Return of Shortcuts

It's a sad day when your competitive advantage is your knowledge of Excel and Excel short cuts. If you work in Excel a lot, short cuts either speed up your work / save your wrists from carpal tunnel / or make you look much better at your job than you are. This is my 5-year-old Excel short cuts cheat sheet. If you can't use it for work, you Poets can use it to build street credibility with your business school classmates.

Jet Set Smart

A couple helpful sites for planning your next trip. Use Trip Advisor to research hotels - the user reviews and pictures are good ways to understand what you're really getting with your $. Trip Advisor is especially useful when you're trying to cut costs by booking smaller, non-chain hotels. Pick your flight seat using Seat Guru, an awesome place to pick your special aisle or window seat for your international flight, stay away from the bathroom seat, or the tight leg space. Trip Kick helps you pick a specific hotel room.

What do you love?

I came across iliketotallyloveit, which is a place where people can share items they "totally love" and others can vote on these items. Google would call it democratization of shopping, or, as the company calls it, a "popularity contest". In fact, I love the logo - isn't it cute?

Social Shopping

Retailers are trying to capture Tweens (8-12 yr olds) by adding a social element to online shopping. Kaboodle is basically a social network (think LinkedIn) for shopping where teenagers can browse fashion interests and communicate with people who have similar fashion styles.

Ideas to Talk About

Remember the days in school when you'd hop into the auditorium to hear a foreign president, famous author, or fortune 500 CEO? Well, you can keep up the intellectual stimulation by watching interesting speeches on TED. If you're interested in starting a company, Stanford also offers talks by famous Silicon Valley entrepreneurs through the Entrepreneur Thought Leaders seminar.

Gilt Group

I'm not a big shopper, but have friends who love to shop. They love buying luxury brands at huge exclusive sales online at Gilt Groupe. Gilt Group is all about exclusivity. They sell luxury brands (eg. Fendi) at sample sale prices. However, not just anyone can be privy to these perks. You have to be invited by a friend who's already a member of Gilt Group in order to get the benefit of low prices. Exclusivity and luxury go hand-in-hand. If luxury were so easy to get, it wouldn't be special anymore.

The Local Gourmet

While brainstorming catchy names for an upcoming dinner event, the name, "Local Gourmet", stuck with me. I'm imaging friends asking, "Want to go to Local Gourmet?", as we walk towards a healthy, gourmet downtown lunch place / a homemade cookie company / a cafe / a cozy restaurant with seating set up around a table like the island in my family's kitchen. "Local Gourmet" is a brand that communicates good, homemade food and can apply to anything food related, from restaurants to cookbooks to online recipe blogs.

Local Guide

After 6 weeks of fumbling around new parts of Minneapolis, I finally found a guide book that catered to my thirst for local-gourmet-stylish cafes/bars/boutiques. The eat.shop guidebooks have beautiful photos, right-to-the-point lists, and short recommendations. The thing I appreciate the most is that the series covers smaller cities (Minneappolis/St. Paul, Kansas City), as well as big, sexy cities (New York, London, Paris).

Arts$ and Craft$

On my way to work, I passed by a homeless teenager with the sign, "Penny for a Poem." It got me thinking. Many of us try to make money in our full time job. But, what if you could make money off of a talent in a side business? A side business that generated a decent amount of cash. If you're good at arts and crafts, you can follow advice from the Etsy founder.

Tips for Selling Crafts Online
By Vangie Beal
June 24, 2009

Online craft selling is a big business. Just ask Etsy founder Robert Kalin, who was quoted earlier this year as saying the Etsy marketplace sold $100 million worth of goods in 2008.

1000markets is one of five online craft markets that delivers good traffic rank and attracts shoppers. (Click for larger image).

Despite the popularity of using existing marketplaces, like eBay, Etsy, and other eBay alternatives, Dillehay recommended that crafters also invest in their own domain name and Web site, since the craft business online is largely connected to one’s own presence.

In addition to using your own Web site for branding, Dillehay said that you can also invest in opening a Web shop and link to it from your own domain.

In his e-book, Dillehay reminds sellers that there is no guarantee of a sale just by listing on popular selling platforms, but five online marketplaces he recommends that have a good traffic rank and attract shoppers looking for crafts and unusual items include; eBay, Etsy, Artfire , Silkfair and 1000markets.

Dillehay suggested that novice online craft sellers need to focus on the business aspect and also create a brand and product people will trust. Here are five tips for those who are thinking about launching their own craft shop online:

• When you offer a craft for sale online, you need to ensure you are listing the item with the best photo you possibly can. Crafts are unique and your photo has to show that. Also, be sure you spell-check your listings. You never ever want to list an item with errors in the descriptions.
• Be honest in your listing and don’t exaggerate. Always include exact size and weight measurements, and add color and materials information for your shoppers.
• When you sell online through Web shops and marketplaces it is extremely important to read their terms of service—and different sites will have different terms. There is nothing worse than wasting time creating listings only to have them removed because you didn’t abide by the terms of service.
• Create a story around your craft. This helps you give your work a story and bring it to life for shoppers. This will give customers a higher perceived value of your crafts.
• Always collect your customer’s contact information and build a customer list. Down the road you can encourage more sales from shoppers who have already bought your product and who are familiar with your name and branding.

Future of Luxury

Mom was always right - define your own luxury, or says Google's Trend Watcher.

On to every brand professional’s favorite topic (or so it seems at times): The Future of Luxury. How will luxury brands fare this year? What will define luxury over the next few years? The answer to a large degree is, ‘luxury will be whatever you want it to be’. After all, what constitutes luxury is closely related to what constitutes scarcity. And while scarcity in traditional consumer societies was for decades defined by the biggest, the best, and the most expensive 'items', the '2009 consumer arena' shows a bewildering number of 'scarcities', some of them invented purely to overcome the abundance now found in traditional sectors. More than ever, scarcity is in the eye of the beholder, especially those beholders who are desperately trying to be unique.

So in the next 12 months, instead of worrying about missing out on the next big thing in luxury, focus on defining it. Declare that the end is nigh for anything that’s getting a little too affordable, too accessible, or just too well-known. Then introduce something very different (if not the opposite), appealing to the in-crowds ready to jump ship anyway. Two fun and very 'now' examples from the hospitality industry:

• Named after the ‘rough luxury’ trend that was coined by the hotel’s owner, Rabih Age, Rough Luxe is a new London hotel with small, funky rooms, some of which share a bathroom, while also offering fine wines, plush bedlinen, carefully curated art, and top-notch personal service. From their site: “Rough Luxe is a new way of looking at luxury as part of time and not only part of an object of consumption. Luxury is an enriching personal experience and not only an ownership or consumption of an expensive object. Therefore, the Rough Luxe definition of luxury is: time for reflection, personal encounters with people, nature, architecture and environment as well as food and social and cultural experiences linked to geographic locations.”
• Along the same lines, though a little bit more ‘Deluxe Bohemian’ than ‘Rough’, is the soon-to-be-opened Ace Hotel New York. Its ‘resourceful rehab’ approach will include (re-upholstered) furniture from salvage shops and flea markets.

Want something to play with? How about DISCREET-CHIC? RECESSION-CHIC? FRUGALITY-CHIC? UNDERSTATED-CHIC? Or anything that's commissioned? Access? Secrets? Stories? Time with one's loved ones? Time for oneself? All things local? Peace and quiet, if not escape? Eco-friendly? Human-friendly? Caring? Empathy? PERKONOMICS? Craft? Friends? Having a larger-than-life perspective? Households of six or more? Eccentricity? Appointment-only? Opinionated? PREMIUMIZATION? Fuck You Money? Philanthropy? Bespoke? Knowledge? Skills? Health? Etiquette? Or a mix of any of these?

Whatever angle you may go for, luxury in this new year will comprise much, much more than ostentatiously flaunting wealth (which, by the way, will still enjoy considerable popularity among emerging middle classes around the world). Find the right (status) trigger for the right audience, then coin it and build on it. This one is all yours. Downturn or upturn.

Applying to Business School

The advice I give to folks starting their business school application process is to buy Richard Montauk's book, How to Get into the Top MBA Programs. Montauk provides a thorough overview to the application process and key strategies to approach your essays, recommendations, etc. I thank a GSB classmate for recommending this book to me.

Working out

Consider signing up for running races to motivate yourself to run and workout on a regular basis. Active.com is a great place to search for a wide range of athletic races and contests, from swimming to triathlons to 5K races. In addition, social drinking and working out can coexist. Go to happy hour and have only 1 beer, then take off to get your run in. Warning: drinking any more than 1 beer is detrimental to your workout motivation.

Bridesmaid Dresses

I had the honor of being my sister's maid of honor this year, and, in a 36 email email-chain with 6 bridesmaids, heavily researched dresses. JCrew provides incredible diversity of cuts all in the same color, which gives bridesmaids the freedom to find dresses that fits their body type. San Francisco-based Siri also has cute styles, but I haven't researched the price point.

Explore

For now, I do enjoy traveling and seeing new parts of the world on vacation. See a map here (Zoom OUT to see locations). Happy to give recommendations on what to do in any of these places.


View World Travels in a larger map

Starting Wedding Planning

Having recently moved to another part of the country, I was surprised to find that websites that are a part of my life are completely unknown here. Specifically, women getting married follow a whole slew of wedding related websites to understand the steps required to plan a wedding (www.knot.com) and create a personalized, alternative style (www.indiebride.com). My sister recommended www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog/ for inspirational designs, snippetandink.blogspot.com for live wedding examples, and www.apracticalwedding.com for more down-to-earth ideas.

A Picture Tells 1000 Words

I often carry a camera with me to remember the good times with pictures and share with friends. If your friends are active Facebook users, you can post your pictures and tag your friends. For more discreet friends or photos, use Google's Picassaweb to share albums with specific groups of people, and even privately tag folks in your pictures. If you're in the state of creating a baby picture album, use Ofoto to customize your album with fun designs and prints. My all time favorite is recording a silly video on your digital camera to replay for hours of enjoyment.

Cookbooks

Since I love to eat, I also love to cook. I find it easiest to cook when I can find the 5 ingredients I'm looking for in my basic kitchen pantry and a regular Safeway supermarket. And, of course, when the recipe requires less than 30 minutes of preparation and maybe even cooking time. My favorite cookbook includes Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, which is considered to be the modern day version of Julia Childs' The Way to Cook.

Manage Your Food Portfolio

Manage your food budget like an investments portfolio. Go to a fancy restaurant every once in a while, and go to whole in the wall ethnic restaurant at other times. The food MUST be good at both the $100 and $5 meal. Seek out good food wherever it may be. Ask ethnic coworkers. Ask friends. Ask www.yelp.com or www.chowhound.com. Ask strangers who look different from you. Ignore anyone who only recommends 4-star restaurants.

Welcome to Live Well Smarty

We all want to live well. The big question remains - how can we enjoy the material things we love while spending our money and time in a smart way? Well, I'm a graduate student in a recession with little money and loads of friends who like to give advice (and hear themselves talk). I'm starting conversations important to the lifestyles of folks in their 20s - 30s, and will kick it off to friends to share additional advice. May all our dreams come true.

Mucho love,
Grace