California Miramar University

While we are known for our online MBA programs and our Doctor of Business Administration and Masters in Leadership courses, our Hybrid MBA program is also what sets us apart from other universities. A Hybrid MBA contains both on-campus and online components for completing your MBA degree, providing a well-rounded graduate school experience that fosters both in-class instruction and discussion and an online component to keep other responsibilities you have and hone your time management skills.

Have you heard of a Hybrid MBA? What are your thoughts on the mixed in-class and online components for MBA instruction?

Transcript of the Video

[Question 1: Why choose CMU?]
[First Speaker:] We’re all out there to get ahead, and CMU was the right opportunity at the right time for me.

[Second Speaker:] The opportunity was right. It was also a course that I got to participate in and it wasn’t just online.

[Question 2: What do you think of the faculty?]
Faculty here is awesome. They are knowledgeable, they know their subject and they know how to teach. Absolutely helpful, couldn’t have been better. Really sent a message to me that this was a school serious about teaching us business in the real world and have all the time for me as a student.

[Question 3: How would you grade CMU as a university?]
[First Speaker:] Definitely an A, A+.
[Second Speaker:] B+.
[Third Speaker:] I’d give them an A.
[Fourth Speaker:] I’d give them an A; they meet my needs as a university offering courses that I am interested in at times that are convenient for me.
[First Speaker:] I just think that the personalized education is really amazing.
[Third Speaker:] This is so much more and they’re getting out of me than I expected.
Video Transcription by GMR Transcription

So far we’ve put the Spotlight on FortuneBuilders Inc. because of their innovation in the real estate industry, and Ludus Sports for their ceaseless passion and commitment to providing a community-based model for customer service. This week we are shining the CalMU Business Spotlight on the Karl Strauss Brewing Company for two major reasons: vision and innovation.

I’m not going to go over the history of their rise to the top of the San Diego brewing scene, as you can find that on their website or Wikipedia, but I will tell you this: entrepreneurial-spirited founders Chris Cramer and Matt Rattner started with a very unique and maybe even “crazy” idea; did their homework and spent countless hours turning back the hands of time in the 1980s to fight Prohibition-era liquor laws; and eventually risked everything they had to turn their initial idea into a profound vision.

You see, when they started in the late 1980s, San Diego County was still entrenched in a Prohibition mindset when it came to beer. Their vision was to create a completely new beer culture in San Diego and open a microbrewery that specialized in local handcrafted beer. (They also enlisted the help of Chris’ cousin and master brewer with over 50 years experience, none other than… you guessed it… Karl M. Strauss.) When they opened up shop on February 1, 1989, they had absolutely no idea how San Diegans would receive their innovative concept. They had invested so much time, money and effort into this vision they had that their microbrewery’s ‘Opening Day’ was essentially a make-or-break deal. But on that fateful day when they opened their doors (*cue inspirational music*), they found locals already lined up to get the first taste of their original 3 beers.

It has now been 23 years since their founding and their business has skyrocketed. Starting with just three beers, they now offer 10x that at 30, including a 6 year-round beers and a variety of highly reputed seasonals and specialties. In 2010 Draft Magazine voted the Karl Strauss Endless Summer Light brew as the best light craft beer in the US. Later in the year their Red Trolley Ale, an Irish red ale, received gold medals in said category at both the World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Festival. They also received a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival for their winter seasonal Two Tortugas Belgian Quad in the Belgian-style Abbey category.

Karl Strauss Brewing Company provides their beloved brews to over 2,500 liquor stores, grocery stores, bars and restaurants in California and now has 6 prime locations across Southern California. (And when I say prime, I mean PRIME… Downtown San Diego, La Jolla, Sorrento Mesa, Costa Mesa and the Universal CityWalk… try that for real estate.) Unlike other craft breweries across they nation, they have limited their scope and distribution to Southern California, but plan to slowly expanding both north and east.

The brewing company holds many events to benefit myriad charities and also strives to be eco-friendly by donating its used ethanol for fuel use. Management is committed to their employees with progressive benefits/compensation, bonuses for those who demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit that got them to where they are today and help the company grow, and a 401(k) plan. Karl Strauss brews over 30,000 barrels every year in their state-of-the-art 2-story main brewery, bottling 250 bottles every minute. They currently have over 400 employees working from them in their main office, brewery and microbrewery restaurants, and grosses over $20 million every year. They have also been ranked 40th on the list of Top US Craft Breweries.

So thank you Karl Strauss Brewing Company, and especially Chris Cramer and Matt Rattner, for serving as the perfect example of how entrepreneurs can turn some “crazy” idea into a very successful operation. When you think about it, one of the key ingredients for success is being unique and adding a unique value proposition. If you stand out from the field, put in countless hours of hard work and cultivate your vision, you can really do great things in the world. And it doesn’t hurt when you’re brewing beer because, let’s face it, it never hurts to sip on a cold brewsky on a hot San Diego spring day.

So again, thank you gentlemen for teaching us all a lesson on how to build and grow a successful business; thank you for your vision and innovation in redefining the San Diego beer scene and reinventing local craft brews; thank you for inspiring our students in our on-campus, hybrid and online MBA programs; and thank you for giving me some ideas of things I need to try this weekend. We are honored to shine the CalMU Business Spotlight on you.

What’s the number one goal for all businesses in the entire global marketplace? Yep, you guessed it… to PROFIT. In order to increase your bottom line, though, a targeted and effective marketing campaign is crucial because you need to find prospective consumers and convince them to consume your brand.

So what are the best strategies to create and implement a successful marketing campaign for your business? Well that’s where Dr. Tim Becker comes in…

MKT 6120: Marketing Management is taught by Dr. Tim Becker. Dr. Becker holds a B.A. in German from Luther College, an M.B.A. from University of North Texas and a D.B.A. from United States International University. His research interests and teaching specialization include marketing and global management.

Transcript of the Lesson

Welcome back Ladies and Gentlemen. Okay, we’re going to discuss what I think is a really exciting chapter. A lot of decisions have to be made. We are dealing with Chapter 5, and that deals with market segmentation. You know what this really is all about? It’s you deciding who should you go after, who should you be selling or promoting and selling your products or services to. Let’s go back to Chapter 1 where we were talking about limited resources, unlimited choices.

So when you look at a product or service, as a good marketer you’re trying to figure out ‘who do I go after’, but minimize the resources I need to get enough customers to stay in business and work on a profit. So you may say, “Oh, there’s a huge market for your product.” Well you know what? That may be true. But ultimately what you have to figure out is: of your market, you’ll really have to get down here to where your target is. And there’s a big difference between your market, who’s the potential, and your target.

So how do you get from this point, we have this huge market, down to here? So how do we do that? Essentially, market segmentation is de-massifying the market. So instead of this huge market you get down to the nitty-gritty, essentially who’s going to buy it. So two things are going to happen there. When you move from your market down to the target, you are going to get an increased homogeneity of the group. So up here might say, for example, if you are selling a product to a car industry, might be, all drivers within a hundred miles of you. Is that a market or a target? It’s really a market. Now when you look at your product and say, “Now really who has the high likelihood to buy?” And that’s the second thing you want to take a look at. Get people that are similar but also who have a greater need, or that you have a higher likelihood to sell to them and a higher likelihood that they will buy.

Transcribed by GMR Transcription