Dawgs for Haiti Social Media Challenge

The Terry Graduate Marketing Association has been challenged to use social media tools to raise $500 for the aid of victims of the earthquakes in Haiti. If we reach our goal, Marketing Professor Dr. Tom Leigh will match it! The internet and social media tools make it so much simpler to reach a broad audience in record time. We've been challenged to use that power for a good cause and put our social networks to the test!

Check us out on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter for updates and news.

You can donate online using the PayPal icon on the sidebar of this blog. Every little bit counts!! Whether or not you choose to support through the GMA or another avenue, think about the devastation that this event has caused and be grateful for all of your blessings. Tragedies like this always put things in perspective. Read more!

A Tribute to Toastmasters

Of the many the great organizations and activities that I’m involved with at Terry, Toastmasters has been one of the most personally beneficial. Started as exclusively an MBA group, the club has grown to include students and even staff in a variety of disciplines. This is my second year in the club and I have noticed and received praise of a marked improvement in my public speaking and presenting skills through the practice I’ve gained at Toastmasters.

While I’ve always felt relatively comfortable with my public speaking ability, Toastmasters has enabled me to practice and receive constructive criticism and feedback in a relaxed and fun environment. I didn’t realize my use of verbal fillers and my tendency to fidget with my hands or lean on one hip. Now that I’m aware of these bad habits, I am constantly conscious of them, not just in speaking publicly but also in conversation in general. I’m also always on the lookout when others are at the podium.

For those of you already at Terry or UGA in general, check out our next Toastmasters meeting. This semester they’re held on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. in Sanford Hall, room 312. For those of you considering Terry, look into joining a local Toastmasters group. Public speaking and presentations are a huge part of earning your MBA and the more practice you have, the better. Read more!

Business Planning

As I’ve learned this semester, business plan development is a full-time job. A wonderful MBA team and I are working with a startup company called DCN – Digital College Network – for our Entrepreneurship class in business planning. The process has been a grueling one. In working with entrepreneurs, my team and I have developed a strong feeling of ownership in DCN as a company and in the planning process. And seeing as these are real, not fictitious businesses that we work with at Terry, as students we are entrusted with much. My team and I took that commitment very seriously.

The work we did for DCN wasn’t just for a grade. Much of it was used when presenting to potential investors. The founders of DCN, who are seasoned entrepreneurs themselves, sat down in numerous lengthy meetings hashing out details, listening to our ideas and answering questions. I must say that it’s a pretty powerful experience to go beyond the textbooks and case studies and work with real people and real companies. As an additional perk, my team and I won second place at a business plan pitch competition against Georgia Tech. I have to give a shout-out to our team captain Stephen Rosenberg, who led us to that victory. Shown here proving that the best secret to good leadership is finding people who work harder than you do… Read more!

Lessons in Leadership

A few Fridays ago, many of my fellow classmates and I had the distinct privilege of participating in a roundtable discussion with Michele Burns. Michele, as she insisted we address her, earned her BBA and Master of Accountancy from Terry and is chairman and CEO of Mercer LLC, a global leader for consulting, outsourcing, and investments.

Michele spoke in the morning to a group of Terry students, both undergrad and graduate, as part of the Terry Leadership Speaker Series. My classmate and fellow GWBA (Graduate Women’s Business Association) officer, Elise North, GWBA President, were lucky enough to be included in a lunch for Michele where we got a chance to talk closely with her and two very impressive undergraduate students at Terry.

But perhaps the best part of the day was our GWBA roundtable. In an intimate group of 25 female MBA students, Michele fielded questions ranging from the proverbial glass-ceiling to the importance of her experience at the Terry College, answering each question with the straightforwardness and candor for which she is known. She imparted to us her belief in servant leadership and the importance of bringing out the best in others. According to Michele when asked for a formula for success, “First you have to show up. You must engage actively, work hard, and be a lifetime learner.”

When discussing the topic of work/life balance Michele had this to say, “There are always tradeoffs involved. You can’t be perfect to everyone all the time. Sometimes, someone is going to be disappointed with your choice, but that is your decision to make.”

The Terry College brings a number of equally impressive speakers to the program during the year, but this meeting was a rare chance to talk personally with a proven leader and discuss challenges that face women in particular. The members of the GWBA are so grateful to her and everyone who helped make this event possible.
Read more!

Rachel Martin, Co-pilot & “The Fix”

Friday, August 7th, two of my classmates, Erin and Stephen, along with Professor Chris Hanks, of Terry’s Entrepreneurship Program, boarded a 6-seater Beechcraft Baron plane at the Athens Ben Epps airport. As we walked into the airport lobby, there sat a baby-faced young man wearing an Air Ignition uniform. He was our pilot, Captain Clint. And though we’d met briefly before, knowing that I would soon be at his piloting mercy 14,000 feet in the air, his apparent youth struck me.

But Captain Clint’s calm and confident manner immediately put me at ease. So much at ease in fact, that I rode shotgun.

We landed in - actually, I don’t know where exactly we landed. But there we were met by Terry’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Mark “Dill” Driscoll. Though his title and impressive career history may imply otherwise, Dill is just at home behind the wheel of a pickup truck as he is jetsetting to business meetings. In the white F1-50 with his signature cowboy hat placed dead center of the dash, we barreled down long country highways, took more than a few turns down roads of red Georgia clay, and finally made it to our destination – the Lentz house in Tifton, Georgia. Erected there was a red and black UGA tent under which sat a few camping chairs, very much the familiar scene of a tailgate party. There was a batting cage on the property, and the infield of a regulation size baseball diamond. It was obvious that to these folks, baseball was serious business. And that was precisely what we were there to discuss. Baseball and business.

In the batting cage were a number of people that I’d never met. Dill’s wife and business partner, Susan, was there along with her brother, Ricky McWhorter, the logistics and distribution manager for McWhorter Driscoll. Walter Lentz was the owner of the house and the inventor of the device that brought us all together – “The Fix.” Chris McAlpin, a native of Moultrie, Georgia and head scout for the California Angels, stood next to Jason and John Womack, two South Georgia brothers who’d partnered with Walter to start a business centered around the innovative product.

“The Fix” is a training device that will improve batting for baseball and softball players. The business that will launch it, called S.T.A.T.S. – Solutions Taking Athletes to Success – is envisioned to be an all-inclusive athlete training and education company with strong South Georgia ties and a dedication to superior quality and service.

In what capacity we students will ultimately be involved, it’s too soon to tell. Perhaps consultants, fodder for a case-study, or maybe even a business plan competition. But what I do know is that exciting things are on the horizon, both for S.T.A.T.S. and the Terry MBA program. Stay tuned.
. Read more!

A Few First-year Tips

Now that I am oh so seasoned in the B-school world (look at that lingo!), I want to tell my new brethren some tips that I wish I'd been told around this time a year ago.

1. It is always 55 degrees in the classrooms in Sanford. In the warm summer and spring months you will likely be glowing, possibly panting and red-faced. However, you will still need a cardigan, sweatshirt, parka, scarf, hat, and/or mittens.

2. If you are in a relationship when you enter MBA school, you will probably be in one when you leave, just not with the same person. Ouch. Sounds harsh, I know. I read an article of on a similar topic at the start of my first year and I scoffed too. In fact, I debated the validity of the article with the cute classmate next to me, insisting that I would not become a statistic. My relationship did not make it. Instead of my former partner, I am now dating that cute classmate with whom I debated.

That’s not to say that your relationship will not survive – it’s not impossible, just really, really hard. However, if you do become a statistic, you have a good chance of following the failed relationship up with one with a classmate. It’s only natural. Don’t fight it. Enjoy it.

3. Let me preface this tip with this: I’m a Mac. Have been for while, and I’m fiercely loyal. My Mac was a parting gift from my former employer and opening it, even to do schoolwork, was somewhat comforting to me particularly during those terrifying first months in the MBA program. But when I tried running linear regressions in Excel for the first time in Dr. McClain’s Business Statistics class, I wanted to chuck my sleek silver MacBook out of the window. Make sure you look into the computer requirements for classes and ask people who’ve taken them before, particularly before you spend big bucks on a new laptop. You’ll be glad you did.

4. Get to know your professors. They are not only great teachers, but really cool people too.

5. Don’t freak out. Despite my use of adjectives like “terrifying” to describe the first semester, everything is doable. And we human beings have an amazing ability to adapt to our environments. If I can do it, you can do it. I sound like those weight loss infomercial spokespeople, but I mean it. If you need help with a class, juggling a schedule, or general questions about anything school-related or otherwise, just ask your friendly neighborhood 2nd year.
Read more!

Social Media Overload

Let me begin this post with a disclaimer: As a student of marketing, I’m all for employing new communication channels and reaching customers via social media. It’s dynamic. It’s a conversation instead of a monologue. It’s current, it’s affordable, it’s the future. I understand and completely agree. I’m all over the Internet. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the blogosphere – you’ll find me.

That said, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I’m at once attracted and repulsed by it. I’m constantly trying to craft my “personal brand.” Tell too much information and you can get yourself in trouble, too little, and you’re not trustworthy. Further, with Twitter and Facebook status updates, it’s so narcissistic to think that people care enough about what I’m doing to update them every hour about my contribution to the World Wide Web. And if I’m spending all this time on my social media presence – tweeting about a great article I just read or complaining about a bad customer service experience, shouldn’t I be doing something else?

Facebook scares me. I jumped on the bandwagon right as I was graduating from UGA in 2004. I was never all that misbehaved as college kids go, but still, I am glad I exited those precarious years of misspent youth before the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and YouTube postings. I’ve clearly dated myself to admitting that but I could not care less about people knowing my age. At least for now.

This is likely one of the silliest reasons to dislike Facebook, but I just have to rant. Sometimes I won’t wear something because it’s been in a Facebook picture. How ridiculous is that? Like many women, I prefer not to repeat outfits too noticeably often, but Facebook reduces the number of times I can wear something drastically. It used to be that one could get away with wearing the same dress to a different event because different people would be there. Now the whole world knows what you wore to what and when, so if you’ve been on Facebook for five years like I have, you can see that I wore a dress to the MBA prom in 2009 that I also wore to a wedding in 2005. Silly? Petty? Superficial? I know. But I also know that I am not the only one who thinks that way.

I also think in Tweets and status updates. I hear a clever quote and I want to write it down so that I can post it for my 783 “friends” to see how charming and hilarious I am. Just nights ago I literally had a social media nightmare. Not an embarrassing foot-in-mouth post, but a real, honest-to-God nightmare. I woke up in a cold sweat with Twitter streams still racing through my disoriented and groggy brain.

But just like sugar, alcohol, and red meat, social media is fine as a part of a well-balanced diet. And no Twittering at least 1 hour before bedtime.
Read more!