My side hustle – Watznow

In August 2021, I committed to a side hustle and accepted the challenge of 2 of my friends to create a social media digital product – Watznow. Let me explain what exactly we’re building.

Watznow is a mobile first social media network that allows users to share, discuss and enjoy live moments through an interactive world map. Users can share live videos that will be visible on an interactive map for 24 hours for anyone exploring the region.

The content is always bound to location and sometimes grouped by events. So multiple users can contribute and share content together from the same location if for example they participate at the same event. Any user exploring the region would be able to see what’s currently going on there and chat with contributors and other interested users. We encourage everyone to share their moments, content creators don’t have to be influencers with a lot of followers to make their voice heard, their content will be seen by anyone around.

At Watznow we also plan to help businesses to promote themselves efficiently based on precise geographic parameters. So they could target their audience that is already in the proximity of their sale point.

We come as an alternative to other social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) that are heavily focused on influencers creating the content and their followers to spreading among their friends, this being a disadvantage for non-influencers that want to share valuable content as it is not pushed by internal algorithms through the network.

Watznow on the other side, focuses on WHAT and WHERE rather than WHO, allowing users to share live content (not older than 24 hours) with anyone around, even without having followers. This way users can explore fresh content through an interactive world map and see what’s currently going on in their city, or any other location / event they are interested in.

This is what our app does, curious enough?
Become an early adopter by downloading our Beta Version from watznow.com

You understand Romanian and would like to hear more about our story?
Listen to this podcast with the guys from Dreamups.

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3tV1zDp
Anchor: https://bit.ly/34ErVAW
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eNBeRsKn

Would you like to become a part of our team or invest in us?
Drop me a line, cheers!

Discovering Cambodia on two wheels

At the end of January, my friends Tudor Mardari, Dan Untura and I, embarked on a journey to discover Cambodia from a different perspective, on two wheels.

Getting there wasn’t easy, 2 covid tests, 16 hours of flight plus a 20 hours layover in Singapore.

We arrived in Phnom Penh in the afternoon and rushed to pick up our motorbikes. The next day was spent working on the the logistics, and the morning after, we were ready to hit the road. The rest has became an unforgettable journey that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

We have traveled more than 3000 km in 14 days, exploring Cambodia’s amazing nature and culture, with hills and valleys, mountains and rivers, thick jungles and dusty roads, and of course, wonderful people. Here are a few moments that will hopefully make you want to go on an adventure right now!

See more on our Instagram page, GoCambodiaOfficial.

Our last stop was Siem Reap, Cambodia’s most visited city and the gateway to the ruins of Angkor temples. Here we dropped by our Mediapark Cambodia office and had a great time with our colleagues.

Summary in numbers: a total of 32+ hours of flights, 2 weeks, around 3000 km, 7 major cities, 3 motorbikes, 50+ coconuts enjoyed, 1 dislocated shoulder, 1 flat tire, 1 broken rib, 30+ gas station stops and countless mesmerising sights.

If you’re wondering what your next destination should be, I would really encourage you to give Cambodia a try, you’ll not regret it. The borders are open and everyone with a Covid vaccine, test and health insurance could visit the country.

P.S. If you want to explore it on 2 wheels, feel free to reach out, we’re gathering a group for the next adventure.

Cheers, till the next adventure!

Two years with Mediapark

I hope it will become a tradition that after every year spent with Mediapark, I would gather my thoughts and lay down some of the key moments that have made the year unique.

The last time I wrote on this topic, everything was broken down into months and their key achievements. In this article, I decided to take a different approach by focusing on a specific set of topics: the challenges, the surprise, the fun and the future.

Vamos!

The challenges

If there is no challenge, what fun is there when you look back at the path you walked through? Not much, that’s why I consider it to be totally fine to encounter challenges at work, as long as we keep a cool head and a challenger mindset, it will all become an organic part of the working process, more than that, it might even be enjoyable. Here are some of the notable challenges that I felt are worth mentioning.

Time management

With so many things to do, I could easily feel that sometimes I’m getting lost in the tasks I have to do for the day. I had to learn how to improve my time management and prioritise my duties in an efficient manner. As a tip, I would recommend reading The bullet journal method by Ryder Carroll. I can’t say that I’m using all the tricks mentioned by the author, but I’ve managed to combine some of them and come up with a simplified approach that works well for me. Give it a try.

Of course, answering emails and Slack isn’t counted 🙃

Recruiting new people

It was clear that the market got pretty hot since the very beginning of the year, everyone felt it, and we did too. It became significantly more difficult to find the right candidates and we suddenly felt that we were in serious need of new resources. In order to improve the situation, we had to intensify our efforts on the recruitment front. With support from HR and every individual branch, we’ve managed to onboard about 68 new Mediapark team members so far. Not bad, but we need to work on doing even better, therefore, we decided to headhunt a headhunter.

Stress

I wish I didn’t have to mention it, but unfortunately, stress has hit me as well this year, and it wasn’t a soft hit. If I am to make a retrospective of the year, I could say that there were a couple of things that caused this pressure and anxiety, such as mismanaged project timelines and budgets, large potential deals that didn’t convert and screwed up the pipeline along with my expectations, heavy workload that made me eat my meals in front of my laptop.

However, it is very important to understand that stress at work is natural and we have to take the right steps in order to prevent it or avoid a potential burnout. We all know a simple solution, take some time off. If taking a vacation is too much of a luxury at some point in time, long weekends might work as well. So go ahead, book that Friday, and switch everything off for the next 72 hours.

The surprise – Mediapark Cambodia

I am extremely proud to say that we’ve managed to scale the Cambodian team up to 12 people, diversify our stack, and extend it from web to app development and QA. We have kicked off operations in Phnom Penh and started to have local sales.

But all this didn’t come for granted, this is the result of great work put by an excellent manager and the support of Mediapark Group. I’m especially thankful to my former Cambodian colleagues, Vireak and Sievly, which have been a part of this since the very beginning of 2017, you guys rock!

The trips

It was July, time to pay a visit to my colleagues in Copenhagen, where we have our newest office. They say that there’s only about one month of hot weather in Demark per year, and guess what, I arrived right in the middle of it.

Work was intense and hot, hot cause it’s a rare thing in Demark that a building would have aircon, and our office wasn’t an exception. Nonetheless, the workplace was cozy, the coffee was perfect and my colleagues were just amazing.

I have spent there about two weeks and I can clearly say that I’ve had the best local guide to take me around and show me the nicest spots in the town, as well as the best places to eat. Veronika, big thanks to you!

The fun – Monthly Team Reunions

In Moldova, we decided that 2021 will be a year focused on fun and spending more time together, therefore, every last Friday of the month, we’re having a “Team Reunion”.

It all starts with an office gathering where we go through the results of the past month, we check the projects that went live and of course, we’re welcoming the new Mediapark enthusiasts.

Hold on a second, where’s the fun? Well, the fun comes in various ways this year: Latino parties, cinema nights, laser tag, carting, hiking, you name it. Here are some of the great moments I managed to capture before getting too busy.

The future

With a great team behind, I’m committed to further push the limits and work on making Mediapark the company that you want to either cooperate with or be a part of.

I am thankful to everyone and hope that our common vision will make us stick together for long.

They say that every great article must have a clear call to action. Well, for those of you reading and not being a part of our big, international family, I would really encourage you to consider it, whether you’re a rookie or a skilled ninja, we’d be more than happy to have you on board. Write us!

Till next year, cheers 🙂

One year with Mediapark

It has been one year since I joined Mediapark as a business development manager and I decided to share with you some of the most appealing moments from this journey in simple words. In this article, you won’t find any deep insights or some fancy terms that would make you scratch your head, instead, I will simply take you through the instants that I enjoyed the most within 1 year of employment.

Before we dive in, let’s jump 4 years back.

  • December 2016. I moved to Siem Reap, Cambodia, and co-founded a digital agency called Smart Management Systems.
  • November 2017. Co-founded the first online grocery delivery platform in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh – Cambo Market. Launched in June 2018.
  • August 2018. Remotely co-founded a digital agency in Moldova, called Genexiz.

How it all started…

I got approached on LinkedIn by a Mediapark representative. The pitch was pretty straightforward “We would like to establish a branch in Moldova”, the idea was to achieve this by merging with Genexiz. The timing was perfect, as I had a flight booked to Europe for just a week later. Long story short, I’m in Moldova, we had a couple of calls and then we agreed to take it a step further, we went to Vilnius, where Mediapark has its main office. Two days of meetings, lots of interesting conversations, and coffee cups. I left impressed and pumped, feeling that this could be the beginning of a new professional journey. Mediapark people on their end had to gather the feedback and get back to us with a partnership offer, which arrived in my inbox just a week later.

The offer, however, was slightly different. We received a green light that they would like to establish a branch in Moldova with us, but the idea was that the operation will be managed only by my partner. On the other hand, I got an offer to join Mediapark Group as a business development manager. After several discussions with my partner, we decided that this is even a better scenario, as it will facilitate a smoother start and integration. Deal, both offers accepted!

August

It’s mid-August, I am back in Vilnius, 99% out of my comfort zone, but at the same time, ready to jump right in.

My first assignment was to manage the revamping process of the company presentation pitch, a fast way to get to know the company better, as I had to read in detail about various successful cases and senior colleagues. A designer from the Kaliningrad branch helped to bring the ideas to life, it turned out pretty well and we introduced it officially about 8 weeks later. Check it out, mediapark.com/hello.

September

A mix of trainings and off-sites.

It started with a 5-day intensive training organized by our sister company Civitta. Every day, a senior colleague would take us through 6 hours of knowledge and practice on a certain topic. My favorite one was “Problem-solving”, as I got to think out of the box and to compare my ideas against 15 other consultants. The whole thing turned out to be extremely insightful, I’ve acquired new useful skills and realized that I’m sh*t at slides and sheets.

Mediapark off-site, Tuscany, Italy. People from 5 cities flew in to celebrate, meet new colleagues, and have fun. We rented a 1000-year-old castle village surrounded by a forest in Tuscany and spent there 4 unforgettable days and nights. We made a full day sightseeing trip to Firenze, followed by a good dose of suntan on a beach in Livorno. There probably were more interesting events that happened, but who am I to remember all of them.

Civitta offsite, Batumi, Georgia. I have attended the offsite as a guest and my goal was to foster the collaboration between the two companies. One Mediapark guy and 300 consultants, what would you do?
Right, take a glass of red Georgian wine and start networking.

October

Time to get out of the comfort zone. The main task was to go to Dublin and fix the bank account of our Irish entity, which for some years was unmanageable. A secondary task was to research the market and meet people for potential partnerships.

I’ll start from the bottom, as I was extremely fortunate to meet a very bright person, who eventually became a very good friend and business partner, Kleverson Morais – a lead UX/UI designer, who loves clean, simple & unique design.

The bank account, well, it turned out that the process of regaining access to the account was not a 1-week shot, therefore, with the support of my colleagues from Lithuania, I gathered all the necessary papers and signatures and left them with the Business Advisor. The next steps were under the bank responsibility, and given the fact that they had to perform a due diligence process, things got dragged. Nevertheless, we managed to obtain full control of the account about one month later. Yay, Ireland mission accomplished!

Also in October, with the help of my partner in Moldova, we managed to kick-off a small 4 people operation. Yes, that was the very beginning of Mediapark Moldova.

November

Mediapark CEO – Povilas Redko, and I have attended Web Summit, the largest tech event in the world, 70K+ people, a great vibe, lots of insightful meetings, and tons of motivation to work even harder and push things to the limit. Wrote a short read with some tips that I consider important, check it out here.

The next stop was Latvia. I got to spend 2 weeks in the Riga office, where at the time we were having a small team of 8 humans and 2 dogs. The reason for being there was to get to know the colleagues better and identify workflow improvement possibilities that would eventually help the branch increase its profitability. Was fun and cold!

This is Pola, the hardest worker in the office

December

December was a shorter month, as everyone was preparing to go in the long-awaited holidays, including me.

Throwback to a couple of months earlier when I firstly pitched the idea of joining the Mediapark Group to the founder of Cherry Digital Agency Well, many emails, calls and meetings happened since then, all of them led to the fact that we have mutually agreed to unite forces and consolidate the Mediapark Moldova team, by bringing 27 bright talents on-board. It was an emotional moment for me, as this was my first major achievement and also a milestone in the company’s growth.

The cherry on the cake for 2019 was the Xmas party, where about 200 people gathered to have fun and celebrate another successful year. The party theme was “Back to 90’s”, soooo, check the pics below.

January

Fresh out of holidays, was ready to take on the new challenges that 2020 was about to bring on the table. Took part in a 5-day training camp, the first Mediapark PM University. We had been given advice from various senior people in the company on topics such as proposal writing, project finances, contracts & receivables, and project management. Only after this training, I realized the value it brought into my day to day activity, as my personal workflow and time management improved significantly. The most important takeaways were how to efficiently utilize the company’s resources and to successfully manage the clients.

February

The month started on a very positive note. The entire Mediapark board flew into Moldova for the Q4 summary gathering, also, to meet all the new colleagues and throw the official merging party. Just like that, in August 2019 there was no Mediapark footprint in Moldova, and just about 6 months later, there’s a team of 30 brilliant minds that are ready to put the work and discover new horizons together.

Bukovel, Ukraine. Short winter offsite for the Moldovan team. We hopped on a minibus, drove around 10 hours and stopped at the station “3 days of fun”.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m not good at skiing
In the sky I flew.

Half way through the month, after about 3 weeks of emails, calls and negotiations, with the help of two other colleagues, I managed to land my largest project so far (:lookingcoolemoji) – a website design and development project for a governmental entity in the UAE.

Aaaand another addition to the team, this time on a very exotic part of the world. Mediapark and I agree to on-board my former colleagues from the Smart Management Systems team. I was very excited about this moment as it was a win-win situation, firstly, I managed to offer a better career growth opportunity to my former employees and on the other hand, Mediapark got a new WordPress team and a cozy office in the Kingdom of Wonder.

March

A quick flight to Kyiv. I was honored to attend Civitta Partner Days, 3 days of workshops, intensive training, and endless networking over dinners. The main goal of the event was to announce the continued growth of the company with new promotions to the partner level. I always felt a bit nervous attending these sorts of events, being surrounded by 100+ senior consultants, but at the same time, I understood that it’s a great chance to learn and polish myself as a professional. Thank you, Civitta, for always inviting me.

Back to Moldova, took over the management of the company’s monthly newsletter. I have put a bit of time in restructuring the way in which the data was collected and turned it into a 4-5 hours per month job, boom, no big deal.

The end of the month caught us all in a slight panic and perhaps gave us the feeling of uncertainty, something like, “Hello COVID, no you’re not welcome!”.

April

Everyone started working remotely and I was about to kick off my largest project so far, with a completely new team, challenge accepted.

May

Maybe a less significant for the company but a proud moment for me happened. The Mediapark website development has been moved to Cambodia, right away I heard good feedback regarding the efficiency of the Cambodian developers from the PM, and soon enough this has been confirmed by the other people that were involved in the website improvement process.

Towards the end of the month, with the help of 2 other colleagues from Lithuania and Kaliningrad, we finally managed to migrate to a new sales CRM. Not extremely proud of this, as I’ve dragged this process for longer than expected, but at the end of the day it was a good budget cutting solution.

June

After 2.5 months of hard work, we managed to launch the first work package of that large governmental project. Even though it was slightly delayed, we received positive and constructive feedback from the stakeholders, this motivated the team to do better and move forward.

July

Evaluations happened across the entire company and I got to actively be involved in evaluating employees from the Moldovan branch. This turned out to be a meticulous and very responsible process.

On the other hand, the board had evaluated my input and the value I bring to the company. As a result, they decided to promote me to an Associate Partner position. It was an extremely special moment. The feedback that I was given is hugely appreciated and it will probably serve me as the main motivating factor for the next 6-12 months.

August

Thanks to the amazing team I got to work with, we managed to launch the second and final work package of that governmental project. What a journey, 4.5 months of hard work in which I got to collaborate and learn from various stakeholders and team members, thank you, guys, you rock!

The HR Part

If you’re a stranger to Mediapark and looking forward to your next career adventure, I’d really encourage you to drop us a message. You will be joining a mature, yet a continuously growing company that offers great benefits with opportunities to learn alongside accomplished senior specialists. Join the family, we’d be happy to have you!

The “Thank you” part

I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for any help or mentorship provided. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year with the company and I’m especially thankful to have met each of you. Looking forward to crushing the next 12 months and take on new challenges together.
Cheers!

How to write a cold email – Simple tips

We’re living in some challenging times and in order to stay in the game, companies and individuals are coming up with really impressive, out of the box selling ideas, in the hope that these would save them from drowning.

I’m a salesperson too, or at least, trying to become one, but for some reason, when it comes to sales, my creativity hits the bottom limit. What works for me instead are the good old methods, combined with product knowledge and consistency.

I have recently read a very insightful book by Patrick J. McGinnis, called The 10% Entrepreneur: Live Your Startup Dream Without Quitting Your Day Job. I was amazed by the number of valuable advice that I’ve got about how to discover new opportunities and sharpen my skills in managing a side-business. If you’re a side-hustler too, give it a try.

But let’s get back to the point.

Communication is an essential part of the sales process, and if your first pitching attempt sucks, you might never get that reply. In times of crisis, I’m sure many of us have gotten back to the good old cold-emails, I did too. Towards the end of the book, McGinnis provides a list of tips on how to write an email the right way, an email that works. I thought I was quite good at initiating an e-conversation, but when I applied the tips taken from the book into a new email and compared it to the old emails I wrote, I noticed that I did have quite some space for improvements.

Whether you’re cold-messaging or reconnecting with an old friend or colleague, there are some basics points of etiquette and common sense that apply. Many people get dozens if not hundreds of emails a day and they don’t want to read a note that has no point or no value. When you’re drafting an e-mail, make sure that you follow these guidelines:

  • Use your personal email
  • Be cordial and succinct
  • Personalize the text
  • Never send a form letter
  • Highlight any shared points of interest or mutual contacts
  • Make a specific request – no one wants to trade endless messages
  • Offer to help with anything they might need in return
  • Always say please and thank you
  • Follow up on outstanding items
  • Be responsive
  • Stay in touch and share news of future developments

Now if you feel that these tips are useful, go ahead and apply them into your day to day emailing routine, I’d be happy to know if that prospect of yours has finally replied.

Hiking Kelinking Beach, fighting the flinch.

A couple of months ago I read a book by Julien Smith, and I had no idea that this was about to lead me to an unforgettable experience. What’s the one thing standing in between you and your dreams? Julian tells us is The Flinch. It’s not the lack of knowledge or skill that holds us back, it’s the hundreds of moments of self-doubt that paralyzes from taking action, but it does have to be this way.

One of my greatest fears used to be the heights, and for the last couple of years, I’ve pushed my self and fought with this, from trying the craziest roller coasters in the US to visiting and getting on top of the tallest buildings around the world. I got better, way better, but, the fear of getting closer to the edge, was still inside me.

I love the adventure, that’s why, it was time for another challenge, hiking the Kelinking Beach. This hidden beach located in the village of Bunga Mekar, on the southwestern coast of Nusa Penida Island, Indonesia. An incredible place framed by towering, steep cliffs, deep turquoise blue waters further embraced by powdery white sand with the most amazing view like heaven on earth.

I was at the viewpoint, looking down and contemplating whether I should go or not, and, from time to time, I was meeting those sweaty, totally exhausted people, that kept telling me, “It ain’t easy, it’s scary, but it’s definitely worth it.” Decided, I’m going.

The walk down to the beach took around an hour and it was only secured with a poorly maintained bamboo rail. The first 10 minutes was a super steep rocky path with a bunch of ropes and sticks sketchily fastened to the limestone boulders on the edge of the Kelingking sea cliff. Every time I looked down, I felt more nervous and more excited at the same time, as I knew that I’m about to get the best possible reward for going through this.

When my feet touched the sand, I felt something indescribable, I took my wet clothes out as I was running towards the water. The view was simply stunning, it was worth all the sweat and fear, it was worth fighting the flinch.

Kelinking Beach

After some moments of pure fun, I started my journey up, leaving behind probably one of the most magnificent place on earth. I got lost on my way back home, riding the bike for about 2 hours on the dark roads of Nusa Penida, but, after what I’ve been through, this was just another reason to make that day a lifetime memory.

Get ready for Web Summit 2020

If you came across this article, you’re probably planning to attend the largest digital conference in the world, Web Summit 2020. Getting ready for an event of such a scale it’s not an easy task and it definitely takes time, but don’t worry, I will guide you through. In November 2019, I have attended Web Summit on behalf of Mediapark, as a business development manager. Based on that experience, I have prepared a list of 20 tips that will help you prepare for the Web Summit 2020.

Tickets

Buy your tickets early, you wouldn’t want to pay 1000 Euro per ticket when you can actually pay 500 or even less. Web Summit encourages female attendees to join, therefore, they provide some significant discounts for them. Tickets can be found on the Web Summit website.

Registration

There are 2 options. The best one, in my opinion, is to register at the airport. It took less than 5 minutes and it requires your ticket (find it in the app) and your passport. The airport registration is available 2 days before the event. The other option is to register at the venue, this option is available strictly from the first day to the last day of the event. The lines were super long and most of the time people queue outside.

Web Summit App

Download the app and learn how to use it before the event. Check how to find people, use the app filter, a very handy tool that will allow you to narrow down the list of attendees by country, company name, field. Try scheduling meetings through the app and understand how the main feature works, contact scanning.

Schedule meetings

I recommend using Google Calendar in order to schedule all your meetings even though you’ve scheduled some of them in the Web Summit App. Provide enough information and location details to avoid any misunderstandings. Here’s what I used:

Do your research

Web Summit app, LinkedIn, Twitter.
Use the app in order to pitch people, text them, introduce yourself and your company, schedule a meeting.
Search for LinkedIn groups named “Web Summit Lisbon” or “Web Summit 2020”, get in touch with people, find out whether both of you could benefit from a catch-up, schedule it.
Twitter, search for the tweets that use hashtags related to Web Summit, if some companies or individuals are interesting to you, leave a comment under their tweet and wait for them to get back to you.

Accommodation

The actual event takes place at Altice Arena, the Night Summit happens in the old town of Lisbon, and the distance between these two points is approximately 30-40 minutes by public transport.
Usually, the apartments near the arena get booked pretty early, and the ones that you will find available one month before the conference will most probably have a double price. Therefore, I would advise you to get a place in the old down so you can fully feel the vibe of Lisbon’s streets.

Food

There are food points between each Pavilion. Queues are long, pretty long, so allow 45-60 minutes for lunch. Prices vary between 8 and 15 Euro. Try to eat only lunch inside the venue area, find cheaper and tastier places for breakfast and dinner outside the arena.

Bring a charger

There are charging stations in the networking areas. Whether you’re using a laptop, tablet or phone, bring a charger or a power bank, you wouldn’t want to run out of batter in the middle of a meeting.

Weather

November usually comes with a mix of sunny and cloudy days. Daytime temperatures are still mild early. On a few warmer days, temperatures in the afternoon may reach 25ÂșC (77ÂșF). However, November is on average one of the rainiest months in Lisbon, so I suggest bringing an umbrella.

Badge and bracelet

Keep your badge always with you and do not take off your wristband. Make sure you don’t lose any of these, there is a certain fee that applies.

Study the venue map

The venue map can be found under the “essential information” on the Web Summit website. Study it, it will save your time.

Networking Areas

If you go to the event for networking purposes, you probably wouldn’t want to hold your laptop while standing and introducing your company to a potential client. Each pavilion has one or two networking areas, make sure you know where they are in case you need to schedule a meeting or give directions to someone.

Company presentation

Practice your speech, have all the necessary tabs opened. Aim to be able to introduce your company within 5 minutes.

Follow up

Solidify your connections by following up. Drop an email or a LinkedIn message on the same day, or, make sure to have a list of all those whom you met and send them follow up messages after the event.

Night Summit

Web Summit continues long after the talks have ended. The best networking happens after hours at Night Summit. Immerse yourself in our evening experiences and make incredible memories while unlocking the other side of Lisbon. Don’t stay till very late, it’s important to have a sober mind the next day.

Don’t be late for meetings

Everyone has a tight schedule, being 15 minutes late might cost you the entire meeting. And still, if it happens, apologize and try to re-schedule.

Prepare for the conversation

Spend some time to study about the people you’re meeting. Ensure that you’re having the right approach, prepare a list of questions you’re curious about, entertain.

Create content

Use the event vibe to generate content for your social media accounts. Share Instagram stories, go live, tweet and take pictures for LinkedIn posts.

Business Cards

The app’s main feature is the contact scanning, but the reality is that the app might get slow and work inappropriately at some moments, that’s why I would suggest filling up one of your pockets with the good old business cards.

Enjoy Lisbon

If you’re staying longer, there are a couple of places I would recommend checking out:

  • Tore de BelĂ©m
  • PadrĂŁo dos Descobrimentos
  • Sintra
  • The Triumphal Arch
  • Cabo de Roca
  • Boca de Inferno

Conclusion

I hope you will find this article useful, if you have some other tips to add on top, share them in the comments below and help others succeed at the next Web Summit. I’m excited to hear about your stories.

Don’t wait too long, get two tickets for one right here.

Pssst. Would you like to meet me and other folks from Mediapark team next year in Lisbon? Let’s discuss it, we would be more than happy to catch up with you. Let’s make Web Summit 2020 amazing.

6 countries in one month

I visited 6 countries in one month and it was amazing!

I will now give you a short overview of what I’ve achieved in one month.

Lithuania

I started doing business development for Mediapark, a digital agency with a team of 160 people across 6 offices in Eastern Europe. Tried wakeboarding for the first time and I’ve got to tell you, “next level of fun”, give it a try it when you have a chance. Met lots of new people, about 100 to be more accurate.

Italy

Mediapark offsite in Tuscany. 110 people, 4 days, lots of fun, pizza and drinks. Visited Firenze and had some amazing Italian gelato. Missed the bus that was supposed to take me to the airport, caught a taxi, told the driver to drive fast, after 30 minutes and 80 Euros, I finally reached the Venice airport.

Moldova

Worked on setting up a new office for Mediapark, visited several business centers and to be honest, I would’ve never thought that the rental price can be so expensive in Eastern Europe. Moldova is the country where I grew up and my parents live, so I got to spend priceless time with my family and pets.

Romania

I remember that day very well, woke up at 3 AM, flew from Chisinau to Bucharest at about 5. Once in Bucharest, I visited the Civitta RO office and had a short catch up over a coffee with some amazing folks that literally take consulting to another level. Later on, a couple of meetings for business acquisition purposes, the guys from Adonis Software gave me a nice first impression. 7 PM, back to the office, nobody was there so I ordered some Lebanese food and enjoyed some moments of silence. 10 PM, back to the airport, it was to time to fly to Georgia.

Georgia

Civitta offsite. Civitta is the leading management consulting firm from Central Eastern Europe with over 300 consultants in 14 countries. I have attended the offsite as a guest and my goal was to foster the collaboration between Civitta and Mediapark. I really believe that the red Georgian wine helped a lot in achieving my goal.

Latvia

One day trip to visit the Mediapark Riga office. Had some interesting discussions with the CEO of the Latvian branch about the benefits of using WordPress API and developing hybrid apps using Ionic Framework. Also, I got to pet some cute furry dogs, which are considered a part of the team.

And you, how many countries have you visited last month?

The essential steps to startup success

Startup Foundation

Let’s imagine that we’re building a house, you start with the foundation, then add the walls and the roof, then you move inside and install all the essentials.

Having a good foundation is crucial. Your entire house sits on the foundation, if you don’t pay attention to it initially, your house will most probably ruin very soon.

-The foundation of your startup?

-A solution that you can provide against your customer’s problem!

Messing up the foundation leads to serious problems. These will become more and more difficult to resolve as you continue. You’ll spend tons of time, energy and cash on solving those issues. You’ll end up stressed, depressed and burned out.

And that hurts.

So let’s figure out how to do that with the least amount of money and time, step-by-step.

1. Determine the customer problem and bring a solution

The main question you should ask yourself is: what problem do I want to solve? What problem do I or others run into often?

The goal is to write the problem down in a simple statement along with every aspect of it. Be sure to focus on the problem, not on the solution.

Then next to it, write the solution you’re bringing. This simple yet meaningful picture will help you understand best if your solution will entirely cover every aspect of the problem.

2. Customer Segmentation

Next step is to figure out which customer segment makes most sense to start with.

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups based on common characteristics so you can market to each group effectively and appropriately.

In business-to-consumer marketing, companies often segment customers according to demographics that include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location (urban, suburban, rural)
  • Life stage (single, married, divorced, empty-nester, retired, etc.)

Customer Segmentation benefits:

  • Create and communicate targeted marketing campaigns to a specific audience
  • Select the best communication channel for the segment, which might be email, social media posts, radio advertising, or another approach, depending on the segment.
  • Establish better customer relationships.

3. Talk to people

The best way to validate you’re correct about your customer segmentation is to talk to real people, there are a couple of ways you can do it, here’s what worked for me:

  • Ask people in my network whether they or someone they know find my solution useful.
  • Add a message in a Facebook group from your area, mentioning your idea.

When you approach people and ask them to talk, I generally advise keeping it short and personal:

  • Introduce yourself and the problem you’re trying to solve
  • Talk about what you’re offering and give them a hint that you can solve their problem
  • Ask them for a honest opinion

4. Prepare your budget

Now for the hard part, we’re going to talk about budgeting, this is frequently the toughest thing for startup founders.

Many startups fail because their Founders or CEO’s are missing hitting their budgets. You want to be the CEO that hits the budget every time, so, let’s see if I can offer some approaches that will make budgeting process a little easier for you.

Now I know it is not going to be perfect, but at least, it will frame out your thinking so if things don’t work out the way you expect, you know exactly where to look at in order to solve them.

Operating budget is the detailed plan of how you’re going to spend money and hopefully earn revenues over the next one year.

When you do your operating budget you start by identifying what are the key drivers for your expenses and your revenues, what are the things that are going to cause me to spend money and enable me to make money.

Most entrepreneurs make a mistake by finding some templates out there and putting their numbers in, I would urge you instead to start figuring out the design of your business and create your own template based on it.

At this point of time your main goal must be developing and shipping a product or offering services, so you have to organize your expenses around this process (staff, development expenses, marketing), unfortunately I have to tell you that by doing this your job has just begun, and most probably you will have to make adjustments every couple of months. You must be prepared for this continuous process especially for the first couple of years.

4. Invest in branding, be creative

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product or company in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

It is a strategy designed by companies to help people to quickly identify their products and organization, and give them a reason to choose their products over the competition’s, by clarifying what this particular brand is and is not.

Companies tend to use different tools to create and shape a brand. For example, branding can be achieved through:

  • advertising and communications
  • product and packaging design
  • in-store experience
  • pricing
  • sponsoring and partnerships
  • the visual identity of the brand (logo, website and colors, are just some examples).

6. Focus on great marketing campaigns

A marketing campaign is a planned sequence of activities and processes which promote an individual product or service. A multitude of channels could be used and coordinated to deliver effective results.

I like to define a marketing campaign as a promotion created to reach a specific goal with a beginning and an end date.

Your campaign can contain as few or as many pieces as you find necessary for your business.

The most important part of creating a campaign is defining a clear goal. Your goal can be as simple as increasing your revenue for the month of October, but it must be specific.

The more specific you are when setting your goal, the greater chance you’ll have of actually achieving it. This will help focus your tactics and save you time.

After setting up your goal, you have to think about the most effective tools you have to spread the word about your campaign. Word of mouth, in-store signage, email marketing, and social media are great starting points — choose the tools that work best for your business.

A clear call-to-action: You want to make sure your campaign has a clear call-to-action. A call-to-action encourages people to take a next step with you. You call-to-action can be anything from “download now” to “book now.” No matter what it is, make it as clear and easy as possible

A plan of attack: Your campaign should have a start and an end date. Use a calendar to plan the plot out the important dates and actions.

Here are a few examples of what you can promote:

Discounts

Downloads

An upcoming event

A new service

A free consultation

Volunteer opportunities

Not only do you want your goals and objectives to be specific, but you want your promotion to be specific too. Telling people you have a sale going on is not enough. Telling people about a specific discount for a specific amount and product will catch their interest.

7. Use customer feedback and improve

Now that you’ve been running your business for a while and you’ve got your first customers, it is very important to collect their feedback and use it to improve your product or services. There are many ways out there how we can collect customer feedback (review form, calls, direct messages). Some of them might affect you emotionally, you have to be ready for it. But at the end of the day, in every customer feedback there’s your customer opinion, which is something that you have to care about if you want that particular client to use your services again.

Must know

There are a couple of things that in my opinion every startup founder needs to know, although they might not sound very motivational.

Be ready to work very hard, if you aren’t ready for this, don’t even start.

Believe in your concept and do not give up.

Do not expect too much in the first years.

Keep an eye on your competitors.

Be ready for an emotional rollercoaster.

Overcome the biggest obstacle to your success

Let’s talk about what is our biggest obstacle in our road to success.

I have a question for you, if someone told you that they would pay you $1 million for you to get 20 more customers this month, could you do it?

Imagine, $1 million!

What would you do, in order to make it happen?

How about if they said they would pay you $10 million, could you do it?

I think most of us would say that we could do it, but the one question we’ve got to ask ourselves is, why aren’t we doing it now, in our organizations?

It seems that something is holding us back, right?

Is this one major obstacle that continues to keep us from doing what we know our business needs us to be, and that’s apathy. Apathy is our biggest obstacle that’s preventing us from being successful. When I talk about apathy I’m not talking about apathy in terms of indifference, I’m talking about apathy in terms of comfortability.

Apathy is a natural human instinct common to us all that consistently encourages us to seek a comfort zone in which nothing ever changes.

May I ask you a question, are you currently doing everything that you know you’re supposed to be doing in order to build your dream business, and are you doing it every day?

Most of us most of us will probably say that we’re not doing it every day because something is preventing us from doing it, that is the apathy.

So, what are the ways that we can battle apathy?

The key is to strive every day to do things better, to consciously look at how we can change ourselves to be able to meet the need at this moment.

We need to fight to get out of our comfort zone.

We have to have a vision that is so strong that it motivates us to get out of that comfort zone.

If you lost your vision, you need to get it back, because it’s the only thing that will drive us to continue the fight. In other words courage to fight and vision, are the two crucial ways to battle apathy.