"IF YOU WANT SOMETHING YOU'VE NEVER HAD, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO DO SOMETHING YOU'VE NEVER DONE BEFORE." -THOMAS JEFFERSON
Changemaker Story
I have always taken a liking to designing things; drawing, painting, and organizing things together so that it’s appealing to the eye. For this reason, I was going to continue to schooling by going to Washington State University to become an interior designer. But this profession lacked something that was a big part of me. I love helping people. One day while I was getting my hair done, I had a conversation with my hairdresser who I had just met that day. This was different from my usual experiences with hairdressers because I went to the same one for five years. My usual hairdresser was on maternity leave, so I was forced to find a new one for the time being. We got to talking about career paths and I had asked her what made her choose to be a hairdresser. She told me her story about how she always liked playing with, cutting, and dying her own hair after she had gotten a horrific haircut when she was younger. But then she started to talk about how she wanted to be a nurse before she chose to be a hairdresser. We talked a lot about how and why she wanted to be a nurse, things that I would have never crossed my mind. She talked about things like; she wanted to help people and comfort people. I was thinking of nursing as science and a professional view of it. I hadn’t taken into account that there was the empathy side of it. I chose right then, that I wanted to be a nurse. I love helping people and I enjoy having the power to comfort people who are scared and injured or sick.
That pertains to the business that my partner Jordyn and I started. We created a product that we had the chance to paint and design one-of-a-kind single flowerpots which I loved doing. It has some sort of ease and a calming affect for me. We also added the choice of herb seeds or flower bulbs, which can grow year round on a window seal. That gave us the chance to create cute recipe booklets for the herbs, deeper meaning cards for the flowers. And of course we had the essentials like soil and the instructions and continuing care for each individual plant. The best part for me was the packaging of it. I loved organizing all of the kit together.
We mistakenly started with our problem being customers needed a way to increase accessibility to fresh organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs year round, that resulted in cost and health benefits. I say mistakenly because what we had done was we built our problem around our solution, not the other way around as should have been. See we already had a solution in mind; it was to build a garden tower that used water and air instead of soil like we did the year prior. What we really wanted was to continue our project from last year, not really focusing on an existing problem for the user. But a requirement for our project was to interview with users. So we talked to a few people about what they might be able relate to with our problem. They all mostly focused on the year-round aspect and the accessibility part. With that in mind my partner and I agreed on figuring out a way to grow these plants inside. A few mentioned they wouldn’t mind being able to plant flowers or other houseplants as well. So there laid our real problem, but we didn’t know it yet.
One day while going through our methods for our project, Jordyn and I started a method called brainstorming. Methods are all different step-by-step guides that were crucial to our projects foundation, one of them being brainstorming. This was the most vital part to our whole project. It was our “big pivot”. Before the brainstorming method, we believed that we had found the solution to our problem. But of course, that was not the case. We both looked at our old problem and decided to better fit what the interviewers had related to. And that’s when we started throwing up sticky notes on our project board. We thought of all kinds of unconventional solutions. We thought, the crazier the better. We stepped back and took a look at a ballpark of 40 ideas. This was all in a time span of about 20 minutes. And finally, we had a new and improved solution that was very unlike the one we already had. But it was even better.
We picked out our favorite idea and added a couple more along with it. We had just formed our solution. Our solution was a plant kit. Just as simple as that, but with a little twist. The plant kit came with your choice of a selection of herbs or a selection of flowers. Depending on if you chose an herb, you’d get a small recipe booklet, and with a flower, you get a “deeper meaning card”. With that you get the soil needed for your plant, and of course the instructions and continuing care. You also get your choice of hand painted, unique pots. These are called “Life Pots”. And on top of that, a portion of our profits is donated to Shriners Hospital. Hence or slogan, “Helping kids one pot at a time”. The idea was to give new life to a child and a plant. Which is why we named our business “Give New Life”.
Shriner’s hospital is a very remarkable place. It is like no other hospital. Shriners Hospital is particularly special because they warmly accept any child under the age of 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and clef lip and pallets, despite their ability to pay.
My partner Jordyn and I both have somewhat of a connection with Shriners hospital. Jordyn was a patient of Shriners Hospital when she was younger until she turned 18. I am aspiring to be a nurse, and I have chosen to eventually donate my time by volunteering at Shriners.
I couldn’t even imagine having a child that needed medical care, and was turned down because of my inability to pay for the medical attention that your child requires. How would one deal with that? Being told no, we can’t help your child, sorry, you’re going to have to go somewhere else. But where? Where else is going to take your child when you don’t have the means to pay? That is why I am so astounded by Shriners Hospital. It is an amazing thing that they do.
As of right now, our project us underway. We just sold six of our pots in a time span of an hour and a half and made 95$. We can see this business being very successful in the near future. We believe that the users enjoy our product because it does solve a need that users didn’t really realize they had until hearing about our product. I think the main thing that drew our customers in, was the donation aspect we give with every purchase. This gives the user more of a reason to want to buy our product. We have not heard any negative feedback thus far. The challenge we faced was figuring out how much money would go to Shriners Hospital and if we could even include their name in the selling of our product. We called Shriners Hospital and asked if we could use their name, and to little to no surprise, they allowed us to use their name. Then we were faced with how much we wanted to profit, how much we wanted to donate, and how much we wanted to sell the kits all together. We later figured out the selling price.
We decided to sell our pots for a reasonable 15$, 10 in profit and 5 to Shriners. Since we made 95$, we took out 35 from that and donated it to Shriners Hospital. We are hoping that we can, in the future, grow much much more. We would love to donate an exceptional amount of money to Shriners Hospital. Unfortunately we were only able to donate 35. But we strive to make more sales which in return will help us be able to donate more money to Shriners.
I, as well as my partner Jordyn, really hope that the audiences we are reaching choose to help our cause. They can help become apart of our journey in raising money for children in need to medical attention. You, our audience, can help this cause by purchasing a plant kit, and telling your friends, family, or co-workers about our mission. Even donating directly to Shriners indirectly helps us. We hope that our product will be a turning point in the awareness of a hospital such as Shriners.
That pertains to the business that my partner Jordyn and I started. We created a product that we had the chance to paint and design one-of-a-kind single flowerpots which I loved doing. It has some sort of ease and a calming affect for me. We also added the choice of herb seeds or flower bulbs, which can grow year round on a window seal. That gave us the chance to create cute recipe booklets for the herbs, deeper meaning cards for the flowers. And of course we had the essentials like soil and the instructions and continuing care for each individual plant. The best part for me was the packaging of it. I loved organizing all of the kit together.
We mistakenly started with our problem being customers needed a way to increase accessibility to fresh organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs year round, that resulted in cost and health benefits. I say mistakenly because what we had done was we built our problem around our solution, not the other way around as should have been. See we already had a solution in mind; it was to build a garden tower that used water and air instead of soil like we did the year prior. What we really wanted was to continue our project from last year, not really focusing on an existing problem for the user. But a requirement for our project was to interview with users. So we talked to a few people about what they might be able relate to with our problem. They all mostly focused on the year-round aspect and the accessibility part. With that in mind my partner and I agreed on figuring out a way to grow these plants inside. A few mentioned they wouldn’t mind being able to plant flowers or other houseplants as well. So there laid our real problem, but we didn’t know it yet.
One day while going through our methods for our project, Jordyn and I started a method called brainstorming. Methods are all different step-by-step guides that were crucial to our projects foundation, one of them being brainstorming. This was the most vital part to our whole project. It was our “big pivot”. Before the brainstorming method, we believed that we had found the solution to our problem. But of course, that was not the case. We both looked at our old problem and decided to better fit what the interviewers had related to. And that’s when we started throwing up sticky notes on our project board. We thought of all kinds of unconventional solutions. We thought, the crazier the better. We stepped back and took a look at a ballpark of 40 ideas. This was all in a time span of about 20 minutes. And finally, we had a new and improved solution that was very unlike the one we already had. But it was even better.
We picked out our favorite idea and added a couple more along with it. We had just formed our solution. Our solution was a plant kit. Just as simple as that, but with a little twist. The plant kit came with your choice of a selection of herbs or a selection of flowers. Depending on if you chose an herb, you’d get a small recipe booklet, and with a flower, you get a “deeper meaning card”. With that you get the soil needed for your plant, and of course the instructions and continuing care. You also get your choice of hand painted, unique pots. These are called “Life Pots”. And on top of that, a portion of our profits is donated to Shriners Hospital. Hence or slogan, “Helping kids one pot at a time”. The idea was to give new life to a child and a plant. Which is why we named our business “Give New Life”.
Shriner’s hospital is a very remarkable place. It is like no other hospital. Shriners Hospital is particularly special because they warmly accept any child under the age of 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and clef lip and pallets, despite their ability to pay.
My partner Jordyn and I both have somewhat of a connection with Shriners hospital. Jordyn was a patient of Shriners Hospital when she was younger until she turned 18. I am aspiring to be a nurse, and I have chosen to eventually donate my time by volunteering at Shriners.
I couldn’t even imagine having a child that needed medical care, and was turned down because of my inability to pay for the medical attention that your child requires. How would one deal with that? Being told no, we can’t help your child, sorry, you’re going to have to go somewhere else. But where? Where else is going to take your child when you don’t have the means to pay? That is why I am so astounded by Shriners Hospital. It is an amazing thing that they do.
As of right now, our project us underway. We just sold six of our pots in a time span of an hour and a half and made 95$. We can see this business being very successful in the near future. We believe that the users enjoy our product because it does solve a need that users didn’t really realize they had until hearing about our product. I think the main thing that drew our customers in, was the donation aspect we give with every purchase. This gives the user more of a reason to want to buy our product. We have not heard any negative feedback thus far. The challenge we faced was figuring out how much money would go to Shriners Hospital and if we could even include their name in the selling of our product. We called Shriners Hospital and asked if we could use their name, and to little to no surprise, they allowed us to use their name. Then we were faced with how much we wanted to profit, how much we wanted to donate, and how much we wanted to sell the kits all together. We later figured out the selling price.
We decided to sell our pots for a reasonable 15$, 10 in profit and 5 to Shriners. Since we made 95$, we took out 35 from that and donated it to Shriners Hospital. We are hoping that we can, in the future, grow much much more. We would love to donate an exceptional amount of money to Shriners Hospital. Unfortunately we were only able to donate 35. But we strive to make more sales which in return will help us be able to donate more money to Shriners.
I, as well as my partner Jordyn, really hope that the audiences we are reaching choose to help our cause. They can help become apart of our journey in raising money for children in need to medical attention. You, our audience, can help this cause by purchasing a plant kit, and telling your friends, family, or co-workers about our mission. Even donating directly to Shriners indirectly helps us. We hope that our product will be a turning point in the awareness of a hospital such as Shriners.
--This helped me with learning how to take my story and incorporating it with our business. I think this is one of the hardest writings I have ever faced. I learned a different kind of writing that I have never used before
Business Plan
--This helped me learn how to write on a different way, I was talking for the business without use us or our. This is a different type of writing that I had to learn as I went, I believe I revised this document 4 different times. This taught me a lot about how to talk for a business.
Product
--This is one of my largest successes. I put a lot of time into this project and product. We sold 95$ worth of pot kits in an hour and a half. This taught me a lot about what users want and like and how they respond to certain things.