Get a Yearbook! RINGTONE
Be the envy of all your friends!!!! Download and install Rockstar’s “If you’re happy and you know it, GET A YEARBOOK!” RINGTONE!!!!
We’re hiring
We’re looking for a new Creative Consultant to join our team!
Tell all your cool friends, and find out more info!
2009 – We only get what we give!
We made a video about our 2009!
Start on the right foot
If you’re just starting out your yearbook project, here are a few pointers you should conside:
Choose the right apps
The yearbook is easy to create – but only if you use the right tools. There are many different apps you could use including Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Apple Pages. Because you’ll be working with large image files, it’s best to use a fast/powerful computer, using one of these programs which can handle large yearbook files.
If you’ve just started out creating your files and not entirely sure you’re doing the right thing, feel free to send the file to Rockstar to check – obligation free!
Use Online effectively
Where possible, collect information such as photos and reports online. It will save heaps of time. Rockstar can set up a free and private website for your project, where you can collect information from your community. Be in control, and chose the best photos and info to download into your yearbook application.
Online is great, but be careful with trying to do too much. Editing large images online is extremely frustrating and time-wasting. Anyone claiming to offer online publishing is kidding themselves, and offering something that is extremely limiting – you don’t have freedom about how you want your yearbook pages to look! It’s like trying to sketch a picture using a thick blunt permanent marker that is running out of ink!
Understand what a “page” is
When it comes time to getting a quotation for your project, it’s likely you’ll be asked how many pages you’ll require. A “page” is a single side of a piece of paper. Each page has one page number. A piece of paper has 2 pages on it – 1 on each side. So if you need 100 pages for your yearbook – you’ll have 50 pieces of paper bound together.
More random tips to come…!
Starting your own business [part 3]
So you have that special spark [part 1], and are trying to work out what type of business [part 2] you want to start…
Different types of businesses (continued)
- Sell your time
- Sell products you make
- Sell products you don’t make, but value-add to
Category 1: If you’re passionate about doing a productive activity that you like, for example tutoring, gardening, being a make-up artist,then you are perhaps selling your time. When selling your time, you’ll have an opportunity to do for a living, what you love doing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. The best analogy I can think of is that you’ll feel like you’re permanently on school or uni holidays forever.
If you’re a little more excited about the act of making money using a system of sourcing and selling things, then you fall into category 2 or 3. One could argue that entrepreneurship starts when you’re in business, not to sell your time.
Sell products you make
You could be quite creative, and on the side create handmade pieces of jewellery, crafts, or food. Selling your creations at markets, stores, online, or via resellers are examples of the business practice here.
Sell products you don’t make, but value add
Value adding is where you create a new product or service by joining together other smaller processes. You might start off with a bread-roll that you source from a baker, … buy a series of small paper-boxes from another supplier ,… insert the bread in the box, …and there you have it – your new product: Bread-in-a-Box! yeah!!
If you’re excited about getting into your own business because you have that spark, but not terribly creative to make your own products or sell your time, then perhaps the best way to get into business is to find ways in the market to value add. Create new products and services, that give value to your customers, by joining together other products and services that your customer would not have done otherwise.
For example: To start up fashion clothing line, you don’t necessarily have to be good with textiles. By value-adding, you can source the production of textiles from a supplier, do something really special or unique to it via another supplier, then sell the end product as your own.
A great beauty of value adding is that you’re not selling your time. You’re selling other people’s time and therefore not limited to your 24-hours in a day – only by how much your supplier(s) can handle. Your profit margin is made in the value of combining the once separate items into one new product or service.
In this series of blog posts on starting your own business, I’ve discovered that I’m really bad at focussed writing. Compared to writing essays, blog posts can be really brain-draining. (or maybe it’s just me). There are a lot of things I want to elaborate on however in future posts:
- cash-flow and start-up costs: is it really an issue, or are you just making excuses?
- tips on starting out: working from home, what to buy, what not to buy, working another pt job
- not obvious – but important stuff on dealing with people: suppliers, customers, employees
Congratulations Year 12 Class of ‘09
Congratulations Year 12 – you’ve made it!
You’ve spent 6 years slaving away at high school and finally you’ve reached the finish line. No more assemblys, teachers, or last minute rushed assignments!… Well, unless you go to uni.
The HSC/VCE is just the last final hurdle. You’ve worked hard all year, and you’re at final stretch before you’re finally free.
Finishing school is a huge milestone. It’s one of the many great steps you’ll take in your lifetime. But no matter where life takes you, you’ll always remember your high school days and miss all those things you thought you hated at the time. When your parents said that your time at school would be the best time of your life, they were absolutely right…. Unless, again, you go to uni.
Through all the hard work (and hard partying…) of the HSC year, a number of schools found the time to put together an awesome yearbook. It may have been a mad rush at the end to get everything together, but it’s always worth it.
Special congrats to all the schools who have worked with Rockstar this year to create their Yearbook. Some yearbooks we’ve seen so far include…
Arthur Phillip High School
Assumption College Kilmore
Bulli High School
Castle Hill High School
Cranbrook School
Elizabeth Macarthur High School
Kincoppal Rose Bay
Mac Robertson Girls' High School
Mordialloc College
Mount Waverley Secondary College
Muirfield High School
North Sydney Girls High School
Riverside Girls High School
Robert Townson High School
South Sydney High School
St Michael's Grammar School
Sydney Girls High School
You guys all did a fantastic job. Best of luck in the HSC/VCE and whatever the future may bring!!!
Starting your own business [part 2]
So you have that special spark, and can believe in yourself…
Why are you going to start your business?
You should figure out why you are interested in starting a business. It will usually be for a combination of these reasons:
- for an enjoyable job, to keep occupied
- to make money and be rich!
- for independence, the challenge, and desire to try
The relative importance of these three reasons will be different for everyone. It’s a good idea to question yourself and be honest, because different types of businesses are better suited to each reason.
Ways to make money
The process of making money effectively and relatively easily, could be done in one of two ways
- make/do something once, and sell it at a high profit margin
- make/do something once, and sell many of them, at low margin each
Being a tutor, a gardener, or any profession where you sell your time, can be considered falling under category 1 – you are selling your time. Being McDonalds and selling Big Macs could be considered category 2 – you are selling your ingredients to a Big Mac.
Of course, there are many more ways to make money. I would however argue that you’re wasting your time if you make/do something once, and sell it at a low profit margin.
If you can work out a way to make/do something once, and sell many of them at a high margin, then you’re definitely on to something.
Different types of businesses
With this in mind, you should think about the type of business you’d like to go into. You could either:
- Sell your time
- Sell products you make
- Sell products you don’t make, but value-add to
Before we go any further, please don’t consider franchising as “starting your own business” – it’s not. Franchising is literally just buying your job. Yes, being a franchisee perhaps has more freedom and responsibility than being an employee. But, you are very much tied to operating rules, territories, tied to paying commissions and fees, and your “success” is managed carefully by head office. Franchises are for (older) people who enjoy hand-rails and guide-ropes. If you feel you’re better than this, don’t franchise.
Selling your time
If you are going into business “for an enjoyable job, to keep occupied”, then you’re possibly thinking about selling your time. One thing to consider about this type of business is that there is always business admin work involved. You may or may not enjoy the admin work.
Your financial success will be very much linear, and tied to how frequently you can work, or how well you can increase your hourly rate.
A way to expand this is to type of business is to sub-contract, or employ others who sell their time. For example, you are a maths tutor, who sells tutoring services provided by your other friends (pimping them out).
Gahhh, suddenly getting very tired, and this will have to be continued….
I’ve proof read this a few times, but apologies for the tardiness. It’s been a 14 hour work day (but still enjoyable), and I’m listening to a sad song…
Your kids appearing … or not… in yearbooks
Sometimes (ever so rarely), we get out of the yearbook studio and meet new people.
A common remark we get, when meeting parents with children is:
“Ohhhh… my son/daughter never gets in the school yearbook!… They only put in the top sporty or academic students!!!”.
Just wanted to clear something up…. It doesn’t work like that.
The yearbook is the type of project where you take what you can get. There are rarely enough high quality photos available to “choose” from.
No one sits there filtering out photos of children who are not the top sporty or academic students. (….and if you’re sure they do, you’re sending your children to the wrong school).
School yearbook editors (that Rockstar work with) will, 9 times out of 10 painstakingly sift through photos to get the widest variety of students.
If you’d like to ensure your children are featured in your school’s yearbook:
- volunteer to take photos at school events
- encourage teaching staff to take more photos
Operations Assistant role update
Thank you to those who took the time and interest to apply for the Operations Assistant role.
We have been overwhelmed by the response to the advertisement. Some HR people write “we have been overwhelmed by the response…“, as a filler sentence. We’re not. In less than two weeks we had over 140 applicants… 160 applicants 180 applicants for 1 role.
At the moment we are reviewing all applications received. Please accept my apologies as we are unable to personally e-mail unsuccessful applicants. At the same time, I’d like to provide some tips for your job hunting endeavours. These thoughts come from our review of applications so far:
- Consider your Resume file name.
Why is your resume file name “resume_rockstar_v3.doc“? Do you create a unique resume for each potential employer? Why?
Employer wonders: What are you hiding from me or What are you making up?. Be confident and just name it “Mary Smith.pdf”
- Answer the question succinctly.
We asked specific questions. Answer it specifically and succinctly. Copying and pasting a rambling pre-prepared blurb, gets your application instantly failed.
- Proper Grammar.
Something is wrong if you type your name as “mary smith”, and not “Mary Smith”. I understand typing in a lax manner on your Facebook wall, but this is a formal job application. It is even worse, when you answer the set questions in this manner. Show some respect…to yourself. Employer wonders: Are our clients going to get this lax treatment too?
- Resume Document = max 3 pages.
2 pages is best. You want to give the employer a summarised taste of your strengths – a reason for them to want to delve more, and give you a call for an interview. Use 3 pages and you better have a damn good reason. Too many people have 3+ page resumes. You should be able to adequately summarise yourself in 2 pages. Oh and, being Primary School sports captain is not relevant anymore.
- Your e-mail is w33dmaster69@hotmail.com???
Really??? Yeah, that was cool in High School, but you’ve grown up since?…I hope.
It may seem that a lot of these things are quite picky – and yes, they are. But a somewhat accurate way to judge potential employees is on the little things. All the little things start counting, and start painting a picture of the person behind these little actions.
You may not agree with our comments – and that’s perfectly fine. Different companies operate differently, and we’re keen to know your thoughts and questions. Please feel free to comment with any.
And finally, here is a list of some of the sloth names submitted!
rockstar
Sid
William Shatner
Raymond
Lethargy Larry
Cuddly
pappi
peggy
Moon tailor
fluffy
goukki
tata
Sammy! =D
Tort
Simile (like!)
Puka
King Max
K9
Hairy
Bradypus/ brady
Michael
Bob
cookie
beautiful (because you can’t judge a book by its cover)
Slothy.
Zoban
NA
FRANK
Bubble
donald if its a boy, maisy if its a girl
Jasper-Raphael The Second
Awake
“Moksha” which means ‘liberation’ in sanskrit.
Victor
Sloth
katie
Buster
Garfield
Iggy
smokey
Willard
douche bag
Run
Cheetah
Slug
Habib
Slow Joe
rockstar
Laze
cookie
Ben
Fluffy
Ben
Dodo
polobun
Mr. Mittens
sleeper
-
I’d have to meet it first but if I have to pick a name, I’d choose Javier or Lupé so it can maintain its Latino roots.
disinclination
Rocket
Dimitrios
sparkle
Bravo
pooki
Ban Zao
Hobbes
Hormes
Curlie / Maxx
Moonface
Slothy maybe?
lucky
Misa- a nice russian name for a south american animal!
Ares
Pi
Reginald. A traditional name for a not so traditional pet.
Bakemono
elfin
Blurbly
Flat Face
nickie
Smiley
Banjo
Slown
sloth
Amelia
Banana-Nails!
Doopz
sleeper
el senor murcielago de peludo (or murci for short)
arnaza
Slowman, which sounds like “snowman”.
usain bolt
Tina
RAG
Womanupindi. As I am a narcissist. And a feminist. And it could sleep for me.
Marley
Fuzzy
Eugene. Because its a cool name but I dont think I would ever name my son Eugene. Do you guys have a sloth? That would be so awesome.
Uncle Rémy
If it’s a male sloth – John, if it’s a female sloth – Pretty
sly
A sloth should be called Sloth until I know his or her personality
Pudgy ! there just so lazy
Spunk
Jackie
Stewie (because I’m addicted to Family Guy)
TIMMY, TIMOTEO or probably SYD
Speedy
Usain Bolt
I wouldn’t want a sloth. But to answer the question, maybe slowpoke.
Gamma
Frankie
Sonic
Cheekoo
Boris
Bumble
Carnifex
Mardee
The Dude
ot ot
airy
Louisa, after my cousin, because she loves sloths and also exhibits sloth-like behaviour.
Smiley
Dorathy
Lazy Larry
Pencil
Stan Still