ENTR 4186 – Entrepreneurial Small Business

Interview Assignment

Introduction

Please select the owner of a small business to interview.  Their organization must be a for-profit business.  You should be sure this person will cooperate with you as they will be asked to answer twenty (20) questions.  Remember to introduce the owner and his/her business to me before reporting the answers to the questions.Make sure the person has owned the business for four or more years and has at least 10 employees working for them.  The interview is not effective if they are self-employed and/or have not been in business very long.  Please use the following outline for the assignment and follow ALL instructions.  You must listall of the questions and all of the answers.  Do not interview someone that is no longer the owner of the business.  They can’t possibly remember things very well.  You may interview a family parent (e.g., Grandparent, Mom, Dad, etc.).   You can learn a lot about an older family member from this interview. 

Outline

1. Introduction.  Who is the Small Business Owner? Briefly describe the person, their company, their location, and how to contact them.   Be sure you share enough information about how long they have been in business and how many full-time and part-time employees they have. 

2. Ask and Answer all of the Questions (there are 20 questions).

3. Write a Commentary on what you have learned from the small business owner after you share the answers to the questions. 

4. Please write a Conclusion.

Lastly, please write this assignment using Standard American English.  Your writing skills will be evaluated because among the criticisms of graduates of business programs is an inability to write well (as opposed to write “good”).

Preparation

1. Familiarize yourself with the questions. 

2. Go to the interview prepared to take notes unless they give you permission to record it. 

3. You may share the questions with the owner before the interview. 

4. You may conduct the interview online, but record it. 

5. Make sure you select a small business owner that meets the criteria in the Introduction.  

6. Start this assignment early.   If you wait the person might not participate which leaves you with no time to get the assignment completed.

Questions for the Interview of the Owner     

Questions for Gathering Information 

1. Would you tell me about yourself before you started or became the owner of this company?
2. Whom else did you know while you were growing up who had started or owned a business, and how did they influence you? Anyone later, after you were 21 years old? 
3. Were your parents, relatives, or close friends entrepreneurial? How so? 
4. What was your education/military experience? In hindsight, was it helpful? In what specific ways? 
5. Did you have a written business plan of any kind when you started or became the owner of this company or at some point later on after the business was open? Please tell me about it.  If not, please tell me why you did not write a business plan.

Once you got going: 

• What are the most difficult gaps to fill and/or problems to solve when managing a company?
• What do you consider your most valuable asset, the thing that enabled you to make it? 
• If you had it to do over again, would you do it again, in the same way? 
• As you look back, what do you believe are the most critical concepts, skills, attitudes, and know-how you needed to get your company where it is today? What will be needed for the next five years? To what extent can any of these be taught and learned? 
• What do you know about your competitors?
• Why do your customers select you over your competitors?
• Are there any ethical concerns that your type of business must deal with?
• How do you overcome these ethical problems?
• What do you know today that you wish you knew when you took over this company?

Questions for Concluding 

1. Is there anything you know now that you wished you had known when you started your company?
2. What things do you find personally rewarding and satisfying as an owner of a company? What have been the rewards, risks, and trade-offs?
3. What advice would you give an aspiring small business owner?
4. Could you suggest the three most important lessons you have learned? 
5. What 3 topics do you think students should learn in a college class about managing a small business?
6. Ask them about the impact of COVID-19 on their business.  Be patient.  Let them answer the question.  Do not interrupt.  Encourage them to give a complete answer (I expect a lot from this one question). 

Commentary

Remember to discuss what you learned from interviewing the small business owner.  This is an important part of the assignment.  You need to really think about what you learned from the interview and the course and reconcile the two things.  How does it compare to what the textbook says about small business owners?  Did you learn anything unexpected?  What did you think of the owner?   I really want you to reflect on what you have done.  The idea is to go beyond simply asking these questions. How did doing this assignment make you feel?   This part of the assignment will require about 20-25 complete sentences (about three paragraphs or more).

Conclusion

Remember to write a briefconclusion.  It is simply a very important of a professionally written document.This is a separate section than the Commentary above.  In a Conclusion you tell the reader what you just wrote with an emphasis on what they should have gained from having read what you wrote. 

Follow-Up

Please write a letter thanking the owner for taking time to answer the questions.  Write the letter rather than typing it.  It does not have to be long.   It might be a little weird to you, but it is simply being courteous.  They did not have to take time out of their schedule to answer your questions. A handwritten Thank You  note is far more sincere than a text message or an email message.