UIC MBA Chicago Entrepreneur Blog Past, present, and future plans in the life of an entrepreneur and former Chicago UIC MBA student.

This semester, I’ve been lucky enough to attend a cross-cultural class with one of my favorite professors.  Get this (for all the readers of this blog),  the professor I highly recommended from the Depaul MBA program, Christopher Barlow, is now teaching at UIC!  Random luck and fate heading in the right direction by attending UIC.  

Anyways, back to the story.  Barlow teaches a class in which he integrates evening MBA students with Chinese students from UIC’s one year concentrated MBA program, CMBA.  It’s certainly an interesting class since there are different ideas, cultures and prospectives.  During one of the in-class group projects, I was lucky enough to placed in a group with Ed (fellow MBA) and Gavin from the CMBA program.  Gavin enjoyed our group and asked for our numbers.  He said we should definitely hang out sometimes.  I thought nothing of it since it has become a common courtesy in our society to exchange pleasantries.  Fast forward to a week later, I was at home making dinner when my cell phone rang.  I answered the phone and was surprised to see that Gavin and followed through with his suggestion.  He suggested that we eat at the buffet that he had presented in class a few weeks back.  Since I had already started making dinner, I declined the offer and went back to cooking.  As I was stirring my curry, I thought about the offer some more.  Wow, this guy had actually followed through.  It wasn’t just out of courtesy that he asked for my contact information and he seemed genuinely interesting.   Lesson #1:  Don’t ask if you’re not genuinely interested and don’t do something just because it’s the social norm or it’s courteous.  When would I get a similar chance like this again?  I called Gavin back a couple minutes later and accepted his offer.  

As we were enjoying the buffet, I asked Gavin what he did this past weekend.  Gavin responded that since they only have a year here in the states, they try to do as much as possible and enjoy as much of Chicago as they can.  At first, I didn’t think much about this statement.  I finished an enjoyable dinner and left a few pounds heavier.  When I got home, I thought about Gavin’s statement even more.  These CMBA students has one year to try and enjoy as much of Chicago as then can.  I tried to imagine myself in a similar situation and at first, I felt sad for them.  As I thought about it more, I realized that most of these students probably explored more of Chicago than I have in 20 years.  Not only that, they lived their lives knowing they might only have a year here and took some chance and risks.  I realized that I shouldn’t feel sorrow for them.  Instead, I was envious of what they accomplished in such a short amount of time and how much they seem to enjoy it.  Lesson #2:  Live your life to the fullest.

There is a lot to be learned from people with different cultures and backgrounds.  They brought different ideas to the table and seemed to do it with more enthusiasm.  Sometimes, the most important lessons you learn are outside of the classroom.  That, my friend, is what make this program so special.  

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud

I recently became a UIC ambassador for the MBA program.  Here are some of my duties:

• Classroom visits: hosting prospects in classes I attend
• Providing assistance at special LGSB events
• Serving on the student panel at informational sessions
• Interviewing new applicants

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud

One of my projects for Organizational Behavior Management class was to do a resource brief on anything of interest.  Since “Think and Grow Rich” is one of my favorite books, I figured I would share it with everyone.  

Think and Grow Rich

(Refer the picture above, my powerpoint presentation)

Page 1 - Napoleon Hill grew up poor.  He worked as a reporter during college to help pay for his education.  One of his first interviews was with Andrew Carnegie.  Andrew Carnegie, at this time, was one of the most powerful and richest businessmen in the world.  Carnegie commissioned Napoleon Hill to write a new philosophy.  The philosophy of success and riches.  Carnegie offered NO PAY to Hill to write this new philosophy and offered him only introductions.

Page 2 - These are the chapters of the book as well as the 12 Laws of Riches.  I’m not going to go through any of these subject as this is merely a resource to entice you to read the book but notice that money comes LAST in the 12 Laws of Riches.  

Page 3 - If you look at this list, this is a who’s who of American history.  Many of the companies you work for or want to work for were founded by these outstanding individuals.  

Page 4 - These are a few of my favorite quotes and stories from the book.  

• Merchants of Chicago - After the Great Chicago Fire, a bunch of merchant had a meeting.  Their stores had burned down and it seemed easier to leave than rebuild.  One man left the meeting and pointed to a spot on State Street and proclaimed “on this site here, I will build the greatest store ever”.  All the other merchants left and that man fulfilled his promise by building Marshall Field’s.  Today, it’s Macy’s but you get the point.
• “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on Earth”.  Everyone has a ton of them.  It’s up to you to figure out what you want to do.
• “Keep on keeping on”  Thomas Eddison said he failed 10,000 times.  He didn’t understand why people didn’t keep on keeping on.  He failed so many times that he RAN OUT of things to fail at.
• “Building alibis with which to explain failure is a national pasttime”  Some people are afraid of failure more than success.  I never understood that.  The timing will never be perfect.  The moon will not align.  Sometimes you just have to take a chance. 
• “Life is a checkerboard and the player opposite you is time”  Time runs out fast.  At the end of the game, are you going to be happy with your moves and outcome?

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud

I realized lately that goals without a defined outcome are too hard to follow.  They must be quantified or very descriptive in order to be achieved.  For example, today, I set the goal to run 3 miles.  If I had not set that exact goal and just started running, I definitely would have stopped short of that.  I was getting very tired at 1.5 mile and would definitely have given up at 2 - MAX!  Because I set the goal at 3, I pushed myself to finish up the last mile.

Here were my goals for 2007 with outcomes:

-get real estate license (I didn’t accomplish this and realize there is no need to)
-buy a property ( I ended up buying a house with my gf in 2008 at a very good value)
-increase net worth by over 10k (my net worth decreased dramatically due to the stock market)
-keep ecommerce website up and running (website has been running great)
-go back to school (attending UIC MBA full time)
-run 5 miles (I was able to achieve this)
-run 10 miles (definitely did not get close to this)
-get body fat under 12% (body fat has probably gone up a little since then)
-travel outside the country (took a couple trips to China, Thailand, and Vietnam since then)
-take more pictures (should remember this for this years goals)
-volunteer (Sponsored child #2 Christian Children Fund.. but did not do much other than this)

A few of my goals were very vague and difficult to achieve.  On the otherhand, I was able to achieve a great deal of my 2007 goals (althought it took me 2007 and 2008 to achieve- better late than never!).  So here are my goals for 2009.

Jay 2009 Personal Goals-

School:

• Obtain a 3.5 out of 4.0 average for both spring and fall semester
• Attend at least 4 school related functions (socials, volunteer work, meetings)

Business:

• Double revenue from ecommerce website
• Increase net worth by 10k
• Launch second website by April 1st and achieve and average revenues of $1000 a month
• Attend two business related events (Berkshire meeting, etc…)

Health:

• Run 3 miles once every other week
• Workout 3x a week

Personal:

• Have dinner with my family at least once every other month

I really feel like I can achieve a good percentage of these goals this year.  Wish me luck!

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud

Here’s some updates on the MBA program at UIC from the dean Stefanie Lenway:

The following are a sampling of some of the CBA’s outstanding achievements from the past few months.

• Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review named our graduate entrepreneurship program sixth in the nation.

• Crain’s Chicago Business ranked the Liautaud MBA program fourth on its annual list of the area’s AACSB-accredited MBA programs.

• Liautaud MBA alumna Caralynn Nowinski-Chenoweth, the co-founder and acting CEO of Sanogene Therapeutics Inc., was named to the 2008 Crain’s Chicago Business “40 under 40” list, which is an annual snapshot “of the area’s up-and-comers from a wide range of industries.” In addition to this honor, Sanogene obtained the exclusive license to the worldwide patent for its core technology, received a strategic equity investment from Cato BioVentures, and entered into a partnership with Cato Research Ltd.

• Alter EatGo, founded by Eric Meredith ‘94, won the 2008 City Treasurer’s Business Plan Competition. This is the second consecutive year a business founded by a CBA alumnus took first place in the competition. (Sanogene Therapeutics won in 2007).

• The Crain’s Chicago Business list of Who’s Who in the Chicago business community featured several CBA alumni.

• The College of Business Administration received an “Above and Beyond” award from Junior Achievement in recognition of its efforts to assist the organization in providing important economic educational programs to young people in grades K-12. Last year, CBA student volunteers reached more than 8,600 students throughout the Chicagoland area, which represented a 277 percent increase in JA volunteer support from the previous year’s commitment.

It’s nice to see that the many people in the program are doing more than just classwork.  I’d like to get involved with more organizations, community services, and competitions in the new year.

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud