Jim Belosic is the founder and CEO of ShortStack, a social media platform that allows you to create customized Facebook promotions & contests. Some of you might know Jim as the “pancake guy” from his blog jims pancakes, where he creates cool pancakes for his daughter.

Jim is also the author of OMG Pancakes! and his book has been featured on Oprah.com & ABC news. I recently had a chat with Jim — we discussed his personal background, as well as the startup story behind his new company ShortStack.

Q: Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Shortstack all about?

Jim Belosic:  ShortStack’s software is designed to help small-business owners and big-name agencies create apps for Facebook Pages, websites, and the mobile web. ShortStack users can create contests and sweepstakes, newsletter sign-up forms and integrations with the most popular social networks, including Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and more. ShortStack is a self-service platform that consists of more than 40 tools, 70+ templates, and an extensive library of support documents, videos, references, and an email support system.

Q: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and also how you started your business?

Jim Belosic: I’ve been an entrepreneur almost my entire life, and I started my own web design company at age 22. Nine years after I started the company, our clients started asking us if we could build some custom Facebook apps for them. We didn’t know much about Facebook in general, let alone Facebook apps,  but I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to learn something new. We were building each app by hand, but we soon created some simple in-house software to help us speed up the process. One day it hit us that we had a really awesome potential product — which I named ShortStack — that we should make available directly to the end user and cut out the middleman (yes, even though that was us!). ShortStack was released in Beta in late 2010 and by January 2011 it was available to the public.

Q: Starting out as an entrepreneur who did you look up to, and who were some of your mentors and why?

Jim Belosic: Ben Chestnut at MailChimp has been a big influence for me. We’ve been through a lot of the same stuff when it comes to our previous experiences; when I read about his company’s history I realized that MailChimp, too, began as an agency. I feel like every time I have a question, I can read Ben’s blog and he’s either had that same problem or offers some insight that is relevant to me.

Another role model of mine is my dad. My dad has always been self-employed. When I was growing up I saw him working really hard but he could take breaks when he wanted. He had a flexible schedule that allowed him to pursue the hobbies he loves. He definitely inspired my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Q: How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?

Jim Belosic: I had no expectations because this was so different than the agency world that I was used to. I love that it’s really fast paced and we have to change all the time. It’s like running any other company, except in dog years . One year in tech is about 7 years in a “normal” industry.

Q: How do you separate yourself from your competitors and what makes your platform better or different?

Jim Belosic: I guess our main difference is our flexibility. Everything can be customized or changed; nothing is cookie-cutter with our platform. Some other platforms offer pre-designed templates with limited customization. ShortStack offers pre-designed templates too, but users can also build apps from scratch, or start with a template then modify it to their liking. We also try to be competitive with our pricing. We offer a ton of enterprise-level features, but since we’re a DIY platform, we can keep the prices low.

Q: What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?

Jim Belosic: Changing from an agency-based model with 10 or 20 clients to a software service with thousands of clients was a huge challenge. We had to continue to run the agency while we were creating ShortStack because we needed the cash. We bootstrapped ShortStack, and the agency side of the business provided revenue for us to keep a roof over our heads. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to take our existing agency revenue and have it support double the workload and staff. It was a huge balancing act, but luckily we were able to charge for ShortStack from the beginning. Without that early revenue, we would have had to look for investors.

Q: Please share some business tips & advice for new tech startups and entrepreneurs.

Jim Belosic: Focus on the product. Don’t worry about advertising and marketing too much at the beginning. A good product tends to sell itself.

Charge for your product from the beginning, even if it’s a small amount. Charging early on will help you reinvest in the company and will teach you how much people are willing to pay for your product. Even a small cash flow puts you light years ahead of dozens of start ups who may never get any funding.

When you are ready, build a public relations team. Public relations is an amazing investment that pays over the long haul. It’s like having good advertising that you don’t have to pay for every month

Q:  What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business and if you could start over what would you do differently?

Jim Belosic: First, I would have focused on the UI of our product more. We told our users that we were easy to use, when in reality there was a learning curve.
Second, I would have designed our service to be more “platform agnostic” from the beginning. Being tied to someone else’s platform (in our case, Facebook) can be stressful.

Third, I would have offered our product with multiple languages “baked-in” to the app. Now we are trying to add multiple-language support and it’s tough at this stage. Bottom line: don’t forget that there are way more people in the world who don’t speak English but can potentially use your product.

Q: Besides the obvious social media tools available, what are the top 3 most useful tools or resources you’re currently using to grow your company?

1. MailChimp: I swear I’m not an affiliate for them!  I just love their product and they’ve helped us increase our email marketing immensely.

2. Improvely: Improvely allows us to track all of our public outreach and see conversions up to 6 months after a user clicks on an initial link.

3. Geckoboard: We’re able to see all of our data in real time, including Tweets, website visits, blog visits, sign ups, etc. Having access to this information allows us to have a quicker response time to questions and to any other issues that come up.

Q: Can you recommend a good book for new entrepreneurs?

“Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It’ll change how you see your product and how your users actually use it.

Q: What’s your definition of success?

Jim Belosic: Success is when you can afford to make mistakes, learn from them and move on without serious repercussion.

Q: How can our community get in touch with you?

Twitter: @shortstacklab

Facebook/shortstacklab

Liam Martin is the co-founder & CMO of Staff.com, an online staffing agency that makes it easy and affordable for companies to find talented workers. I briefly spoke with Liam and he shared a few startup advice with us.

Q:  Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your company and also how you started it?

Liam Martin:  Staff.com is an online staffing agency that only concentrates on long term remote jobs. Rob Rawson and I started the business a year ago off our previous business Time Doctor.com which is the market leader in remote employee productivity. The software is basically like Google analytics for your work day and it’s the same software we use to monitor remote staff through staff.com

Q:  What are you currently working on right now?

Liam Martin:  This morning I was doing meetings with a few project partners. Rob was working on new features for the site. I mostly just talk to customers and ask them how I can make the site better then go out and do that.

Q: How many people and companies are currently using this platform and how do you plan to keep growing?

Liam Martin:  We get thousands of people trying Time Doctor and Using the Staff.com platform every month. We look at things pretty methodologically, figure out a funnel that we can build, get it profitable, then move on to the next one. Basically rinse and repeat.

Q: How is running an online company different than what you thought it would be?

Liam Martin:  I thought I’d be talking to people less but in reality I’m talking to people pretty much all day. Not a big deal but it’s sometimes distracting when you want to get big things done during the day.

Q: How do you separate yourself from your competitors and what makes your platform better or different?

Liam Martin:  Staff.com only focuses on long term remote work unlike most online platforms that focus on short term projects. So on other platforms you might get a website built, on staff.com you can only hire web designers, we focus on hiring the person and not the project so we’re much closer to a classic staffing agency, we provide workers just like any one else, they’re just not located in your office.

Q: What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?

Liam Martin: Scaling, it’s still a problem as we grow. Getting the right people on the bus that are passionate about what we’re doing is incredibly difficult and it’s a constant issue with us as we grow.

Q:  Please share some business tips & advice for new tech startups and entrepreneurs.

Liam Martin:  Don’t worry about problems of success until you’re successful. Business success boils down to three things, acquisition, conversion and retention. Don’t worry about the last two if you haven’t figured out the first one.

Q:  What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business and if you could start over what would you do differently?

Liam Martin:  Figuring out critical scale points, writing code before testing our assumptions based off that code “find out if your users actually want a feature before you code it”, not systematizing as much as you can in the beginning so you don’t have to go back and manage it.

Q:  Besides the obvious social media tools available, what are the top 3 most useful tools or resources you’re currently using to grow your company?

Skype, Jing and Snap Engage “amazing tool to directly interact with your customer”.

Q:  Can you recommend a good book for new entrepreneurs?

Liam Martin:  Good to Great by Jim Collines, The Lean Startup by Eric Reis and Getting Real by 37 Signals if you’re looking to build a tech startup

Q: What’s your definition of success?

Liam Martin:  Being unkillable. I.E. Making enough money so everyone gets paid and you’re in the black. I know that sounds like a shallow definition of success but if you haven’t gotten there yet nothing else matters as eventually you’ll be out of business.

Q:  How can our community get in touch with you?

Liam Martin: Check out our site at staff.com, Twitter, or jump directly on a call with me at https://clarity.fm/#/liam and talk my head off.

Satya Van Heummen is the founder of Planspot, an online platform that allows you to promote and manage events using multiple media channels, including social media, newspapers and magazines. I recently had the chance to talk with Satya and today he’s going to take us further into his entrepreneurship journey and also share some great business insight for all new and upcoming entrepreneurs.

Herby:  Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Planspot all about?

Satya van Heummen:  Planspot is an all-in-one event marketing tool to run campaigns across multiple channels. An event created on Planspot is directly published to social media, media (magazines, newspapers, event listing, blogs) and via newsletters. We publish the ticket sales link, attendee link and event page link everywhere, helping organizers to sell out.

Planspot then fetches all social media conversations, enabling organizers to actively engage and promote their events. Besides, events are matched to about 500+ connected media making sure events reach the right audience. Last, a dashboard provides powerful insights (statistics) that show event organizers exactly how well their campaigns are doing and which channels are performing best. Planspot makes event marketing easy and effective, and saves time, money and resources for both organizers and media partners.

Herby:  Please tell us a little bit about yourself and also how you started your business?

Satya van Heummen:  I would like to describe myself as a strategic innovator and new business developer.. During my studies Industrial Design I already focused on marketing and innovation in relation to product development. I got my first investment for “Front”, a newspaper for designers. Then I started working in retail, exhibition and graphic design, switched to fashion, and then worked as a new business developer. The latter fits me best because I  am a person that simply sees fantastic oppertunities in any market I come into contact with. In 2011 I got the idea of Planspot. With the help of a private investor and a dedicated team we developed Planspot to what it is now.

Herby:  Starting out as an entrepreneur who did you look up to, and who were some of your mentors and why?

Satya van Heummen:  It’s not my nature to look up to other people, but I got very much inspired by the dynamic US startup culture (reading Techcrunch etc). I got to Silicon Valley in October 2012, and realized that a lot of success greatly depends on whom you meet and how strategic you can steer your business. You have to be lucky to find the right investor, to find the right team and even then, you need to be able to make the correct strategic decisions to realize your vision. Most people will simply fail and it’s a tough business. Besides, you simply cannot do it alone. So put aside your ego and use all resources, visions, and opinions available to form your strategy and make your vision come true.

Personally I’m very much influenced by Eric Reis (The Lean Startup), by Alexander Osterwalder (Business Model Generation) and by Ricardo Semler (Semco).

Herby:  How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?

Satya van Heummen:  Prior to starting Planspot I had lots of experience managing huge projects in different businesses. But I never realized that a tech startup is that much different. Unfortunately I found out the hard way.

The major problem for any tech startup is that you’re doing something that hasn’t been done before. So you’re basically doing pure innovation and that makes it extremely hard to estimate and make fixed roadmaps. Yet business depends on those new features being released and business needs to get going, especially if you have investors breathing in your neck.

The other main problem for any startup is finding your product-market fit. Once you do get new features released, there’s a big chance people aren’t waiting for them or there’s an expectation mismatch. This also counts for pricing your product, something that you always do wrong the first time (unless you’re lucky).

The result is that you get delays in development because of being innovative. Yet once you release those features not many people might want them, resulting in more delays because you have to start over making new features.

Most startups (>90%) fail because they get stuck in this vicious circle of delay and product-market mismatch, and simply run out of money. Our main success is that we managed to control delays in development and come closer to our product-market fit with every new release.

Herby:  How do you separate yourself from your competitors and what makes your platform better or different?

Satya van Heummen:  The interesting thing is that we don’t have that many competitors. There are a lot of ticketing companies out there providing some sort of event marketing tools for their customers, but they will never be as good as we are, simply because it’s not their core business. There are also a lot of social media and newsletters tools, but they are not specifically deployed for event marketing and they are hard to grasp. So with Planspot we combine all those different channels, make them easy and effective.

But our main USP compared to our competitors is definitely our media network. Planspot basically matches each event to relevant media (like magazines, newspapers, event listings, blogs,  billboards). And media get great content and can charge event organizers for publication. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Herby:  What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?

Satya van Heummen:  Definitely reaching our product-market fit. We still didn’t find it completely, but with each new release we’re getting closer (proof: increase in users, retention, increase in paid users). So make sure to always think MVP, work Lean and pivot whenever needed!

Herby:  Please share some tips & advice for new tech startups and entrepreneurs.

#1.  Even if you had the best idea ever, once you get to the market with your brand new investment, you always got it wrong. So make a minimal viable product and get to the market superfast to talk to your (future) customers. Their input is the most valuable to get you to your product-market fit asap.

#2.  No matter the consequences, don’t be afraid to pivot. Don’t be afraid to change strategy, your product, your features, your developers, and people in your team (yes, that includes firing people). If something doesn’t work, better change it today than tomorrow.

 Herby:  What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business and if you could start over what would you do differently?

#1.  Selling too early: we sold our (huge) product way too early, creating high expectations with potential customers. Then we launched our MVP, and it was a major disappointment for those customers.

#2.  Making your product too big: we didn’t start working lean / MVP and we spend too much time on features that nobody wanted, yet were complicated to make. Result: lots of delay

#3.  Don’t outsource development: we started by outsourcing development (cheaper), next we switched to freelancers, now we have our own developers. I’d never start a tech company again without developers in my team from moment zero.

Herby:  Besides the obvious social media tools available, what are the top 3 most useful tools or resources you’re currently using to grow your company?

#1.  LinkedIn. It’s simply invaluable to us to grow our business

#2.  Pipedrive. It’s the best easy, effective yet simple sales tool out there (and we’ve tried many).

#3.  Trello. Nothing beats Trello to get cohesion and transparency in your company.

Herby:  What’s your definition of success?

Satya van Heummen:  Making your vision of your product and company come true, and be 100% happy with what you’re doing.

Connect with Satya van Heummen

Twitter @Satyavh

Facebook/Planspot

Kate Endress is the founder of DITTO, a 3D technology that allows you to virtually try on eyewear. Kate and her new startup have been featured on both Marshable and Techcrunch and today, Kate is sharing her startup story, as well as a few entrepreneurship advice for new entrepreneurs.

Herby:  Please tell us a little bit about your company and how it all started.

Kate Endress:   DITTO is an online retailer selling a wide collection of the top designer glasses and sunglasses. Based in San Francisco, DITTO uses patent-pending technology to let shoppers create a DITTO, a 3D virtual self, from video footage from their webcam. Shoppers can use their DITTO to virtually try on glasses to see how they fit in 180-degree views before they buy them from the site. Customers can also share their DITTO to get feedback from friends or ask a DITTO stylist for a personalized recommendation.

Herby:  How do you separate yourself from your competitors, what makes you better?

Kate Endress:   There are three key differentiators between our competitors and us:

1)  Our innovative, interactive 3D video try-on technology lets customers see if the glasses actually fit them before they buy.   Our competitors use 2D pictures that don’t scale the glasses properly and aren’t interactive.

2)  In addition to big mainstream brands, we well trendy designers, like Illesteva and Westward Leaning, that aren’t sold on other sites.

3)  Our sleek, well-designed website has already won 10 design awards and makes searching for glasses fun and easy.

Herby:  How many people are currently using this platform and how do you plan to keep growing?

Kate Endress   So far, over 50,000 have created DITTOs. It’s so exciting to see that people are using (and loving) what we’ve built!  I get emails every day from customers that we really helped solve a problem for them.  I email them back asking for feedback, features they would have liked to see, and asking about which other brands they wish we’d start selling. This feedback is helping me layout a growth plan for the future.

Herby:  Please share a few business tips and advice for first time entrepreneurs.

Kate Endress   Do your homework and listen to your prospective customers before you start. I spent countless hours watching and listening to people buying glasses in retail stores or optometrist offices. I gained an understanding the existing pain points, garnered insights which have led to some of our coolest features, and developed a deep inner confidence that we were solving a problem that mattered which came into play when things got tough later.

Herby:  What was the best entrepreneurial advice you have ever been given?

Kate Endress:  “ It’s a marathon, not a sprint.“  It often times takes years to vet an idea and get it off the ground. Starting a company requires an inhumane amount of hours and you are often so excited about it, you’d rather work on it than do other things. But months and months of grueling hours becomes counterproductive and founders fatigue is real. Take care of yourself by getting 8 hours of sleep per night and working out regularly. Take days off when you need it. Take at least at full week off once a year.  I realize now this makes us all better.

Herby:  Starting out what was the worst mistake you made as an entrepreneur, and what did you learn from it?

Kate Endress:   The worse mistake I made was underestimating how long it would take to build real technology.  I must have heard this a thousand times at business school but I figured that my company would be different.  I sat alongside my engineer team and put together a “conservative” game plan for product development.  We ended up being 6 months behind schedule and I spend money scaling up other parts of our business before we needed to which wasted precious dollars.  Tough lesson learned.

Herby:  What is your definition of success?

Kate Endress:  To me, success is about being competent and hard working enough to be respected, passionate enough to inspire our team, our vendors, and our customers, and smart enough to build a team of people that is even smarter. The last two years that I’ve been working on DITTO have been an incredible learning opportunity for me and the road to greatness is still ahead. But I’m motivated to keep striving. I love reading books about great leaders and seek out advice and feedback of how I can be better. I hope I look back in a few years and smile knowing I’ve led DITTO with purpose and passion. Now that’s success.

Herby:  How can our community get in touch with you?

Kate Endress:   Feel free to follow me on Twitter @KateEndress or email me at kate@ditto.com.

Whether conducted face-to-face, by telephone or via email, entrepreneurial interviews are becoming an increasingly popular tool to be used in the contemporary marketing campaigns. The real success stories behind the stage have always been a great source of inspiration, bringing both – powerful advertising impact and intense interest amongst business circles.
This article will give you a walk-through of what to consider when preparing an interview with an entrepreneur for your blog.

No wonder why there is increased emphasis on the pre-interview preparation. It is a tough job indeed and can be very tricky for several reasons:

• Interviews should be conducted in a way  to bring added value to the public, develop entrepreneurs’ favorable repute; boosting your blog popularity and traffic. That means one thing – you need to go that extra mile, being able to deliver a memorable experience to all parties.
• All people are unique. In practice, you would come across totally polar personalities, possessing super specific traits, cherishing different values and often reacting quite controversially in any given situation. The conclusion – you would better be a behavior- based interviewer and good psychologist, then being a stereotyped one, simply following your list of questions.
• You need to devote decent amount of time, exploring your target interviewee’s interests, recent interviews and business sector.  This will give you a sober notion of his personal attitude and help you create a questionnaire, strictly corresponding to his communication manner and behavior.
• You cannot underestimate the fact that you are interviewing a famous public figure, a successful leader or reputable manager who as such, needs to be treated very respectfully.

Some tips on making the interview worthy and viral:

• Go into details with the specifics of the business you are about to delve for a successful interview. That will give you the confidence that your questions sound precise, professional and just on the spot.
• Avoid questions that could be followed by short YES/ NO answers. Except that they don’t bring any valuable information, the definitive answers have never been the looked-for result in a professional interview. Use open questions instead, aiming at provoking detailed and quality answers.
• Make sure that questions are clear and can be easily understood both by the interviewee and the audience. Appealing quotes or phrases are always a good tool to catch people’s interest from the very beginning.
• Keep the right balance between professional and friendly attitude. Tone should be amicable to certain extend but still, speech needs to be elegant and  courteous.
• Select the questions considering your specific goals and target audience – they need to be engaging and deliver brain teaser answers. To be a notable one, the interview should inspire, people must have something to learn from it!

Accordingly, here are some helpful questions to ask entrepreneurs, which in terms of  precision,  have been divided in several groups:

 1.     Ice-Breaking Questions

Those kind of introductory questions are the prep-step in an interview, helping entrepreneurs feel more at ease, melting the distance and inspiring a friendlier atmosphere.That’s the ultimate trick to make them share more.

When meeting entrepreneurs for the first time, you can safely take the floor by asking:

• Let’s test your entrepreneurial intuition. What is the first question you think I am going to ask you?
• Tell me more about yourself?  What kind of person are you?
• Try to describe yourself in 3 words only.

2.     Standard Informative  Questions

After breaking the ice, you can move forward to a series of standard questions providing general information about the company, name, headquarters, company’s vision, mission, goals, values, future projects.  

Here, you can try some of these:

• Where did you get your entrepreneurial spirit? Are your parents entrepreneurs?
• What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?
• Where did the idea of  your business derive from?
• How did you decide on the location for your business?
• How did you come up with the name for your company?
• Considering the fierce competition in Today’s  business world, how would you highlight your company’s competitive advantages? What makes it stand out of the crowd?
• How do you handle investors and funding issues in your business?

3.     Personal Questions

By asking more personal questions you are going deeper than just scratching the surface. Getting more involved in the talk, you are now bringing the interview to the next level – letting the audience become more familiar with the personal touch behind the business success.

Do not hesitate to ask some of the following question samples:

• Outline the  schedule of one of your typical working day?
• What are your hidden inspiration sources? How do you generate new ideas?
• What best motivates you? How have your entrepreneurial motivations changed since you first started?
• How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
• What’s your greatest entrepreneurial achievement to be proud of?
• What are your shortcuts to successfully handle frustration and stress?
• What book has inspired you the most? ( What is your favorite book?)
• Who is your greatest support when facing up hardships in business?
• What do you consider to be your weaknesses?
• What do you do on a daily basis to grow as an entrepreneur?
• How do you evaluate human resource factor as an inseparable part of your company success?
• What’s your way of hunting talents and building effective working teams to achieve  great results?
• What are the main principles you follow to build a successful customer relations?

4.     Critical Thinking Questions

Critical thinking quizzes reveal entrepreneurs’ analytical skills when solving a situation and show their ability to weigh the possible solutions before coming up with a final answer. Questions in this category are highly educational and greatly increase the degree of engagement.

Here are a couple of questions that would be beneficial to be asked:

• Do you believe there is a winning formula for becoming a successful entrepreneur? What is yours?
• What is your opinion on the following topic: Are entrepreneurs originally born as such or they are raised to be successful?
• How do you identify business opportunities and what metrics do you use to measure their viability?
• What popular entrepreneurial advice do you agree/ disagree with? Why?
• If you could talk to one person from history, who would it be and why?
• Who is the one entrepreneur to be your greatest example and inspiration?
• How would you scale the advantages and disadvantages of being entrepreneur?
• How would you rank the key 5 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
• How do you define success?

5.     Extra Value Questions

The time has come. This is where you start asking questions to provide the best entrepreneurial and business tips , lessons and advices to the audience.

If you want to bring that added value for your readers, do not hesitate to include questions as follows:

• What entrepreneurial tricks have you discovered to keep you focused and productive in your day-to-day busy schedule?
• What are your most effective methods to motivate your team for outstanding results?
• What ‘s your milestones to help you develop a stable company culture and friendly working athmosphere?
• What would you advice to the start-up entrepreneurs?
• What’s your personal manner for balancing work and life?
• Do you wisely consume your time as an entrepreneur? What key activities would you recommend entrepreneurs to invest their time in?
• Do you follow some specific self-control mechanisms to encourage you to keep walking when things are not going as smoothly as planned?
• Do you believe in destiny or do you think you can control your fate?

6.     Amusing Questions

To escape a bit from the dry and monotonous business etiquette, find the right timing to fit some jokes in the tone of the discussion. 

Bring some fresh air with a set of creative and funny questions such as:

• What’s your favorite quote for describing entrepreneurship?
• What’s your favorite metaphor for describing entrepreneurship?
• Are you an adventurous type of person? What’s the most exciting experience to memorize in your entrepreneurial journey?
• Top 3 places on the globe that you haven’t conquered yet but would love to?
• Top 3 websites/blogs that you can’t imagine your day without? Give your reasons.
• Top 3 mobile apps that make your work more effective?

 7.     “ What If “ Questions

They will help you put entrepreneurs in a funny situation and play some role scenarios. People are always curious to know what successful people would do if placed under weird circumstances and how would they react if set out of their everyday environment.

Why don’t you ask them some of the following?

• What are the 3 things you would bring with you if teleported to a desert island?
• If you had a magic stick, which are the 3 things you would change in the world?
• What is the one issue about your life experience you would alter if you had the chance to?
• If you were to write a book about yourself, how would you name it?

8.     Dare to Answer Questions

Those kinds of questions are to be asked at interviewers’ own risk, since some of them could be accepted as too provocative. On the other hand they are an effective way to convert the interview into a highly rated material, while bringing popularity to both parties.

You can try with:

• Are there any missed opportunities that you wish to have leveraged?
• What is your greatest fear, and how do you manage fear in general?
• How do you think being an entrepreneur has turned you into a better person?
• What makes you feel out of your comfortable zone? What are your ways to handle these situations?
• Share some of your failures and the best lessons you have learned from them?
• What sacrifices have you had to make to be a successful entrepreneur?
• What was the toughest moment you have experienced in your business practice? How did you succeed to get over it and move forward?

Conclusion:

Following those advice will guide you throughout the interview process. However, sometimes topics are naturally flowing from one to another leaving you in a chaos of thoughts so you have to be prepared to think outside “your question agenda”. In this case, you have to react fast, try to stay confident and be ready to bring more colors to the interview.  Try to shape the interview more like a business dialogues rather than a boring monologue by being an active listener. Stay in motion; help entrepreneurs with extra questions if needed to keep the conversation smoothly going.

There is no general rule on the number of questions to be included in an interview. Keeping it simple and concise, often between 10 and 20 questions is a good working practice, but again, it can vary depending on the types of questions asked and the subsequent length of answers delivered. Making both entrepreneurs and public enthusiastic with the interview held, would be your best prize for being brilliant in what you do.

Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora founded “Back to The Roots” to help you grow your own mushroom. The duo had their big AHA moment during a lecture in College about growing mushrooms from recycled coffee grounds, and the rest was history. Their product became a media sensation and has been featured on many media outlets, including ABC, NBC & FOX business news.

Today they are sharing their business story, some entrepreneurship advice and of course their plans are for the future.

Herby:  Please tell us about your company, what does it do and where did the idea come from?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  Back to the Roots started with the Grow-Your-OwnMushroomGarden after we heard in a lecture that it was possible to grow mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. The garden quickly became a hit, and the mission to inspire people to grow their own food was born.

Herby: What are some of the projects you are working on right now?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  We’ve just launched our HomeAquaponicsGarden – a fish tank with which people can grow their own food on the kitchen counter. We did a Kickstarter for the project last December, and now the kits are on pre-orders. They’ll be on shelves this summer!

Herby: Do you or have you ever own any other businesses, if so what happen to them?

Nikhil & Alejandro :  We haven’t! We started Back to the Roots right out of college, and have been sticking with it. We’re dedicated to growing the company into a sustainable food resource for consumers.

Herby: Please share a few business tips and advice for first time entrepreneurs.

Nikhil & Alejandro :  Hustle! It’s always about hard work. You won’t get anywhere if you want to just sit back and relax – you have to be always moving, thinking, creating goals and doing your best to reach them.

Herby: Starting out was there ever a time you thought about quitting, thinking this idea wasn’t going to be a successful business, and how did you overcome these feelings?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  Running a business can be daunting – there are always times when you wonder if you’ll pull through or have enough cash. You have to just keep working as hard as possible and knowing that you can do something. We overcame those feelings by looking at the reasons we felt that way, and working to change the situation or figure out the challenge.

Herby: Say I was starting my own “Back to The Roots” today, what would you say is the most important thing I need to know?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  Listen to your customers – they’ll tell you what people are looking for, and then you can create it for them.

Herby: What are the top 3 most useful tools or resources you’re currently using to grow your business?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  Facebook, definitely! That’s been a huge driver for us, always, because it’s such an open way to communicate with our customers. We also encourage people to post pictures of their mushroom gardens and when they do, we’ll donate a MushroomGarden to a school of their choice.

Kickstarter was another huge tool for us this year – we raised $250,000 for our new product, a home AquaponicsGarden, via Kickstarter (Facebook was really helpful with this too!).

This is a bit of a different tool, but we also see design as a resource of sorts. If we employ simple, classic design in our products, people will want to use them because they’re easy and elegant. It helps to keep this in mind with everything we do!

Herby: What is your definition of success?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  Reaching the goal you’ve achieved, and knowing you’ve accomplished something positive along the way. We love business – otherwise we wouldn’t have started one – but we also believe that business can do good and can help consumers. Knowing that we’ve been able to donate product to classrooms and help kids learn about food is one of the best ways to define our success, but it’s never over.

Herby: Can you recommend a good book for new entrepreneurs

Nikhil & Alejandro:  The Lean Startup

Herby: Where do you see your company 5 to 10 years from now?

Nikhil & Alejandro:  We’re looking to expand and make new products to keep growing in the sustainable food space. We’re hopeful that we’ll be leaders in this area and be able to help other stay healthy and eat healthy!

Connect with Back To The Roots

Twitter @ValezAlejandro

Twitter @NikhilArora

Website: Back to The Roots