Tyler Sturgis
Professor Chalfant
Entrepreneurship
3/12/13
Intro an Entrepreneur
At the beginning of this assignment I was on a mission to get a phone interview with the found of my favorite men’s clothing boutique on the west coast of the United States. After me reaching out several times and trying to get something scheduled, I got nothing. I kept contacting the people who ran operations day to day and they continued to tell me that he would call me back. Granted, I’m sure he was busy but this is small boutique so I feel he could’ve lent me at least an hour over the month period I was attempting to contact him. At the end of the day, I came up empty handed. This was at the beginning of March so I needed to find somebody to interview quick. I was asking around, whether it be friends or family. My mom said she could introduce me to her friend who owns a hair salon. I put that on the back burner because that was the last thing I had any interest in. If I went a few days more without finding someone else, I agreed to meet with her. The next day I was talking with my old manager. He always seemed to know everybody and had a lot of connections around the community. I brought up the project and he offered to put me in contact with one of his old friends who had opened his own cell phone shop. This was not the most exciting thing either but it had come down to the wire and I needed somebody. The very next day I had contacted TJ Fleming. The thing I was most excited about was that he is only 24 and we could possibly have more in common than just me taking an interest in his business ventures. We scheduled a meeting for the following week. We agreed to just meet at the local Panera Bread, that way it was a open and welcoming environment. Upon arrival we both just talked for a bit, about our relation to Eric, the one who put me in contact with TJ, and various other things like what I am studying in school. A few moments passed and then we got right into it. He began by just telling me his background a little bit, where he grew up, his family, etc. He told me he was offered a good job as a car salesman right out of high school and decided to not go to college. My first question to him was why he decided to leave the car industry if he was doing well. Prior to working at the dealership, he had worked at a cell phone kiosk for a year and saw the potential profit there was to be made in this business and decided he wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to do something simple though, he would offer “pay as you go plans and also monthly plans through all of the big name companies, you know Verizon, AT&T and such.” We talked a bit about risks, he said the biggest risk for him personally would be the capital investment, because he was taking all of his earnings from working at the dealership that he had saved to start this up. He also stated that the industry changes so much and consumer mindsets change so often that he kept asking himself, “Can we supply the most up to date product that people like?” We both kind of got off on a side rant dealing with Apple and how often they release seemingly the same phone with a slightly different name. He said, “In this industry, you can be just a season behind, or a ‘generation’ as many know it and you are a bust.” One of the biggest things he had to decide on is which consumer he wanted to cater to. At the end of the day, he went with the “lower-end, less privileged customer”. A big reason being that he came from very humble beginnings and knew what it was like to not be offered certain services that others are offered. This for him was more feasible in multiple ways. He envisioned a shop where he would buy phones from people who were looking to sell them, even if they were already contracted through another company, and then he could sell them at a profit to people who came to him for contracts. Falls Mobile LLC is what the name came to be. “I scouted
