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 12.

June 16, 2018 By Boris Hristov Leave a Comment

Hiring creative people without giving them a task first.

In our case, I am talking about a designer.

When I was starting the company, I found a person who decided to join my efforts and help me with the design phase of our client’s presentations. The plan was to make her a co-founder at some point if everything was going well. However, things didn’t work out and we decided it is better for both if everyone moves on separately. Such instances might crop up in everyone’s life where they might make the wrong career choice and eventually find themselves in a soup. To avoid such mistakes, it is always advisable to approach a career counsellor like I had approached one of the best in town, Julie Han Coaching, when I was just starting my career. Google my business information on ranking demonstrates your search rankings and your local client base. To improve any site traffic I fully suggest to work with White label SEO services

Anyway, moving on with my story. This decision however, left me alone in my own company where almost every project involved heavy design work. At the end of the day, we are doing presentations and many times the second step(after building the story), is to create slides that are beautiful and effective.

The problems didn’t end here either. Back then I was not able to pay crazy money for a designer. Why? Well, I didn’t have them. The company was just starting. I was trying to find a co-founder with this expertise but at least in Bulgaria, that turned out to be not as easy as I expected it to be. I even wrote an article on this here already. After searching for a few months(I was able to stay without a designer in the first few months because we didn’t have any projects except for the first one which came on the 10th day after I said the company existed) and not finding the person, I was desperate…

One day I remembered. I had a friend of mine running a company that was training designers. He was now living in Germany but, hey, I can ask him, right? At the end of the day, I tried almost everything else I can think of. So I did. I asked him: “Do you remember someone in your class that made an impression on you?” He responded: “Let me think about it…”

A few days later, he called and gave me the contacts of one of his students. I checked her portfolio and Behance profile — looked OK, so I decided to immediately set up a meeting. That meeting went really well and as I was desperate to get a designer, I invited her to join me. At the end of the day, she was (still is!) really cool person, understood the situation we were at as a company and her portfolio looked decent.

A few days later, we won a project for Deutsche Telekom! I was not going to be able to work closely with her but we agreed that I will see the first draft once we have it. That’s what happened. I got the draft. I got it 16 hours before the meeting with the client where we were supposed to show the progress.

I was shocked when I saw that draft. There were some very fundamental mistakes in the design(I am not a designer but as someone who runs a presentation agency, I know more than enough to know that what I was seeing was not something our client will see). Mistakes which were not present in the portfolio projects I saw before our first meeting…

Surely, I sat down with her as soon as I could and we fixed it. The presentation ended up being so good(we created the story, the design and worked with the Sales Director on his delivery) that it got the attention of the biggest telco in the country and later on, with our help(we built one more deck) they closed a multi-million dollar deal. However, in the upcoming months I was constantly noticing things that worried me quite a lot in her work. I completely understood that she was doing her first professional steps in the design world but those things were fundamentals. Even I, who am not a designer, was not allowing myself to build slides like that when I had to do it on my own. All of that made me ask the question why was this happening and how can I prevent it in the future?

Here’s how I prevented it. When I started looking for our second designer(and each future such we hired), I did what everyone does(guess why!) — I gave the candidate a task. The results — WOW! Just this little change gave me so much insight on what I could expect — you have no idea! First of all is a new company and this has its steps which only a professional will be able to work on, now you can learn more about how to do it with the help of their previous experience, and start a marketing strategy and budget that fits your business movement.

Then I was able to immediately see how that person was approaching a potential project and what was his level in terms of design. At that moment I realized why everyone else on the market(OK, almost everyone) was doing that and had this step as part of their hiring process.

So, my advice for you is, I believe, obvious, right? Always give a task to a candidate. Always, always, always! Yes, you know this person. Yes, you like this person. Yes, it’s may even be a friend of yours. It doesn’t really mater! Give them a task and test them first.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: 356labs, Challenge, Co-Founder, Design, hiring, HR, Personal Thoughts, Presentation Design, Training

Podcast: The Presentation Podcast 50

March 26, 2018 By Boris Hristov Leave a Comment

So here’s a question. What is the chance for almost all PowerPoint MVPs in the world to sit down all together on one table and share knowledge? Well, take a look at the photo and see the answer for yourself!

While we were at the MVP Summit in Redmond, the team running the Presentation Podcast(yes, they are also MVPs), came up with a brilliant idea – let’s all sit down, have some drinks and share some PowerPoint wisdom.

That’s what we did and in this almost an hour long podcast you can hear quite some tips & tricks that will help you build better slides faster.

Want to learn the tricks? Enjoy listening!

Filed Under: Business, Perosnal, Presentation Skills & Presentation Design, Public Speaking Tagged With: 356labs, Awards, mvp, Podcast, power, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Presentation Skills

Awarded: Microsoft PowerPoint MVP

March 5, 2018 By Boris Hristov Leave a Comment

So there it is. It happened. Again. I am back to the MVP Program as a PowerPoint MVP!

Some of you may know that back then when I was a SQL Server person, I got the SQL Server MVP award and held it for three consecutive years. Of course, it didn’t happen easy as my application was declined first but that just motivated me even more to push even harder and prove Microsoft that I deserved that recognition. I was 22 back then and probably was one of the youngest MVPs Microsoft has ever had…

Then 356labs happened and that… changed a lot of things. Most importantly – changed the fact that I was not contributing to the SQL Server world anymore and so I told Microsoft that they will have to drop me out of the program because I don’t deserve the MVP status anymore. Why? I was just not doing anything SQL. Simple as that.

However, since we launched 356labs, our presentation agency, I started doing a ton of PowerPoint work – wrote 300+ blog posts, organized and participated in tens if not even hundreds of events, pushed the product and built a community of people who understood that PowerPoint can actually be used to create presentations that win multimillion-dollar deals, and win huge investments. So I asked myself – why shouldn’t I try and get the PowerPoint MVP award?

I tried. I submitted my application almost 2 years after we started 356labs and pushed so hard all of the things above. The result? Got rejected. Why? They wanted to see that I will continue to do what I do because it’s just been an year or two now and that’s not enough.

Well, I agree. That’s really the case and honestly speaking, it makes sense. That’s why I continued to push and pushed even harder. I thought myself that I need to do so much so that I will put Microsoft in a position where they don’t have any other option but to give me the award(yeap, one of the MVP leads will tell you that these are the exact words I told him). When I submitted my application again I had more than 55 activities(as Microsoft calls them) and just one of them were the 300+ articles(to give you context of how much effort it takes).

On February 1, while waiting for the confirmation mail, I received a tweet from a friend who is a SQL Server MVP and the tweet was saying that I got the award… I still don’t know why they pushed this information through FB instead of email but let’s not get into this one. 😉

Lesson from the story: Never give up! I learned that looking at the people who inspired me and who achieved things I admired and hopefully this short article will once again remind you that this old advice “Never give up!” is here for a reason. It’s here because it’s true.

Thanks to everyone who made this award possible and especially to everyone in our team at 356labs. That was not going to be possible without your effort! 

Filed Under: Business, Perosnal, Presentation Skills & Presentation Design, Public Speaking Tagged With: 356labs, Awards, Career Development, Challenge, Conferences, Microsoft, PowerPoint, Presentation Design

Speaking at the American University in Blagoevgrad

December 1, 2016 By Boris Hristov 1 Comment

aubg_business_club_boris_hristov_club_membersA few weeks ago I was privileged to be invited to speak at the American University in Blagoevgrad. It was not exactly the university who invited me, though, but one of the clubs they have – the Business Club.

To be honest here, it is absolutely rare to see such a motivated and already educated group of young people. We spoke about the world of presenting, some tips and tricks on how they can stay up to date and always ahead in their game and lastly, about personal branding and it’s importance.

…of course they also asked me if I did mistakes when starting 356labs and I shared just 3 of them. We didn’t have the time to share at least 20 more…

Once again – great time with the students, who were also from all over the world, fantastic job by the organizers and already looking forward to go back and spend some time with them again!

Filed Under: Business, Perosnal, Presentation Skills & Presentation Design, Public Speaking Tagged With: 356labs, American University, Business Development, Career Development, Challenge, Conferences, Domain Expertise, Lessons Learned, Mis, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Presentation Skills, Startup

Video: Startup Grind Sofia

November 10, 2016 By Boris Hristov 2 Comments

A month ago I got an invitation from the local chapter of Startup Grind to speak about 356labs, my story and the presentation world. It was a long, but incredibly interesting and more importantly honest conversation.

Enjoy watching!

Filed Under: Business, Perosnal, Presentation Skills & Presentation Design, Public Speaking Tagged With: 356labs, Augment Reality, Business Development, Challenge, Conferences, Lessons Learned, Marketing, Microsoft, Personal Brand, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Presentation Skills, Prezi, Sales, Startup, Startup Grind Sofia, Storytelling, Virtual Reality

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