Congratulations Suzanne and Rob!!!

Rob and Suzanne pitching their award winning business plan to Jackson Nat'l Life Insurance Co.

... it was less than 15 years ago that the Internet began to assume the role it now has in companies... the way they served customers, transacted business, worked with partners and managed employees.  Social technology is about to do the same thing: transform the way people work together and do business.  The only question is, how fast will you get there?

 ~ Groundswell: Winning in a World 

Transformed by Social Technologies

Looking around and looking ahead at the disruption of traditional business models, Jackson National Life Insurance Company recently reached out to college students across the U.S. looking for ways to integrate social media into their business operations.  Thus was born the Jackson Social Media Business Plan Challenge.  Well, guess who won the challenge... along with a cool 15K?  None other than Suzanne Bonifaz and Rob Flores, fellow classmates in St. Ed's dMBA program!

What is particularly exciting about their Grand Prize win is that the plan was developed for a traditional insurance company.  Often, when people hear about our MBA program focusing on Digital Media Management, they typically assume its solely focused on the music, film, tech and media industries.  While many of my classmates will work in these industries upon graduation, Rob and Suzanne's win demonstrates that the principles we've been studying apply across the business world.  While perhaps media is the most "glamorous" industry, its ultimately about all industries staying competitive and thriving in our ever-evolving new business environment.

Exemplifying the program's infusion of 'Digital Media Management' into a traditional MBA,  Suzanne and Rob applied the principles recommended by Forrester Research in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technology (required reading for our Digital Consumer class).  For example, remembering that social media is ultimately about relationships and creating tight ties with the customer (rather than simply the technology), Rob and Suzanne didn't settle for the obvious answer of simply suggesting a Facebook or Twitter account.  Instead, they took into account the technographics of Jackson's customers to create a plan that would fit the overall objectives and strategies that would make sense for Jackson's unique needs.  Further, because Jackson is a financial services company, subject to strict oversight and regulation, they employed the "issue spotting" skills developed in our law classes. 

As our cohort nears the end our dMBA journey, (graduation is just over 3 months away!) it is inspiring to see our classmates succeed in applying to the real world what we've been studying.  Not only does this encourage us that businesses are clamoring for our skills... shoot... thanks for just making the rest of us look good!  

Congratulations Rob and Suzanne!

What?!?! 

You're not following them on Twitter?

Well, you should be!

@sbonifaz 

@RobdFlowers

I Got My MBA Today...

OK - not really. We've got one more semester to do this spring... then we'll officially have our MBAs... but today... we earned our stripes today!

New Venture Creation has been one of my favorite classes in the program. In this course we've taken just about everything we've been learning for the last year and a half... Marketing, Finance, Branding, Accounting, Law... seriously, ALL of it, and in a mere 6 weeks have applied it by creating a business from scratch... then today we pitched that plan to a panel of judges and potential investors for feedback.

Holy $#$%^. We've done A LOT of presentations and public speaking throughout this program, but this assignment was like fighting for your life. These panelists didn't hold back in their critiques so we had to come prepared to NAIL it. Throughout the course of this class we've had other professionals and entrepreneurs provide us with feedback as we've developed our pitches. From this it seems that 1/2 the lesson has been to stay open and flexible to this professional feedback and make adjustments as needed; the business plan my team and I pitched today was very different from that first pitch we did in the beginning - you know... back when we simply had a "good idea". In the interim, my hardworking teammates, Britni McCotter and Gabe Maldonado and I reshaped this mere good idea into a viable business plan with high earning potential.

Congrats to my dMBA cohort - it was a blast celebrating w/ you this evening on a job well done!

A Light Bulb Went Off in the Desert

That's Texas in my rearview mirror - and if you look closely, you can discern the spider that we seemed to have picked up somewhere in the desert.

The 1,400+ mile roadtrip from TX to CA was an amazing journey with my Mom where along the way we saw old friends, stopped off in Tombstone (where I got a "talking to" from the Marshall - which I guess wasn't too bad considering the reputation of the town), soaked up the iconic southwestern culture and had a misadventure with my car key (yay, Triple A!). It was a beautiful mother/daughter experience... despite my Mom freaking me out by repeatedly referring to us as Thelma & Louise. They wound up in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I wanted to make it to LA for my internship!

In between disagreeing over what music to play, Mom and I listened to the classic, Good to Great by Jim Collins. The findings of the author's research on what separates "good" organizations from "great" ones are compelling - and what I found most provocative were his thoughts on the use of technology by the "great" companies. In an age when social media is typically touted as a fool-proof method of marketing and networking, Collins' research is perhaps more important than ever. In Collins' interviews with leaders of "great" organizations he points out how little those leaders emphasize the use of technology. Now, that's not saying they don't use technology... of course they do. Collins, however, stresses that technology is an accelerator and not a creator of success.

Without proper analysis of the market, a sound business strategy and the discipline to stick with the strategy, technology becomes a tool in unskilled hands, yielding, at best, short-term gains. Collins uses the example of DrugStore.com and Walgreen's at the height of the Dot Com Boom. While the financial markets and analysts fell all over themselves regarding DrugStore.com, they practically had the obituary for Walgreen's written. I won't get into the details here - you should read them for yourself in chapter 7 of Good to Great - but Walgreen's emerged from their "slump" with a solid business strategy, trouncing the internet's wunderkind DrugStore.com, who has continued to flail since the Dot Com Bust.

Listening to Good to Great upon completing my first year of my MBA studies was perfect timing. Because the program has a focus on Digital Media Management, the book, like the program itself, reminds us that the tools of technology are critical accelerators, but are no replacement for a solid business foundation.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Since starting this blog about my experience of St. Eds' dMBA program, I've had prospective and future students send me questions about it. The most common questions have been about how to best prepare for the program.

My answer is pretty simple: come academically prepared and have an effective stress coping strategy.

To academically prepare, 1st, check out the list of required courses and look for your weakest areas. This will, of course, be different for everyone depending on your work and undergraduate experience. For example, I've worked in Marketing pretty extensively, and in undergrad I was a Sociology major, so I felt pretty comfortable with Marketing and Statistics. Because I have written copiously in my career and, as an undergrad, took way more writing component courses than were required and completed an independent study research project, writing and Marketing Research weren't an issue. My areas of weakness however, were Accounting and Finance and that's where I had to work the hardest.

2nd, upon identifying areas to strengthen from the list of required courses, begin to fill in any knowledge gaps now. You can do this by taking a course at your local community college, or, at the very least, pick up a "For Dummies" type of book to familiarize yourself with key concepts - trust me, your future self will thank you! Before starting the program, I took Accounting at Austin Community College, and boy, am I SUPER glad that I did!

An effective stress coping strategy is just as critical to the program. I can't emphasize enough how quickly this program moves - 3 new classes every 7 weeks. But don't be fooled, that doesn't mean the curriculum is watered down - we're being prepared for the national MBA Major Field Test (in 2 days - wish me luck!). Throughout it all, my favorite stress release has been training in Krav Maga at Fit and Fearless (2 blocks from campus!) 3 - 4 nights a week. There's nothing quite as physically and mentally refreshing as punching the heck out of a bag for an hour.

On the eve of starting my 1st year, the best advice given to me came from a dMBA graduate who advised, "Its not rocket science, you just gotta do the work." That summation became my mantra, reminding me that I CAN do it and that, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. So, as I reflect on my successes and perhaps, even more importantly, my challenges over this 1st year, I'm grateful for the how well the dMBA program has been preparing me to continue forward to pursue my passions.

1st year of business school... DONE!

WOO - HOO!

As I celebrate completing this 1st year of the dMBA program, I can't help but think how this year has been like the 300-meter hurdle event I ran in high school, an event which requires both speed and endurance.

Like a sprint, this program has moved at a super-fast pace as we've completed 3 full courses every 7 weeks. To put that in perspective, in one 7 week term we:

• Digested 10 chapters of Finance,
• Designed and implemented a marketing research project (similar to one I did in undergrad that took 1 full semester) and,
• Covered the basics of the entire Adobe Creative Suite.

When each 7 weeks were up, however, it was on to the next set of classes, making this more than a sprint, but a test of endurance as well. And of course, there are the hurdles... you know, just those everyday things of life that we have to overcome to make it to the finish line.

Sometimes I think I'm a little crazy to have signed up for such an intense program... but us dMBA'ers, we're our own special breed :) So, congrats to my classmates on a job well done! Now a little R&R before I'm off to my amazing summer internship!

Why My Cat Thinks I'm Aloof

Its Finals Week!

Exams are done, but projects are due next week:

• 1 Marketing research paper,
• 1 Marketing presentation,
• 3, yes, THREE chapters worth of homework for Finance (no, I didn't procrastinate, they were just assigned!),
• 1 video editing project (complete with color correction, sound mix and original score!)

I am SO taking a vacation to Barton Springs after this!

Creativity... MBA... Ice Hockey... What???

With the start of this new term, I've been feeling like something of a Renaissance Woman lately. After all, this "Digital Media" MBA is no regular MBA.

Perhaps two of the strongest examples of what makes this degree "digital" comes from our latest round of classes:

1st, in my Finance class we've been studying all the traditional financial ratios and formulas, then applying financial analysis to current companies and market trends. For example, for one of our projects, my teammate Crystal and I are analyzing Disney. Specifically, we are conducting a financial analysis of Disney's 2006 acquisition of Pixar as well as their risky decision to produce Wall-E (after all, it starred a robot and a cockroach for heaven's sakes!). The objective of the project is to examine how to effectively balance creative and financial risks and rewards.

The 2nd example of what makes this MBA "digital" comes from my Interactive Technology and E-Commerce class. This class picks up where Information Systems left off last term. The 1st few weeks are devoted to understanding the framework and organization of technology, with the remaining weeks dedicated to hands on experience with Adobe's Creative Suite 5 and other creative digital tools. What I love about this class is that, while we're being trained in the business of digital media and not to be the "experts" in the actual creative software (otherwise I'd go get an MFA or an art degree instead of a business degree), this program expects us to be well versed enough in the standard digital tools that my peers and I will be effective collaborators in creative teams.

So its this intersection of business, technology and creativity that leaves me feeling like a Renaissance Woman lately - but better yet, as discussed in Daniel Pink's, A Whole New Mind, that I find myself being trained to understand traditional business principles as needed for our digital media world.

With that, I leave you with yet another sports metaphor (thanks to my friend Mary who reminded me of this awesome quote!):

I skate to where the puck is going to be,

not where it has been.

- Wayne Gretzky

KO'ing Accounting

What's the deal with me getting giddy every time I write a budget lately? I've been absolutely euphoric as I work on my final accounting project. Seriously.

The project, to create the budget and financial statements for an event, is based on the Austin Regional Golden Gloves Tournament that I recently attended.

The tournament promoter, Art Cardenas, graciously took the time to sit down with me to discuss the expenses and revenue streams associated with the event. I arrived early for our meeting so I waited while he wrapped up training. I didn't mind waiting however, as I got to watch him work. I've spent a good part of my life in gyms and around fighters of all sorts so the smell of sweat and atmosphere of hard work made me feel right at home.

When Art wrapped up his coaching we got down to business. The best part of it though was that our financial conversation was punctuated with talk of boxing and the walloping rhythm of pugilists on the speed bag. So there I was, around people I love, talking about things I love, doing something I love. OK, technically, accounting in-and-of-itself isn't something I love - in fact, sometimes the homework feels something akin to my fingernails slowly being pulled out with pliers. But I'm in this program to better leverage business functions because I firmly believe that:

Accounting + Financial Knowledge = The Power to Make Things Happen

So my budget-induced-euphoria was caused by putting my newly enhanced accounting skills to use for something I care about. And why do I respect boxers so much? Because when I see them put their heart into their training, it reminds me that when things get tough I gotta, as my old boxing instructor used to say, "Suck it up." This dMBA program is challenging, but if my heroes can climb into the ring and repeatedly get punched in the face, I can do a little accounting homework.