If the employees are investing too much time in any task, it may cause delays in the project and cost overruns too. Therefore, time-tracking plays a crucial role in discerning employees’ time, productivity and bandwidth so that appropriate strategies can be formulated to enhance their productivity and minimize resource wastage.

In this blog, we shed light on how time-tracking impacts employee productivity in any organization.

What is Time-tracking?

Time-tracking is the process of tracking and recording how much time an employee spends on which task and project. It also provides a picture of team productivity, time distribution across tasks and projects, the progress of the project, etc.

Earlier, time-tracking was done via traditional paper timesheets, but it came with several limitations and drawbacks. Now, modern time-tracking solutions have largely replaced these paper sheets, overcoming their limitations while providing additional capabilities like managing productivity levels.

How Time-tracking Improves Productivity?

Here are some of the ways time-tracking can help with improving productivity:

1. Provides Data for Analyzing Productivity

Time-tracking maintains a record of employees’ time and work done daily. The project manager can utilize this data to evaluate various details like employees’ bandwidth and time utilization, employees who are procrastinating their work, which employees are more productive and which ones take more time to complete tasks, etc.

Armed with this information, project managers can spot where productivity is lagging behind so that smarter decisions can be made to improve the productivity and efficiency of employees.

Moreover, employers can overview which department is spending how much time on which project and whether the time utilization is worth it or not. This analysis helps them develop a strategy that is profitable to their organization.

2. Productivity Level Comparisons

A time-tracking software provides a 360-degree view of everyone’s contribution to the team. This data is helpful for project managers to identify those employees who are putting in extra effort and working overtime to meet the project’s goal. Managers can publicly recognize their efforts or reward them for motivating other employees to be more productive.

Similarly, if managers find employees taking more time to accomplish similar tasks, they can ensure relevant training or guidance is provided in order to enhance productivity and efficiency.

3. Smarter Task Allocation

One of the most challenging jobs for any manager is to assign the right tasks to the right person according to their bandwidth and availability. time-tracking provides clear visibility into every employee’s bandwidth and time utilization. Equipped with this data, managers can correctly assign tasks without overburdening their employees.

In addition, time-tracking also gives an estimate of employees’ capacity, allowing managers to distribute tasks across the workforce more efficiently.

4. Identification and Prevention of Distractions

Irrespective of how dedicated employees are, distractions are bound to arise, leading to lower productivity. These may come in the form of attending unnecessary meetings, requests for ad-hoc tasks, long break hours, etc.

Distractions disrupt the focus of employees, which may cause their current tasks to be delayed or even derailed. With the help of time-tracking software, managers can identify the causes of distraction and, therefore, can mitigate the issue by outlining a proper roadmap.

5. Elimination of Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks can arise at any time over the course of a project for a variety of reasons. These bottlenecks can end up causing delays down the road as tasks are often interconnected. With the help of a time tracker, project managers can look for any bottleneck or roadblocks in a specific task that needs more time and address it proactively.

6. Keep Focus on Priorities

A time tracker gives an insight into which employee is working on which task and for how long. The project manager can look into whether the tasks they are working on are of high priority or not.

For example, an employee may dedicate a good deal of time to a task that can be insignificant. Therefore, with the aid of a time tracker, employers can reevaluate and redefine their priorities, which can contribute to higher productivity.

7. Ensure Mandatory Breaks

Breaks are important to boost employee morale, as it helps gain balanced emotional health and de-stress at the workplace. Failing to avail of sufficient breaks during working hours can negatively impact employees’ productivity.

This is where the time tracker comes in, as it enables blocking appropriate breaks at the right interval. These breaks will prevent burnout and mental exertion, which are said to be the top causes of low productivity.

8. Support Better Focus Levels

When employees have clarity about which priority tasks they have to work on, along with other low-priority tasks in the pipeline, they can better focus on their work and can efficiently manage their time to accomplish them.

Time-tracking is helpful in identifying the priority or urgent tasks that need to be done first, which helps them better concentrate on their tasks.

9. Keeps Procrastination at Bay

The problem of procrastination is so timeless and usually happens when employees are overburdened with unpleasant tasks or face ambiguity regarding which tasks are of high priority.

However, it has been observed that most employees are more driven to complete the work when they are provided with milestones, as it gives them a feeling of personal accomplishment.

Thus, project managers can set milestones and micro-goals in different phases of the project with the aid of a time tracker. This way, employees can work more productively to meet goals and can beat procrastination as well.

In addition, some tracking software comes with an automatic notification feature that sends the schedule overrun notification if the schedule lags behind.

10. Prevents Employees from Multitasking

When employees are loaded with multiple tasks together, they start multi-tasking to complete them all simultaneously. However, frequently switching from one task to another can degrade productivity. This can further disrupt concentration and increases the chances of errors too.

Time-tracking gives an insight into if the employees are frequently switching tasks, and with the aid of this information, project managers can evaluate and prioritize their tasks accordingly.

11. Improved Project Planning

One of the most challenging tasks of project planning is estimating the time individual tasks may take. However, time trackers retain the historical data of previous projects.

Managers can leverage this data to estimate the time requirements for future projects since the wrong estimate can result in missed deadlines, cost overruns, and overburdening the team with multiple tasks that can hamper their productivity.

3 Great Time-tracking Apps

Replicon

Replicon is a time-tracking software that offers many AI-powered automated functionalities. It integrates with over a hundred popular productivity and project management apps, including Asana, Slack, Zoom, etc.

It features flexible timesheet capture that supports all types of employees in different roles. The software also helps verify, analyze, review and apply the right workflows for producing accurate timesheets.

Bonsai

Bonsai time tracker tool offers features to make your workflow easier and more efficient. It has an easy and straightforward interface that centralizes your timesheets. It also lets you manage tasks, track billed hours, and create and send client invoices.

Indy’s time tracker

Indy is a reliable tool to track your working hours on projects and helps you get paid. You can start or pause recording your work hours with a click and organize your tracked work sessions. There’s also an option to add the hours to your invoices to get paid for your work.

WebWork Time Tracker

WebWork is an employee monitoring software that helps employers track the progress of remote teams through screenshots and reports. You can get reports as timesheets or statistics that you can easily export in different formats.

Moreover, you can automatically monitor employee attendance, monitor particular app usage, among projects, and chat with your team. The tool is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as well as for Android, iOS, and the web.

Conclusion

As improved productivity and higher efficiency levels are the keys to successful on-time project deliveries, investing in a robust time-tracking system can be enormously beneficial to any organization. Time-tracking can help organizations better manage their employees’ time and uncover missed opportunities to improve their productivity levels.

The post How Does Time-tracking Impact Employees’ Productivity appeared first on Hongkiat.

Sure, you can get the design on tap from the numerous freelance networks out there like Upwork, but if a shot in the dark or, really, a coin toss, is not something you’re willing to risk, that kind of glut available there is not exactly an appealing option.

So, ditch your training wheels, say adieu to any learning curves, and dive into designing with these 20 tools for marketers and entrepreneurs alike!

Wix

A cloud-based website development platform, Wix offers you to create a high-quality website from scratch with complete flexibility of customization. Be it business, e-commerce or a personal blog, you can create any website or landing page for free.

What’s more interesting is that anyone can create a professional website with Wix without having any prior knowledge in web development. The websites you create are SEO optimized, mobile optimized, have a custom domain name and site branding and can be incorporated with many features like online booking and e-commerce.

For creating your free website with Wix, all you have to do is to pick a domain name, choose a template from 100s of options, edit your template, and add features through simple drag-and-drop editor, and publish your website. You can use SEO tools to drive traffic and mark your online presence.

Price:

Wix offers hundreds of templates and reliable hosting for free. However, if you want to avail more advanced features, you can get any of the premium plans starting from £4/month to £21/month for websites and £15/month to £27/month for business and e-commerce sites.

Visit Wix

Canva and Canva Pro

Here is a great online tool for the hard-up startup of one that can help you create anything from social media covers and posts, to event invites (like the launch event you’d want to get the press to with a cool image and a savable calendar link in tow) and more.

It makes it as easy as drag-and-drop to load their templates up with your own images, or you can buy most of their graphic resources for as little as 1$.

Canva Pro packs the power of the free Canva, but it’s better by orders of magnitude in that it allows you to create a brand kit with consistent colors and fonts, to customize templates, to share photo folders, and to resize designs.

Price:

A subscription to Canva Pro will run you USD12.95 a month or, on an annual plan, USD9.95 a month. A paid image on both Canva products will set you back one US dollar or 10% less if you purchase credit for a bunch of them in advance.

Visit Canva

Creative Market

The popular market where designers can strut their stuff is a boon of inspiration to anyone starting out, with tons of graphic resources, even 3D, on hand: templates, icons, wallpapers, WordPress themes, brushes and other Photoshop add-ons, and more.

The "Simple License" that covers most of the items sold on here basically allows for both personal and creative use (within some common-sense limits) and, on top of that, every week six resources go free. Sign up for their newsletter to be alerted when the freebies get released.

Price:

Creative Market is free to browse for inspiration, and the items on sale are decently priced. Also, if you load your CM account with $100 or $200, you’ll be getting 10 or 22 free credits, respectively, for use in the marketplace.

Visit Creative Market

Freepik

This aggregator is a comprehensive choice for the average Joe moonlighting as a designer in training. Run and populated by a team of designers, developers and other digital professionals in Spain; the site is your go-to place for finding icons, vectors and even photos – everything you’d need to patch together into a site or/and app.

Use it in conjunction with Pexels, Pixabay or whichever of the tens of more robust free stock photo providers out there and you’re in business.

Price:

Though the site’s resource base is free (for up to 60 downloads a day, for personal and commercial use), you’ll be expected to correctly attribute the files you use to Freepik.

Visit Freepik

Pablo

Buffer’s little helper for socially-engaged startups (meaning yours, if you’re smart) is a free online tool that allows you to share visual quotes to all of your social networks in one fell swoop. Link it with the popular social sharing tool Buffer and you’re good to go.

Pablo automates your design process by providing both quotes and pictures – all that’s left for you to do is mix and match to fit your purpose. If you want to wield even more power, and are willing to "sacrifice" a few seconds for it, Pablo lets you add your own background image for the quote you’re aiming to share with your followers and fans, then adjust its contrast and even add a blur effect for extra pizzazz.

Price:

Pablo is free to use.

Visit Pablo

Pexels

Good design doesn’t only consist of graphics, it also includes high-quality images that can be a cachet of quality. But finding these eye-popping hi-res images for your blog/site can be hard in this copyright-saturated world of ours, so, unless you’re planning on winging it and risk smearing your image even before you’ve built it properly, Pexels is the way to go.

It offers up a wealth of photos that are covered by the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, meaning you can use, modify and distribute them for personal as well as commercial purposes, without needing to link back or to attribute them in any way.

Price:

Pexels is free to use, though it will prompt you to donate whatever spare change you can via PayPal on download. Considering the money will go to improving its hosting capacity, is the least you can do.

Visit Pexels

Visme

Visme’s presentation maker is the perfect option for a business looking to scale their business communications and presentations. Create stunning slide designs with access to hundreds of professionally designed slide templates and over a million different design elements.

Choose from stock photos, stock videos, vector icons, animated illustrations, 3D graphics and so much more. Insert your business’s brand colors and fonts to easily create branded visual content.

Best part? While Visme is a great option for presentations, you can create any type of visual content with this tool. And the business account is only $29/mo (billed annually). Create infographics, social media designs, reports, marketing materials, sales collateral, videos, animated graphics, lead magnets or any other type of visual content you might need for your business.

Visit YYVismeYY

Instapage

A leader among landing page builders, with over 250,000 users worldwide, the Instapage platform is a complete easy-bake oven for pages you might want to add to your website.

Whether they be signup forms or contest info pages, Instapage has a large number of versions you can try out till you find the best fit. Once you’ve settled on one, all that’s left is customizing it with your brand logo and your message, as well as any images and/or fonts that will make your image pop.

You can even A/B test and tweak your pages, with studies conducted by the Instapage team (and others) showing that staying on top of conversions for each variation will improve your numbers by a considerable margin.

Price:

Instapage offers a free plan which won’t include a mobile-responsive version of your page (and, as we know, that’s frowned upon by Google Search), and a few other features that are available on the other, paid plans.

So you’re better off choosing between the Basic ($29 /month), Professional ($79 /month), and Unlimited ($179 /month) plans, which will offer a lot of bang for your buck. The paid route will also keep you from getting locked out of your dashboard (the home of your stats!) when the page reaches the 100-visitor limit on free.

Visit Instapage

WhatTheFont! and font repositories

If you’re a newbie without any design skills to your name, you can mimic a designer’s eye by snatching up the fonts used on pages you come by online – that’s where WhatTheFont comes in. It’s a free-to-use tool that lets you pop an image into the uploader and churns out the font used within.

Your image should consist of no more than 50 characters, as widely spaced out as possible, and there are a few other tips on choosing the best image to load into the program. Once you get the font name, search for it in FontSquirrel, Google Fonts or 1001 fonts.

Price:

WhatTheFont and other font repositories online are free, but be sure to check that the font you download is also free for commercial use.

Visit WhatTheFont!

Adobe Color CC

Formerly known as Kuler, this is the color tool to have if you’re colorblind, color-challenged or just can’t be bothered to create a color scheme from scratch.

The idea behind it is to use the color wheel to pick the best four colors for your site, blog or a particular page, graphic image, infographic, you name it, that go together with your chosen one color to a tee, based on the rule you select in the upper left side of the screen.

Or, if you’re hard-pressed for time, the tool also comes with an exhaustive "Explore" tab that lets you browse through, copy, edit and save to your library other users’ read-made schemes.

The other great thing about this handy tool by Adobe is it gives you the ability to import your new theme to Illustrator, Photoshop and/or InDesign. You’ll need an Adobe account to make the best use of your themes, so if you’ve already signed up for one, you’re good to go.

Price:

Adobe Color CC is free to use (and ditto for the Adobe account).

Visit Adobe Color CC

Coolors.co

The finest color generator around with paint chips so wonderfully large a blind bat could see them, Coolors also boasts a browsing feature, much like Adobe Color CC above (though they do boast "the largest color schemes collection," in their Instagram bio).

Complete with HEX codes (generated or that you can put in yourself), adjustable color components and toggles for brightness, temp, hue and saturation, it really is, like "a slot machine for harmony.

If you’re going to do some reverse engineering – i.e., some color scheme online grabbed your eye and you’re trying to get the exact codes to punch into your own website with ease – pretty much all photo editors can fix you up and there are a bunch of sites online (plus an iOS app called Quolor) that could provide that color picker functionality.

Price:

Coolors is free to use.

Visit Coolors.co

Design Seeds

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Design Seeds, whose owner is pretty adamant about how much she disapproves of color generators like Coolors. As she explains it, it takes talent and an artist’s eye to really get an expressive, emotion-inducing palette.

But if you’re not an artist with an eagle eye trained over decades, you can still use Design Seeds to get inspiration and attendant HEX codes for your brand image.

Each of the swatches you see on the site are "individually mixed" by the artist in Illustrator, and posted side by side with the photo they inspired/were inspired by after last touches are added in Photoshop.

A lot of painstaking tinkering comes into this site, so make your choice of palette wisely, be mindful of the artist’s work!

Price:

Design Seeds is free to browse through, and the owner does freelance on the side, so you can turn to her in a pinch (and at a cost).

Visit Design Seeds

Pixlr

In case you’re not about to shell out for Adobe’s monthly fee or put down a lump sum for a software you won’t be using that often past the point of building a logo and some other graphics for your startup image, Pixlr is a free online Photoshop alternative to consider.

With a clean UI and a user experience not that different from what we get from Photoshop, this editor stands out as it can be counted on to manipulate any photo or design into a work of art without headache or much in the way of skill.

You’re even able to save your creation as TIFF, among other popular formats, which will prove a valuable move in time, when you get a design team on board and they’ll need the high-quality file to tinker with your it further.

Price:

Pixlr is free to use, as is the mobile version, though that’s nothing to write home about yet.

Visit Pixlr

BeFunky

BeFunky is an online editor that takes tools even further than Pixlr, rolling the power of a collage maker, photo editor and designer into one site, a one-stop-shop for most of your startup needs.

Each branch of this mammoth web app has its own interface, with a real-time viewer front and center and tons of resources (icons, templates, fonts etc.) in the left-side panel.

Whether you’re trying to get your photo to pop or looking for an editable template for pretty much any purpose (event invites, menus, infographics, "Thank You" cards and more), you’ve hit the jackpot with BeFunky.

Price:

While they come with plenty of freebies, that’s not to say BeFunky’s giving away all its goodies. While many of the tools are free to use, you’ll need a pro account ($4.95/mo or $24.95/yr) if you want access to all, ad-free and unlocked premium templates, stickers and frames.

Visit BeFunky

Lucidpress

Lucidpress is suitable for print and digital outputs, but it shines when you’re fixing to create the latter: with static and interactive templates (allowing for slideshows, YouTube embeds and more), drag-and-drop functionality, and streamlined collaboration, it allows you to climb to designer status in the eyes of your customers. They’ll be none the wiser.

Price:

Lucidpress is free to use with limited functionality (a cap on 60 objects per document, and 3-page documents max), or you can shell out $7.95, $15.95 or $40 for a basic, pro or team account, respectively. These paid plans come with the ability to save a ready-to-print file, view analytics, embed documents and more.

Visit Lucidpress

Freebbble

Dribbble is the largest showcase site for professional graphic artists, so you’re bound to get time-sucked into it. Eventually, you realize that most of the exhibitors are top-notch artists on four-figure payrolls and agencies.

If you’re looking to quench your thirst for great design made by Dribbble’s community of artists, head on over to Freebbble, where all the content given away for free on Dribbble is neatly ranged and classified by license type as well as resource type.

This offshoot isn’t affiliated with Dribbble, it only parses it for great free resources – which they all are – so you’ll need to check again with the original dribbbler that it’s OK to use their freebie and that his/her intended license is properly tagged.

Price:

Freebbble is free to use.

Visit Freebbble

Easel.ly

Everyone knows content marketing is (supposedly) replacing old-school ads (banners and the like) as the only way to get eyeballs on your product. But engaging users at this time of rampant ADD and short attention spans isn’t as easy as writing blog posts; the only type of content that’s actually got a shot at breaking through the noise is visual.

Easel.ly is the DIY home of infographics that offers a ton of templates, objects and images to pick from, and Visual.ly sets you up with a designer that can make all kinds of visual materials for you: you’re free to choose between them based on your needs, possibilites and time.

For what it’s worth, Easel.ly’s platform is highly intuitive, letting you drag-and-drop just about any content you want from their extensive library (from charts to images, icons and more) or even upload your own.

Price:

Easel.ly’s free to use with a pretty restrictive cap on images and fonts you can add to any one infographic (60 and 10, respectively), but the Pro plan is a bargain at $3 a month.

Visit Easel.ly

UXPin

Though this might be a little out of our league, it never hurts learning a new skill, particularly with so few (and so pricey) UX designers out there. So, if you’re thinking about prototyping your app/website and don’t know the first thing about it, UXPin is your next pitstop.

Aside from letting you wireframe any interface, whether on desktop or mobile, this platform boasts a user-friendly dashboard interface itself, easy prototyping of the user’s experience on-site/in-app, nifty collaboration functionality to get a friend to test-drive it for you and more.

It’s also worth taking a look at its knowledge base, where there are tons of white papers to get you started.

Price:

While the learning resources are free, actually, to use the UXPin platform, you’ll need to set aside $19, $29, or $49 every month, depending on which package you find more up your alley here.

Visit UXPin

The post 20 Design Tools for Startups on Budget appeared first on Hongkiat.

This article will give you six things to know before launching your startup. It will show you some of the problems you might face on your journey and possible solutions to make the ride as smooth as possible.

1. You need a good team

Before you even consider starting a business, you must gather a good team. Even if you’re the most intelligent person, you have your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing those weaknesses will help you determine what you need to look for when searching for partners or hires.

But, a good team doesn’t solely revolve around technical skill or knowledge. A good team needs a strong leader that can keep it working as a cohesive unit. If you don’t have strong leadership skills, try working on them or partner up with a strong leader.

2. Cybersecurity is very important

No matter what type of business you’re starting, it’s safe to assume that you will have some online presence. With that in mind, you have to consider the different cyber threats out there, especially with the recent rise in cyberattacks targeting everyone, from individuals to small companies to large corporations.

In the early stages of your startup, establish good cyber hygiene, which involves:

• Using strong passwords
• Encrypting sensitive data
• Using a data security tool, i.e, NordVPN.

3. Most startups fail

It may be a hard pill to swallow, but the fact is that 90% of start-ups fail. Now, that isn’t to say that you should give up on starting a business. It’s simply a reminder to keep realistic expectations and your options open.

Stories about how people risked it all and made it are inspiring. However, for every one of those stories, a million more failed and lost everything.

If you’re unsure about a business idea, start working on it in your free time while keeping your full-time job. When you start your business, incorporate it so that you aren’t fully liable in case of bankruptcy. These are some ways you can risk-manage the start of your venture.

4. It will be emotionally draining

Starting and running a business is rarely a smooth ride. There will be some bumps on the road that even the most mentally resilient leaders will have trouble dealing with.

Many founders experience emotional drainage due to:

• Family-work imbalance,
• Work-related stress,
• Managing people etc.

Additionally, small business owners often take on multiple roles in their company for lack of resources. This leads to role ambiguity and can significantly affect the owner’s decision-making capacity and mental health.

While emotional drainage is hard to avoid, there are some things you can do to minimize its effects. One practice that many successful entrepreneurs recommend is meditation.

The various forms of meditation can help clear your mind and tackle problems more effectively. If you’re new to meditation, consider guided meditation on YouTube or even get a special app.

5. Find a mentor

No matter what road you’re on, there are people out there that have walked the same route and live to tell the tale. Find those people and soak in as much knowledge as possible.

If you’re lucky, you can build a good relationship with someone who eventually becomes your mentor. If there’s someone you admire or would love to meet, don’t be shy to reach out to them. You’d be surprised at how many people are eager to share their knowledge with others.

With that said, a mentor doesn’t always need to be a business figure. It could also be a family member or a good friend – someone who can keep you level-headed and help you focus on your goals.

6. Writing a Business Plan can help

Writing a business plan isn’t mandatory. However, if you want to pitch your startup to investors, a well-written business plan can help get your message across.

The main components of a business plan are:

• Executive summary,
• Products or services description,
• Marketing strategy,
• Competitor analysis, and
• Financial planning and budgeting.

A business plan is one of the first things investors look at when making investment decisions. But even more importantly, it gives you an objective summary of the business.

This can help you analyze certain aspects of the startup and drive good decision-making in the future.

Final thoughts

Launching a startup is a big step. You’re bound to face some hurdles along the way. It’s essential to prepare yourself for what’s to come and find solutions to problems that may arise.

To maximize your chances of success, surround yourself with a good team. Strong leadership and cohesiveness can make or break a startup. However, keep in mind that most startups fail, so be prepared with a few exit strategies just in case.

The post Launching Your Startup: 6 Things You Should Know appeared first on Hongkiat.

In this article, we’ll look at 7 key reasons why regular customer engagement helps grow businesses of all shapes and sizes, and how you can make the most of your feedback and survey responses when you do receive them.

1. Your customers pay the bills

Just because you spend a large portion of your time refining your business, doesn’t mean you’re completely objective as to the quality of your offering, nor does it mean you’ll see every potential opportunity at your disposal. This is where your customers come in!

Your website visitors, social media fans, and customers have already taken an interest in what you do, therefore you have a great opportunity to learn what they think you’re doing well, could be improved, or be an opportunity for you. If enough people are saying similar things, then you should consider taking action.

If you don’t, the most likely turn of events will be that your customers will go looking for these services elsewhere. Because you’ve already got the attention of these people, you’re in a great position to offer them services they want or improve the ones you’re already offering, therefore boosting their ongoing spend.

2. Plenty of choices online

As we touched on earlier, if you don’t provide your customers with what they’re looking for, they will most likely go looking for it elsewhere. So much so, that 86% of customers who receive poor customer service from you, will quit doing business with you. Customer service you say, isn’t that just good manners? Not at all.

Customer service is a full-cycle service that includes listening to your customer’s opinions and ensuring their journey from browsing your services to check-out is as easy as possible.

With all the different choices online, you have to be competitive across all areas of your business. Whether it’s improving existing services or adding new ones, your customers are the best people to tell you whether you’re keeping up.

3. Acquiring new customers increases costs

Have you ever wondered how much it costs to acquire a new customer vs. how much it costs to retain an existing customer? Almost 7 times, that’s how much! So many organizations overlook their existing customer base in search of new opportunities, and forget that it’s their existing customers who have been kind enough to give you their business.

Now nobody’s suggesting that seeking out new customers is a waste of time, but focusing on increasing your existing customer spend is definitely something you can use customer feedback to achieve. When the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, as opposed to 5-20% for new customers, you would be mad not to.

4. Reviews can make or break you

The sad but interesting truth about online customer feedback is that for each negative review of your service you receive online, this review will reach around twice as many people as compared to a positive review.

With this in mind, you need to make sure you’re using customer feedback to pre-empt negative reviews about you online. The customer feedback you receive needs to be acted upon; otherwise, you’ll be facing a growing amount of negative feedback you won’t be able to manage.

However, it’s good to keep in mind that if someone does post negatively about you online, 51% of these people will react positively to you if you directly address their feedback.

5. Make use of your opportunity

Did you know that 79% of people who provided negative feedback to a company had their feedback ignored? Ouch, that’s a lot of grumpy customers. As an organization, this is a major opportunity for you to outplay your competitors and provide a far greater service.

Sure the aim is to avoid negative feedback, but that will come when you listen to your customers through regular email based surveys, use of a customer feedback tab on your website, and implementing a strong website conversion review across your site.

6. It takes time to get those sales

Surprisingly, only 30% of first-time website visitors make a purchase on e-commerce sites. This may shed light as to why this user group only spends around 2.5 minutes on a site, whilst returning visitors spend over 5 minutes.

Nevertheless, don’t get discouraged if you notice your website visitors are not making a purchase the first time around.

If you’ve got things right, there is a strong chance they’ll be back and will make a purchase if your check-out process is easy to navigate. With drop-out rates during check-out generally going through the roof on most sites, this is a major point of focus where customer surveys and usability studies can help out.

7. Use your collected data

It’s amazing to see that so many organizations do the right thing and collect customer feedback, yet fail to use that feedback data in their businesses.

Sometimes it can be unpleasant or costly to recognize what you’re doing is not quite right, but remember just how much of a difference a small change can make to your bottom-line.

Regular customer feedback is an affordable business tool you can use to bolster your marketing and service offerings. So next time you see something negative happening with your website performance, sales, or online reviews; ask yourself, how can I change this trend and offer a better service to my customers?

The answer? Listen to what your customers are saying and act on that feedback as soon as possible.

The post Customer Engagement Will Grow Your Business (7 Reasons Why) appeared first on Hongkiat.

This is why it’s necessary to be particular about coming up with the perfect brand name and the story behind this name for your business. It may not seem like a daunting task, but it requires careful consideration on various aspects of what kind of services or products you will be providing.

After all, the brand name, along with the logo and the type, sums up everything your business represents into a symbolic name.

Here are a few essential things you might want to consider before you decide on your brand name:

1. Ensure it’s Web-Friendly

In this age and time, if you want your business to flourish, it’s probably a must to bring it to the Internet. Therefore, you have to ensure if the brand name you’ll be coming up with is “web-friendly“.

The brand name should be “web-friendly” in the sense that the name can be put on the web with Internet users having few issues finding and accessing it to gain information about the business.

First, if you’re going to utilize the net for your business, you’ll need an official website to serve as a one-stop station for anyone interested to find out more about it.

This means getting a domain name that is distinctly associated with your business. Therefore, you should choose a brand name that people could easily remember rather than something complex and meaningless.

Take for example, www.tchm.com versus www.tchmedical.com. The second one seems easier to remember because of the word “medical“. People would recall “tch” and “medical” better than simply “tchm“, which does not consist of any real word and does not give any clue about the business.

Second, given that social networking sites like Facebook are the in-thing now, you might be considering marketing your business through them in future. One thing you should thus check is that there are no pages created with the same name as your brand.

This will prevent the dilution of your branding and easily allow people to find the exclusive page of your business and gather more information about it.

Other things you may also wish to consider include your future business email address (which will most likely bear close resemblance to your brand name), the ease of using your brand name to search for your business on search engines, etc.

2. Simplicity

The easier it is for the brand name to be pronounced, the better it can be spread through word-of-mouth. Similarly, the fewer the number of words for the brand, the easier it is to be remembered.

Sometimes words are not spelt out the way it sounds, and people may have difficulties searching for the company on the net. For example, although “Xerox” has become an effective brand name that became synonymous with “photocopy“, it probably had some pronunciation issues when it first existed.

People might have mistaken the pronunciation with the incorrect spelling of “Zerox”. The company may have lost a significant portion of their potential customers just because these people couldn’t get the spelling right.

So when it comes to ensuring that your brand can be remembered accurately, simplicity could be the best policy.

3. Contains the Essence of Business

Just as your business should have a unique selling preposition to distinguish yourself from your competitors, your brand name should also manifest that which is distinct from the others.

It can also be used to reflect the strength of your business or give a hint on what kind of services/products it actually provides.

For example, the search engine “Google” might have given us the impression of “googly” eyes, which we can associate with searching for things. Such a company name lets people effortlessly identify with what the company provides and serve as a good anchor in their memory.

Other brand names may seemingly bear no relation to the business, but they emphasize on the “feeling” aspect of the name. No one probably have any idea what “Starbucks” is when they first heard it, but once people realize it’s a coffeehouse chain, it sticks in a strange way.

The name evokes energy and spontaneity, just as a cup of coffee would do to you every morning.

4. Stand Out from the Crowd

Simplicity aside, brand names need to be memorable as well in order to create a buzz and generate an interest in what is it that your business provides. Making your brand name too descriptive and straightforward may kill the curiosity that is needed to sustain the interest.

Before coming up with a few potential brand names, it would be a good idea to do some research on the ones that your competitors have come out with. Identify what are the similarities across the different brand names.

Subsequently, when you generate some potential brand names for your company, resolve not to come up with something similar to them.

In other words, your brand name should stand out from the crowd, by which I’m referring to your closest competitors. After all, a large part of your business concerns will revolve around these few.

As a potential customer considering the various options between you and your competitors, which one would most likely catch his or her attention initially? The one with a brand name that doesn’t sound like the others.

5. Have the Logo in Mind

Brand name and logo go hand-in-hand for the most part. If you want to have a strong branding for your business, make sure that people can identify the logo with the brand name.

The brand “Apple“, for instance, has a pretty straightforward logo in the shape of an apple. This makes it simple for people to recall your business. Why? Instead of relying on solely the linguistic memory for the brand name, they are now also able to store the visual memory of the brand by associating it with the logo.

Now that you know how significant the connection between the name and the logo is to your branding, it’s necessary to think of a name that affords you more freedom in the creative process of your logo.

Personally, I believe an “image” logo is stronger than a “word” logo, so it might be a good idea to consider a brand name that can be symbolized as an object or something.

Try comparing Apple‘s “image” logo to Microsoft‘s “word” logo, I think most of us would agree that the former takes lesser cognitive resources to remember than the latter.

The post 5 Tips to Building Better Brand Names appeared first on Hongkiat.

Welcome to that “12:00 o’clock going-to-the-office-never-have-to-answer-to-nobody” dream life! You’ll finally have the time and resources to do all the stuff you wish you’d done. Trips, vacations, freedom, and prestige!

Well, you’ll first need to start your business. And guess what? You’ll be very likely to end up closing it or selling its assets! And that’s a good thing. Let me explain.

Entrepreneurs Fail Constantly

That’s right. You could say it’s a never-ending, always-fashionable trend. Entrepreneurs, whether they’re dirt poor, millionaires, or even billionaires, just keep on losing. Don’t believe the hype. That’s the real state of entrepreneurship.

If you want to go into business for yourself, get ready for feeling failure and pressure about 90% of the time. But don’t worry. You’ll at least be in good company.

Did you know about Steve Jobs’s or Bill Gates’s failures? or that some of the most successful entrepreneurs initially faced much failure? Did you know the average millionaire goes bankrupt at least 3.5 times or that 3 out of 4 start-ups funded by Venture Capital fail?

So, if you were to generalize, by the 5th year, regardless of the industry, over half of all startups shut their doors.

That’s just facts.

But Why?

And the reasons why this is happening are even more ludicrous. According to StatisticBrain, the #1 reason all businesses fail is emotional pricing.

That’s to say, entrepreneurs usually overprice their products or services and are too stubborn to adjust to the market. They fail and give up. It’s not the economic climate, the industry, or management.

The list of bankruptcy reasons goes on, with increasing audacity and disregard for common sense:

• Living too high for the business
• Nonpayment of taxes
• No knowledge of pricing
• Lack of planning
• No knowledge of financing
• No experience in record-keeping

Why These Numbers Are Good News!

These high failure rates and stupendous reasons for failure are actually really encouraging for any budding entrepreneur. What they mean is:

• Competition is really low.
• You’re bound to succeed if you keep at it.

These reasons paint the picture of failure as being the most common element in business today. That’s normal. Because of this, the only winners in business are the ones who:

• Apply common sense (no emotional pricing, paying your taxes, planning and adapting, etc.)
• Continue practicing business after failure.

That’s the big secret you don’t hear in the interviews: being an entrepreneur isn’t so hard. Just keep at it and apply common sense. You only need one win, and bam: you’re a hero. Even billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban admitted this in his book:

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once, and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.”

Your Business Will Fail

I can predict with great certainty that your first business will be a disaster. I’m happy to be the first to let you in on this secret. Wisdom comes from practice, so it really doesn’t matter how much you’ve read or been taught, how many PhDs you have, or how much encouragement you get from family and friends.

You won’t have that common sense. You’ll reach too far. You’ll overexpand, overprice, and treat clients and employees wrong. I know I’ve said it’s easy, but most of us aren’t born with that much needed common sense.

You’ll fail miserably. Almost nobody makes a million dollars with their first business. Almost nobody makes that first jump. Not even superheroes. Neo from The Matrix Series can fly and dodge bullets, but even he didn’t make that first jump in the movie.

Here’s Neo looking smug and confident.

Here’s Neo doing/failing his first jump

The sooner you are OK with failing, the sooner you’ll be successful.

And don’t think for a second that just because you’ve failed, you won’t be able to get investors or hire people again. That’s because real investors and smart people aren’t surprised by failure. They already know these hard facts of the business world.

Charles Holloway, director of Stanford University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies summed it up beautifully:

“How well a failed entrepreneur has managed his company, and how well he worked with his previous investors, makes a difference in his ability to persuade U.S. venture capitalists to back his future start-ups.”

What All This Means For You

So the conclusion is you should start your first business as soon as possible so that you’ll be able to fail as soon as possible. The sooner you fail, the better. You want to have a startup mentality.

One awesome idea to apply comes from Start-Up Nation, a book covering the impressive financial success of Israel:

If an entrepreneur has a business idea, he should start it that week.

Stop preparing. Stop building features for your clients who aren’t even there yet. Just stick a Beta Version next to the brand’s name and go to market. Good enough is good enough.

If given a choice, take speed over quality. Nothing worse than an uncertain, perfectionist Captain fighting the storm.

What to Do When Failure Comes Knocking

After your business fails, here’s what you need to do:

Find comfort in the facts and figures given in this article

Re-read them. Internalize them. You are not special. You didn’t make the first jump. You’re normal, and that’s OK.

Evaluate assets

Every business, no matter how bad, has some sort of assets. I.e., cars, equipment, office space, or maybe intellectual property, employees, or client base.

Even if the business is making no money, you still had to have some clients, or maybe you’ve worked and had ongoing relationships with different companies. Those are still valuable assets. Maybe you have a nice commercial lease worked out. That’s a plus in any buyer’s eyes.

If you have a brand name, that’s awesome

Brands carry a lot of value for investors. I’ve seen business saved just because they had mass appeal thanks to their brands. Open up a spreadsheet and list all your assets.

If you aren’t happy with what you have, add another column. Call it “Experience”, and in the corresponding cell, write “Invaluable”. You’ll feel better, and it’s absolutely true.

Sell the assets individually or collectively as a business

Another scenario would be to give it away and keep a certain percentage if you think the business still has potential. If you have trouble finding a willing buyer or person to take over, consider these routes:

• Contacting the competition
• Contacting business partners
• Asking your accountant or lawyer. They’re usually well connected.
• Being honest and asking your employees.
• Being honest and asking your employees if they know somebody.
• Ads, forums, blogs, newspapers
• Universities. Find a young, hungry wannabe entrepreneur. Give it away for free and keep a percentage.
• Try gatherings or conferences from your industry. Don’t be shy.

The Last Step

Now you’ve sold it or gave it away and kept interested, sit down. Relax. Detach. Open the spreadsheet. Write the top 3 mistakes you’ve done while owning the business. Write the corresponding three lessons you’ve learned. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to restart.

Restart as soon as possible. You’re now closer than ever to being a successful entrepreneur.

The post How to Deal With Failing In Your First Startup Business appeared first on Hongkiat.

This can be an incredibly rewarding experience that can enhance both the project you’re working on, as well as your overall career as a creative professional. Or, it can be a total nightmare, with clashing personalities and a muddling of the overall vision into an unsalvageable mess.

We’re going to look at how to handle being the boss of a team-driven design project, so that you, your team members, and your clients are all happy with the result.

Don’t Make Them Read Your Mind

Be direct and tell your team your exact expectations. What, specifically, do you want from them? What will happen if they don’t deliver? Never, ever assume people will automatically know what to do in any circumstance if you haven’t told them, especially if they’re new hires on an unprecedented creative project.

If they do know what to do, that’s a plus, but most people won’t know half as much as you think (or hope) they will.

Working Without The Manager

Give step-by-step instructions. The key here is to automate the process of creating the work as much as you can. In the book The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, there is a significant emphasis on “assembly line style” business practices — that is, setting things up so that you, the manager or business owner, are needed as little as possible in the day-to-day activities.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but the less your team needs to rely on you for little things, the more great things you can all accomplish together.

It’s always better to assume less knowledge and be pleasantly surprised than to assume more knowledge and be screwed come crunch time. I know I sound cynical, but after working with dozens of teams over the years, this is just the simple truth of the matter.

Be Generous With The Compliments

Your team is working long, thankless hours to make the company dream a reality. They made a choice to be there, sure, but weeks or months of relentless work on a single project will wear down even the most tireless worker.

Sometimes, all it takes is a simple compliment to keep someone engaged and willing to put in just a little more effort. People like to know they’re doing a good job and that their hard work is appreciated.

If your team is kicking ass, you owe it to them to say thank you in whatever way you can. This isn’t just HR psychobabble, by the way; it can literally make the difference between a project being a success or a failure.

I can’t tell you how many teams I’ve been on that have started out strong, and devolved into squabbling, demotivated groups of people completely alienated from each other and disenfranchised from the creative process — all because the manager was a jerk.

Defend Them & Take The Heat

If you’ve never been in charge of other people before, there’s some bad news I have to break to you: everything is your fault. You may have heard of the expression “the buck stops with you.”

What that means is that you are the final authority when it comes to all decisions, whether good or bad. You’re the judge, jury, and executioner, but your head is also on the chopping block when things go awry.

Specifically, this means that the mistakes of your team are your responsibility, not theirs. That’s why you’re the supervisor and they’re the employees. They expect you to protect them from the brunt of your client’s or boss’ wrath, and in return, you lead them to do the right thing for the company.

Filter Your People

This rule is non-negotiable, as it should be. There’s always a cost to power, and there are responsibilities that come with leading people. However, there’s a responsibility that your team has to you as well.

My personal rule is, if someone screws up more than three times, I immediately replace them with someone else. You only want winners on your team — all the losers can go goof off somewhere else.

Don’t Let People Get Away With BS

As the saying goes, you should hire slow and fire fast. If someone isn’t working out, it’s better to let them go sooner rather than later. Hanging on to a bad apple will only cause problems, not the least of which will be with other team members who are pulling their own weight. You owe it to the “A” members of your team to get rid of the “B’s,” “C’s,” and “D’s.”

The goal here is to have a team comprised of nothing but A-listers. That way, things will go much more smoothly, and you can focus on giving your team everything they need to be as successful as possible. It’s a little like cutting off the diseased parts of a plant.

The deadweight will do nothing but sit there and slowly poison the healthy leaves and flowers. You can’t afford that if you want to be the best.

They Must Earn Their Keep

Always make sure your team members are making you or your client a profit. Never pay someone more than what they’re actually bringing in to the enterprise. Team members need to earn their keep, and if they’re not doing so, fire them.

It may sound harsh, but remember, you want “all A’s” on your team — not someone who will drag down morale and make everyone else less productive.

If you’re working for a client or a boss, you have a responsibility to them to make their business as profitable as possible. If it’s your own business, your responsibility is to yourself and anyone who has a vested interest in your business’ success.

This will require some type of record-keeping of the profit margins and such, and if you’re not good at that kind of thing, hire someone who is.

What Do You Think?

Have you worked as a team leader before? What other insights do you have about choosing and bringing out the best of the best in the people working under you?

The post Building and Hiring an Awesome Team appeared first on Hongkiat.

There are usually rewards for the backers: they get promotional materials, or to try out beta-versions of the product, and if it is an event, they get exclusive backstage access.

In this way, the creator of the project raises capital to do it, and the contributor gains the rewards for supporting a project he or she believes in. Sounds too good to be true? Well, there’s a catch. For the project to raise money, it needs to follow specific guidelines. Here are the seven best practices for running a successful crowdfunding gig.

Build It Before Launching

Many crowdfunding campaigns go under because they fail to lay the groundwork before introducing their project to the masses. You want to have a social presence. Either a Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube account already in place.

Have your website describing the project you’re doing. This will help you harness the power of your audience for getting the campaign off the ground, and it also allows people who don’t know you to trust you more.

Nobody likes giving money away for no reason, so having your name and your campaign’s site pop up on Google when a potential pledger is searching for you outside the crowdfunding site will help build trust in your project.

Know Your Target Audience

There are tons of crowdfunding sites out there. It’s your job to know which website your potential pledgers (the people are contributing to your project) are browsing. That means understanding each site’s audience. Look at what sort of projects are featured on the homepage, and what campaigns are most successful on the site.

If a particular site raises the most money for music projects, and you are doing a piano recital, that’s the place for you. If you have a cause awareness campaign, you should check out MightyCause or RocketHub. Go for the ol’ behemoth KICKSTARTER for projects involving tech.

On the other hand, appsplit, the first app crowdfunding site launched in 2010, is great for mobile development.

Reminder: Make sure you read the terms and conditions for the site you choose. Some take a significant portion of the money gathered and/or require you to be a US citizen. Others have more relaxed terms.

Storytelling and Psychology

Believe it or not, the crowdfunding model is older than the Internet. During the 19th century, newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer (yes, the inventor of Pulitzer Prizes) raised more than $100,000 in six months.

The goal? The pedestal restoration of the Statue of Liberty, which resulted in 125,000 people pledging towards it. Why? Because they cared and could identify with the story.

Most people browsing KICKSTARTER are looking to support things they believe in or care about. There are also certain psychological trends all humans fall into. Tony Robbins talks about this in an excellent TED talk.

How To Tell A Story

Think about this when you’re presenting your project’s story. Remember to make it emotional. The six keys elements you’ll need to address in your overall project presentation are Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love & Connection, Growth, and Contribution.

Most of the people want all of those things, so talk about them. The trick is to convey the ideas to the eventual pledger by hinting at them. Make sure they get it within the first minute. Let’s say, I’m trying to raise money for a social job platform for Android. Here’s an intro that works well:

“My project is certainly significant because we are trying to connect young people with their potential future jobs, contributing and improving to the overall employment rate here in Romania. We will impact more than 10,000 people in the first four weeks, and with a minimum conversion of 2%, our app is bound to drastically change the lives of 200 people.”

The combination of real numbers, overall tone, and the six elements make for a compelling story. What takes it to the next level, though, is the human element involved.

Video? 100% Yes!

What better way to tell a story than through video? Having a video for your project is an absolute must. “More than 50 percent of crowdfunding projects with a video is successful. Conversely, only 30 percent of those without a video succeed,” says Kendall Americo, CEO of ClickStartMe.

First, let the viewer know who you are, then jump right into the story. Your video should have a catchy title such as: “Would you save the app world with me?” as opposed to “New app to be launched soon”. The story being told should be short and precise.

You need to convey the following:

• Who you are
• How your story is connected with the six key elements
• What the rewards for the contributor are
• Asking exactly for what you want and explaining where the money will go
• Thanking everybody in advance, already assuming they’ve pledged

Consider making a professional video as an investment, and if you’re not comfortable with your accent, maybe hire a voice talent.

The Inner Circle

Competition for funds is fierce nowadays. That’s why you’ll want to make sure you have a few friends or family members as first investors. People often imitate others in order to belong to a tribe.

Take advantage of this “group mind” by planting the first seed yourself. Once you have your 1st round backers, others will come.

Lots of Rewards

Rewards are awesome, and offering them is a no-brainer. Try giving rewards for even the smallest of donations. Here are a few ideas:

• Behind-the-scenes photos or videos
• Autographed materials, photos, t-shirts, mugs, and other souvenirs
• Including the pledger in the product’s credits
• The actual product (free or largely discounted)
• Invitation to launch parties, events, social gatherings
• Unreleased beta-versions of the product
• Including the pledger’s name within the game/product
• Access to the team or one-on-one talks with you
• Direct involvement in the script/features of the campaign

Get the word out.

The Internet is full of blogs and publications about every topic under the sun. Immediately after your campaign starts to grow, contact as many as possible. Once you reach your first milestone, your project can become a story, especially if you are raising money for a cause.

Media attention spreads like wildfire if it’s an exciting project. Best to not contact anybody on launch day and wait until you hit your first milestone. That will prove some interest in your idea, and you’ll be more likely to score an article.

The post 7 Tips For A Successful Crowdfunding Project appeared first on Hongkiat.

Business plans are in place to give investors a sense of security. Hence, they try to test the person they are funding. Creating a business plan is just a test — a flight simulation if you will. It would help if you spent some time flying inside the simulator, but don’t get caught up.

Every entrepreneur knows that things will go wrong in real life, and no business plan can save you then. What will save you is your ability to bounce back, adapt, and fight. What will save you is being a real-life Iron Man.

But why exactly do these business plans fail? And if you are to make one, what’s the best business plan possible? Let’s have a look.

The map is not the territory

Reading a map and following a business plan is quite similar. Looking at any map, you see the overall direction in which you need to go. The map, however, won’t show you the people on the street, the traffic lights you need to stop at, or the distractions you need to avoid along the way

It can only show you the different corners you need to take en route to your destination. Sure, you need the map — for about 10 seconds. After that, it’s game on, and the actual environment will guide you.

Simulation Versus Real Life

What if there’s a crowd somewhere in between you and your destination? You’ll need to jump, dodge, run or slow down, depending on what’s actually in front of you. At some point, you’ll even need to forget the map. Will you stick with the plan and slowly work your way through the mob, or divert and look for a faster alternate route?

This is where you can see the difference between real entrepreneurs and wannabes. And there’s no right or wrong choice either. You’ll have to make that choice on the fly, considering the specific variables presented to you.

Fighting the tide

Going against the tide is how businesses make money. However, making their mark is where the real reward for entrepreneurs is.

Most of the time that doesn’t go down well with the big VC firms as their priorities are protecting their assets and making a decent yearly profit. Still, if you are an entrepreneur, your concern is offering the coolest product possible to as many people as possible. So how do you cope? You ride your wave.

How to ride your wave

Sure, you need to catch a good disruptive wave (a growing industry). But that’s as far as your business plan takes you. A glance at the map, a sight of a future, increasing wave, and in you go like a brilliant surfer. Don’t second guess yourself either as you lose time.

I’m not saying you should invest heavily in this fashion. Start small, and see if it works. If you invest little and start on multiple waves, you won’t drown when things go wrong. And eventually, you’re bound to hit the Jackpot and make up for all the losses. So when you see a wave that keeps on rising, you focus on that entirely and disregard everything else.

That’s your only business plan. The overall goal of finding the right wave, creating the best possible product and bringing it to as many people as possible. All the rests are distractions and unnecessary complications.

Just do it

No real superhero entrepreneur wants to hear about complex forecasts of customer volume according to age groups, and how an increase of 2.5 percent for the marketing budget three years from now will convert more young people into buyers. That’s for people concerned about profit.

So if you can, start by not putting yourself through the ordeal of having to construct such estimations. In the words of Sir Richard Branson: “Screw It, Let’s Do It!”

If it’s that simple, why doesn’t everybody do it? Well, it could be a multitude of insecurities and negative beliefs, which I’ll sum up as “fear of starting.” That is another reason that not everybody can create a successful business.

You need to adapt to win

Each superhero has their flaws and weaknesses. Sometimes, the superhero even runs away. He also asks for help. He doesn’t just blindly rely on his superpowers. The lesson here is he doesn’t always stick with the original “business plan” of going in and using his powers to win the fight.

Adaptability is what makes business work. Pivoting in crucial moments. Anticipating the future and adjusting your course accordingly make for a successful business.

So don’t believe the hype. Trust in Sir Branson. Forget your business plan. A business should be a fun sport. Yes, it can be a contact sport, but will a few bruises even matter when you know you’ll be smiling in the end?

The post Why Business Plans Don’t Work For Entrepreneurs appeared first on Hongkiat.

For example, I recently learned that in my previous job, they are paying someone $10k per month for ‘part-time work’. That’s only 20 hours per week, 80 hours per month, and all he does is act as an adviser to the founders of the business.

Read Also:  How to Ace That Job Interview Using Your Failed Startup

Even though he wasn’t hired as a co-founder, he is still on that level and is earning more than a majority of Americans because he has built, through the years, multiple skillsets that proved useful in not just the companies he has worked with, but to his own startup as well.

So, what are the secrets? Let me warn you, though, that these secrets take time to build up. They are not just some quick and easy solutions you can learn online in a week, month, or year. These are the things that you pick up, experience, and do over several years. And if you are just starting your career now, you must keep the following in mind (think of it as an investment in your future).

1. Specialize in diverse skills

It is ironic to say that you should specialize in multiple skills since specializing means you are focused and are the best on one thing only, but the playing field has changed in recent years. The "jack of all trades, master of none" saying is no longer applicable.

Anyone can be a master of several trades. Case in point – many influential tech entrepreneurs are accomplished in one field and are also great at some other skill that plays a vital role in their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Since we are talking about being hired at a startup as a co-founder, it’s important to understand that generally, startups have limited resources to spend on perks and salaries, that’s why they value people who have mastered multiple skills over those who only specialize on one thing. For example, most can’t afford to have separate teams for marketing and development. If you can do both, then you can secure a place at their high table.

But of course, this doesn’t mean that those who only specialize in one thing have no chance on being hired as a co-founder. What I’m saying is that it is definitely a big plus.

Another important note is that if you are aiming to be hired internationally, it won’t hurt to learn a couple of foreign languages as well. If you speak English well, learning German will be easy. Mandarin and Spanish are also hot in the market.

2. Try to learn things quickly

Entrepreneurs are extremely busy people and every second they have is important to further their goals. If you aim to be someone different startups want to be in their executive team, then you really need to learn, think and act faster than most people.

For example, if reading a 300-page book takes the average person 8 hours to finish, your goal should be to do it in three or four hours. In a speed reading test made by Staples, it is shown that an average college student reads 450 words per minute, a high-level executive at 575, college professors at 675, and speed readers at over 1,500, which most likely includes lawyers who read through thousands of pages each day or week.

Of course, it’s not just about reading. The aim is to keep your brain malleable. That means you need to train your brain to adapt and learn new things constantly because what’s reading for if you can’t "learn" the things you read, right? This also applies to learning new technologies that may arise anytime, be it programming, marketing, big data, or the like.

3. Possess mental and emotional fortitude

Running a startup is both mentally and emotionally taxing. Many people assume that being at the top of the hierarchy in a company means you get to dilly dally around when in fact, that’s where the most stressful decisions are made. Every day is a mix of making decisions, from minor stuff to literally making a decision that would potentially ruin the company down under (or secure multi-million funding).

Assume that each day will be stressful and that you will be bombarded with issues even during your supposed rest days or vacation time (if there even such a thing). Developing mental and emotional toughness is not an exact science, but it can be done through rigorous introspection and meditation, including learning how to tolerate minor discomforts, evaluating your beliefs, and the like. Here is a good article about this topic.

Founders who are looking for co-founders can and will detect weakness in your mentality and emotions. Your past record will also be a glaring indication of how tough or weak you are in dealing with high-stress environments and situations. And if they deem that you are not on the level where they can be comfortable with you being on a top spot, then you won’t get the job even if you are highly skilled in many facets.

4. Build personal projects

Having experience in a couple of companies at a senior executive role is definitely a plus, and will likely land you a great deal. But do you know what’s going to turn "likely" into "most likely"? Building your own personal project that culminates your skills and years of experience.

In the same sense that actual skill trumps grades received from school, having a concrete example of your experience will work wonders in your job hunting.

Answer this question: If you were to look for a co-founder for your startup who would you rather hire? Someone who has 10 years of experience in web development in three different international companies and has held senior management roles or someone who has built their own SaaS company and has been in business for 2 years?

Building a personal project can propel your career into the future. Start by looking at the successful companies of the past, including the ones that are booming currently, and from that make a prediction as to what is going to be hot in the future. It’s all about predicting what people will need, what problems they will experience, and the like.

In today’ market world, data is gaining undeniable significance. Companies that have amassed large amounts of data are now leading the data science revolution. Data visualization is also an up and coming trend that many companies are taking up right now and it is still growing with the growth in the need to process and present a data.

5. Be far-sighted with a good sense of timing

Ever wondered why some products like the iPhone or digital cameras are considered revolutionary even though their manufacturers weren’t actually the first to develop them?

The first touchscreen phone was developed way back in 1992 by IBM, but Apple took the cake in 2007. The first digital camera was developed by Kodak in 1975, but only a couple of decades later did other companies released their own digital cameras – which inevitably led to Kodak’s downfall. There is such a thing as launching too soon or launching too late.

You see the pattern here? It doesn’t matter if you have a “revolutionary” product if you don’t know how to properly time its release. Timing is everything, as they say, but the truth here is that you also need to understand the market, how people think, how they prefer things to be. Are they ready for it?

Being able to take in a massive amount of information and come up with accurate predictions for decision making that propels the company forward, is one skill that is wanted in co-founders. It takes a lot of mental prowess to do this, and it is a testament to your ability as well if you can do this.

Some final thoughts

By any account, as mentioned in the beginning, these aren’t things that you can simply pick up in a day, week, even an entire year. These are skills and experiences that you pick up over the years of hard work and desire to progress. They require extreme patience, passion, and focus, and that is why not many, even startup founders themselves, achieve the level of success they want.

If you start attending to these as early as now, or by reframing yourself based on the things you have already done in the past and start building and re-evaluating yourself, then chances are you may land yourself a co-founder position at a successful startup.

Read Also:  15 Inspiring Startup Presentation Videos for Entrepreneurs

The post 5 Secrets of Being Co-Founder Worthy appeared first on Hongkiat.

A well planned effective email marketing campaign can help your business products and services gain maximum visibility and recognition, not only locally but all over the world. With this direct marketing procedure, you start getting a quick response once your email reaches your targeted customers.

The importance

In today’s world of cut-throat business competition, companies and enterprises are making use of only the most effective means of business promotion, and email marketing is one of these mediums. Businesses find email marketing beneficial because of its ability to be highly adaptable to today’s constantly changing business world.

Another factor that adds to the inevitable importance of email marketing is its aspect of being highly inexpensive and affordable. It can also easily be built into existing marketing systems of any organization seeking a promotion at the international level.

Moreover, online marketing can make the business promotion more efficiently, short, and real-time in terms of delivering something to your clients and customers.

Benefits of Email Marketing

Rightly executed email marketing can compliment all other marketing initiatives and reap you many benefits, some of which are as follows:

Cost-Effectiveness

No matter how inexpensive the conventional mediums of marketing and business promotion can get, they can never be compared to the cost-effectiveness of email marketing. Marketing collateral, like press advertisements, brochures, flyers, and posters require a significant financial outlay. On the other hand, email marketing is live, constantly changing and is easy to implement, along with being inexpensive.

Global Approach

A good advantage of email marketing comes with the globalism of the Internet. No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, email marketing paves the way to a global approach of business promotion. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.

A Personalized Medium

Email marketing is a personalized medium of advertising and business promotion. It enables you to create a special bond with the prospects.

Unlike other mediums of marketing and promotions, email marketing can be segmented in terms of its target audience, meaning that you can split people off into smaller, more focused lists. This too gives a more personalized approach to your marketing messages.

Gauge Results

Any marketing campaign needs to be gauged in terms of its results and feedback from the target market. With email marketing as a tool of business promotion, you can easily carry out litmus tests on your target audience regarding different campaigns.

You can accurately measure click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person arrived at your website, and more, through readily available tools on the Internet, and assess the success of different email campaigns.

Quicker Response Time

Another advantage of email marketing over the conventional means of business promotion is that it has a quicker response time. The average response time of email marketing is one to three days at max and you get the most responses on the first day itself, while a direct mail campaign would take minimum two weeks to generate any responses.

Ease of Use

Email marketing comes with an ease of use for both the sender and the receiver. Executing an email marketing campaign is simple and anyone can do it without any extensive resources.

6 Tips to do it well

For every effective marketing campaign, doing it right matters a lot. Following are certain tips which will help you execute better and more effective email marketing campaigns.

1. Pre-determine Your Campaign’s Objectives

Before executing any campaign, its objectives and targets need to be pre-determined in order to get the maximum out of it.

A general email marketing campaign can have two basic objectives i.e. to strengthen customer loyalty and ongoing relationships and to drive direct response of the customers. Whichever of these two are your campaign objectives, it is important that you plan it out and then set it for execution.

2. Avoid Spamming

No matter how easy, affordable and responsive it gets, the biggest hurdle in the way of a successful email marketing campaign is the spam filters. When more and more people started misusing email marketing, email service providers all over the world introduced spam filters, which were a great setback for this mode of business promotion.

Therefore, when the successful marketing practitioners realized that people’s dislike to spam destroyed the customer loyalty they worked so hard to address the problem with best practices that revolved around the aspect of ‘permission’.

Permission is best and the only authentic way to avoid spamming in the process of email marketing. This may sound a tedious process to you, however, in actual getting permission is not much difficult.

Offer something useful to your customers (a coupon or special discounts, research related to your product or perhaps an informational newsletter) in return as if the person agrees on to receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information.

Never underestimate the power of "free", and use the same in taking customer’s permission for email marketing. When you will give them something free, build the relationship and then recommend products or services, they are likely to buy from you and will stay loyal to your brand.

3. Opt-in Option

An opt-in option is a perfect way of taking permission and carrying out an effective email marketing campaign. Adding an opt-in form to your email marketing message is the best practice in terms of marketing ethics and effectiveness.

Some organizations even go for a ‘double opt-in’ option i.e. after the receiver of their marketing message firstly enters his/her email address to subscribe to their list, they send a confirmation email which contains a special link which verifies that this visitor did indeed sign up to their mailing list. This way they easily avoid spamming and their customers develop a sense of respect for them.

4. Creating the Message

Once you plan out your campaign objectives and also get permissions of your customers, the next step is to create the actual message that needs to be sent out. There are some points to be remembered while creating your email marketing message:

• The subject line is the most essential element of email message content. The subject line should always make sense and should standout.
• Create the content of your message absolutely clear and easily readable.
• Go for the ‘inverted pyramid model of message construction i.e. start from ‘most important’ information to ‘less important’ one
• Web readers have very less time and are always in a hurry so keep your message short, to-the-point and ensure its relevance.
• There are certain essential elements of an email message content i.e. the ‘to’ line and ‘from’ line, the subject line, the offer, the format, the body copy, the message category, message personalization, and targeting.
• Like the subject line, signature has crucial importance in an email message. Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it is a good way to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an opt-out link.

5. Testing the Message

Before sending out the actual campaign in execution, it is better to test its different aspects with trial and error method. Try out different fonts for both content and links, re-positioning images such as logos and buttons and experiment with different emailing patterns (including the greeting and sign off).

Send three different patterns of your email, compare their click-thru stats and see which one works best. This way you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract more visitors, and ultimately more sales.

6. Develop and Maintain the Email List

As mentioned earlier, in order for your email marketing campaign to be successful, it is important to be focused on every aspect of execution. Similar is the case with an email list.

You need to develop a proper and well-searched email list for your campaign (probably of the people who are interested or have opted-in for your marketing initiatives).

Also, an email list is not a one-time thing. It needs to be trimmed and maintained according to the circumstances. Longer lists should be broken down into smaller segments, targeting the consumer and personalizing the message. Also, after every three months, shed off the people in your list who do not rear or respond to your messages.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a fully grown and well-used tactic for business promotion via emails. It is cost-effective, easily executed and gives a good impact on your campaigns.

Email marketing does not replace your other marketing activities but compliments them extremely well. A well run and good email marketing campaign can grow your customer pool and add to customer’s loyalty.

Hearing from your brand repeatedly, with good content reminds readers of your business’ value, especially if they take your advice and find it works for them. Although email marketing comes with lower risks and higher profitability, however, this can only be achieved through proper planning and execution tuning into higher success rates for your business.

The post Email Marketing: Tips to Do it Well appeared first on Hongkiat.

That’s exactly what the freelancing industry can do for you. It’s a catalyst for rapid growth. But this needs to be done carefully. Sometimes you’ll want a firm, other times you need just one freelancer. There are also parts of your business you want to keep to yourself, and parts which are best managed by freelancers.

Here’s a guide on when, where and how to use freelancers for your startup.

1. Accounting

Yes, I am starting with accounting, the dreary, taboo topic nobody in the business world really likes to write about. That’s because it doesn’t really make for great headlines or high click rates. ‘Experts’ love to hype things and talk about ‘business’ like it’s a Superbowl commercial: loud, simple and colorful.

The reality is, if you run your own business, accounting should be the most important thing for you. And no, it’s not always fun. That’s exactly why you need a freelance accountant working for you.

You don’t want a big accounting firm managing your startup. You’ll get as much attention as Shuffleboard competitions on Eurosport: really close to none (Shuffleboarding at its best. Your rivals probably wish you have long hours of “fun” with it).

So what you want is a freelance accountant, who will be on your call 24/7. As an entrepreneur, you are a jack of all trades especially accounting. Keep your hand on the pulse of the business. Ask questions. A lot. Don’t be afraid to look stupid in front of your accountant. That’s the one place you are allowed to be.

A freelance accountant will give you one-on-one time. You’ll have him or her under control. You’ll learn more. Go for local freelancers as opposed to hiring somebody you can’t meet. This is one place where freelancing sites aren’t that great. However, you can find accountants by:

• Asking other entrepreneurs
• Posting questions on accounting forums (that’s how I found mine)
• Posting a listing on job sites
• Looking for Facebook groups related to entrepreneurship and accounting
• Reading finance blogs and interacting with other visitors

2. Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are great tools, in the hands of the right expert. If you are a startup, go with a ‘lone wolf’, don’t hire the pack. Go for just one freelancer. If there’s any place you want to spend a little more, this is it. That’s because there are just so many phony individuals in this niche. Everybody is an SEO expert nowadays.

The truth is, experts do cost more, but don’t be fooled by the price tag. There are many dumb ‘SEO experts’ who cost a fortune. Real SEO experts get results – and results are the only thing that matters. Make sure you set goals for your expert and make sure his pay is conditioned by achieving those goals.

Don’t be fooled into hiring ‘social media experts’ or ‘market research experts’. That’s basically all hype. Do all the social media management on your own (here are some social media marketing cheatsheets to get you started) or if the volume of work is too big, through a virtual assistant. You just set the tasks, and then hire a decent, English-speaking VA.

The truth is social media isn’t hard. You just need to act like a real person. There are tons of tutorials out there on how to manage your Facebook, your Twitter, your Pinterest, and every other profile. Try to read as many of them as possible and then get to work.

3. Design

If you are developing a website to help your business or your entire company relies on an e-commerce website, you should, by all means, use a professional freelance designer. From logo creation to website design, to banners and flyers, your company’s image really makes a difference. This is the second-best place to invest your money in, after SEO and SEM (traffic is the most important thing by far).

Make sure your freelance designer knows a bit of coding. Great designers usually do. You want a design that is easy to implement, not just something which looks great. Also, it helps to know what your e-commerce site needs to have, so you know what you are getting into.

4. Coding

Now, for coding your site, that’s a totally different story. Great coders are usually very reluctant to interact with people. That’s why you want a freelance firm. More and more companies are enlisting their services on freelance websites. But if you can, work with a local company for the coding part. It will be easier to push them in the direction you’re wanting.

Another crucial reason you want a company, and not a freelance coder is the fact that you need an interface between you and the programmer. You need someone to put some pressure on the coder every now and then (and Lord knows that you won’t be able to scare him into delivering by writing in CAPS LOCK on Skype). A firm is just safer. They’re also less likely to steal your startup idea and more likely to get the job done fast.

5. Analytics

Here’s one ‘meal course’ you’ll want to handle on your own. Don’t hire anyone for this. You need to know what CPM, CPC, funnels, bounce-rates and all that other weird gibberish means. Again, there are loads of tutorials out there. Here are a few found here to get you started:

• A Guide To Goals And Funnels In Google Analytics
• Google Redeems Itself With Google Universal Analytics
• 20 Must-Know Tips & Tricks To Master Google Analytics Data
• 6 Powerful Google Analytics Features

6. Newsletters (Writing)

This is such a delicate topic. If you’re a startup relying on sales via the Internet, collecting and maintaining an e-mail list is the absolute way to grow. Creating the newsletter then becomes a high priority task. Either daily, weekly or monthly, you need to take the time and practically create a sales letter from scratch each time you send out an e-mail to your subscribers.

There are some great freelancers/entrepreneurs out there who can work for you on this one. But they charge a lot. That’s not the way to go if you’re just starting out. This is one just for you.

First thing, you need to create is the prototype of your subscriber. If you haven’t already, ask your subscriber details about his age, sex, location and keep a history of how often he visits your site or buys from you.

Important note: keep changing the appearance of the newsletter, at least monthly. Experiment and keep an eye on your clickrates and open rates. I’ve personally doubled our clickrate for 2 weeks on one e-commerce site I owned by applying text-only newsletters, written in a personal, friendly fashion.

7. Blogging

There’s absolutely no reason why your company shouldn’t own a blog. I get it, you’re busy actually doing the business, you’ve got no time to write about it. Get a freelancer!

Hire a blogger. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling flake food enriched with beta carotene for ornamental fish. You can blog about it and people will visit. Sometimes, being the big fish in a small pound equals success. You never know, the blog might become a business in and of itself.

Just write!

Read Also: Why ‘Just Write’ Is The Best Writing Advice You’ll Ever Get

8. Customer Care

Here’s one area you won’t want to work with any outside people. You’ll find cheaper local labor. And even if you don’t, it’s worth paying more to get a local person. Customer care (CC) is basically the interface between you and the customer. As such, CC creates the user’s experience. And medium to long term user experience is the most important factor in determining the success or failure of your company.

You want a local employee, whom you can supervise. A lot. Clients will create problems in places you thought didn’t even exist. Quite a bit of your input will be needed. The key to massively successful companies such as McDonald’s is the experience the user has when interacting with the company. Learn from that.

User experience is always worth investing in, even if it doesn’t yield immediate return.

Conclusion

Working with freelancers isn’t for everybody. We’re still a long way from reaching the full potential of the freelance industry. It’s still in its infancy. Some entrepreneurs prefer working with people directly, in a more hands-on fashion in an office environment. But if you’re a startup, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t leverage the opportunities this industry lays out for you.

By employing freelancers in certain key positions, your startup can have multiple departments, just like a corporation. And in the ‘virtual world’, your online presence will often times be more immaculate than that of big companies.

The post 8 Ways to Launch A Startup For Freelancers appeared first on Hongkiat.

It depends on what’s written in the subject line.

See, the subject line tells you, at a glance, whether the sender’s message – or, more accurately, the sender’s purpose – is worth your attention. As a sender, you can either write the subject line right, or you can do one of the following things, which will definitely get your email pushed aside.

Recommended Reading: Send Anonymous Emails: 20 Sites To Keep Your Identity Hidden

1. Get Too “Cutesy”

Example:

"Bet you won’t be able to resist opening this e-mail! "

Why it doesn’t work:

It’s one thing to be witty. It’s another to come across as trying too hard, which is exactly the impression you’ll get from the sample e-mail above. When you’re in doubt about how to write your subject line, remember this: Clarity trumps cleverness. You can combine both, of course, but that takes some practice.

What can work:

"This e-mail will help you today"

2. Type in ALL CAPS

Example:

" VERY IMPORTANT E-MAIL"

Why it doesn’t work:

Your e-mail may be the most urgent in the history of urgent e-mails, but if your subject line looks like the online equivalent of shouting, it’ll still get ignored. Use the “CAPS LOCK” button only when necessary (e.g. proper nouns like John Doe, Empire State Building, World Cup).

What can work:

"Very Important E-mail"

3. (Ab)use Punctuation Marks

Example:

" Please, Please, PLEASE open this e-mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Why it doesn’t work:

Punctuation marks have their place, yes, but as with the “CAPS LOCK” button, that place isn’t the subject line (most of the time). Besides, a subject line that looks as though it was written by a drunk 15-year-old at 3 AM doesn’t exactly earn you points in the professionalism department.

What can work:

"Please open this e-mail"

4. Promote, Promote, and Do Nothing But Promote

Example:

" Random Product for Sale!"

Why it doesn’t work:

Your recipient may be stingier than Ebenezer Scrooge, but if you at least specify a benefit in your subject line – rather than being a little too blatant in your attempt to part your recipient with their money – you’ll get a better response.

What can work:

"Don’t Miss This 50% Discount on [Insert Product Here]"

5. Be Vague

Example:

" E-mail "

Why it doesn’t work:

Okay, I know it’s an e-mail (thanks, Captain Obvious!), but what kind of e-mail is it? Is it an uplifting message about getting through another boring day at the office? Or is it an ongoing promo about a product I’ve been dying to buy for the past few months? C’mon, don’t make me waste my next few seconds figuring that out for myself!

What can work:

"A message about "

6. Be Generic

Example:

" News Alerts from The Daily News Deliverer"

Why it doesn’t work:

This one may be slightly more descriptive than a vague subject line, but it’s no better. Why? Because it doesn’t give the recipient an urgent reason to open your e-mail other than: “Hey there! We hope you’re willing to waste a few precious minutes trying to find something interesting in here!”

What can work:

"Breaking News: ‘Daily News Deliverer’ Figures Out How to Write Subject Lines"

7. Write Kilometric Subject Lines

Example:

" This e-mail will help you ditch that soul-sucking corporate job, find a beautiful wife, buy an equally beautiful house in a swanky neighborhood…"

Why it doesn’t work:

Yes, your subject line should be descriptive, but not to the point that it’s longer than the entire border of Russia. In fact, a study found that e-mails with 6-10 word subject lines are more likely to be opened than e-mails with 11-15 word subject lines. (Fun Fact: Most marketers are used to doing the latter.)

What can work:

"This e-mail will help you live your dream life"

8. Write Nothing

Example:

" [no subject] "

Why it doesn’t work:

If there’s nothing written in an e-mail’s subject line, it’s reasonable for the recipient to assume that there’s nothing worth reading in the e-mail either. That said, if the reason you don’t have a subject line is an honest mistake (e.g. you clicked the “Send” button too soon), you can always resend your e-mail, along with a sincere apology and a polite request to disregard the previous e-mail.

What can work:

""

A (parting) reminder on how to get it right

Okay, we’re finally done with how not to write e-mail subject lines. Now what?

We start writing them right, of course. We start writing subject lines that:

• stand out, in a good way, from the usual drivel that clogs up people’s inboxes
• concisely describe the e-mail’s contents, and
• clearly spell out to the recipient what they’ll gain from opening the e-mail.

If you don’t want to bother with subject lines, you can always communicate with others the old-fashioned way: either through snail mail, or through face-to-face conversations.

The post 8 Types of Email Titles That Often Get Ignored appeared first on Hongkiat.

Many successful businesses start off as partnerships, like Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, and his four other co-founders. The founders have someone to share the trials and tribulations of opening a startup with, and it also helps with easing stress levels.

Then again, there are some traits that you do not want to have in a startup partner and for some of us, these warning bells do not ring as early as it should. Instead of studying what traits company founders look for in their partners let’s look at what traits there are that we should distance ourselves from instead.

Recommended Reading: The Essentials In Pulling Off Your Own Startup

1. A partner who is all talk, but has no proven track record

There are three types of people in the world: those who are good at talking and doing, those who are terrible at talking but are great at doing, and those who are great at talking but are terrible in doing things. I have met all three, and among them the most dangerous is the last one.

They will make you believe that everything is going to be alright, that everything is under control, and if you are unlucky enough to fall for their sweet talk, you will soon find yourself wondering who was the real fool.

When interviewing for a partner, be sure to ask for their resume or CV and have them explain what they did in their previous work, projects, and other ventures. It also wouldn’t hurt to verify the things they say.

In the current state of the internet, most things are already online. A red flag for a potential partner is that when you do a quick search for their name and little to nothing comes up in the results. If your prospective partner has been successful in one industry or another, there should be some digital trails of his adventures on tweets, Linkedin and Facebook posts, blog posts, news clippings, even a personal website, or a mention in a press release.

Just think about it. Just about anyone can start a website anytime and slap their face there under a different name then claim that he or she had been a web designer for 30 years. Seek out their credibility and make them authenticate their authority.

2. A partner who is inconsistent

Startups are always on the line. No time or resources can afford to be wasted. If your partner decides on doing one thing today, and another the next day, you should be worried. It’s okay if you have enough resources to “waste”, sometimes it is inevitable, particularly if you are aiming for innovation. But while you’re still in the process of figuring things out, you need to be laser focused.

That’s also probably the reason why you are looking for a partner, so that two people can focus on two important and bigger things.

You can easily spot an inconsistent person by looking at their resume. Have they handled a couple of jobs in the span of a year? Have they jumped from one project to another? It would also be prudent to ask for character references that you can contact and talk to. Think of it as a feedback gathering exercise. If your would-be partner is consistent, things will check out.

3. A partner who is bad at dealing with people

It’s a big world out there and there are plenty of people who have no idea what is culturally acceptable and what is not when dealing with other people. For example, a friend of mine told me how their company’s new partner shouted at him while they were at a public place. Being a tall foreigner, he definitely stood out and people were looking at him funny.

The point here is, if your prospect partner doesn’t know how to deal with people, that’s already a red flag. If he can’t treat people right, it’s going to hard to get people to like him. If you are the only person this person respects, but he doesn’t extend that courtesy to people who work under you, that’s a warning sign to go find another partner.

To know what the real deal is, you can give your prospect partner a trial run, an entire month of working with you and the entire team just to see how well they work with people. This is important because if your company takes off in the future, it is only expected that your partner will deal with even bigger players in the field. And you don’t want to go around facepalming whenever your partner opens his mouth.

4. A partner whom your employees hate

Ok, maybe lacking a bit in social skills is still okay, but you have to pull the brakes when it results in people hating your partner. That’s a big no-no. You are building a team of superstars, not a film with a good cop and a bad cop.

You can easily spot a person whom your employees (current or future) will hate if you’ll just have them spend some time with everyone. Bring that prospect partner in, ask them to go around and talk to your current employees, eat lunch with everyone, and then at the end of the day ask your employees for their feedback.

This actually happened to me during my internship as a web developer. The company brought in an applicant, and at the end of the day, the manager asked us (employees and interns) to rate the person: if we liked him or not, and other comments. A multi-million dollar business actually took that into account. Why? Because they know that happiness in the workplace is crucial!

Things are going to be a lot harder to handle if you skip this, and brought in the partner anyways. There’s a post on reddit where by the user related how his co-founder was slowly derailing their company’s culture.

“My COO is starting to act like an a**hole with all new employees. He is giving them impossible deadlines for sometimes stupid demos for specific clients. He gets in their face and is always babbling and fighting with our CTO on how inefficient our new developing team is. […] Our culture is slowly derailing. I know I have time to correct but I can’t just fire him because he is the best at what he does.”

I don’t envy being in his position.

5. A partner who has a lot of side projects

It is understandable that skilled entrepreneurs will have at least a couple of projects going on at the same time, but if your prospect partner is not willing to sacrifice or loosen their leash on some of their projects to give more time to yours, take that as a sign that they are just treating you as another side objective.

Look for a startup partner who can dedicate a majority of their time working with you towards the same goals. In the same sense, you need to ask yourself what you are looking for a partner. Is it to bring in a new talent who will manage and cultivate a specific area in your company while you are busy on other parts of it?

Or is it so that you’ll have more time for yourself and other projects? If it’s the latter, then you might actually be the problem you are trying to avoid.

6. A partner who has a bigger ego than you

Every partnership starts with a tamed attitude. Both sides will be measuring up the other’s ego, trying not to force an idea too much, trying to be careful. And that is natural. It’s part of the process of becoming a team. But the problem lies when a big decision needs to be made, and both of you are on the opposing sides of the decision.

For example, you may want to lower your service’s pricing in order to get more clients, who would otherwise look for cheaper, offshore solutions, but your partner is against the idea because that would include lowering the company’s standards and even its image.

If your terms are 50-50 partnership, that means one can’t decide without the other. And if no one would relent, if no one is willing to compromise, if no one is willing to put their ego aside, that’s pretty much a failed partnership. The goal of partnering up with someone is to have someone pull you back to reality, to keep each other in check – not to dominate the decision-making process.

Here’s a good example of the troubles you may face if you team up with someone who has an abnormally big ego. It’s an interesting story of how hard it can get if you pick the wrong person.

Now, let’s go back to that 50-50 partnership.

7. A partner who wants a 50-50 partnership

There are different kinds of partnerships. There’s the “money partner” who finances everything while the “working partner” acts on everything, but the control and assets in the company are divided. Then there’s the “equal” partnership where both sides pitch in their money and time and work. It doesn’t matter what kind of partnership you form, the 50-50 kind is a bad idea. It’s a business killer.

60/40 is good, maybe even 52/48, but never go for 50-50. Being on the same “rank” is a recipe for disaster in the long run. There needs to be someone at the top who is at the very point of control and accountability, someone who has the final decision in everything. Even in sports there is a bigger authority aside from the teams that are playing, and that’s the referee. Without this, you’ll end up fighting if no one wants to compromise in order to reach a decision. There needs to be someone at the top, and there’s room for only one.

Here’s an example, a heartbreaking one, of a failed partnership. Kathleen King owned a successful, growing bakery in Southampton, NY. Since her homegrown, own-recipe bakery was growing exponentially, she decided to partner up with two brothers. They split the business evenly, that’s 33.33% ownership for each. Bad call. The brothers ultimately teamed up and kicked King out of her own business.

8. A partner who agrees with everything you say

Of all the things listed in this article, this is the most dangerous. While it is really nice to work with someone who you can agree with, the danger here is you might start believing that you can do no wrong. Everything you do is deemed correct – since no one is contesting your ideas and actions. This is called confirmation bias.

Another thing that falls in this category are the skills your prospect partner has. Don’t look for someone who has the exact same skills as you have. Look for a partner who can complement your skills. If you are good with content creation, find someone who is good at content marketing. If you can sell anything, find someone who can create great products. You get the idea.

Conversely, you shouldn’t just agree on everything your partner says. The rule here is that if everyone in the room agrees on one thing, there needs to be at least one person who will play the devil’s advocate.

Final Word

Building a business from the ground up is a mountainous effort, but you can cut this by half by bringing in a partner to your business, one who will complement you in ways that you are lacking, and vice versa. You just have to find that one (or a couple of them) who has the same level of conviction as you have.

In reality, it is difficult to find the perfect business partner. There are many variables involved and in one way or another, you’ll have to compromise when you’re choosing too. One thing is for certain, though, you need to keep each other in check and quite possibly have everything down in writing, all terms and conditions and stands and policies, all the works.

The post 8 Things You Don’t Want In a Startup Partner appeared first on Hongkiat.

From the choice of shoes, office chairs, and facial hair choices to how meetings look like, here are some of the stark differences you would expect at startups and MNCs.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

Now Read: “Two Kinds Of People In This World” by Zomato

The post Startups vs. MNC Explained in Photos appeared first on Hongkiat.