Ricky’s Online Business Blog

December 7, 2011 (Wednesday) – I’ve been in GSM-UPM since July 2009, seen many batches of students and made many friends. But everything is coming to an end soon in this month. Going to journal the last moments, struggles and challenges until end of year. Stay tuned. Good night for now.

December 8, 2011 (Thursday) – Assignments come and go yet never ending. But Case/Project should be on top of mind and done every now and then.

December 8, 2011 (Thursday) – Reading up on “perceptual distortion” for the very last presentation (conduct training) on Sunday.

December 8, 2011 (Thursday) – Books are gold mine to those who know how to find. Theories are practical to those who know how to apply.

December 9, 2011 (Friday) – Had the last group meeting with members of my last group for the last presentation in MBA. We are to give a half-hour training on Perceptual Distortion. We will try to, no, we will do our best to give one impressive “performance”.

December 9, 2011 (Friday) – Finished preparing slides for weekend training. Going to depend less on slides but focus more on trainees. Borrowed textbook of Marketing Strategy class. Going to scan through for possible materials to use in Case Study.

December 9, 2011 (Friday) – Reading marketing strategy textbook and extracting possible models and theories to be used in Case Study. Pretending to be CONsultant for a client and learning to apply theories in real-world situation is great learning experience.

December 10, 2011 (Saturday) - Now left the last presentation (training) tomorrow, final exam on 28/12, and case submission by 30/12 (or 3/1?). Coming week is critical in order to submit before Christmas. Must have good lifestyle support and time management!

December 10, 2011 (Saturday) – Last-minute effort to rehearse for training tomorrow. It’s always a challenge to present a dry topic in a funny way and engage all audience from start to finish. The last time I managed to do so was on Digg in MIS class but many months ago. Hopefully the last presentation tomorrow will be good enough for lifelong remembrance.

December 11, 2011 (Sunday) – Mock training started in GSM. 6 groups to present half-hour each, 4 indoor and 2 outdoor. God bless my team’s indoor training later.

December 11, 2011 (Sunday) – Final presentation is done! My own performance is not satisfactory. But thanks to teammates Shannon Tam and Carrie Goh Yi Yi, we did fairly ok. All the best in your project and studies. I’m leaving GSM soon.

December 11, 2011 (Sunday) – One customer asked me on writing a lot about MBA lately. It’s because now is my last month in MBA and I want to journal these last moments of my course. So writing till end of year only. No, I’m still working..

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In business and entrepreneurship, we often talk about “business model” and “revenue model”. Put simply, a business model describes how a business work and compete.  A revenue model says how the business earns its revenue and profit.

It’s my first time to come up with a more formal model on real life problems. It is not meant to be complete or entirely accurate.  A model is just a representation of the real world.  It is meant to help us make decision on real life problems. It has weaknesses and we shall not depend on a model entirely.

I came up with this model on personal branding as I’m preparing for a talk on the topic.  The model doesn’t try to cover everything about personal branding. Nor does it explain why we should do brand our self, or how to go about doing it. But it’s more on the elements of personal branding and the kind of questions we should ask our self when developing and evaluating our own personal brand.

I hope to elaborate more on the model soon. But for now, I’ll let the mind map do the talking. Click on the map to get the full picture. If you can roughly get the ideas I want to convey simply by looking at the mind map, then I know my mind mapping skill has improved

Your comments and criticisms are much welcome.

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FB post #1 – Have you been saying you want to do something, but your action just doesn’t show you are doing it? Perhaps you need a little more motivation? Perhaps many things in life keep distracting you that you can’t focus? Perhaps you are over ambitious that your goal is just not practical? Or perhaps what?

FB post #2 - Have you been working diligently but other people just don’t see your hard work? Perhaps your performance is not yet good enough to attract their attention? Perhaps you need some “selling skills” to make them notice you? Or perhaps you are not exposed enough that they don’t even know your existence?

FB post #3 - Sometimes what we want to do conflicts with what other important people in our life expect us to do. Maybe we haven’t learned enough of their needs. Maybe we don’t know enough of our own ability. Or maybe we haven’t communicated enough with them on what we can do for them.

How do you respond to these posts and questions? I’m in brainstorming stage to prepare for an upcoming talk on personal branding. Your comments are welcome.

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