Berkeley-Haas Alumni Conference, April 28, 2018
Wow! It’s always nice to be back on the Berkeley campus! I found the conference always a fun-filled day — a day to be “Students Always.”
 Berkeley-Haas Business School Although I missed Deal Lyon’s Goodbye Speech in the morning, I attended two workshops: 1) Design Thinking, and 2) Negotiation. Both offered practical insights drawing from academic learning applying to real-world situation.
Some highlights from the Design Thinking workshop:
- Design thinking involves solving problem by looking at both technology and human interaction with technology and its impact.
- It trains us to think in a non-linear fashion, where problems can be solved in many different ways.
- Design thinking is suited for products, services, and experiences that involve people.
- It focuses on the “Customer Journey Map,” that’s crucial in seeing how your product may play out with the various pain points that customers may be experiencing throughout their journey getting from point A to point B.
- The best part of the Design Thinking workshop was that we got to help Mark Zuckerberg tackled his current problem on social connectedness and data privacy.
Some highlights from Negotiation workshop:
- Present our value as a package instead of piece by piece
- A win-win negotiation requires key prep upfront and don’t leave “value” at the table due to a lack of sharing info from both sides
- Be clear and consistent in your negotiation
- Know your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) to ensure you get the most value out of any situation
Tidbits from HaasX Talk:
- Take care of yourself so you can take care of others
- Always go against the grain if you want to make changes
- In business, to be successful, it’s always about the people whom you work with, whom you serve, who you mentor, and those who mentor you.
- When you come to a dead end, think of it not as a wall, but just a steep climb
- Be a creator of radical transformation and help others rise up so you can rise up too!
I hope you enjoy the highlights that I have captured. Click here to see more Haas Insight! Please give us feedback on what you would like to hear from us!
If you are a young company running a shop on your own, without an extended team, you may find it challenging to keep up with sales and marketing adequately so you can grow and acquire more customers. Often times, I get asked by clients: “Where should I focus on our sales and marketing efforts to win and create impact to my bottom-line?” My answer is not “Well, it all depends.” It sounds too cliché. When I think of sales and marketing, here are some common-sense tips that you can consider to help you be better at what you are already doing.
1) Adopt a positive, embracing mindset. Prepare yourself with the mindset that during early stages of your company, in its first one to three years, you need to wear the sales and marketing hats at all times. More importantly, you need to understand that in every sales transaction, no matter how small or large, it requires some level of relationship building or engagement, whether you cultivate it through using social media or other traditional marketing methods.
2) Be authentic and know who you are. People want to do business with people that they can relate to. Share business and personal struggles that make you feel real, to show that you can too, help your customers live through their struggles. Think of the type of person and leader that you want to be, project that position in your customers’ minds, and consistently show those attributes that define who you are.
3) Build your network. Go to events 2 to 3 times per month to network and also acquire knowledge where you want to be seen as the expert or have passion toward. Talk to people, gain new perspectives and new ideas at times, to keep your creativity alive. Stay connected with people whom you talked to that you like or share similar interests through LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or other social media channels that they usually hang out, and follow up by sharing your insights, or engage conversations through their social media posts to deepen the relationships.
4) Earn credibility. If you are a good writer, write articles or blogs on subject of your authority. Post it on LinkedIn, Facebook, or pitch to local publication’s editorial team who may be interested in your story. Having articles published by a known publication or website can earn great credibility for your company. So you will get to have some bragging rights in your social media channels, your emails to prospects and existing customers.
5) Get involved in local community. Actively participating in your local community, blogs, or social media community groups can help you become an advocate for their cause. People may find your name mentioned in search engine results, in blog or social media posts, and accept your brand as a solid, dependable, and known entity. Find your spot light and don’t try to be the next Uber.
By implementing some of the tips above, you can rest assured that steady sales and marketing keeps you focused, yet it also gives you the flexibility to try out 1 to 2 new sales or marketing ideas once a year to keep your brand fresh and creativity alive. So you can continue to grow and thrive, and take your business to where it needs to be.
Special Note: You can access a soft copy of Access Magazine here. Printed copies will be made available early August timeframe.
Need a Yoda moment? Now you can!
As we begin a New Year welcoming 2018, you deserve to take some time off from your day-to-day activities and have those Yoda moments! So you can reflect and retool on any important aspect of your business that may need more attention: whether it’s about having a focused marketing strategy, finding the right customers, creating better social media presence, or re-designing your product for better customer experience.
Whatever your challenges may be, we can fit your individual needs into our workshops because you will get one-on-one time with us to assemble ideas, and prioritize the next right thing to do for your business and marketing, as well as getting peer-to-peer discussion for timely feedback. At the end of the sessions, you will take away with an actionable marketing plan to help you stay focused, with strategies and best practices that are essential to achieving your business and marketing goals in 2018!
When: Series 2: Kick off February 1, 2018
RSVP here no later than January 20, 2018
What:
- A 2-month business and marketing coaching series unlike any other
- Work in small group with 2 to 4 like-minded women business owners
- Get instant access to individual coaching from a high-caliber marketing expert
- Gain new perspectives from peer-to-peer discussion and timely feedback
- Do good because 1% of our sales proceed will be donated to Napa Valley Community Foundation to help Napa fire victims in rebuilding their homes and dreams!
Investment: $1,150/person for a 2-person group; $725/person for a 4-person group.
Contact jenny@jennyhuangmarketing.com for more details. RSVP here no later than January 20, 2018. A $100 deposit is required to hold you spot before group formation.
There were many wonderful content that we have curated in social media that we cannot wait to share out with you. Some are short reads and some are long, and well worth investing time to catch up. So pick you favorite and dive in!
- In general, consumers like brands who are helpful, honest, and friendly, beyond personality and being humorous.
- Wondering about how to increase Facebook audience, read more here.
- Average length of a successful video on Facebook varied from 24 seconds to 90 seconds.
- The 13 Best Photo & Video Editing Apps for Mobile
- Bonus: Snapchat Use Among Influencers Is Down 33%
Sources: Sprout Social 2017, Hubspot 2017, Social Media Examiner 2015
Hey, everyone! So thrilled about finishing up our new, YouTube video focusing on How to Get Early Adopters for Your Product.
If you are a start-up company, you would be most interested in listening to this quick talk in less than 2 minutes.
If you are an existing company, you may want to study how 3M crossed the chasm to find new markets, expanding their Post-it Notes usage in other target audience segments. 3M today is a $3.47 Billion company, so they must have done something right to get here.
Let us know what you would like to hear more!
Have you ever hosted a TV show before? Watch our airing here!
My first-time, TV host experience had been exhilarating! It’s great to work with a supportive TV crew, whose knowledge and skills are shown in this production. Of course, I could not have done it without my special guest: Jesse Cool, Owner of Flea St. Cafe based in Menlo Park, CA.
Jesse could not have been more gracious. I met with her for an hour before the show so Jesse understands what I was trying to accomplish. I was fascinated by her war stories in the kitchen, about organic food, her challenges as a women, a business owner, and a mother. All of which impressed me so much that I could not get everything into the show.
I am glad that it turned out the way it did, although I was very nervous. I’ve learned being conversational and showing genuine interest in your guest helped me acted natural. Instead of making me shine, I made my guest shine, that felt great! The interview went well; I will do this again with a heart beat!
Wow! Have you ever been to a conference that made you feel inspired? The Berkeley-Haas Alumni Conference on April 27 did just that!
It was great to be back on the Berkeley campus, being in awe with the student life, meandering through the streets finding parking, catching glimpses of Lyft drivers taking passengers around town, and absorbing knowledge and insights from great minds.
Today’s blog content drew from inspirations cultivated by speakers and presenters at the Berkeley-Haas Alumni conference, offering a blended perspectives from our Dean Lyon, award-winning professors, and real-life entrepreneurs.
I am going to cherry pick and share with you 1-2 compelling articulation from each speaker/presenter.
Platform, the Sharing Economy and Business Model Innovation:
Today, every company is a software company, because of our desire to utilize technology and data analytics to help us make decisions about how to maximize output of an organization, to improve production efficiency that has direct impact on the company’s growth and its revenues.
Venture Capital Perspectives:
In addition to VCs interviewing you, you should interview VCs whom you are seeking funding from so that you understand their expectations, and they understand your circumstances.
You should always be honest with your investors on where you stand, and see your investors as your eyes and ears because they have a vested interest in your company.
HaasX Ideas Worth Sharing:
Art of Pivoting. It’s not about what you do when you fall down. It’s about what you do when you get back up. Sometimes you do have to give up in your start-up company. If you do, don’t see that as a failure, but take time to find yourself again, and look into yourself to find another passion that will help move you forward.
Idea Generation: You need to expose to new ideas in order to foster new ideas and make your ideas better.
The Accidental Entrepreneur: Heroic entrepreneurship is not about being the next Google, the next Bill Gate or Steve Jobs, it’s about being yourself and serving the community by doing things that make a difference.
Disruptive Personal Branding: Embrace yourself; value diversity; create values for others; grow and cultivate relationships, emphasize on depth vs. breadth; post not just professional achievements, also include flaws, challenges, triumphs, and successes.
Embrace Awkward Conversations. You cannot go through life and be true to yourself if you keep avoiding awkward conversations when you ought to be upfront and honest. Having awkward conversations give you lenses to see the truth about a situation when you are stuck, and could help you realize how to make it better.
I hope you will find the curated content shared out inspiring, and get you up to inspire others in your work and personal lives. I went away from the Berkeley-Haas campus feeling fulfilled, as I have adopted a set of tools that enables me to be honest with my work and personal achievements, and follow some of these guide posts to be a better version of myself.
Source: Berkeley-Haas Alumni Conference April 2017
I have always been a fan of Influencer Marketing (earned media). I believe that if it’s done right, Influencer Marketing is an effective way for companies (young and progressive) to keep their products known among their target customers and drive brand affinity over time.
Public Relations is one of the channels that I know where most influencing happens, because it’s 3rd party and has the least un-biased opinion toward your brands. But as I dig deeper and read more into what other successful companies are doing in Influencer Marketing, I’ve found that the landscape has changed. Social media channels (Instagram, snapchat) and blogs, with focused campaign efforts and measurable mechanism in place, could be a great influencer marketing tool to help your brands generate positive ROI.
This article from SocialTimes shared some very interesting nuggets that I would recommend a read if your target market or niche makes their purchase decisions based on authentic recommendations from people whom they know or follow.
If you are setting up your marketing strategy for 2017, and want to focus on something new in your marketing, in addition to what works for you, Influencer Marketing could be one of the areas that you could try out this year or get some help in. As long as you have a focused plan and favorable ROI, you can make some positive impact to your marketing efforts.
I will continue to follow trends and ROI in Influencer Marketing, and may look into developing relationships with a few influencers that I know, and see where that takes me. I’d be happy to report out on notable discoveries.
I’d also love to hear from you! Let me know if you had done some influencer marketing that this community should know. We would be thrilled to learn from you!
Source: K. Morrison, SocialTimes (Adweek), Dec 2016
About Arvest Wines
Arvest Wines is a wine with purpose that gives back to local artists and the community through charitable causes.
The Results:
Arvest Wines has successfully started their business and registered locally, with 3 partners dedicating time to bring their business to life. They’ve invested wisely in product, marketing tools, and packaging to ensure they operate lean from the start, focusing on priorities and marketing activities that could yield positive results for their launch and customer acquisition in the near future.
Arvest Wines’ Challenges:
Arvest Wines is a young start-up in the Silicon Valley, led by a team of 3 partners. The company wants to launch a wine product that’s unique from other wine products that consumers can easily purchase from off the shelf. The want their wine products to help small vineyards in California capitalize on their excess supplies, and encourage consumption among end users who appreciate both art and giving back to the community through charitable means.
Arvest Wines was looking for assistance in building an initial business model with product, target markets, and distribution channels that would work to generate proof points and good ROI.
Solution:
We assisted Arvest Wines in developing their initial business canvas, coupled with guidance in defining their market niche, product differentiation, positioning, distribution and marketing channels to set up their launch in early 2017. Arvest Wines now has a framework from which they can apply for go to market, generating excitement and awareness building among influencers.
I’ve learned so much from the Women in Leadership event at Google on August 16.
The executive leader panel included: Leslie Trigg from Outset Medical; Kerry Barret from Accretive Solutions; Lynn Christensen from Workday; and Ki Kuehn from Google.
These influential and thriving women leaders shared lively discussion and awesome insights about how to lead and thrive as women advance in their careers and in life.
Here are my awesome takeaways:
Focus on the vital fews — don’t try to address everything
Find talents with passions — you cannot force passion into people
Be bold and take risks — don’t be afraid to take a role that you think you may not have all the qualifications for
Leadership is about taking care of your employees — Lead by focusing not just on yourself, but also the people who work for you
Be optimistic — work and life will have their struggles, be positive and get back up when you fall down
Be kind to yourself — mistakes and things happen in life often times, don’t beat yourself up on them
Don’t worry about politics, just get things done and work together as teams
Thank you Leslie, Kerry, Lynn and Ki for your wisdom!
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