There it was.
A word that stood out starkly against all the others around it.
It was an innocuous email less this one word that kept nagging me. As one of my fellow employees wrote to me in a recent email,
…I was surprised.
Category: Startup Lessons Learned
How Do You Accelerate the Learning Curve for New Software?
This week the site title is a little misleading.
No lesson learned. Just an observation and instead seeking lessons learned from the readers.
Last week I dove into a couple new software tools.
Omnigraffle
Omnigraffle is to Mac as Microsoft Visio is to Windows.
Wireframes, process flows, architecture diagrams, functional maps. And that’s barely scratching the surface of what Omnigraffle can do.
Sketch
Sketch is your modern day alternative to Photoshop.
A design tool designed for Macs.
Viral Dynamics of The Ice Bucket Challenge
By now you’ve heard of The Ice Bucket challenge.
It’s very straight forward.
- Fill up a bucket with cold water and ice
- Dump it over your head
- Nominate three friends to do the same
- They then have 24 hours to accept the challenge or donate to ALS to raise awareness about Lou Gehrig’s disease
Friends, celebrities, politicians, business leaders and everyone in between are stepping up.
What Day of the Week is Best for Enterprise SaaS Sales?
You’re in enterprise SaaS sales and it’s Monday morning.
You want to start the week off on the right foot and jump into closing deals. But don’t. Resist the urge. Even though you’ll likely make some sales, you’ll regret it after.
Why? At Less Meeting we found that Monday was the worst day for us to make sales.
Burn Out
Some days you just don’t have it in you.
You’re tired and can’t find the motivation. The extreme ups and downs have taken their toll. You’re burnt out.
But you need to push through and keep going.
What To Do When You’re Burnt Out?
Being burnt out sucks. The only thing worse, though, is staying burnt out.
One option is to take a break. Step away from your work – figuratively or even literally – and let your mind and body recoup. This is great for severe cases, such as after wrapping up a huge project.
However sometimes it’s just another Monday, lacking the excitement from a few days ago the prior week. And if you took a break every time this happened you’d be working just as often as you weren’t.
So the next time your week starts off slow here are some tips to help you get through the funk:
- Stick to what you know, what you’re most comfortable with, so you can book an easy win
- Get back to your routine so you can build positive habits and familiarity
- Avoid highly creative tasks that can be mentally exhausting
- Instead, look for busy work that helps keep the ball rolling while your mind recoups
- I also find reading to be a great activity when I’m burnt out
- …and of course, an extra cup of coffee never hurts 🙂
After a long three-day weekend like this past one it’s common for Tuesday to feel a bit dreary.
If you find yourself feeling unproductive today try some of these tips to stay productive while your mind rests, so that you’ll (hopefully) soon be back at 100%.
Supporting 4,000,000 Users With a Single Person
How can you provide high quality support without being too expensive or disproportionately time consuming compared to the other parts of your small business? As a reminder, new startups have millions of things to do and support rarely warrants more than 5-10% of a founder’s focus.
Brian Cervino supports 4,000,000 users at Trello by himself. Wow – now that’s not just link bait but a fricking impressive number.
Here’s the baffling thing. His toolset includes Help Docs, Email Support, In-App Support and Google Analytics. For the most part these are basic tools and processes. No insult intended, it’s just that I’m guessing any startup that’s gone through their first firestorm knows about most of these.
What’s Wrong With This Email Sales Pitch?
I received this email in my inbox the other day. I almost archived the generic form letter instantly…
This one especially caught my eye though. For such a short email I saw a number of good lessons to share on how to make sure your next promotional email gets noticed for the right reasons.
10 Pricing Hacks You Can Try This Week
What’s the most important aspect of your business? Is it the Product…the Team…the Market?
Often overlooked and usually an arbitrary “feels-good” number, Pricing belongs right up there with those other three business model pillars.
You Won’t Hit the $1,000,000 Milestone At $10/mo
To achieve the $1MM ARR startup milestone it’ll take you 8,333 customers at $10/mo…which you won’t hit until December…AND only if you have all those customers starting Jan 1 and none of them cancel.
SaaS Pricing Lessons: Reverse Discount Pricing Models
You might already be familiar with Asana – the new-ish Project Management product that makes MS Project feel like an abacus, and even one-ups Basecamp.
But their approach to project management software isn’t the only thing new about Asana. Their SaaS pricing is new as well (or at a minimum “different” than the norm):
Notice something odd?
Take a minute if you need…
Better Speaking – Two Common Mistakes (You’ve Heard Before)
Had a chance to do an interview with Cornelius Fichtner of the Project Management Podcast a few weeks back. If you’re a Project Manager then listen to this Podcast – How To Have Better Project Meetings.
Sure, the podcast was a great way to 1) Build an expertise around meetings, and 2) Promote Less Meeting to Project Managers.
But more importantly it gave a chance to be on the other side of the conversation (I’m usually the one asking all the questions). And in the process having this recording highlighted two big mistakes.