Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Here are some little pieces of sharing on BizPartner page on Facebook.

• Domain name (such as rickysoo.com) is your identity on the Internet. Your web site address (such as http://www.rickysoo.com/) and email accounts (such as user@rickysoo.com) are named according to your domain name. Without a domain name, you cannot have such web site or email accounts that uniquely identify YOU.
• A subdomain (such as sales.company.com) is a subdivision of your domain name (company.com). You can host a different web site on this subdomain as http://sales.company.com/, and create email accounts such as alan@sales.company.com
• Why not use subdomains to create different email addresses for different departments in your company? You can have email addresses like ricky@sales.bizpartner.com.my. Read http://www.rickysoo.com/2009/03/25/use-subdomain-in-your-email-address/
• Who can register .com.my, .net.my and .org.my? Any ORGANIZATION registered in Malaysia, including society, association, non-profit organization etc. Individuals? Go for .com lah
• What if you need a .my domain name but have no company to register with? Go for second-level domain name, such as bizpartner.my, Yourname.my. Any Malaysian can register!
• You work in the sales department. yourname@company.com or yourname@sales.company.com. Which email address do you prefer?

You can get the above tips in your Facebook by joining as fan on BizPartner page on Facebook.

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Recently a friend started a discussion on Facebook about boy-girl relationship. Then people started to liken courting boys and girls to marketing.  I commented about it and guess it might be funny to post it on my blog too…

Marketing is applied everywhere, whether we like it or know it or not. Maybe we can learn from Peter Drucker on what he says about selling and marketing in his book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices..

“There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.”

Now let’s apply and adapt marketing vs. selling (courting) to boy-girl relationship and see if we can get any insight from the wisdom

“There will always, one can assume, be need for some courting. But the aim of marketing is to make courting superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the guy/girl so well that you fit the target and sell yourself. Ideally, marketing should result in a target who is ready to accept your proposal. All that should be needed then is to make you available!”

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I have recently been interviewed by two local authors for their upcoming book on MBA in Malaysia.  Here are my original replies to their questions.

14. Did your studies help you in any way in your work? How?

Certainly. I have always found practical applications to work.  For instance, many accounting concepts such as revenue recognition have been directly useful in doing my own accounts.  Others include marketing concepts. Many a times I just cannot concentrate on reading up the marketing textbook, simply because my mind will drift away thinking of applications in business!

Furthermore, I have found concepts and models useful even in personal life too!  These include balanced scorecard, SWOT analysis, branding and repositioning that could be directly used in assessing our own self and making strategic decisions for our own life.

15. What do you expect to achieve with your MBA in 5 years?

An MBA will be of no use if it is not applied in real life cases.  I expect to be able to use what I have learned in busniess, especially in making informed decision and strategic planning.  I also expect to raise my soft skills such as presentation and public speaking to the next level.

16. What is the most recent book you read? Did it help you?

In preparation to write a marketing plan for one assignment, I borrowed from the libarary and just finished reading the book titled “The Marketing Plan: A Handbook” by Marian Burk Wood. It has helped me understand the steps in creating a marketing plan.  It is defintely not just start writing, but needs to go through real life analysis and decision making before coming up with a sound marketing plan.  This is directly useful in my business.

17. Looking back, what would you have done to prepare yourself before starting your MBA? Why?

I am working while studying at the same time, but I enjoy my life back to school again.  If I could have a wish, I wished I could just take a leave from work for one to two years and immerse myself in studies.

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