Represented as Watson Institute (Watson is where I am working on my own business), with our Executive Director Brin and three other scholars (Norman from South African, Nzambi from Kenya and Mahmoud from Egypt), I attended the Colorado Capital Conference 2018 hosted by Rockies Venture Club.

I think it is good to write the theme of the conference here in case some readers not familiar with this conference.

Angel Investing has traditionally been a local activity. Angels support businesses in their own community in a time where investors are sending their capital to Wall Street where anonymous managers invest in companies that take jobs away from local communities and send the profits right back to Wall Street, leaving intra-coastal communities in the lurch. Economic development 101 tells us that if we keep capital in the community, we get a “multiplier effect” when cash is recycled throughout the community, resulting in 3–5 times more economic impact than when it is shipped back to corporate headquarters somewhere else. Join us in the Colorado Capital Conference 2018 where we will look at how Angel and Venture Capital investors can get better, more tax advantaged returns by investing in their own communities and diversifying their portfolios by investing local and creating positive social and economic impact.

Invest Local

In the front door and near the stage, there are several exhibition boards with an interesting photo on it shows where to invest:

• Wall Street?
• Main Street?

This is an interesting fact that there is a significant investment trend is

Most part of capital is invested in California, New York, and Massachusetts

Which means that other places actually are nearly ignored in terms of investment and investors tend to only look at those so-called “Golden Area”. That why Colorado is special and is cultivating the community which helps local businesses and startups to grow and looks for impact as well as return.

Because people often saying,

You can either invest for return or invest for impact.

But Colorado is building a community that integrate both side.

There are two major reasons that make this happen,

• More and more Investors focus on investing in local
• Entrepreneurs thrives locally

Challenges faced when investing local

Different in Talents

Often times, there is no different in quality of entrepreneurs from different places. But what is different is the need of education, here we have talents, but they are not the same with entrepreneurs in New York or California.The entrepreneurs here need some education. Not only in research area since some of entrepreneurs don’t do their home work before approach to investors.

But in a broader sense, entrepreneurs are not only finding investment, but fining partners. Let’s say, you can raise ten thousands dollars doesn’t necessarily means that this investor is right for you. And the key is, whether can this investor help you beyond write a check.

Limitation of funding

Often times, the foundation or investor in midwest don’t really have that amount of money to invest in. So investors need to spend long time in finding enough capital partners. Normally it takes 9 investors in each round and the amount of time cost in huge, this increase the local investment.

Not like at coast, once you get a big name to invest, other investors will follow them quickly without hesitation.

Lack of ambitious

Just imagine that there is a line which represent goals/ambitious, here are different positions that entrepreneurs locate compare between local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs at coast.

• Coast: way above the line, reasonably ambitious
• Central : below the line. So local investors need to help entrepreneurs to see a bigger picture

There is no difference of quality of entrepreneurs, it is just that investment is the whole picture, not just an idea.

Sustainability, Self succulency

• Coast: Entrepreneurs often bootstrap up front, so when they begin to raise money, their companies are already profitable, this makes investors easier to make the decision to invest on them.
• Midwest: Breakeven is already nice when raising money.

Because investors look for a real business, and often times they don’t want to put all the eggs in the same basket, so if there are 10 suitable companies, investors will invest in 10 and since this increase the likelihood of success, and this is more practical.

Suggestions for Entrepreneurs

• Find mentors, get trained. Specialty and knowing basic info in vital.
• Eco system doesn’t appear from no where, it happens with relationships, friendships, and etc. So building relationships, communities help entrepreneurs moving.
• Collaboration, open communication.

THE INNOVATION BLIND SPOT — Keynote

Actually data shows with the past 30 years, the number of establish new startups id dropping and the number of firm closer is increasing.

In the list of amount of new companies open each year, Colorado is even not in the top 5

So the question is: Does investment really helps entrepreneurs? What are those questions that we are trying to solve?

Here are some interesting data, from all the startups

Most of the investment is at NYC, California and Boston.

81% of new business doesn’t receive help from either venture capital or bank loan.

What if we missing something which are our blind spots.

Bigger is better?

It’s not what you know, it is who you know

“two-pocket thinking”

Top 3 correlation with success

• Self awareness
• Have a woman in the funding team
• Grit and perseverance

As an entrepreneur, I am happy to be here in Colorado as part of the community even not for very long, but I believe the power of local and local can make even bigger impact.

If you want to know more about business strategy and planning, you might also interest in:

• How to use SMART model to set good business goals
• 6 tips help your business to be heard in today’s digital busy world. # 1 from 6

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

Three investment lessons I learned from Colorado Capital Conference 2018. was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why and How to invest local smartly?

Represented as Watson Institute (Watson is where I am working on my own business), with our Executive Director Brin and three other scholars (Norman from South African, Nzambi from Kenya and Mahmoud from Egypt), I attended the Colorado Capital Conference 2018 hosted by Rockies Venture Club.

I think it is good to write the theme of the conference here in case some readers not familiar with this conference.

Angel Investing has traditionally been a local activity. Angels support businesses in their own community in a time where investors are sending their capital to Wall Street where anonymous managers invest in companies that take jobs away from local communities and send the profits right back to Wall Street, leaving intra-coastal communities in the lurch. Economic development 101 tells us that if we keep capital in the community, we get a “multiplier effect” when cash is recycled throughout the community, resulting in 3–5 times more economic impact than when it is shipped back to corporate headquarters somewhere else. Join us in the Colorado Capital Conference 2018 where we will look at how Angel and Venture Capital investors can get better, more tax advantaged returns by investing in their own communities and diversifying their portfolios by investing local and creating positive social and economic impact.

Invest Local

In the front door and near the stage, there are several exhibition boards with an interesting photo on it shows where to invest:

• Wall Street?
• Main Street?

This is an interesting fact that there is a significant investment trend is

Most part of capital is invested in California, New York, and Massachusetts

Which means that other places actually are nearly ignored in terms of investment and investors tend to only look at those so-called “Golden Area”. That why Colorado is special and is cultivating the community which helps local businesses and startups to grow and looks for impact as well as return.

Because people often saying,

You can either invest for return or invest for impact.

But Colorado is building a community that integrate both side.

There are two major reasons that make this happen,

• More and more Investors focus on investing in local
• Entrepreneurs thrives locally

Challenges faced when investing local

Different in Talents

Often times, there is no different in quality of entrepreneurs from different places. But what is different is the need of education, here we have talents, but they are not the same with entrepreneurs in New York or California.The entrepreneurs here need some education. Not only in research area since some of entrepreneurs don’t do their home work before approach to investors.

But in a broader sense, entrepreneurs are not only finding investment, but fining partners. Let’s say, you can raise ten thousands dollars doesn’t necessarily means that this investor is right for you. And the key is, whether can this investor help you beyond write a check.

Limitation of funding

Often times, the foundation or investor in midwest don’t really have that amount of money to invest in. So investors need to spend long time in finding enough capital partners. Normally it takes 9 investors in each round and the amount of time cost in huge, this increase the local investment.

Not like at coast, once you get a big name to invest, other investors will follow them quickly without hesitation.

Lack of ambitious

Just imagine that there is a line which represent goals/ambitious, here are different positions that entrepreneurs locate compare between local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs at coast.

• Coast: way above the line, reasonably ambitious
• Central : below the line. So local investors need to help entrepreneurs to see a bigger picture

There is no difference of quality of entrepreneurs, it is just that investment is the whole picture, not just an idea.

Sustainability, Self succulency

• Coast: Entrepreneurs often bootstrap up front, so when they begin to raise money, their companies are already profitable, this makes investors easier to make the decision to invest on them.
• Midwest: Breakeven is already nice when raising money.

Because investors look for a real business, and often times they don’t want to put all the eggs in the same basket, so if there are 10 suitable companies, investors will invest in 10 and since this increase the likelihood of success, and this is more practical.

Suggestions for Entrepreneurs

• Find mentors, get trained. Specialty and knowing basic info in vital.
• Eco system doesn’t appear from no where, it happens with relationships, friendships, and etc. So building relationships, communities help entrepreneurs moving.
• Collaboration, open communication.

THE INNOVATION BLIND SPOT — Keynote

Actually data shows with the past 30 years, the number of establish new startups id dropping and the number of firm closer is increasing.

In the list of amount of new companies open each year, Colorado is even not in the top 5

So the question is: Does investment really helps entrepreneurs? What are those questions that we are trying to solve?

Here are some interesting data, from all the startups

Most of the investment is at NYC, California and Boston.

81% of new business doesn’t receive help from either venture capital or bank loan.

What if we missing something which are our blind spots.

Bigger is better?

It’s not what you know, it is who you know

“two-pocket thinking”

Top 3 correlation with success

• Self awareness
• Have a woman in the funding team
• Grit and perseverance

As an entrepreneur, I am happy to be here in Colorado as part of the community even not for very long, but I believe the power of local and local can make even bigger impact.

If you want to know more about business strategy and planning, you might also interest in:

• How to use SMART model to set good business goals
• 6 tips help your business to be heard in today’s digital busy world. # 1 from 6

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

There investment lessons I learned from Colorado Capital Conference 2018. was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

营销学院 是我在学习国外网课和实际运用之后总结的市场营销技能笔记。同时你也可以在我的主页关注产品经理，互联网运营，内容产出，B2B销售等主题。

对商业市场等有兴趣的朋友欢迎点击关注知乎专栏：商业深度洞察。我同时在每个月以固定频率记录Self Reflection和一些 Life Lession 欢迎关注知乎专栏： 这些是我人生学到的。

或微信公众号： SaltAndPepper。

喜欢阅读英文版本的朋友欢迎登陆 Medium搜索：Meiling Wu 来关注我

我们应该去哪里学习Marketing

最近在听一个Podcast，Crazy egg（美国用户研究网站）的founder说关于学习Marketing，尤其是Online marketing，他最不会去的地方就是大学，原因有二

• 大学的课本时代久远，跟不上现在互联网科技进步的速度
• 如果你问大学教授你帮助了多少个公司的marketing，大多数的回答是：教授主要负责教书，没有太多的公司经验，我这一辈子都是作为教授度过的。

我想大家也明白，我们讨论这个并不是为了说这件事本身是对的还是错的。因为我的母亲也是一名教授，重点在于：这些教授往往没有商业世界的真实实践。

如果有同学想在学校之外找资源学习Marketing，推荐以下一些网站和内容

• 博客/文章：www.moz.com, www.backlinko.com等，最好的办法就是可以先去看几篇文章，内心有一些大致的了解，如果你有自己的网站，在自己的网站上运用；如果你没有自己的网站，可以去wordpress.com / weebly.com / strikingly.com 搭建自己的网站，这些建站平台都有免费的版本，即使是付费的也大约是一个月50rmb左右。

Learn before you earn.

你要做的就是去阅读文章，搭建自己的网站，运用网上提供的一些模板，自己主动地产出。如果你觉得自己没有coding的技能也不是问题，因为这些建站平台都是可视化无需coding的建议平台。

当你把网站建立起来之后，你就可以把你看过的文章，听过的podcast其中所有的只是都用在你的网站上。

几乎所有的我认识的Online marketing的专家，都是从开始建立自己的网站开始的。

Small wins start to add on over time

Single Grin的创始人Eric在圣地亚哥上的本科，毕业之后进入一家小公司做非常前端的数据录入的工作，对他来说根本上四年都没有学到东西。后来他的一个朋友介绍他进入了一家online marketing公司，他这才开始学习online marketing，因为终于有机会接触到商业世界真实的东西，可以开始学习消化，当然更重要的是 persistant.

在他入门的一开始，为了了解Music industry，他去了各种各样的额music festival不是为了听歌而是去看整个music festival的流程。于是他慢慢学会了怎么写博客，怎么推广，怎么设计自己的登录页面Landing Page，慢慢的在他的网站上开始有了有机流量的增长，访问者慢慢变得越来越多，不久之后他就在google上成为关键词“Light Show videos”的第一排名。

Neil Patel 的博客是MKT界非常有名的博客之一，Eric在一开始只是简单地看Neil的博客，可是后来他慢慢发现Neil的博客中有很多概念都是Eric之前从来没有听过的，他开始有了想要通过邮件联络Neil的想法。

即使你认为在你想要去和别人建立联系的时候你可能觉得人们不会回复，但是如果你足够坚持，不停地去reach out，是会看到结果的，毕竟大家除去头衔，本质上都还是人。

Neil在Eric的几次邮件之后，开始回复并进行了电话会议，最终也成就了今天两个人一起进行商业合作的结果。

和在同一行业的人建立联系

做Online marketing也不仅仅是要专攻于自己的网站。 Neil在开始的时候和他的另一个朋友经常互相交换一些小的tricks，尝试不同的技巧来看是否有效。Neil坦言说如果不是当时两个人互相交换想法共同进步，两个人都没有办法达到今天的高度。

所以不要仅仅是把自己关在屋子里研究自己的网站，多去参加社交活动，和人们探讨，尝试去和想要谈话的人产生联系。

如果你给别人一个苹果，别人给你一个苹果，那你得到的是一样的东西。如果你分享别人一个idea，别人分享给你一个idea，现在你有两个idea。这是idea分享的力量.

Marketing大师都是怎么学习的

• Nuzl 每天早上可以通过音频的形式来收听最流行的话题，省去了阅读
• Follow 当下著名的人物，因为他们转发的东西和收看的东西已经是经过筛选的内容，质量可以得到保证
• 经常去阅读别人的Blog，保持良好的习惯
• 在看过之后，总结一个可以执行的清单，把input转化为output.
• 尽量读细节的商业指南，因为相比较更广阔的文章细节更容易理解和执行。
• 可以在通勤，走路的时候听Podcast，省时又高效

下一期主题： 营销学院MKT School #1| 每日收看量超过100亿的内容产出大师教你如何扩大受众范围

本次笔记大多来源http://Lynda.com和自己的理解。 想看更多有趣的文章？ 关注微信公众号：SaltAndPepper盐和胡椒 或者是我的知乎主页 点击这里

欢迎赞赏，留言板见：)

营销学院 MKT School #1| 我们应该去哪里学习Marketing was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are five mega trends that are impacting the global marketplace and creating new challenges and opportunities.

• One is urbanization as we face a huge shift of people moving from rural and suburban locations into cities around the world.
• Another is the accelerating rate of population growth.
• Climate change and the skyrocketing demand for more natural resources.
• There are global shifts in economic and political power.
• Technology is exploding, and the digital data each of us has at our fingertips is changing every business and organization.

More powerful sources of data and analytic tools give us the ability to create the insights that will allow us to solve the new challenges and opportunities we will face today and tomorrow.

Importance of a data and analytics framework

• Navigate data analysis in an orgnized manner
• Provides a prcess for solving problems
• Allows focus in outcomes first, enabling actions and decisions.
• Identify where value in generated

The 4 aspects of the data and analytics framework

Discovery

• Define the problem
• Develop a hypohesis
• Colllect and explore data

Insights

• Perform data analysis

Action

• Link insights to actionable recommandations
• Excution plan

Outcomes

• Review the desire outcomes of long-term objectives and solutions
• Define the problem
• Impacts executive decisins and employee actions

It is always better to start from the outcomes and the hypothesis, as opposed to the available data to generate the best value from data and analytics.

Data analytics framework: tools and technique

Descriptive — What happened?

Examples of descriptive analytics:

• sales patterns
• Customer behaviour
• Cutomer profitability
• Past competitro actions

Diagnostic — Why did it happened?

• Diagnostic analytics helps you understand why it happened. It provides the reasons for what happened in the past. This type of analytics typically tries to go deeper into a specific reason or hypotheses based on the descriptive analytics.
• Diagnostic analytics goes deep, probing into the costs of issues.

Predictive — What could happen?

• What are my customers likely to do in the future？
• What are my competitors likely to do?
• What will the market look like?
• How will the future impact my product or service?

Prescriptive — What should be done?

Adaptive and Automous — How to adapt the change ?

This kind of insight is powerful and can fundamentally change the speed and sophistication of decision making.

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

PwC Approach — The Data and Analytics Framework. was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was a busy month, every weekend are occupied since now I am interning in Bulgaria, and there are many other international interns, so we prefer to have trips to different cities because of our limited time here. So recently, I barely have time on weekends to sit down and write my personal reflections. So I a trying to seek out sometimes during work days after work to write my review for July.

Life

Overall, life kind of entering a situation that everything is stable and regular. Rather than feeling like living in a foreign country and everyday is an adventure, I feel more comfortable with everyday routine through the living condition in the students’ dorm is not so good. Walking around the city center is one of my favorite things to do since for me anywhere with 4mins walk is manageable.

There actually isn’t much time for me after work, so I feel very tired for the past month mentally. It might because of those trips every weekend as I mentioned before, I don’t have time to just be alone and recover energy. As far as I remember, to be alone to gain energy is the typical way for the introvert, and apparently, I am an extrovert person, at least for the past 22 years. I always feel good when I meet new people and stay with friends.

So there might be a change in me as time goes by. Especially recently, I find out it is really much more important to taking care of mine own feeling rather than over thinking those words and actions that from others.

Drinking beers have become one part of my life routine. Since there are many different brands and types of beers across Europe and can be found in Bulgaria at a fair price. So my final goal is to try all kinds of beers that can be found here though it sounds impossible and learn more about beer culture. I do prefer beer rather than wine when it comes to alcohol.

Work

Out2Bound

July is my second month working in Out2Bound, things become easier and smoother. I totally get used to the working environment and working flow.

Lead Generation is still the main task for the sales side of my work. I begin to try to sense the business objectives behind the list of names since one of our staff always said:

We are not only dealing with a list of names, there are real people behind the list and you can actually close deals with these contacts.

So trying to find the pattern behind repetitive tasks, notice keywords from their profile and experience, and pay enough attention to details are challenging. Luckily, I begin to get used to them and try to discover something new from them.

Also, another big part of my job shift to marketing. I get to have a chance to take videos from other members and learn to use the video editor to create a promotional video that can be used later on our official website. Also, for the Chinese market, I begin writing blogs and enhance our online presence at Zhihu.com (Which is like Quora). I try to use a different approach to Chinese market since the difference between social channels and how people perceive business opportunities.

And I also begin to try outbound campaign targeted to US at the end of July so that I might be able to share more in the next episode of monthly review after I finish it.

AIESEC in New Zealand

Things just happened to just on this. I only use two days to finish the applications and one day for ratification, one day for the personal interview and one day for 24 hours challenges.

Actually, I already finished my AIESEC journey two years ago, I knew my AIESEC Journey is not fulfilled but I know I have to move to next stage. But things are always like this, if you have some ideas in your mind, no matter how many years passed, that trigger is still there and you know you still hold that desire when it appears again. So that’s also the same for me.

So long story short, I am now become MC VP Marketing in AIESEC in New Zealand 1819. And let’s see what will happen and hopefully, this will become one of the best experience in my life.After 1757 days, I am still an aiesecer!

What I Read & Watch & Listen & Learned

Reading is always my weakness since as I audio learner, I do prefer podcast and just listen to some courses that delivered by people either in person or as a format of audio. So I didn’t read too many articles in the past month, which I am not very satisfied with myself. I created a reading tracker and try to read at least 3 articles per day but I always forget.

If the goals you set is unachievable, you will never have the motivation to even give it a try.

Maybe three per day is too much, maybe there are better ways to remind myself to read, so I will try with a different number and see how things happen.

But still, I learned a lot in the past month with audio and video.

Coursera

I finished few courses related to Big data and Business Analytics since I feel a strong need for me to improve data analytics skills. Hopefully, I can finish both specializations before late September.

Podcast

Order of man — How a man markets himself

• Though it is talking about man, but I do believe it is the same thing with girls. Learn to market oneself is definitely an essential skills for everyone not only in your professional side but also in daily life.

Order of man — The path of most resistance

• The path of most resistance. It’s a term you’re not likely to hear. The term we typically use is the path of least resistance. And, I understand why. It’s natural that we, as human beings, look for efficiencies, shortcuts, and the easiest path. There’s merit to the path of least resistance. We shouldn’t make things hard just for them being hard. Or, should we? Contrary to popular belief there are plenty of times when it would be in our best interest to pursue the path of most resistance.

Order of man — Fixing your marriage by fixing yourself

• This episode really give me a strong sense of self-awareness and self-improvement. Here are some sentences that I would like to share. And probably later I will write a blog specially for this.
• We can not control and manipulate other people doing and thinking, and how they behave and action they take and what they think. But we can influence them! And we influence them by becoming more influential.
• She know how to take care of herself, I know how to take myself, I am strong, she is strong, we all strong independently, we are stronger together.

Articles

• 世界杯最大赢家，全盘解读华帝 "夺冠退全款"营销套路！ - 数英
• 乔布斯的简洁哲学：不是做减法，而是做除法 - 数英
• 朋友圈广告可免费投放了，微信的便宜这么好占？ - 数英

What I wrote

• The art and science of decision making in business world.
• Social media trends with Data— Industry Revolution
• How to Succeed in Business and Sales Ops Teams in IT industry

What I am planning

August will be my late month here in Bulgaria, and I will cherish everyday that I spend here. Late August, I will fly back to States to begin my Watson 2018 Fall Incubator as a China Fellowship Scholar. I am really looking forward with this opportunities since I already waited for the chance for two years since the first day I get to know Watson. It will be held in Boulder, Colorado.

AIESEC, will be largest part of my life of the following few months, I will try my best to working remotely, and I know it will be very challenging but in the same time very exciting.

For the last two weekends in Bulgaria, I plan to take two short trips to two cities in Bulgaria: Veliko Turnovo (Old Capital of Bulgaria )and Koprivshtitsa (Small but nice one). Some of other international interns plan to go to Greece but since I only have single entry so unfortunately I can not go with time. But on the other hands, I have more chances to see this country!

July is a ordinary month, but in another sense, also a unusual month for me, many things happened and there are some changes about my mental settings and motional management. Hopefully, things will become better and better in the August and all the best to the people that I care.

Monthly Soul Sentence.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes. — Hannah Arendt

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

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July 2018 — Routine Life. | Review Notes was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Solving business problems using data analytics

Many business leaders until today, still continue to rely on intuition to make important decisions.

Only 1 in 3 executives say their organization is highly data-driven.

But research shows that data- driven organizations are 3 times more likely to report significantly improvements in their decision making.

How to better combine the art and science of decision making?

• Combine a more effective use of data with the abilit to extract insights
• Embed analytics into decision making culture of an organization

Organizations are constantly trying to improve.

Overlaying data and analytics on this process results in better and faster decision making.

Making business-defining decisions using data analytics

Organizations make thousands of decisions every day.

Big decisions: Decisions that will shift the course of a business, or even an industry and shape the world we live in.

They set the direction for the business and are both high value and high stakes.

Big decisions are made frequently and revisited often.

They can be reactive, forced by circumstances beyond our control.

If we bring data analytics and other elements that shows below to decision making in our organization,

So the decisions like growing or shrinking the business or collaborating with competitors are seen more clearly.

• Have more opportunities to identify, model
• Map multiple futures
• Reducing the risks of innovation
• Accelerating the decision making process.

So that we’ll not only be there for the next big breakthrough, we’ll be leading the field.

This medium is my study note of Data-driven Decision Making on Coursera. See you at next episode with more dozes of business!

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

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By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

The art and science of decision making in business world. was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old

96% of Millennials have joined a social network

Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic

Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.1 out

1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S met via social media

Years to reach 50 million users

• Radio — 38 years
• TV — 13 years
• Internet — 4 years
• iPod — 3 years

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year

iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months

If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest.

China -India- Facebook- United States

Yet Wechat dominant China

US Department of Education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.

80% of companies use social media for recruitment

% of these using LinkedIn-95%

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55–65 year-old females

Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spear have more Twitter followers than the entire population of:

• Sweden
• Isreal
• Switzerland
• Ireland
• Norway
• Panama

50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook, imagine whats this means for bad customer experiences

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail pass, some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts.Instead they are distributing eReaders,iPads,Tablets

What happens in Vegas stays on

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Wechat
• KOHTAKTE
• Flickr
• Youtube

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.

While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to Youtube

WIKI is an Hawaiian term = Quick

WIKIPEDIA has over 15 million articles, studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, 78% of these articles are non-English

If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $1,712.32 per hour.

There are over 200,000,000 Blogs

World of mouth → World of mouth

25% search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands

Do you like what they are saying about your brand?

You better!

People care more about how their social graph ranks products and how Google ranks them

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertisements

Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

90% of people skip ads via TiVo/DVR

Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas

24 of the 25 Largest Newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation

60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily

We no longer search the news, the news finds us…

We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media

Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate

The ROI of Social Media is Your business will still exist in 5 years

Still think social media is a fad?

Welcome to the world of Social.

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

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Social media trends with Data— Industry Revolution was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, I am working in Out2Bound, a Tech consultancy company based in Bulgaria which aiming to help tech company sell more. And we are currently trying to build connections with potential partners who might need help for sales.

My colleges and I went to an event which is hosted by Vmware Bulgaria after work. I was pretty curious before about how is the landscape of those local branches of international companies so I thought this will be a great chance to look into, and I do learn a lot during the session and I was really enjoyed it.

Sales is all about building trust with others, since things are always start from people.

The operation, as a vital importance of each individual business, holding a strong sense of responsibility to support all other functions as a core pillar. In a certain way,

Innovation of operation is much more important than innovation of product.

As a CEO, what is you priority of your company strategy and why you set that as your priority?

This is a common question when we thinking as the position of a higher level. And not surprisingly, the priority keep shifting these days.

Growth

This is a common and of course important priority to most of the companies. Since if you do not grow, sooner or later, there will be other companies who take your place.

But data shows the frequency of “Growth” this words is lowering of the list of priority. Actually, it is not because we do not care about growth, it is because with the expansion of the size of companies, they become more complicated with their structures and they find out there are other things become more important.

Organization Structure

As we mentioned before, companies begin to put more efforts on building internal connections and structure for them to be ready for next steps.

IT

IT, as a core value of every company, it holds a very strong sense of responsibility with growth. Also today, the digital transformation is largely driven by IT in a certain way and IT has already become the most essential part of a company.

People

Finally, we come to the workforce that actually generates value for companies. With more and more realization, management team found out that the support and experience that a company provides to members largely attribute to their working efficiency and results.

Individual makes different.

The more diversity and support one team have, the more innovative and insightful they will be.

What are the four Growth Drivers

• Mobile: it gives you unlimited reach
• Cloud: it gives you unlimited scale — you can get what every you need
• IoT — Internet of Thing: it connects you physical with digital things.
• AI: Intelligence is trending.

IT= Business

We are transforming traditional products and industries to new forms of industries with help of IT.

Actually, the worldwide spend on Digital Transformation is changing from

$1.3 T in 2018 to $2.1 T in 2028

Which is an unbelievable amount of investment.

Business Operation is largely depends on

Business Complexity

Since especially for large corporations, all different things are related to each other and how to set priorities and makes operation more effectively become a hard task.

Big Data

Needless to mention, a huge amount of data has surrounded us and it is essential to transform meaningless data into actionable suggestions.

Multi-Culture

Sometimes in a team, one plus one might bigger than two if we manage the team effectively. We can even triple the performance by adding diversity since there are always new insights from a different perspective that you might never think before.

Business Pace

Today, everything is fast. For a business, how to isolate those noises and prioritize the main strategy is vitally important.

How should we deal with reactive and be more proactive?

Actually, statistics show that most of the noises are occupied on 10% of our business and we always spend 80% of the time on dealing with those 10% useless thing.

The key is to

Isolate those problems → Set priorities + focus on them

• We might need some external resources when we really do not have the capacity to deal with those voices alone. Finding some partners to help you is also a smart choice.
• We might really need to say NO to some difficulties so that we can free some time to do the really important thing.
• Automate some process can largely help us be more proactive about things we would love to.

Think out of the box!

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

How to Succeed in Business and Sales Ops Teams in IT industry was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Always, when I look back on the whole month, I am not able to remember what happened during this month, so I usually go through my Wechat moments and try to regain some memories hopefully.

The past two months are quite overwhelming for me so comparatively June went smooth and less stressful. I went back home for around 10 days and flew to Sofia, Bulgaria for a 3-month internship. Today happens to be the 30th day since I been to Sofia and a Friday, so might be a perfect time to write a review for June.

Life is all good in general, not because it is perfect, but because I am trying to learn how to live with imperfect. Still feel boring most of the time when I have nothing to do, but one good thing for me is I begin to feel more comfortable to stay with myself rather than force myself to stay with a group of people for not feeling lonely. Maybe it is a sign to grow up, though slowly.

Sometimes you feel that every day is so long to finish, you even begin to count every second; but at certain moments, you feel a little bit lost because you just realize yesterday is not the day you thought it should be.

Without further ado, Let’s get started.

Life

Life is always the hardest part to describe since it contains many aspects. So I was always thinking, how do we define LIFE? To some people, life might be the time that they spend with their family members; might be the time people used to full fill their value; might just the time people chilling out and doing nothing serious.

For me, the purpose is one of the most important things that must be contained in the definition of life. Life without purpose is like a body without the soul. I am quite a spiritual person and I want my everyday life is bold with purpose. So, one of the ways I try to approach is to fulfill my time with meaningful things. But oppositely, Why I always feel boring when I am not doing those things that I defined as “meaningful”, I will be surrounded by a sense of insecurity, and the very direct sign is: I will feel boring, and feels it is not right to just doing nothing.

It helps to keep myself motivated, but on the other hand, this feeling keeps me in a very intense situation that my mental status is always stressful and focused which actually make me very tired at the end of the day. And I might feel guilty if things turn out that I wasn’t productive enough.

So trying to “Enjoy my life” becomes my goal for this year. I clearly know that the meaning of life is not just about how many things that you finished or what achievement that you attained. For me, It is about how you maximize the effect of time with most prioritized issues that help you to become a better person.

Learning how to relax is also an important thing for me.

And I know I am making progress.

Work

I joined Out2Bound, a tech consultancy company based in Sofia, Bulgaria and its mission is quite straightforward: Help tech company sells more. I see this internship as my first destination of my Gap Year and this to bring me a whole new experience.

Out2Bound was originally founded by five AIESECers with the same vision, and keep growing disruptively with its great team spirit and niche target. Also because it is based in a co-working space: Puzl in Sofia with 70 other companies, this also a great chance to get to know the atmosphere of startups in Sofia.

Since sales are the core of Out2bound so our day to day tasks are majorly in Lead Generation and Reporting. I also take part in Marketing research and content creation for China and the US because my background and company need. Overall the colleges here and the team atmosphere is really nice and I am comfortable with working with them.

We went to the Black Sea last weekend as a retreat together for four days. Living together in a Villa, barbecuing and drinking one of the best draft beer in European, hanging out together on the beach and partying non-stop until morning to welcome July 1st. That was a great and unforgettable experience!

One of the former international interns from Netherland also coming together with us and I am kind of jealous with European people since they can travel easily among different countries just like travel from a province in China to another. Also, this made me again deeply believe in Life-Long Connection. People still have invisible deep connections though you might not physically be together.

So If possible, I would like to join in next retreat in winter or next-next retreat next summer.

What I wrote

June is quite a productive month when it comes to writing. Since I was I got lots of time to focus on content creation and I begin to realize the value of good content, and how great content can add value to others.

Content is king.

This will never go wrong.

English:

• Going extra miles on Customer Service
• How to manage customer’s expectation to drive performance
• You seems have no idea about where your life is heading to.
• Connecting problem resolution to outstanding service.
• Five sales mindsets that help you succeed in real life.
• After going through more than 200 companies profiles on LinkedIn, I find out 5 reasons why you…

Chinese:

• Tech Sales Academy | 优秀销售人员全靠这13个平凡的素质
• Tech Sales Academy | 五个翻倍B2B销售业绩的心理学技巧
• 有时候人生的反馈需要时间，你可以再耐心等等
• 产品经理PM Lab #4 | 如何进行有效的用户调研
• 产品经理PM Lab #3 | 为什么没有任何东西比用户调研更重要
• 产品经理PM Lab #2 | 如何发掘用户所面临的问题和作出假设
• 产品经理PM Lab #1 | 客户发展是产品经理的必修课
• 为什么每天明明很多事做可是还会觉得很无聊

What I Read & Watch & Listen & Learned

Future University

It is a 4 months course that designed by Beichen which is a leadership focused organization based in Guangzhou, China. FU contains 20 required courses and I finished 6 of them this month and learned a lot from them. And I also admire Beichen for design these non-traditional courses to really help Chinese youth to develop leadership and inner discovery. I will blog some of the insights I learned and try to start designing my own courses.

Podcast: Tim Ferris Show — Witney Wolfe Herd — Founder and CEO of Bumble.

Whitney Wolfe Herd is the founder and CEO of Bumble, one of the fastest-growing social networking apps in the world. She launched Bumble in 2014 as the only dating platform where women make the first move, and in three years, her vision has led to Bumble’s growth to more than 28 million users worldwide in 144 countries.

This episode brought me some unique perspective of how women make the first move in relationships and how women leaders stay strong in the business world. It is a must hear Podcast!

Podcast: Crazy Capital — Story of Starbucks

Starbucks has grown from several stores in Seattle to international brands with a market capitalization of more than $84 billion. Revenue in the Chinese market also surged by 30% in Q1 in 2018, and same-store sales increased by 6%.

This episode answers a few questions about: how can consumers be infiltrated and changed by the coffee culture under the guidance of Starbucks? How does it capture consumer love through marketing methods such as store design and membership systems?

And brought me a strong sense of how a business succeeds from a small brand.

Podcast: Crazy Capital — Pinduoduo = Costco in China

From the obscure startups two years ago, to the tens of billions of dark horses in the end of 2017, Pinduodduo is the fastest growing e-commerce company now. At the same time as the consumption upgrade is fierce, the term “reduction of consumption” represented by many people has begun to appear frequently.

This episode brought me a fresh new idea about “reduction of consumption” and how Pinduoduo’s business model can threat Alibaba in it own way. Strongly suggest to professionals who hold strong interest to Chinese e-commerce industry.

Online Courses

I registered with several marketing and data related courses online and finish some of them.

What I am planning

Travel

There are still around one and half month here in Bulgaria and everything is on the track. I might plan to travel to other cities within Bulgaria during weekends and it might be a little bit difficult since all the signs here is in Bulgarian so I have no clue if I got lost. Will do some research about transportation and plan a little bit.

Learning

Life is pretty regular so I will put more time into learning new data related skills through online courses. Hopefully, I can finish Business Analytics and Big data course on Coursera by the end of July and begin Python from August.

Reading

I didn’t read a lot during June and listening collecting information through audio makes me feel inconsistent and easy to lose attention during autoplay. I might try to clock some time every day even only 15–20min to spend on reading without interruption. Ideally, I can find a pace and write a Reading reflection during July.

Great June! Keep on conquering!

Monthly Soul Sentence.

Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf.

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

By the way, 👏🏻 *clap* 👏🏻 your hands (up to 50x) if you enjoyed this post. It encourages me to keep daily writing and help other people finding it :)

June 2018 — New Chapter. | Review Notes was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The last one was written on 13th and it has been 10 days since last time I wrote a daily digest. Here I am with fresh ideas and stores.

Time seems goes faster than before and just finished my second week here. I begin to build my new life routine here, and things back to track slowly. I feel comfortable to commute and visit different places here without accompany and begin to try new dishes.

I feel so happy that some new friends begin to follow my blog and this gives me strong motivation to keep writing. Also, I was been asked several times that why didn’t you write Daily Digest these days? Besides I am busy with working and some personal tasks, I know there is one more reason stops these days:

The amount of experience and feels that I can digest.

The reason why I decide to write Daily Digest is because there are something that worth me to reflect and gain some insights from them. So there must be something that I can reflect before I begin to write. But the feelings of a new city and new life style is actually quite similar with the learning curve.

When you face something new, you will learn a lot in the first few days and it is easy for you to come out many ideas and have some inspirational moments. But it is hard to last long under this kind of situation, you will quickly feel life becomes a little bit boring and back to routine when you actually begin to really see it as a “life” rather than something new.

So that is also why I didn’t write in the past days. I do learn a lot in the first week from training sessions and I began me actually work this week with daily basis tasks so life goes into a routine and there aren’t many differences if you compare among days. And I was exhausted about this situation since I really want to have some outputs everyday, but now I feel comfortable with not having outputs everyday since if I only see everyday life as a process to gain something useful, I will never actually gain something but also lose the joy of being present. And I would give it a name : Life experience curve.

I went to Plovdiv with 10+ international volunteers and interns during this weekends. It has been at least 2 years since last time I had such a big group to travel and members are all from different countries and regions. Plovdiv is a great city with amazing long history and distinguishable architectures. I will write a blog for Plovdiv with photos and videos.

Keep going and don’t settle!

Location: Plovdiv / Sofia, Bulgaria

My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.

*Sign up here to receive my latest articles.

Find more of my stories here !

If you found value in this, I’d really appreciate it if you join us and write me back.

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Life experience curve. | 24th Jun. Daily Digest #16 was originally published in Next Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.