Curious notes

time orientation

2011-01-04T17:14:00.001+01:00

Love both idea and the graphics!

health and sales

2010-11-16T08:52:00.001+01:00

I love the idea both for healthy food promotion and sales increase!

Lunch Line Redesign by the New York Times.

great presentation

2010-09-13T12:24:00.001+02:00

STEAL THIS PRESENTATION!

View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.

sharp object

2010-09-02T12:01:00.001+02:00

Thanx to Mieko Saito, my MBA classmate.

how to delight

2010-08-10T14:16:00.000+02:00

Designing for delight (Giles Colborne)

View more presentations from cxpartners.

How to Find Your Passionate Work

2010-04-07T09:25:00.000+02:00

Following are some exercises to help you finding what is your passion in life and how can you develop it.

1. Go through magazines, brochures and newspapers and cut out any images, photos and words that inspire you. Make a collage, and see what main subjects are reflected.

2. In a middle of an empty page write the most important value for you in your work. Write other values that excite you and connect them to the ones listed thus far. Once you have finished, look at the relationships between the words and discover the message in relation to your vision.

3. Ask yourself the following questions:

a. What do you do that is natural, easy and effortless?
b. What activities put you in the flow, that place where you get energized and lose track of time and space?
c. How would you complete this sentence: I love it when I know my day will include:...

Once you have completed these three steps you hold a map for your heart's desires. You've found what excites you, the values that are important for you as well as your strengths and talents.

Now sit down and make a list of all the possible jobs that can include the contents of this map. Be creative and even invent new positions, or new jobs. Don't limit yourself to reasonable solutions.

Allow yourself to dream and pursue the unknown, all that lies beyond your comfort zone and limitations.

Take as much time as you need and have fun with it.

Positive monday booster from Vered Neta

consulting activities

2010-04-07T08:22:00.006+02:00

I have some great news, guys.

Something happened to me that I decided to add some new activities to my common business. As you may know, I'm a marketing progect leader in Russian distribution company and a marketing lecturer in Ryazan University.

After my MBA boost of my entrepreneurial spirit I had a lot of doubts and thinking about own business. It took me 2 years to pay the debts after my study - and now I'm feeling like having a freedom to organize something myself.

First is the product project. We have a great idea and a clear vision how to build distribution. Need some personal finance to be invested, at least at a trial stage. The project is offline, but requires some online activity and refers to my personal interests to healthy life and professional connection in stationery business.

The second project started 2 weeks ago when I joined my family business. There's a group of smart people who know spanish real estate market. They are great in finding the place and good to communicate with people willing to buy it. The process is smooth, my task is to build communications and help improving client's inflow. Since they really know what they're doing, I'm happy to join them. This is #1 priority by now.

The third one is about buying a share of the business. I love the idea of business library connected to a network. And it is about micro-investment so I suppose it a good step to own business experience. Meeting the entrepreneur this or next weekend.

The last but not the least involves some abroad activities. This weekend we're meeting with a friend of mine to develop the business model and communication for yoga community.

Perfect. All the projects require my professional skills and refer to my personal interests. Abroad activities (love both places), markcomm, health, networks and media.

Feeling like openning a box of Godiva chocolate for the first time!

Doing the Work That You Love

2010-04-07T08:16:00.001+02:00

So many people are sitting and hoping that someone else will make them happy. That their boss will give them a raise, that their company would make their job more interesting, that their kids would be nicer and behave better so they would be happier, that their husband or lover would make them feel good.

This is a childish behavior and even worse it puts you into the position of a victim. It’s time you take charge on your own life.

As a child, I remember my father, sitting in his room, surrounded by his books, writing.
His work was his love. Later in his life, when most people have retired, he was up early in the morning, busy with his work. It gave him, both a meaning to life and kept him young.

My mother never liked her teaching job, although she was very successful. She retired early and kept searching for satisfaction, without success. She became bitter and sad.

Until today I cherish the lesson I learned from them: Find a job that is your hobby, your art.
As children we all wanted to be somebody. A fireman, a pilot, an artist. As we grew up, we realized that our job must also pay our financial and social bills.

So we sold our passion and love for stability and security. We rationalize by saying that 'work is work', and pleasure will come later.

But does it?
When was the last time you found the time and energy to do the things that you really care for?

What if your work could follow your heart's desire? What if you could really do what you love to do?

Finding it might be difficult, as we have lost touch with what we enjoy most. It has been too long since we have given ourselves the chance to connect to it.

So, how about taking some time off and instead of complaining about your job, start searching what it is that you love doing. Find out what is it that you are good at, where your talents lie and what comes both naturally and easily to you.

Recall childhood activities that you once loved. Become aware of the situations that bring out the best in you.
Discover what values are important to you and what you would like to see manifested in your work.

Once you have created a framework for those activities, talents and abilities, in which you excel (as well as those values that you wish to express in your work), start investigating what sort of work expresses them to their fullest potential.

Allow yourself to be creative; don't dwell in the area of "sensibilities". Allow yourself to be open; as opposed to reasoning everything.

Communicate to the world the type of work you wish to have. You will be surprised at how much support you will receive, once you clarify your wishes.

When you do the work you love, it becomes easy and effortless, because work becomes a source of energy rather than a drain. You continuously grow and develop while creating for yourself a space of love and friendship. You tap into your creativity therefore remaining young and alive.

So how about making your hobby your work?!

Positive Monday Booster by Vered Neta

networking month

2010-03-31T20:42:00.004+02:00

March was full of networking. First I met my ex-colleague for a quick dinner chat, it turned out to have a business interest as a motive to meet. Then I had a very productive breackfast followed by networking conference. Finally, today I attended business breakfast organized by Zubry community.

Here are my notes from today's event.

1. Networking is not only about business. Networking is about connections. I saw a lot of business today. I heard a lot of advertising. People were missing. Just imagine a breakfast with advertising posters - this is what I had today. Well, almost. I've got 1,5 personal connections. One is a great girl too busy to pursue her dream activities. And a half is a guy who can be interesting, but too proud of himself.

We're in business 24/7. What I expect from a business connection is to be a little more personal.

2. Networking is about care of relationship. And relationship means that more than one person is involved. Having in mind own interest care about the other party. People need to concentrate on listening. What's in it for me is good. But being combined with what can I give to the person is a weapon.

3. Networking is about being natural. Leave professional as a filter to check incoming/outcoming information. And that's it. Nobody wants to have breakfast with a classified ad. Nobody wants to connect to a marketing manual.

Marketing Triumph ingredients

2009-08-26T09:54:00.009+02:00

The biggest marketing mistake I've made by now is beleiving I can make people moving just because I have a great idea. Not to humiliate personal skills and abilities, it is impossible to be the only marketing and innovation drive.

But it is possible to break the rules. The team, not the only person can make it. And for a leader - think out a set of actions, create a reasonable budget, get personnel, create a team (put teambuilding and educational expenses into the budget and use it) and set the market on fire.

To succeed, you need three components. Clarity of the mind + Team + Budget = Marketing Triumph.

Loose budget means lots of plans and weak implementation.
Weak team means you will abandon most of the plans' implementation due to the lack of time and efficiency.
Blurred mind means money spent for no purpose.

Clarity of the mind + Team + Budget = Marketing Triumph. Shake well. Enjoy.

Took me 1 year to find the recipy.

clarification

2009-08-12T11:37:00.003+02:00

I've been reading How to Innovate With Less Management tips and stopped at one phrase.

# Skip the business plan. Focus on making the idea happen, not planning every detail.

The idea might be perceived as shocking. But it isn't if we clarify one point. No detail digging is needed unles the whole structure is vague. Sometimes it is ok just to have the idea outline and the digging is unnecessary. And the digging itself without directions may be a waste of time.

todo

2009-07-27T12:54:00.002+02:00

Just added two feed at my netvibes and now I'm full of todo lists and thrilled to find an answer how to stop worrying and start implementing all my plans.

One more article from John Baldoni To Lead More Effectively, Increase Your Self-Confidence.

From time to time I need to ask myself a couple of questions to boost my self-confidence. Here they are from the mentioned article.

What do you do well?
What have you done to earn the trust of others?

I omit the second question from the article (Why should people follow you?) cause I'm rarely thinking for the whole team, concentrating on personal issues. May be the ability to create the followership defines a leader? Anyway, I decided to concentrate on processes I'm managing. Well, human resources are the part of the process, so are the clients, that makes followership being vital for me.

#100 post

2009-07-27T12:15:00.004+02:00

...is full of quotes from articles mentioned in previous post.

Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning.

It's hard to do because maybe, just maybe, that next piece of information will be the key to our success. But our success actually hinges on the opposite: on our willingness to risk missing some information. Because trying to focus on it all is a risk in itself. We'll exhaust ourselves.

The world is changing fast and if we don't stay focused on the road ahead, resisting the distractions that, while tempting, are, well, distracting, then we increase the chances of a crash.

Now is a good time to pause, prioritize, and focus. Make two lists:

List 1: Your Focus List (the road ahead)

What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What's important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can't work 25/8.

List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)

To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn't make you happy? What's not important to you? What gets in the way?

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day
Ritual is a secret power to manage one's life.

Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That's not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful.
Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

Make Your Place Proud of You.

"Do not let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do." The words are those of John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. When attempting to do anything new, voices inside us will whisper "No, don't do it." Those who give up listen to such voices; those who persevere pay them no heed. When it comes to making big and bold changes, either in our lives or our careers, there will always be those around us telling us no; it is up to us to heed our own inner yes.

"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives," said Abraham Lincoln. "I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

love it

2009-07-27T12:05:00.004+02:00

I've discovered a wonderful source of knowledge recently. It has started with Managerial tip of a day from HBR and now I'm in blogs, reading all the stuff I need to read in order to calm myself.

Here are the links to articles I've just gone through and I'm about to enjoy by reading thourougly:
- Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning.
- An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day
- Make Your Place Proud of You.

These are topics I've been thinking for a while recently. Hoping to find some hints.

PS. Good sign that I've started thinking in English again.

HBR's

2009-07-07T12:02:00.002+02:00

I love the way Harvard Business Review promotes its products - The management tip of the day with all the lnks to related topic's products.

I've got this thru twitter's @ManagementTip which is an extremely simple way to get info.

2009-06-27T15:32:00.002+02:00

I´ve been reading an article about peer pressure as a part of motivation process (tried to found a link in my rss-reader and failed - that is a sign for me - I have lot's of them) and realized about myself that I'm totally peer-leaded person. If I have a wonderful team to be ready for process and changes - and I can show great results. Being put into a team of crying losers I tend to get nervous and loose in effectiveness. May be I'm wrong perceiving myself as a proactive person?

Well, the line between being just lazy (reactive) or just careful not to have wrong map and trying to create something beautiful in a really creepy environment. The only thing I know for sure - if I made a decision to be here, I'd be proactive.

2009-05-19T09:38:00.000+02:00

Observe the 1-9-90 rule. This new rule, pioneered by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li in their seminal book Groundswell, is quickly becoming a standard: 1% of your population will create content, 9% will comment or engage with it, and 90% will just browse. Voyeurs rule the online world, so keep this in mind.

10 tips for building brand communities

creative

2009-01-25T20:40:00.002+01:00

Fabulous!

Revlon reminescence

2009-01-21T12:42:00.002+01:00

What marketers sell is hope.

By Seth Godin.

bad bosses' classes

2009-01-15T09:25:00.002+01:00

I'm now in reading deeply to compensate the reality imperfet conditions by ideas of how grat this reality can be and what should i do to change it. This is very much aboout Covi's book. And from ChangingMinds I've got a good article.

1. A bad boss can be a walking textbook on behavioral psychology. Working with a bad boss is your golden chance to learn the "do's and don'ts" of management. In all probability you can learn more about people management working with a bad boss in six months time than working with a good boss for five years.
2. Bad bosses help you learn harsh realities of human nature and make you better prepared in life's countless encounters. You swim better when you learn swimming in a rough river or sea, rather than in a calm swimming pool.
3. Every growl, rude remark, goof up, threat, cover up, charm switching, etc., can be a good lesson that is going to pay rich dividends to you at a later stage. They help you become a better manager at a later stage, because you will now have a rich experience in the pitfalls of bad management. It helps you to instantly remember and avoid the wrong things when faced with similar or equivalent situations.
4. And bad bosses help you in many other ways if you study their lives carefully. For example, it will help you understand how and why many employees erupt like a volcano at home due to work related problems.
5. Worldwide many ordinary people have become great leaders because they were subject to various degrees of insults or extreme forms of harassment by someone. So, directly or indirectly, every great leader will have to thank their tormentors for their current greatness. Similarly it can also perhaps make you great someday.

This is more self-comforting. I prohibited myself to complain about the work situation until I do the most I can. And the goal is to implement all my projects to be proud when leaving for a better company or for my own business.

2008-12-20T08:25:00.001+01:00

I really like the straihtforward message of the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTFNPHb71Z4

consistency

2008-12-15T07:20:00.000+01:00

People have a deep need for consistency, and when they do something they need to have consistency and alignment between their actions and their beliefs. When there is inconsistency, they must either change what they are doing or what they belief in order to restore consistency. If they have already started doing something, then they cannot change what has been done, so they must change what they believe, particularly 'Why I am doing this'.

Source

advice vs implementation

2008-12-11T12:12:00.004+01:00

I can see the same pattern in behavior of any business that seeks for a consultant advice - they all whant to know what to do and they all want to do nothing with that.

Consultancy companies provide the solution - implementation part is up to the client. And the very implrementation part makes the difference between a successful company and a loser.

Well, I vote for implementation. Still having the consultant career in mind.

Sequence

2008-11-26T10:26:00.002+01:00

Normal: Product - Promotion
If you want to include a product into catalogue, first ensure that you know the product, the supplier, the terms.

Preverse: Promotion - Product.
A company decides to act like others and includes first positions into catalogue without thinking out the supplier and terms. Result - a holy crap for communication dept to find pics, and then for buying dept to find this f#$king supplier... In the end clients want the damned product and the company still doesn't have it.

The preverse scheme occures when the CEO wants something to be included and other depts (sales, buyers) don't want to loose their time for preparation. When a smart decision comes - to make a last step to push others to act.

As to me I hate this reverse logic. Especially when I'm the last step executor.

2008-11-05T12:33:00.000+01:00

Seth Godin on expensive logos:

I guess the punchline is: take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

Key lessons for marketing in a recession

2008-10-22T13:47:00.003+02:00

Coachie has written a list of notes from a report "Key lessons for marketing in a recession".

I can't say I agree in full, there are some typical marketing self-esteem lies to approve marketing existence. But for sure I agree that companies which cut marketing budgets are long term marketing losers. It was always easier and cheaper to maintain customer relationship rather than building them from scratch.

And of course, crisis is a great time to search for an opportunity and to use new alternative media which is cheaper than traditional one.

crisis behavior strategy

2008-10-13T12:44:00.004+02:00

It's almost official - we're in crisis. At least now we can feel it by reconsidering payment periods for our clients, managing cashflows and thinking out our future possibilities in terms of both personal salaries and marketing budgets.

Now we have several possible behavioral patterns.
1. Making efforts to act if there's no crisis at all. Painfull and we're not sure if we have enough resources.
2. Doing nothing hoping to survive somehow until better time.
3. Reconsider our marketing policy, take our time to create all we can create by ourselves, communicate with our clients, choose strategy to do our best in terms of maket activity without spending much money - and get it all when economics gets out of recession.

We can use low-cost marketing still to ensure our clients to get enough attention.
We do.

2008-10-10T10:40:00.002+02:00

One can't be a good marketer if his/her efforts are in product/client area only. The main product for a marketer is himself/herself. Self-branding is extremely important to a marketer.

I've heard from a collegue of mine that one of marketing gure started his seminar with a statement that he doesn't care about self advertising - his clients are the world-of-mouth channel. But to me this was a bit arrogant to say - very self-important and nothing about the audience.

The good example for me is Igor Mann with is slightly out of reality "I love all" image - he provides with a serious content without this burde of self-importance.

It is very important to show self-importance without showing it heavily.

marketer vs director

2008-09-19T09:13:00.002+02:00

You can do most things alone. I can do, at least. But marketing goes beyond individual work. YOu can be a good analyst, you can have a good sense of what you need to do, but to have solid results, you need to have a marketing team.

Now I'm in a big project of creating the system of client's business improvement to establish long term win-win relationships. A mix of marketing, consulting and analysis tools. But to perform well I need a solid base of marketing support - and I can't do this alone.

Here is a problem. We have one marketer who doesn't think strategically. The only perspective he can get is his own interest, the more short term the better. WIth all that he thinks it is normal to interrupt other processes with his opinion. In most cases he is a pain in the ass.

My first move was to kick him out. If I start anti-promotion, soon or later I hit the goal. But before doing this I decided to provide him with some tools to improve his behavior. Before kicking out it is always better to find a way to fit the employee to ideal system.

Here we are - just making a step from sole marketing executor to a strategical thinker.

presentation

2008-09-15T12:43:00.001+02:00

http://www.slideshare.net/ethos3/storytelling-101?type=powerpoint

i like the idea and the structure, although the whole appearance is not close to russian presentation style

promises

2008-09-04T10:04:00.004+02:00

Am I totally wrong being against the practice of producers of putting advertizing of products which are not included in the catalog?

My perspective is the following:
- We put advertizing with the product which is not included in the assortment of a company.
- The customer sees it, wants it, asks it.
- We can't provide the customer with the desired product.
- The client needs to search another way to get the product.
- The client is disappointed by the company.

salestaff motivation

2008-08-27T11:03:00.003+02:00

I'm having a chat with my client now aboput sales staff motivation. It is normal for sales people to claim for more clients and more clients' satisfaction. Normally sales compensation is a percentage of sales to motivate people sell more and to give the opportunity to be paid on the basis of their efforts. Well, I understand that effort doesn't mean sale or result, but th classical payment system is more or less adequate.

What do we have now in Russia? The only lesson on career build-up process young graduates know is to get a good payment. They've been told that companies have money, that salaries are high and the higher starting salary is the better for you - you will get dramatical rise only if you change a job. Which is true in most cases.

But for fix salaries.

Young sales people here in Russia normally ask for high fix salary. Which means that they don't want to work. And that is not the right person for a salesteam.

motivation

2008-08-01T10:10:00.002+02:00

I beleive that people are better managed by premiums rather than by fines. Especially this is true to me - I hate being paid less than I expected.

i like it

2008-07-29T11:09:00.002+02:00

We have a bonus collecting system called Mnogo.ru. If you buy with their partners, you receive virtual bonuses you can convert to gifts (provided by partners). The more you collect the more you can get. I use this occasionaly collecting bonuses for buying books with boffo.ru and paying for mobile services and transform them into aeroflot miles to get free ticket.

So, Mnogo.ru has a promotional quizes. You can pass it, receive 20-50 bonuses (the prizes cost more - 800 bonuses for DVD, 1050 bonuses for a jar of coffee)and if you pass it successfully, you can try to get a prize from a partner. So, typical staff - answering simple questionary, you get your bonuses and think for a couple of times about Mnogo.ru itself and its partner.

But let's look deeply. The questions are posted in a way you can easily get an answer (with a link provided to a site you can check info). And that is a great trick - if you can easily increase your chances for grand-prix, you most probably will go for it and check. And get more information about the company.

E.g. What is the price for a model XXX (link to a model)? Of course, you will realize that the price is low and will have more incentives to buy the product.

Or: what is the color of a t-shirt XXX (item nr) at a website (link). You will go, see a t-shirt and may be continue browsing the catalog.

And all it for 2.5% of a DVD!!!

I like it!

FF 3.0

2008-07-26T19:16:00.003+02:00

I'm crazy about FireFx 3.0. It is perfect. With one excepton. Del.icio.us buttons don't work although the opposite is said at help part.

I hate two things (at the moment). When I need to change my habits. And when the promised thing isn't true.

Upd. Mea culpa. It works. But in a different way. Now I have my post button again. What a relief!

attention, please

2008-07-09T05:48:00.003+02:00

Last saturday I came from th business trip. I had 6 meetings within 2 days to get known to our clients and collect their impressions about our program (just to check if they need it). During those meeting I made some notes about not only words I heard, but also about the things the CEO's like. E.g. I know that one of the clients loves Eastern culture (katanas on the wall, expensive herbal tea, china on the shelves). I know that another CEO has little space in her study, but crazy about small girlish souvenirs. To know your client better you need just to open your eyes.

One more thing. Durng all the meetings before I leave, I used to give a 'free advice' - if the company just started planning website creation process, I provided them a link to a good newsletter about the components of the project. Another company received a hint to read a very useful book about 'micromarketing' - cheap basic steps anyone needs to implement if (s)he wants results without big investment.

Just open your eyes. And be eager to know your client better.

visualization

2008-07-01T13:59:00.002+02:00

It is very hard to sell a service idea. It is easily to sell the thing behind the idea.

Compare:

Our program includes a consulting service to optimize your business.

to:

During our program after carefull analysis you will receive the recommendation pack and visual communication templates kit (website to be customized, presentation and information letter template) which can increase your communication level and sales ability if you use this.

And to:

You will have a website* for free and a draft of your sales presentation. It will increase your rewvenue and will cost nothing.

* we haven't mention that a website will be slightly customized (colors, fonts, size, logo) from universal template and will cost little to the provider company.

That's why educational programs sell books and CDs with information. That's why hospital has VIP rooms. Extra profit for visualization. People want to pay more for what they can see and touch. Much more than this costs.

resources

2008-06-30T19:04:00.003+02:00

It is not funny when people plan to do something without relevance check. With existing resources. You know, I would be happy to provide my clients with templates of website for their own use - but only if my website works correctly. If not, don't bother me with trying to promise. Until I get a resource to do it to myself, how I can propose this to my clients???
Ok, I have a resource to adjust, to customize, but do I have a resource to create a template base for adjustion?

motivation

2008-06-25T09:34:00.002+02:00

It is very trendy to speak about non-money motivation for manager. Something like managers value better groth possibilities, recognition etc.

All mentioned above makes a real difference between a good hr program and a not-so-good one. With one thing to be said - money motivation should be good enough. There's no sense of promoting non-money motivation if a manager can think about fitting his/her expenses into budget.

from to do... to done (Esselte slogan)

2008-06-23T22:56:00.005+02:00

I've made it. Sat - decided to act. Sun - designed an announcement. Mon - printed out and posted it at salon's reception. Nothing much.
I also gave instructions about value-added consultations to a cosmetic girl.

One more step - I will ask her on Thursday when we'll meet to count the number of cosultations and repetitive service consumption to understand money our small trick will bring to the company.

I also finished processing revenue's data. Waiting for official statistic of costs and taxes to get the profit figures.

Just do it.

2008-06-21T09:26:00.004+02:00

I've recently got (finally!) the book by Alex Levitas about improving profits. The most valuable advice (apart from lots of business situations the author described) is the thing of acting after thinking out the solution.

With the salon of my friend we decided to male stimulation action: give a free cosmetic test to everyone who has bought the 30-60 minute atrificial tan station pass. This is a trick - everyone who uses solarium needs a special skin treatment to hydratate it. If we advise directly, people might be afraid of being pushed to pay for cosmetic service. But if we give free test and explain, that additional treatment might be needed, it;s a person's choice if he (or she) will take it.

Sounds smart and easy. But we decided the trick a couple of weeks ago - and nothing has been done since that time. Well, it's really a time for me to push the program. 2 steps from me - calculate profits (since march 2007) and post an announcement.

Ready, steady.... no-no-no, not later... now! go!

It will never work

2008-06-21T08:44:00.001+02:00

"It'll never work" from Daseg.

One more self branding tool...

2008-06-06T20:03:00.002+02:00

As Mauricio sais, "this video is part of a self-branding exercise that serves as a tool to reach my goal of obtaining a job in the communications / interactive marketing / public relations field".

Proud of you, coachie!

Wanna get know him? Please, visit.

wanna news?

2008-06-03T07:09:00.007+02:00

My dear friends from beauty salon still haven't put any announcements I suggested to make. We created one more program to promote cosmentologists among to artificial sun station users, but nobody made an effort to announce it.

Well, very typical.

Today I'll make all the papers for them to put. It seems to me I'm thinking more about the company than the owners. At least they allow me to make them a field for experiments.

don't loose profits

2008-05-23T06:27:00.005+02:00

When the discussion comes to entrepreneurial profits, the business owners are often puzzled how they can increase net income. The real question first is how to use the whole potential of an existing business.

My favorite small business - beauty salon has recently bought artifitial tan station. They need to pay off the credit. But since it is working no announcement came. Of course, best clients know about this service. But not all of them. I asked them to put info note at the wall close to reception area. Three times. Today I will check if they managed that.

Inform! How your clients can buy if they don't know what to?

pleasure

2008-05-11T21:59:00.002+02:00

What MBA really gave to me is a pleasure of choosing a place to work. Not companies are choosing me, but I'm really choosing my future employer.

A pleasure that requires a great deal of responsibility, but it is still a pleasure.

entrepeneurial spirit

2008-05-09T17:23:00.006+02:00

Today I had a talk with my friend. She is around 50 and she is an owner of small beauty salon close to my appartment in Ryazan. This lady is a very active person, she's about to open her own kid's store here, in Ryazan (they're remaking an appartment at ground floor to a shop now) and also is an active member of one of the churches (she coordinates also a rehab center project for ex-prisoners).

Yep, she has a typical entrepreneurial soul with a lot of personal time devoted to her business activities. She understands the necessity of establishing the contact with her clients, she has a high percentage of clients who visited her salon more than 1 time. She has a bit higher prices than most of the hairdressers close by, but still, she has her clients. She loves her staff, her girls treat her as a close elder friend. She has a great inner ennergy sourse, that helps her to make actions even if she doesn't know how to act.

Well, she does a lot of things successful entrepreneurs do. But she doesn't know her profit. Yes, she has all the figures for taxation purporses, but she never counts the difference between revenues and costs. She operates on a basis of cashflow - if she has enough cash to pay her rent and public utilities, she's happy. Sometimes she knows that she hasn't earn enough money to cover them in curret period, but she has some money left from previous one.

I asked her to provide me with all data about receips and expenditures to understand her profit picture. I hope understanding inflows and otflows of cash will help her to understand her situation better and improve profit. I also asked her to make minutes about all the small expenses left unaccounted - at least this will give me a full picture to start my recommendations for improvements.

I will keep an eye on this company.

marketing essence

2008-05-05T08:38:00.001+02:00

Marketing essence from Seth Godin:

Make big promises; overdeliver.

Mistakes:
- Making too big promises - unrealistic.
- Making not enough promises - not attractive.
- Deliver less than promised.

self promotion

2008-05-02T12:20:00.002+02:00

Seth Godin's post about different approaches of self promotion: me-centric vs. client/customer/audience centric.

I published a book so I need you to read it
vs.
There’s something you need to read, so I wrote about it.

Tradeoff

2008-04-29T19:42:00.002+02:00

I have a tough decision to make. The simlest tradeoff between stable position of brand manager with local operational challenges and a very challenging position of strategy consultant, which gives a lot food for brains but also requires a lot personal resources (time, attention).

Yes, after MBA I feel tired. But I had 4 months of my family period and recovered a lot. And passive way of leisure is not a best way for me. Consulting offers a constant thinking process - I love it, the same to challenge. Branding offers me a stable work in a field I know, lower cost comparable to consulting (region location, less requirements to lifestyle).

The only question that is crucial is if I'm ready for stable family life now. Not a professional one, not a financial one.

Phuf...

Mauricio again

2008-04-29T09:05:00.004+02:00

Well, my bad influence went to its peak - my coachie finally became an official blogger and wrote his first couple of posts in his blog. In his very first post he kindly made a piece of PR for me:

Marina’s role in all this was pivotal. She was the first avid blogger I had ever met in depth that can actually claim to have a significant level of daily readership of her online conversations. Most impressive was her discipline in terms of keeping her content constant and fresh, despite the heavy academic workload demanded by our program. After watching her do this for some time, it became evident that the main driver behind this discipline was the relationship she had forged with her readers who looked to her for advice on obtaining scholarships in Russia for academic programs abroad, as well as everyday girl-talk (Marina is also a contributor to the Russian COSMO blog). All in all, a very special cyber-relationship indeed! One that peaked my interest and drew me into the sport of blogging.

From my point of view I can add the followng. Blogging is a process that corresponds to my nature - I can easily and quickly write all the posts and find interestng information to be posted. I love sharing - sharing thoughts, knowledge, things that make me smile. I love receiving feedback; of course, I prefer a good one to a bad one. And having a loyal audience, it is easier to get a good comment. And the last but not the least is that my blog becomes a good tool for network and relationship creation, it makes the process of people knowing me better faster. and I appreciate that very much.

Good luck, Coachie, and thank you for PR:)

My Netvibes

2008-04-27T20:50:00.002+02:00

What are you reading now? What do you read on regular basis?

My answer to the last question is my gmail and blogs.
I can't share my private email, but I certainly can do this with blogs. Netvibes, to be exact.

Here is my universe. Here I posted two pages of blogs I usually read - English and Russian ones. Thanx God, now the public profile is available to everyone.

twitter2

2008-04-21T11:40:00.001+02:00

What is more important to have: a love to a product you manage or a match to people you will work with.

meeting time

2008-04-21T11:34:00.002+02:00

I entered labor market for active job search a bit less than a month ago. It´s really a time when my ambitions meet market requirements, supply meets demand.

Sometimes it hurts. E.g. when demanding part doesn´t understand that it asks a bit different things the supplying one can offer (I'm speaking about overqualified personnel who is offered lower position just because (s)he can do this) and demanding part starts pressing. Sometimes you have a perfect fit but too low-start position. Sometimes it is a total dismatch.

The thing I use to forget about labor market is that information is not perfect here. If you don't want to loose time for interview, you'd better clarify positions and interests. Just to save time.

books

2008-04-13T08:24:00.004+02:00

I'm preparing to my first consulting interview now and happy to start reading recommended books for the company. One of them is "Say it with Charts
The Executive's Guide to Visual Communication" by Gene Zelazny (I'm reading the book in Russian). I realy enjoyed it, wishing I had a chance to look at some tips before or at least during my MBA.

Even if I had internal feeling about diagrams to use, I've got a great sence of complex charts. And the most useful tip, propaly, in this chart is about headlnes of the slide/shart. We got used to put simple general names instead of showing the concrete idea of the chart.

And now I need to make a small analytical presentation. I almost hate it - it is mechanical job. But the only one nice thing about it is the fact I can train my new skills of creating charts. We'll see.

wants vs stopper

2008-04-11T09:21:00.002+02:00

I have just read Wad's wonderful sketch (in Russian) about wants and their limitations. He formulated a simple process of getting from wants to consumption.

1. Space-hold.
2. External irritant activates The Want part, showing assosications with pleasant emotions.
3. The Want starts working, but the rational part knows that pleasant emotions should be paid, the Stopper activates.
4. To get the Want to win over the Stopper, the irritant needs to show the idea of acessibility.
5. There's no reason to retrain the consumption.

Therefore, if the irritant (the producer or distributor) wants to increase demand, he needs to show the consumer, that it is possible to acquire the good or service. And vice-versa - if you want to resist the temptation of consuming something, just create the idea of full impossibility to get.

Nice thoughts.

mentality

2008-03-24T20:41:00.003+01:00

We just had an icq talk about russian mentality. It is started with the fact I menioned about recruiting agencies and their non-professional approach to company's websites. My position is that no compamy should use a website if it can't make a proper tool. In Russia website boom startes spontaneousely, everyone decided to have a status point - website. The quality didn't matter, the company needed to check the box - done.

My opponent gave me an exuse - Russian mentality. I could agree only with one thing - Russian mentality means to have and excuses for everything without making anything for better life (the second mentality thing is all-country sadness - bad weather worse history (Stalin's repressions, e.g.).

It's not a Russian thing to want more things for less money, it's international.
It's not a Russian thing to create a tool just for the sake of creation.
It's not a Russian thing to do and then to think. But some people understand that this way is not efficient. And some of them prefer to use excuses.

During my diploma's presentation my reviewer told that the same tool - a knife - can be used by both surgeon and murderer. Just to develop this metaphor - every surgeon practice with dead bodies before he works with humans. If a company that sells me its products or services using a bad tool it doesn't sell.

Yes, I'm Russian. But I'm also a professional.

(With a voice of Diesel advertising). Tools. Use with caution.

an example

2008-03-24T20:05:00.002+01:00

Just fogot to share a wonderful example of my favorite coachie successful and creative way of promoting himself. I think he has chosen an appropriate tool corresponding with his goals: to show himself as a very creative and communicative specialist in PR area.

It´s my special pleasure to introduce Mauricio.

self ad

2008-03-24T19:33:00.002+01:00

Ok, as I promised, here is the list of things I can give to the company I will work for.

- Loyalty. I don't know why, but every time I start working with a company or team, I get stuck to it. I will work for them and with them until something extraordinary may happen. E.g. I wasworking for my first serious company for 5 years. Just because I loved my partners, my product, the things I can do. And despite all the problems that may occure in every company. I left the company when I won a scholarship for my MBA. Extraordinary, heh.

- Result orientation and high work efficiency. I love to achieve. Love to strike out points in my to do list. When I was a child, my father told me that I get involved into many thing and loose my attention to some of them without finishing. Since that I've got a special feeling then I finish the task. I can control my interest to different things. But I prefer to have a tme to finish all of them, that's why I work efficiently.

- Curiosity. I like to dig into the things. This require some creativity along with analytical skills. I love to create different table forms to get better perspective or vision. I love to get information. I like to be prepared.

- Quick mind and ability to learn. I could easily understand how to avoid the paper jam into big professional printer machine with spanish interface (by this moment I've just started studing this language). I can easily become feeling comfortable with any software (it took me one night and half a bottle of rioja vine to understand meta-tag language of wiki programming - I'm still using it while making my fitness diary in tiddle-wiki).

- Ability to work with strategic goals and tactic tasks. I do it in my day-to-day life. I do it during my business activities. I love take a wider strategic perspective and break it down to a set of practical things to be done.

- Love for mentoring and coaching. I love explaining complicated things in the easiest way for people to understand. I love when people can do wonderful things after discussing with me different tasks. I love to get appreciation from those people.

- My experience and skills. As I told during one of my interviews with an employer: "I'm not cute because of my MBA certificate, only because I'm cool, I decided to get it".

BTW, it was a great exercise to make. I feel more confident before meeting my future employers.

it is easy to miss something you're not looking for

2008-03-20T10:31:00.000+01:00

quick MBA notes

2008-03-15T07:36:00.003+01:00

During last 3 months after graduation I became very sensitive about all MBA talks anyone can read in blogs and news discussions. Here in Russia we have and MBA-blaming wave among business people. Most of them don't have an MBA degree and still think they have enough information to judge the topic.

I'm not idealizing MBA, cause I know the program inside. I know that professors are just normal people and they make their professional path among people - mistakes may happen. I know that if you have a course of 240 people it is hard to provide professors of equal quality to every group. E.g. we had 2 awful marketing professors and 1 perfect bitch who was very exigent and at the same time he was balancing at the edge of roughness. Many of us hated him, I still beleive he was he of the best. People are diferent.

MBA teaches how to present your thouhts. My first course was about presentation skills and I still beleive most of our professors should be obliged to take it as well. Later I took one more course of this professors just to enjoy his style. MBA alumni are perceived as people who put format behind the content. Something like put a lot of graphs and smart words in your presentation - and you're a winner! Well, some of MBAes are stil like this, but not all of us. I always idealize content, then I spend several hours (if I have them) to put it in the best form to give it to my audience. But first is the content. Distill and deliver, as my favourite entrepreneurship professor told us.

Sometimes people think that CEO shouldn't take MBA because after the program he start to manage finances or marketing himself. MBA is an overall course, it is not specialization. It gives a width, not a depth. MBA knowledge is enough to ask smart questions to your CFO or Marketing Director. If CEO goes directly to financial management, if he can't trust his CFO, either he has a bad CFO or he is a bad CEO.

People also blame MBAers ask for a huge money for no value. I know the value I can bring to a company (I will make a separate post about that). And during my interviews I always show the company exact things I can do for them. And I know it costs a lot. My experience, sharp and quick mind, problem-solving skills, my loyality and the fact I care about my reputation - I tink I can ask a lot for this. If MBAer asks for big money only because (s)he spent a lot for the program and needs to pay for a credit - that's a reverse logic.

Just to finish the post. MBA now is something between semi-closed club to make business connections, extension courses for those who wants to change from industry to business sector, lifestyle camp and a lab where smart person can make his experiments about different business situations (I mean communications within groups, project management of case solving, but not cases themselves). It is not a panacea from all the business problems, but it gives you a good practice how to act in a situation of time and information shortage and huge peer pressure (as any group for problem-solving is temporary and everyone has his/her ow intersts). And MBA is a Master of Business Administration, that is equal to general management specialist. Not marketer, not financial guy/girl. In Russia there are a lot of programs of MBA:marketing or MBA:finance. They just mix two or more master programs. And people eat this. Cause everyone wants to buy a piece of a dream to become a good CEO just paying for a program.

funeral management

2008-02-24T10:56:00.003+01:00

Funeral requires a lot of management skills to pass through. High emotional involvement combined with high time pressure. Inspite of a limited procedures needed to be done, the stress level is incredibly high.

Just to survive, I used the following tricks:
1. To lower emotional pressure, I dove into physical labor - cooking (in Russia we have a tradition of funera repast, that is normally cooked at home), serving the food etc.
2. When somebody wanted to help me and at the same time started to anny with a phrase "we don't have enough time until..." the only way to limit the hysterics was to give the person some occupation, cause in the case of high emotional pressure there's no possibility to explain for the person to understand.
3. Just remember that this pressure is not endless, the time for pressure is limited wit a traditional set of funeral procedures.

Let my granddad's memory live on forever.

selfactualization

2008-02-06T15:26:00.000+01:00

Sorry for Russian, but this is my opinion about russian article from e-xecutive.ru.

Реально понравилась статья "Тайны корпоративного двора". Прежде всего тем, что поднят вопрос самоактуализации.

Обидно, что практикам не хватает более формального и системного подхода - в статье сформулирована проблема и показаны плохие примеры, мол, не справились, мол, не получилось. Есть пару-тройку намеков о том, что можно делать, но основы под это никакой не подведено. Замечаю за собой ту же слабость - лень формулировать, проверять на целостность и полноту теории. Нас долго пичкали статьями Портера. Я все удивлялась, мол, написал книгу, молодец, но потом еще двадцать пять лет объясняет ее в статьях. Теперь понятно - он постоянно ее тестирует на соответствие изменяющимся условиям. Подходит ли модель пяти сил для анализа интернет-бизнеса, почему сил именно пять, не пора ли ввести еще парочку, и тут же тестируются кандидаты. Но Портер - он этим и живет, преподает себе. А тут управленцы же.

wrongly perceived incompatibility

2008-02-04T11:35:00.000+01:00

My dear friend is creating his reputation-building website as a tool to promote himself as a forex-trader and asset management specialist. Since I was working as an editor and corrector while making my product catalogues, he decided to trust me the proofreading.

And we had a great fight.

He wrote a text to optimize his website in searching systems. I proofread it as a reputation-building tool. I really beleive that all the texts should be written in a vivid manner to create with a reader the sense of sincereness and opennes. By saying "to create" I mean to give a clear message that the author is open and sincere.

The fight was severe. Until the very moment we both understood we can combine those two limitations we thought were uncompatible. I was re-creating some sentences and passages after he had given me hints about optimal sentence structure for search engine inquires.

Most of limitations and conditions are perceived as incompatible but they are not. If you change the requirements specification, you can find the best solution. Not compromise, but consensus.

free+ or how to make money on add-ons

2008-02-03T10:57:00.000+01:00

Seth Godin just gave a link to Kevin Kelly post "More than free" about eight ways of making something worth charging for.

He mentions the following:
1. Immediacy - get now or at least earlier than others.
2. Personalization - generic version is for free, customized one is not.
3. Interpretation - software, free, the manual, $10000.
4. Authentacity - how much are you ready to pay for a trueness certificate?
5. Accessibility - low access cost, how much are you ready to pay for it?
6. Embodiement - making services r intangible goods tangible.
7. Patronage - audiences want to pay the creators.
8. Findability - makeing money by helping the audience find works they love

I love the article.

Varsavsky again

2008-01-15T00:00:00.000+01:00

The test of self esteem: when you find someone who has done something great, do you feel admiration or envy?

free your twitter mind

2008-01-05T11:42:00.001+01:00

Is it possible to trust people in your private life and be a rigid manager in business one?

twitter-style

2008-01-05T11:35:00.000+01:00

Just realised, that there are two basic styles of thoughts - twitter and let's say blogger. Blogger generally assumes in-depth analysis, even if you write about your breakfast - scrambled eggs with tomato without bacon, I love healthy food and hate animal fats. Twitter is a way to quickly mention the thing without digging in. Just scrambled eggs. Or better say, I had a breakfast.

What is better? The favorite mba-style answer - depends. Giving grades means having a system of assumptions, and this is biased anyway. Think out your goal and drop your tools (Ianna, hi, there).

I just stopped blaming myself for twitter style. This is the reason I decided to classify this. And thanx to Varsavsky, of course, his latest posts are in twitter style.

Fortune

2007-12-01T18:43:00.000+01:00

Just saw at Martin Varsavsky blog a curious link on Fortune 25 most powerful business people.

Very insightful. 1 women and a lot of technological people.

internet

2007-11-29T14:46:00.000+01:00

During last BBW class Martin explained us two main concepts of internet information tracking. Since the terms were new for me, I decided toput a note on this.

There are two main concepts of information tracking - pinging and crawling.

Crawling is what Google does - indexation the change in Internet. To provide personalized advertizing, forexample, Google datacenter machines register the changes made evey second. If you ned thoroughness, you take this method, which has two main disadvantages: expensive (computer consumes a lot of energy) and perception issue (they are spying).

Pinging idea was used by David Sifry for Technocraty - blog searching engine. The source of change reports to a server automatically if he made a change and want it to appear in search results of the server's engine. You go for it if you need speed.

BBW last class

2007-11-28T18:07:00.000+01:00

Just went from one of my favourite classes (I even dedicated a separate blog to this topic. I have a bunch of insights from this class also, but will revise and post them later.

What I have to say.

First, we were talking about Martin´s current business Fon a lot. I even used 15 minutes of free Fon access to send the results of 2nd round of investments. And Martin brought a Fonera to each of his student as a gift. Well, I can ensure that they will have the first fonera in Russia, cause the first thig I'm going to do is to connect my father's appartment to ADSL and guess which router I will use? Quite a good reason to get into several countries at least to get first early adopters.

And second. Recently Martin has written about ASUS Eee PC - open-office linux-based portative PC with 4Gb flash memory. It is really nice, taking into account that in China it is sold at the equivalent of 180 eur (around 350 usd at Amazon in the US). What I have to say about it? User-friendly, fast, compact (a bit heavy - almost as heavy as Sony Vaio i've revcently borrowed from my friend to use). But the biggest discover for me is Linux, which is quite friendly (as my friend told me - until you open the console:). I feel like they were cheating on me about the only possibility for user - MS!

Well, hoping to get my Acer back as soon as possible (it is like renting an appartment forme when you use someone's laptop). And come back with results of last class soon.

hate full stops in the heading (full stop here!)

2007-11-21T14:53:00.000+01:00

My proofreader's past poisons my life - I can't read cheap books and newspapers cause I pay too much attention to details of layout and formatting; that distracts me from the content. And more important - while making ppt's of presentations I usually kill my group by paying the attention to "unsufficient details". Like full stops in headings - I hate this and I have this hate in my proofreader's DNA.

Seth Godin just posted the list of eye tracking rules. Now I'm going to use them during my next arguments. Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the full-stop issue, but allows to avoid other discussions (as logo positioning and picture backgrounds).

Here is the list (in alphabetical order):

* Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
* Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
* Bigger images get more attention.
* Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
* Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
* Formatting can draw attention.
* Headings draw the eye.
* Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
* Large blocks of text are avoided.
* Lists hold reader attention longer.
* Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.
* One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
* People generally scan lower portions of the page.
* Readers ignore banners.
* Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
* Show numbers as numerals.
* Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
* Text attracts attention before graphics.
* Type size influences viewing behavior.
* Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
* Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
* Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
* White space is good.

Source:
Seth Godin shortlist.
Visual hosting blog explanation.
My russian post and translation.

story of success

2007-11-16T18:08:00.000+01:00

Today is one-year anniversary of Russian regional (meaning it is not from Moscow) company "Sila uma" (Force of mind). Their weblog must read for russian speaking entrepreneurs as a success story and a resultof thoughtful markting.

education

2007-11-15T15:00:00.000+01:00

It's very important for people to have their first education at home.
Bibi Russell, the founder of Bibi Production (Bangladesh) during 2nd Social Responibility Forum at IE.

little triumph

2007-11-13T23:57:00.000+01:00

Our Venture Lab project has just qualified for semi-finals in IOP day (investment oriented project). In a week we're going to present the business to comission.

I'm really happy cause the work done is great.

tools vs aims

2007-11-11T17:23:00.000+01:00

People sometimes get lost between understanding the aim itself and the tool. The tool is just something that can get you to the aim, not the tool defines the aim, but vice versa.

Recently I subscribed to a rss from making presentation community in russian. I can see the trend of copying those fancy styles from western presentatios - pictures with a shortslogan on the slide. To be hones, I still prefer to have presentation only forthe sake of illustration of my words. Or sometimes when I don't have a time to get ready or don't have passion to tell people - this is the case when I put some schemes in PPT.

What I can also see, that some of consulting companies just buy techniques and then copy-paste slides from other presentation. Because nobody is going to pay you for several drops of essence, they need oceans of information, spreadsheets, fancy tools.

I really want to find a place where I can distill and deliver - I really love this formula from my entrepreneurship professor Julio de Castro. Cause the tools is not that really matters, it is how good you can use them. Or even the result of using them.

Anyway, while people buy tools but not the results, this marketwill exist. And of course it is easier to just copy and paste. Forget about reputation, they only tend to speak about it.

can't stop, really)

2007-11-10T00:03:00.000+01:00

Since I have a break with my entrepreneurship project, one more thing to be posted.

The theories often come to my mind during my MBA studies are:

1. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
2. Sunk cost theory.
3. Customer oriented behavior.

Will develop the idea later.

English

2007-11-09T23:49:00.000+01:00

Studying in multinational environment has its advantages and disadvantages. Main advantage is diversity. But sacrifice is the level of English.

You need to express yourself. You care about letting people know your idea. You talk to the guys from 37 different nationalities. And different levels of English, of course.

Well, I've got fluency and freedom of expression, but grammar went down obviously. And since the speed of thoughts now is incredible - I'm fixing everything I need, there is no time for revision.

Put the grammar note on todolist and sighed when was looking at her grammar book.

Dream Yacht

2007-11-09T23:26:00.000+01:00

I worked a bit and added some explanation about one of my classes - building businedss workshop with Martin Varsavsky. Please, consider, that business idea I develop is no more than class exercise and I put as much efforts for it as necessary. In real life the overall aproach is also implemented, but the depth of details and work are at another level.

All the updates are in Building Eureka blog.

what a small world!

2007-11-09T20:52:00.000+01:00

Playing with social networks actually shows you how the world is small and connected. What really differs Xing from other nets I use is that they show the whole conection chain between existing connections and a person. Even when I had 1 connection (guy whom I met randomly in friends feed of my livejournal friend and afterwards met in Munich when I visited Friedrichshafen Outdoor trade show), all my IE contacts were connected with him through network. Random guy with my IE network! Well, Xing is the first system I saw that shows the whole chain (not like "somebody from your friend's network"). And even when I find my ex-colleagues from Norway, they are somehow connected with my IE contacts. Lovely!

By now:
Xing - 19 connections within 4 days (most from my university, 1 ex-colleague, 1 poutdoor contact, 1 from groups I added).
Odnoklassniki (Classmates) - 104 connections within 7 days.

to sell or not to sell

2007-11-08T12:20:00.000+01:00

Talking to potential buyers about your company is the only way to know how much is worth. There´s nothing wrong with that as we all need to make informed decisions.

Martin Varsavsky quotation

Small business success.

2007-11-08T12:14:00.000+01:00

Three things you need:
1) the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn't work,
2) the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
3) enough belief in other people that you don't try to do everything yourself.

seth godin quotation

x-posted to building eureka blog

first result of netvibes feeding

2007-11-07T20:45:00.000+01:00

I really liked the post of Seth Godin.

I was at a gala a few weeks ago (featuring no less than ten speakers). At least 80% of them began their talk by saying, "I know you're hungry, but..." or "I know it's late, but..." or "I know you want to go home, but..." and then apologized for giving a speech.

If your speech needs to be prefaced by an apology...

don't give it.

That's why they call it giving a speech. It's a gift. If you have to apologize, it's no longer a gift, is it?

Our collective fear of public speaking has created a host of awkward situations and events. It's pretty simple: Be brief. Or don't come at all. Don't do anything you need to apologize for.

(and brief means sixty seconds, usually. That's enough to say hi, to say thanks and to move on.)

Seth Godin, Nov 07, 2007 16:37:46 GMT

tech notes

2007-11-07T18:53:00.000+01:00

Well, you really understand the opportunity when you need it. I become aware of RSS idea a year and a half ago when bumped into discussion of its necessity. I started using it a year ago when during our Informational System class we mentioned it. At that time I was choosing between downloading feed with a special program or having it online. Since I didn't have connection at home, I went for FeedDaemon - to download and then read later. At that time it seemed to be a perfect thing - I had all my feeds atr one place, read them when I had time. I wondered: why people need online rss-combiners.

My laptop now is on mainteinance (to make a long story short, I had a flaw at the top cover and went to service for a change, they promised to fix it during one month, when the block got stuck, when they decided to change the screen because of spots and now they are waiting for a motherboard - I don'tknow really why, but the laptop is 2 months delayed). I'm using my friend's machine - she was very kind to borrowit to me until December. And I really can't using a lot of programs - the capacity doesn't allow me. I gave up Outlook (to export messages then and to sort - too much time), stopped using Skype for calls (I rarely used it, mostly for messenging), reordered all the links and folders I use, but it's getting messy, because it is just not my laptop!!!

Since my networks are not requiring that my time, now I decided to build my rss feed place. Thanx to Marin Varsavsky, whose class again inspiredme to do one more crazy thing online. I really need the easy updateness on news. Later on I will duplicate all the feeds to my FeedDaemon, but now...

Welcome to the wonderful world of netvibes.com.

networking again

2007-11-07T15:42:00.000+01:00

With all networking activities the main thing is consistency. If you're building a network,youneed to do it regularly and on contstnt basis, since you stop, the processgoes backwards. Within 3 days I built 2 networks - private and business. Or, let say, started building that. I'm going to cut my activities within facebook (after december, when I come back to Russia) and russian nets and pay attention to LinkedIn and Xing.

The steps to build it are the following:
1. Register and check ytour closest network - University and Business School.
2. Check network of each member added you. Add those you know.
3. Check groups, choose, be a member.
4. Participate.

Now I'm at 4th stage with Xing.
;)

social networks

2007-11-06T20:05:00.000+01:00

I'm playing with social networks now. There is a huge variety of ones, with different aims and coverage, but all of them require a lot of time and don't use in full.

I've understood several stages of relationships with the net:
1. Awareness - somebody lets a person know, may be describes main features and advantages.
2. Interface test - here a person registers for a network (by invitation or through automatic process) and makes first steps on the building networks through checking invited friend's connections.
3. Network building - (s)he uses search tools, matching possibilities, checks colleagues, classmates.
4. Additional services check - the most useful and user-frienly are adopted, others are ignored.
5. Network modration - after a certain effort the network is updated automatically. User just moderates it.
6. Intensive use of the network - most of users rarely come to this stage.

The aims of creating a social network are the following:
1. Stay in touch with friends - network here is an interactive adressbook or messenger.
2. Active participationin social life - creating and attending different networks, groups.
3. Job search engine.
4. Professional network creation - for knowledge sharing.

Well, each of the type has its own target users, I can't say that my nets are not important. some of them are not just developped to be useful.

Most probable trends are:
1. Entertainment (social life) nets will merge, since it is hard to manage several ones.
2. Professional nets are on contrary will intimidate and increase entrance barriers due to the level of sharing of information rise.

I participate in the following nets:
* Facebook - social, entertainment, mostly to stay in touch with my IE classmates and spanish friends.
* LinkedIn - social+professional, since most of the contacts business related (IE + some external).
* Xing - entered today, job search + professional.
* MoiKrug - russian net, started as a contact book, now I use for professional purposes - job search + stay in touch with russian professionals.
* Odnoklassniki.Ru (Classmates) - I'm using it since two days ago. Curious to find elementary school classmates and see them now. While surfing thru it, I understood that I started forgetting even university friends. Just to stay in touch.
* Vkontakte - russian clone (copycat?) of facebook (even design). Non developped forme, just in case, cause I have a good friend there. Plus, making an experiment of networking building.

Well, when building, networks require a certain effort and a lot of time. When buit, they save time through providing quick answers and help a lot if correctly used.

As my friend Mauricio says, network should work, when it worths the time spent for building it.

fabrizio salvador

2007-10-26T19:35:00.000+02:00

Two quick quotes from one of my favorite professor's class:

Sunk cost is irrelevant for future decisions (everyon knows, but tends to forget).

and

You don't make money if youalways say yes. Raise your ability to say no.

two weeks of no classes is over

2007-10-15T14:34:00.000+02:00

I mostly spent my time for spanish classes and our project financial calculations.

Waiting for new ideas from school discussions.

Daniel Porot

2007-09-29T21:07:00.001+02:00

One of the greates things our Career Center did is getting Daniel Porot (porot.com) to our class.
Playing with his career guide I've found a wonderful exercise.
List the talents you have.

Mine are listed below:
1. Challenge myself
2. Make fun of
3. Negotiate
4. Discover
5. Present
6. Set goal
7. Coach
8. Keep going
9. Analyze
10. Put into words
11. Balance
12. Structure
13. Manage resources
14. Repair
15. Organize oneself

upd. have done it forthe second time

1. Make fun of
2. Customize
3. Coach
4. Negotiate
5. Balance
6. Communicate
7. Analyze
8. Develop
9. Present
10. Explore
11. Put into words
12. Find a solution
13. Improvise
14. Keep going
15. Find instruments

resilence to criticism

2007-09-29T14:01:00.000+02:00

One of the biggest mistake of entrepreneurs is having pink glasses when reviewing own business and idea. I'm the best, others are sucks. Or I have a unique proposition, nobody can give this to you. This leads many of businesses to a failure.

Then a person becomes professional, he/she tends to be more resistant to critical views. In my humble opinion, professional is the person who can still open his/her mind to a new information or view rather then pushing own idea. It's ok to have a stron belief into own idea - that's a reason why you have it. In the same time critical review of the idea can improve it a lot.

Many people understand this position in their own manner. Recently I've seen several examples of making a public access to the document asking for idea/presentation/business evaluation. Wow! Those people are open to criticism, I thought. But then I've read all the comments and authors reaction to them. Resistance. Normal reaction is 'Tastes differ' (universal answer to someone's opinion), or 'What can YOU say to me?'. The person posted the document for discussion therefore has a different aim. Instead of asking for an opinion he/she asks for approval, bragging.

I'm not good in listening criticism to my job. I take everything too personal and prefer to blame person who gives criticism of lacking critique skills. Sometimes it is true, but not all the times although I prefer to exaggerate a lot and count all the cases of criticism I don't like to the lack of skills. And I'm also awful in giving criticism meaning that I try to find weaknesses without mentioning strenghs. When I don't like one job from the person I tend to perceive other his/her jobs in a worse way.

So, here are some rules and exersises I use to be less critique resilent and give a good criticism.

While asking for a critique:
1. Try to evaluate your job without bias. Think about target audience - what are their interests and do they find benefits in your message. Do they have an answer on the question 'What's in it for me?' Make a list of their interests and answer if your documents brings your idea to fit them.
2. Count to 10 after making suggestion about criticism given. Think about the person's interest of giving this critique to you. Is there good sense in his/her comment? What will change if you make suggested chnges? Are they for good or for bad.
3. Remember, those comments are about your document/idea, not about yourself. They doesn't reflect your skills/talent in full, just a small piece incarnated into this document/idea.

While giving the criticism.
1. Evaluate the job, not the person who made it.
2. Make a list of strenghts and weaknesses. Try to provide an even quantity of comments on each part. If you can't provide one of the parts, think deeper.
3. Think out the words you're making criticism. While making criticism, ask yourself about your interests. And interests of a person asking for criticism.
4. Never give criticism when not asked. In ideal world give criticism only if they have paid for it)))

market research use

2007-09-26T14:45:00.000+02:00

Here is the link between three key indicators we can withdraw in marketing research.
Brand awareness should lead to purchase intention and this, therefore, should translate itself into marketshare. By identifying the problem, we can find the right tool fot solving the problem.

2007-09-21T12:50:00.000+02:00

Two essays about startups.

How to make wealth
Why not to start a startup

Both by Paul Graham.

Building business workshop class

2007-09-20T11:33:00.001+02:00

A piece of advice to entrepreneurs.

Know the price of everything. Every moment of entrepreneur's life is making decisions of price and quality. Know the range of prices. Look into maarket capitalization of any company. Know the GDP of the countries you're connected with.

Guessing is the half of life of entrepreneur. If you obsessed with accurate numbers, you'd better be rocket engineer.

Spain is the most successful oof least ambitious countries in the world.

In business it's all about balancing content and emotions.

Building business workshop

2007-09-19T18:37:00.000+02:00

I have just got the assignment for BBW of Martin Varsavsky to develop a business project. Since group work is not allowed, we're not presenting the one we have for venture lab.

I have limited time to find idea, discover business opportunity and develop a business plan (financials, marketing).

I openned a special weblog for this purpose to describe the process.

Welcome.
http://buildingeureka.blogspot.com/

Lovely!

2007-09-14T13:27:00.000+02:00

Change management, Peter Gil.

Money is the margin you can make on the top of existing technology.

The window of opportunity is opened for a limited time. It's not enough to see the window, you need to know the way how to convert this opportunity to money quickly.

S-curve of product/team life cycle: there's no natural travel along the curve. Crisises are inevitable. But you can make proactive change to reduce initial investment stage and have a smaller payback period.

Teams roles: there are different models for group behavior description. One of them position individuals into 4 basic group according to their preferenses - explorers, organosers, controllers, advisers (tecnique developped by TMS). Positining yourself into this map means that 75% of people around you are different and perceive reality and make suggestions different.

Any strength taken into extreme is a weakness. Any strength you don't take advantage of is a weakness.

ps. Peter Gil is the owner of MDT (www.mdt.es)

DM

2007-09-12T14:24:00.001+02:00

Since I'm taking two courses on decision making this term (one (msrketing strategy for DM) is finished, I posted some takaways and promised to post more), I'm going to elaborate on this topic.

We started with the very basics. One maim takaway from Drucker's article about DM is "A decision with no action is just a good intention".

marketing strategy for decision making game

2007-09-11T19:52:00.000+02:00

Well, the first course of electives has just finished. 15 sessions in 5 days with market simulations. 6 groups competing in two markets, starting with 2 products (similar for each group, 2 different segments). We didn't manage well - I'm not experienced in those types of games, but we made several remarkable mistakes to be mentioned and got lot's of experience. Basically, we learned how to manage a company with small budgets and were recovering every time after crisises. At the same time we launched successfully the product to a new market (correct strategy, but rather low profitability).

Some ideas.
- When all the companies have the same products, the only difference can be made by the strategy is by advertising (influencing perceptions) and allocating salesforce. First is good for pull strategy (influencing ultimate consumer), second is for push (working with channels).
- When a company start launching differentiated brands, it is important to fit into segment needs/requirements (price is included). The closer the better.
- Products become obsolete, segment's requirements are changing, and marketing is all about managing perceptions.

Pricing strategy.
- Wrong pricing can kill very successfull brand (specially when it is become obsolete). The leading on the segment can turn to total loss with one wrong pricing decision. Our wrong-priced brand couldn' recover even after drop in price and remarkable (for us, not for competitors) budget.
- While launching totally new product pricing can be made upon estimates from the most similar products margins.

We also can have a remarkable market share, but low net contribution due to higher base cost and lower margin. We did it several times until discovered the problem. Common truth, but dramatic consequenses.

Managing small budgets:
- You always need to think in advance. Investing in rnd now will require a launch money. Is it possible to manage bigger brand portfolio with existing money? And with projected profits and budget? Sometimes we postponed launching and product become obsolete.
- It is better to have less brands but well positioned rather than to spread small budget among several promosing but not very profitable brands.

One more thing. We tended to create more advanced products that exceeded segments needs. Therefore we were less competitive on price (due to less margin). How could I forget about example of perfect tent - if you create tent with best materials and techs, it will cost you around 5000 eur (don't remember when and how we made those proximations), that's why producers normally go for simpler solutions.

One more remarque upon using marketing research data will follow if I can insert table.

marketing strategy decision making

2007-09-06T20:49:00.000+02:00

The very first subject on electives for me is marketing strategy for decision making. We´re playing multyteams´game - market simulation. The very first round my team finished as the last one. Although we did quite a normal job (I can´t say that the job was good though) in terms of market contribution (at least it was positive and better than in previous perion), when being compared with others and with market figures (growth, for example), we showed the worst performance.

During my job as product manager I was always feeling that all product category´s growth is not enough, we can make it better by paying more attention, assigning more salesforce etc... But I just didn´t have any benchmarks - this information for different competitors is closed in Russian market.

Sometimes you need to run very fast just to stay at one place. But how fast should you run, you can understand only while looking on milestones.

back from vacations

2007-09-06T20:24:00.000+02:00

I was on vacations last 5 weeks, that was very intensive (3 countries - Germany, Russia and Turkey), lots of events... and notes. Now I´m back to school, my laptop is on maintainance and I don´t have russian keyboard, that means my russian weblog is temporary pending, so I´m going to put everything I took notes on here.

Hold on!

just found at my friend's weblog

2007-07-30T13:08:00.000+02:00

Source: www.oper.ru

The poster is one that every entrepreneur must have before thinking out his product. While listening in-class presentations I've caught slight feeling of understanding why most of the businesses are dead within 1st year. Every entrepreneur is sure that his\her project is unique and is by default successful.