DT is Gone!

I never lived in Deseret Towers, but I had fun watching them get knocked down. It took pretty much this whole semester for it to happen.

Attached are some pictures I took and also a little video (if the video will attach). So if any of you have memories of them, I hope this helps you reminisce of former, free'r days.

how to present yourself

Today, was almost my favorite day of the month. Its not the last day of the semester, but the last day of classes. I have my last presentation at the end of the day and... it went ok.

Now, I'm sitting up: can't sleep. I also cannot talk myself into studying for finals. Instead, I'm watching all the jokes portions of the talk shows. I usually am trying to sleep during Lettermen and Leno, so I catch Conan, then Craig Ferguson (who I think will be fired when his contract expires), and then if its on Jimmy Kimmel.

I usually don't like Kimmel; I was turned off by that Damon/Affleck song-- which I saw last time I couldn't sleep. However, I've got to say Jimmy Kimmel sure does present himself well. Here is a guy who's overweight, less established, and probably benefiting from the make-up artists before he goes on camera.

And despite all the setback he is by far the most calm, cool, and collected. I think his rebuttals to random things are funnier (I assume they don't get that material from writers). And I feel the others have to resort to lots of gimmicks (Conan honked his nose like a clown.) But J. just stands there confident, knowing what he's going to say, and rolling with the punches in a very funny way.

So I'm writing all this because I just gave a presentation for Venture Capital Class. I did ok. Nothing fantastic, but I think if I were to try to learn to be a good speaker, I'd look to Kimmel for inspiration and strategy. And I think it takes practice, the confidence can come naturally, but prep'ing is also necessary.

So we'll see. I'm not sure how I'll learn from Jimmy yet. But Iwill probably watch him sometimes (until the crudeness begins to ramp up) and helpfully I'll get to be a better presenter. But watching him has let me know I can handle the fact that my stomach is more noticeable than I'd like it to be. So its nice. At least I got to be slightly inspired.

read!

So I'm sitting here in the foyer of the BYU's Tanner Buisness building trying to get an accounting assignment done. Our professor likes to write a lot of his own cases so you have to learn to read into what he wants.

My friend and I have been trying to figure out what the heck this professor is talking about. Reading over the assignment about 5 times and debating what these different words mean.... then we decided to look up some of the vocab in the text's glossary.

Well we found out that before doing this assignment we need to read the chapter assigned as study.

DUH!

Ok, I'll quite trying to take the easy way and actually learn something.

Best excerpt on Positioning / Advertising

For MBA 680: Strategy 2 We have been reading The Innovator's Solution. Chapter 3 of this book has by far my favorite advice on how to position and advertise a new product. I recommend this book to anyone trying to launch a new product. The whole book is great, but at the very least, you need to read chapter 3.

This Chapter refers to big-business's tendency to segment the market and find underserved opportunities. This is ok, but it doesn't help with products you've already made and it doesn't help you discover emerging markets or provide a whole lot of differentiating abilities because anyone else can easily imitate at this point.

Instead the advice in this chapter is to advertise to the Circumstances a Customer find herself in. What specific job is the customer hiring the product to do? This could be something like kill a little time, entertain myself, avoid studying, feel cool, or keep my job. Or many others.

Lets use entertaining myself, I could easily do this by reading a newspaper or magazine, playing a video game, watching the variety of people at my local 7-11, TV, amusement park........ almost an infinite list. See all these companies are competing with each other. So if I'm making a new news website, instead of just loading up with all the same news that everybody else has, I'd seek to display the news in an entertaining way. Then I'd be positioned as the news company you go to when you want to be entertained. I'm not a journalist website, I'm a entertainment website. I'm using the news to entertain instead of reporting the news.

Lots of other applications here, but I just wrote a very long (and probably confusing) paragraph so I won't pursue other apps further. Rest assured though, I am about to turn my computer off
work on an advertising campaign centered around what a certain business customer would be trying to do when I put my product in front of them.

BYU Students are Cheap!

So that's kind of a mean statement isn't it? I put it there because I am the one who is cheap! I started an LLC last year and I'm desperately, confusedly trying to do the taxes on it right now. I thought it'd be fairly easy with Turbo Tax. But let me tell you this... Turbo Tax has failed me! It keeps wanting to treat my company like a sole proprietorship.

For the last 2 weeks (weekend only) I have tried to get this annoying program to quit forcing me to report the company's income as my own. Finally, I just entered it and about 30 screens later, it asks me for form 1065 -- Income from an LLC. I even upgraded Turbo Tax to get this fixed.

So in the end, I'm cheap for not hiring an accountant. I will next year. Hopefully I'll also be more profitable next year, but if I'm not.... I'll still hire an accountant! I'm not cheaping out and buying something that robs my two-weeks and extra-money from me.

quizes :(

With the wife being pregnant, I was required to order her a new,
better mattress. So I had to stay home from class today to get the new
one delivered.
This set off a trend and I skipped all the classes :)
Then I found out there was a quiz in one of them. Oh well, grades are
going down the drain. I guess that's how it will be when I'm running
my own company. I might stop to take a break but that doesn't mean
everyone else will too. One of the first things I should probably do
is get resources aligned so I'm not necessary all the time.
(written from my Smartphone Companion)