study these notes:
Week 1: Effective Teaming Part 1

Life cycle of a team includes forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning
Forming: Introduction and getting to know each other and identifying team goals
Storming: How to address first team setback and power struggles
Norming: Cooperative actions 
Performing: Peak performance, morale, and productivity
Adjourning: Capturing lessons learned and continuous improvement opportunities
Effective team meetings: No agenda no attenda 
Creating a team charter which is consistently updated and serves as a framework for how the team will operate.
Big takeaway from this lecture: It is important to establish how your team will operate and ensure it runs smoothly. Each team meeting needs an agenda to run smoothly and the team must be focused on productivity for the entire duration of the meeting.

Week 2: Effective Teaming Part 2

Team roles such as leader, organizer, writer, editor, and researcher help keep the team structured.
These roles can be rotated to gain experience in each or can be allocated based on the strengths of each individual on the team
Leadership, receiving/giving feedback, and managing conflict are all an important aspect when working in a team on a large project
Takeaway: Team member roles can create structure in a team and ensure people are working on their strengths and have a set role in the team. Having a set process for resolving conflict also ensures team members are not confused and conflicts can be resolved quickly to avoid setbacks in the team. 

Week 3: Networking

Networking is important as you can meet new people and make useful connections, exchange connections, increase contacts, create opportunities, and discover positive influences and role models. 
Goal of networking: Customers, job offers, mentors, friends, experts, and sponsors
Networking is the exchange of information and ideas among people with a common objective, profession or special interest, usually in an informal social setting. Networking often begins with a single point of common ground. 
The goal of networking is to get an advance, the next step that the person you are networking with will take you to help you achieve your goal.
Examples of an advance: An introduction, sending you a follow up article or piece of information, agreeing to help you with advice or support throughout your networking journey, agreeing to act as a reference for you (level 1 only)
Networking contact levels
Level 1: People who know you well, care about you, and would love to help you achieve your goals.
Test: Would they stop you in the street to tell you hello?
Level 2: Typical sources are introductions from level 1 contacts or meeting as a result of a common interest
A warm personal introduction is best. Say thank you to the level 1 who introduced you after the meeting with the level 2.
Level 3 and 3+: Come from introductions from the previous level. Preparations for these meetings must be even stronger as you have weaker ties to these levels than the previous levels. Again, thank the level 1 who introduced you.
Then meet with the person linked to the target and ultimately the person who is the target or the person who can give you the job.
Cold calling can help skip these steps, people in Canada accept meetings 70% of the time.
Takeaway: Networking is the most important way to reach your professional goals and building networking skills is highly important to be able to progress in your professional career. Practicing for each networking interview is highly important and linked to your success in the interview and your overall networking process.

Week 4: Professional & Personal Development

A work plan is an action plan that helps a team to achieve its goals
It is usually in the form of a table or a Gantt chart and consists of key steps or actions to be taken and:
How long they will take to complete
How they interact with each other (interdependencies)
Identify when key decisions or milestones will occur
Who is responsible for each action
How progress will be tracked and communicated 
Helps everyone on the team get aligned with each step of the project and know what their roles and tasks are as well when they are due
Business etiquette allows you to make a good first impression, show respect, build reputation, create strong relationships, reflect confidence, and be a career enabler. 
Takeaway: Work plans and business etiquette are critical tools in reaching goals. Dimple Dalal, our guest for this lecture, also shared her journey to VP of Investment banking at Bank of America. Shared internships she did and how she leveraged her career.

Week 5: NBTA Introduction & Brainstorming

It is important to be specific with recommendations when discussing how to improve your team. If you do not give specific examples and solutions, it is a bullshit reason.
Key components of a business plan:
Objective: To convince investors to invest in a new business idea that will result in a viable business
Business idea: What product will our business make or what service will it provide?
Customer need: How will we attract customers?
Competitive approach: How will our business be able to compete effectively? 
Resources and financial goals: What resources do we need? How can we make a profit?
Implementation plan: How do we launch and operate our business?
Brainstorming is important as it is a simple technique to get lots of ideas on a particular topic that provides quick results while allowing everyone on your team to participate without it being hierarchical.
Poll Everywhere: Why is making a good first impression important?
Takeaway: Brainstorming is the starting point of any good business idea and allows each team member to contribute to the discussion in order to generate a variety of ideas for a project. A business plan is also the main selling point of the business, without it you will not get customers and investors, and hence you will go out of business.

Week 6: Career Panel

Centre for career design presentation during this lecture 
Zain Khan: The first years of your career are brutal. You’re on your own and have no clue what you’re doing. I wish I had a guide back then so I made my own. I went from 0 to VP in 3 years. Here are 11 principles to accelerate your career now:
Hard work is overrated, consistency is underrated.
It's not about how hard you swing your bad, it's about swinging over and over until you learn to hit it out of the park.
Consistency gets you places that hard work doesn’t.
Optimize for learning over salary and role, a high salary is a byproduct of a valuable role, for which you need a valuable skill set.
Goals are bullshit. You never rise to the level of your goals, you always fall to the level of your habits.
Pick a company in a growing industry to come about opportunities.
Build skills that are rarely found together. Example: Storytelling and data analysis
You gain confidence after doing something hard, not before.
Promote your work shamelessly.
A good manager is more important than a good salary as they will mentor you.
Just because it's not your fault doesn’t mean it's not your responsibility.
Never do anything that hurts your reputation.
Work is the local maximum. Life is the global maximum. There is more to life than work and money.
Takeaway: Career design highlights it is important to plan your career and set your goals. Create a plan for all of first year and first year summer and keep yourself on track with this plan, setting goals to be met along the way. Zain Khan’s advice can also help to elevate a business career and provides valuable insight for those newly in the workforce.
Week 7: How New Businesses Attract Customers

The single most important thing a business needs is customers, as they are the foundation of any new business’ success. No customers means no revenue and no business.
Priorities for customers include convincing people to try your product, repeating business with you, and receiving such excellent service they use word of mouth to promote.
The thing provided by the business needs to satisfy a need, work well (highly functional), and keep on working (have high quality).
New businesses need to promote their product to make customers aware of them.
Setting a fair price is important as it is the value the customer is willing to pay while also allowing the business to make a profit. 
Pricing strategies include:
Cost plus
Value pricing
Contingent pricing (Warranties)
Coffee chats:
What are your goals for the meeting? Are you seeking information or are you making a formal request?
You must research the company, industry, and recent news items of the company the interviewee works for
You must do a google search and a linkedin search on who you are meeting
Let the conversation flow during the coffee chat, going off script is ok but have an idea of what you want to ask.
Towards the end, ask for specific closed ended questions you are looking for such as when to submit an application.
Always say thank you after the chat.
Dorenda McNeil, Senior Vice President of Operations, Brand and Talent at Counsel Public Affairs. Taught the class about business etiquette such as shaking hands and standing up when speaking to someone. No phone glancing and full attention.

Week 8: How New Businesses Compete

When firms compete with each other, consumers get the best possible prices, quantity, and quality of goods and services. 
Competition among companies can spur innovation through the invention of new or better products, or more efficient processes.
Competition can lead companies to event lower cost manufacturing processes, which can increase their profits and help them compete, and they can then pass these savings onto the consumer.
Competition can also help businesses to better identify consumers’ needs and then develop new products or services to meet them.
Five key questions each new business must answer in order to compete successfully:
How strong are existing competitors? (Barriers to entry, industry growth, rivalry)
How hard is it for new competitors to enter your market? (Economies of scale, switching costs, government regulations, monopolies)
How much power do your suppliers have over you? (Supplier concentration, forward integration)
How much power do your customers have over you? (Customer/buyer concentration, substitute goods)
Are there substitutes for your product or service? (Functional similarity, price and performance)
Some businesses would like their competitive strategy to be a moat that separates and protects them from their competitors. 
Rogers, Bell, and Telus: Switching fees to make it expensive to change to another competitor
Your doctor: Has so much information on your medical history you wouldn’t switch
Netflix: Outspends competition in developing new shows 
Perfection competition, monopolies, oligopolies
Airport test: Can you be on a delayed flight wait at the airport with this person? Are they able to talk about business passionately for a minute straight without going off topic? Ultimately the goal is to see how well this person can represent the business in a passionate way.
Make business your hobby and passion!

Week 9: Resources & Financial Performance

Resources needed for a new business
Financial: Financial resources for capital expenditures, working capital, salaries, and operating expenses
Intellectual property: Use of patents, licenses, or copyrights
Equipment, space, and raw materials: Machinery, vehicles, equipment for manufacturing and assembly, real estate and furnishings for offices, operations, and distributions, and raw materials
Human Resources: People resources for all functions and activities of the business
Digital: Hardware, software, licenses, and applications required to operate business
Businesses must develop a financial forecast with what they will need, revenues they expect to generate, and costs. Break even point can also be estimated.
Make assumptions for cost of labour, space, and other costs.
Create a projected income statement to give a better picture. 
Use excel to create graphs for revenue ramp up and cost and profit ramp up.

Week 10: Compelling Written Documents & Powerpoint Slide Decks

LinkedIn is important as it is your personal branding and a presentation of yourself and your professional accomplishments.
Effective charts require a headline, chart title, labelled axes.
Must be clear and easy to understand with clear sources and a call on the audience to pay attention to a key message on the chart.
All data must be accurate, with assumptions reasonable and clearly explained.
Analysis must be high impact: Product description title vs. our product is great title.
Information must be presented well without clutter and must be accurate. It must also be eye-catching and easy to read or else users will quickly lose interest.

Week 11: Effective Presentations

When presenting an analysis and insights, the analysis needs to add value to the facts of the problem or opportunity which you are presenting on.
Each slide should answer the question “So what?”
Bullet points are used to describe the key messages, points, or recommendations.
Characteristics of a high impact presentation:
Accurate data and assumptions
High impact analysis
Clear charts and headlines
Strong preparation
Effective Q & A
When preparing for a Q & A, brainstorm potential questions and answer with teammates and present to someone new and see which questions they present.
If you do not know the answer, put a fence around the issue rather than winging it. Say “I don’t know how to research further and let’s meet to discuss in detail by X date”
When introducing yourself, always greet the interviewer with a big smile and thank them for taking the time to allow you to introduce yourself.




Notes From Speakers

Cindy Rzepecki, CPA - Accounting and Forensic Accounting at EY
Toronto audit group (learn a bit of everything such as retail, construction) 
Forensic accounting at EY - help companies figure out fraud, theft, internal or external. (largest fraud found was 100 million stolen in a constitution company)
Helps companies that are in dispute, does a little bit of law work.

Emma De Tommaso - Law student at U of T and previous work in Finance at Tim Horton's

Ambika Maheshwari, CPA - Accounting, Finance at MLSE and Management Consulting in Mergers and Acquisitions at EY
Went to Coca Cola and did supply chain finance
Now she is working in consulting at EY
Month end, forecasting and budgeting 

Week 8: Michelle Gupta
Graduated from Schulich in 2017
She wanted to go into finance 
She wanted to work in a career with working with people collaboration
Brand management 
You basically manage a brand
Having a budget and you have a target and you have to use the budget given and come up with ways to hit that target

Product
Products are so good that consumers recognize the difference. Superior products raise expectations for performance in the category. 
Packaging
Packaging that attracts consumers, conveys brand equity, helps consumers select the best product for their needs.
Brand communication
Exceptional advertising that makes you think, talk, laugh, cry, smile, act and buy and that drives category and brand growth.
Retail execution 
In-store: with the right store coverage, product forms, sizes, price points, shelving and merchandising.
Online: Consumer and customer value.
All these elements presented in a clear and shoppable way at a compelling price.