Hejsan to all!
Winter break is very near in the future and that means that this course is coming to an end. We had our second and final exam today. It was a bit tougher than the first one, but I'm confident that it went well! We were asked about the importance of the digital world and how it should be utilized in Finland. ICT is biggest chance of growth these days, so finding an answer to that question is really topical.
But enough about that. As I mentioned, the course is over soon and that's great and sad at the same time. There was repetition during this course (which I still don't see as a bad thing) but mostly it was a huge learning experience. I'm not saying I'm an expert in the digital business now, not even nearly, but nevertheless this course really opened my eyes to the possibilities that the digital world offers.
There so much you can do online and these days being online is an necessity, not an option. There's no way a company can survive in the modern world without knowing how to operate in the digital business world and how to utilize all the opportunities it offers. We are moving towards an era where pretty much everything is done online. So in the future you either know this stuff or you perish (well this at least applies to companies).
The greatest thing about this all is that I can now apply all the stuff I learnt to my own company! For example, I mentioned in one of my previous posts that my company will have its own blog. There's so much that can be done with social media marketing, SEO, lead nurturing, tracking customer behavior etc. that it's almost overwhelming. But I'm sure that in time I'll get the hang of it all! As I said, this course didn't mold me into an expert, but it pointed me on the road to become one.
This all being said, I really want to thank Ilkka, Anna and Marjo (and all the coaches) for this course! It had it's ups and downs but mostly just ups.
So yea, THANK YOU GUYS!
Joonatan kiittää ja kuittaa!
(even though it sounds like it, this propably isn't my last post here, so stay tuned!)
torstai 3. joulukuuta 2015
keskiviikko 25. marraskuuta 2015
Real deal
Hellooo,
It's time for my weekly blog post! I'm going to have to keep it short this time since I'm writing this in bit of a hurry. But still there's some stuff I want to talk about.
Most of my learning this week has happened while setting up our business with my friend Taavetti. I mentioned our company KV Woodwear in the end of the last blog and that we were expecting our first product samples (wooden sunglasses). I'm happy to report that they have arrived!
Here's a (terrible) picture of the glasses:
We are now expecting our larger order and should have the glasses available for customers in about 2 months.
I could write about all the work and different processes we have had to go through to get to this point with Woodwear, but it would take about 20 pages so I'll talk about what's relevant for this course.
Something digital that we have been busy with, is our online store. We are buying our store platform from a firm called Vilkas group. They offer this online store tool with built in payment operator Klarna Checkout. So we get the store and different payment methods from one place which is really convenient. There's some learning to be done with the different options and tools for the website itself, but we're getting the hang of it.
I've also been thinking about different marketing methods and I'm 99% sure that KV Woodwear will have it's own blog! During writing this blog, I've realized that iblogging is a great way to do marketing and stay in contact with your customers This blog has been the first one for me ever and now it's time to put this stuff into real use.
That's all for this time. Sorry that the post is such a stump, but as I said, I'm writing this in a hurry.. I'll promise more details on the next post!
It's time for my weekly blog post! I'm going to have to keep it short this time since I'm writing this in bit of a hurry. But still there's some stuff I want to talk about.
Most of my learning this week has happened while setting up our business with my friend Taavetti. I mentioned our company KV Woodwear in the end of the last blog and that we were expecting our first product samples (wooden sunglasses). I'm happy to report that they have arrived!
Here's a (terrible) picture of the glasses:
We are now expecting our larger order and should have the glasses available for customers in about 2 months.
I could write about all the work and different processes we have had to go through to get to this point with Woodwear, but it would take about 20 pages so I'll talk about what's relevant for this course.
Something digital that we have been busy with, is our online store. We are buying our store platform from a firm called Vilkas group. They offer this online store tool with built in payment operator Klarna Checkout. So we get the store and different payment methods from one place which is really convenient. There's some learning to be done with the different options and tools for the website itself, but we're getting the hang of it.
I've also been thinking about different marketing methods and I'm 99% sure that KV Woodwear will have it's own blog! During writing this blog, I've realized that iblogging is a great way to do marketing and stay in contact with your customers This blog has been the first one for me ever and now it's time to put this stuff into real use.
That's all for this time. Sorry that the post is such a stump, but as I said, I'm writing this in a hurry.. I'll promise more details on the next post!
maanantai 16. marraskuuta 2015
Feelings and emotions
Hello everybody, it's me again,
I'm a bit late with my publishing since it's Monday already, but fortunately it has only been a couple of days since my last blog post so I hope you don't mind! And now I have the possibility to include our today's lecture in my post.
We had two very interesting presentations today by two great presenters, Jaakko Alasaarela from ZEF and Camilla Tuominen from Emotion Tracker. They both are the CEOs of their companies, so it's safe to assume that they know what they're talking about, though this time the subjects were more about feelings and emotions than business economics.
Jaakko was a great presenter and really excited about the stuff he talked about. He told us about ZEFs three priorities which were love, passion and bravery, in that order. He talked about love and how every human being wants to be loved. If they can't be loved, they want to be respected. If they're not respected, they want to be feared (and probably respected through that fear). And if they're not feared, they want to be hated. I guess that's true, at least in most cases.
When he talked about passion, he told us a story about Zlatan Ibrahimovic who is one of the greatest football players ever. Through passion he managed to get signed to Ajax when he was young, but it got to his head. He got rid of his agent because he didn't agree with him on everything and was lazy with his training. He thought that he doesn't need to train as hard as the rest because of his talent. Long story short, another agent brought Zlatan back to the ground, told him to get rid of his Porsches and fancy clothes and got him back to training. And now as I mentioned earlier, Zlatan is one of the greatest players of all time. So the moral of the story being that you have to be passionate to be successful, but you also need to stay humble.
Here's a picture of Jaakko during his presentation (and Zlatan celebrating in the background!)
Camilla is the founder of a company/app called Emotion Tracker. The app is used to track your emotions (duh) during the day. It helps you to realize the causes for your feelings and pin point the moments when you feel these feelings. By doing all this you can control and understand the reasons behind your emotions thus making you more able to do some "self-therapy" (my term, not hers haha).
She also talked about other reason why it's important to understand your feelings and the feelings of others. Well One point she made was that in the future all that can be automated, will be automated. What's left for the humans to do is to read emotions or "x-factors" that computers can't understand. I'm sure that this is going to be the case in the future, so yea, just meeting people on the emotional level is going to be the job of the future.
Also something I thought I'll mention, is me and my friends company KV Woodwear. We're planning to import, market and sell wooden sunglasses (and other wooden accessories in the future) The reason I want to mention it is because we spent our weekend setting up our online store. So I guess that's something worth mentioning since this is a blog for digital business course. It's been a huge learning process from the beginning to this point and now we're at the point we can start doing stuff online. We just got our first samples today (I actually haven't seen them yet), so it's about time to start building the online store and our website. I'm going to keep track of what we're doing and post everything online related on my blog.
Here's our company logo which was created by a British graphic designer Juliana Bokisch.
I'm a bit late with my publishing since it's Monday already, but fortunately it has only been a couple of days since my last blog post so I hope you don't mind! And now I have the possibility to include our today's lecture in my post.
We had two very interesting presentations today by two great presenters, Jaakko Alasaarela from ZEF and Camilla Tuominen from Emotion Tracker. They both are the CEOs of their companies, so it's safe to assume that they know what they're talking about, though this time the subjects were more about feelings and emotions than business economics.
Jaakko was a great presenter and really excited about the stuff he talked about. He told us about ZEFs three priorities which were love, passion and bravery, in that order. He talked about love and how every human being wants to be loved. If they can't be loved, they want to be respected. If they're not respected, they want to be feared (and probably respected through that fear). And if they're not feared, they want to be hated. I guess that's true, at least in most cases.
When he talked about passion, he told us a story about Zlatan Ibrahimovic who is one of the greatest football players ever. Through passion he managed to get signed to Ajax when he was young, but it got to his head. He got rid of his agent because he didn't agree with him on everything and was lazy with his training. He thought that he doesn't need to train as hard as the rest because of his talent. Long story short, another agent brought Zlatan back to the ground, told him to get rid of his Porsches and fancy clothes and got him back to training. And now as I mentioned earlier, Zlatan is one of the greatest players of all time. So the moral of the story being that you have to be passionate to be successful, but you also need to stay humble.
Here's a picture of Jaakko during his presentation (and Zlatan celebrating in the background!)
She also talked about other reason why it's important to understand your feelings and the feelings of others. Well One point she made was that in the future all that can be automated, will be automated. What's left for the humans to do is to read emotions or "x-factors" that computers can't understand. I'm sure that this is going to be the case in the future, so yea, just meeting people on the emotional level is going to be the job of the future.
Also something I thought I'll mention, is me and my friends company KV Woodwear. We're planning to import, market and sell wooden sunglasses (and other wooden accessories in the future) The reason I want to mention it is because we spent our weekend setting up our online store. So I guess that's something worth mentioning since this is a blog for digital business course. It's been a huge learning process from the beginning to this point and now we're at the point we can start doing stuff online. We just got our first samples today (I actually haven't seen them yet), so it's about time to start building the online store and our website. I'm going to keep track of what we're doing and post everything online related on my blog.
Here's our company logo which was created by a British graphic designer Juliana Bokisch.
So yea that's everything for this week, see you next time!
keskiviikko 11. marraskuuta 2015
Laying down the law
Yo yo,
It's been a while since my last post so it's about time to update you guys on my events. We had our first exam and we have been studying bunch of legal stuff which we should take into account when conducting business. Naturally our weekly assignment was about this subject, but more about that later.
Here in this picture you can see a master blogger(yea right) at work at our school. I just decided to take a picture of myself doing this blog since I don't think I've done it in my earlier posts! I also used my magical Photoshop skills to edit the picture(pre-set filter from a photo editor app...).
So yea, we had our first exam of this course and fortunately I aced it! I got 15 points out of 15, at least I'm quite sure that 15 was the maximum, so it couldn't have gone better. It was quite easy since I had previous knowledge about the subjects and on top of that we did the exam using computers. So I had the possibility to check and complete my answers using the Internet. But yea, I'm really happy about the result!
On the legal stuff, we had a great lecture by our schools law expert Marjaana Marmo. She has immense knowledge about the subject and her English was really good, so it was a pleasure to listen to her. What she talked about most was the consumer protection act and commercial law, and what are the differences.
Consumer protection law (CPL) is in effect if businesses are selling to consumers (B2C). It's there to protect the weaker side, which in this case is the customer. I'm not going to go into great detail about the content of the law, but it's there to regulate what you can sell, in what condition, how, where etc.
Commercial law(CL) on the other hand is applied when businesses sell to other businesses (B2B) or when consumers sell to other consumers (C2C). One big difference to the CPL is that the CL is applied only if nothing else is agreed on. So a consumer buying a product is under the protection of CPL no matter what, but CL can be overruled if the different sides have agree on something else. So you got to be real careful when you're doing deals and signing contracts.
We had an assignment about all this and the part that was my responsibility had different stories(cases) and my job was to find out which laws apply to the specific case and what the end result will be. It was actually pretty interesting and the biggest trouble was finding the right sections from the law. We are gonna talk and debate about the cases tomorrow and I'm really looking forward for that!
Here are some crappy pictures (taken by me) from the lecture:
We are once again nearing the end of this post. One thing that I want to mention before ending is Movember. It's that time of the year when all men have the permission to grow our facial hair as we like. I'm gonna try growing my beard and stache. I'll probably end up shaving it since I don't have the beard growth of Dan Bilzerian but we'll see!
But yea that's that, see you guys next week!
It's been a while since my last post so it's about time to update you guys on my events. We had our first exam and we have been studying bunch of legal stuff which we should take into account when conducting business. Naturally our weekly assignment was about this subject, but more about that later.
So yea, we had our first exam of this course and fortunately I aced it! I got 15 points out of 15, at least I'm quite sure that 15 was the maximum, so it couldn't have gone better. It was quite easy since I had previous knowledge about the subjects and on top of that we did the exam using computers. So I had the possibility to check and complete my answers using the Internet. But yea, I'm really happy about the result!
On the legal stuff, we had a great lecture by our schools law expert Marjaana Marmo. She has immense knowledge about the subject and her English was really good, so it was a pleasure to listen to her. What she talked about most was the consumer protection act and commercial law, and what are the differences.
Consumer protection law (CPL) is in effect if businesses are selling to consumers (B2C). It's there to protect the weaker side, which in this case is the customer. I'm not going to go into great detail about the content of the law, but it's there to regulate what you can sell, in what condition, how, where etc.
Commercial law(CL) on the other hand is applied when businesses sell to other businesses (B2B) or when consumers sell to other consumers (C2C). One big difference to the CPL is that the CL is applied only if nothing else is agreed on. So a consumer buying a product is under the protection of CPL no matter what, but CL can be overruled if the different sides have agree on something else. So you got to be real careful when you're doing deals and signing contracts.
We had an assignment about all this and the part that was my responsibility had different stories(cases) and my job was to find out which laws apply to the specific case and what the end result will be. It was actually pretty interesting and the biggest trouble was finding the right sections from the law. We are gonna talk and debate about the cases tomorrow and I'm really looking forward for that!
Here are some crappy pictures (taken by me) from the lecture:
We are once again nearing the end of this post. One thing that I want to mention before ending is Movember. It's that time of the year when all men have the permission to grow our facial hair as we like. I'm gonna try growing my beard and stache. I'll probably end up shaving it since I don't have the beard growth of Dan Bilzerian but we'll see!
But yea that's that, see you guys next week!
sunnuntai 25. lokakuuta 2015
Feedbacking
Hi again everybody!
I've lost count on how many weeks of Digital business course are behind us, but it's a lot! This time my blog is going to be a bit different, because we got an assignment to read blogs made by other students and give them constructive feedback about their writing. It seems kinda absurd for me to "review" other peoples blogs, since I'm a total beginner when it comes to blogging and can't think of anybody else who is more unfitting to give feedback on blogging... but I'll give it a shot!
Before we get to that, I briefly want go over some other stuff I had this week. Ie had a couple of lectures, one on digital strategy by Ilkka Kurkela and the other one was about lead nurturing by Bishnu Rana. One thing that stuck to my head from Ilkkas lecture, was the amount of value customers give to peer recommendations. I think it was something like 95 % of people are willing to buy something recommended by other customers. So this is something that you have to think about when designing your product and coming up with marketing strategies. Just a few bad reviews from unsatisfied customers, might really damage your marketing.
Lead nurturing was a new term for me, but after the presentation by Bishnu, I have some understanding of what it means. One of the slides said that "lead nurturing is a process of building effective relationships with potential customers (lead) throughout the buying journey". So basically when customer finds you online, you have to have content which the customer finds interesting and relevant. It's not enough to have a link to a crappy website, you have to have pictures, videos, blogs, social media sites, so that the customer becomes more and more interested about the product and hopefully ends up buying it. I'm not saying that every company has to have all of these, but figuring out whats relevant to your customer and providing content that meets their interests is crucial.
Me and my team also decided to start having weekly meetings to keep up with all the work we have. Here are some pictures from the lectures and our group session on Wednesday!
So now lets get to the assignment we were given. I just picked these blogs pretty much by random from our courses Facebook page.
First blog is by Linda Knuutila. You can find her blog here:
http://lindaknuutila.wix.com/lindadigilife?_ga=1.161481215.2120878016.1441554220
Lindas blog is really great! Apparently she uses Wix.com as her blogsite. I have no idea if it's good or bad, but at least the layout is great. It's easy to scroll through different posts and the posts themselves are filled with pictures and videos. So kudos for the visuality!
I also like the fact that she has a introduction about herself on the site, allowing readers to see and know the person that's writing!
Second blog is by Kevin Feng. You can find the blog here:
http://kevinsdigibiz.blogspot.fi/
Kevin also has a good blog, but it's not too interesting to look at. There's not much pictures or videos to look at, so maybe adding a couple pictures to each post wouldn't do harm! Also there are quite a few spelling mistakes on the posts, so I would recommend paying more attention to the text itself. When there are fewer mistakes, the posts become easier to read and give a more professional look to the reader.
The third blog is by Mapi Pesonen. Here's the link to the blog:
http://gimmedatdigital.blogspot.fi/
Mapis blog has good visuality, almost all of the posts have pictures on them which is a big plus! But maybe Mapi should spend a bit more time on writing the texts. The stuff she has written is great, but I just wish there was more of it. She covers some subjects really briefly and it can be hard for the reader to understand what they are about.
Fourth blog is by Aleksi Lainio. Here's the link:
http://aleksilainio.blogspot.fi/
Aleksis blog is really clear and easy to read. It has a simple layout, but because he has pictures throughout the text, it's not boring to look at. His English is really good and there are almost no spelling mistakes and the content is exactly what it should be. He covers the weeks subjects and talks about what he has learned about them.
Last but not least is a blog by Kristiina Jantunen. Blogs link:
http://digibusinesskristiina.blogspot.fi/
Kristiina has a really basic blog. It's white on white with some black text in it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. For me, it just makes the blog nice and simple. But I guess some people could consider it a bit boring, so maybe adding some color to the page wouldn't hurt. Adding more pictures or videos should do the trick and would make the blog more interesting at first glimpse.
The text itself is top notch, but I feel like Kristiina could tell a bit more about what she has learnt, Sometimes she just talks about the subject we had that week, but never tells what SHE felt was important or learned during that week.
That's all folks! See you guys next week.
I've lost count on how many weeks of Digital business course are behind us, but it's a lot! This time my blog is going to be a bit different, because we got an assignment to read blogs made by other students and give them constructive feedback about their writing. It seems kinda absurd for me to "review" other peoples blogs, since I'm a total beginner when it comes to blogging and can't think of anybody else who is more unfitting to give feedback on blogging... but I'll give it a shot!
Before we get to that, I briefly want go over some other stuff I had this week. Ie had a couple of lectures, one on digital strategy by Ilkka Kurkela and the other one was about lead nurturing by Bishnu Rana. One thing that stuck to my head from Ilkkas lecture, was the amount of value customers give to peer recommendations. I think it was something like 95 % of people are willing to buy something recommended by other customers. So this is something that you have to think about when designing your product and coming up with marketing strategies. Just a few bad reviews from unsatisfied customers, might really damage your marketing.
Lead nurturing was a new term for me, but after the presentation by Bishnu, I have some understanding of what it means. One of the slides said that "lead nurturing is a process of building effective relationships with potential customers (lead) throughout the buying journey". So basically when customer finds you online, you have to have content which the customer finds interesting and relevant. It's not enough to have a link to a crappy website, you have to have pictures, videos, blogs, social media sites, so that the customer becomes more and more interested about the product and hopefully ends up buying it. I'm not saying that every company has to have all of these, but figuring out whats relevant to your customer and providing content that meets their interests is crucial.
Me and my team also decided to start having weekly meetings to keep up with all the work we have. Here are some pictures from the lectures and our group session on Wednesday!
Lecture on lead nurturing
Ilkka talking about digital strategy
Tomppa being super active and me sipping from my manly shaker
So now lets get to the assignment we were given. I just picked these blogs pretty much by random from our courses Facebook page.
First blog is by Linda Knuutila. You can find her blog here:
http://lindaknuutila.wix.com/lindadigilife?_ga=1.161481215.2120878016.1441554220
Lindas blog is really great! Apparently she uses Wix.com as her blogsite. I have no idea if it's good or bad, but at least the layout is great. It's easy to scroll through different posts and the posts themselves are filled with pictures and videos. So kudos for the visuality!
I also like the fact that she has a introduction about herself on the site, allowing readers to see and know the person that's writing!
Second blog is by Kevin Feng. You can find the blog here:
http://kevinsdigibiz.blogspot.fi/
Kevin also has a good blog, but it's not too interesting to look at. There's not much pictures or videos to look at, so maybe adding a couple pictures to each post wouldn't do harm! Also there are quite a few spelling mistakes on the posts, so I would recommend paying more attention to the text itself. When there are fewer mistakes, the posts become easier to read and give a more professional look to the reader.
The third blog is by Mapi Pesonen. Here's the link to the blog:
http://gimmedatdigital.blogspot.fi/
Mapis blog has good visuality, almost all of the posts have pictures on them which is a big plus! But maybe Mapi should spend a bit more time on writing the texts. The stuff she has written is great, but I just wish there was more of it. She covers some subjects really briefly and it can be hard for the reader to understand what they are about.
Fourth blog is by Aleksi Lainio. Here's the link:
http://aleksilainio.blogspot.fi/
Aleksis blog is really clear and easy to read. It has a simple layout, but because he has pictures throughout the text, it's not boring to look at. His English is really good and there are almost no spelling mistakes and the content is exactly what it should be. He covers the weeks subjects and talks about what he has learned about them.
Last but not least is a blog by Kristiina Jantunen. Blogs link:
http://digibusinesskristiina.blogspot.fi/
Kristiina has a really basic blog. It's white on white with some black text in it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. For me, it just makes the blog nice and simple. But I guess some people could consider it a bit boring, so maybe adding some color to the page wouldn't hurt. Adding more pictures or videos should do the trick and would make the blog more interesting at first glimpse.
The text itself is top notch, but I feel like Kristiina could tell a bit more about what she has learnt, Sometimes she just talks about the subject we had that week, but never tells what SHE felt was important or learned during that week.
That's all folks! See you guys next week.
keskiviikko 21. lokakuuta 2015
New acquintances
Hello hello!
I haven't posted for a few weeks, sorry for that. But in my defense, there has not been too much going on!
Last week was lecture free, at least for the digitality course so we had no guest lecturers or class. I did have one other class for the Laurea Startup course on Tuesday, but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend. So that's why I haven't posted a new blog for a while, I didn't have anything to talk about! At least that's my excuse...
Luckily this week has been a bit more exciting! Me and couple of other students had a great opportunity to visit Mika Järvinen at PCA scala in Helsinki. Ilkka had been talking to Mika about a possibility to do a project of some sort for PCA scala. So yesterday me, Ilkka and other interested students went to visit him. Mika told us about his business and showed us around the gym. We also had the chance to workout, I should've taken some pictures, but it didn't pop in to my mind at the time.
PCA scala is a gym/health club in Vallila, Helsinki. It targets its services toward businesses rather than private customers, so scala has a different concept than a conventional gym. They do have private customers, but courses for work groups and coaching is what they really do. PCA also has personal trainer courses. Mika also told us about other ideas he has for the future, but he asked us to keep them to ourselves, since the information is kind of "classified" at the moment.
We're not sure yet what kind of project we are going to do, but something it's probably something related to marketing and broadening the customer base. Mika seemed to be a really intelligent guy and he has huge experience in training and running businesses. For example, he has over 32 years of experience in personal coaching, that's almost 10 years more than I have lived!
So yea, I'm really excited for this possibility to work with Mika. I'm interested in lifting weights and business, so having the chance to combine these two is fantastic!
This is all for now, see you guys next week!
I haven't posted for a few weeks, sorry for that. But in my defense, there has not been too much going on!
Last week was lecture free, at least for the digitality course so we had no guest lecturers or class. I did have one other class for the Laurea Startup course on Tuesday, but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend. So that's why I haven't posted a new blog for a while, I didn't have anything to talk about! At least that's my excuse...
Luckily this week has been a bit more exciting! Me and couple of other students had a great opportunity to visit Mika Järvinen at PCA scala in Helsinki. Ilkka had been talking to Mika about a possibility to do a project of some sort for PCA scala. So yesterday me, Ilkka and other interested students went to visit him. Mika told us about his business and showed us around the gym. We also had the chance to workout, I should've taken some pictures, but it didn't pop in to my mind at the time.
PCA scala is a gym/health club in Vallila, Helsinki. It targets its services toward businesses rather than private customers, so scala has a different concept than a conventional gym. They do have private customers, but courses for work groups and coaching is what they really do. PCA also has personal trainer courses. Mika also told us about other ideas he has for the future, but he asked us to keep them to ourselves, since the information is kind of "classified" at the moment.
We're not sure yet what kind of project we are going to do, but something it's probably something related to marketing and broadening the customer base. Mika seemed to be a really intelligent guy and he has huge experience in training and running businesses. For example, he has over 32 years of experience in personal coaching, that's almost 10 years more than I have lived!
So yea, I'm really excited for this possibility to work with Mika. I'm interested in lifting weights and business, so having the chance to combine these two is fantastic!
This is all for now, see you guys next week!
sunnuntai 4. lokakuuta 2015
Attending events
Hello everybody!
This week consisted of great speakers and events. I attended Yrittäjyystiistai at Laurea Leppävaara on Tuesday and NBF live streaming event at Laurea Tikkurila on Friday. We also had a visiting lecturer, Jyri Rasinmäki from Vapa Media, to talk about problem solving on Thursday.
So starting with the Yrittäjyystiistai. It was arranged at Laurea Leppävaara and they had three entrepreneurs to tell their story and talk about entrepreneurship. First one of them was Sami Heino, the founder of Groom, which is a barbershop specializing in men's hair. He told about the times when he was starting this company, how people doubted him and his idea and how he managed to turn a 10000 euro loan (he actually used only 7000 euros) into a booming business. Groom currently has over ten barbershops and they cut over 5400 men's hair each month.
The second speaker was Eeva-Liisa "Eppu" Ylälahti. She has a lot of experience in doing market research and is a entrepreneurial spirit. She has failed in the past and wasn't afraid to talk about it. She invested in an IT-company in the early 2000s and lost a bunch of money when the IT-bubble burst. These days she works as a freelancer consultant and is focused mostly on social- and volunteer work.
Last speaker was Ali Jahangiri, who is mostly known for his stand-up comedy. Not many people know that he has had a bunch of different businesses and most are operational at this very moment. For example, he started a website for selling and buying cars in Iran. Or he also has a smoothie business which uses fruits that would be otherwise thrown away. So he's definitely an entrepreneur. But instead of talking about business and stuff like that, he talked about the importance of being yourself. He said that he got where he is now by being his own funny self, so I guess it's not all about skills and knowledge. You need to have the courage to be yourself, people will notice if you try to be something your not.
Here's a couple of pictures from Yrittäjyystiistai:
Nordic Business Forum seminar, which is like the biggest business seminar in northern Europe, was held during Thursday and Friday. I wasn't able to be there personally, but luckily Laurea ES set up a live stream so that students could see and hear the speakers. I was able to be there on Friday and had the chance to see Björn "Nalle" Wahlroos interview Dr. Ben Bernanke. Ben Bernanke is one of the great business minds of our time and was in charge of the Central Bank of United States during the financial crisis. They talked about world economics and to be honest, it was a bit hard to follow the discussion from time to time, but it was still intriguing to see and hear them talk.
Pictures from NBF live stream:
So the last thing I want to mention in this post, was our visiting lecturer, Jyri Rasinmäki from Vapa Media. He was there to talk to us about problem solving and mostly the importance of asking questions. Once you know the right questions, what are we solving and why for example, you can start finding the right answers. One sentence he had on one of his slides, got stuck to my head. "Creativity and criticism can't be present at the same time". I really started to think about it and he's right. So from now on, when me or my team is asked to come up with new ideas, I just have to remember to turn off my criticism and focus on the creative side. I'm terrible at outside the box thinking and the first step to bettering myself at it is probably tuning down my criticism.
Here's Jyri and the slide that got stuck in my mind:
That's it for this week, waiting for the next one!
Joonatan Virta
This week consisted of great speakers and events. I attended Yrittäjyystiistai at Laurea Leppävaara on Tuesday and NBF live streaming event at Laurea Tikkurila on Friday. We also had a visiting lecturer, Jyri Rasinmäki from Vapa Media, to talk about problem solving on Thursday.
So starting with the Yrittäjyystiistai. It was arranged at Laurea Leppävaara and they had three entrepreneurs to tell their story and talk about entrepreneurship. First one of them was Sami Heino, the founder of Groom, which is a barbershop specializing in men's hair. He told about the times when he was starting this company, how people doubted him and his idea and how he managed to turn a 10000 euro loan (he actually used only 7000 euros) into a booming business. Groom currently has over ten barbershops and they cut over 5400 men's hair each month.
The second speaker was Eeva-Liisa "Eppu" Ylälahti. She has a lot of experience in doing market research and is a entrepreneurial spirit. She has failed in the past and wasn't afraid to talk about it. She invested in an IT-company in the early 2000s and lost a bunch of money when the IT-bubble burst. These days she works as a freelancer consultant and is focused mostly on social- and volunteer work.
Last speaker was Ali Jahangiri, who is mostly known for his stand-up comedy. Not many people know that he has had a bunch of different businesses and most are operational at this very moment. For example, he started a website for selling and buying cars in Iran. Or he also has a smoothie business which uses fruits that would be otherwise thrown away. So he's definitely an entrepreneur. But instead of talking about business and stuff like that, he talked about the importance of being yourself. He said that he got where he is now by being his own funny self, so I guess it's not all about skills and knowledge. You need to have the courage to be yourself, people will notice if you try to be something your not.
Here's a couple of pictures from Yrittäjyystiistai:
Nordic Business Forum seminar, which is like the biggest business seminar in northern Europe, was held during Thursday and Friday. I wasn't able to be there personally, but luckily Laurea ES set up a live stream so that students could see and hear the speakers. I was able to be there on Friday and had the chance to see Björn "Nalle" Wahlroos interview Dr. Ben Bernanke. Ben Bernanke is one of the great business minds of our time and was in charge of the Central Bank of United States during the financial crisis. They talked about world economics and to be honest, it was a bit hard to follow the discussion from time to time, but it was still intriguing to see and hear them talk.
Pictures from NBF live stream:
So the last thing I want to mention in this post, was our visiting lecturer, Jyri Rasinmäki from Vapa Media. He was there to talk to us about problem solving and mostly the importance of asking questions. Once you know the right questions, what are we solving and why for example, you can start finding the right answers. One sentence he had on one of his slides, got stuck to my head. "Creativity and criticism can't be present at the same time". I really started to think about it and he's right. So from now on, when me or my team is asked to come up with new ideas, I just have to remember to turn off my criticism and focus on the creative side. I'm terrible at outside the box thinking and the first step to bettering myself at it is probably tuning down my criticism.
Here's Jyri and the slide that got stuck in my mind:
That's it for this week, waiting for the next one!
Joonatan Virta
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