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Chapter 1: What lessons did the host learn from Harvard Business School?
Harvard Business School was two of the best years of my life. I learned so much in the classroom and outside of the classroom. And that's kind of the whole point of putting these two episodes together. Maybe we should go to a Luckin' Coffee after this and do some market research.
Chapter 2: How does Porter's Five Forces framework help in business strategy?
I went to one actually in China. I guess you weren't with me for some reason. Oh. We talk about some topics that even in the past year have had a lot of developments and changed over time and make these topics worth revisiting. The archetype of an inspirational leader. We talked about Steve Jobs. Now we have the news that Tim Apple...
Tim Cook is leaving as of September 1st, and he's going to transition into the executive chairman role. What is John Ternus like? And what is his style of leadership? And how is that going to affect Apple?
Chapter 3: What marketing strategies did Warby Parker use to disrupt the eyewear market?
And how is that going to affect their product development? How is that going to affect their innovation? We are your Wall Street and Silicon Valley big sisters.
And we're a top 10 business podcast bringing late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. We released these episodes about a year ago, and they absolutely took off. Over a million views, so many comments about how helpful this content was. So now we're bringing it back to you.
It's our playbook, it's our frameworks that Jean learned at Harvard Business School and literally spent years in the classroom taking notes, and we are bringing it to you live now. We're bringing you the debrief, our takeaways, and our updated thoughts on how to get started.
on these videos i'm so excited to bring this content to you guys because harvard business school was two of the best years of my life where not only was it so much fun but i learned so much in the classroom and outside of the classroom and that's kind of the whole point of putting these two episodes together it's actually the first episode is more focused on concepts frameworks and really important elements that we learned in the classroom
And then part two is much more so the concepts that we learned outside of the classroom. And so putting these two parts together, plus adding all these extra notes now that we're one year out is kind of like the perfect playbook.
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Chapter 4: How can understanding revenue, profit, and cash flow benefit business leaders?
So for this episode, part one is going to be about strategy, marketing, product development, and finance. And then part two is much more about leadership and kind of all the soft skills that I learned at HBS. And in my opinion, part two is actually more fun and interesting than part one. But part one is very much the foundational skills that you learn.
So it's kind of like eating your vegetables before you get to the dessert type of thing. So like I personally found part two more interesting. So if you're in a rush, you could just skip ahead to part two. But I do think part one, even I was listening to it this week and I was like, oh, yeah, like I forgot about that term. It like really got me thinking.
So I think it's useful to listen to both parts. So I think just listen to the whole episode through, but make sure you listen all the way to the end.
And you know this is a Tiger Sisters episode because throughout part one and part two, we have case studies, we have mini exercises, and we bring in examples from both our professional and personal lives so that you guys really understand the concepts and can apply it to your own lives after you watch this.
Let's get started with part one of everything I learned at Harvard Business School, the foundational skills.
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Chapter 5: What are the different leadership styles discussed in this episode?
So if you're new to this channel, Jean is my older sister. She went to Harvard Business School. She's my role model, best friend. We have this podcast together. And just a little bit more background of who she is. She's an absolute badass, badass biatch.
She started her career out at Goldman Sachs working in finance, and then she's pivoted to working in tech as a product manager at Zynga, the gaming company, and most recently at Snapchat as head of product for augmented reality monetization. And Jean went to Harvard Business School. She graduated in 2017.
She has over 50 patents in AI, and I'm able to talk about this because she won't brag about herself, and I have to brag about her. So as you know, we're talking about Harvard Business School, everything she learned there. I went to Stanford's Business School, and I just graduated a few months ago, so this is fresh on our minds. And we wanna give you a crash course in the next 30 minutes.
We're gonna race through all these concepts, so buckle up. We're going to go through four main concepts, strategy, marketing, product development, and finance.
So what we're going to do throughout this episode is we're actually going to bring in examples for each of these sections so that we can talk through the company and you can really understand how these frameworks apply, just like we would in business school. I learn best through examples, so I'm really glad we're going to put this to the test.
And by the end of this episode, you're going to have a mini Harvard MBA basically saving you $250,000. That's right. We both spent $500,000 collectively on our MBAs, and you're going to get this for free, not including the travel expenses.
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Chapter 6: How does networking create opportunities for business success?
Bruh. fun and extraneous travel expenses. So let's get started with strategy. So strategy is where Harvard Business School really, I think, differentiates themselves, or at least where they strive to differentiate themselves. And where they shine. Yeah. So at HBS, strategy is not just a buzzword. It's a roadmap for where to compete and how to win in a complex marketplace.
And without a clear strategy, even the best products or the best companies will not be able to succeed. A classic HBS tool is Michael Porter's Five Forces, which analyzes the five components of strategy. Porter's Five Forces was actually invented at HBS, so we bring it up all the time. Porter's Five Forces are as follows.
Threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitutes, and rivalry among existing competitors. So let's say we are going to use Starbucks as the example. Everyone knows Starbucks, and that's actually kind of like a classic business school company example. So let's start with Starbucks and threat of new entrance.
So the way to think about the threat of new entrance is that from Starbucks perspective, one of the reasons why they're super successful is because it's really hard to start your own coffee company and go against big people like Starbucks.
Starbucks already is a pretty massive company, so they spend a lot of money on brand awareness, supply chain efficiency, and they have a lot of money to spend on having the best real estate so they can have the best stores in the best locations. You might be able to open up a small coffee shop, but going against Starbucks for these reasons can be pretty hard.
So then I would say threat of new entrants for Starbucks is actually pretty low.
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Chapter 7: What role does product development play in innovation?
Yes. So the second is bargaining power of suppliers. Yeah, I feel like this is a pretty easy one because the scale of Starbucks is so massive and obvious that they have incredible bargaining power with suppliers. They buy in a huge bulk volumes. So because of that, they can really control and push down the prices.
Yeah, that's kind of similar to Walmart as a classic example that has incredible bargaining power with its suppliers. Also Costco. Those are some of the other ones that get brought up a lot. Yeah, the big names. Okay, Sheree, what about the bargaining power of buyers?
the way to think about this is from the customer perspective the customer can go to other brands out there of coffee places like you could go to dunkin donuts you go to phil's or pete's but honestly like there is pretty high brand affinity for the customers starbucks has loyalty programs they have like cool seasonal drinks customers want to buy starbucks
Starbucks has also invested a lot in this area through their technology investments. So creating the app where you deposit money into your Starbucks account ahead of time kind of locks in the customer and sort of decreases the buyer bargaining power in some ways because they literally have a ledger with you. Yeah.
And I guess the last part about Starbucks is that it was one of the bigger names to create a third space. And now there's like so many other third spaces. But Starbucks is really known for being like that place away from home where you can hang out, you bring a laptop, meet up with people. So in the customer's mind, like it's still like, let's meet up at Starbucks.
yeah it's ingrained after having been in your sort of routine and your go-to third place for so many years ever since for us since high school or middle school even middle school not my caramel macchiato my ice caramel macchiato oh my gosh it was the ultimate treat it was so the ultimate sweet treat yes before we knew about calories
Before I cared about calories and the effects of caffeine on stunting my height as a 13-year-old in middle school. But I love that iced caramel macchiato. I felt like a queen drinking that. But we digress. Back to the lesson. Back to the lesson. Okay. So the fourth force to talk about is the threat of substitutes. Yes. So if you think about coffee as a category, there are a lot of substitutes.
You can make coffee at home. You can get coffee in the office, etc., But I think what Starbucks has done a really good job of is expanding into adjacent categories so that they sort of diversify their holdings and then decrease the threat of substitutes. So Starbucks also makes those little pods, right? Coffee pods. They make coffee beans that you can buy. They make ground coffee.
So they're not just a retailer of coffee in their retail locations only. They've done a really good job of sort of mitigating the risk of substitutes. So I would say their risk of substitutes is moderate. Yeah. The last of Porter's Five Forces is rivalry among competitors. So how does Starbucks line up here?
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Chapter 8: How can finance concepts impact decision-making in businesses?
I don't know if you've been to a Starbucks recently, but now they're like printing, printing it out. Like the names. Yeah. Oh, sometimes they still write it. Maybe in my online orders, they just print it out.
um but then i think recently there's been a mandate i saw this online there's an article where like the um employees of starbucks were asked to like write more personalized messages yes yes on the cups exactly i saw someone uh someone i i know wrote like i love you so matcha oh someone or someone received a cup that said i love you so much and she actually posted it on her instagram she's like oh this totally made my day yeah i mean that's just one example of differentiation
Yeah. A high, high touch. So the one thing you can take away from this lesson is that you can't be the cheapest, the best and the highest quality all at the same time, just like Starbucks. They chose to be higher quality and more expensive. And one example that comes to mind for us is Sisters Matcha. Right.
Sisters Matcha, which is our company, is a ultra premium matcha brand and it's ultra premium brand. product so even if we wanted to offer it for less we just couldn't because of our supplier costs and the fact that the matcha that we provide is um the cultivar is called akumadori which only makes up two percent of all of the matcha produced in japan So by definition, it is very rare.
It's very hard to cultivate. It has to be handpicked. Like all of these different reasons contribute to the fact that it's a premium product. So for us, we went the way of differentiation as opposed to cost. Yeah. Which makes sense for like the stuff, like who we are as well. Like we enjoy nicer stuff.
And we also like matcha, like when we're drinking ceremonial grade first harvest matcha, like you want it to be the good stuff that you're putting into your body. Exactly.
So for us, it wouldn't make sense to start a brand that is oriented on cost leadership because that doesn't align with our own personal brand or our own values for something that you are basically consuming every day and putting into your body. And that's meant to help you and improve your health. Very true. And also, it's just beautiful. And it tastes so freaking good.
But yeah, so these are things that like this is just another example for you guys to see like Starbucks is obviously a huge behemoth. But these are things that we've thought about when creating our own company, which is very, very small and is kind of a startup. Yeah. And also just like breaking into the matcha world.
Like we were asking these questions of ourselves, to each other, of our brand, and where do we want to sit and making these very intentional decisions so that, you know, we can be successful. So that concludes our mini lesson on Porter's five forces. Next, we're going to be talking about marketing. One of the first big concepts for marketing at HBS is STP segmenting, targeting and positioning.
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