This week is special, since the english vlogs are back, but spreading some wisdom mainly to my CEE people. I had the privilage to give a ride to Tanya (500 Startups) and Jürgis (one of the best entertiainers I’ve seen) straight from the airport. They were the keynote speakers at Startup Safary Budapest in 2018.
We cover tons of cool topics, Faccebook, privacy, slowing down, networking tips and how to be a good human.
Le me take this opportunity and thank Peter Kovacs and the Startup Safary Budapest Team for making this happen. This is one of the coolest events of my hometown. I’m just glad to be part of it and I hope that this little video serves as a little insight and source of inspiration for some of you!
This post is not going to be about why I want to attend Spark.me in 2018. It is about building relationships and giving value.
Last year I collected my top reasons for going to conferences and shared my favorite moments from 2017. That being said, I wasn’t able to share an experience that I really wanted to have and that is attending Spark.me.
I have to put a disclaimer first, I came to know Vlad — the guy behind Spark.me — just a month before Spark.me and he was super cool to invite me to attend, but I couldn’t make it. The story didn’t stop there, Vlad introd me to Darko, who is the superhuman behind AllWeb Conferences where I gave two talks in Albania and in Macedonia last fall. It all started with Vlad’s intro.
Do you feel the power of networking here?
This brings us to 2018 and Spark.me. I was so desperate to attend and give a talk that I kept following up with Vlad, even though he became harder to reach then Obama and Putin combined :). But… As I learnt from a previous Spark.me speaker, Steli Efti, NEVER STOP FOLLOWING UP. So I did, and the clouds cleared and Vlad got back to me with not one, but two ideas:
hold a workshop on Day 0. That’s easy
apply to become an official vlogger
No need for more, here I am, becoming one 🙂 And even though this article was supposed to be about why I want to attend, and I could have written about the amazing boat ride that comes with being an official vlogger (fingers crossed, I become one), or that I’ve never been to Montenegro and always wanted, or the exciting speaker lineup where I’ll get to meet old-, and new faces, but as I started to write it, it become something else.
For me, it was about how you should build relationships and never give up. What is your take away? Come, join Spark.me and tell it to me there, or just comment here in the meantime.
Oh and, deeply honored committee, since Spark.me never had an official blogger from Hungary, I’m really excited about this opportunity. So again, fingers crossed, it happens!
Oh and watch my vlog about why you should attend conferences:
What if? I asked myself what if I could bo back in time… I had my birthday last week. Getting older means, on a level, to revaluate old habits and things in my life. This year I looked at my digital footprint and information sources and realized that it is so clutered and I have so many irrelevant feed from my past. Unfollow people fast. Things that used to be interesting for me 10 years ago but not anymore. Also, my filtering got pretty good and improved over the years.
So even though I cannot go back in time, I can use my current knowledge and rebuild my digital information stream from the ground up. I unfollowed everything and everyone on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, I unsubscribed from all my email newsletters — only leaving a few, favorite sources. I did it almost 2 weeks ago and have been building it up from the scratch.
I realized some instant wins:
Spending less time on my social streams, since I get the good content almost instantly
I don’t have FOMO if I don’t see something and I’m happy with it
General mindset and mood is lifted.
So I can only recommend it to you as well. Share your tips and experience in the comment!
Let’s talk about your time-management and productivity hacks. Like those, you can save 30-60 mins by using them, and you might even enjoy this monotonic and boring task. Instead of annoying intros, let’s see some statistics and hacks:
Half of the people usually give up after one email follow up. However, the average number of successful emails is 8, which means eight follow-ups!
It doesn’t matter that you are using Outlook, Gmail or any other clients, here are 3 hacks, what you can introduce to your daily emailing to save you 1-hour per day:
1. Reminder
This is a function with I can save hours and important deals. By using this, I have so many opportunities to attend conferences for free, even as a speaker. I had new customers, and I could also talk with some busy people, who are usually unreachable. This little action is sending you a notification if your email hasn’t been answered within a certain time you set earlier.
Here is an example: you would like to work on a new project with your old customer, but he is really busy. However he promised, he will come back to you by the end of next week, something came up, and he didn’t. Luckily you have set a reminder for 2 weeks for this email, so your notification arrived. You don’t need to keep it in your head, write down in your diary or making Excel files because this program is doing this job for you. Magic!
2. Send Later
I’m sure you have been in a situation where you received an email from your manager or partner, and you had to work on it. You might even send one of those in the past. One of the greatest advise from a big company’s management I heard was that schedule your emails in working hours. There is a big chance your college or customer will answer it with more motivation if you send it in the morning instead of 1 am. The other story: I learned that one of my partner doing emails on Sunday evenings so I can schedule my sendings to him for that time. Since I follow this, the ratio of answering has increased. It`s nothing to do with his willingness to answer; he is just really busy. This function can delay sendings with a time defined by you. You can learn another awesome trick, which I share in my video. That also saves me tons of time.
3. Shortcuts and Templates
Often times you have to write the same reply: when should we meet, sending intros or weekly report. If you are advanced, you already have templates for those in a Word file or on Google Drive. But the real professionals set up a combination of the keyboard and paste the needed information. Yesware provides a template section within their Gmail plugin.
What are your best hacks? Which one of those above will you start using?
If you are interested in these programs, you can also use Yesware.com or Followup.cc and built their plug-ins in Gmail or Outlook.
I’m a creative individual, speaker, photographer, CEO of B Creative, and Founder of SpringTab My team & I help Content Provider Brands with better Business Intelligence and Personalization. You can find me on the streets of Budapest, Los Angeles.
