SAM ZAWADZKI

Successful entrepreneurs know how to get things for free. Their speciality is media coverage. Entrepreneurs like Michelle Mone and Richard Branson consistently generate headlines that money couldn’t buy. Michelle Mone founded Ultimo, a bra company. She had a tiny budget of £500 to launch the brand and spent in on a publicity stunt, paying actors to dress up as plastic surgeons and stage a protest that Ultimo was so good that it was putting them out of business. She got hundre

Post funding a lot of start ups go on a shopping spree, hiring people left right and centre... It's important to have a little perspective when building a team. An annual salary is no small deal. It's similar to a deposit for buying a house, 10s of thousands of pounds! Employing someone isn't a decision that should be taken lightly... At Apply.Property we wanted to build a small team of multi disciplinary people, we knew rigorous interviewing would be key. Here are some of ou

Love Trump or hate him, there is no doubt that he is good at getting other people to do his work for him. George Ross provides an interesting insight into the negotiation techniques that he has refined over a career of deal making. Some of the key messages: Rule number one, people are lazy. This means you need to make things easy for them & remember that they will only ever do things when they have to... that's at the very last minute. In being lazy people expect things to be

Building software is hard, and missing self set deadlines is upsetting. When something isn't working it's important to understand the problem. Our company Property Technology Ltd is building a prospect management tool for estate agents www.apply.property. My business partner Bilal is in charge of development while I am responsible for sales. The expression “can’t see the forest for the trees” fits nicely into the problem that we've had with missing deadlines. On one end of th

Hustler, philanthropist and dragon. Jame's autobiography was fascinating. His life journey is an incredible one. The key pearls of wisdom that I found in the book where: - To get the best out of people you have to create a stimulating team environment where people feel part of something, that's the key, building a great culture. - If you squeeze the margin out of a deal there is no incentive for the other party to work with you and it may stop them being able to work with yo