Growth Talks

Creative Friday is the day of the month when we stop doing our “regular” tasks and use it for side projects, new ideas, acquiring new knowledge, testing new tools, practices. It is a way to boost creativity and productivity across the company.

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When do we do Creative Friday?
Creative Friday is happening on a different date for each office. We do that so offices can cover for each other. One office has a Creative Friday. Others cover for them. You can also divide a single office into two groups.

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What are the rules for Creative Friday?
Rule #1: you don’t talk about Creative Friday… I kid. There is only one rule for Creative Friday: unless there is a huge emergency - you don’t do your regular tasks.

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Does this mean I don’t need to code or reply to customers?
Unless there is a major emergency - you don’t need to code or reply to customers. Teams from other cities will cover for you. Moreover, your side project might include coding or talk to customers.

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I don’t want to work on any side projects. What can I do?
There is absolutely no pressure to have side projects. You can use this time to learn new technology, learn new skills, even loosely related to our business or tech.

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Can we form teams?
Yes! You can work in groups, teams, however you prefer.

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Do I have to finish my side project on the same day?
No. You can have a one-day side project (or no projects at all, it is up to you) or you can work on something for several Creative Fridays.

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Can you share some examples of things we can be doing?

You can really do anything that is related to our business:
+ learn new skills
+ read a book
+ shoot a new video you never had time to shoot
+ start a blog or write something
+ create new concept a feature or our communication or anything + company related
+ create new concept for
+ talk to coworkers
+ experiment with some new tools or tech
+ pimp your office space
+ try to guess Wierzej’s email password

Again, the only rule is not to do regular stuff.

Episode featuring Mick Griffin. Simple strategies for learning about your customers to improve your communication. How to talk through benefits rather than buzzwords. Use online tools to research customer before contactng.

I truly believe You can build a meaningful, healthy business in any industry simply by focusing on the great customer support. It is why I compiled a list of 13 tips / best practices to help you improve your customer support and customer success.

Tips are pretty much universal, so hopefully, you'll be able to use them in any business. I typically pass this list to our new team members, so they are aware of our company’s standards.

1. Don't try to sell.
2. Power of words "Thank you" and "Sorry".
3. Try to build informal relations with customers.
4. Use alternative communication channels such as FB Messenger, Twitter or even Instagram.
5. Talk through benefits. Not buzzwords.
6. Be flexible. Give users time to learn your product.
7. Offer help every step of the way.
8. Smile.
9. Be brief.
10. Don't try to hide your imperfections.
11. Be proud but stay humble.
12. Stay close to customers regardless of your position or company size.
13. Go the extra mile.


Community Tips:

+ Would be great to have a sense of humor and not to treat yourself, or the product/service, so seriously. That helps in loads of situations. (c) Karina Woźniak

This is a new segment called Startup Toolkit designed to share tools that can help you to improve many different parts of your business. Some of them are brand new, some existed for a while.

List of Tools:

https://useproof.com/
https://hunter.io https://www.voilanorbert.com/ or https://clearbit.com/ https://www.detectivelabs.com/
https://storm-up.com
https://www.fullstory.com/
https://biteable.com/ or https://lumen5.com/ or https://slide.ly/promo
https://draftsend.com/
https://www.rebrandly.com/

DISCLAIMER: I get NO benefits by recommending these tools. I'm NOT affiliated in any way with these companies.

Some of these tools were shared within our internal slack channel for exchanging new tools. Kudos to B24 team for keep finding new ones (especially to the most active Mateusz Czech).

One of the reasons I started this channel was to promote the culture of actionable tips, actionable knowledge. Fixes that you could implement today!


6 Fast Ways to Improve Your Online Business
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1. Install online chat component on your website.
a. http://Livechatinc.com or free equivalent such as Purechat or Tawk.to.
b. Simple implementation.
c. You can also use Marketing Automation tools such as http://Intercom.io, http://Userengage.io or http://Synerise.com but they are typically more expensive (but also more capable).
d. Mobile app makes it convenient.

DISCLAIMER: Livechat founders are shareholders in my company. That being said I do not benefit from recommending LiveChat or any other product here (obviously apart from Brand24). Moreover, we were recommending LiveChat long before they bought Brand24 shares.

2. Find top online conversation for your industry and engage.

3. Start a campaign based on Google Smart Goals

4. Setup a welcome message through http://Appcues.com or equivalent.

5. Start a review page and Link to your review page at the top of your site.

6. Use Live Testimonials.

Tips and tricks that will help you to find investors for your startup. I also included templates for emails you can use to contact investors.

12 Tips for Finding Investors For Your Startup:

1. Overvaluing Your Idea is bad.
2. Co-Founders over Investors.
3. Product first. Investors later. Focus on your business and investors will find you. Get to MVP or first customers, then talk to investors.
4. Be brief when creating Pitch Deck. Use high-concept pitch. Focus on Product, Target Consumers and Monetization.
5. Always have alternatives. Consider crowdfunding, ICOs, etc. (More info: https://medium.com/blockchain-review/...)
6. Look for smart money.
7. Ask them for an honest feedback. Even if they say no, you can learn a lot.
8. Build profiles on AngelList, Crunchbase, http://mamstartup.pl/startupy
9. Try Facebook Groups, Slack channels etc. https://www.facebook.com/groups/twist... or https://medium.com/startup-study-grou...
10. Try events like Startup Weekends or organizations such as Founder Institute
11. Use a free lists of investors such as: https://blog.udemy.com/top-angel-inve..., be brief when engaging.
12. Don’t stop believing. Disbelievers story.


To summarize: investors can bring a huge value. They can help you scale your business. But getting an investor shouldn’t be the goal itself. Investors are means to an end.

PS: Sorry for poor audio. My microphone broke down in the middle of recordind :)

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First contact examples:

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Example 1 of email to investor

Topic: Media Monitoring SaaS / $200k MRR / 2000 clients

Tips and tricks for promoting a new business. Particularly with no money. Learn from my experience in launching a startup with no budget.

Few tips on how to deal with stress and worry. Probably my most personal podcast yet. For 3 years I had a huge problem with sleeping. I worried about our company, about results, projections, competitors.
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Books that helped me a lot:

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Dale Carnegie Free Audiobook : How To Stop Worrying And Start Living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAH-v...
Polish version: http://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/17348/...

How to communicate value to customers? Insane story! A few weeks back, my main challenge was our drop in sales within a global version of Brand24. We needed to find out which changes we made in past weeks caused our sales to drop. What we were able to find through analytics tools was the fact a large number of our potential customers was bouncing of our "Pick a plan" page. No idea why. I was trying to crunch more data when I saw Pawel Tkaczyk (http://paweltkaczyk.com/), who was visiting our office. He asked me "what's up", so I pretty much shared my problem/challenge. He looked over our "pick a plan" page: http://bit.ly/pricing-bad-results and instantly asked: "Why do you promote your plans through lack of certain features?". He was referring to us using a strikethrough font to show features that are missing in lower plans (very popular method across a SaaS pricing pages). Our idea was to drive people towards higher plans. We realized nobody is promoting their product by showing features they lack. You don't see new Range Rover commercials saying "it doesn't offer ..." :) Sounds obvious. Well, it wasn't. Not for us anyway. We quickly removed this "missing features" and conversion went up! It led to record-breaking results in October with 90 net client growth and passing a historical point of 2000 active clients!
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I guess the lesson here is: the communication of the product is as important as the product itself. You can have an amazing product but you sales can still suck because you communicate the benefits poorly. I've never had a 5-minute, unscheduled meeting that would drove so much value.

Moja prezentacja z konferencji Element Talks 2017, o tym jak User Experience może pozytywnie wpłynąć na rozwój biznesu. Przykłady wdrożeń optymalizacji na stronie BRAND24, które pozwoliły nam na zwiększenie sprzedaży.

Więcej o konferencji: https://www.elementtalks.com