The Unofficial MBA

An MBA is expensive, both in terms of tuition fees, expenses, and opportunity cost. This blog is the story of a wannabe MBA student who set out to learn all the top management and business skills of the worlds top CEOs by studying all the information that is available on the Internet. That’s why this site will have a leaning towards online marketing, and ecommerce.

There’s a great post over at lifehack on the possible uses of Wiki’s at work. It’s worth checking out as wikis are a really fast way to build a repository of knowledge. The community written approach is great, and MediaWiki (the most popular implementation, that Wikipedia is based on) is an extremely advanced piece of software. I’ll suppliment the lifehack post with my own favourite reasons for using a Wiki for work…

1. Free -doesn’t cost a thing for the software, but you might have to pay someone to install and maintain for you. You may also need some hardware, if you don’t already have something suitable on your network (which you probably do as you can install mediawiki on most computers).
2. Easy Mark Up Language - There’s no need to understand HTML to update - there’s just a few simple markup phrases that control formating and linking. Keep the cheat sheet handy and you don’t need to remember the syntax.
3. Version Control - This is the killer for me - You can track the changes and see how a particular document has developed. Built in version control means that you can always revert to an older version of a document.

It is not necessary for you to have owned or operated a successful business to become a successful business consultant. Nor is it imperative that you have been in management or have held a titled position. You will, however, need the ability to sell yourself, and an up-to-date understanding of the area in which you intend to assist others. Read the rest of this entry »

The list of free university podcasts over at Open Culture has been updated. This is a great resource for anyone who (a) misses university, or (b) wants to learn stuff for free. There’s so much here that I’m sure everyone could find something interesting.

In particular, there’s some MBA podcasts available, including:

• Sloan School of Management
• London School of Economics
• Havard Business Review

full article on oculture blog

In the first of the unoffical MBA myth buster -  If you know what to do and actually do it, you would not see this as impossible. This is because if you are hardworking but do not know what to do or are heading into the wrong direction, you are wasting your time, money and you would get de-motivated even faster.

In the other hand, if you have the knowledge and know-how but do not put apply it, all you get are theories, but no money. I have met individuals who are probably working harder than me but earn less, and also those who know more than I do, but are not doing a thing.

So, you need to integrate your knowledge and action into one, and put it into use. It would not be too easy, but it would be too hard, either. Ordinary individuals like you and me are making money online everyday. So, can you!

Today let’s talk about….. How do you find Advisors, Accountants and Lawyers?

Get a professional!

When you run a your own business chances are you will need help from and accountant, a lawyer maybe just an advisor. But which ones do you need and how do you choose the right ones?

Word of mouth is in my opinion the best way to find reliable, trust worthy people. If that isn’t an option you should spend bit of time comparing people and services. Start with a short list. Seek out their clients and find out how long they have been in business. You’ve been networking? Leverage the contacts you have made to find appropriate help.

First let’s talk about advisors. You may not realise that there are different types of advisors. For instance you may need a financial advisor if you are trying to manage a lot of debt. They can help you structure your business so that it will easily pay your business debts as well as paying your salary.

There are also business advisors. They can help you if there is anything you are unsure about when it comes to running your business. Than can be more affordable and extremely helpful if you run into trouble. Having good advisors can take a lot of weight off your shoulders.

When you own a business the day may come when you will need a lawyer to help you with licenses, permits, regulations, contacts, or employment. You need to get one straight away if someone violates your trademark, copyright or patent, or someone threatens to take legal action against you for some reason. It’s a good idea to have a lawyer on your side. Whenever you are dealing with the law you really shouldn’t try to go it alone.

Accountants are a necessity for saving on your taxes. Accountants know the tax laws inside and out. They will be able to point out all the savings you might be entitled to. A good accountant who will keep in contact with you. They will remind you of tax deadlines and changes in the law.

Advertising your business can be confusing and costly if you don’t know what your doing. If you aren’t sure how run your advertising campaign you may want to check into an advertising agencies. A good one can create professional looking ad and place it in ways that will produce results. Look for one that specializes in home businesses, and will let you start with a small budget.

So you see with a little time and effort you can carefully choose the right advisor, accountant or lawyers to help you make running your own business much easier and less stressful.

This quote is interesting, as it applies to more than just sales:

In todays marketplace you have to ask for the order nine times before someone will buy on average. The reason 99% of you don’t make the sale is because on average people only ask for the sale 1.5 times. I guarantee if you set up a good system and ask people for the order nine times you will make money. Our sales numbers will go up dramatically the more contact you have with the prospect.

How many times have I had to speak to the accounts department, before I get my report? Well, it was about 9 times.

How many times did I ask tech support to fix activesync on my exchange account? Well, yes, now I remember it was about 9 times.

Now, all those things I’ve asked for and not got… I’m going to go through my “waiting for” folder and fire of 8 more requests!

Had a couple of meetings today, external meetings - not like the internal meetings I’ve complained about before on this blog. I love external meetings, and it’s been a while since I’ve had two on the same day. Why I love external meetings…

1. Always with a different person. No meeting is ever the same. I can’t say the same thing for our internal meetings which are very often repetitive.
2. Network effects. Meeting more people makes more contacts, and can open you up to a whole other persons network. One of the great things about networking is the compounding effect, that with just a little effort and a few meetings you can build a large network of contacts. Leveraging tools like LinkedIn helps too.
3. Gets you out of the office. It was sunny today. That always helps the mood and never fails to make me more productive on return to the office.
4. Positive. When the meetings are mainly sales based or business development, they are by their very nature positive. You have to be positive, and big up the company. Talk up the best aspects and our strengths. This works like an affirmation - by concentrating on the positive aspects, it makes you feel positive automatically! wow!

So - let’s all book in some more external meetings, it good for business and makes you feel good.

I’ve posted about GTD before, and this is an update. I’ve been using the GTD system for a while now. If you are not familiar with Getting Things Done, the main resource for GTD is the book by David Allen: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity

The biggest problem with Getting Things Done (GTD) was collecting open loops, but not actually doing enough to close them and keep on top of the work. The other main problem was not doing the Weekly Review, and hence not keeping on top of where everything is in my “trusted system”. That’s two big pitfalls with the GTD system, and the two reasons why I need a big spring clean of my Outlook system.

I’ve started clearing out and transferring everything to a paper based system, in preparation to start again with the Outlook plugin. While doing so, I’ve noticed various things filed in the wrong place, I noticed various items incorrectly classified. I decided to summerise these as “bad habits”, or “Heinous Habits of GTD”. This way I have a list of things to avoid once I get up and running in Outlook again:

1. Having “next actions” on the Diary: Force of habit - I was occasionally storing non-time-sensitive items on the diary.
2. Not having everything in the system. Enter everything, even if just by sending a simple email to myself - that way I can capture everything, and not supplement the system by having random post-it notes with To Do items on them.
3. Not using projects more effectively. Yes, adding items to a project list just to get them out of my mind -must avoid doing this. Also, should learn to setup projects more effectively with the advanced project management tools in the new version of the Outlook plugin.

Now I’ve cleaned up my “system” it’s time to start implementing from scratch again - but this time avoiding these bad habits!

As you are probably aware, Google last week launched universal search:

“With universal search, we’ve begun blending results from more
than just the web in order to provide the most relevant and
useful results possible, In addition to web pages,
for instance, the search results may include video, news, images,
maps, and books. Over time, we’ll continue to enhance this
blending so that searchers can get the exact information they
need right from the search results.”

Internet marketers, take note - now is the time to act to benefit from this change! What does this mean for your company’s website, your online store, or other internet marketing efforts? Search engine traffic is probably one of the biggest contributors to your website visitor numbers, so now is the time to start getting a representation in these other areas of search:

• Video: Upload a useful, attention grabbing video to Google Video. Make sure to optimize for your relevent keywords and link back to your site. How to optimise your video for Google.
• Get your website or blog into Google News.
• Get your old news into the Google News Archive Search.
• Submit Press Releases to sites that already appear in Google News. Do a search of Google News for your niche with some key phrases, and see what sites turn up.
• Make sure all the images on your site are optimised for your important keywords. You can do this by making use of the “alt” attribute to describe each image on your site in the HTML. Consider creating a few crazy graphics on your site to attract people to click.
• What about book search? Well, just write a book in your niche and get it published!

Check the Google Blog for more information.

Someone said to me a few days ago: “you lot spend all your time in meetings”. Now, while that’s not entirely true, I must admit, we probably do have a few too many. I think it’s partially because we’re so under-resourced, and everyone’s operating in multiple areas, but that’s all the more reason to do a bit of research into meetings, and how to run more effective meetings.  Here’s some tips I’ve picked up:

1. Lead by example: if you don’t set a precedent of turning up on time for meetings, then you’re not going to get others taking meeting timings serious. Try to start on time, no matter what - late comers should not be accommodated!
2. Eliminate: Don’t hold meetings where a conversation would do. Even if it’s just over IM, try and get issues resolved without blocking out time for a meeting. I have just finished reading the 4 hour work week. This was a bit of a paradigm shift for me, as the author never has any meetings. I like the idea of elimination, so let’s start eliminating all the non-essential meetings, and having more “conversations”.
3. Know what action or outcome you expect from the meeting. This one was really good for me, and so easy to forget at times - the number of meetings I have been in where no one seemed to know the exact reason why we were there is surprising. Setting this in place also goes along with the need to maintain focus, making sure that all contribution leads towards the expected outcome.
4. End early! If the meeting is going past the allotted time, then you need to readdress the content of the meeting and address the fact that there’s too much content to go over. Or, alternative maybe you’re just not getting to the point, in which case goto step 3.
5. And recap at the end. Make sure everyone has taken down their action points.