tired?

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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.