My BYU MBA Experience

Mormons do business?

2010-06-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Found this Video Interesting.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/stock-ticker-video.aspx?ticker=%24INDU&vid=e6d88598-d9af-4210-a9fc-af8d1ec535d4

Perhaps I'll be in a similar one one day? :)

It was kind of across the board. I feel it highlighted too much that Mormons would hire other Mormons. That might be scary to non-Mormons, and while I agree that there is networking to be done in the Mormon Circle, Mormons will hire those that do not practice the faith as well.

Time to build some businesses!

2010-06-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

Some good articles from Inc Magazine on PR.

In this first one, I like the suggestions on using Twitter. When I first read this article, I tried to think of some events that could be thrown to get people excited. The tasting parties were way better than anything I came with. I think that will be the uniqueness of the product, champagne bubbles. Highlighting that and organizing events showing people how to enjoy that aspect is the best idea in my opinion.

This 2nd one just shows some good ideas for managing your PR. Getting to know reporters through social networking now seems perfect. I don't have businesses launched yet but I'm going begin establishing those connections.

Good Deal on Inc Magazine

2010-05-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

For a Good deal on INC Magazine, go to
http://www.inc.com/keyword/offer

$5 for 1 year
$10 for 3
(woo!)

Personal Value Grouping for the HVM

2010-05-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

We were told that Hierarchical Value Maps at the top boil down to a few unique categories. I just needed to get these recorded for some ideas coming up the pipeline.

Accomplishment
Active Life
Belonging
Beautiful World
Comfortable Life
Efficiency
Equality
Family Love
Family Security
Financial Security
Freedom
Future Generations
Individualism
Inner Harmony
Longevity
Mature Love
Patriotism
Personal Responsibility
Personal Security
Pleasure
Progress
Salvation
Self-Respect
Self-Satisfaction
Social Recognition
True Friendship
Wisdom
World Peace
Youthfulness

Will be adding a few posts and then this blog will probably just be a bunch of records after that.

... moving on to .... ?

2009-07-09T16:35:00.001-07:00

Ever since I started this blog, I looked forward to one day typing on here, "I'm moving my family to [some non-Utahn city here], and I'm going to work for [some very professional company here].

Well, I received 1 offer from an advertising agency that was going to let me go to Hawaii after about a year. But as I researched and even did a week of on the job training, I realized they were trying to go national with a business model that was never going to be sustainable for more than about 2 salesmen in the state of Utah....... I turned it down.

I've been consulting for another organization, but they are looking to hire hardware expertise and I have software..... maybe I just haven't sold myself by not stressing that I understand the market just fine.

And as I've thought about this "expertise," both what I have and what I want to do points me in 1 direction ---->> Terence, start your own company

This is the whole reason I came back to business school. Knowing how to start, manage, and grow my own company is the whole reason I got an MBA from BYU. I took every single class I could about starting a company.

The problem is, my plans all require some experimentation. I'm planning on relying on Page Rank for a lot of my advertising ..... a great strategy to build something on the side for a year or two until it reaches critical mass. Starting and depending on something immediately has not been in my plans (and I question if it is in the economy's).

And yet... I'm setup great to do it. Expenses are very low right now. I still have some consulting on the side so can cover those expenses. I don't have a work commute. To summarize: I have a lot of time to build a company.

I have to re-strategize, and figure out a different business model (still need cheap though). I have put together a lot a web-advertising software to use that should be useful. And I have to have a product delivered very quickly.

I am starting one
I will be starting my own company. I do still have a few interviews, and I'm going to dedicate an hour or two each day to the job search, but I'm going to start a company! :)

Right now, I'm focusing on web-news critical to certain industries like Tom's Hardware or Engadget. I am passionate about Scuba Diving and would love to be the Scuba leader on the web, but I haven't researched to see if that is a good starting point right now. I do have a few other industries that I have had some automated researches on though and will venture into there.

And I am reading over my Entrepreneurial Marketing & Strategy notes (my 2 favorite classes at BYU). Maybe there are some other ideas I haven't hit yet.

I wanted to start a blog dedicated to Social Entrepreneurship happenings around the world, but that will have to be delayed as well.

As my sites gain in popularity, I have some other ideas about selling communities to those who want to start one but not manage it...... and then of course my thousands of ideas. As time goes on, I'll come up with more and more.

These first steps will not build my big, international organization like I want, but they are stepping stones to get there.

Well, here it goes. Just got to give myself one more reminder:
Use your gut, but not too much emotion! Pay attention to why ideas make you nervous, and solve problems... do not just ignore them.

Notes from Leadership Seminar

2009-06-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I am packing up and I've got quite a few papers I want to throw away -- but a few things that I would like to remember.... so I'll be transcribing a few things into here.

Below are some notes I took at a leadership seminer put on by Zig Ziglar and others in the Fall of 2007.

Spearker: Peter Lowe

Using words alone, he improved our performance. To change your future, change the words you use
Believe what you say has happened
To practice, envision where you want to be -- Simulate it! (pratice before you go out and do)
Had a lady break a board with her hand -- lesson was that it is easiest to break a board in the center (don't pussy foot around the edges)
If you think you can't breakt the board, simulate it
"All things are possible to those who believe" (.... Walt Disney? :) )
Waht you believe is more important tahn how much. A winning belief system is knowing you've won even when down @ half time (some sort of football analogy (Canadian Football no-less))
See the whole background, not just what you're focused on.
"Quickest way to change your life is to change your relationship w/ God" (... he was preachy, but I think there is logic in this)

Speaker: Rudy Giuliani

Leaders are Made

you have to know what you believe in
Leadership about ideas. You have to have them! Knowing public opinions and following it is not leadership!
To be a leader, you have to be an optomist
Got to be thinking success in order to obtain it (on a side note, congrats to the Pittsburgh Penguins! wininning two nights ago)
Courageous People can manage Fear.
They also reduce risk
Eon't let intimidators break your spirit
Relentless Preperation -- Practice & Rehearse
If you prepare for everything you can think of, in that prepration you'll take care of what you can't (said in reference to 9/11 and how nobody saw that coming, but handled it pretty well)
Teamwork -- you can't accomplish on just your own. E.o. accountable... even you.
You have to love people. More important to be there for people when they are more wrong thatn right.

Speaker: Tom Hopkins

Need ot change your attitude toware the word "no" (it's now so bad to hear it)
Think of failure as a learning experience or change to change
* develop humor
* practice
* gam to play to win
when someone quits, they eventually become a negative person -- want to be a positive comittied achiever!
-- In sales, ask questions requiring a "yes" (isn't it?, don't you agree?, doesn't it?)
Alternate force -- 2 options for agreement
Procupine response tactic
You're not judged by how often you fail, but how often you succeed (& they are directly proportional)

Speaker: Dr. Robert Schuller (some minister)

When you have an unsolvable problem, you just need to talk to more people
5 ways to turn good inda into a Dynamie Achievement
1 - Nesting
2 - Testing
3 - Investing
4 - Arresting
5 - Resting
..................... yeah, I have no idea what this is talking about
......... I'm done with this guy... my notes aren't making sense.

Speaker: John Stockton

He and Rudy were my 2 favorite speakers at this. He was pretty funny

Competition is a school
you learn from everybody
you learn what not to do
Let kids take their bumps... don't protect the whole way
Outcome is secondary to the effort to change that outcome
Put whole heart & sould into everything you do and you will be a success
Talks about how success takes a whole lot of repetition
To be a good teammate:
Enjoy your teammates' success
Be on the same page as teammates
Know the rules
It's amazing whatt you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit
Be energetic, don't be a drag

latest activity

2009-05-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

遣りたい仕事の貯めに感じを学んでいます。

the work is done

2009-04-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

So graduation isn't until the end of the week, but I have completed every last effort I will perform to earn my MBA....
shouldn't be my last post, I want to give myself some summaries from the courses I completed. However, I am done. Everything I learn from here will be for me and not for this piece of paper I'm going to get soon (and a very valuable piece of paper I hope it is!)

CAGR

2009-04-14T18:00:00.001-07:00

I am doing some research consulting for a company and came across a new term I hadn't heard before: CAGR

Turns out it mean Compound Annual Growth Rate. I figured it would be good for a MBA Blog to know about this term.

Toothpaste Trophy!

2009-04-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

In the International Marketing Class (MBA 658), team "Great Asia" won simulation for selling Toothpaste in Latin America. -- We're showing off our awards. Who can't use some Spanish Colgate with a bow on top? I'll be putting it on the mantle above the fireplace soon.

Nice Job Kenji, Kyle, & Flavio! -- BYU will be at a loss when you leave this month (... I'm getting all teary eyed)

Negotiations Journal Done!

2009-04-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

I may write in here some other time to keep my learning going. But for BYU's MBA 661 Class, My Negotiations Journal is complete!!!!! (7 entries I believe).

Woo -- just a little more homework to go before I graduate!

Schmoozin Something for Free

2009-04-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Story
During the course of my undergrad, I did gain some skills at getting something for nothing, and I was decent at getting things from for-profit companies for free. At various times, I managed to get free:

pies from Denny's
upgrades at restaurants
cell phone accessories

I’ve also gotten a lot of fees waived. As I received these freebies, I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into convincing my counterpart and I always figured I was likable and a good talker. I felt others wanted to give me things because I was good at showing them they had nothing to lose and that it was a way to make their company look good.

One day I had a lot of pressure. At a beach-side amusement park, about 20 friends from Dixie State College asked me to get us all free-ride on one amusement that nobody was patronizing at the time. I had pride on the line and I really wanted to show off.

I approached the lone employee, who looked bored, and immediately went into this story about us not having much money, being poor college students, and that we’d really like to ride his ride. I showed him how it didn’t matter because the company wasn’t losing money. My thinking was he was bored and would be fine with it because it was something to do. Instead, he told me no.

I didn’t argue with him, just walked through my logic again and did a little begging and he said, "Do you have any more excuses?" I returned to my friends, a little embarrassed but realizing nothing was lost, and told them let's go do something else.

The Takeaways
Desire or Incentives
In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie teaches principles about the desires of others: "Arouse in the other person an eager want," "Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest." I did neither of these. Instead I told him about our problems. This worker had no incentive to give us a complimentary ride.

I didn't have a lot of incentive to offer him, but I can think of a few small ones:

have a girl talk to him instead of myself
make him feel important (another Carnegie principle)"If I could have done this sincerely without seeming like a mooch, he may have just wanted us to stay around longer
talked with him for a while enough to become friends. We could have even invited him to hang out later.

In this situation, nothing but paying the fare would have guaranteed success, but I could have done more than hope a sympathetic ear would give a handout.

Step to His Side
ON page 52 of Getting Past No, William Ury suggests you look at the other person's point of view to see the existing barriers; and to understand why others are behaving the way they do. Above, I speculate about potential strategies that could help me to give a free ride for my friends. If I actually asked him why he said "no," I may have been able to come up with a better strategy. A few more seconds of questioning would definitely have worked better than the summarization of previous reasoning I had given him.

One other item that stands out to me is I have a Caucasian appearance, and this individual looked to be of Latin decent. Without delving too far into stereotypes, I’ve come to think this person probably thought of me as an exploitive, arrogant rich-kid (despite the fact that I do not have the fashion sense to pull that off). Had I discovered that issue by asking questions, I may have been able to prove to him that I've had to earn everything in my life and was hoping for a favor that I would return to someone in a similar situation one day.

Next Time?
I do still ask for freebies, but usually just a small upgrade to items I am already paying for. I try to be as friendly as I can be, and give people a chance to talk--Carnegie points out that people like to be listened too. Instead of setting out on a mission to get something free, I would approach him in an attempt to make a friend. If my new friend would give me something, great, if not, I would not argue or apply too much pressure other than trying to resolve any concerns I could discover.

In this situation, my BATNA was to move on, so I would not bank too much self-esteem on whether or not I mooched something. The most important technique to negotiating freebies is persistence in asking for many things--boasting about your few successes and forgetting the many failures.

Isn’t my Lancer Beautiful?

2009-04-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

The Story
I had completed my undergrad and been employed for a few months when it struck me, “Time to buy a new Car!” I had a lot of fun looking and did a fair amount of research. I finally found a Mitsubishi Lancer that I was interested at Barber Brothers, a dealership about 100 miles south of where I was living. I made some phone calls, felt like I was promised a good price on the car, and made the trip down so I could drive home in my new Lancer.

When it came time to sign the dotted-line, there was $500 in discounts I had been promised that were not included in the contract. It was about 9:00 pm and the manager really wanted to go home—he had actually been fairly antagonistic to during the time I had spent there looking at the vehicle. After informing him something had been forgotten and that I had visited in anticipation of it being included, he told me in a very derogatory tone, “He’s [my salesman] is stupid. This is why we have contracts!”

That evening, I returned home without a new vehicle.

In the end, management called me and made some concessions and I got my vehicle that I wanted.

The Takeaways
Not too committed
On page 138, in Getting Past No, William Ury advises that it may be necessary to demonstrate your BATNA. I got lucky—I had not considered a BATNA, but I was not going to let Barber Brothers be this insulting to me. My impatience was not satiated, but my being willing to show power did get me a better deal than that which I initially sought.

I accidentally stumbled upon a good negotiating tactic. One of the reasons we have a BATNA is to keep in mind other options are available; we should not be too committed to seeing the negotiation through. Next time I will have a BATNA that will not allow me to

Look at my power
Fundamentally, there was a huge shift in our negotiation at this point. Barber Brothers was not only trying to get a customer back, they were also trying to do damage control (so hopefully a blog post such as mine showing Barber Brothers Stupidity would not appear). There were three Lancer dealerships between me and Barber Brothers; had I thought about it, I then had a great story that gave me a role of being a willing buyer, but also someone who had better be treated well.

I should have talked to other dealerships, explained what happened, and gauged if they would even more accommodating. I had this new power of being astute buyer but still willing to make a purchase as long as I was treated correctly.

I did use my new power to get some slightly better discounts, but further analysis would have shown many more options to strengthen my BATNA before accepting an offer.

Next Time?
Barring the economy not letting me work, I will be buying my wife a new vehicle in the next six-months. First, we will decide on the vehicle we want, and then do what we can to find a few options for purchase. Every salesman will be forced to listen to this story for five to ten minutes—I want the role of being willing to buy, but having dealerships throw barriers in my way.

I will most certainly have a BATNA setup through this research, and not be locked into wanting one vehicle (I do not want these blinders on again). And I’ll reevaluate often to see if there are more tactics for me to gain a better deal.

Hawaii or San Diego?

2009-04-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Story
During my last semester of undergrad at BYU-Hawaii, I obtained a well-paying job that aligned perfectly with my major. This was nice for a student on the North Shore, because I hadn’t gotten to enjoy too many of the more costly activities on the islands.

However, I set myself up with one problem. My intention was to move back to the main-land in about four-months, and my boss thought he was hiring a long-term employee who would stay in Hawaii. During the semester, I read Getting to Yes and hoped I was increasing my negotiating skills so that I could convince him to allow me to work for him from San Diego. But as I was reading the book, I was not considering what I could do to strengthen my BATNA, nor was I worrying in the slightest about his interests.

Without addressing it with my boss, I graduated, flew home to Utah, and moved my stuff to California. I worked from home for a week or two and my boss kept asking when I planned on returning to Honolulu. One night, I called to discuss with him options for me to stay, but he didn’t answer his phone. A bit nervous, I left a voicemail saying I would not be returning and wanted to work for him—but in California.

After about three-weeks of this, my boss called me and said if I wasn’t willing to return to Hawaii, he’d have to let me go.

The Takeaways

Organize a BATNA

Having read a book on negotiation, I assumed I was a good negotiator. Had I really be working to have a BATNA, I would have seen that I needed to be looking for a different position since my true interest was remaining in San Diego.

In Getting to Yes, the authors give an example (Chapter 6, p 102) of catching an airplane and how when one is running late, getting on that plane seems like the only option. In truth, there are more options: another plane, driving, the bus, etc… For some reason, I had a fear showing me that stringing my boss along was my only option for staying in San Diego.

Also, had I setup a BATNA, I might have seen that living in Hawaii wasn’t such a bad BATNA either.

Invent options for Mutual Gain

I knew my boss’s concerns in this situation--he had a previous employee who stole money and equipment when she was contracting from the mainland. He did not want to experience this again. Using that little but of knowledge, I figured this was going to be difficult and so I didn’t engage in negotiation. Looking back, I feel we could have come up with many options:

6 months of me in Hawaii, while I slowly phased into a telecommuting status
Rotation of 1 month in Hawaii, 1 month in my location of choice
Me training a replacement for a few months while I found a job in the location I wanted to be

I actually think the first one may of worked and possibly the third. The point is, I didn’t discuss it with him, I sprung upon him my definition of how it was going to be (and the story shows a few weeks later, he told me how it was going to be).

Next Time?

The biggest mistake was setting up my employer’s expectations that I knew I wasn’t going to fulfill, and then depending on my boss to help me get what I wanted. I definitely had the right to live where I wanted, but I was just waiting for a crash by hoping he’d see it totally my way. Next time, I would actually enter into negotiation and I would do it much earlier.

I would also put a lot more time in to accomplishing my real goals. I’m not very proud of this story. I don’t feel I was wrong in not divulging that I didn’t plan on working on his terms, but at the same time I do feel like I swindled my employer. The fact is, I wanted this job up until I graduated school and it would have killed it if I told him early on that I was not planning on staying—two weeks’ notice is all I felt obligated to give.

Next time, I would not leave myself in a position to be dependent upon my boss. I would first obtain a position in San Diego and then let him know I could telecommute or just quit outright. Spending a few more months in Hawaii would not have been that devastating—impatience to start a life in San Diego hampered my ability to start out with a solid financial foundation in that city. I eventually moved back to my hometown in Utah where I had a better network to find a position (I really missed Hawaii after that).

........ but I did meet my wife in Utah, so it was a happy ending. I think this is an important lesson too. Don't get so worked up about one negotiation or one event in your life that you let a lot of "happy endings" go unnoticed.

Ask the Vendor, and ye shall receive

2009-03-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

The Story
During my internship last summer, I was put in charge of getting a few vendors to design and launch our website. With one vendor, I was very unimpressed with how they managed the project and handled specific directions. Since the company was billing us hourly, these inefficiencies were not just delaying completions, but costing money. I can handle mistakes being made, but I did not want us to have to pay for time wasted when they did not follow my requests and instructions.

I was definitely nervous when I received the bill for services, because I knew I was going to have to call and ask for discounts. I could let it slide and my employer wouldn’t have known, but my loyalties were in the right spot (to the company). Luckily, I had seen this coming and I had a lot of documentation on where time was wasted and calculations showing a more appropriate time-duration.

I setup a meeting with the project manager—letting her know what it was about. At the meeting, I went down the list line by line and explained why I didn’t think each was fair and said what I thought fair was. I gave statistics and showed where our direction had been plainly ignored.

For the outcome, I received 70% of the discount I was requesting. I requested a little high and I think the fair range would have been to receive 80% of my requests.

The Takeaways
BATNA
I was familiar with BATNA’s going into this, but I hadn’t had negotiation training for years (and what little I had was from reading books and not gaining experience). The only advantage I had was some courage inspired by loyalty. I was aware my boss would refuse to pay if I told him it was unfair, but that would have meant I would lost a vendor and a lot of effort would have been lost.

Next time, I would use this for my BATNA, telling the project manager that I’m working with her to avoid escalating this higher and causing a big debate between our bosses. When I’m trying to reduce the bill by about $3,000, this is actually not a bad BATNA. If she gave 70% without me flexing an alternative, I could have perhaps gotten my additional 10% that I wanted through a very soft threat.

Ask and ye shall receive
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). I have gotten more of what I wanted in life by just being willing to ask. In this case, I got most of what I wanted by going down a list and stating it. This situation is a great example showing that this advice does not apply only to our relationship with God, but also in our relationships with each other.

Prepare for the Negotiation
I also got what I wanted because I did some strong fact preparation. I knew what to ask for because I did some analysis. The project manager was at a disadvantage because she didn’t know what I’d be asking for (I think that is fair though, she could have delayed and asked for time to think).

In this class’s packet, the last reading is a list of 10-best-practices. The first item in this list is “Be Prepared.” One reason is to be able to better analyze offers more effectively. Because of my preparations, I was able to see her counteroffers as reasonable and accepted. This preparation also helped me to see that my requests were reasonable and thus my confidence had a good foundation as I entered this negotiation.

Next Time?
As I said, I will definitely consider my BATNA next time and do what I can to strengthen. In retrospect, I had a fairly valuable alternative. My preparations came in handy, and the documentation I was keeping from an early stage allowed me to have more “proof” than she did.

What is unfortunate is that I did not enter into a simpler negotiation the first time I noticed the problem. Perhaps the problems could have been rectified and I would never have felt the billing was unfair (and maybe more importantly, the project would have been completed earlier). Next time, I will address the problem early on and be able to ask for less.

Skimping on the Negotiatons Journals

2009-03-31T21:09:00.001-07:00

I haven't been getting enough posts on here for my MBA 661 course. So I'm going to step it up. Prepare to be blasted by posts on this subject over the next few days!

Pricing & Positioning

2009-03-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to announce that I am doing a horrible job of paying attention in Pricing and Positioning right now.

:(

My first Case Interview

2009-02-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

I had my first case interview -- actually got out about an hour ago. I've got a few takeaways I'd like to remember.

Last night, a good chunk of my evening was spent figuring out what a case interview even is. I found a few good resources for this:

So the interview wasn't quite what I expected. I was anticipating a full on role-play so I was thrown off when I started. Actually, it was more like studying an actual case: here is the situaiton - what to do?

I was expecting to be able to ask more questions than I was allowed. I thought I'd be judged on my probing skills, once I figured out they wanted to see what I brainstormed, I was on my way. I estimate that getting accustomed to the interviewer took about 1/3 of the time. I was much happier with my performance in the latter half of the interview.

and so what did I learn?

The 3 C's Cool Calm & Collected. I could have handled this a little better I think. As I realized my assumed structure wasn't going to play out, I probably showed a bit of confusion. This also stopped me from taking the notes that I wanted so I could analyze better.
Could you ask about structure before actually start? Judging by what I saw in this interview and what I read about on McKinsey's website, there are probably quite a few variations out there. To better play the role that is meant for me, it might be good to ask what to expect in the structure.
Who are you in this?
Am I allowed / should I be asking for more information?
Brainstorm Options Things finally started clicking when I just said: there is this huge amount of info. If it were this, I would do this.......... He liked seeing that I wasn't sold on one solutions
How will get Buy-IN I didn't see this one coming. I had a few ideas, and I really tried to focus what I've learned in negotations class and working with the stakeholders. Hmmmm........ if anyone has more ideas here please comment Obviously people don't just accept your ideas because you are a consultant.
Articulate Well I always know I've got to improve here. I should practice saying what I mean. I often do have great pictures in the back of my mind; somehow it all gets translated into mumbo-jumbo :)

I look forward to a few more of these. Remembering what I learned should help me move from my earned 70% of all wow to a solid 100% Wow Factor.

New Goal in the MBA Program : 100% Wow!

Arouse in the other person an eager want

2009-02-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Arouse in the other person an eager want -- One of the Fundamental Principles in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I had a very quick negotiation with my Wife's 11-year-old brother a few days ago. She was watching him and wanted him to take out the trash; he wanted to play video-games. I was getting angry because I didn't like seeing my wife disrespected by this person she was helping out.

And then it hit me that he was desperately waiting for something to be delivered to him in the mail. Most of his battle was putting down the game-controller, so when I said, "I'm surprised you're not running outside to the mailbox, because it was delivered about 30 minutes ago," he immediately started to head for the door. Taking the trash out wasn't as big a deal when he was already up and moving around.

Everyone was served because interests were sought instead of hard stances on positions.

Takeaways:
Arouse an eager want: Instead of forcing my will on Sam, I was able to see a connection to something he wanted. Dale Carnegie's suggestion eliminated hurt and angered feelings by seeking a new way to get things accomplished.

Often the advice given in books such as "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "Getting to Yes" is difficult to follow because you do get emotionally locked into your position and the righteousness of that position. I was quickly moving from "wanting my wife to not have to deal with disobedience" to an attitude of anger and a desire to force this kid to obey everything I said because I said it.

We have to give up those immediate emotions of satisfying ego, pride, anger, or revenge and actually get the deal we'll be happy with a few days later.

Talk about Interests: This is one of the ideas in "Getting to Yes." It was quick, but when I spoke in a friendly manner about his real desire being outside it was very easy to tack on an additional task. When speaking to Sam's interest, the pie was expanded and he excitedly carried out his task.

Excel is lowering my morals

2009-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

In my class about Pricing and Positioning, we've been running a lot of analytics in both SPSS & Excel.

I think this is kind of funny. It seems Excel 2007 is a little more accurate than the 2003 version. So when you save a file in the 03 format, it sometimes questions ones fidelity. Luckily the loss is minor.

This error made me laugh a little too much. My wife thought I was just a big dork. But I kept seeing it every time I saved.

Hopefully once I graduate the BYU MBA, I won't have my morals questioned so easily.

.......... yeah, I am kind of a big dork.

VC Snoman

2009-01-24T23:17:00.001-08:00

Been Meaning to post this on the Blog for a while. I think this is a pretty funny video that I heard about while doing the intern thing at VSpring this last summer.

Speed Pitch || Business Plan Competition Event

2009-01-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

My team competed in the speed pitch portion of BYU's business plan competition early this morning. That was a pretty fun event. And I learned a lot!

Brock Blake gave a good presentation about what speed pitching is. I took a few notes and I liked his focus on when investment money should be sought. I had never heard it summed so well that it is better to solve a pain than a want when his slide suggested "Pain Killers" not "Vitamins."

So another of my teammates did the first pitch. I think he did an amazing job. Our visual tools were screwed up because the color printer decided to steal my money instead of print my slides. We had only 1 slide of our website printed on a black and white printer.

After that, we watched another student present his idea. This student is someone I respect a lot. I think he is very confident. I have seen him get up in front of class and present some ideas that are pretty out there-- and be serious, and calm. Persuading us that his ideas are very good.

And what did I notice when he was presenting? His hands were shaking! This person who I didn't think could get nervous at all was a little rattled. It made me feel good because if he could get nervous then it was cool if I did............. I was 100% pleased with my presentation.

I've got more to improve on (we've been invited to pitch in the second and final round), but I couldn't be happier with how I performed and the confidence boost that comes from seeing that others are human.

............. and I'll admit some very organized practice helped too.

Landlord's Property caused $1300 in damages to my car

2009-01-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

The Story
Friday morning, 1 week ago, I went to get in my car and found that all the snow from the garage's roof had landed on and around my car, denting my hood in beyond repair.

Knowing I'd want him to witness the actual damage caused, I called my landlord, Ryan, and said he should come look at it before I tried moving things. I also took videos and pictures of the car: as it was found and of the damages.

Two different body shops gave me estimates for about $1300 to buy a new hood and install it.

Ryan returned a few hours later to say I was given 1 parking spot and that I was not parked in it so he was not liable. He then used what Getting Past No would classify as a trick and said he'd paid for some plumbing bills involving the kitchen that he felt was our fault and that it was our turn to give.

I thought the plumber arugment was very unlogical, but my wife was the one who let me see it for what it was when she said, "I don't get what plumbing even has to do with this."

I argued back that I was guaranteed 1 spot (wife's car was there), but never told I could not park elsewhere. Also said plumbing was not a good excuse for me to pay $1300 in an unrelated incident. The snow on the roadside necessitated parking in the driveway and no spots were marked as "do not park."

At first I really didn't know how to handle this. But I was able to research a pretty good BATNA in dealing with my car insurance. I wasn't excited to pay the deductible, but they have a team that will work to get my money back--and they have a lot more legal expertise than I could acess for a small amount of money. They said they would fight to get the money back if they felt they should.

The Takeways
Don't start talks until you know what you want.
When I told Ryan I didn't accept his no-liability argument, we argued for a moment and then he asked what it was I wanted. The fact was, I didn't know yet. I wanted to be fair, but I had no clue what fair was yet-- I just knew his suggestion was not. During this time, I noticed frustrations because I didn't have a solution yet, but he was trying to absovle himself of all responsibility immediately.

Next time, I would follow the same tactic of letting him know I didn't consider his suggestion as legitimate but then I would say I was looking into the best way to pursue this still and that I had no suggestions yet.

Sometimes people refuse to negotiate or accept responsibility
Ryan kept asking for free 10-minute advice from lawyer people in his religious congregation. And they kept telling him what he wanted to hear. I quickly saw that this was going to go nowhere. I think in the end, he'll find that he got what he paid for.

Don't feel like you need to negotiate
In the end, I think I am the most happy that I submitted to my insurance. Unless he agreed to pay of go through his insurance I would have come out of this worse than I had to. When I saw that he wouldn't take full responsibility it quickly became clear that there were other forces that would make him.

Really this isn't over yet, I will hopefully get my deductible reimbursed. But really, if he wouldn't accept fully responsibility then I was not getting what I wanted. I think the insurance company will recover it.

Getting a little Shut Eye

2009-01-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

The Story
The first day of school, I came home exhausted. I have classes 9:30 - 5:00 straight. So after dinner, I decided I was going to take a nap. At the moment I was walking into my room to rest, my wife asked me to take care of some bills related to our daughter's birth (6 weeks ago).

Now, I have been procrastinating working on these bills, I've wanted to ignore their reality. And at this moment of tiredness, I really wanted to ignore it. So I said that I was tired and wanted to rest for a moment, "could I do it a little later?"

She emphasized to me that she really wanted to get this taken care of immediately. I then said we should complete this task when I was done resting. And so we did... the bills were taken care of and I got the rest I desired.

The Takeaways
Ask for what you want
In Getting Past No, on page #21, William Ury says "What you don't ask for, the other side is unlikely to give you." One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that I often know what I want, but I try to get it without the help of others. Often if there is a conflict, I give in because I'm not accustomed to asking.

In the situation above, I asked for what I wanted and got it. My wife also got what she wanted by emphasizing those desires. We both came away happy. I've seen this in other instances in my life--there is nothing wrong with asking and in family it is often easy to setup a quick solution that meets everyone's desires.

What did you learn about the negotiation process or about other people as negotiators

It can be very quick. I didn't realize I was in a negotiation until it was over.
I could have handled it better. My wife may not have needed to be as forceful if I would have said I understand, I'm tired, but I will pick it up immediately when I get back up. This would have been Ury's Step to their Side suggestion.
I probably would have gotten more emotional had the compromise not been reached so easily. I need to use the Go to the Balcony step as well. I did feel guilty that I didn't help immediately. I didn't need to, I knew my motives were good.

Next time?
Situations like this will arise often. In the future, I will quickly address the two steps above. I know one tendency I have is to forget things I'm not looking forward to. I probably would have felt less guilt if I would have put the bills on my desk so I'd be sure to see them when I began working on homework. This also would have helped with the "step to their side" step because I would have displayed behavior showing her position was important to me as well.

Negotiaiton Journal

2009-01-07T17:42:00.001-08:00

For my International Negotiations class by Dr. Richard Bruce Money (get it? its true.), we have to keep a journal of a few negotiations we enter into over the course of the semester.

Since this is my journal of all I learn (j/k its far less than what is in here) in the MBA program, I thought I would just keep my journal in here. Now you can be there as I negotiate my way to success and millions of dollars!

There, now I've explained what the "negotiations journal" label is---- time to get busy with the journal.

Reasons to Believe

2009-01-05T00:05:00.001-08:00

In Dr. Whitlark's Entrepreneurial Marketing Class here at Brigham Young, one of the main principles discussed throughout the course is a "Need to Believe."

I was thinking that a quick way to establish if people are looking for a tool such as you've masterminded would be to use the free services at Trelian. Wouldn't work in all cases, but for some ideas that can be identified in two or three words, you could see if the solution is being sought.

There is more to Need to Believe than just this currently-sought aspect, but I thought this could be useful.

Last Semester -- Woo!

2009-01-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

School starts tomorrow. Just wanted to everyone a big "Good Luck" shout out for this semester.

.......... And to all the 2nd years in the BYU MBA program, enjoy this last semester before life starts back up.

New Year with Cannon :)

2008-12-31T23:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, totally irrelevant to an MBA, but I finally figured out where the original video of the guy playing Cannon is. I wanted to give a link to his Youtube video just so it gets proper respect.

Click for the best and original Electric Guitar Cannon video by FunTwo.

Ring in the New Year with it!

I had to do some projects on Youtube for my internship and this has bugged me for a little while.

Marketing Mix

2008-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a few projects and just wanted to get Marketing's 5 C's & 4 P's in front of me.

Marketing's 5 C's

Customer
Company
Competition
Collaborators
Context

Marketing's 4 P's

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People (some like to throw this in there as well)

lot's of snow

2008-12-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

Utah Valley has gotten lot of snow this week. Actually its pretty awesome timing for Winter Break.

I've been living in apartments for many years now so this was the first time in years that I've had to shovel. Not Bad, actually--I liked getting forced outside. BYU's MBA Program wants me inside in front of a computer all day. :)

Here is how my car looked about 5 minutes ago.

Execution & Strategy

2008-12-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about what I've learned from my internship and classes. I've gained a lot of technical skills over the last few years, and this has not helped me to start an internet company--- so what will?

I think it boils down to execution & direction. One needs to have a direction to go. Just after college, I worked for 2 different small companies whose owners were just winging it day to day--it was easy to see they were not going to stay in business long.

I've been pretty good at planning out the internet product, but then have had very loose plans for how I was going to advertise it. The internship this summer definitely taught me a lot about executing a go-to-market strategy.

Courses I've had this year like entrepreneurial strategy and entrepreneurial marketing (FYI, this professor is going to release a pretty good book on startup marketing so watch for it) have shown what to base a strategy on.

So now I can create a much more robust and useful strategy. Anything left? Oh yea, execution! Tom Hopkins used to say that the salesman with enough desire will succeed, but he now says he has changed his mind and its the salesman with the most discipline.

And I really think that discipline is one of my greatest weaknesses. Its fun to dream of the future-I love that part! But working for it? I get bored pretty easily. I'd rather just hangout with friends.

Of course seeing that I've got a good strategy and knowing how to define one should help me to trust it better and be more willing to give it my time.

MBA 669 - Entrepreneruial Strategy - The Wrap Up

2008-12-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

My most useful class this semester was Entrepreneurial Strategy taught by Gary Williams. Great class taught by a man who has been very successful but has also had longings to be teaching in academia--I don't think you get a lot of people like that in business schools.

So we had to read 3 books for this class. Inside the Tornado, Innovator's Dilemma, & Good to Great. Looking for some Christmas reading material, I also asked about other potential reads and he suggested the popular books by the author's of the books above and also: Execution, and Blue Ocean Strategy. Looks like a great list of ideas and models to know before going to raise funding.

In separate teams we analyzed for different companies very deeply. This week, we had to give them a final strategy that we felt they should follow. Most of us anlayzed using G2G's Hedge Hog Model and ITT's Bowling Alley Model.

I've got Good to Great down pretty good, but ITT was packed with info. I've got to go back and learn this stuff a little better-- I think it will make me infinitely better at startups.

I also learned a higher degree of professionalism in this project. We were dealing with very busy professionals and had to earn their trust in order to be taken seriously. Sad to say, but I only give myself a 5 out of 10 on my professionalism & earning Allegiance's CEO's trust.

Oh yeah, Allegiance was the company we did this report on.

The learning of professionalism and modeling was great and I think it will serve me as I become a stronger business developer.

Putting a lot of thought into it this semester at BYU, I definitely want to get into Biz-Dev after my MBA.

Good Luck with Finals

2008-12-10T21:11:00.001-08:00

I haven't written much lately.... so why start now?

Just wanted to say good luck with finals to everybody!

A post about Urban Meyer

2008-11-17T07:38:00.000-08:00

I've had a lot I've wanted to post on here lately..... way too busy right now!

Anyway, since getting an MBA is just one step to achieving all my dreams,I thought I'd post this by Urban Meyer. I don't really like the guy, but one cannot argue with his success.

In an article on ESPN, he said
""I think it's one of the most impressive stats I've seen," Meyer said. "The momentum our players think about, and our coaches stress to our players, is very important, whether it's a blocked punt or great defense. That's why we ran a reverse on the first play of the game. I always feel like early momentum is worth at least 14 points."

So this morning, I got up at 7:30 and began working away. I've gotten a lot done, including the things that are important but so easy to skip: like exercise and scripture study.

Didn't want to forget the quote about early momentum, I think it can server me in my career at all levels--even as the grunt (could help to leave the grunt position quicker).

Citing MLA -- (we still do this dridgery in an MBA?)

2008-10-22T17:57:00.001-07:00

When it comes to citing sources in the research papers I write, my favorite resource showing appropriate methods for MLA style is here.

I'm just noticing it is dropping in the search-rankings so I wanted to give it a boost. I have been using it throughout my MBA and it has been very useful.

tired?

2008-09-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

My eyes are getting ready to close.... a little more studying to go :)

I guess this post is more philosophical. I remember at orientation last year, Kristen Adair spoke that we would be tired. Coming off my internship and back into school, I've really been on a high. I'm trying hard to learn as much as I can; I find so much so fascinating.

And so I'm tired-- but my goals are being achieved. And yet, it is very easy for me to become "un-tired" .... but I have to will it.
I've got Pivot Tables and Leadership Skills a plenty.
I've got creative questions and "needs to believe" galore.
You need some tornado strategies? I've got twenty.
But who cares?
No Big Deal.
I want more!

I'm really writing a bright side to this story. Through pushing my limits, I'm seeing they're further away. I can do more. I can give more to my family and my employer-- And I can still have more time for fun. I guess I've got a six-sigma on life (actually that would be terrible)

So I'd like to end this song and blog with a toast:
"MBA is interesting. It really is here to help me. So flow with it and take all I can-- and then ride those horses all the way to the bank (yeehah)"

First 2 Days

2008-09-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

The first 2 Days of classes have gone well. Looks like I"m going to be doing two different consulting projects this semester. One will even be specifically marketing focused and I need all the experience I can get.

The other is even more exciting because it is specifically on strategy! Strategy has been the most interesting to me because it seems to bring together the most disciplines -- well Marketing & Finance & Technology anyway. I like being part of this whole hub of business skills. I don't even know that I want to have the title CEO one day, but I feel strategy & people/sales skills are the ways to be effective as a company's or project's Commander in Chief (thats an even loftier title)

St. George is Hot as Hell & then I'm going to work like it

2008-08-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, I seemed kind of insane writing that Monday Night-- it was late. I'm sure some principles exist in there still.

Well, Labor Day weekend is here, that means all that stands between me and my second year of BYU Marriott School of Businesses MBA Program is a quick trip to St. George.

I'm out of here in a few hours!

marketing techniques blasting in from everywhere

2008-08-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

What a fun year to be a marketing student. I should have been in bed an hour and a half ago, but I'm watching the new coverage of the Democratic National Convention and I just can't. It sucks, because I'll want to do this for the Republican one as well "to see all the views"

Anyway, I'm writing this because in just this little bit of television I've gotten to see so many marketing techniques -- and these political marekters are talented and networked. For my internship with REDFLY, we've had a strong focus on public relations. The principles I've learned there are amp'd up with nuclear, wind, solar, coal, and fossil fuel power -- this is seriously an intense campaign.

The convention itself is brilliant, nearly every news-camera in the country is aimed somewhere in Denver to record what is happening. Then becuase protestors know what where the camers are going to be, they show up to and bring even more news coverage.

Then the people-networks people have are implemented. Journalists are interviewing authors during each break in speakers. Politicians are being interviewed constantly. Public Relations is key right now; I'm not suprised that John Edwards isn't around for this his PR has been killed by his infedility.

During commercial breaks, who appears? John McCain telling me that Obama is bad and focusing on issues dear to my heart--taxes.

For the most part, I change stations between commercials so I see a lot of CNN & FoxNews. The strategies are similar on both stations, but FoxNews interviews more civilian democrats than public servants. (I always hear Fox is too conservative, but I don't feel it is. My litmus though will be to see if they press Republicans with as diffiuclt of questions)

It's interesting though, I'm seeing milllions of dollars of publicity and commercial advertising dedicated to this election. And while I think its necessary its actually kind of sad.

I guess conventions are kind of like a "sale." They are a great tool to get us focused. With all the positioning states did to get to vote sooner, I'm suprised that the parties don't fight harder to have thier convention second. I'm also suprised that the conventions don't happen closer to election day becuase these get people stoked. With all the beach-balls I see flying around, this looks even more fun than a BYU Football game-- I know the ushers would be more than happy to kick me out for doing that.

Anyway, its way too late for me. So I'm starting to ramble. I guess the point is as an MBA Marketing Student I am looking forward to the type of marketing I'm going to get to see these next few months. I guess another interesting point is it shows just how much marketing can affect your decisions--because I really don't trust these politicians. :)

Good Night!

Catapulted by Dr. Dave Jennings (review)

2008-08-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last Year, all first year MBA Students at BYU had to take a communications course from Dr. Dave Jennings. This year, he quit to promote his new book: Catapulted.

So I ordered the book and then Amazon posted to my account that they delivered it to me... only I never got it. I called Amazon to inform them I didn't receive "Catapulted" and they sent it again. I still didn't get it, but a few hours after they said it was delivered the guy that is now in my apartment at Wymount showed up on my door step delivering me both boxes. So, I hope this one extra book helps Dr. Jennings out :)

And now for a review
The book was pretty good. It is told in the form of an alegory -- I'll admit I don't like leadership books like this because the stories aren't real and I feel there is too much "theory" in it all. The only book I've ever liked in this form has been "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

That said I did like a lot of the advice in the book. It talks a lot of leadership and finding where you want to lead someone. It also puts a very necessary focus on people and relationships.

I don't want to give away the "meat and potatoes." I've heard similar things from Zig Ziglar, but "Catapulted" gives the reminder that we can't just follow money and we can't just chase promotions, we really need to focus on accomplishing the goals our values would let us have, and we need to lift others not climb over them as we do.

Short review I know. But he book is not expensive and its a quick read. I really suggest reading it and noting down the advice. There are conversations between the protagonist and a few supporting roles. Again-- very fictional, but you do pick up on some good insight from Jennings. Doing it over again, I would definitely buy the book.

My one complaint about the book is that Dr. Jennings did not focus on his "pit of despair" or "pit of opportunity" that he would talk about in class (and which I assume were his own invention). He hints at similar principles to what he taught us in class (about overcoming challenges.) These were my favorite lessons in his class and I think he'd be well served to write another book on these subjects--and to do it using more anlaytics and logic instead of one general allegory.

Robots.txt

2008-08-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is another techie post. Our web-designer did some things that kind of screwed us up for getting listed on Google. When Google tried to spider our homepage, they were forwarding the GoogleBot to our mobile page -- translation, Google Thinks we don't have a home page. Killed our page rank and our listing in the Organic Search.

I got that fixed last week and then noticed this week that Google kept looking for a robot.txt file. Now if you read up on the robot.txt file, you'll see it says if you don't want to control what a search-engine shouldn't see, 1 option is just to not have a robot.txt file.

However, seeing Google was looking so hard for it, I added it (it's 26 bytes big, pretty easy) and Google has since begun indexing our website like crazy. So I guess the moral is, don't be lazy, put a free-for-all robots.txt file on your website and you'll like the results.

Venture Capital perpetuates more Venture Capital

2008-07-19T23:23:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on Venture Capital.

Didn't read real close, but basically VC Money out there is remaing the same, but those currently funded companies are having a harder time exiting, so sucking up more money until exit.

Do we have too many entrepreneurs out there? I doubt that. What I think is happening is Sarbanes Oxley has made it so difficult to go public that companies will be venture backed for longer looking for buyers instead of going public when they're hot.

Sad really, one of the reasons I went to BYU for an MBA was to get do some cool company building and exiting. I understand the need for security of people's money and retirements, but I think the next president is going to have to tackle the issue of not killing off companies with too much regulation.

It's back.... Minto!

2008-07-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

Went to a meeting yesterday where an IT consultant was telling us how to better integrate our systems. I was there because of my responsibilities for making sure e-commerce is awesome.

So we get in this meeting and the consultant goes: blah blah blah. For each "blah" he was supposed to say, it seems he said forty-extra "blah's." In mathematics, that's a blah-speach to the 40th power. So what should have been 5 minutes was quite a bit longer.

I spoke with an executive after the meeting and he said the guy should have displayed 1 chart slide and said the systems aren't integrated and too many manual processes are used to link them.

Then put up a second slide saying that phase one is just to get csv files to link them-- creating X manual processes per day instead of per order. 3rd slide: Phase 3 eliminates those manual processes etc...

Ok fellow BYU MBA'ers, do you know what this guy was describing nearly to a "t"? Minto. Start with a story: "Data Entry is going on and it sucks"

"Here's why it sucks"

"Here's the band-aid fix"

"Here's the long-term fix"

5 minutes and 4 million less "blah's" later, everyone is able to make their carpools and read over the full version of the report if they need to.

Glad I wasn't the guy presenting. When it comes time for me to, I will remember this lesson.
----------------------
I'm not trying to be rude to the guy here, but just make a point. He was actually well prepared, but most the people at the meeting wanted to donate precious few minutes and his strategy was to explain his findings in great detail. If they had more concerns they could get them addressed (hence be prepared), but I think the biggest concern was "let me know the problem is beiing taken care of and I won't get in your way."

Make sure you're prepared to answer questions but people in most businesses are busy; communicate necessities and then hand over your report.

Flush DNS

2008-07-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I don't have much of a tech blog, and since I'm dealing with websites still, I thought I'd just get this recorded here.

Just released the new website, and its not populating to my browser correctly. To get my computer to recognize the new IP Address we're pointing our website to, I ran the command:
ipconfig /flushdns

Wow, as a BYU MBA, I'm learning a wide array of skills. Brigham Young University helped me get hooked up with a very cool internship.

get 'er done

2008-07-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

I've been put in charge of a few vendors to get my projects done. I'm learning a lot in dealing with them. Thursday, I had to have everything in place for our new website to go live. The vendor has been really difficult to work with and commuicate with. On Wednesday, they actually sent me an email saying I interrupted too much.

I didn't care! I only wanted it set up, I wasn't worried about their schedule. I went to their office Thursday afternoon to discuss what was left and to make sure they were working. Trying to respect their need to focus, I didn't bother the programmer too much for the first hour. Then I went and asked about the progress and he told me he was woring on soething entirely different!

So I sat there and discussed it with him for 10 minutes and then 10 minutes later the programmer had given me what I wanted. I was excited and I was apalled at this web-designers system! They charged us for an hour of work when 20 minutes was what was needed! Well, from now on I will make sure they repeat back to me exactly what I want.

That's the principle I'm trying to highight-- know what you want and make sure they can tell you. Until then, they do not have permission to start the work.

Soon to say Goodbye

2008-06-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from packing to say I'm moving out of Wymount! And while packing sucks, air conditioning blows cool air all over the house and I'm excited to have it again. (figure I'm about 20 days short of a year)

So first years, stay away... stay as far away as you can.

Hope everyone is having a good summer.

what day is it?

2008-06-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Haven't been on this in a while. Wow this has been an intense summer! For the first time in my life, I actually forget what day it is. I think it's partially because I just don't hae time to pay attention but I'm also haviing a lot of fun so who cares what day it is--just enjoy it!

It's been really fun to get into Celio and see everyone running at 150 mph getting ready to go to market and now we're slowing down a little to make sure we're doing things right and being consistent.

I got some cool respoinsibilities yesterday and now am very involved in coordinating the marketing internationally. I'll tell ya what, you can have an awesome internship in a small company and get some great titles on your resume. But you also have to make sure you are very results oriented.

I wish I was this focused on results back when I played hockey in highschool-- I might have doubled my varsity goals (from 2 - 4) :)

Project Summary

2008-06-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

My largest task I've had so far is getting up a new website for Celio. I believe my technical skills from my previous career made me a strong candidate for this internship. I'm not using those technical skills directly so much as I'm leveraging them to better advise our vendors as they put pieces together for us.

However, this has been such an educational process. Previously I worked for a public university and it was not an environment that was very results driven-- stuff got done, but deadlines were often passed. This has been such a fun place to learn to do business. I've got a budget to get my projects done, but getting something that works isn't the most important part-- I also have to make sure the website converts to revenue in some way.

So I'm getting to dip my toes into some market-research by exploring what effectively steers customers-- this isn't just ad-copy but also making sure the site is friendly and intuitive. You can only get so far with intuition-- it also comes down to anlayzing data and seeing how customers are actually behaving.

Another task I'm taking on is writing some copy and analyzing the messages. A large part of building a brand is consitently showing what the brand is and does. The are some unique challenges because our product isn't a laptop, but it lets you use your smartphone in a similar manner. How do you communicate that to consumers concisely?

I'm really greatful for the chance to explore this company and this market. It's definitely fast paced and it is a great opportunity to learn how marketing works. Going with a startup has been good for a few reason. I didn't have much marketing background, so getting to start immediately is going to give me about 2 extra months of marketing experience. Also, I'm getting such broad experience in so many areas. Utah has a strong venture backed startup industry-- I'd really suggest people look at it thoroughly when they are looking for jobs and internships.

Why a Startup?

2008-05-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm on the bus from Provo to Salt Lake. Most of my entries on this will be written while on the bus (using this REDFLY that I'm promoting during my internship) so you know... no getting worked up about my spelling errors because ths bus bouncs a lot!

From what you can see in the other blogs, I'm one of the few students that climbed on board with a small-company. I did this because I wanted a strong look at a company going through the Venture Capital process. In fact, the only bad thing about this internship is the commute (I'm pretty whiney about it) and that I didn't take a couple of week vacation (I'm going on a cruise for-sure when I graduate now!)

I really suggest going with a startup company if you have interest in it. I do think you have to do better research into things like the market your entering, the executive/founding team, t he product and areas like that. If it doesn't work out, you won't have a big name on your resume so I believe you should study the company out well and make sure it will match you an take your career where you want it to.

The internship has been a lot of fun. I've been given a lot of responsibility and a lot of freedom to meet my objectives. Its also nice because I'm getting to touch a lot of areas of marketing. I'm doing some direct-advertising, some brand management, and some market research.

I also see what everyone was saying about learning a lot more in the job function. I've learned some cool ideas for prototyping products and researching with those. I am even learning strategy about dealing with world-wide suppliers. My last year of classes has definitely been a good framework for how to market within a start-up, but this is definitely helping to fill that Skeleton in.

If you'r interested in a start-up I really suggest it. I thoroughly enjoy the lack of red-tape that I was plagued with before. I like working with pretty advancded technology. And I like working with a clean-slate in marketing-- I'm not tied to any previous images that people may have had.

I've been found!

2008-05-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I just saw a letter from MBAMA saying they knew this was my blog. I haven't been broadcasting who I am because I am frankly a terrible writer.

Oh well, now that I've been found out, I guess I better step it up.

I start my internship on April 24th, and I have been working for Celio Corp. I really wanted to do marketing but at the same time go with a company that was in the Venture Capital Rounds.

Hope everyone is having good summer!

DT is Gone!

2008-04-23T10:37:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-15T23:26:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-09T08:58:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

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 :(

2008-04-01T18:40:00.001-07:00

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)

Yoasis -- Pretty good job

2008-03-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago in my Brand Management class, we had the chance to help HogiYogi choose what they would call their new entrant into the latest Yogurt craze that is going on.

Initially HogiYogi was going to go with "YogurRXt" -- not a good idea. They had a creative idea around it, and they thought it tied into "Health" well. But Yogurt Health means organic not sterile hospital. Plus calling sizes something like "Overdose" while creative is going to bring back very bad memories for some people.

What they decided on was Yoasis. I agree with them that of the ideas put up, Yoasis was probably the best presentation. The student team that came up with Yoasis had some very faulty logic as to why this idea should be picked (like a "National" survey that was sent to who they knew in the MBA Program, or the fact that it competed with names they made up and not the names that other teams presented).

Nonetheless, the Yoasis team by far had the best presentation. One team actually spelled yogurt backwards for a sound saying "True-Joy" but spelt "Trugoy." Does anyone really want the name "Goy" in their business name? Unless you were told to say 'joy' you'd be making an ethnic-slur every time you said the business name.

So my wife and I went to Yoasis last night. They've done a pretty good job with it I think. They did use the water-fountains idea from my team's presentation. They made a really nice "sit and lounge" modern atmosphere right next to Yoasis. Because of this, I think that if there was a Starbucks in Provo, this location would be able to take a sizable portion of that Starbucks' market.

The price was great; I'm sure that will help them capture a lot of the student market.

The actual product is wonderful!

In fact, I only had two problems with it. Yoasis has a flat screen where it shows video of natural, oceanic places. When I was there a documentary concerning sea-lions was playing. The problem is they play the sound as well. So while I was there trying to talk, I felt the documentary kept invading my conversations. Perhaps muting the sound like Costa Vida does with its tv's would be a good idea. Of course I can see the flipside to that too. I love surfing and I always want to hear details of the waves pictured at Costa Vida.

Second, I love the ocean. I graduated from BYU-Hawaii. I will probably move back to Hawaii within the next 10-years. And large portions of my vacations will be spent scuba-diving all over the world until I am back in Hawaii. So when I see a product use the word "Oasis" and then show me a tropical island.... I don't like it. I've heard many others say "Isn't an Oasis in the desert?" Well, I agree! Its funny but it is actually kind of offensive to me and those are my two passions in the world: the Ocean, and the Desert (of Southern Utah).

So without biasing this with my clear opinion, I do think the Imagery Yoasis is using to brand itself does create a little customer confusion.

All in all though, I think they did a pretty good job and I'll patronize it once or twice a month while I'm here for another year. With the rush they were in, I believe they chose the best idea and they've done some good implementations. As always, there are tradeoffs, and that more than anything is what keeps critics in business!

Brand Management -- Pretty Cool

2008-03-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of exciting things in business. And there are many not so exciting things in business. I wish that 10 years ago, I would have had a parent who could explain to me the different "Holy-Grail's" of business. I think these basically boil down to:

Investment Banker
Consultant
Brand Manager

Maybe accoutant and a large firm should be on there too.

Anyway, I'm taking a Brand Management course and I love how much all of marketing combines in this class. I don't really want to be a brand manager at big company like Nestle. I'd rather to technology and work on branding a product in the eyse of consumers.

Before the MBA, I often was told branding was a waster of an entrepreneurs time. And maybe all aspects of a brand are. But if you're trying to be true to a specific brand (some expermentation will still be necessary) then building a strong brand is definitely the way to go. it won't hurt you and it will make you more accountable and not allow you to pursue whatever strategy your emotions may desire at the time.

Harvard Busines Review

2008-03-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

So does anyone read the Harvard Business Review? Until MBA School, I was never that interested in it, I thought it was professors at Harvard writing a few things here and there and then supplementing it with their students' papers.

This last year at BYU, I have read a lot of articles from it. We purchases these articles in our course packets. I'm not sure if my professors are just choosing the cream of the crop (well actually I would hope they are), but these articles are amazing and packed with insights. In fact I've noticed many books are written after an author explores the ideas in these articles first. I've read a lot of books where the whole thing wasn't much more useful than what is in an 15 page article anyway.

I also like that it is professors and experts from all over the world that submit articles-- its not just those at Harvard like I had thought.

Anyway, I'm going to begin reading the HBR in the Library over the next year and if I feels its as good as the articles I'm getting from my MBA professors, then I'll probably be a subscriber for many years to come.

All you Wymounter's!

2008-03-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hey Wymount changed where its website is at. Now when I look it up on Google to pay my bill, I can't find it. Instead I find links to a bunch of whiney people's comments about Wymount (I whine too, but seriously, what do you expect for this prices?)

Anyway, Wymount is not at the given link.

Business Plan Details

2008-03-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

Last week, a private equity partner--Ron Mika-- attended my MBA 664 Venture Capital / Private Equity course and gave us a document on what he likes to see when a company is pitching itself to be bought by his firm.

I definitely think this list will be useful to me in the future and probably to thousands of the million of readers of this blog :)

Presentation Outline Suggestions:

Executive Summary ("Answer First"):

Company/Industry/Transaction Overview
Investment Thesis - Why why are we interested?
Risks - What should we be concerned about?
Proposed Deal Structure (Sources & Uses)
Financial Cases (Management, Underwriting/Base, Downside)
Financial Returns

Industry Detail

Is this an attractive industry to invest in?
Porter 5 Forces
Growth
Relative Market Share
Speed of Change/Innovation
Cycles
Etc. --- (ok I agree, is there a need for an 'etc' in a list like this?)

Company Detail

Is this an attractive company to invest in?
Competitive Advantages
Product Advantages
Distribution Advantages
Relative Cost Positon
Technology of IP Position
Management
Etc.

Deal Detail:

Deal Dynamics (Auction, Inside Track, Proprietary, Mgt. Reinvest, Etc.)
Structure/Financing Terms
Comparables (Trading & Transaction)
Exit Scenarios
Major Assumptions for Each Case (Mgt, Base, Downside)

Bottoms-up P&L, B/S, CF

Downside Protection - "How low can you go?"
Excel Model

Obviously, this list is for a Private Equity firm, but there is still lots of applicability to those trying to raise Venture Capital. I imagine there are thousands of lists out there like this. I'm sure those are legit too, but I know this one is because of who gave it to me.

Interview Preperation

2008-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this MBA program at BYU-- is it paying off? YES!

I have an interview today for my dream internship. So I've been asking around for suggestions a lot. I think I interview pretty well, but one thing I need to remember in an interview is to be confident! Sometimes questions are meant to be tricky, don't be feeble as stating what doing.

One friend told me to document all my experiences into categories. These are the categories I think that apply:

Leadership
Marketing (as a marketing student -- may even break this down further into areas like product and brand management)
Problem Solving
Dealing with Problems
Dealing with Problematic People

Also, another friend was telling me how you want to do your homework and know what to expect from the position (do your homework to make sure you even want it) and know what is going on with the company. I've assembled the following list of what you should know about the company going into the interview:

What is the product? (this can be deeper than what you think)
Who is the customer?
What has the company done well in the past? (not well?)
What are problems are in the future? What strategy should be used in the future?
Why work for this company?
Who is the competition?

There are obviously a large amount of other questions that could come up. Some interview questions, though not effective, still get asked (what is your greatest weakness?). but for that I'm sure you can search for interview questions.

Ok time to focus my studies on these areas.

Decided on Industry

2008-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

Well, its been a lot of back and forth deciding what I wanted to do when I was done with this MBA, but I think I've done it finally.

My Venture Capital Class this semester has been amazing. I'm learning a lot about growing business fast and trying to see what can be successful with a small amount of tweaking. Entrepreneurship has always been in my blood, but is it a mistake to start a company without first establishing yourself with a large company. That way if your venture fails at least you've got something else on your resume to prove you learned something.

Well, I've decided I'm going to take a chance. I want to grow a business not wander in bureaucracy so I am looking to get involved with a startup that is currently dealing with VC Firms. I want that exposure and hopefully can make the jump one day. I've been hustling and making a lot of phone calls.

In my opinion, the future looks good. I'm working really hard, but I think I am getting some things done.

Ethics thoughts:

2008-01-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

all first year's in the BYU MBA Program have to take a course on ethics. The book I'm reading has some thought provoking questions at the end, so I thought I'd just type my answers to those here. I don't think I'll need them in class tomorrow, but maybe and this will help me remember.

Before did you think ethics was a fad? why/why not? Now? w/wn? No I didn't, there's been lot's of examples in the past of ethics being an issue. This brought some big ones to light that I hadn't thought of, but they were definitely there. Even Jesus being forced to be crucified was an ethical lapse (he wasn't guilty of anything and many knew it) of many leaders

I still don't think its a fad. Clearly at present there are problems and people's lives ruined in the last few years. I had never thought of good ethics before and I'm glad to see many are practicing that.
Have you been cynical about business & its leaders? w/wn? How does cynicism affect you as a business student? I've been cynical about many things based on this. I used to feel that way about democrats; I currently feel cynical about Shawn Hannity. I haven't been too worked about about business though. I consider people to be more sloppy than unethical. Unfortunately this book has proven that such slopiness can lead to unethical behavior.

I don't think it does affect me too much. I worry more about liking where I live and not working too many hours.
What if no consensus for what ethical behavior is? This is difficult, I learned that with other missionaries while I was serving in a very rule-less mission in Tokyo. I don't have a good answer here, I better pay attention tomorrow. This is really difficult because I tend to be conservative with what is ok and its hard when you see others doing things you want to, but feel its unethical for you to.
What's something legal but unethical or vice-versa? I've thought long and hard, and I've come up with a few ideas. The only I can think of is that lieing is in many situations legal (thought in many its not as well), but most the time it will be unethical.
What's a situation where the 'right' answer just wasn't obvious? I did some consulting on software I used at my main job. Some things I'd program would be needed by both organizations. Splitting time between the 2 wasn't real easy. So should I do the same work twice? Or be paid for 1 instance of work twice? Something else? My main employer was agreeable to doing outside work like this, so the consulting wasn't the dilemma and either answer probably could have been defended. Also it was encouraged to share work with organizations it was a strong community, so the 3rd options was to just do it at my main place of work and then share.
Should business ethic be taught? w/wn? I think going over scenarios has as much value as a case study. You experience the decision in the shoes of the person going through it. Making and analyzing decisions in a wide variety of scenarios will allow me to better understand the thought processes and impacts I should be concerned with.

This will help me to practice the 3 steps of: Moral awareness -> Moral Judgement -> Ethical Behavior. Many times I haven't even been aware I've been facing an ethical dilemma.

ideas working

2007-12-19T08:16:00.000-08:00

Well, my "Extra 30 Minutes" idea is working. I just finished my Minto Document for Communications MBA 505. Its on that book I wrote all the notes about and kept complaining about. I will upload the paper in a couple of days after finals have passed.

So it worked and I just gave that extra effort and got done with it. Now its 9Am and I have the whole day to do with as I please.

Interesting though, my fear of getting lazy didn't come true. The new fear is giving that extra 10% of effort that can have huge pay-offs.

Finance & Operations Finals are over

2007-12-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

Well I've done the operations and finance finals. They went pretty well, I definitely think I've done better on them than I did on the midterm. I have learned a couple of things about taking finals too. I guess "finals" are not going to be a large part of life, but I've got 3 more rounds of them after this week, so I better remember what I've learned.

First, for the finance final, I kept telling myself that I needed to study Beta. I'll bet I could have studied it in about 20 Minutes, but I just couldn't force myself to do it. Well, there was a lot of the test dedicated to Beta and I really regretted it afterwards.

Same thing with the test for operations class that I just got out of. I thought I needed to study some equations slightly more (I actually did ok with this) and a quick review on setting up multiple workstations (it would have taken 10 minutes) but I couldn't make myself do it.

Now I won't lose huge amounts of points, but it could have taken me from 85% to 90% I imagine. Its not that I was lazy, I did do a lot of study. Its that 30 more minutes of work could have given me a shot at acing those tests.

So the principle I learned is: Cover what you know you need to know. Don't fight the last few minutes of work.

Also, I studied like crazy and used the flash card program and it helped me to learn this stuff very detailedly. I need to make sure I do that in the future.

Ok 2 more tests, neither of which require much study and then I've got 1 semester done of my BYU MBA!!!!!!

Finals -- they're here :(

2007-12-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Well, finals have started. I've been studying finance with a Ademar, Steve B., and Victor every night this week. It's been kind of focusing on 1 subject and having a lot of jokes in between. Yesterday, I had to be home to sign for a package, so we all studied at my apartment and made some frozen pizzas while we studied.

All this studying has felt good in that I feel like I'm putting the necessary effort to become capable at this subject.

I also got up at about 7:30 this morning to go meet up with these guys to study operations/logistics. And now I'm back in my office typing up papers on Minto Readings (this is the communications final). I'm not worried about surviving until Thursday, I just hope I don't get lazy, I have that habit.

Well good luck to anyone that may be going though this. I recommend not being too lazy throughout the res of the semester and then the week before finals will probably be a little easier.

Elevator Statements (as taught at BYU MBA's Orientation)

2007-12-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

these are the instructions they gave us for elevator statements. Basically the advice is to get across "What is special about you?" - "What's special about me (my comp.)?" - "How do the 2 connect?"

Before this lecture, I thought they we're called elevator statements because it was like you were rising from no relationship to them being interested in you.

So here are the notes (remember after each are examples, don't feel tied to it):

Who am I? Hello, my name is ___________
Why am I talking to you? (Referral's Name) suggested that I speak to you.
What is my objective? I am interested in advancing my career in financial management
What are my strengths? I have 5 yrs. experience and will complete an MBA in finance in April. I have been effective in problem solving, collaboration, leadership, and increasing profit margins.
How did I achieve these strengths? I developed these skills in a variety of positions with XYX Corp. prior to my graduate program. In my MBA Program, I focused on corporate finance & financial analysis.
What are my passions? I enjoy working with a team to improve processes & solved difficult problems.
How do these apply to your company/industry/location (c/i/l)? I am confident in my abilities to assist an organization improve its financial processes, reduce costs, and achieve its cash flow objectives.
What do I want from you? I am especially interested (c/i/l ) and would like to learn more about finance operations within you (c/i/l).
Put it all together, reduce the # of I's used & rehearse it until it sound natural and unscripted.

Interviewing Challenges

2007-12-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

I'm doing some housekeeping to get a little organized for next semester and a little less stressed for finals.

I found some notes that I took during orientation on interviewing and thought I'd get them written down and then get this piece of paper thrown away.

Interviewing Challenges:

Smart & Wise
Confident but not arrogant
"Can I trust you with my clients?"
Prove you're worth the pay.
"Tell me about yourself" = "Tell me all the things about you that helps you with this job" (personal things are ok, but it needs to relate to the job)
Who? What? Where? When? How? --- you're not allowed to answer questions "yes/no"

I'm accountable now (and embarrased)

2007-12-08T00:08:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, I was talking with some fellow class-mates (Jeremy & Gabriel) and I got talking about an annoying comment someone put on my blog. Eventually this conversation was steered into my showing them this blog.

Before this instant, I hadn't let anyone know about "My BYU MBA Experience", and hadn't directly tied myself to it. I kept the secrecy because I don't want to have to put a lot of thought into my postings, but still want to record my thoughts (whatever they may be) Now I'm somewhat embarrassed because I often write about trivial, boring subjects.

So now that its tied to me, I guess I'll have to be a little more eloquent and a little more exciting...... well maybe, after all it is still My Blog & My Thoughts.
But at the same time, "you're work is your signature." So if this is going to be signed to me, I guess I'd better write something I feel is at least acceptable. (i.e. I thought this was pretty lame)

figured it out

2007-11-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

So I've often had a hard time focusing here. This MBA Stuff is actually pretty difficult. I'm learning Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, Communications, and Operations. All very different fields, and yet most the stuff I'm learning seems so applicable in so many areas, how do I choose?

The difficulty of a an MBA here at BYU is combined with the fact that I haven't really had respect for an MBA in general. I thought there was some value to it, but I just realized how much value that is. Before this, I'd heard lots of comments like, buy $1200 worth of books and you can know as much as an MBA. I guess that's still true, but the fact is you actually have to read those books!

So it is with an MBA. I've haven't been the most effective with this time at BYU. I've been learning, but real half-assed. When I think back I know quite a bit, but it is slowly slipping away because I'm not reviewing and look for applications.

I guess there is value in the credential of an MBA-- though that seems to be disputed a lot (especially by those who don't have one). But there is also a lot of knowledge that can be gained. To know gain as much as possible (and to know you have that knowledge) would truly be a waste of this 2 years (even more if you think an MBA is already a waste)

I don't know what its like at other schools, but my MBA at Brigham Young University is teaching me a lot.

don't waste it don't waste it don't waste it

So, marketing has a dull side

2007-11-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

At BYU, the first semester students are required to take MBA 550 Marketing Management. This year, the marketing professors are making us do a huge project that students didn't have to do in the past.

It involves ZMET, Laddering, and Ideal Customer Profiling. Last Tuesday, we went to Good Earth Foods to talk to employees about the type of customer that purchases the Solaray Brand.

We got some interesting results: Baby Boomer M/F. 18-30 year old males who are either trying or are in shape. And newly lactating mothers. :) I decided we wouldn't attempt to interview the last category.

Then on Saturday we went back to the store to contact some customers in these categories and see if we could set up some interviews. However, the number of us who returned Good Earth plummeted from 5 to 2. (it was understandable why that happened, but still annoying)

So 2 of use walked around Good Earth for 2 solid hours talking to customers. For the most part it was kind of intimidating-- kind of reminded me of being on my LDS Mission again. Adam came up with a good idea in that we said we could interview them at Good Earth so they knew we had permission and weren't just trying to steal phone numbers.

In the end, I was glad to be done with it all, but we made some good contacts and have some great insight to give back to Solaray.

You don't have to do a Field Study with a company like we're doing. We decided to do it this way because some of us need to build or marketing resumes a little bit more. (of course throughout the rest of my MBA at Brigham Young, I don't think I'll be this agressive about getting extra experience)

Listening Notes -- #4 --> Last Ones!

2007-11-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

Chapter #6 -- What we great listeners know as "Advanced Principles for total Listening" (I ad-libbed this a little)(trust me if you ever read this book, you'll need to do something to make sure you haven't died of the same insight over & over)
H Have a hearing checkup (I think this is the stupidest thing in this book, but apparently it is a problem and checkups are good.)
E Evaluate the Evidence
A Anticipate Key Points or Ideas
R Review Mentally

Evaluate the Evidence: Ask self questions like:

Am I getting definite example or generalities?
fact or opinion?
What the speakers point? What trying to prove?
Listen for what the facts add up to (not just the facts)
Also feedback and clarification is good to make sure you're getting the right message.
Also some people are liars, so ask for sources afterward. This is a good way to evaluate.

Anticipate Key Points

Try to figure out where speaker is going (you can do this cuz you think way faster then he/she speaks)
This also helps you focus way better on the message
Can make things a lot less boring.
Best way to take notes is just write down what's unknown to you. or a diff perspective.

Review Mentally

Mentally summarize what you hear.
What point is the speaker making? What are the key ideas? (do these steps repeat themselves?
Basically: identifying, organizing & recalling the key ideas.
Try to listen emphatically -- put self in others shoes.

Chapter #7 -- Listening between the lines
One body position could mean many things. You usually want 2 or 3 clustered visual cues before interpreting body language.

Chapter #8 -- Goals for Understanding

Do I listen to understand rather than spend the time preparing my next remakr?
before agreeing or disagreeing do I check to make sure I do understand what others mean?
do I try to summarize points of agreement or disagreement?
do try to ask questions that result in a more informative answer than yes/no?
try to eoncourage others to participate inthe discussion?
guard against assuming I know others eaning or feelings?
aware of others feelings when he/she expresses closeness/affecectoin?
when others feelings hurt respond with sensitivity?

the less the formal system of socialness is satisying to employees they are drawn to informal social channels and much less loyal to the organizzation.

Chapter #9 - Applying total listening techniques
For interviewing candidates, ask questions first before rambling on about selling them on joining the company. Make sure they fit.
for performance appraisal, remember people crave feedback and appreciation

type-A behaviors are more prone to heart-attaches. Here are some patterns (and as this MBA gets more stressful here at BYU, I know I'm falling into some of these)

always rushing & not listening
talking business while eating
talk too much and not listen to others (repeat)
being impatient w/others.
losing temper
showing hostility and always fighting.
hurrying others in their speaking
constantly interrupting

Well I've got to right the report with my study group now( they were smart and chose other books). I don't anticipate typing too much more out of this book.

get the employees trust

2007-11-16T23:21:00.000-08:00

In MBA 548 - Strategic Human Capital, Dr. Bingham showed some studies he's done at NuSkin and they lay-offs they've been having.

Apparently the finding they've had is that "surviving" employees of a downsizing event have good perceptions of the company if they trust the company. If they do not trust it, then employees have horrible perceptions of their employer (can someone say resume shopping is about to begin?)

So the key is, if you need to retain people after getting rid of some, you better treat those folk you get rid or right. This will help the survivors to trust you and hopefully stick around.

Listening Notes -- #3

2007-11-16T17:18:00.001-08:00

The book continues. Some of the suggestions are good, but this guy isn't a very good teacher.

Listening requires Energy, Concentration & Thinking (its hardwork)
Big secret to listening: Ask open ended questions that need detailed answers
Best way to understand people is to listen to them.

Chapter #3
Listening Pays

sales people who listen are more successful
listening to (getting to know) children is vital to good parenting.
trick to listening to presenters: Write it Down
Questioning, Taking Notes & Writing a report can help you remember 70% more from an oral presentation
So always be prepared to write something down (pen & paper by phone etc...)
good listners ask self questions like: what is the pattern or speaker's organization? Where is he going with this topic?
also outline what you're hearing. Diff ways to do this: chronological, analytical, order of importance, compare/contrast, problem/solution, numberical, alphabetical, & spatial.

Ch #4 - (63) Bad listening habits to avoid

daydreaming
facts-only listening - get speakers overall message not just minor tidbits
Poor Posture - make you not look engaged
Tuning out
emotionalism
faking attention :)
Obsessive not taking - you won't get it all, higlight the main points
Time Wasting - don't waste your listening time. You can listen faster than the speaker can speak so anticipate, evaluate & mentally summarize the speaker's points as you listen.
even keeping you desk clear can be a good way of elminating distrationc
do not play (fidget) with pens or other things when listening.

Chapter #5
L Look at the other person. (ie if not in eyes at least in hairline.
A Ask Questions - open ended is best (ask how someone feels people love to explain that)
D Don't Interrupt
D Don't change the subject
E Check your emotions (listen not judge) (also don't do the 1st 'd' and chime in with your emotions)
R Respond- nod, "uh huh", can ask questions to clarify what is said.

Sweet, I just got totally caught up. I think I'll finish the book this weekend. I look forward to being told about 20 more times how psychiatrists get paid so much money just to listen.

Sales man example (asking):
Faker: Sell me something in this room?
Seller: What would you like to buy?
Faker: Oh, I guess this ashtray
Seller: Why would you want to buy that ash tray?
Faker: Its new & shapely. Its colorful and also we're in a building and I don't want it to burn down so I want to accommodate my guests.
Seller: (instantly) How much would you pay for the ashtray?
Faker: Well its not and sturdy and attractive, I guess about 18 - $20.
Seller: I'll go ahead and let you have it for $18.
--- asking questions is a great way to sell.
closed ended questions: Who where & When, Did (I thought of this on my own)
open ended questions: What why & How

Reasons to ask questions: to get specific info or to learn opinions/feelings.

did ya learn anything with your BYU MBA? or just a lot of philosophy

2007-11-15T16:16:00.001-08:00

I have been very impressed with 'Kaizen' and 'JIT' and 'Lean' in our intro to operations class taught by Dr. Foster. I kind of make fun of the class and call it irrelevant, but really it is anything but.

The whole concept of inventory (all 3 types) being waste is very insightful. It took me a little while to come to terms with it. I also like the concept of how inventory has a way of masking problems.

I've been trying to think of ways that JIT and the Kanban approaches to production can apply to software development. If you write your code to be reusable, you only need to produce it once, so I don't think it really applies. However, if you system is passing messages to get different parts of the system to complete a task, it could apply there. It might even be better at balancing the load on your network if messages came in intervals instead of all at once followed by dead times. Bandwidth isn't hard to come by though, so maybe its not as big a deal. It is definitely easier to troubleshoot a problem for 10 messages as opposed to 1000 though so for maintenance purposes it could be better.

-----------
finally application of course materials and not my thoughts on how things are going.

BYU MBA Bloggers are diverse

2007-11-15T16:10:00.001-08:00

Wow, I was just looking at some of the other BYU MBA Blogs out there-- there's quite a few... and they're probably better. But they are also such thin blogs. Look at how many posts you get with mine! :)

Oh well, I guess I'll have to begin taking some pictures (1,000 words right?)

It really just goes to show that BYU MBA Students are quality! I had countless disappointments when I found out others interviewing for an internship I wanted-- I knew how good a person each of these individuals were.

Oh well, If you can't beat 'em join 'em right? Guess I'll have to learn from these other students and hopefully become pretty capable myself.

they apologized

2007-11-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm happy to report that what I wrote last time in http://my-byu-mba.blogspot.com/2007/11/weve-got-to-repect-professors.html has been taken care of. Dr. Whitlark said the students came up and apologized later and he said he really respected that-- courage like that is one of the reasons he likes BYU Students so much.

Dr. Whitlark has started a faculty fun-war between marketing and finance professors, so we here them tease each other a little bit. I think the students get in on that too much and make fun of our professor Dr. Grant McQueen too often. However, I'm not was worried about that because the professors shouldn't do it if the expectation is for us to not join in. I still don't very much, but if the faculty has a problem with it, I believe it in their power to stop it-- they got us into it in the first place.

Oh joy! BYU's MBA program is a lot of fun.

we've got to repect the professors

2007-11-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

So in a presentation I just saw some students give, the final slide tried to compare the pictures of Dr. Whitlark (an awesome marketing professor) and Freddy Krueger.

I think this was done in bad taste. Dr. Whitlark is very funny and jokes around a lot and we are getting to know many of our professors very well... but we should still have more respect for them than that. We're not really colleagues with them and joining in on their jokes when they tease each other is maybe beginning to go too far. I hope the MBA program at BYU doesn't get too childish.

I've been involved on some of these jokes, but I think I'll set them aside. These professors have been working with each other for years and its kind of rude for us to come in and poach their jokes.... worse it is extremely disrespectful of the professors.

Listening Notes -- #2

2007-11-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

Can you put yourself in the other person's shoes (8) <----- page number

Main objectives of communicating: 1 - Be deeply understanding of others 2 - be clearly understood 3 - be accepted by others 4 - to get action
Psychologists say fundamental human need = to be appreciated. Listening is 1 of highest forms of appreciation you can show another person. (10)
Listening is easier when you have a purpose. ie to: be an interested manager, obtain news/facts/other info., form an opinion, discover s.o.'s attitude, obtain feedback, be a friend.

CH-2
Characteristics of poor listerners (do I have some of these?) (yes)

always interrupts
jumps to conclusions
finishes my sentences
inattentive; wandering eyse
changes subject
writes e.t. down.
not give responses
impatient
loses tempor
fidgets

good listerns:

looks at me while I'm speaking
questions to clarify what I said
shows concerns through ?'s about my feelings
repeats me
not rush me
poised & emotionally controlled
reacts responsively (often w/ body language)
pays close attention
not interrupt me
keep on the subject til i've finished my thoughts.

questions to evaluate yourself with:

how do I see myself as a listener? be very specific
How do others see me?
Am I a willing listener? (not really)
am I easy to talk to
do I draw out opposite views to fully understand others' feelings?

Communicating Book

2007-11-09T20:38:00.000-08:00

For the MBA 505 course, we have to read a book that we choose on communication. The library offered my Learning Made Easy. It does not get the best review on Amazon, but I liked what the chapter headings said; as for the rest, only reading will tell if was good. (I'll put a book review on Amazon though if I like it otherwise they've already got it covered)

Anyway, I really do want to gain better listening skills and since this is a library book that I have to return in 3 weeks I thought I would keep a lot of notes on this blog. So that's what's under the "communication" theme.

------------------ The Notes Begin ------------------

Bad Listening caused by bad habits: listening only for facts, day dreaming, disliking the speaker, private planning, too much emotion, mental detours, debating, tuning out too soon.
Distractions: laziness, self-consciousness, even something like a toothache.
Listening is a huge tool for managers, you have to understand so much about your subordinates.
Practically impossible for Leadership is can't listen. (at least if its not by force)
Listening mean trying to see something the way the speaker sees it. Any other thoughts are distractions.

Marriott School's National Advisory Council (NAC)

2007-11-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

Thursday and Friday, the Marriott School hosted its National Advisory Council and all graduate students in the BYU Marriott School of Management's various programs got to participate.

I got to meet some pretty interesting people. Andrea Thomas who is high up at Wal-Mart and John Locke who is the CEO of Mrs. Fields cookies.

There was a keynote speaker at the dinner Thursday Night. I actually hate listening to speakers (and quite often professors), so for a while I just watched the clock. Finally it hit me that there were many respectable people in the room and if they were willing to be there and listen maybe I could glean some good insights as well. For the life of me, I cannot remember his name.

He spoke of how one learns new information:

Learn: What is it?
Understand: What does 'it' mean?
Believe: What does 'it' mean to me?
Application: With this new belief, understanding, and knowledge what am I going to do to bring it into my life?

Since Thursday, I have pondered these 4 steps/principals with special care to see if this would help me get more benefit from my MBA. I have decided that I have been looking for these steps for a very long time.

The fact is, I know a lot. Even more, I really try to understand why things are the way they are. From that point though, I let emotion take over: I don't want to listen to professors * I feel like other activities than studying * I want to be in shape but I don't feel like exercising. This list could get huge! And sadly, this list extends into spiritual feelings / beliefs and opposition trying to get me to ignore them. (ie: but I don't feel like going to church!)

So, I've got to take what I learned about Emotional Intelligence and and "short circuit" the emotions, make sure I can apply what I learn to my life (in this context career), and then make sure I'm doing that which I know benefits me and helps me to achieve my goals.

Step #1: Listen to the professors even if I'd rather be home sleeping.
Step #2: Analyze these case studies and pretend I'm really trying to make a business that is important to me great.
Step #3: Actually learn from the books and don't just do the busy work.

I feel like I'm learning a ton from the MBA Program. I'm also not getting good grades at all. Hopefully trying to build my own business on the principals I learn will help those marks increase; more importantly, hopefully those dreams I spoke of before will still be able to come true through applying the awesome business truths I'm learning as a BYU MBA student.

letter to friend researching MBA Programs

2007-10-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2007-10-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Stories to pitch Business

2007-09-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

So these are my notes on an article about using stories to pitch business. I thought there was good insight into other things taught at BYU so it should be a good post:

This quote from the Magazine Article is kind of relevant, its talking about how people know everything isn't perfect, so CEO's who try to say it is to get investors are just creating mistrust. I just thought it really applied to the gospel (Needs be that there is an opposite in all things, else we could not be happy). So I highlighted it: The great irony of existence is that what makes life worth living does not come from the rosy side. We would all rather be lotus-eaters, but life will not allow it. The energy to live comes from the dark side. It comes from everything that makes us suffer. As we struggle against these negative powers, we’re forced to live more deeply, more fully.

McKee. R. (June 2003). Storytelling that moves people. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 81. Issue 6, pp. 51-55

Gary Crittenden speech to BYU MBA

2007-09-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Gary Crittenden (CFO of Citigroup) spoke to the MBA Program. This guy had a lot of great advice, and while I've forgotten most of it, I wanted to write down 2 things that really sat well with me.

First, he said to make sure you exercise. He talked about the merits and life enjoyment that will come by doing it, but he also said that after work for Bain for about 6 months, he was actually told that he wouldn't get very far in the company if he kept 'porking up.' I haven't been running too much for the last 3 years-- Saturday Morning, I went running.

The best advice that I thought he gave referred to knowing what you're willing to work. He said, "Any job/company will take however much time you're willing to give it." So we need to set limits to make it home to the family and spend time with them. He said he always left by 11:59pm on Saturday so and reserved the whole Sunday for family and worship. I'm not worried about it right this second, but in the future, I need to decide what I'm willing to give to my employer or my own company. He did say that the more talented you are, the easier this is-- some companies may not be willing to accept your limits (so would you want to work for that company?)

BYU MBA #1

2007-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/65343

Reading it from Monday's Wall Street Journal was better than this article-- but since they aren't free online, you get this link. I actually think my reading it every morning at 6 AM made me the first person with relation to the Marriott School to know of this ranking.

It feels good!

I've got to do better about blogging -- sorry :)

finally an update of how school is:

2007-09-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

Wow, so it's kind of crazy to setup a blog for 2 months and then not write in it once the actual event you're blogging about begins.

I've finally been to each of my classes.... and hmmmmm what would I like to say I've learned. I learned quit a bit, but now I'm so inundated with homework and case-studies I've forgotten it all (quite ironic if you think about it)

I'm actually just going to leave it at that. Guess I'll have to work harder to pay attention in class.

its here!

2007-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

Well.................

SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW!!!! :)

I'm feeling pretty good-- full of anticipation. I'm way too tired already.

Interviews. Getting an MBA just made these harder!

2007-08-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Today, we've been doing mock interviews. I jut got out of one with a guy who has a ton of experience with some big named companies. His background is corporate strategy.

I just wanted to document some of the advice he gave me. It should be very helpful in the future.

There are going to be lots of questions (I can probably look a lot of them up) that I need to have general answers to:

Why BYU's MBA? Why an MBA?
Why now?
What would you like me to remember most about you? (this was his favorite question he said. He was glad I didn't just choke and give nothing, but I definitely needed a good answer to this question)
Why Marketing?
Where do you see yourself in 2.5 years?

He went on to say as a marketing major, I definitely needed to market myself confidently.

Man! I wish I could remember more of the interview. He said he really liked my answer about why I went to my undergraduate program and just said I needed to have my reasons memorized for the other pat-answer questions.

The fact is initially BYU was not my first choice, but then I fell in love with it. I don't need to tell them the first half of that story though, just tell them how I fell in love with it in the strategy class of Dr. Dyer's that I attended.

He also said that he thinks of the MBA as a 2 year business search and that the saddest thing to him is if someone either:
Does not know what they want to do at the end of that 2 years
or
Does know what they want to do, but did not gain the skills to get there.

I guess I know what I want, I'd better make it happen!

Also I observed an interview too and one question the interviewer asked that I liked was, "What are you doing to make sure you get your dream-job after you've completed the BYU MBA?"

My answer there? ------- Networking!!!!!

60-second 'Me' Elevator Pitch

2007-08-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today at orientation, we practiced a lot of our "job finding" skills: resumes, elevator statements, and interviews.

There was some fantastic advice handed out. I'm pretty sure I'll be talking about resumes in the future, so I just wanted to quickly jot down a good summary of Elevator Speeches when you're trying to get a recruiter to show interest in you for an internship / job.

You tell them:
What is Special about you?
What is Special about them?
How do the 2 connect?

Be confident but not arrogant. Its a great idea to show them you know about their company and like the idea of working with them (not just working with someone)

first day of orientation

2007-08-27T20:35:00.001-07:00

Well, I've made it through the first day of orientation. There are many things that I could talk about, but I think I'll go with one thing that Dr. Stice said. I've heard him touch on it before, but I think I caught his vision today in his opening speech.

He told the story of a recruiting trip to Mexico City and lady who traveled 9 hours by bus to see if she would be accepted to the MBA Program at BYU. He said that she had horrible English, and because of that she would probably never be in the seat of a class in the Marriott School.

He then went on to tell us that she probably wouldn't get that chance, but that she still paid tithing that gave us that chance. I think what Dr. Stice wanted us to take away from his speech is that tithing dollars are paying for our education and because of that we need to serve the saints upon our graduation and not get caught up in our own riches... which BYU will probably bring us. Also we need to learn everything we can so we can become the successful leader that the Marriott School's MBA Program is preparing us to be.

This chance is really going to open up some big doors for me. I must make sure I make the most of it and make the world a better place. Then the sacrifice of others will be worth it.

Moab Rafting trip - put on by BYU's MBAMA

2007-08-26T14:43:00.001-07:00

Well the MBA Student Rafting trip Moab is finished and all I can say is, "Wow!"

We had a great time and the association MBAMA put on a great trip (we got back yesterday). We did a lot of fun things and I definitely feel comfortable with Orientation Beginning tomorrow. I now suggest to anyone that sometime in their life they need to take a hummer tour in Moab, UT.

The real benefit (besides the Stress Relieving Fun) was (as I always seem to say) the Networking. A few Alumni attended and we got the chance to meet them and hear about the companies they work for. Also, they gave us their contact information and if anyone wants to apply to their companies, we already know where to send the resume.

I can't think of a better introduction to BYU's MBA Program than attending this trip. I hope everyone signs up for it next year. I think my attendance will pay great dividends with the Alumni, Recruiters, Classmates, and Faculty that I was able to meet on this trip.