"Company Me"

Personal Business Plan:

Since the genesis of ‘Study Session’, we strive to empower online productivity coaches and other online programs that aim to help college students manage time and study efficiently. Our company is providing a hands-free method to acquiring more of clients you want and revenue you need. A business owner’s main concern is to focus ON the business, not IN the business. We allow for that as we take over sales, conversions, and quality of leads to ensure the business owners focal point is creating the best quality content for their customers, instead of finding them!

I am a college student and I understand the daily struggle to balance 15+ credits, a job, and social life. This company is more human than business, because my inner passion and empathy toward other struggling college students is the driving force. Surely, we could’ve launched our own productivity, studying coaching program, but we decided we wanted to help college students nationally and internationally. There’s no better way to do this than support the entire industry by serving other businesses in the niche, and helping them grow by means of digital marketing.

Business Environment:

We are a competitor in the advertising industry, serving a smaller and specific niche, productivity & study-planning. We aim to serve an incredibly specific client so that we are able to perform to the highest quality for that client. As an advertising company, we diverted from the “generalist” approach to serving businesses because we know that the more we work closely with the same exact client, the better we get to know that industry, therefore the better results we are able to generate compared to a generalist advertiser. In the global environment, the advertising industry has made 550 billion dollars in 2017 and it is expected to increase. 

As a company we are not entirely concerned with being out-competed as we have chosen to serve only a specific client rather than almost any general business.

Entrepreneurship & Strategy:

As the CEO of Study Session, it will be a sweaty launch to building our client base. Though it will take ruthless discipline and hard-work, the methods for building this company from scratch are not seemingly difficult.

The golden rule of sales in any business in any industry, is give 95% free and sell the 5%. The concept of this sales approach is quite simple to understand from a psychological perspective. If I provide free value, advice, concepts… the clients will more often than not, immediately think “If she just gave this away for free... imagine what I will get when I actually pay her money”. When my company provides, my target clients, with raw value up front... we not only show them what we are capable of, but we gain their trust. Unlike your local Monroe Muffler car-mechanic... we actually pop the hood of our operation, and point out each part of the driving force of the engine. We then offer the client the option to run with it and do it themselves. But they as well as I know, that time is money... and the more of that they save, the better off they are... that’s how we sell; ethically & simply.

Management:

As General Manager of Study Session, I am the first person you speak to when on boarding to our program. I then supervise the functionality and communication of the employees to ensure our clients are satisfied with our service around the clock.

Our employees are expected to have exceptional people skills including leadership, creativity, and their ability to work in a team. We also look for second language skills. Since we are achieving to go international, we MUST have employees who can interact with people from a different country. We also suggest that our employees study abroad before working with us so they get an idea of how other cultures are. 

We have an in-house bonus program for our employees. Essentially, as the general manager we send out “sneaky surveys” on a bi-weekly basis to all of our clients asking them to rate our service 1 out of 10 stars and basic questions like “how are you feeling about the results? how is our communication with you during the process, and could it be better? Is there anything you would recommend we change or subtract regarding our service to you?”. We ask our clients to answer as honestly as possible. Each employee is assigned 5-10 clients and handle things from ad campaigns, lead follow up, lead tracking, & reporting to the client. The best result from the “sneaky surveys” yields a bonus to the employee connected to that client in the amount of $1,000 cash & a 5% increase in commission split for that client they are performing for. If that employee receives the bonus again, the commission will increase by 5% on an on-going basis until they reach 50%, on top of being paid an hourly rate. All of these bonuses function on a bi-weekly basis to keep our employees motivated as frequently and intensely as possible.

For the poorest rated employee reading from the “sneaky surveys”, instead of chastising them as the general manager or even approving of that from other employees in the office, we’ll have a private 1:1 60-minute consultation on where they didn’t perform as well to sharpen that skill and make it better for the next client. We encourage a strong fellowship in the office between all positions so instead of viewing our company as a hierarchy of positions with one person at the bottom and another at the top... we have an even playing field. So we have the highest-rated employee share his/her tips and tricks to the rest of the office, for the 2-week period that they receive the bonus.

As a scaling and growing agency we have 18 employees currently, and 126 clients... we know that there very well are a lot of questions. This is why we have a general manager in office at all hours at a desk, the same as any other employee who keeps available to inquiring employees while maintaining daily tasks and facilitating.

We don’t want our employees to hide much from us so our general manager is able to, at a birds-eye view, track the performance of all employees with each client using a proprietary software. With this capability, we are able to hold our employees accountable for their work at the same time, initiate the surfacing of any problems they face while handling a client.

Regarding, in-office criticism & offensive behavior to other employees, we highlight the relevance of our concern for this and have developed a 2 strike protocol for “bad” behavior. More than 2 reports of negative behavior from any single employee results in firing, without any consideration. Our office is supposed to be a positive environment that our employees can collaborate in, stay motivated in, and grow in… with negative energy these things are not possible.

Some ways that I will keep myself motivated is by taking up something that has nothing to do with my company. ". Studies have shown that stimulating hobbies and interests correlate with less  burnout and a greater ability to overcome adversity in your job." (Granville). By doing this, it will prevent me from becoming burnt out and will keep me motivated with doing my job effectively. 

To make sure we are known, me and a team of others will advertise our own company in simple ways. Some ways may include the internet and others may be as simple as promoting it to colleagues. 

Marketing:

As a CMO of an advertising agency, you could imagine the level of difficulty we have; not much. Our services are mainly grown through referrals by clients and our employees. We have a referral program with every client, where we offer 3 months of recurring service for free instead of a $2,900 monthly bill totaling ($8,700), if they refer us another client and we onboard them to our program.

Not only do we have a program for our clients, but our employees. We encourage our employees to self-brand because people buy from people, not businesses. So instead of highlighting on their social media profiles like Instagram and Facebook that they are “employed at Study Session”, we encourage them to advertise themselves as if it is their own business, while branding with “Study Session”. The reason we do this is because the more connected our employees are with others, using our company name, the higher chances we have of taking on more clients in quality and quantity. Also, if any employee directly is involved in acquiring a new client for our company we give them a $500 referral fee.

Our target audience is individual coaches or online programs that focus on productivity and study assistance for college students. As an ad agency, we are pretty well-versed in the field of targeting customers online, and this is exactly what we do through the use of Facebook Ads. The platform of Facebook Advertising allows for endless reach to our audience, as long as we know what we’re doing. So we combine the paid approach to acquisition as well as organic. We have a Facebook page where we post daily content and short value videos conveying tips and tricks for our clients and others who aren’t our clients, on how to grow their business and expand their reach.

Information Systems & Operations:

Study Session provides direct measurable results for all clients as well as in-house activity. We us a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), known as Salesforce. This tool allows us to communicate with one, another in-office, our general manager assigns tasks through this, employees update progress, clients submit cases for any issues they have and much more.

Sales force allows us to stay connected as a company and with our clients. All we need is this CRM for pretty much all of our operations. We also have email & phone call tracking software’s that keep track of all of our communications with clients. It’s important that we have the opportunity to monitor our employees’ performance in all facets.

Resources

Granville, Kevin (n.d). How to Manage Your Career. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/manage-your-career?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=pay&smvar=guides

Gray, Kevin (2017, November 30). THE KEY ATTRIBUTES EMPLOYERS SEEK ON STUDENTS’ RESUMES. Retrieved from https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/2017/the-key-attributes-employers-seek-on-students-resumes/