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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A FAB Summer

Things were looking pretty dim on the internship front for a while there, but as luck and some shameless networking and lobbying with professors would have it, I managed to secure an incredible internship for the summer.

Exams finished on May 8th and my job started on the 11th. My position was/is with First American Bank & Trust in Athens – founded in 1928 and family owned to this day. It’s a community bank with very much a family feel headquartered in a gorgeous historic building downtown. At First American Bank (FAB, get it?) I’ve really been empowered to take my ideas and run with them. What was so fantastic to me about working at a community bank was that it was flexible, none of that corporate red-tape, but yet, still highly regulated with procedure and protocol. With some guidance from my superiors I was able to craft an internship that suited my interests and experience.

I dabbled in some market research, soaked up everything I could about the banking industry, and examined the bank from top to bottom. The beauty of bank marketing is that you really do have to get creative. Banking is so commoditized that differentiating your institution is crucial, and that’s essentially what I’ve been working on this summer, finding our unique and valuable differentiator. One of my favorite resources that I found was this blog Financial Brand. Even if you have no interest in banking, these articles are fantastic.

The most remarkable thing that I’ve witnessed during my summer at First American is the interaction of employees with customers. Three times in less than three months, one of our CSR’s got flowers from different customers she had helped. Another customer brought in homemade baked goods for the branch manager the day after she’d helped her with a transaction. The employees know the customers’ names, children, histories, etc.

In addition to superior customer service, our bank has weathered the financial storm exceptionally well. In fact, just last month we entered into an assumption agreement with the FDIC to purchase the assets of First Piedmont Bank in Monroe and Winder, Georgia.

During the school year I’m going to continue to work with First American, implementing some plans I proposed including leading a customer and non-customer survey and implementing some website updates. Although I’ll still be involved with First American, I can assure you that my glowing comments are not compensation-inspired flattery, just honest observation.
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Whirlwind

Phew. Unbelievable, but the first year of MBA school is over. The beginning was tough, almost unbearable, but things certainly tapered off toward the middle of spring semester. I got complacent in my ability to juggle assignments and interviews and began acting like an undergrad again. Athens has no shortage of nightlife and entertainment and we MBA students are a sociable bunch – proceed with caution. But just as I settled into a rather delightful existence of a lighter workload, the pace accelerated exponentially and WHAM – exams. Read more!

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Congratulations Class of 2009!

Congratulations to all of the Class of 2009 graduates!! Pictured above is me with my handsome partner-in-crime, Mr. Bryan Barnett, Class of 2009 who is now gainfully employed by Integra Realty Resources in Atlanta. And here is the rest of it. Read more!

Like, Totally Outrageous

Ahh, the prom. One of American life's great milestones. If you missed it the first time, or if your memories are the type that you'd rather forget, MBA school is a way to let you relive that glorious event without some of the setbacks. The GBA (Graduate Business Association) sponsored an 80s Prom as our spring social. Amidst slap bracelets, fun dip, and period clothing, we danced the night away to Rick Springfield, Michael Jackson, and classic Madonna. The gorgeous couple pictured is Tom Morgan, Class of 2010, and one of my lovely roommates, Miss Emily Breen.

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A Lesson in Humility

Last Tuesday I had an interview with Aflac for an MBA marketing position. I thought everything went great. I wore my most conservative black skirt suit, recited my well-rehearsed answers to behavioral interview questions, avoided my verbal ticks (that I’m now conscious of, thanks to mock interviews). I thought the whole thing went swimmingly. I left feeling exhilarated and confident. I had it in the bag. Or so I thought.

I liken waiting to hear back from Aflac to waiting for a phone call after a seemingly great first date. You thought that the date went great, but apparently he thought otherwise and he never called. I want to be the psycho girl who calls and asks why, but I am trying to accept the fact that maybe they’re just not that into me.

Because I have a healthy self-image, the rejection hasn’t affected me too much. I wanted that internship. I wanted it badly. But you know, if they don’t want me, I don’t want them. No hard feelings. I was so overconfident that last weekend when I was walking around downtown I popped into one of my favorite Athens stores, Helix, just to browse and found these adorable note-cards with ducks on them that were strikingly similar to the Aflac duck. I bought a set of them smugly thinking, “Ooh, I’ll send these as thank-you notes after my second round interviews.” I am going to give them to a good friend who actually made it to the second round.

My search continues. My confidence, while still high, is probably at a more appropriate level. In the long run, it’s a good thing that I wasn’t called back. Aflac was my first interview so if I’d made it to the second round and eventually received an offer, my perception of job hunting would likely be skewed, thus setting me up for disappointment later. Rejection builds character. Read more!

Flashback

Having earned my undergraduate degree from UGA, I have a sense of sentimentalism and almost déjà vu being back on campus for my MBA. But even more than that is the amusing dynamic I’ve noticed as a part of a full-time program. My friends, it’s high school all over again.

Obviously not in the curriculum and course load, but certainly in the social sense, the experience is a retro one. Starting out as a first-year this August, I felt like a high school freshman. I was excited and nervous and didn’t really know what was going on. No matter what the most put-together, outwardly confident people projected or claimed, they were in the same boat as I.

If first-years are freshman, then second-years are of course the seniors. The 11-month students are somewhere in between. Don’t be put-off if high school was hell. It’s like Disney Channel high school. The seniors help the newbies find their classes, and go out of their way to be nice to them. The second-year students are a great asset for learning the right courses to take, how to handle assignments, etc. They’re also the starting point of your MBA network.
. The classroom dynamic has a high school feeling to it too. We all have our close-knit groups of friends and our unofficially assigned seats. We have the students that know the answer to every question, the students who think they know the answer to every question, and that one student who brings the whole class to sharply inhale when he’s called on – you never know what will come out of his mouth.

In a class of 56 it’s only natural to have groups within the aggregate, but I have to say that, as a class unit, we are a collegial one. Maybe it’s the high school cheerleader in me but I truly have a unique fondness for these classmates of mine. Even the ones who aren’t my favorite, I can see in them the value they are adding to my experience here.

To me, the social aspect of this graduate program is the most important. Yes, the courses are great and I’m learning a lot, but there are so many ways to learn accounting, financial statement analysis, economics, etc., besides attending a full-time MBA program. It’s the human interaction that I value so much, be it with professors or classmates or other staff members. In such a technologically advanced environment, where people type more than they talk to one another, the value of any face-to-face experience is growing exponentially . Read more!

Out With the Old, In With the New

After a much-needed but shamefully unproductive break, I am back to the grind. Classes started on Thursday the 8th. There are no Friday MBA classes, so essentially, I had a one-day week, which is at once difficult and a breeze; one day is really easy to rationalize skipping, but it also gently eases students back into school mode.

As a kickoff to internship season, the Career Management Center (CMC) hosted an internship reception in Atlanta on the Friday after classes started. Our CMC staff arranged for recruiters from more than ten different companies to come to the Terry Executive Center in Atlanta to talk with us. By ‘us’ I mean the 56-person first year MBA class. There were reps from great companies like Chick-fil-A, Turner Broadcasting, Carter’s, and Unum, just to name a few.

Two of my favorite classmates, Meredith and Erin, and I carpooled, not only to save on gas and boredom, but to ensure that none of us chickened out. Admittedly we’re all very sociable and outgoing young women. Meredith is the consummate hostess and is always planning a non-school related gathering of some sort. Erin was a wedding planner in her past life – her career practically hinged on her ability to sell and charm. I too am rarely at a loss for words and am typically at ease in most social settings. But for some reason, faced with an official “networking” function, all three of us clam up.

From talking with classmates and other friends, I have learned that this is the norm. Only a select few actually like networking, even those who are really good at it. But practice definitely makes perfect and having one semester of MBA school under my belt has undoubtedly made a big difference for me. My palms still got clammy but I’ve mastered the discreet hand-in-pocket move to temporarily alleviate the problem prior to offering a firm handshake.

I am eager and excited about both the semester and the internship search. I know neither will be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. Read more!