My Work Place

  My workplace is called Music Depot. It is a music store that sells all kinds of music accessories and instruments. It helps people with there music needs. For example,  if someone needs guitar strings then we supply them.  Also Music Depot has guitar and drum lessons so people can go in  and learn a new instrument. It is a small family buisness owened by my mentors Pete and Angie. It is located on B street in Hayward CA. It is a small building with glass windows that displays some of the instruments from outside. Music Depot also puts things on consignment which lets people drop off there stuff there at the shop until its sold and we gain a small profit on the sale. My workplace serves any and all musicians who need new equipment, used equipment, guitar strings, accessories and so on. And we do it all for a more than resonable price. I usually do stock and I take pictures of the equipment and things like that but I'm also doing sales as well. When people come in the shop or call on the phone I help them with the equipment or products. My mentors are teaching me allot about customer service. The strengths of the business are that its a well maintained, a welcoming environment, we are always reasonable with prices on all things sold in the shop and everyone who comes in is treated with respect and equality. They also communicate a loand are great collaborators with local bands who sometimes come in to help out.  And soon they are going to have a meeting with  Shecter Guitar and they might carry them in the shop. A weakness of my workplace is that it is a new small buisness and it is not very well known yet. Also, in a bad economy it is hard to keep a small business going. But obviosly, the strenghths over power the weakness so I believe in time this business will flourish.

My Awesome Mentors

My mentors name's are Pete and Angie and they are the owners of the shop. A typical day when they open is that we put the signs out switch the closed sign to open unsheet the instruments do some paper work and then wait for customers. Everyday is different for us  because sometimes it can be a little slow but we alwayse get customers that come in either for lessons or equpment that they need at the time. The shops organizeation comes from Angie shes always recording what goes out or comes in and things like that. My mentors were alwyase into music so it makes sence that they opened a music shop. And acctually my mentor Pete has his own band and they opened for alot of big names in the music industry. My mentors loved music so much they decided that they needed to open a music store, so extra money could come in and give the convenience of a music store to the people of hayward. Its not just a store they're part of a community now and their helping bring different music into the predominately hip hop liking crowd of hayward. For the job, they needed knowledge of music and different types of equipment, that pete has and organizational skills that Angie has so they make the perfect team. Also, what they believe to be one of the most important skills needed for the job is the talent of building a relationship with clients which i think both of them have because its easy to build relationships with genuine people like these.

My Role

I would say that my main responsibility would be to cater to the cutomers and record whats in the shop. My roles range from helping customers make decisions on what to buy to taking stock of the things in the shop and taking pictures of them so we could put it on the website whatever they need me to do I find a way to do it successfully and reletively quickly. I like my internship because it helps me to be more adaptable to situations im not used to. A regular Tuesday starts off with me taking the signs and putting them outside then I wait on customers that need help. And whenever theres not alot of customers I sometimes ask them about how it is to own a buisness. Then Pete will come in at like 4:00 and get coffee. When he returns to the shop, I'll be working on any tasks that they give me. All the jobs they give me are challenging in a way but also do able. When I complete that task, I'll tell my mentor and i work on the next one. Every week, I learn something different. The first week I learned about shipping and how magazine orders work then the second week I learned about what you have to do to get a company to let you carry their guitar and the 3rd I learned the importance of takeing stock. What we usually do for lubch is whenever im hungary or somthing my mentor will order taco tuesday from La Imperial or ill go get my own thing. After lunch, I work with my mentors on anything they might have for me. Then I call my mom after 8 o'clock to get picked up and thats how my day ends. 

My Project

For my WLE project, I plan on creating Ads on craigslist to increase customers and sell a few things at the same time. Music Depot is such a new store that i think it needs a little bit of advertisement to boost sales and customer visits. Although dozens of people walk by it everyday, most of them don't come in because their not musicians and theres no way of gaining new customers if musicians don't know about our store. My mentor actually came up with the idea to put things on craigslist but I think instead of just putting the merchandise on there we could put info about the store on there as well. On the ad there will be the individual item and price but then below it ill put a picture of the store and just create a little advertisement below the item. So if they don't end up buying the item they'll still know we're there and they have a new music store to go to. I will be putting the ads on craigslist and come up on how to introduce the store on the internet. I am pretty excited to work on this because I am helping Pete and Angie gain more customers and getting the word out about the store. What this will do for the store is get some of our consigned merchandise off our hands and also create free advertisement. And we will be advertising to the right people because who else looks up music stuff than musicians. My plan to complete this project is by dividing the different sections of the work over time so its not overwhelming and working on the ads individually. In the end, we will have put together ads on craigslist that will be advertising to the right crowd, getting rid of our consigned items, and expanding our customer base. And the best part is, its all for free. 

Progress on my WLE Project 1

Today at my WLE I helped out with moving new consigned PA equipment. I had to put all the stuff in the back so it could be tested. So I put it in the back and plugged them in and tested them. They all worked fine except for one of the heads. Then we discussed what to do with our project. We took the pictures of the stuff needed to sell and now I'm going to put regular adds just about the store so its even more of a asset. i took pictures of the outside and the counter so that I could put it up. I plan that i can do it in a week but ill have to send it to Pete and Angie for revisions. 

Leadership skills

A leadership skill that I am using is Collaborating Productively because Whenever I needed help on something or needed materials, my mentors and I collaborated productively to solve the problem. For example when I was testing PA equipment and the head wasn't working so I asked my mentor and he helped me through it. I think I used collaborating productively well because me and my mentors never had an argument or disagreement and they never asked me to do more work than I could handle. I think my mentor used communicating powerfully most because whenever something went wrong like a late shipment of strings he always communicated to the right person to get it fixed.

What I learned Reflection

What I learned about myself is that when it comes to music I could figure things out pretty well. For example when I needed to put a PA system together to test I did it flawlessly. This was a big accomplishment for me because I had never put one together before and it was a challenge that I had to overcome. My WLE placement was really good because whenever musicians come in to look for stuff its always cool to talk to them and to ask what they do and stuff. My environment is a really quiet and friendly  place to work and im glad that I did my WLE there. What I learned to be the most effective skill for a store owner is responsibility.  When you own a shop your responsible for its accomplishments and its failures so you have to on top of your game making phone calls almost all day if you need to. You have to be responsible or your store might go under and no one wants that.

Professionalism 

My WLE is at a music store and pretty much all I did to find it was google music store in hayward and that was it. After that I actually went in and talked to the owners Pete and Angie and they ended up letting me be there for WLE. I think the best way to getting a job or being hired is to have confidence (not cockiness) and to just be a respectful person when you go meet the or talk on the phone. After my WLE what it means to be a responsible adult is you have to do anything and every thing to keep your shop going at almost any cost. Mostly because if you go under all that stuff in the store is now yours and you have to either keep it or sell it on craigslist for sometimes lower than you bought it for.

Life at my WLE

My workplace has to be the best workplace ever in the world because Pete and Angie are the coolest most laid back people and its really cool to have a job where your boss is awesome. What I did today is I sold some strings and drumsticks to some customers and presented my WLE. I have improved as an intern is now when I first started out I was more shy but now I know what to do, how to treat customers and sell things to those customers. So instead of being told what I need to do I do it automatically. 

The End

This experience will prepare me for next year because now I know what to expect and i wont be as nervous going into it on the first day. My final thoughts about WLE is that it was a great experience and its really cool that i get to do what most kids dont. I liked the whole experience and I'm proud that I could say when I was in high school I got to take a day of from school and go work at the best job I ever had.