Stoa School

**How did I help build a business vertical from scratch?**

* **Build a product that people want**

  * Research around Finance

  * KPMG partnership

  * Curriculum design

  * Website content

  * Get Finance partners onboard - negotiating terms

  * Setup a CRM - NPF

* **Marketing**

  * Strategise a campaign from scratch

  * Application Form

  * Build ads

  * Press release

  * Email cadence + value add mails for lead nurturing

  * Plan events - what does it take to to execute high quality online events?

  * Plan competitions/Employability Tests

  * Partner with 3rd party vendors - Catking,

  * Video Scripting

  * Research for Podcast

  * Brochure

    —> Lead Generation

    —> Lead Nurturing

    —> Lead Conversion

* **Sales & Admissions**

  * Pitch + FAQs

  * Work with the Sales team to understand ground reality and generate insights

  * Interview & Screen candidates

    * Understand problems in detail

    * Create and improve ads + other marketing collaterals

  * Build & send offer letter

  * Follow up for admissions fee payment

  * Term 0 for converted students to avoid drop-off

  * Send a gift box to enrolled students

  * Send Orientation mail and start full fee collections

    * One Time Payment

    * no-Cost EMI/Loan

  * Plan Orientation

  * Onboarding forms

  * Handover data to Programs team

* **Working with other Teams**

  * Understand iterations in the program & update website + messaging across collaterals

  * Build program videos explaining key offerings

  * Interview Placed students - testimonials on websites + other collaterals

* **Build Internal Products - Dinero**

  * Move from Spreadsheets to Product

  * Integrate CRM with internal product

  * Build dashboards to understand performance of interviewers, counsellors

  * Interviewer Dashboard - give feedback to students based on which scholarship is calculated

  * Integrate & Send offer letter

  * Programme + Cohort wise dashboards

  * Offers sent vs conversions

  * Track pending payments

  * Mark dropouts in case of any

  * Expense Management

**Community Building**

* Building external communities that helps build trust

* Curating content for HR, Product, Finance & Design

* 1:1 calls for onboarding and men toring

**Programme Management**

* Planning new cohorts

* Coordination with Tech/Design Teams

**Team Management**

**Hiring**

* Identifying roles

* Building JDs

* Building functional competencies

* Screening & Hiring

* Create assignments for specific roles

* Prep for interview - asking the right functional and behavioural questions

**People Management**

* Task Allocation

* Providing feedback and necessary approvals

* 1:1 meetings with all employees

* Feedback to higher management

* Championing leaders to make myself redundant

* Brainstorming sessions for idea generation and execution

* Team activities to keep morale high

Masters' Union

We watch and learn by imitating others, and the most important thing we learn from others is desire. Rene Girard, a French Historian, Philosopher, and Stanford Professor spent his life around decoding human desires.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2F0vEKKsxXnuc214uY4s0hRiSTdNI3%2FjrZqwHiYKDiCDopSJAmA%2Fae49010d-8250-4c6e-9bcc-0c0ef4c00d5f.png?alt=media&token=a9134f48-04ee-414f-b5e4-81da86ea59e4","id":"ae49010d-8250-4c6e-9bcc-0c0ef4c00d5f","width":814,"height":523,"filename":"mm.png","type":"image/png","caption":"","border":false}]}
```

                                           **Mimetic desire sits at the intersection**

**Why do we want specific things, objects, and people? This theory managed to answer some hard questions and constantly challenged my assumptions.**

### The Big Idea

Think of two kids and two identical toys.

One child picks up one toy, and immediately the other child has the unquenchable desire to take away that toy, ignoring the identical one right next to it.\
This is a mimetic desire. We’re all guilty of doing this in one form or the other. Most of us anyway.

**We want what others want. We want it because they want it.**

> Girard believed that human development occurs initially through a process of observational mimicry, where the infant develops desire through a process of learning to copy adult behaviour, fundamentally linking acquisition of identity, knowledge and material wealth to the development of a desire to have something others possess.
>
> \- Wikipedia

There was this widespread assumption that our desire is authentic and our own. Beyond food, shelter, sleep, and sex all our desires are adopted by observing the desires of other people.

To learn, a human needs a model; but as he copies his model, he also copies his model’s desires. Desire is triangular: it is a relationship not merely between a desirer and an object, but between an observer, a model, and the model’s object of desire.

[More here](https://mellowisdom.substack.com/p/mimetic-desires-) ....