Managing your attention with energy to gain focus

October 18, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Many of us work hard or work a lot of hours. But, we lose attention and start mindlessly doing tasks. For “busy work” this might work, but for work that requires our attention we need a way to gain focus. It is easy to do busy tasks all day long, but we often need to prioritize or make complicated decisions which require deeper though. How can we gain that focus?

By increasing your energy level, your brain will have more food for thought. Increasing your energy level is not rocket science. Here are a few techniques:

Eat an apple per day & go bananas!
Eating more fruit is an easy and cost effective way to raise your energy. You get enzymes, vitamins and other forms of nutrition. Eating an apple can change your entire world in a snap — or a crunch. If you are regular about eating fruit, you too will become more regular in terms of bowel movements which in turn raises your energy level. Additionally, fresh juices that were squeezed within minutes of your consumption are excellent.

Take a shower in an hour…
Your body attracts certain energies. Those energies can get yucky. The best remedy is using healing oils and showering. Most of us shower daily, but if you shower a second time you might feel better. Showing not only physically cleanses you, but cleanses your unclean energies. There is a reason why Hindus have a tradition of bathing twice per day. It is partly due to their balmy weather in India, but partly because of the purifying effect that water has on the human body or anything else. Many people own crystals, but they too attract heavy energies and water is one of the ways of cleansing them not to mention sticking them in dirt or salt to absorb the energies. Many humans put a cup of Epsom salt in their bath to go that extra mile cleansing their bad energies. Showers are good, but baths are even better!

Vitamins & Supplements
Taking vitamins and supplements can help your health. The quality of the vitamins can really vary, so getting most of your nutrients from real food is a good idea so that the supplements can supplement an already healthy diet. Keeping your cholesterol and triglycerides down can increase energy too. I have found that Q10 is great for your heart and blood vessels while Grape Seed Extract is good for eye and capillary circulation which is critical if you stare at a computer all day long with your eyes!

Walking can increase your energy step by step
Many people just don’t get enough exercise. Some of us think we need to go to the gym. The gym is good for building muscles. If we sit too long, we need good back muscles for our posture. But, for the most part we need walking or swimming to stay fit. An hour a day or more of walking is excellent. But, I really feel it if I cut down my walking for a week or two when I’m busy.

If all else fails…
Chocolate is a nice way to get some extra energy later in the day. Caffeine might cause you insomnia even twelve hours after the fact, but chocolate will do the trick and energize you for about five or six hours.

Take Breaks
We wrote many other articles about when to take a break and how often. This is really up to you, so study how you react to breaks and take different types of breaks. You can measure the effects. See if you feel better, and see if a walking break is better than a napping break. You will be able to work more effectively if you take breaks — and listen to your body, it will tell you what you need a lot better than your boss will.

Leadership Quotes from amazing leaders

October 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Leadership, Quotes | Leave a comment

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” — John Quincy Adams

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Warren Bennis

“If you do not change dirction, you may end up where you are heading.” — Lao Tzu

“The faster you rise, the faster you fall.” — lyrics from hip hop song

“Nature does not hurry, yet all things are accomplished.” — Lao Tzu

“A great leader must be willing to stand for his cause alone against all odds.” — Myself

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” — Lao Tzu

“He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted.” — Lao Tzu

“You have to think anyway, so why not think big?” — Donald Trump

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. — Sam Walton

“The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.” — Sam Walton

“The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.” — Sam Walton

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.” — George Washington

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” — Benjamin Franklin

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” — Niccolo Macchiavelli

“Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.” — Don Marquis

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius

Silly ideas for tech startups

October 16, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Startups | Leave a comment

Startups are the rage these days. Everyone on social media is interested in reading about them. Startups have interesting ideas and even more interesting names. Personally, I feel that you can’t do well in a startup unless you have a goofy sounding name. But, what are some cool and interesting ideas for startups? Here are mind.

(1) ForgiveFind
I think the Pope should create a startup called, ForgiveFind which could be a site used to locate forgiving people. And if the programmers who build the site screw-up (they usually do,) then forgive them. And if the Pope doesn’t like my silly idea, I’ll forgive him too.

(2) You’re Fired!
I think someone should create an app where you can enter in employee information. You can track if they have been late on a project, or gave you an attitude about anything. Three strikes and you’re out. This app could have a database that tracks everything from coming in five minutes late to talking back to the boss just a little bit which could be 25% of a strike. If the employee doesn’t like being fired, they can visit ForgiveFind and try to talk the boss into getting a membership.

(3) InterestLevel
This site will track all of your interests, not to mention how interested you are in your interests. Are you very interested in hiking, but only a little interested in rock climbing? It will compare your data to everyone else’s data not to mention their attitudes about every issue on planet earth and find you some friends. Your friends might be older, younger, or funny looking, but they will have lots in common with you if you found them on InterestLevel.

(4) ParkingBuddy
This app will help you find parking places anywhere. It will be connected to a satellite that can see all parking places in the world (on a non-cloudy day) and see if where you want to park is free. Additionally, ParkingBuddy will be on good terms with the Parking Gods just to be on the safe side. I always pray to the Parking Gods and so far, I have been taken care of.

(5) RateMyTweet
This startup will help rank your tweets. It will take into consideration how the tweet performed the first time it was aired. But, it will also offer graphs to see how it does it tweeted on a regular basis and will help you determine the ideal frequency in which to tweet your various tweets. It will also track tweet variations, so if you worded your tweet in multiple ways, you will quickly learn which variation worked better. If you need help making your tweets a little more fly, try visiting PimpMyTweet which is a fictional tweet writing outsourcing startup in India.

(6) AuraJudge
This startup will come up with a machine that can read people’s auras. If you are walking through a seedy part of town, you will quickly learn who the dangerous people are when your aura-machine’s alarm starts going off. Germans can also use it to verify which innocent Syrian refugee is really an extremist!

(7) ScreenWriterBuddy
If you are a writer, and need to makes sure your schedule stays full, this startup will create an app that will email and text your contacts on a regular basis to see if they need your services. You can have your contacts buzzed once a week, once a month, or whenever you feel necessary.

(8) WineLover
This startup will create an app to track your favorite wines. It will remember which restaurants have wines you love, which regions you liked the most, and which stores have the wines you like at the best price. The wine-lover app will also tell you when you are too intoxicated to be using your i-phone by having Siri say, “Sober up you wino!!! — you’re too intoxicated to be using this app.” Or, “You know you’re too inebriated to be using this act when you spell Merlot — as Mr.Lote!” This app will also let you search your favorite wines by notes — if you want floral notes, raspberry, mocha, or vanilla, this app is for you.

How much do you train a call center worker whose only lasted three months?

October 14, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Leave a comment

Most companies offer lousy service because they don’t train their employees. However, companies that train their workers too much up front may find that their investment goes out the door. Call center workers typically work in a very high stress environment and quit their job within months. According to studies I have read, to get to the top of a company’s food chain, you need to stick to your job for at least fifteen years. How high will you rise in management if you promptly quit every three months?

How much up front training should you give a BPO worker? Or is it better to test people, and make them pay for their own training if they want a chance to work for you? Better yet, maybe the best way to train an employee is a few hours a month on an ongoing course. Perhaps there would be fewer hours of training and more hours of working after an employee has proven themselves over the course of time.

If you put too much training in an employee up front, you lose it when they quit. If you don’t train your employees at all, you lose your customers as they will seek companies with employees that have more than half a brain. There must be a happy medium.

One method is to divide tasks by difficulty. A new employee should only be allowed to do simpler or less critical tasks for the first few months. After they have proven their loyalty, that is when you might train them to do more difficult tasks. On the other hand, what if they are good at simple tasks, but can’t learn well? If you started out by training them in the beginning, you would have data on their learning curve which is a very critical stat to have on an employee.

Maybe the training curve should include some up-front training to establish the employee’s learning curve, but heavy duty training should be left for after the employee has stuck around for 120 days.

The cost of losing an employee seems high as you might lose your clients if you keep offering new employees of questionable abilities. It might make sense to invest in the office experience so that people stick around a lot longer. But, that is another story.

When and how you do your training and how much are critical questions to ask. You should ideally experiment on this concept in as many ways as you can think of.

The best tasks to outsource are not critical or time sensitive

October 12, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Leave a comment

Outsource everything!
Some people say, “Outsource everything!” However, if you want quality work done, you can’t really do that. Keep in mind that if you outsource tasks to companies far away, you might not be in constant touch with the workers and you might not even know who is working on your project. If you have something critical, or that requires carefulness or knowledge, you’re in trouble. Imagine that you hire a software company in India to work on your online database. Let’s say that Rahul knows what he is doing and he is the guy assigned to your task. When Rahul quits (and everyone named Rahul who I’ve ever worked with always seems to quit in the middle of a project) then the next guy might not be as good as Rahul.

Let’s say you have some critical phone work to do. If you search the world for that perfect agent, you will waste a lot of time searching only to have them quit at the critical moment. It has happened to me many times.

Another time I outsourced tasks that needed to get done on time. The tasks dragged on and on endlessly and I had to do the work myself when I was very busy. Once again I had made a mistake. So, what is the secret of outsourcing?

Outsourcing time sensitive work doesn’t work!
You can’t outsource work that is time sensitive unless you are absolutely sure that the company you hired will get the work done correctly and on time. That means that if someone quits, that a replacement of equivalent skills will take over. If Rahul knows your site and Rajesh suddenly takes over, even if Rajesh has a few years experience, he doesn’t know your site — so you are in trouble. If you have phone work which has to get done on time and the girl doing the work is sick that week, then you have to do the work yourself. My suggestion is don’t give time sensitive work to others in the first place. Find a very efficient way to do that work yourself.

You also can’t outsource critical work
Let’s say that something can be done at any time, but there will be consequences if the work is done poorly. If you know your work well, but others don’t, there is no way they will do it as well as you can. If you know someone well, and they perform the work almost as well, as well, or better than you can, then you can use them. But, outsourcing to a stranger for critical work is a recipe for disaster. Whomever the BPO company uses for your job will either do a poor job, or if they do a good job they will by definition quit and be replaced by someone who does a bad job. In the long run, the average quality work from outsourcing companies is rarely good. I make it a policy to only use outsourced workers if I have the opportunity to get to know the worker personally. The minute they quit, the entire company starts their reputation all over from scratch with me as I interview the new workers. If I don’t like the new workers, I just fire the entire BPO on the spot! Otherwise my work will be shoddy and who needs that?

Dividing tasks that you thought were a single task is key
I have a task that I call welcome calls. It is very time consuming as my directory has 300 new members per month and I call them all twice. I call people to introduce myself to them, and to get their information straight as well as to see if they have any behavioral characteristics that I like or dislike including how they answer the phone. If they say, “hullo,” I don’t like that, but I do like it if they introduce their company name like a professional. After some long though and a discussion with a friend who runs a social media company, I decided to break my task into pieces. I’m going to have an auto-caller do the initial call so that I get a reading regarding if they answered their phone or not. The auto-call can also instruct them to email me for their password so they can spruce up the info on their listing. The second call will ask them if they want to be on the newsletter. The third call will be by an assistant to fill in whatever info is not yet there. That way I only have to do the fourth call, and I will remove most of the listings with un-filled out information before I do the fourth call which will reduce the quantity of my calling by 70% at least. So, what does this have to do with outsourcing? I can outsource the third call, and automate the other calls. That is a great way to conserve on my labor time.

So, what should you ideally outsource?
(1) Research on social media. Finding tweets to retweet or articles to share. You might want to double check their work as they don’t know your industry as well as you do.
(2) Additional information calls. If you have to call your clients for backup information which is not life threatening or time sensitive, that is a great thing to outsource.
(3) Article Writing. If you run a blog, you can accumulate a lot of articles long before you publish them. This is a great task to outsource not only to save you time, but also to have multiple writing styles on your blog which will make it more interesting.
(4) Test sites or experimental programming tasks. If you are hiring a new programming company, if they screw up a test project, you have little to lose, but a lot to gain in price savings if they do a good job. If they screw up your main site, you could be out of business or have many technical glitches or messy code which will haunt you in the long run.
(5) H.R. If you find companies who have access to great workers, they might be able to find you people fast when you are too busy to look. Or, if they are not so responsive, they might waste your time when you don’t even have minutes to waste.
(6) Graphic Design. You can hire more than one company to do a single project. That way you can have choices for which artwork to use, and if one company doesn’t finish on time — fire them!
(7) Programming consultants are good to hire to check up on the quality of code of the programmers you hired in India. You need to know if they are writing clean and efficient code. You’ll never know if you don’t hire an expert although you will get hints when everything they build is broken or breaks easily after the fact.
(8) Social media services are good to hire for mundane work. But for strategical work, it is hard to find a good company. Sometimes you have to be a social media expert yourself. But, for posting, either use an auto-posting system or hire a company who will post your stuff at a reasonable rate. You should do the work yourself to see how long it takes so you can see if they are billing you for four hours for every one hour that you would have used.

Business Quotes That Will Inspire You

October 4, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Quotes, Semi-Popular, Success | Leave a comment

Here are some business quotes to inspire you into deeper thinking. Enjoy…

“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser

“Are you living for paper, or living for the dream?” — from the Notorious B.I.G. movie.

“We’re all working together; that’s the secret.” — Sam Walton

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” — Sam Walton

“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.” — Aristotle Onassis

“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” — Peter Drucker

“An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.” — Dee Hock

“If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.” — Charles Kettering

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.” — Bill Gates

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You might also like:

17 entrepreneur success quotes
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/03/28/17-entrepreneur-success-quotes/

Leadership quotes from amazing leaders like Steve Jobs, Lao Tzu, Donald Trump, etc.
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/10/17/leadership-quotes-from-amazing-leaders/

Best motivational quotes
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/09/10/best-motivational-quotes/

What does Warren Buffet look for when he hires people (compilation)
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/02/06/compilation-of-best-management-success-blog-entries/

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“It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” — Tom Brokaw

“All lasting business is built on friendship.” — Alfred Montapert

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” — Henry Ford

“Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than mental capacities.” — Walter Scott

“Which social network is the best to market your business? Facebook, Twitter, or word of mouth?” — Myself

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” John Kenneth Galbraith

“Corporations: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” Ambrose Bierce

“I buy when other people are selling.” — J. Paul Getty

“My own business bores me to death. I prefer other people’s.” — Oscar Wilde

“Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don’t expect it from cheap people.” — Warren Buffet

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” — Warren Buffet

“You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.” — Warren Buffet

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” — Warren Buffet

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” — Albert Einstein.

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You might also like:

How to create a company culture like Google’s and have fun doing it
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/03/14/how-to-create-a-company-culture-like-googles-have-fun-while-doing-it/

The Lamborghini effect in Social Media Marketing
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/09/06/the-lamborghini-effect-in-social-media-marketing/

7 rules for women entrepreneurs to live by
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/01/30/7-rules-for-women-entrepreneurs-to-live-by/

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Curb Your Attitude – a skit about workplace drama at a Medical Transcription Company

October 4, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Medical Transcriptions, Of Interest | Tagged | Leave a comment

RAMESH: Everybody I’m working with seems to have awoken on the wrong side of the bed today!

PRAVEEN: Well, if everybody got out of bed on the wrong side, then maybe it is the right side.

SANKUL: No, it is YOU who got off on the wrong side of the bed.

DILIP: FYI, I sleep on the floor on a thin mat next to a wall. I only have one side to pick from!

PRAVEEN: Oh, no wonder you’re in a lousy mood. Maybe you should sleep in a chair like my sister.

STEVE: (ring ring) Hey, how come my medical transcriptions are never on time?

RAMESH: Why do you always exaggerate?

STEVE: It’s not always. Sometimes I exaggerate! You are exaggerating how often I exaggerate!

RAMESH: Okay, we were one day late on the last assignment only. We’re almost done with the current assignment.

STEVE: If you had a client who enforced deadlines, you’d be fired for being even three seconds late.

RAMESH: Okay, curb your attitude!

STEVE: It’s already curbed, I have it on a tight leash.

RAMESH: Praveen! Get that assignment done for Steve. The transcription for the transfusion.

PRAVEEN: I will transfuse the transcription right away.

SANKUL: I’ll have to diffuse your tranfusion if you don’t curb your attitude!

DILIP: Which one are you talking about?

SANKUL: All of you! I think we all need to go on a walk, inhale some rick-shaw exhaust, and come back to the office feeling refreshed!

DILIP: Yes, let’s reboot our attitude.

RAMESH: Agreed! Just get the work done so I can tell Steve the good news!

Facebook knows you better than your mama. But, how well do you know your customers?

October 3, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Facebook knows you better than your mama knows you.
Don’t you be talking about my mama!

But seriously, how well do you know your customers?
Facebook knows who your friends are, where you went to school, who your parents are, what you like to read, your interests, and who your email provider is. Most of my old friends who came back to me found me on Facebook. There is no other way to find people these days now that we are all over the place. Thank God for Facebook. Personally, I feel there should be a national database of people that you can look up based on name, home town, or other things. But, in any case, the important thing Facebook knows is what you like. If a business knows your habits and what you like, they can cater to your needs.

In Facebook’s case, they can offer you friends who have similar likes and interest, articles that will please you, and maybe even products. Big businesses sometimes get it. They understand that knowledge is key. But, small businesses don’t bother understanding their clients. In the old days when people used to know each other, they knew their clients needs from knowing them. But, in this hi-tech age, you don’t ever see anyone. So, you get to know people by studying data. See what they click on, and what they like. You can survey them too, but what they say they like and what they click on may not match up as much as you think.

As a BPO or small business owner, you can keep database records of your client’s habits, wishlists, and other information about them. What information you keep is up to you, and your database will evolve over time. Yes it is expensive to maintain a database and dealing with the programmers is no easy task either. But, without knowing something about your clients and being able to segment them, you will not know how to please them.

SHELLY: Would you like your data entry done within 72 hours like you did last time, or would you prefer the two week economy package.

RAMESH: Oh, you kept records on how I purchased last time. I don’t even remember myself. Wow! You must be a very attentive company.

SHELLY: Well, we try. And next time you come by, did you want two glasses of masala chai with two lumps of sugar, or do you want to try a new energy drink called zap?

RAMESH: You even remember how many lumps of sugar I take? Usually I take one, but your chai was extra robust so I took too. I’ll do chai, but I’ll have a sip or zap.

SHELLY: Do you want a morning appointment like last time?

RAMESH: This time let’s do 3pm as my wife needs me to help her in the morning.

SHELLY: Oh yes, Amrita. Her Master’s degree program ended a week ago. Tell her I give her my congratulations.

RAMESH: I am getting my own Master’s degree just listening to all the things you know about me. Now, what is my online banking password?

SHELLY: Why, did you forget?

RAMESH: No, I’m just testing you.

SHELLY: It is 1811516.

RAMESH: I”m just kidding I don’t use online banking.

SHELLY: I know. I was just pulling your leg.

RAMESH: Ah-ha! Got you. I just had it amputated…. Just kidding.

SHELLY: You are too much. See you at 3pm. Parking is in the rear. We’ll assign you a spot that says, “Parking for Ramesh(es) ONLY”

Using Linked In to network for your BPO or Call Center

September 29, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center, Marketing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It is not easy to promote your call center and gain clients. You can cold call companies, promote a web site or use social media. There are so many social media sites out there it is hard to know which one is the right one. For business, LinkedIn has some definitive advantages.

The average LinkedIn member has an average yearly household income of $109,000
50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority for their companies.

But, how do you use LinkedIn for your call centers?

Create a profile
You need to create a LinkedIn company page. Make sure you fill the page in very completely with all of your background professional information and every pertinent fact about your company.

Post regular updates
You can post regular updates on your profile about what you are working on at the moment.

Connect by Networking
One way to gain new contacts on LinkedIn is to contact relevant people who follow your contacts. It’s easier to make a new contact if you have some common ground.

Participate in Groups
You can join up to fifty LinkedIn groups and participate in call center discussions. You can also provide good answers to other people’s questions. Being regularly seen helps, but being seen as a reliable source of intelligent commentary and knowledge helps even more.

LinkedIn Advertising
We tried LinkedIn Advertising for my discussion group. We did get new followers, but the cost was not cheap. It was $2 per click and we got a new follower for every $12-14 we spent which was not terrible, but not really cost effective.

Paid Memberships
LinkedIn limits the quantity of professionals that you can contact in a month. So, unless you have twenty profiles you use together, you can’t contact that many people. Paid memberships let you contact more people to network with.

Start a Group
In outsourcing, most of the groups have job postings. Our LinkedIn group has a lot of interesting outsourcing and business discussions.

What is a follower on LinkedIn worth comparatively?
I run 17 social media campaigns and I am constantly trying to figure out what a follower is worth. I can measure click patterns and see how many of them like particular blog articles. However, the actual human beings doing the clicks from LinkedIn are much more influential and hence could be considered to be of a higher value than perhaps a Twitter click to my site. How much more valuable is a LinkedIn click than a Twitter or Facebook click? I would tend to say more, but how much more is hard to say. If you compare various social networks, compare the costs of developing a group that will give you 1000 clicks a month to your blog or site. It might take a much higher quantity of followers to get the same result on Twitter, but might be easier to attain those followers. The math is complicated. But, if you want to get ahead in networking, you need to be able to identify the most time effective methods and avenues of promoting your call centers!

LinkedIn is not big on outsourcing
Keep in mind that there are not many outsourcers using LinkedIn and they are not at all interactive. To market your call center or BPO you need to find regular business owners who could be in any field that might need your services. Get to know them and see if they have an interest in trying you out.

Interesting Startups from around the globe

September 27, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Startups | Tagged | Leave a comment

Startups are a huge topic of conversation with young people today and on Social Media. I also find startups interesting as I have created many businesses in my short life, and a few of them have been very successful as well. Chinese investors are going all over the globe including places like Israel, Boulder, CO, and others to capitalize on venture capitalism involving startups.

After you see the various names of new companies, you might ask yourself: does it help to have a goofy sounding name if you are a startup? I think we all know what the answer is!

OurCrowd
OurCrowd from Israel helps regular affluent people invest in startups with the same verms that top venture capitalists get. By utlizing crowdsourcing, they are helping smaller investors capitalize on early stage wealth creation.

LafaLafa
This Indian startup sells mobile first coupons and has a cash-back app. It was chosen for the 500 startups accelerator programme which is one of the best accelerators in the world

Rubicon Global
Leonardo Dicaprio just invested in this trash startup. They use software to manage a network of independent waste haulers that bid on picking up trash from convenience stores and other types of businesses as well. I guess there’s truth the the saying, “There’s money in muck.”

IronSource
This company helps mobile developers find clients and find advertising for their apps. This Israeli company already has half a billion users per months.

Zutalabs
This Israeli company has a palm sized printer that walks across a piece of paper printing text on it.

Elio Motors
Elio Motoers is a top 2015 automotive startup. They make three wheeled vehicles and will be on display at the next Los Angeles Auto Show in November.

YotPo
Yotpo helps eCommerce sites fill their review sections with genuine reviews. They send an email to customers right after they bought a product and have technology to make it a snap for them to write reviews from their smartphones.

ShoeKicker
This deal hunting startup ranks particular models of running shoes by price. A shopper can quickly find out where they can get the best price at the moment.

Percentil
This European used clothing startup specilializes in “nearly new” clothing as well as coordinating pick up and delivery. They are a great alternative if you are fed up with the other startup ThredUp.

How do you inspire people who do boring BPO jobs?

September 20, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Motivation, Semi-Popular | Leave a comment

This must be the world’s oldest question besides the whole chicken and the egg paradigm. How do you inspire people to do boring jobs? In the real world, not all of us can do interesting jobs. We can not all be doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. In fact, most Indian chiefs got out of the market when the business went South a few decades ago. Many of us have to do repetitive phone calls, data entry, check lists, and other boring back office work. So, what is the secret to making it tolerable or even fun.

Many of the larger call centers have mastered this art by having regular competitions, fun activities, and excursions. But, we can’t all do excursions all the time, especially when we are tied down by families.

Keeping the work place fun and positive is a good start. Even if your job is boring, if the job environment is pleasant or fun, that makes it all the better. Contests and competitions make things interesting too. Having group meals can give a sense of belonging as well. Seeing an opportunity for long term career advancement should also be on the horizon. People want to know that they can move ahead in the world. Another motivation technique is to let people know the bigger picture of how important their work is, who it affects and how. Many workers simply have no clue as to how their work affects the world until they screw up and get blamed for inconveniencing 10,000 people in some huge way! It is better to let them know in a positive way before they screw up!

On the other hand, the simple act of appreciation goes a long way. A simple, “nice job!” or other act of recognition goes a long way. A pat on the back (don’t try this in India with the females.) Just don’t get too carried away with the pats or you might go from having unmotivated employees to having sexual harassment lawsuits! Good God!

How to use the right keywords in your blog titles that lead to instant popularity

September 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Using the right keywords is like having a magic key that opens the door to winning over the hearts of the readers in the blogosphere.

I have written a few thousand blog articles in my career. I’m by no means a professional writer or anything close to it. But, I spend a lot of time looking at google analytics. I use Google analytics, and also try to figure out what works in the Twittersphere as well as the Blogosphere. I used to think that writing interesting articles that were akin to the interests of your audience was the secret. I was wrong! Yes, you need to understand your audience and what your audience responds to, but keywords make all the difference.

Positive Keywords
The guy at the coffee shop in my neighborhood is so interesting. I was talking to him about keywords today. We must have talked about over a hundred topics so far since I’ve known him. I said that the word “fail” doesn’t work with my crowd. He said that the under 18 crowd loves the word fail. They’re only interested in watching people screw up, or fall off their skateboard. But, my audience doesn’t respond well to this word. I won’t get retweeted, and people won’t click on my blog. If I use fail — I fail. On the other hand, if I use the tag #failure on Twitter in a blog about #success, that seems to be okay assuming it is accompanied by some more positive tags too. In short, I learned that my crowd liked words like millionaire, CEO, success, expand, grow, best, good, etc.

How To Themes
In addition to being perpetually positive, my crowd loves nothing more than how to blogs. They run businesses (or want to) and want to know how I think they should create and grow their business. If I have one hundred different marketing techniques, they will read each one if I phrase the title correctly. The minute I’m just giving “good advice” nobody wants it, but if there is a “how to” in the title — it gets read. How to motivate, fixing mistakes and finding solutions to particular problems are blog title fragments that almost guarantee success.

Interesting Content
If every blog article you wrote started with “how to,” I think that people might get bored. But, spicing up your blog with some really interesting and unusual content is great too. Not all of us can think of zany ideas, but I have thought of a few. I wrote a piece about what it would be like if classically trained musicians ran IT companies in India. I wrote another about what it would be like to have your office in the Himalayas. Ideas come when they come, but my audience eats up these interesting ideas. If you have some cool rule of thumb that is easy to remember, that will win over readers too. I wrote a piece about the 2 minute contact rule. It was easy to understand the concept, plus it was catchy.

Pairing Strategies
Using language in a fun way wins over readers too. I wrote a piece called:
The pen is mightier than the sword; But, is flogging mightier than blogging?
The title caught on right away, especially after the drama in Saudi Arabia where a blogger disrespected Islam and was going to get a whooping. I wrote another title called: Good Sign; Bad Sign — what to look for in newly hired workers. Once again another pairing strategy that caught everyone’s eyes.

Relatable Content
If you write a blog article and the readers say, “You’re preaching to the choir!” Then, you have got the right idea. People love to read about someone else having the same problem that they have. If you write about stress to an audience of stressed out maniacs, they’ll love you for it. If you write about job training where your readers are younger workers who need training, they will relate right away. Sometimes I write about my personal experience and start the article with the word “diary.” This is a strategy that works well too.

What Doesn’t Work?
Writing about negative concepts, or things the audience doesn’t care about like politics, the economy, etc. (on my blog — your audience might love those topics.) If your articles are too analytical, that narrows down the audience who care to think that intricately. Additionally, if you write about boring and nagging topics, only dentists and grammar teachers will want to read it. Sometimes ideas that are too goofy backfire too. Humor as a rule is good in writing, but if you use it in a way your audience doesn’t like, then you wasted a good joke on a bad audience!