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My name is Tobin Dreisbach and I am from Cincinnati Ohio, specifically the Indian Hill/Kenwood area. I am taking this class because my favorite teacher I have had in college so far, Alex Burkhart, recommended it to me. I hope to learn more about entrepreneurship in a digital world and how you can capitalize on new technology. I believe that as technology continues to evolve, the opportunities to be entrepreneurial in a digital world will continue to grow exponentially.

I have always wanted to start a business since I was a child. Entrepreneurship runs in my family, my father Brantley Dreisbach built a successful business, as well as my grandfather Larry Sheakley who has built countless successful businesses. I have been surrounded by entrepreneurs my entire life and have always been fascinated by the idea of building something myself. I am always coming up with random entrepreneurial ideas but never have followed through with anything, I'm just kind of waiting to find that great idea. I think this class will help me sharpen my skills and allow me to think about business in a manner I had not before. I would not consider myself to be very tech savvy so I am excited to learn how I can use technology and the internet to my advantage in business. 

I would 100% like to start a business one day. I have always been entrepreneurial since I was a young kid and it runs in my family as I stated before. I constantly have different ideas, but I am waiting for the one that I really feel confident putting my entire heart and soul into. I want to start a business to build something myself instead of for somebody else. I want to work for myself, even if that means more hours, more stress, sometimes not being able to pay myself, etc. The satisfaction behind building something yourself and watching it grow to be successful is worth the pain I know I will go through being an entrepreneur. 

The emerging technology I am the most excited about is AI. It is awesome to think we are living during a time when a technology that will impact the way people live their everyday lives has come out. It almost feels like when the car came out or when the internet came out, AI is completely revolutionizing not only technology but the world. AI creates levels of efficiency within business that were unprecedented even 10 years ago. The amount of busy work and task that can be done extremely fast and effectively by AI instead of by a human can save businesses millions of dollars a year. AI also eliminates human error and mistakes. AI will revolutionize business by allowing for access to highly complicated data analysis in seconds, personalized marketing at scale, and providing customer insights with clarity. For daily life, it can help with all kinds of things, like writing content, generating logos, building prototypes of apps or website, you name it, AI can do it. 

The biggest failure I have encountered to date was pre-law at Ohio State. Coming out of highschool, a military boarding school, I wanted to be closer to home. I said I wanted to go to UC, but my parents wanted me to go to a better school. I got into plenty of good colleges, and my parents thought I would be wasting my time going to UC. I chose to go to Ohio state for pre law because at the time I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and I also wanted to be as close to home as possible. I ended up hating Ohio State. I barely made an effort to integrate, and the change from a graduating class of 54 to a massive school in a massive city was just too much for me. I completely stopped caring about school and going to class, decided I definitely was not going to law school, and by October, I had applied to transfer back to UC. I consider this a failure because I did not make the proper effort for myself to succeed in that situation. However, I am extremely grateful that I ended up at UC, and now I am on track to work for and hopefully eventually take over my family business, The Sheakley Group of Companies. 

The first major thing I learned from this class is the emphasis on not giving up. You made a ton of sacrifices constantly during the build up of Let's Move Down because you truly believed in the vision of the company. The hard work and dedication you put into building that business helped reinforce what I already knew about the grind and hard work it takes to be an entrepreneur. I also learned that business model is probably the most important thing in the success of a business. There are companies who raise hundreds of millions of dollars, are backed by tons of famous people and big investors, and still fail. Why? A lot of the time, it comes down to their business model. Business models can be the difference between life and death in the world of entrepreneurship, so you better make sure you have a good one.