Boris Hristov

Founder of 356labs

Founder of 356labs
and PowerPoint MVP.
Speaker, Trainer & Author.
A guy that loves to do sports, have fun and enjoy life. Gallery / Blog / Contact

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Starting My Company. Mistake 9.

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Starting a business can not be as hard as people say.

… guess what — it really is.

And no, I don’t want to sound like, you know, I am one of those guys that work so much. Noup. Not at all. I just want you to understand that when you are starting a business and you start it alone or with a co-founder(s), there is no one else you can count on. What I mean is that when there is a slight issue or a big problem with:

  1. Your website
  2. Your sales
  3. Your marketing campaigns
  4. Your payments
  5. Anything else

… it will be you that will have to fix it. This is completely not the case when you work in an organization and you can always forward that problematic e-mail or some task to the people above you. It’s just not.

So my lesson here is one that you have already heard before — get ready to work countless hours because believe it or not, sometimes even straightforward things like purchasing stickers to give away at an event, for example, can take you 2 days of pretty intense communication between you and the printing company(guess why I am using this example?).

Again, as Steve Jobs once said:

Many people say you have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing… and it’s totally true… and the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t any rational person will give up.

Well said, Mr. Jobs. Well said!

Today I was thinking about…

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…regretting. That is a really interesting topic to me and I am really fascinated to talk with older people than me and ask them:

What do you regret for?

Interestingly, the answers do not vary and most of them are:
– Did not spend enough time with my family!
– Did not spend enough time with my closest people!
– Did not do what I love doing!

Think about that…

Today I was thinking about…

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…are we actually living OUR life? And I ask myself this question very often – every single time I see or feel that someone actually lives the life of someone else or at least wants to do so. What I want to know though is WHY? Why are so many people not living THEIR OWN life?

Today I was thinking about…

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…impressing a future employer with a diploma(only). My personal view on the topic is quite extreme (although I know that all extremes are harmful), but that is probably coming from my experience as both student and someone who teaches university students. My opinion is that diploma does not mean anything! I mean seriously! I really (if I am the employer) don’t care whether someone is coming from Sofia University or Cambridge. I just don’t! The only thing that I (and the business) care is how this person can win me money. And yes – that’s sound a bit rude, but… get over it, because that is how things work in the real world!

I have recently been in a discussion whether or not it actually matters which university you are coming from and I recalled an interview that I have held recently (asked for that chance and got it – great experience for me, btw!) for our team. The candidate had graduated from one of the best universities in UK(seriously, he was!), but we (me and my manager) were searching for a SQL Server DBA. Personally, I do not care where people have graduated, I care and I asked for SQL Server related skills (because again – that is what will win our company money). That can easily be confirmed by one more thing – the time I spent on both things – where the candidate graduated from and the questions related to the actual job. If I can remember correctly it was something like a minute for candidate’s university experience and 30 or 40 in deep, technical, SQL Server stuff! So, you think that something unrelated (that much) to the job, discussed for a minute is important in comparison to the 30 minutes spent on the real stuff? Think again.

Why I am writing this is because I get too emotional when someone starts to argue with me about university degrees, which place is better and which not and how important this is for your future job. People, please. The only thing the recruiters and the people that will be interviewing you care is whether you can do the job, whether you CAN DO STUFF. Focus on that, present it in a great way, prove your knowledge and expertise and remember that this is what matters, not your Stanford’s degree…

By the way – the candidate got the job! 🙂