Week 8 - Online MBA

     Having an online MBA has definitely helped me. I am a supply chain consultant so I travel a lot. I could be out of town for the whole week. Sometimes a problem happens with my client and I need to travel without much notice. With this kind of travel, attending a traditional in-class MBA would be very difficult for me. Online courses give me more flexibility in completing my course work which is great for my mental health. It is also great for physical health with COVID. I am thankful I did not have to sit in a room with many people who could be sick.

    I am also a very visual person. I noticed that online courses have a lot more visual aids than in-class courses so that is great for how I learn. I understand that not everyone learns this way. Back in my undergraduate days, I had a few online classes. I did struggle during those, but they were required classes that had nothing to do with my major. With all these MBA classes, I really want to learn the material, so the classes being online does not hinder me.

Week 8 - Surfing the Tsunami

    Previously in my blogs, I've discussed how to adapt, adopt, and become and adept in AI. If you are still a little intimidated about learning Artificial Intelligence, then have no worry. Getting in the habit of frequently reading news will help you adopt AI. Trying out different platforms and sites will help you adopt AI. There are plenty of resources online to help you learn to become an adept.

    

There are a plethora of books available online. Rise of Robots and Master Algorithm are great books to start with. MIT has a series called Essential Learning that will introduce you to machine learning. Coursera offers free classes in computer science and coding. You could also opt to pay a premium to earn course certificates. You should also try to find courses or bootcamps in your area.

    

Week 8 - Guerilla Marketing

    I've discussed various methods and techniques on how to have an effective guerilla marketing campaign. But how do you know which method or technique to actually use? Knowing the difference can save you a lot of money in preventing needless mistake. Research is incredibly important in understanding your customer base and what they want. Even if that research costs money from a research company, that research can be leveraged to prevent marketing mistakes and gain even more sales. Think of paid research as an investment.

 

   There are four common methods to conducting research. if you want to know more about your customer, the best person to ask is your customer. That is why having a spreadsheet of customer contact information is so important. Once you have an established customer base, send them a questionnaire to fill out with questions pertinent to your market and product. You can also send out a similar questionnaire to prospective customer by offering them discounts if they complete the survey. The most obvious method is the Internet, with its almost infinite knowledge. Be familiar with how to fully utilize search engines, and you can gain valuable information on your market and its customer base. Just be sure to look at the quality and source of the information.

Week 7 - Ascend Your Start-Up

    After you have been successful for long enough, you will begin to form a large company with global reach. With so many people working for your organization, everyone working together as one is important. Culture establishes what your organization and your employees stand for. It gives everyone a common person and view. It allows your employees to view themselves as a team and collaborate with each other.

    But how can we establish a collaborative culture? It starts with being inclusive of everyone. Your employees need to feel valued and able to speak their thoughts. Culture is not only affected by your employees. Investors also have an impact on your business, and thus your business's culture. Be sure to align yourself with investors who share your cultural vision and have a good track record with their decisions. As the leader of the company, you also lead the culture. Leaders need to clearly state the company's values and views and stand by them. You will need to be willing to trust others to enable growth and encourage innovation.

Week 7 - Surfing the Tsunami

    Last week on my blog, I talked about becoming an adept in AI. There are many avenues you can utilize to learn AI. Let's now learn about some of the people who have advanced AI to what it is today. Thanks to Andrew Ng, learning AI is easier than ever. He started the “MOOC” revolution (Massively Open Online Courses) when he co-founded Coursera. His online courses on machine learning are still popular and influential.

    He is not the only leader in AI. Machine learning and AI has a large community that is still growing. Geoffrey Hinton has more progress in having algorithms learn like a human brain does. Pedro Domingos excels at explaining the concepts and opportunities of machine learning. Fei Fei Li is a leader in computers using visuals applications such as image identification and self-driving cars.

Week 7 - Guerilla Marketing

     Guerilla marketing is more about using creativity and energy, rather than using money. However, marketing still costs money. This can be difficult for small businesses who cannot throw around the cash for large advertisements spots. However, there are ways to save your hard-earned money when it comes to marketing. The most money-efficient way to advertise is by going to an advertising agency. These agencies usually get a 15% discount on any advertising spot. That 15% that is saved will be their commission. Since you'll be paying the same amount of money, you might as well also pay for the expertise of an agency to help you. You can even make your own in-house advertising agency to get this discount.

    The prices for adverting spots are highly negotiable. If advertising time is not sold, then it is wasted. That means radio and television companies need to sell their advertising or risk losing money. This means that are very open to lowering prices. You can also make a per inquiry (PI) or per order (PO) deal. That means you pay nothing for the cost of the advertisement. Instead, the radio or television company will get a certain dollar amount for every query or order that is made from the advertisement. This option is great if you are having difficulties with cash flow.

Week 6 - Ascend Your Start-Up

    In my last few blogs, I talked about setting your start-up for success with a minimum viable product, minimum viable team, and working on any disconnects your business might have. But how can we know we are successful? We must establish processes that are repeatable and measures that are observable. This will help establish accountability and alignment in your organization, which are two characteristics that all top-performing companies have. Processes and measures will help you establish a clear roadmap to sucess and let you know if you are on the right track.

    Growing your business will mean that you will have several different departments and many employees. Managing operations will become increasingly difficult which is why accountability and measures are so important. The best way to create accountability is to set up Objective and Key results (OKRs). These objectives should be essential to your success as a business. For example, customer satisfaction is what sets you apart from your competition, so you decide to maintain high levels of customer satisfacti0on. This will be your OKR. each department must have their own objective to contribute towards customer satisfaction. Customer service be measured on customer retention rate. Quality Assurance will be measured on preventing customer complaints. Human Resources will be measured on employee retention rate. Combine all of these measures and you will be able to gauge if your business is still on the path to success. 

References

Yu, Helen. (2021). Ascend your start-up. Made for Success Publishing.

Week 6 - Guerilla Marketing: Methods

    Guerilla marketing is not about spending a bunch of money to hit all avenues of media. It requires creativity and energy to engage your audience. The different method of marketing have their strengths and weaknesses. It is vital for you to decide which method to use. News paper is best for telling loud, succinct news. Magazine ads are great for conveying both emotion and information. Television is perfect for demonstrating the product, which is not possible through printed images and words.

    Then there is the goliath that is the internet. This method includes webpages, email, blogs, videos, and more. Your webpage is perfect for not only showing off your product, but also your entire business. Just make sure to achieve your main goal of the website: have the customer order your product. Blogs allows you to talk greatly in depth about your product. Email allows you to reach directly out to your audience provided that you have acquired your customers' contact information. With the internet, continually engaging your audience is easier and more effective than ever.

Week 6 - Surfing the Tsunami: Adept

     On my previous blogs, I talked about adapting to AI which means to utilize software and platforms to grow your business. The next step it to adopt AI to grow your business further and create new jobs. The last step is to become an adept of AI. This step is the best way for you leverage AI for your company. Becoming an adept means learning coding and how AI works with data and getting involved with developing AI.

    

    But how can we become an adept at something as complicated as AI? Luckily as technology advances, so too does it become easier to learn. As something become more prevalent, there are more tools to learn about it. As AI grows, more and more programs and tools have been made to understand the giant that is AI. For example, DataRobot allows businesses to use AI and machine learning even if employees have little experience. Google and IBM have assistive platforms that let you use AI in an easy-to-understand way. The internet is also abundant with videos and games to learning machine learning and coding.

References

Kelsey, Todd. (2018). Surfing the tsunami.  

Week 5 - Ascend Your Start-Up

     When it comes to mountain climbing stories, we've all heard of the term acclimating to the weather. The climbers need to adapt to the new environment. So too must business acclimate to their customers. This mean to solve the Customer Voice Disconnect. Customer are more than willing to voice their opinions. It is the duty of the business owner to sift through these opinions and find the important information on how to improve the business.

    How can we interpret the customers' words to find out what they really want? To do this, the business owner must stay close to their customers who are invested in the product and have been offering advice along the way. These customers have been loyal and know what they are talking about. The business owner needs to step out from the curtain and interact with these customers. The owner needs to listen to not only praise, but customer concerns. These concerns will help identify the root cause of the business issues which is what a business owner needs to focus on to improve their business.

Week 5 - Guerilla Marketing

    My last blog entries talked about creating a marketing strategy and the importance of sticking to the strategy. The only thing left to do is act upon that strategy. There are sevens steps to consider to ensure this important strategy is a successful one. The first step is to identify the special aspect your product or service is offering. This will help differentiate your product from all the others and convince your customers to buy your product.

    The next step is to take that special something and translate that into a benefit for your customers to focus on. The third step is to state this benefit in a clear and easily untestable way. even with this benefit, you need to grab people's attention. The fourth step relies on you grabbing people's attention in an interesting way. But keep in mind too not focus too much on being interesting because you also need to be informative about your product's benefits. You then need to call your customers into action whether that be going to a store, visiting a website, or calling a number. As stated before, you need to have a clear message. This step includes making sure your customers have received the clear message and there is no misunderstanding. The last step is to measure the customer traffic. How many saw your ads and how many actually visited the store and went to your website? You can use these measures to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. If there is not enough traffic, you will need to revisit the previous steps and see where you can improve.

Week 5 - Surfing the Tsunami: Adopt AI

    Last week I discussed adapting to AI which is a good start when it comes to responding to AI. An even better response is to adopt AI. The adoption of AI consists of, not only using AI related tools and platforms, but also being involved in AI management. An argument can be made to be resist AI since it can reduce the number of available jobs and threaten the safety of personal data. However, to reject AI, means to reject progress which never works out well.

    I think a good way to learn to adopt new technology is to simply look around us. AI and machine learning is already heavily incorporated in ecommerce. It's difficult to be completely AI-independent since a lot of websites and technology we use already use AI, even if we do not realize this. It also helps to realize adopting AI does not mean to give up on your own employees. Instead, adopting AI allows you to incorporate it into your business to redefine your workforce and sustain your business. If you do not adopt AI, you can fall behind which means you might have to let people go. On the other hand, if you adopt AI, you can grow the business and hire even more people. AI is here to stay. rejecting AI is simply not good enough. But adopting AI will put you in the forefront of managing it.