw a ad for a cleaning company (By then, she wanted her own business) and went to 5 different banks to try to get a loan but no one give a 35 thousand dollar loan so at 23. She started earning money by cleaning and being a Realtor at the same time. Two employees taught her how to clean. After a while, she started her own company.

What is success to you?
"Do what I love everyday." She talked about how she wanted to have a comfortable living and enjoy life. She wanted to take mini vacations and not grow old without experiencing what the world has to offer. Many people work so hard towards retirement, but grow old and lead miserable lives. "Giving back to the community is definitely important. I think if every company contributed a little, it would really help." Sometimes, they had domestic workers clean cancer patient's houses for free. Giving back to a community was a big thing for her.

How do you delegation and communicate so all the jobs get done?
She talked about how different people do different jobs. "You may be able to do a job, but maybe someone who has spent more time in the field can do it better or faster. By letting them do it, you free up your time." She spoke about her experience with her first office manager and how she was watching her closely with everything she did. "You want to be working on your company not in it." She said having a good business relationships is important because you can look to them for connections or have them help you out as you have helped them. "I want to bring up the whole cleaning industry. I want my company to be big, but I want other cleaning companies to rise with ours."

Blog #12 + 13

Alright! I will have to do my pictures tomorrow, but I will be writing my captions for them. I know exactly what I want to take pictures of and I can get those by tomorrow. This is for the "perspective" shots and the "collaboration" shots because I'll have to take picture of certain paperwork for this. Also, I will be making this blog a little lengthy since I forgot to do the blog on Monday. (Oops!)

Post three pictures that show a specific "perspective" of your internship.

Picture 1: This is a picture of Christine's desk. As the owner of a business, there will always be work done here. Perhaps not so much paperwork, but plenty of networking on her computer. Sometimes, she has two computers going at once. When one was going slow, she would turn to the other one and tap away to schedule time to go to meetings, updating the company's information, emailing contacts, etc. This place can also be empty, especially since Christine runs out a lot to go to prior commitments, contact businesses, and speak with other connections. Even so, no matter where she is, the phone will ring just as it always does. Even though she is the owner, she politely answers it, having many people mistake her for the secretary. Most of the calls actually go through Israel. In the perspective of the owner, getting your company out there is definitely important.

Picture 2: This is a picture of Israel's desk. There is always papers on these desks, mostly for notes when a client calls. Israel is the General Manager and takes care of most of the booking. Whenever a client calls, he is patient and thorough with the details of what the company provides and makes sure to listen and accommodate their exact needs. As a service company customer service, as Christine has said before, it key. If a client calls, they want something from the company but they aren't going to pull nails to get it. Being a General Manager, as I have observed, takes patience. Client may call angry, it can be difficult to hide frustration. Clients may call to cancel, it can be tricky to hide disappointment. Even so, the people who answers the calls must display an environment of understanding and let the person know that their company cares. In the perspective of the General Manager, being able to fix a problem with a client is probably an event that takes time.

Picture 3: At last, here is a picture of what a client might be doing when they call. I was actually a prank client for a while when I was calling different companies to see what their rates were. There were times I went, "I just need the information, you talk A LOT." There were many companies I called that didn't even answer the phones, three time even! I made a list of information I wanted to get from each company and carefully put them in a script so it looked a little less sketchy then it really was. I'm sure a real client wouldn't have to worry about that, they probably would be free to say, "Oh yes, my house is on this street... yes, this apartment number." while I found myself being the one to say, "O-Oh well.. my husband has the paperwork for the house we plan to move-in to." Anyways, to get to the point, a client's job is supposed to be made easy. I did feel a little frustrated when no one picked up the phone at certain companies. I was a little shocked when some companies actually called back (It was more like.. unprepared to be honest). Even so, the biggest thing I was looking for when I was calling the competition is customer service. After seeing how difficult it can be to get information from some companies, I realized how hard it was for Christine and Israel to handle some clients. But from what I've seen, they do it VERY well because they don't talk up a storm, they listen to their client. They ask what areas had priority which no other company did (I spoke to 17 of them out of 24). So in the perspective of a client, I would expect great customer service.

Collaboration in the office:

In the course of one typical workday, how many different people do you directly work with? How many people are indirectly affected by your work.
I work with Israel and Christine a decent amount. They sort of take turns telling me what needs to get done in the company or how I should do something. I'm pretty good about asking for clarification and finishing my work in a timely manner. There are little things I do that may influence people. I mean, when I ask people to hold on the phone, it's better then no one picking it up and them going away saying, "Oh my gosh I can't contact anyone!" I also called a lot of other cleaning companies, some sounding really confident or some sounding intimidated. Some people that may also be effected by my work is the sponge company. Christine really likes the little sponges but after doing the marketing plan, we realized that sponges just weren't in the budget at all. Also, domestic workers can be affected because I organized their files and paperwork. Many of them were missing a lot of stuff or they weren't up to date on paperwork so that could've indirectly affected them.

Describe your direct collaboration with others—how does it go & how does it influence the work?

One of the things I like about my internship is the collaboration, whether it is important or trivial. Something that I found sort of cool, and you may think I'm weird for saying this, but putting people on hold and having someone else pick up. It made me feel like, "Oh, I'm letting people know that someone is actually here." and therefore, Israel can be at ease when talking to a client because the other client that called was put on hold. Some collaboration I also had with Christine was for the marketing plan. She knew about the past marketing strategies the company has tried and I learned a lot about how paper-investments didn't work as well as online investments. Little things like that influenced the overall outcome positively. It was nice to be able to get some feedback from her when it came to layout or spot checking wording.

Describe your indirect impact on others through your work—there are probably many people you never actually see who are affected by your work. How does this happen? How does this influence your work?
I think I've already went over this? I suppose some people who would be mostly influenced is advertising companies because Cleanology may have wanted to continue to use their advertising but after the market analysis, perhaps they weren't bringing in as much money as they were dishing out. Perhaps the intern here for next year will find my work helpful too because I know I found the intern's work from last year to be helpful. It sort of gave me a template. Also, I was organizing a business list for Israel that will be helpful to him when he goes Downtown, maybe he can get through meeting companies faster.

Blog #11 and Interview

Please post a summary of your week at internship. What were the highlights? What were the challenges? What was memorable and why?
Hmm, what happened this week.. I think one of the things that bothered me this week the most was the weather. It was difficult get out of bed and be greeted by the cold air since we have no heater. That brought me to work with a "gosh I'm so tired" feeling. I actually couldn't stop yawning. One of the things that causes yawning is oxygen deficiency. When I'm tired, I tend not to take deep breaths which is why I yawn. I thought it'd be a little offensive to Christine and Israel so I tried to hide it, which didn't work well. IN REALITY, I was having fun with what I was doing. I wasn't yawning because I was bored or anything, which is a common misconception. I just get so caught up in work that I sometimes forget to breath. Hah, you may think that's crazy but it's something I noticed about myself when I'm tired. Aside from my always tired personality, I think this week went by great. I'm almost done with my final project, I just have to call competitors now (Eek, I'm no good on the phone). Though, like I said in my previous post, Christine brought me to a social networking lunch (I liked the food, the dessert looked the best. But it did seem like that were overly preparing it) where a speaker was talking about "how to get more done with less stress". I thought that was great because I love listening to speakers. A lot of the points she made were something I found useful. Those were most of the highlights from my week.

Interview:
What was your educational background?
- C average student Junior High
- High school 3.7 (A's and B's)
- Dad would've paid any college
- Business as a kid (Candy and lemonade)
- Her dad owned his own company
- Business english and communications class in college (It was great)
- Senior in high school, dad's girlfriend got into property management (Leasing at 17)
- Real-estate licenses at 18
- For 5 years property real-estate
- 23 she wanted to own her own business (No money saved up)
- Saw ad for cleaning company (35 thousand dollars no load) (Went to 5 different banks)
- 2 employees (Taught her how to clean)
- Went to clean (Cleaned for a year and a half) (Do paperwork while cleaning) (Had cellphone on hand)
- Dec started cleaning company
- Put supplies on credit cards (Initial investment was 1k dollars)
- She read books about business (She's a sponge :D She was winging it)

What is successful?:
- "Do what I love everyday"
- Comfortable living
- Able to give back
- Live life (Take vacations)
- People work for retirement (Doesn't travel, too old, Christine takes mini retirements)

Delegation:
- You have people do different jobs (You can be good, but someone may be better)
- When she hired her first office manager, she was watching her like a hawk
- Delegation is important (Frees up your time)
- Working on the company and not in your company
- Talk once a month out of the office (Works as a team versus boss/person)
- Good business relationship
- If someone was shrinking, she would try and refer people if she has too many jobs booked

Second Part of the Interview:

Blog #10

First, post a picture that sums up your day (make sure you get permission for the pic!). What new questions has your internship inspired you to ask about our world? What has it made you wonder about? What are you moved to go out and do or learn about on your own time?

Well, this is just my work desk. I'm constantly moving around doing things so it's not something I can easily photograph. Actually, a question I have is how much time to people actually spend doing what they love or something productive. I know I go home, watch anime, and draw all day. Somehow, I had found that productive before. That was until Christine brought me to this social networking meeting about "How to get more done with less stress". I never saw it as "less stress", I saw it as "I'm doing something I love and it's convenient". But then I started to look around and see what else I could do that may be more productive but doesn't take that much more work. Instead of full on watching anime and drawing all day, I eventually started to watch TED online because I am interested in opinions. A small switch like this didn't take that much work, but I'm estimating that it would extend my creative thinking because of all these different speakers talking about the world. My next step is to actually move forward on what I want to do. I wanted to draw a comic for the longest time. People always told me, "You've said that, but when are you going to actually DO it?" This made me see that up til' now, I've felt like I have all the time in the world. As college nears, and even in being a junior in highschool, I see that my time is slowly being occupied with more things. Hence, the extra time I have left should be spent on doing something, having a product ot show. Sounds like a big lesson, but after thinking about it for a while, I actually told Nikki (My friend), "Nikki, I want to be successful and do something."

Here are NEW questions I can ask for the SECOND interview:
- What sort of things did you want to offer to clients?
- Did you research the location of your company?
- Where did you cover to make sure there wasn't a huge competition out there?
- How did you actively get into social networking?
- How do you accept disappointment from slow days or other people saying no to your company?
- Do you have a goal and direction in how your company will grow?
- Did you ever make a plan for your company? Did your company growth follow that plan?
- What was the worse thing that has happened throughout the struggle to make a new company?

Blog #9

I actually had my interview already. Do I need to keep these in structured notes? I just wrote a lot of little things, if that's alright. If you want it in paragraphs, leave a comment. I like it scattered around more because I look at it as things aren't taught or learned in order. Here were some of the categories we covered in the first interview.

Company:
She didn't start as a green company (Products didn't work though and they were expensive)
2-3 years into the company, she slowly fading out products (Switching them)
Christine's Cleaning Service (She wanted a professional name)
Cleaning industry (She saw the need for a good cleaning company)
She was in property management (Previous cleaning companies had no website and bad customer service)
House cleaning had bad image
She wanted to better the image
Costed 5 gran (For branding and website) (Had to take loan)
She's competitive (But she wants to bring everyone up for the industry)

Christine!:
Christine is bad with money xD!
Dad would blow money on stuff
"She'll cross that bridge when she comes to it"
Business owners don't budget most of the time
You always want to delegate things you don't like doing/ don't have time to do
Lots of teamwork

Business Issues:
Big problem, didn't collect people money (Nov 2007) (Company was half the size people owed 16k)
2k isn't that bad, it's current money owed
AR is account receivables AP account payable

Trouble with clients not paying:
6 years she sent 5 people to collections (3 months or more late) (Mails and invoices)
Three out of 5 paid (Can put on their credit report)

Client get angry:
Had to make a manual
40 thousand dollar engagement ring (Was "stolen" and client was angry. Turned out husband got to get it cleaned)
They have to listen (99.9% the client finds it. Client is in denial. I'm not suprsied about this one.)

Businesses:
Business is stressful
Business owners want to spend money on Lawyer, CPA (They are doing your accounting, saving you from the IRS. Saves money on taxes), Bookkeeper.
Called Business coach first (Needed to call her attorney, but got reassurance)
Call clients immediately if they break something
Problem solving is fast (The problem will become a crisis if you don't)
Consult with other business owners and mentors (They may have gone through the same thing)

Retirement:
- Inflation is about 2-4% a year
- Christine wants about 3.5mil for retirement

Awards Christine had been nominated for or got:
- Woman entrepreneur
- Young entrepreneur
- Small business person of the year
- A small business is defined as a business that makes less then 50million a year