letter to friend researching MBA Programs

That inside the MBA thing is very informative. There are quite a few schools that visit. The only top-10 named school that visited when I went was MIT-- that guys was kind of arrogant.

Since you've taken the GMAT, for your next step I'd start applying to the schools you know you want to apply to and continue researching others. At first, I didn't really like BYU until I sat in on a class-- I'd ask Kristen to schedule an opportunity for you to do that. Because I liked the BYU MBA so much after that tour, I only applied to the Marriott School and Stanford.

Obviously the campus visit really helped me make my decision. If you've got the cash/time, I'd suggest visiting other schools you're interested in. Being just married, I was kind of strapped for cash, so couldn't fly to other places. :)

Ok later

got my first interview!!!

I just got chosen for my first interview for a marketing internship!!!! woo woo.

The interview is at BYU and the internship is at Wal-Mart Corporate Headquarters!

I'm pretty stoked, this is one of my top 3 companies I would like to work for.

I've been hyperventilating about it though. ok... breathe... breathe.

All Products are like Coke or Toiletpaper

Coke- the more you have on hand, the more you consume.

Toiletpaper- you'll pretty much use the same no matter how much you have.

So when you discount a Toiletpaper product, people will stockpile it. They won't ever pay full price because they'll always buy on sale and have what they need.

For Coke, you can discount and people will buy a lot, but it will serve to make them more regular drinkers. This should actually increase loyalty.

(I learned this today in BYU's MBA 550 "Marketing Management") I suppose it applies more consumer products. Kind of funny.

Diversity day for a BYU MBA

We had a diversity discussion today. I just wanted to write down some quick notes from it: So what did we talk about in this? There are 2 parts to the lesson I belive. A cycle and Principles vs. Values. The Cycle of:

• Seeing
  
• Doing
  
• Getting

If we want to 'get' difference results, we need to change what we see and then what we do based upon what we see.

The other part is Principles vs. Values:
Principles are laws of nature. Doing 'A' gets you 'B' (ie hard work helps you obtain what you desire) (or quitting smoking makes you live longer -- i supposed one could argue that not smoking makes living worse though so you can't say it make you live better)
Values are chosen. Inflicting these upon others seems to be where the clash comes in. (ie mothers should stay home with children)

principles of an advertisement

I'm having some trouble sleeping tonight. I was asleep, but woke up with many thoughts about idea for the business plan competition. For HR, I'm reading the book E-Boys and it has me thinking that I must act "fast & decisively" to conquer everything..... honestly I think I woke up in a nightmare that I have to begin work immediately. (by principle, I can't give in to the pressures of nightmares)

I had what was probably the funniest experience of my college career today. In MBA 550, Dr. Whitlark was discussing the 3 components of a good advertisement:

• Product - people need to quickly see what your advertising
• Company - they need to know who's product this is (I can definitely see situations where this will be the same as product, but not all)
• Benefit - Show them why they should buy it

So we were looking at some ads that had been in various magazines. Some I was getting, some I wasn't (I discovered I am more of a sucker for creativity than good advertising than most my class)

One was for hotels-- one showing a very nice room and gentleman relaxing in it, the other showing room amenities and some catchy slogan. The one with the benefit-showing slogan won. Then, Dr. Whitlark gets up there and says, "I don't know, this one is a good advertisement if you're in the market for a half-naked man."

It was so funny! I could not stop laughing. He's good a providing a very jovial atmosphere, but this time I was in uncontrollable fits of laughter. I was still laughing about 10 minutes later. I am a little scared that I just had my best experience in the MBA program at BYU and I'm only a few weeks into it. :)

get involved

Friday morning (at the ludicrous time of 6:45 AM) we met with a panel of marketers from companies like Con-Agra, Kraft, Wal-Mart and others.

The question was asked when we do our internships next summer, how can we show that we can compete with some of the other top-business schools like Stanford & Kellogg etc...

What we were told was to just get going immediately. Don't sit there and wait to be told what to do but find out what needs to be done and just start. That's what companies want to see is people with initiative.

There was more advice given than that, but that's the comment I walked away with the most from.

Business Plan Kick Off --> Kicked Off

Yesterday was the kickoff for BYU's Business Plan Competition. Wow! Did they do a bad job at that event. What was supposed to be an information session turned into a hard-to-hear pep-rally. I think I won't go to the info. session next year and I'll just get the schedule on their website. The least they could have done was make sure that the speakers worked in the back. Instead nobody could hear and so we all just talked.

The Competition itself is pretty cool though. I think I'll launch my company on the internet in about 2 weeks an then work on building that up. As for a team... I'm not sure what I'll do. I really don't want one. Also if I can make it profitable, I'm not sure I'll need one. Also, if I can make it profitable, I won't need to win the competition anyway. I think this may be the most arrogant paragraph I've ever put in this blog.


The competition is open to all students at BYU: under-grad, grad, MBA (yes!), and everyone else. There are also some differing categories: ebusiness, charitable, work-from-home.

It was funny, they admitted that the work-from-home category (with a $5000 first winner prize) is focused more on women. I mean 'Duh!' but can you actually say that? Will gender be one of the judging categories?

Textron's Ken C. Bohlen -- part II

I just wrote a little about Ken Bohlen, but I wanted to add a little more on something he said that really rang true with me.


Mr. Bohlen spoke of trust as being a huge issue among the different generations. Generation X doesn't really trust corporate or government because of things they've seen (Nixon, Enron, layoffs, are a few of MANY reasons). Also they are coming from families with a 51% divorce rate-- seeing that even family is difficult to trust.

He said that something hurting the world is that there isn't a lot of trust and its probably rightly so that there is not:

• People don't often tell their true intentions, especially once greed is involved.
  
• People are often looking for "what can you do for me?" and not worried about what they can do to return the favor or just earn the reward.
• Another big point he made was baby boomer's are very competitive and that is what corporations have been the last 30+ years. More progress would be made if businesses weren't trying to be better than the other, but make everything better.

Anyway, what I took away from all this is that trust is a big deal and since all I want to do is start my own international, billion-dollar company, I need to not worry about finding a job. I don't want one and will cut-and-run the as soon as I can (trust).

Well, the guns are focusing! -- watch out world.

today's 1st year BYU MBA speaker: Textron's Ken C. Bohlen

I think this was a pretty long title to put on this.
Today, we were spoken to by Textron's Chief Innovation Officer: Ken C. Bohlen.

He spoked to us about the changes going on in the world right now as far as people who are getting older and the older work force. He even went as far as saying there won't be enough worker in the United States in the 10 years because they are all retiring.

He tied this to the metaphor of "frog's jumping out of boiling water if thrown in, but staying in it if it slowly comes to a boil." In his opinion, congress is not waking up to the fact that the work force is aging (somewhat because they are part of that aging population (which I definitely agree with)). Anyway it will be an interesting dynamic as time goes on and there isn't a enough labor to fill jobs. We need to educate our kids better.