February 2012

• Finish Business Accounting 1.  I’ve got about 2/3 of the way through and realised I needed some external help which I think I have located. The work I have already done in this area has positively influenced the day job.
• Actually read The 80 Minute MBA because it is due back at the library a very long time ago now and looks very silly, but I mind as well be sure.
• Get through GMAT Review as I am hoping to take the silly test in March at some stage now so need to get it out of the way.  I have done probably 100/400 pages already.
• I also have GMAT Quantitative Review supplement and 30 Day GMAT Success but we’ll see what happens.
• For German, I will continue with my weekly classes and my use of www.babble.com.
• And finally should free time present itself, I have The Personal MBA which seems to be (now that I’ve done a bit more research) the most popular book about a journey like mine, Killing Giants about taking on a giant in any given industry which I started and it seemed way less insightful that it originally appeared; and last I bought Googled which is about that other search engine not Yahoo!, not Jeeves, the one that begins with a G….

Ones to Watch: SXSW Interactive

Though much to my chagrin no one has yet offered to pay for my attendance at SXSW Interactive festival (still open to offers…), I am following the announcements keenly from Dublin.  This afternoon, the list of Accelerator Finalists for 2012 was announced and can now be used as a Cliffs Notes on emerging commercially viable startups. Having drooled over the successful shortlist, here are my top five:

Buzzdata

They say: BuzzData is the best way to share and collaborate on spreadsheets and other datasets publicly with the world or privately with a team or across an organization. BuzzData gives your data a permanent home so you see how your data gets connected with people, ideas, solutions and the bigger picture.

I Say: DabbleBD may finally have a successor.

SceneTap

They say: SceneTap utilizes anonymous facial detection technology and video-based software to effectively track customer analytics in a venue or particular space, including crowd density, male to female ratio, and average age. It offers an administrative tool for operators and a social network for consumers.

I say: Big brother just went clubbing and I like it.

Geeklist

They say: Geeklist is the first Achievement based network of developers where they can show off their great work and find who built what, using what, with whom, where and when. Never before could you find out who gets credit for awesome work like I Scaled Twitter.

I say: Giving credit where credit is due.

Sourcemap

They say: Sustainability depends on knowing the impact of our choices.Sourcemap.com is the only crowd-sourced platform for sharing the supply chains behind everyday products. Join 2 million visitors and nearly 7,000 people and organizations that use our free website to measure, improve and share the social and environmental impact of things.

I say: It’s like Portlandia characters just moved to Silicon Valley.  Is that local?

CellScope

They Say: CellScope builds systems for at-home disease diagnosis using mobile phone cameras. The company is developing smart phone attachments for diagnosis of pediatric ear and skin infections, which cause over 30 million doctor visits annually in the US. Future CellScope products will leverage the technology platform for consumer skin care and interactive microscopy.

I say: Until they fix American healthcare, this ought to save a few bob.

Ich lerne Deutsch.

There are several reasons why I am learning German. I like learning new languages.  I love Berlin where I have very nearly moved a number of times in the last four years.  It is a language of rich artistic and political history.  And crucially I never ever want to be evidence for this joke:

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? 
Bilingual
What do you call someone who speaks three or more languages? 
Polylingual 
What do you call someone who speaks one language?
American. 

The only reason any of this relevent to a blog on my autodidactic business education is that there is an argument to be made (by people smarter than I am) that Germany is the strongest economy in the eurozone.  Not to sound overly dramatic, but I would rather invest my time learning the language of the country that bailed out the rest of Europe, than one of the tongues of the debtors.  If/when this whole Euro thing goes to pot, I want to have some prospects in the future home of the Deutsch Mark 2.0.

My own understanding of the origins of euro and recent crisis has been developing over the last few years.  You certainly don’t need a formal background in economics to build a basic competency in the topic; in the last week alone, I came across these in my google reader: And then there was one - The Economist, German Bonds Draw Strong Demand - Wall Street Journal, European Stocks Climb as German Manufacturing Exceeds Estimates - Bloomberg.com, Europe’s Crisis Is Germany’s Blessing - Spiegel Online.

I recommend these two very highly.  This American Life did an amazing job last week of explaining how the hell everyone got into this mess with The Continental Breakup.  It traces everything from the original post WWII intention of stopping inter-european war by tieing Europe together with a single currency.  It was fascinating to hear about Victor Hugo as one of main proponents of a federation of European states [The day will come when you France, you Russia, you Germany, all you nations of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, you will merge into a superior unit, and you will constitute European fraternity. —Victor Hugo, from a speech at the 1849 International Peace Congres, read more here].  Back in September, Vanity Fair published It’s the Economy, Dummkopf! by Michael Lewis: With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status. 

I also feel I should better understand a country which chose to send this unibrow to the Eurovision.

Business as Unusual by Anita Roddick

It’s going to become more and more obvious to people who read my musings that the businesses  from which I take inspiration make more than just money.  They simply make great stuff (my pet fashion labels); make progress (Apple); or they attempt to make a difference and that is exactly was Anita Roddick was trying.

Before I knew what a CEO did or what a franchise was, I knew that The Body Shop was a place where I could buy anything I wanted without having to look at labels for animal testing.  I knew the name Anita Roddick from the back of The Body Shop issued postcards that I hung on adolescent bedroom walls or, better still, quickly signed to be sent off in bulk to legislators.  Roddick was a role model of mine, as a feminist, an environmentalist and as an entrepreneur.  Her name and her vision were parts of each store and key building blocks of the brand.  She wasn’t perfect of course and she incurred the wrath of her an element of customer base over the controversial sale of her global beauty band to L’Oréal.

This is a worse sin that “selling out” in my eyes; Roddick seems to have written this book without an editor, nevermind a ghost writer. It is as if she took what helped her bottles sell well and applied that logic to the pages of her memoir. The sparkly gold pages are full of schizophrenic font choices and sizes as well an overwhelming number of oddly placed and selected “inspirational” quotes.  It all left me feeling cooler than The Body Shop’s Peppermint Foot Lotion.  And Roddick espouses a rather narrow brand of ecofeminism, one which implies having ovaries means knowing more about the planet and thus business than men.  I find it off-putting.

All that being said, I did learn some things from this woman’s tenacious rise from failed café owner to leader of a global brand that tried to save the world while selling some of the best beauty products I have ever come across.  Here are my takeaway lessons:

• Conduct and use results of social audits: We have 5,000 stakeholder – anyone involved in or affected by The Body Shop, from our suppliers to our staff to our shareholders to the communities in which we’re working to people who have received money from our foundations – and the audit involves them all telling us what they think of us… In effect, our stakeholders provide us with a substancial blueprint for the future, because if we don’t do right by them, then we’ll be seen as no better than any old cosmetics company. (p 68)
• That a key quality of an entrepreneur is “pathological optimism”.
• That advertising, hierarchy and standard definitions are optional.
• Not everything fits everywhere – the american malls chapter seems to been an outright disaster for The Body Shop: “We shouldn’t have been in malls…We should be urban, wild and eccentric” (p.156).
• That companies can support causes and that there are organic links if we pay attention to them and feed them.
• That people are attracted to knocking others down of their “high horses.”  I found this segment of the book fascinating.  “Any company that is values-led can expect some extreme responses – either elevated above the angels or cast down with the demons, with a bull’s-eye glued to your back to boot.” (p. 229)  I completely agree with her observations,  If you never say you are trying to behave well as a person or a company, no one can accuse you of anything.  But, if you say you are trying to behave ethically towards X, then others can and do attack you with your own intentions as the bullets.
• Too much growth can be a bad thing.  Part of me felt Roddick and indeed The Body Shop would have been better off if it had stayed a boutique brand  She fought with stakeholders, felt let down by franchise holders and nearly lost access to her own company under various CEOs as a result of growth and pace of growth.
• Never Sell To a Big Bad Company??? Until you do of course. Alas, she forgot to write that chapter but did comment on it on her website before she passed away: Annitaroddick.com

You can read the book for yourself on Google Books.

Inspired & Sorry I went AWOL

I stayed busy studying over the holidays and am now fast approaching the first birthday of the day-job product.  Things have been fairly mental these past few months! The result of that was a very neglected blog which I will begin to fix this weekend.  I need to catch up reporting on what I have learned and confess that I am also considering a full MBA again and now studying for the GMATs.

In the meantime, here is the annual report from Warby Parker, maker of such fine vintage inspired glasses as seen above and a real business role model.  As a customer of theirs, they automatically emailed this to me today.  I couldn’t be more impressed.

I am looking forward to catching up on all things DIY MBA, including my enrollment in open source courses from both MIT and Stamford.

Progress-ish Report

I have been crawling through Business Accounting 1.  My hope to be done with the giant text by October’s end may have been ever so slightly ambitious, though not for lack of trying.  I am just finding there is an awful lot to memorize and that learning something so detailed in an autodidactic fashion means that I need to go through tons of examples at every step to make sure the rules (oh my god there are just so many rules) are really hammered in.  I am using the text and doing all examples there, using parallel quizzes/ flashcards/ extra exercises available on the online resource centre and using www.accoutingcouch.com so I am learning from more than one source.  So in summary, this is a fascinating time in my life.  <silence>

It is no coincidence of the 8 or so subjects which my three chosen Role Model MBAs share as core curriculum,  I am tackling accounting first.  I am approaching the end of the financial year here at le day job on Oct 31st.  Thus the next month promises to be full of facts, figures and projections.  I have already been able to use the terms General Ledger, accruals, day book, and journal in normal conversations this week.  So while spending Saturday with pots of tea, my fireplace and a general introduction to Books of Original Entry was not exactly riveting, the theoretical and practical progress begins.

Eureka

Last night while drinking red wine over my accounting book (don’t judge, it’s going to be a long MBA), I was still very frustrated by the same trial balance -> income statement -> balancing statement transition that I wrote about a few days ago.

With no teacher to ask and my helpful but equally clueless housemates not being able to decipher between Carriage Fees In vs Out and why only one goes into the Income Statement or to explain if I use the Leftover Inventory amount in the Balancing Statement or the Income Summary (hint: this is the only info you use in both), I was stuck in a hole for aver an hour.

The wine was running out and I still couldn’t get it all to click from the textbook alone.  Also, many websites use slightly different language so the more I looked it up on other sites, the less sure I was about where I was going with it all.  In a last ditch effort before befriending a random accountant over a message board somewhere, I copied out a long, complicated example into my rapidly filling first notebook and used highlighters to track movement of figures from one Financial Statement to the next.  And EUREKA.  I had a lightbulb flash above my head.  Thank god, cause this look is good on no one.