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Key to Success after Failure

Panel 8

Alvarez O. Ivette

Azor, Yasmine

Chen, Garvin

Gaitskhoki, Olga

Kandora, Douglas

Li, Ellen

Seo, Young (Susan)

Wojdat, Jan

Zhu, Feng

Guest Speakers

Richard  Eisner, CPA

Joseph Haddock, CFA Manager at Bloomberg

Mark Kaplan, RAPP representative, Sr. Digital Strategist

Michael, Hickey,Manager at Starbucks

Opening Statement by Doug

-General Introduction

-Gracious Thanks

-Ice breaker (story how Doug played offensive lineman in Football during his High School Career. One game, the opposing player kept pushing Doug back farther and farther, but Doug would give it his all every play. Then eventually the opposing player started laughing at his attempts to stop him. Doug failed. So what did he do? The next play he found a way to win, he put his head down and hit the other player straight in the ‘bread basket’ which knocked him down. Doug was successful)

-Introduction of Speakers

-Format of panel (Questions will be projected and we will ask one at a time to the panel members for answers)

The opening statement was improvised; no physical written document was created.

Panel Questions:

1. What was your definition of success starting your career?

2. What was your biggest asset starting your career?

3. Name a failure you’ve had and the most important lesson you took away from that failure.

4. How did you/do you cope with failure and/or pressures/stress from work?

5. What is your biggest asset today?

6. What is your definition of success?

7. What is one piece of advice you wish to give young people starting off their careers?

Bonus question- Tell us a funny moment that involved you and failure.

Key Points of the Panel

• Find something you love to do, something that goes with who you are and keep going at it.
• Take a chance and go where the opportunities are.
• In business stress and failure are different,  stress is personal, while failure affects other people’s lives.
• Keep an eye on the bigger picture, understand who you are and match your assets with the company
• “Comfort is an enemy of progress”
• After failure, step back and take a lesson- “fail forward”
• Learn how to think and how to apply what you learn.
• Know who you are: strengths and weaknesses.
• If you fail, build up, retrench, and try again.
• Make the best of failure by learning from your mistake. Take a step back and see what went wrong from a holistic perspective
• If something did not work out as planned, apologize and make a better model. Go back and say we made these changes. And do not blame.
• Do not be afraid of failure. You should not be worried.

Closing Statement by: Ivette

Again, we would like to thank our panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules to be here with us today. I would like to sum up what was discussed today into three short and clear points.

1. In previous panels, we have established a long list of C’s, but now we would like to integrate the P’s, but not the Marketing P’s, but two words that were mentioned today a lot: Passion and Patience. You need to find something that you love and you know will motivate you to go to work every day. Also, it will give you that steadiness to remain at peace with yourself and with others.

2. Never Give Up!- There will be many times where you will want to stop and quit what you are doing. Always remember that you should believe in what you do, just keep trying and push on through. You eventually will make it work and be successful.

3.  Take a Risk!- In order to get experience, we should take risks because from these risks, we learn and take away something that will help us grow.

Lastly, before you go, I would like to reiterate what Mark Kaplan said “Perspective is the root of Perception,” so take that with you, think about what it means and how to apply it to your life.

Thank you for coming today!

Opening Statement

Welcome to “Who Wants to be a Corporate Millionaire!” I am Mary Fung and I will be your host this morning. Our topic today is “Employee Engagement.” So what exactly is employee engagement? Yes, it is about engaging the employees. The notion that “our people are our most important asset” has been a debatable topic. In the eyes of most employees, money and profit seems to be the company’s most important asset. However, even during the recession, companies are investing large sums of money to their employees to better educate them, satisfy them, and even enhance their self-image. The importance of employee engagement lies within the company through each individual, department, and whole organization. It is about effective communication, support, and development. In our opinion, employee engagement is when an employee is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about his or her own work. They care about the future of the company and are willing to invest a lot of time and effort on their part to exceed their normal responsibilities to make sure that the company succeeds. Today, we will discover different methods that companies uses, the importance of it, and will finish off with a nice, competitive game and then the Q&A session. Let’s start introducing our panelists. To our left, we have Valerie Grubb. She is a Senior Operations and Human Capital Consultant as well as the Principal of Val Grubb & Associates, Ltd. She works on a consulting basis in Operations Management and Training and supports talent/leadership development for corporations and non-profits. John McKeon is VP of Human Resources at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. As the top Human Resource executive, he designs, develop, create, and administer human resources and organizational development programs to attract and retain motivated individuals to ensure the continued success and growth of the medical center. Mark Muller is currently the Senior Vice President and Municipal Portfolio Manager for Loews Corporation. Prior to joining Loews Corporation in 1995, he served as the Vice President, Asset Management, Municipal Portfolio Manager with Goldman Sachs.  Eric Hamilton is a social media, internet, web and search marketing veteran with over 20 years of technology work experience. Currently, he works for Yahoo! as an Engagement Manager supporting Yahoo! Web Analytics which is Yahoo’s enterprise level analytics solution. And last but not least, Susan Zhou is currently a human resources consultant as well as an adjunct professor in Baruch College and New York University. She has 12 years of experience for profit and non-profit industries such as in financial services, healthcare, insurance, publishing, marketing and retail.

1. Employee engagement is such a broad topic. Can you elaborate on what this means to you in relation to your field and how you take part in it? Feel free to use an example.
2. Does your work environment incorporate employee engagement? If so, how do you think this affects the employees and staff?
3. Organizations are trying to build a competitive advantage through engaging their employees. However, it is a costly investment. Keeping in mind of the current economic situation, do you think these organizations should invest in their employees?
4. Have you ever had a bad experience with employee engagement?

10 Famous C’s: Connect, Career, Clarity, Convey, Congratulate, Contribute, Control, Collaborate, Credibility, and Confidence

Closing Statement:

Employee engagement starts with the attitude at the top. However, don’t let bad management sway you from being a great leader yourself. Work on keeping your team engaged regardless of what’s happening above you. You have the greatest impact on your employees. Employees most value recognition from their direct supervisor, more so than from even the CEO. It is proven that companies that implement employee engagment has greater profits than those who don’t. Google is a great example of this. They have in-office doctors, therapists, spas, gyms, and free food including snacks throughout the day. They foster learning and challenges and their success shows how employee engagement is the way to go.

Key Points from each speaker:

Valerie: Make people feel part of the company. One bad apple can spoil the bunch but before firing them, give them a chance. Be nice to everyone. You can engage your team no matter what role you play.

Eric: You have to be involved through constantly interacting and building bonds beyond technology. Every company is like a football game. You would cheer for your teammate after or before an achievement. You are above any pitiness. If people are disrespecting you, embrace the hate. You have to keep yourself above the fold.

Mark: Team organization and communication must occur or the team is bound to fail. The best corporate culture is an environment where a problem exists and it is worked on till it is resolved, bringing you confidence. It is inevitable where there is one unengaged member. You have to commit and invest, if it doesn’t work, let them go.

John: Motivation brings engagement to employees at the micro level. On the macro level, goals and objectives of the organization are clear to employees. You have to understand your management style by recognizing your weakness and rewarding employees. If you don’t have a right mix of people, the goal might not be properly achieved.

Susan: Employee engagement is about building on a strength that an employee has. The employee should think outside the box to better the company and create an engaging environment through activities and programs cuch as yoga and walks in the park. This motivates employees as well as contribute to their overall health and well being. You want the employees to do things that they are interest in, making them feel that you are supporting them.

Key to Success after Overcoming Failure

Panel 8

Guest speakers 

Richard  Eisner, CPA

Richard Eisner, CPA, is a founding partner and member of the Executive Committee of Eisner. He uses his executive skills as well as more than 45 years of diversified accounting experience in administration at Eisner. Dick is currently on the boards of the Columbia School of Public Health and the Legal Aid Society.

Joseph Haddock, CFA 

Manager at Bloomberg

Product Manager for Global Corporate Actions within the Equity Data department. His responsibilities center around managing 9 teams:
Equity Indices – data for the S&P500 index and other similar indices
Corporate Actions – recording dividends, splits, listings/delistings, etc
M&A – post and follow global deals, write commentary the biggest
Earnings – follow earnings releases and get the information up in minutes
Guidance – record company management’s expectations
Events – track meetings & releases, post transcripts/audio where applicable
Equity Issuance – IPO & secondary offering coverage
Dividend forecasting – proprietary forecasts of future dividends
Programing Support – internal team to help manage software developments & roll outs
Joseph Haddock has been with Bloomberg in various roles for 12 years

Mark Kaplan

RAPP representative, Sr. Digital Strategist

Mark Kaplan is a Senior Digital Strategist at RAPP. He’s been at RAPP for over 2 years, and is currently dedicated to the Merck account, the agency’s largest. Prior to RAPP, he was an Information Architect at the digital agency Razorfish, and before that a Business Analyst at MetLife. In his free time, Mark is learning guitar and enjoys longboarding around Central Park.

Michael, Hickey

Manager at Starbucks

 Although originally interested in Computer Science, Micheal Hickey graduated from the University of Central Florida with Business Management degree. He worked two jobs throughout college to support himself. Upon graduation he joined Starbucks as an assistand manager. After one year,  he was promoted to manager for a level 2 (smaller volume) store. A couple years later, he was promoted to manager for level 1 (large volume) store. Michael was then assigned as project manager for store development, which included traveling throughout the U.S. training employees and managing several new Starbucks stores.  In 2008, Mike was assigned to one of Starbucks Flagship stores located in Times Square at 42nd street & 8th Ave. He not only manages one of the busiest Starbucks cafes in the world, but he is also responsable for providing catering for corporate occasions in the area as well training other managers.

Panel Speakers:

Danny Meyer – President of Union Square Hospitality Group
Lara Kisielewska – Founder of Optimum Design and Consulting
Ariel Cohen – President of Learning Link
Doug Boxer (represented by Cristine Franco) – Founder of Rare Bar and Grill

Opening Statement:

“Entrepreneurship starts with an idea, a concept that drives one to take the risk of creating a business. In the service industry this feat can be extremely challenging, since there is no tangible product to advertise. In essence, the entrepreneur has to sell an idea to the client. As a result, many obstructions may impede small businesses in their pursuit of success. Among these, a few of the biggest challenges are competition, lack of financing and capital, time management, and difficulties in establishing networks. According to our text, 80% of start-up businesses fail within the first five years of operation, so one can only imagine how difficult it is to start and run a business. Our panels today will be sharing their experiences as entrepreneurs in the service industry. ”

Entrepreneurship in the Service Industry

Questions for Panel Speakers

1. Introduction: Tell us briefly about your business and why did you choose this service.
2. Quote: “Competition breeds success.” How do you feel about the competition in your field?
3. How does establishing your public image and networking contribute to the success of your service?
4. Conclusion: What have you learned from your entrepreneurial journey and what advice would you give to new entrepreneurs?

Closing Points:

As stated before entrepreneurship starts with an idea. What our panelists revealed to us today is that the key to entreurpernurship is “knowing yourself”. The road to success may start with an idea, but the vehicle to traveling that road lies in combining that idea with your passion. Danny Meyer became the CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group, one of NYC most popular restaurant chains, by following that which fueled him most, literally- food. Lara started her entreupenurship career because she was sick of working for people that did not respect her ideas or listen to her. Knowing that she had much more to offer Apple and the other jobs that she worked at, she left in order to create her own company. However knowing yourself means much more than following your idea, but also sticking with it. As Rick Cohen stated in the road to success “a big public failure” is an instrumental tool in one’s development. During the economic downturn of 9/11 Lara lost over 5/6 of her business. She could of simply given up, but she kept with it and was better for it. When Ariel clients were unhappy with the tutors that he had sent them he would refund their money back for the time that the parents felt their children had not learned anything. All in all their failures became the inspiration to take a step back evalutate what they were doing, focusing on what could be done better, than taking corrective action to fix the problem. As all of the panelist stated in order to succeed as an entrepernurship you must continue to innovate and improve your ideas. Although any industry is littered with competition, scarce resources, and threats of substitutions the real obstacle to one’s success is themselves. “We are ultimately competing with ourselves” stated Danny Meyer. Most ideas that people think of are not unique for long. In the service industry restaurants and service providers alike are fighting for a piece of space in consumers mind. In order to stay in the mind of consumers, who are bombarded by multiple advertisement, an entreurpuer must be able to transform and build upon the idea that they had the day before. As Doug Boxer said his restaurant continues to draw in people cause they focus on the little things. Rounding off our panel discussion we asked each of our panelist to state one thing that they would tell to future entreupernuers. Ariel had this to stay, “Although we all have goals in life few people ever write them down. There was a study taken of three groups of students, those that had their goals, but never wrote them down, those who wrote their goals down and those who wrote their goals down and their plans to make those goals come true. The study proved that those who wrote down their goals made three times as much money as those who didn’t right them down. Surprisingly still those who wrote down their goals and their plans toward achieving them made ten times as much as those who just wrote down their goals. With that we ask you if you really want to start your own business, you must come up with an idea which originates from something that you are passionate about,ensuring that you will stick with it even when faced with failure.

PANELISTS

• Scot Cosentino; Owner of Goodfella’s Brick Oven Pizza and Pasta Restaurant
• Jesse Mejia; Founder of New Renaissance Events
• Antony Wei; Entrepreneur & Owner of Standford Parking Garage

Introduction

Team 5’s Panel on entrepreneurship will discuss the advantages and disadvantages to starting your own business. Entrepreneurs are defined as those individuals who take risks in order to further succeed in their endeavors of opening a new enterprise, venture, or idea. We would like to please ask the audience to hold any questions or concerns until after the conclusion of the discussion.

To begin, we would appreciate it if each panel member would start off by introducing him or herself, while briefly discussing their current business operations.

Questions

1. What were some of the contributing factors that led you to becoming an entrepreneur?
2. How did you market yourself and your business as unique compared to your competitors, leading to your success as an entrepreneur?
3. What are the challenges you face as an entrepreneur that one may NOT face when they work under someone? How do you overcome these challenges? … time, money, management, etc
4. Was your first attempt in starting your own business a failure or were you successful from the start? If you did fail from the start, how did you pick yourself up again and have the courage to try again? What was your biggest motivational force that pushed you to strive to succeed?
5. How have you exemplified the important characteristics one must have to be a successful entrepreneur?
6. What do you think is the one most important piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to start their own business?

Conclusion

There are many risks and benefits to being an entrepreneur. As our panelists discussed, entrepreneurs distinctly take actions of risk, for the chance of success. There are many qualities and characteristics entrepreneurs portray that enable them to succeed. Of course, anyone could be an entrepreneur, but those who strive to pursue the challenge and are able to overcome any obstacles put forth in front of them, are those who will be most successful. Some great key points to take away from today’s discussion include the following:

• Scot discussed how entrepreneurs should not seek the approval of others, for you will get more “no’s” than yes’s”. Naturally, entrepreneurs are those who separate themselves by others by taking chances of possibly failing. If everyone had the desire to be an entrepreneur, everyone would feel the answer to opening a new business should be “yes”. However, that is precisely what distinguishes entrepreneurs from other individuals, the ability to say “yes” and believe in taking the risks.
• Scott and Jesse both agreed with the thoughts of surveying the public for their own businesses. Surveys are crucial to marketing and communicating to the public, and enables you to learn about others’ needs and desires.
• Antony made a solid point by saying that when you are an entrepreneur, you directly see the amount of work and effort you put into your own company. When working in large companies, you may succeed in your operations, but may not realize those successes directly as you would when you run your own business.
• Antony and Jesse agreed that the happiness of employees influences that happiness of customers. Employers should always want their employees to be happy, for an employees attitude towards his/her line of work shows throughout the company, affecting the customers attitudes.
• Scot put a emphasis on getting things done as soon as possible, in order to have time “later”. Handle things when you first see the opportunity. Get a lot of “done’s” to ensure that there isn’t a build up of obstacles and challenges to overcome all at once.
• Antony started that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a risk taker. However, the risk must be calculated.
• All panelists believe that entrepreneurs should always aim high. Have your vision in front of you and always keep your eye on your vision. If a failure occurs, pick yourself up and try again, never lose sight of what is on top of the mountain.

Other Key Points to be Noted

Scot

1. Everyone has their own dream. Working for yourself you have no one to answer to but yourself. Your success and failures are your own
2. Your vision is what makes you succeed
3. You need to have something that works, is wanted, and needed
4. Focus on every part of your business, you need to know every area of your industry

Jesse

1. Make sure everything is going properly in order to have a prosperous cycle, instead of a viscous one
2. It is good to start young and related what your learning in school to your business
3. Surround yourself around successful people to be motivated
4. Have a good perspective on things, take the challenge

Antony

1. When the boss is very personal, customers are more loyal
2. Be available 24 hours a day, stress is always with you. In order to overcome this, you must manage your stress. It is your business, you will get things done
3. Don’t be afraid to fail
4. Make sure you do your research on your business