Chapter 10 : On the home stretch

Just got back from work and even though we didn't have that much customers today, it was so exhausting because of the boredom. There could have been even an hour with nothing to do, very frustrating I have to say. But as always, I will give you guys the best possible effort for this blog post too so let's stop this whining and review this past week. Oh and speaking of whining, I have a nice and short video for you to show at the end of this blog post so stay tuned!

I was absent from Monday's lecture because as I mentioned in the previous blog post, we had a cruise to Sweden with our fellow student colleagues from every agency of Laurea. I could write a review about the cruise too but come on, this blog is a school assignment so let's skip that, shall we? After a two-day purgatory (yeah it's Easter, what did you expect?) I managed to get to the second lecture of the week on Thursday and I must say, I have never been that pleased to get to the school as I was after that lecture. Antti Haapsaari. This guy was the real deal. An hour just flew by when he talked to us about his architecture firm Kanttia 2 and how he has had projects even in Egypt with very powerful people as co-workers. I went totally speechless by how compelling and inspiring Antti's lecture was. The best guest speaker easily by far and I will probably remember his tips and thoughts after years from now because the way he presented his thoughts gave me a feeling that this guy knows what he's talking about. And addition to that, he's very enthusiastic about what he does and didn't hesitate to share his experiences with us. And working with some very powerful people in Arab world just supported the image of very successful and inspiring person that I got from him. Simply awesome.

Had to borrow a picture taken by my group member (thanks Miikka) because I want you guys to remember this face, a truly franchise player. And look at that shiny blazer, damn...

One thing that really caught my ear was how Antti talked about the importance of relationships in the field of business. And let's not just focus on customer relationships because there are several important relationships in business that have to be taken under consideration. For example when you're applying for a job, you have only one chance to make a good first impression to your possibly future boss. Do you want to express yourself as a trustworthy guy to whom your future boss could easily hand over some important responsibilities or do you want to give an image about a guy who probably fuc... pardon me, lets your boss down with disloyal acts? Not a hard choice I assume. Of course you have to always be yourself and nothing else but building relationships start from the very bottom and proceeds piece by piece to the unbreakable bond (I should be a writer...). The relationships with customers or co-worker or whatever don't have to be some blood bonds, sharing the deepest secrets among each other but simply a relationship where the other part can have the certain trust in you that you will do your best in a reliable way, no matter what it was. Make your boss believe in you, make your customers believe in you but most importantly, believe in yourself first. You can't form good customer relationships or business associations if you don't have the faith in yourself and your skills.

On Thursday we also got another assignment in which we are trying to come up with some innovative ideas for our student colleagues' team Funking. Funking's idea is to provide an ultimate tool for ultimate fanning. It's like a Snapchat style platform but with a lot more content and elements that create a close connection between fans and their idols. I really hope that we can come up with some good ideas to present for them because I think the idea of Funking is actually very cool and of course I'm hoping that they could be able to launch their idea eventually to the big leagues, so to say. 

As I mentioned earlier, I bumped into a very cool and inspiring video about the key to being more attractive. In other words, the key to get the above-mentioned relationships. I think this video encapsulates well what it takes to be successful in business and in life in general. And believe me, it's not rocket science. With some little adjusting you can make yourself attractive in a way to build some relationships, achieve your goals and live a happy life. I could say that for most people, all they have to do is just loosen it up a bit. "Don't obsess over things you can't control. Focus on what you can do!"

I think there's enough for this week so see you on next Sunday!

Chapter 9 : Resetting brain

So what's the haps guys? For me this week has been by far one of the most funniest ones in this year. On Monday we presented our videos to NoBot representatives and feedback was really positive and supportive. All groups had made a great job with their videos and these kind of assignments are always fun to execute because of the chance for some creativity and presenting your thoughts in a form of a video. We didn't win any prizes but well, it just left us even more will and desire to succeed in the upcoming assignments! And of course, congratulations to the winning teams. We were also given another assignments by Mazda which was pretty exciting for us considering the fact that Mazda is "quite" a big company to do assignment for! But more about that later on the post.

On Wednesday we went to watch football again. It was the second leg of Champions League bout between Arsenal and barcelona (yeah, I wrote it with a minuscule) but once again the second mentioned came up big and dropped Arsenal off the competition. But next year will be ours... Then we ordered couple more beers and tried to figure out how we would present our presentation to Mazda representatives. The task was about Mazda 2 car and our mission was to make a PP-presentation about some new innovative ways to market the car. Target group was 25-44 years old people so there was a quite of a challenge to execute the assignment well considering the fact that the biggest purchasing power happens to be among the 50+ year old people. But we came up with an idea to focus the marketing to radio because cars are usually the most common place to listen to radio, especially in the mornings. We chose to have Radio SuomiPop as our channel for marketing and particularly their morning show Aamulypsy which is hosted by Jaajo Linnonmaa. The idea was to involve Jaajo also to the marketing by advertising through him the car on Aamulypsy as well as on Jaajo's social media channels. He's probably the funniest man in Finland at this point so it goes hand-in-hand with the Mazda 2's slogan ''one of the funniest cars to drive''. Presentation went pretty well and it was nice to hear some god damn CRITIC too and not only praising comments. Constructive critic is always important to avoid the same mistakes next time.

Unfortunately I couldn't make to the lecture after those presentations because I had to jump on a train with a destination being Tampere. There I was joined by my friend who is living in Pirkkala and we went to see a concert by one of our favorite bands, Hollywood Undead. Such a fun night and it sure felt at work on the next day.

Had a blast

I heard that we were given an assignment by PCA-scala gym on Thursday's lecture. As a hardcore trainer and wannabe bodybuilder I immediately turned out to be really excited about this task. Our mission is to come up with some innovative social media marketing solutions for them to be used in marketing of their upcoming fair day event. We've had so many of these social media marketing related tasks so it should be easy for us to execute it perfectly, shouldn't it? And because of the fact that it is related to gym training makes it even more interesting.

That's about it. Sorry guys but I have nothing else interesting to share with you or reflect my thoughts on something ultimate controversial subject this time but as the title says, this week was a bit of resetting my brain so that I can make the most out of the rest of the spring and all the new challenges and possibilities it hopefully will bring to us. And well the resetting will continue on Sunday when we are going on a cruise, heading towards our lovely neighbor Sweden. Might the a bit moist resetting but well, sometimes a good bunch of fun will help you get through the hard times in the past and ahead! I will end this post with one of my favorite quotes which shows the fact that even sometimes it feels like life is hitting hard straight up to your face, just shake it off and keep moving forward. Nothing is too serious to be harbored in our minds forever, just reset yourself and the next day will come with countless of new possibilities. We'll see again on next weekend!

Chapter 8 : Pursuit of Happiness

Hello guys! As I'm writing this I've just finished my eight hour working day and yet another school assignment so apologies in advance if there are some typos, misspellings etc. because I'm very fuzzy at this point. But hard work always pays off, that motivates to get me through all of these school assignments by the deadlines and getting my heavy bum to work every week. And a few prizes for my toil are coming next week in forms of a gig and cruise to the lovely western neighbor Sweden. Work hard, play hard as the crappy song says.

Damn, this is some serious background image stuff.

Digital business course contained a lot of law issues this week. Very crucial stuff but personally my interests and law issues have a quite of a distance between them so paying attention for a whole lecture was once again a bit difficult. Maybe some additional group work or illustrative examples could little bit ''spice up'' the lectures? Traditional lectures are a good way to adduce all the necessary things in detail but something to help students get more involved to the teaching process could help the actual learning process as well.

Speaking of involving, we filmed a video for NoBot Oy which was a task given to us on last Friday when I was in the Netherlands. We had to reflect our thoughts in a form of a video about caring and involving in workplace. Very important issue to deal with in today's work life because I've heard from my fiends about their horrible bosses (good movie by the way) who don't seem to care at all about their employees and that also affects on the general atmosphere in workplace. It's hard to get into the group where everybody are crestfallen and instead of getting praises and credit for their work, they get a shitload of complaints for every single mistake. It pisses me off, even writing about this makes me furious and feel bad for my friends to have that kind of experiences from work life. Everyone make mistakes and it's part of the whole process to eventually learn from them. Do these so called ''leaders'' think that Steve Jobs for example didn't make any mistake in his way to the top? Please... Just noticed by the way that the image I posted on above is quite illustrative what comes to this subject. Good background image stuff indeed, goes with everything.

I can fortunately say that I've always had good bosses and team leaders wherever I have worked in. Maybe the best example to tell you guys about, are my experiences from Celectus Oy. The company is all about selling. Its main agenda is to provide sales know-how services and train the best salesmen in Finland. I was part of a sales team in metropolitan area which provided the best energy solutions for customers and companies. We were competing in Leijonaliiga which was like a regular sports league type platform to compete in selling against other localities. We played ''matches'' against other teams from different localities and the team who had more sales at the end of the day was the winner and earned a certain amount of points that helped them in the league table. After 3 month ''regular season'' came the playoffs which culminated to the finals that were held in some trade fair which happened to be on at that time. In a nutshell, Leijonaliiga made sales job ten times more interesting.

It's self-evident that in that kind of job you have to have a good superior who can lead the team as well as the individuals in it. My two team leaders had such a big impact and influence on me which will probably carry on ahead in the future. They genuinely cared about me, not only as an employee but as a person, as individual human-being. That alone made me feel that okay, these guys really want to get to know me and get the best out of me. Because they knew me as a person even at some level, they knew how to train me individually by concentrating to my strengths and bolster my weaknesses. We also had training as a team and we all got to know each other well and were like old buddies among ourselves. This is what caring and involving is all about. I'll put our NoBot video and Leijonaliiga's video (some free marketing for my old employer company, you're welcome) here in below.

On Thursday we had a second lecture about law issues and also a very compelling presentation about marketing research. But what really stood out for me the most was a brief speech by our lecturer Anna who talked about finding and creating your happiness. Nice thoughts which sure got me thinking about how I've managed to create my happiness and what are the cornerstones in building it. There was also something about the positive thinking leading to positive things which I mentioned in my previous post too but I started to wonder in a little bit deeper level on that and some other things about happiness. Does it work for everyone, thinking positively and positive things just come one after another as an outcome? Though I believe that there is a obvious connection between them, does it even work for me? At least not always. I might wake up to a sunny day and think positively from the very first glance towards the sunlight but then a few minutes later a car drives by and splashes water onto me. Yeah, really positive feeling about that too. Maybe not the best example but maybe you get the point. We have billions of people in this planet and it's quite obvious that some things work better for others. And maybe that is what Anna meant by saying ''you create your happiness''. Only you know what makes you happy, hell, even it's to think negatively about everything then go for it. Better die happy than bitter about not reaching the happiness. Pursuits of happiness, there are many and finding them may take from a few years to a few decades but I believe that when you reach the complete happiness, that will be the most wonderful thing in the world with no comparison. And it might come already on next day, just open your mind to even the smallest things in life and let the flow carry you wherever it will.

So deep... But hey, what can you do? See ya next week with new deep thoughts!

Chapter 7 : Power of thinking

I'm going to keep it quite brief this time because I'm so tired after my trip to Netherlands. But let's talk about that later on this post and focus on the supply of what digital business course offered to me this week. I took part only for the Monday's lecture which also started the ''part two'' of the studies in this spring. I was absent from Friday's lecture because of the trip which was really a shame since the lecture's topics included, if I understood correctly, something about sales and marketing. Two subjects which I have waited the most to discuss about but hey, that's life... But yeah, on Monday we presented our Superpark marketing videos to a Superpark representative and the winner of the competition about which group gets the most views for their video was also crowned. Congrats to Diginspiration!

On Monday we discussed about power of thinking. The only thing you can have a complete effect on in this particular life is your own thinking. We played a little bit mind games against ourselves by a variation of the Napoleon Hill's invisible counselors method. The idea was to close your eyes and get yourself to the most comfortable place you could imagine with the closest people to you or some of your idols for example. Then ask them how to solve the problem which is harms you and you'll find the answer. Well okay, I didn't but safe to say that these kind of mind trick and finding your mental power takes some time and practice. And actually my flights to Netherlands and back to Finland were good sites to try again that trick. I think I'm getting there... But in my opinion, positive things happen as the outcome of positive thinking and that's the number one mind trick that all of us should learn and internalize. Even the first hit on Google agrees with me.

My girlfriend is on student exchange in Arnhem, Netherlands so as I mentioned earlier, I had a small weekend trip as I flew there in the early hours of Friday. And being such a conscientious student, I felt so bad for my absence from the Friday's lecture that I decided to visit my girlfriend's current university and ask one of their lecturers a chance to come listen the lecture. The answer was yes (didn't catch the lecturer's name) and I had a privilege to listen some interesting thoughts about marketing for an one hour. The lecturer's way to present his thoughts was very compelling and he didn't hesitate to involve the students to the teaching process by asking a lot of questions and presenting illustrative examples. Very pleasant lecture and fortunately it was only one hour long so that my trip would not contain only business studies :).

Had a great time in Arnhem and it was a freshen weekend since we had a brief but long waited chance to spend time with each other after five weeks apart. Arnhem was a nice, small city with a warm atmosphere. Next time we are planning to spend a similar shorter type of holiday in Amsterdam so the perspective between those two places can be quite a radical one!

Now I'm off to bed, 'til next time!