Local Business Marketing | #GetChatty
Hi I’m Arthur and I’m a marketer in Melbourne. I consult small businesses, local businesses, organisation, artists and creative professionals about their marketing strategies (social media, digital and events). In late 2020, I started this new series to hopefully help encouraging Melbournians & Sydney-siders to support their small to medium operations, at this stage I’m offering this initiative to businesses located in Windsor, Prahran, South Yarra, South Melbourne and Greater Melbourne, (also greater Sydney where I love and lived most of my life). This is a self-volunteering project and there will be no cost for businesses that’d like to take part, if you’re interested to take part please reach out to me here or DM me via my social media!
Chatty: Good morning everyone, welcome back to the Chatty Curator channel, Get Chatty About Your Local Businesses. Today I have my friend Monica with me and, hi Monical how are you?
Monica: I’m good Arthur, how are you ?
Chatty: Very good, very good! So uh, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Monica: My name is Monica Jurin and I am an associate professor of Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Chatty: Like 2020 had been quite a year let’s just, let’s not, let’s not…
Monica:…downplay it!
Chatty: Yeah it’s, its; impossible to downplay, I think uh, 2020 had been quite a year and how did everything that happened affected your line of work or your students, particularly the ones about to graduate?
Monica: Yeah, it is tough because we have to move everything online so in a very short time we have to reorganise ourselves. But the students, they have very good understanding of the situation that we are in and all the staff jump on board and there are things that you know you can’t and this is a myth that people always think, oh it’s quite easy and simple to transfer face-to-face class suddenly go online the next day, It’s not! You have pick up new tools, you know, online collaboration is a little bit different. How you are going to demonstrate things and schedule, you know conference and things like that, everything online but, um, I think we have done really well and somewhat, some students tell us that they actually like this because it’s so convenient. It saves them time, they don’t have to travel around they don’t have to, you know, go like, spend 1 hour to go to another location to meet with a client, come back to the campus and that sort of things logistically is much more better. And we have picked up a lot of tools and even with the clients we share knowledge like, one day I was having the meeting with the client and the students and I said oh, I think our discussion is not going anywhere, why don’t we jump on the Mural Board right, let’s do a brainstorming exercise. Because everyone has so many ideas we have to put it down in front of us, sometimes we just have to visualise it. And then the client was like, oh what software is this? This is interesting, I would, maybe explore it a little bit more, you know. So I think it is challenging but it just makes us much more innovative, much more creative and we get things done.
Chatty: That’s amazing I think this is a, this is a really fantastic attitude because it is about, well look I mean this is what we got, this is what it is, so we just need to find a way to make the most out of it. And to me that any of the client or people that I work with, that just kind of like, well it is what it is, so let’s find a way to deal with it. It’s not the best case scenario, um, but it can be worse, we can be in a different continent, at least we’re in Australia, like you know, it can be worse! Uh, but anyway …
Monica: …and also the students told us that now there’s so much more confidence in the future should they be asked to, you know, uh, organise a, an online meeting or use all these different technology like Zoom you know and things like that they say, what we have used it, and we can do it.
Chatty: Speaking of the, the students that you mentioned about there’s a project called BITE B-i-t-e, can you tell me a bit more about that?
Monica: That is actually my project, I am setting up a business incubator at MIT. So BITE stands for Business Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship. We want to combine or create a space actually, create a space for business idea engineering students to work together. Because you know if you look at our organisations and businesses around us, we have to work together, that is the core functions of a business these days so I want students to think about, not just going out there to find a job, but they can create opportunities for themselves. Especially for the young, younger generation, you have to create opportunities for yourself that is why we have BITEs and it’s going, and we have currently the first project going on in that space which is, um, a business student who come up with a concept now working with an IT team who will create and develop that platform to showcase and demonstrate that concept.
Chatty: Do let me know how you go a little bit later on, would love to get to know that and, and you know, even if the audience want to know that, that would be fantastic. And I think it is a really good thing because sometimes that even if you’re working in a, say a large corporation organisation, there will be different teams in areas and yes people from different discipline training they would come together and if everyone working within their own silo that they would turn into this little bit of tunnel vision situation that unfortunately would actually, um, it might limit your success so you know cross-disciplinary and just communication I mean it’s actually kind of how we met, I mean we have completely different areas of interest but then because we started conversations together that’s how we worked together well and then we become friends after, so I was like that’s, say hello, just you know, that’s what it is that’s how it’s started. And…
Monica: …then we teach each other things remember we had to develop a website together…
Chatty: …oh my god yeah! Oh my god, no, no, no, no, no, yeah exactly if someone show me, ask me to do coding i’ll just call like, that person, that person like you know, don’t, don’t look at me! Seriously!
Chatty: We are in the generation of digital transformation, how do you think these cross-disciplinary, synergy if may, to help the business environment moving forward ,so we are moving from the, from the student environment to a point of view like you know the small operator, like other people I interviewed it or the economy in general. How do you feel that these cross, um, synergy would work?
Monica: I think it is important that, um, we, we are thinking of synergies but i’m thinking of transformation. We have to really set our mind to be open. And because I know that organisation are now still for many, many years organised into specific department or functions right?
Chatty: Yeah.
Monica: But, if we want to be able to communicate like, like how we have worked together, we need to have a bit of understanding about each other’s area and fields because we have to build a bridge, so between IT technical knowledge and business people let’s say, let’s just take this two, they have to build a bridge. The IT technical people must understand a bit of business and the business people must understand a bit of IT technical knowledge, but in between that bridge is built on digital literacy, before we even talk about skills, right? It is our understanding of how digital stuff work. If you do not understand that, that bridge is always uneven or it’s not even crossover. So digital literacy, I know that you know in primary schools and high school they, they do a lot about this, but I think in the business world we also need to improve with our digital literacy before we push our staff and everyone else to just to go, develop your digital skill Arthur you have to upgrade you have to upgrade. But if without the understanding of the digital world and, and how to be creative and innovative with the skills that we’re going to develop it will never, never you know make the synergy work, we will always still talk inside our little box.
Chatty: It’s actually a really good point because what happened is, some of the things that, because I also work with like contractee or freelance clients, they are lots of very interesting ways that if you may that, um, if they feel naturally that they want to learn something, if they built rapport for example, like using what you were saying in the example, if there is a positive rapport between the IT person and the business person, then they would be more willing and open to learn about each other. If it is someone of say, someone of a, of a, of a managing director say to, say to someone that you gotta learn this, then they would think it was a chore and then it would just feel like their task and then unfortunately it didn’t really, it probably won’t really translate into the result of the work that, so that’s why I think, it was actually very interesting, one of my, one of my contractees that I can’t too much details but they want to organise an event uh, and they kind of like want to just give it 2 weeks notice they feel that’s enough time. But the way that I, is I, because I, I already have an existing rapport with them, I kind of like I know what explains better with them. So I basically explain it this way it’s like ok, well like, if you invite your best friend over for dinner of course 2 weeks is ok, but if you are organising a housewarming including people that you know a little bit but not too much, maybe a month to 6 weeks. And then if you’re organising something big like wedding you need two years or a year or something like that. So that was actually really useful because that actually, they decided to push the events like 6 months giving that 6 month gap and then that, but because I had a conversation with these people beforehand we had a certain level of friendship of rapport being built and that’s how the message come across. If I just go in and say, you need to do it in 6 months or something like that, they will be like….nah, nah, nah and I was like even though it’s good for them but then that’s the thing about about being book smart or street smart.
Monica: Yeah, and, and that’s what I meant by transformation right? Transformation include a very important skill and thank you for bringing it up. In the first workshop we do with our students, it is about client management, communication, building rapport. Without that you can’t help transform something that is being done or transform someone’s mind about, you know how to do certain things and also translation skill, Arthur, translation skill a lot of people think well why are you talking to me about translation I’m not an English major student or whatever, but it’s the translation from seeing a problem translated to someone who is not familiar and by using their language to inform them and convince them, right!
Chatty: It’s, it’s actually good, sorry we’re completely out of topic but then I, what I, what I think translation is important is for example in, in English there will be different words that we stress and then just changing the tone and the meaning of the entire statement and I would imagine that would happen in most, if not every languages, and the translation is that ability to not only, making sure the words are interpreted, but also the meaning are being interpreted. So that’s why you know, like you said that, it is a skill to be learned but it is something that do need to, like you know, someone need to invest a little bit of time to really get to know it. Thank you so much Monica for, for taking part in this and how people can find you and how business can get involved to, to for example help the students?
Monica: At Melbourne Institute of Technology that’s where I work and mit.edu.au and I also have my personal website that I’m trying to develop these days and try to do a bit more translation work, I guess yeah, so my personal uh website is mjurin.space.
Chatty: Thank you so much for your time and I wish you and your student the best of luck, uh and of course like uh, let’s keep in touch and please let me know if there is something that the Chatty Curator can help as well.
Monica: Sure! Thank you for inviting me Arthur, it’s a great chat I totally enjoyed it.
Monica can be contacted via:
mjurin.space
mit.edu.au
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/monicajurin
If you are / know of any Melbourne based businesses, artists or organisations that may interested to take part, please make sure to read this post then request a meeting with me!
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