Capstone - The Beginning of the End

I took this photo over Spring Break while hiking in Pacific Palisades.  At 512 steps, this staircase is supposedly the longest set in all of Los Angeles.  That meant, of course, that I had to climb them.  But why someone spray-painted "Tech" onto them, I'll never know. Or, perhaps, I really do.

I've mentioned earlier that I dove into all things digital a few years back because I wanted to stay on the cutting edge of where business is going. This inherent drive to stay ahead of the curve eventually landed me at St. Eds' dMBA program. My foray into both technology & this program has, at times, been an up hill climb. Nevertheless, these experiences have prepared me well for "Capstone".

"Capstone" is the final 7 week term of our program. During this time teams are assigned to companies to help them research, develop & execute a plan of action to solve a problem or launch a project. Its not an internship - its richer than that - we are knee deep in problems... & solutions.

We are a week into this new term... 1 unlike any other.  In addition to our Capstone (I have the best freakin' team ever in Kevin Kettler & Gabe Maldonado) I've picked up 2 clients of my own & am consulting with an international nonprofit org and start-up company.  I love the mix of these various organizations - they are all in very different industries & each has different levels of comfort with digital/social marketing & community building.  As such, I've been required to adjust my approach & presentation to not only each client, but to various members of my clients' teams.  For the eager & prepared, I'm jumping right into strategy & execution.  But for the more skeptical, like a dutiful business student, I'm presenting metrics to justify the ROI, generating buy-in from cynics & following up with designing & delivering training for employees.

Is it weird that I've used several pics of Travolta to illustrate my points on this blog?  No? I didn't think so.

This experience is a 360 view of digital/social media in practice. My clients, those who are in position of authority in their orgs, range from Gen X'ers to Baby Boomers.  From them its becoming clearer & clearer that we've spent the last 2 years in a bubble.  Now, its been a great bubble - but a bubble nonetheless.  Most of my cohort are Millennials so we've been in a bubble in which it is obvious that digital/social media are valuable tools.  But to some of my clients, these tools are strange & foreign. Capstone is about translating what we've been learning into practical business application. Said another way, we've been studying the individual pieces of the puzzle for 2 years - now is the time to put those pieces together.

View from LA's Giant Steps in Rustic Canyon

Capstone means I've traded in my jeans (classroom attire) for my Ann Taylor pencil skirts & suits (to meet with clients). And its awesome. I love returning to the "real" world and its incredibly rewarding to put these dMBA puzzle pieces together for clients... the view from the top of this climb is spectacular!

For more photos from my travels, follow me on Pinterest!

The Digital Bridge: Parker Westbrook

Meet my friend, Parker Westbrook.  Parker's a bad-ass... but don't take my word for it, she's just been named Krav Maga Instructor of the Year at Fit & Fearless. 

Yet, despite Parker's physical and mental toughness, there is 1 thing that leaves her a little queasy: technology.  Parker isn't alone, though. For those of us not born into the Net Generation, aka Digital Natives... the online and digital landscape can be daunting.

Now, I'm not a "Digital Native" either, and I'm certainly not a natural-born "techie" so I completely understand the feelings of overwhelm with technology for those of us who haven't grown up on the Internet.  But understanding that digital tools and platforms are critical to the new realities of our world, I've gone out of my way to embrace them.  This has left me in an exciting role of being a bridge between the 2 worldviews (that of Millenials and Non-Millenials) and I absolutely love it!  In being a "digital bridge" I relish being the calm voice, teaching and encouraging non-Digital Natives to harness social media for their own purposes.

Back to Parker.  She's got the training side of things down cold, but she's more than just about teaching people to kick and punch. Parker is driven to empower people to take responsibility for their own personal safety and well-being. Moved by her mission, and since she can't teach 24 hours a day, I began pestering her to broaden her digital footprint to reach a wider audience.

To that end, for the last several months I've worked with Parker to develop her online presence.  Together, we've developed an overarching strategy to communicate her message and I've trained her in using various online tools.  For me, the most compelling tool she's using is podcasting.  This idea was born out of Parker's unrelenting quest for knowledge exhibited by her habit of interviewing "people on the front lines of what’s happening in the world of combat sports, self-defense, and psychology".  When I learned about these interviews, drawing on my background in documentary filmmaking, it was a no-brainer to suggest she begin recording these interviews to share with her audience so they could hear first-hand lessons from assault survivors as well as leading experts in their field.  The results are inspiring podcasts published on her website.  As a part of her digital repertoire, the podcasts not only set her apart, but serve to educate a wider audience.

Working with a tee-tiny budget, Parker's digital footprint is all DIY.  Because of Parker's initial resistance to technology, one of the most rewarding parts of working with her has been encouraging and supporting her to embrace the tools to create and sustain her digital footprint.  When we first started working together she was skeptical about creating and maintaining her own website, etc, but its been fun for me to increase her digital confidence and prove to her that she can do it!

In addition to working with Parker on the digital platforms themselves, its has also been exciting to apply the business principles that we've been learning in the dMBA program - especially the areas of Marketing & Branding.  In fact, working with Parker has been a rewarding opportunity to put the Digital in Digital MBA! 

Thank you to Joni McClain of Love and Light Images for the use of Parker's photo.

It Takes a Team to Build an MBA

Yay! Fall semester... DONE! In a near consensus, this has been the most challenging term yet in terms of workload and complexity of the content.

But despite the demands of it all, this has actually turned out to be the most rewarding term. Last year was spent laying the foundation of a solid business education and this year has been all about putting that foundation into action.

Besides the content however, the how of getting things done is quite different this year. Laying that foundation last year required a lot of independent reading, writing papers and doing homework ensuring that we individually understand the core business principles. This year though, working in teams to get our projects done wasn't just assigned, it was critical to our success. From my fabulous teammates in New Venture Creation, to my awesome partner Tish in Digital Law and my tireless collaborators in Branding and Promotion, I've loved working in groups this term as the dynamic simulates what its like to be out in the working world again... working with different personalities & experience levels, negotiating compromises, balancing strengths and encouraging each other when things get tough... There were a lot of moving parts to manage but doing so made all the difference to our success.
Aside from our assigned teams however, studying for Law... sheesh - I don't know how I would have digested all that content if it wasn't for my study buddies. To give you an idea of all the cases we had to master in a short seven weeks, here they are, shown w/ Basia's head for scale.

Anyhoo - its time for a break over the holidays before we come back in the Spring to wrap this thing up.

Until then, dMBA'ers congrats on a tough but valuable semester.
Go ahead and strut... we've earned it.

Digging Deeper

The dust has settled and yesterday's euphoria has faded. Yep, we had a successful pitch yesterday - our team has even been approached by multiple people about making the business plan a reality... but its Friday night and I'm back doing homework.

I did take today off a bit. I was just drained after yesterday, so I slept in... did some family stuff... even caught part of the Tennessee Williams marathon on Turner Classic Movies.

But looming over the day were the three Branding & Promotion papers I wanted to get out of the way today so that I'd have the weekend free. You know, free to study for Tuesday's Digital Law final exam. Free to study for Tuesday's New Venture Creation final exam. Free. Yay. Free.

Well, two papers are down... one to go. After the 2nd paper I hit the gym to feel alive again. I admit it... I was pretty bitter about another weekend eaten up with school. But then I blew out my eardrums at the gym with this gem from Linkin Park and I'm ready to dig deeper... cause after the finals on Tuesday, I'm free.

PS - thank you PW for introducing me to this stress-busting song!

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!

Burgers in the Digital Age

One of the best advantages of grad school is having access to world-class professionals who are at the top of their field. In today's Branding & Promotion class, John Moore, the marketing guru of Brand Autopsy, shared with us his insights. Particularly rich about Mr. Moore's talk are the principles he shared which are timeless and yet, never more applicable than now in the digital age. 



As I've previously discussed, organizations are catching on to how easy and essential it is to connect via social media and utilize digital tools, so the question becomes: if digital makes it so easy that everyone is doing it, how does one cut through the "digital noise" to effectively connect with their inundated audience? One obvious place to start is with data mining and the ability to target your audience with online tools. Yeah, yeah, yeah... like I said, that's an obvious place to start, but it lacks the teeth of solid business principles and the deeper understanding of an experienced marketer. 



To address this question of "cutting through the noise" Mr. Moore spoke about the need of setting yourself apart and being "talk-able" for your audience. Now, note, this strategy leverages digital tools - the tools are the means, they are not the ends, a mistake often made when getting caught up in the hoop-la of social media. Mr. Moore illustrates his point with burger restaurants. Now, a burger joint is a good old-fashioned brick-and-mortar business where, generally speaking, the product is pretty much the same from one place to the next. So how do you set your burger apart? Its those unique "touch points" that make the burger, the restaurant and the experience unique. Its the details of these touch points... from customer service, to the menus, to the furniture... in other words, the personality of your place that creates the resonance, the "talk-ability" of your organization. And talk-ability is what we want, digital or otherwise, as up to 50% of purchasing decisions are based on word-of-mouth marketing. 



My big take-away from today’s talk was creating that talk-ability factor for the long haul – not just one big splashy event or press release that people stop talking about in a few days or weeks. Its about creating something more significant than buzz... its about showcasing your organization’s personality throughout it's lifetime. Oh, and the other take-away… a shared craving for burgers that my classmates and I immediately satisfied with a trip to HopDoddy’s Burger Bar on SoCo!