Coming into the Independent Study and Mentorship Program, I knew I wanted to utilize this opportunity to dedicate efforts towards expanding my knowledge on entrepreneurship and business sense. Having an interest in solving problems in a creative manner from childhood, entrepreneurship appealed to me as a profession in which I would be able to expand on this nature of mine while make monetary profit from a business venture. Therefore, I had concluded that the best representation of my acquired skillset and knowledge would stem from the establishment of my own business. Ambitious at first, I imagined the creation of my business as material for my Original Work while scalability, profitability, and sustainability would be the three focuses of my final product. However, as I came to realize, through primary and secondary resources, that the establishment of a business venture includes intensive research and proactive planning, I reevaluated realistic goals for myself which included the completion of a detailed and revised business plan for my Original Work. This business plan, representative of my work in this program thus far, combines the leadership aspects, the technical components, and the soft skills that are vital to an entrepreneur.

Despite this foreplaning, the actual execution of the Original Work was most critical in this entire process. With a hefty amount of schoolwork and an imposing amount of work to complete the business plan, time management was of essence, and I believe that mastering this skill proved to be the hardest part of this process. Ensuring that I was following the necessary protocol of logging each sitting that I dedicated to my Original Work and completing the small tasks was vital as it would help expedite the compilation of my Original Work but a sense of laxity, although minimal, caused growing amounts of unnecessary stress. Although this did not impact the quality of my Original Work in a significant manner, the lesson I learnt will be beneficial as advancing into new chapters of life will require self-commitment and planning, and since there won’t be any external motivators, setting personal deadlines and goals will be ever-important.

In addition to the intangible lessons I leant through this experience, I also gained a significant sense of pride in the practical sense of my product. This business plan serves as the blueprints to a future enterprise, one that I believe has the potential to impact our community in a large positive manner. This business plan, delineating the functions of the Green Bean Co., serves as a planning document for the launch of The Green Bean Co. As a social venture that encourages the growth of a circular economy in regards to the repurposing of spent coffee grounds into reusable everyday products such as skincare masks or premium agricultural compost. In addition to being a valuable asset to the society in the near future, this business plan will also help propel me into my Final Product as I plan on establishing my business and measure its efficiency in the beginning of its operations. Although setting up a business sounds easy, I will be pushing my limits as the input required to simply begin a business is large and to monitor its operations is even harder. However, doing this will allow me to truly gain an all-encompassing set of knowledge over the topic of entrepreneurship as I will not only be exposed to the planning and development phase of the business cycle but also to the operational and logistical side of it as well.

Through these interconnected yet diverse set of experiences, I hope on gaining a vast set of technical knowledge over the topic of entrepreneurship while developing as an individual.