Read on to find out more about the blog and the secretive person behind it!

How was GeekMBA360 born?

It was a confluence of several factors. Since my college days, people liked to talk to me about career issues. I functioned like an “informal career counselor” which made me realize that people are hungry for down-to-earth, honest, and realistic career advice.

I witnessed several layoffs over the years so I feel strongly that there is no loyalty in corporate America. Hard working employees need to have the resources and support to help themselves to navigate job market and make career decisions and I feel that my blog can be that resource. Hence, the financial crisis gave me a sense of urgency to start the blog. I feel that a lot of folks were ill prepared for such a  major financial crisis. I’d like to help.

Last but not least, I love writing. I read a lot of blogs too which made me feel compelled to join the rank of bloggers.

I love the GeekMBA360 branding – “Career advice at the intersection of business and technology”. How did it come to you? How did you develop and maintain it?

I know that my niche is at the intersection of business and technology. I have a technical background, but I’m also very interested in business side of things and got an MBA a few years ago. So, I want a name that  reflects both tech and biz side of me. That’s how I came up with the name GeekMBA. However, the domain name “geekmba” was taken. I had to add something to it. One day I was watching the CNN news program “Andersen Copper 360″. I thought 360 is an easy-to-remember number to add to “GeekMBA”.

I’m glad that you like this brand. I was actually a little bit concerned about it! I was worried that having the name “MBA” in it might limit the readership — I want a blog that is helpful to professionals, not limited to business school graduates. Also, I know some people don’t like MBAs — they appear to be arrogant, overly analytical, and clubless at times. I was afraid that my brand might have negative connotation to some folks, but it all seems to work out so far.

You seem to be very careful about privacy, with no name or picture of you on your site. This is a rare thing in the blogging world, since it thrives on being “personal” and “easy to relate”. Why remain anonymous? How does this affect your blog? Does it affect your blog?

Great question! I’m actually a very open person, a straight shooter in real life. Sometimes it kills me remain anonymous in my blog because I love to connect with people.

I am very careful about privacy largely because of two reasons:

1) I have a full-time job, and blogging is a only a side personal project. Given the subject matter of my blog, I really want to avoid any mix of my day job and my blog. All of the examples I use in my blog were from my previous jobs, not my current job. I want to avoid a situation where co-workers read my blog and think that I’m referring to something at work. So, for now, I’m writing anonymously to prevent any unnecessary speculation/guessing.

2) I want my blog to have a brand that is separated from me, the person. This is not easy to to do since blogging is authentic, personal, and social by nature. But, my entrepreneur philosophy is to build a profitable venture with a system and a brand, so that the start-up venture will have a life on its own without being associated to me. We’ll see if I can succeed in doing this.

How do you monetize your blog? Have your methods been profitable? What is your advice to bloggers who want to earn money from blogging?

This blog is profitable. The monetization methods include ad networks for display ads, affiliate (e.g. Amazon) and premium reports (I currently have 3 premium reports on sales.)

In term of making money from blogging, my advice is to have your own product for sales since it is better than affiliate commission. On the other hand, affiliate commission is better than ad networks.

Favorite topics to rave about? Rant about?

I like to rave about individuals who have the courage to pursue their own path, and find happiness along the way. I also provide honest and balanced perspective on MBA education as well as practical, from-the-trenches career advice on job search, start-ups, and so on.

I rant about work place politics and frustration and the daily challenges to balance professional and personal demands.

What’s your favorite advice to those who have been severely affected by the recession?

The Chinese phrase for “crisis” consists of two characters: danger and opportunity. If you lost your job or lost a lot of money in the stock market due to the recession, it’s a personal and/or professional crisis on the surface. But think hard and think creatively about the hidden opportunities – you will definitely find them.

So what exactly is My Milk Toof? It’s a photo blog about, well, milk teeth. ickle and Lardee loves to play and eat and try to be good milk teeth. The blog is not just riding on the coattails of cute. You can see the artistry and skill, the hard work and obsessive attention to detail that the creator puts in every photo. Out of all the blogs in the world, this is one of the very few that is truly a labor of love.

This interview is with the elusive Inhae Lee, the creator of My Milk Toof. Find out how she got the idea for the blog, how she makes the milk toof universe, and how great content is the best marketing strategy.

Your blog is all about ickle and Lardee, but very little is actually known about you! Please tell us a bit about yourself – your name, age, country, favorite things, profession.

My Korean name is Inhae, but I also go by Renee. I immigrated to the United States from Korea when I was sixteen, and have lived in Philadelphia and California. I’m the middle child of three, both sisters. My dad used to own a video store in Korea, so I grew up loving movies. I love cities, thrift stores, children’s books, matinee movies, and cupcakes. I used to work in the video game industry as a game artist but am currently taking time off, hence the blog.

How did you get the idea to create My Milk Toof?

When I began my work hiatus, I was exploring some possible personal projects. The idea for the blog came after researching the term milk tooth that I heard in a movie. Once I became inspired to create a tooth character, my original plan was to design a resin toy to sell. But my boyfriend encouraged me to start developing stories around the characters instead. Using the camera he got me for my birthday, I began photographing the little teeth around my apartment. ickle and Lardee are based on my two nieces, Jamie and Chloe.

What materials do you use to make ickle, Lardee, and their toys? Can you give us a short rundown of how you make them?

ickle and Lardee are handmade with super sculpey. They are then baked, polished, and painted. For props, some are handmade from fabric and clay, but the rest are from garage sales, toy stores, and ebay. Lately there has been a lot of sewing involved, especially for the Halloween episode which required Lardee to wear a pumpkin costume.

How do you usually get ideas for your stories? A random TV show, a scene from the street, a book, what?

My inspiration comes from my childhood, such as the story of Lardee nursing a tree back to life. Sometimes my sister calls and tells me a story about my little niece, such as the teething story. Often my boyfriend gives a lot of input into the writing process – he’s a story artist at Pixar. I love Peanuts comic strips from the 50’s- I especially love the Charlie Brown animation specials. Sometimes I pop in “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” and watch the opening of Charlie Brown making his Kite over and over again.

How do you develop your stories? Do you wing it as you go along, or is each one carefully planned and executed? What’s the process of creating and writing each story and how long does it usually take?

The process of developing stories used to be lot simpler, but as the storytelling has evolved, executing a story has become much more complicated. Storyboarding has become very useful, but sometimes I do improvise shots and ideas as I go.  Currently it takes about two to three weeks to come up with a story, storyboard, make new models/props, photograph, and edit. Sometimes I have to wait a couple days because I’m waiting for a prop I bought off ebay to arrive.

Why did you choose blogging as the medium for introducing ickle and Lardee to the world?

A blog is the simplest way to connect with people and share what you do. It’s also a great way to experiment and get immediate feedback for your work. I highly recommend it.

You have a dedicated fan base so every blogger wants to know – how did you promote your blog? Or did you lay off promoting but simply relied on the sheer awesomeness of My Milk Toof?

It helped making a Facebook page and having a twitter account. But word of mouth really got the project out there. I really couldn’t have done it if people didn’t start posting about my blog on their own blogs.

They say that the best way to have a successful blog is to have great content. Would you say that this is true for you?

I agree. I think people can see and appreciate the amount of work and craft that goes into each post, and that makes people want to revisit the blog.

Your work has now been published in print. Are your readers going to see less of you in your blog? (We hope not!)

I‘m doing my best to maintain updates, but the more sidetracked I get with products, books, etc…, the less I’m able to dedicate to the blog. My time management skills are tested every day!

What’s next for My Milk Toof? Any projects currently in the horizon?

There are some great things on the horizon that I’m not ready to announce yet. But currently I’m working hard on some fun Christmas stories.

]]> http://www.bloggertalks.com/2009/12/inhae-lee-the-genius-behind-my-milk-toof/feed/ 0 http://www.bloggertalks.com/2008/04/welcome-to-bloggertalks-30-beta/ http://www.bloggertalks.com/2008/04/welcome-to-bloggertalks-30-beta/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:52:47 +0000 Thord Daniel Hedengren http://bloggertalks.com/?p=125 It was about time, indeed, about time. This is the BloggerTalks 3.0 beta, and I’m really glad it is finally out. My time is limited these days, and that alone should have stopped a relaunch, right? Well, given the new situation, with me being the new editor of The Blog Herald, doing news posts on the blogosphere here sure didn’t feel right. So I scrapped The Rag, and redid everything.

From now on, BloggerTalks will be weekly interviews (suggest victims!) with bloggers that matter and are interesting. No more, no less. Well, perhaps more sometimes, but this is my initial goal at least. That, and to get the beta stamp off it. That means fixing some cosmetic things of course, but also to finish the front page. This one doesn’t really cut it, now does it? Nope.

Anyway, right now it was more important to get the ball rolling again. Sites shouldn’t be without updates, so expect this week’s interview to pop online soon.

Welcome back!

It appears I spoke too soon. A broken elevator in the building we’re moving from stopped all work this weekend, and while waiting for it to be fixed, we’re kind of stranded in limbo, or something.

BloggerTalks will be back during the week, one way or the other, but for now I’ll take it easy and try and get this moving business on the road again. Meanwhile, why don’t you subscribe so you won’t miss anything?

Thanks for your patience!

This means there won’t be any interviews this week. We’ll be back next week, on Monday unless something weird happens. Be sure to subscribe so that you won’t miss out, there’s both a RSS feed as well as e-mail subscription options.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested you can always check out my updates from Japan. I’ll link ‘em all over at tdhedengren.com, including photo albums.

As always, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me, recommend interesting people for upcoming interviews, and by all means do subscribe to our updates.

That being said, I welcome you all back to BloggerTalks with a brand new interview featuring succesful freelancer Skellie. Enjoy!