Krisaki's Blog

MEMOIR ROUGH DRAFT

Once upon a time a there was a young boy from a small village nestled in top of the “bald” mountains of northern Greece. His family was poor and they lived off the land to survive; no electricity, no running water. They walked miles every day just to tend to the few crops that barely made any income. Him and his brother started working in the fields at the young age of six years old, anything to help out the family. When it came time to start school, this young boy showed a great interest in learning, he realized education was his only way out of poverty. At the age of sixteen his brother left school and decided to make it on his own in the foreign land of Australia. With in a weeks time the whole village bid him a sad fair well and sent him off on a long boat ride, not knowing when they would ever see him again.

At this point the young village boy decided he wanted to finish school and become something of himself like his older brother was doing. He continued to study hard and work hard, with out fail, he graduated first in his class in the village. Family members and friends were all so proud, it came time for him to leave for the mandatory army duty. He packed up and left on a bus for the big capital city, Athens, he stayed with his aunt there while he served his time in the army.

One chilly October night, a young American girl showed up at the door step of the apartment where he was staying with his aunt, he was wearing red pajamas when he greeted her at the door. He did not speak a word of English and she did not speak a word of Greek, but some how it was love at first sight. She had come to Greece to finish her high school years and learn about her Greek heritage, as her grandparents were immigrants from Greece many years before, from the same village that he was from. It was all so coincidental and perfect, when it came time for her to leave they didn’t know what to do, they didn’t want to leave each other, so he packed his bags and left for America with her. Sad to leave his family, friends and village, he knew what he was about to do was going to change his life for the better.

Once they got to America, they realized things where going to be very difficult they had to find their way in life, and very fast. For him especially, he had never been out of his country, never mind all the way across the world, he didn’t know the language, and he barely had two pennies to rub together. With in a few days of arrival, he found a minimum wage job at a local pizza parlor for an old, ill-humored Greek man that had immigrated to America years ago and had never gone back to Greece. The young girl found a job at a travel agency and while working they both put themselves through college.

The young man got a masters degree in electrical engineering, and the young woman got her masters in English literature from UMASS Dartmouth. Right out of college they both got good jobs, the young man worked for an up and coming computer manufacturing company as the manager and she worked as an English teacher at Northeastern University. For many years they worked in these jobs, working their way up the ladder, but something wasn’t quite right, they wanted something more.

On the side, they tried several small business while still keeping the security of their original jobs. They tried opening up a hot dog stand in the local mall, that failed. They tried opening a small local cafe, that failed. Finally, through trial and error and perseverance, they tried opening up a restaurant in Boston…this one worked! It was a very successful little restaurant called “Cafe Du Mond” in a great location in the heart of Boston. She was managing it by herself and he was still part time at his other job, it became too much for her to manage all by herself so they sold the business and looked for the next big adventure!

By this time they knew a little something about owning and running a business, she had worked a little bit in Real Estate over the years and knew a little bit about the housing industry and with his degree in engeneering they decided to look into modular homes. Of course this was a brand new concept in the early eighties and most of their friends and family were against the idea. They were hearing things like; “Go with conventional housing!”, “The economy is too shaky right now” “Those things will fall down with the first gust of wind!”, but they paid no attention and they plunged forward with a goal in mind.

In 1986 they designed and built their first modular home under their company named Help-U-Build. The first year they built 10 houses and the second and third year even more. By 2002 they changed the name to Go Modular, Inc. and in 2005 they hit their peak at a staggering 110 houses in a year. They were one of the biggest modular home dealers in the North East, if not the biggest. They had built the company to a net worth of 14 million dollars. Life was good, they were finally happy.

These two entreprenurs are my parents. I am very proud of where they came from and what they made of themselves today, despite the current slump in the economy they are still running Go Modular even though sales have dropped considerably in recent years, they didn’t give up. They are in their early sixties and still going strong. They had a big dream and managed to achieve it through hard work, perseverance and taking risks despite what anyone said. They have always involved me in the business and since I can remember, talk of the business was always around at home and I was always brought to the office from when I was very little. Most of the employees have been with the company since I was born. For the past three years I was working in the business, first picking up phones and running errands, then assistant manager and most recently marketing and bookkeeping. Recently, with the help of my parents, I own my own small business, a take-out/delivery pizzeria in East Greenwich with thin crust brick oven pizza. My fiance, my parents and I all run it together like a happy little family. Even though it is quite stressful and hectic to run a business, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now, in hindsight, I am re-living a newer, modified version of my parents lives. I went to Greece for high school and met the love of my life and he came to America with me as we are working to put ourselves through school and planning out our own lives together.

Confessions of an Entrepreneurs Wife

This article is exactly what the title says; confessions of an entrepreneur’s wife. It follows a period of around 5-6 years of the ups and downs of starting and running a fairly large business from the wife’s perspective. It is a behind the scenes story about the toll it takes on a family in running a million dollar corporation. It’s a lot of work and not always a lot of money in return.

• Surprisingly there was a lot of “corporate” language that was foreign to me.
• Even though this corporation talked about in this article was a relatively large million dollar corporation a few things did hit home. There are similarities in running a any kind of business, small or large. It takes a lot of time and energy and capital start up money
• Many times business is all about risk taking which was the main focus of the whole article; Taking risks and the consequences.

I chose this article based on the title because it sounded like “memoir” and I wanted to get some ideas for my own memoir. It was story with a lot of details and personal perspective which is what made it interesting. It didn’t have too much “technical” lingo, and when it did, it served a purpose and connected with the rest of the story.

• The whole article flowed great, each paragraph connected perfectly into the next.
• You could really feel the writer’s character coming out, especially in some of these sentences that I picked out that I really liked:

“Watching Bill navigate the entrepreneurial life, I see now just how little I really knew about starting and building a business.”

“We spent the day in our dining room, gleefully shouting out potential names and writing them on an oversize chalkboard.”

“Consumers were buying his dream.”

“The growth rate was impressive, but the company wasn’t profitable.”

“Like a shark, he needed to push relentlessly forward to survive.”

“A successful CEO uses sales tactics to figure out what the other person wants, how to make him or her feel comfortable, and then ask for the moon.”

“There are no boxes to think out of; he simply doesn’t see them in the first place.”

• Even though these are simple sentences, I think they were constructed well and made very strong points in few words.

Chase credit card commercial

Chase credit card company has catchy commercials to sell their services. I find myself remembering their commercials where I don’t usually with other forms of advertisements. Something about their marketing is effective and memorable. This one in particular is like a short story. Some forms of advertisment  have nothing to do with the product/service, where you find yourself wondering what they were selling in the first place. This commercial is just right, it doesn’t over sell their service, yet you still remember that Chase is the company behind it. That takes very perceptive marketing skills to get that message to come across to an audience.

The message that is being portrayed by the company is that if you get a Chase Sapphire card, you too, will be able to go on extravagant vacations, meet celebrities and brag about it all to your friends. Although this is not at all true in reality, they make it look so easy, fast and simple. One minute the husband is on the phone booking their filght and the next minute they are off at a luau with Chevy Chase. It also appeals to a wide variety of audiences in that they chose actors and actresses of different ethnicity, sitting on an attractive yet nondescript terrace, wearing very attractive yet average clothing. It seems like the quintessential life, it appeals to the emotions of the audience becasue logically if you get that card and you go on a vacation you will be spending quite a bit of money, but no one thinks about that when they see the commercial.

Chase company also made sure that they used their name and logo in commercial several times and at key moments.  For example, in the opening of the commercial they show the actual Chase Sapphire card as it opens as if to open a story book cover as the “story” of the commercial begins. Then the man begins the story of how the vacation began; “We booked a flight using the points from our Chase Sapphire”, as they show the card again. Then they incorporated Chevy Chase, the actor which was a great idea for the audience to remember their company name. People will make the connection in their mind with Chevy Chase and “Chase” credit cards. Then the “friend” repeats it again with an astounded look on his face, then to close out they show the card again with a little bit of info about what the card can do. Lastly, they incorporate the use of color in order to capture the audiences’ eye at key moments. The whole commercial is in black and white except for when they show the card or their company logo at the end.

All in all, Chase used very clever marketing techniques to sell their service. Many credit card companies put out good commercials, but Chase stands out from the rest as far as marketing their product. They target a large audience by portraying things that many people aspire to do, and they do it in such a way that makes it seem simple, fun and easy.

- My hometown was a very quiet and boring place to grow up, there weren’t any children my age to play with and the neighbors were unfriendly.

- Laci’s style was different than the average person, she dresses however she wants with out caring what people think about her.

- Mr. Brown doesn’t explain the lessons well and puts arbitrary questions on the tests that he expects the students to know.

- The feng shui, and colors of the room do not give off a homey feeling.

I would like to choose business/economics for my theme. From a personal level I would like to choose it because all my life my parents have owned a business and I have always admired them for it. Since I can remember they have always included me in it, from discussions to decision making, and for the past three years I have been working in the business as an assistant manager. Recently I have become self employed and own my own small business with the help of my parents. It is much different from my parents business, my new business is a pizzeria, whereas my parents business is a modular home design company. I feel that I have a good perspective of two different types of small businesses and of course there is always more to learn, so I am very much looking forward to writing about this topic in particular because I have such a great interest in it and I can look at it from many different perspectives, and I am eager to learn more about it.

As for my other three essays, I have a lot of different ideas that I am bouncing around. For example; my ethnography essay I might observe a small or large business that is going under and explain why it is failing and what it should have done to improve. I might also choose to observe how this economy affected small businesses and in turn how that affected the economy. As for my argument I plan on choosing why socialism doesn’t work as a form of government  and why capitalism is the way to go. Lastly, for my picture essay I would like to compare American’s economy to a different country’s economy and compare what works and what does not especially throughout the recession. This is more or less what I would like to write about for each of my four essays respectively, however I might alter the topics slightly as I come up with new ideas throughout the process.

My name is Krisaki, but sometimes I go by my Greek name, Fani (Fanee). I am 21 years old and this is my second semester at BCC. I started college late because I went to high school in Greece and then when I came back to the US I took two years off to work in my family’s business.
Throughout my high school years I always liked writing a lot, whether it was creative writing or based on a novel, or even research papers, whatever the type of writing, I feel like I can express my self better because I can think about what I want to say and how I want it to come across. I especially love the creative side of it, each person can have their own style. I even write for personal pursposes as well, I like to document certain important times in my life in story format. I find it therapeutic and a fun way of remembering good memories and capturing a moment in time. When it comes to my personal writing I must write traditionally with a pen and paper, however, for school I can’t even imagine writing on paper, I automatically go to a computer.
Some of my shortcomings in writing that I would like to improve on through this class are the flow of my writing, sometimes I find I can be a bit choppy with my sentences and paragraphs. I would also like to be able to write at a higher level, I would like my writing to be more sophisticated. I also must admit that I am a terrible speller and I am constantly trying to improve on that. I am looking forward to doing different types of writing that I have never done before, like the memoir and the ethonography essay, and improving my writing overall.