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“Effective Executive” Series with Shelli Trung, Founder of 3Six5Dates.com

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This week’s “Effective Executive” interview is with Shelli Trung, Founder of reality date-a-thon website, 3six5dates.com. The social experiment follows the adventures of four women in four international cities, all going on about 100 dates each, within one year. Shelli was recently listed as one of Australia’s Top 10 female startup entrepreneurs, and is frequently quoted in the media on Marketing and Branding for startups. She is currently located in New York, discussing partnership opportunities to grow 3six5dates – including turning the dating stories into comics and animations.

 

How did you come up with the concept of 3six5dates?

I had set myself a goal at the age of 25 to have started my own business by the age of 30. With this in mind, I started researching the range of businesses that would suit the lifestyle I wanted. I knew I wanted to create something fun that would not tie me to a specific location. I love storytelling and was specifically inspired when watching Nora Ephron’s “Julie and Julia,” which is about a woman who cooks through all of Julia Child’s recipes in one year while simultaneously blogging about it. I combined this curiosity with the gap that I felt the TV series “Sex and the City” left behind when it finished up. I didn’t want the voice of the mature, professional, single woman to fade into the background. 3six5dates is an attempt to fill that gap in some way.

As someone who is passionate about female entrepreneurship, can you provide some ways that women can empower themselves and embrace entrepreneurship?

Regardless of whether you are male or female, going out on your own is exciting but can also be scary. Historically, women have let men lead the charge. However, I am seeing more and more women stepping up to the challenge, which is uplifting.

Women need to recognise that their unique talents – such as being excellent relationship builders, natural multi-taskers and the simple fact that women make more purchasing decisions than men – to be great assets to starting a business. The key thing that has really made the difference for me, is to go out and get your support system if you are not surrounded by other entrepreneurs. I certainly wasn’t when I started! But it is this single reason alone that has sustained me through the tougher moments – and there will be plenty of those. Learning to ask for help is another key factor. Women tend to think they can do it all – but they should realise that they don’t have to! Burning out is the fast track to wanting to give up!

Can you tell our audience about any obstacles you faced when creating your Company and how you overcame those obstacles?

At one stage, we were trying to work on 10 projects at the one time and not completing any of them. It was definitely a lack of focus – trying to do too much and accomplishing nothing. We instead now concentrate on – and are committed to delivering – three larger project outcomes every quarter.

How do you manage your busy team of volunteers and what tools have you found to be effective on a day-to-day basis?

I can work pretty much anywhere there is an internet connection. Being a virtual team does come with its unique challenges. We make use of a lot of online tools – many of them free.

We run all our meetings and training through Skype, which allows us to share one another’s computer screens – extremely useful for design work.

All our files are shared on Dropbox and we are also heavy users of Evernote to keep track of tasks. To minimize the number of emails we send one another, we have a 3six5dates private group to relay any team announcements.

Most of my team, including myself, have their emails feed into their phones which has been a great time saver.

As the sole founder of your Company, how do you keep up with the everyday demands?

I have a wonderful team who are very supportive and make me feel like a superstar so I don’t feel like a solo founder!

I think running any business effectively and ensuring you are leading and driving the vision – as opposed to working ‘in’ it – requires that you automate and delegate as much as possible.  This means equipping, empowering and trusting your team once they are trained.

What is next  for you for the remainder of 2012?

3six5dates has spent the last six months developing strategic partnerships with dating organizations in the US. We have and will continue to roll out cross-promotional activities with them, including comics and animations.

In addition, I am working on launching another startup in Australia called MenuHub with a good friend and co-founder. As the name suggests, it is food-related and early testing has shown extremely positive results so far. I am excited about this new challenge!

The rest of the year looks to be full of possibilities!

 

Happy Earth Day – Tips on Running an Eco-Friendly Business

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$200 billion productivity gains

$190 billion savings from reduced real estate, electric bills, absenteeism & employee turnover

100 hours per person not spent commuting

50 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions cut

276 million barrels of oil saved

1500 lives not lost in car accidents

$700B total estimated savings

…so says Inc Magazine about virtual companies. As a virtual agency since we were founded in 1998, PerkettPR is proud to spend every day contributing to the improvement of our environment. Not only do we reduce our agency’s carbon footprint – less gas, less real estate, lower electric bills, less emissions, etc. – but we improve the satisfaction of our employees as well, as their “commutes” allow for successful careers and happy home and personal lives. Being able to work a full day and still fit in time for dinner with the family, or an outdoor run before dark, provides PerkettPR employees with the opportunity to fulfill both career and personal aspirations. We’re proud of our positive culture from both an eco-friendly standpoint and an employee-happiness standpoint.

Like any smart company, we’re certainly always looking for ways to improve. Recently, several of our employees shared additional ways that they contribute to a green environment. Without further ado, here are our tips.

Easy Ways to Be an Eco-Friendly business:

  • Recycle paper products, e.g., mail, container boxes, etc.
  • Recycle ink/toner cartridges
  • Use only recycled paper
  • Re-use paper by printing on both sides – for internal documents
  • Use sleep mode on electronic devices to consume less energy when not in use. You can also turn off the power on your surge protector (energy saving practice)
  • Use CFL light bulbs
  • Use mobile phones or a VoIP provider (like Skype) as business lines to save on cost/use of energy
  • Be paperless whenever possible (e.g., review documents on computer screen instead of printing out, use email instead of paper delivery, keeping files on computers.)
  • Use a free conferencing and web meeting service for meetings, like client Powwownow, instead of traveling to meetings
  • Use a dry erase or chalk board to take notes instead of using Post-Its or order recycled Post-Its
  • Utilize instant messenger services versus phone calls to save energy; money
  • Promote the use of filters for tap water instead of buying costly (and damaging) water bottles.
  • Re-use file folders and boxes.
  • Cut down on personal newspaper or magazine delivery and use online options instead.
  • Purchase software online (SaaS) – save on packaging materials, costs, etc.
  • When ordering corporate-logo gear, order non-toxic products from US-based manufacturers, when possible. Safe and eco-friendly stainless still water bottles are made in China, but both Klean Kanteen and SIGG have fair-trade manufacturing environments.
  • Offer flexible work schedules (e.g. 3x day) or telecommuting to cut down on emissions, traffic caused by your employees’ commuting.
  • Offer incentives to take pubic transportation or to carpool if telecommuting is not an option.
  • Reduce (strive to eliminate) the use of disposable and toxic products and practices
    • Use stainless steel reusable water bottles and reusable travel mugs that don’t have a liner made with harmful BPA (if it doesn’t say it’s BPA-free, then it’s not) or other eco-friendly containers
    • Use VOC-free paint in the office, such as Benjamin Moore Aura.
    • Strike a “corporate discount” deal with a “green” dry cleaner.
    • Do not use non-biodegradable plastic bags (the type many grocery stores offer), instead use biodegradable bags as office trash liners and reusable bags for shopping

What are your tips for becoming a green business? What do you do around your office each day to contribute to a healthier Earth? Please share!

 

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Persuasive Picks for the week of 04/12/09

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Magpie logoHow to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying
The water in the Twitter stream will only get dirtier as it continues to take precedence in the mainstream media spotlight. Spam-based money making marketing schemes are a part of that filth, and Marshall Kirkpatrick chronicles one such abuse that has ties to the likes of Apple, Skype, and Flip.

5 Ways TurboTax Is Reinventing Tax Day With Social Media
Rohit Bhargava of the Influential Marketing blog shares 5 ways that Intuit is leveraging social media to help reduce stress for TurboTax Free Efile users during tax time.

“Social Media” is hype. “social media” is real.
While tons of companies are still struggling with how Social Media fits into their marketing strategy, Damien Basile of the Cause=Habit blog helps readers cut through the hype of it all and see it’s not really as complicated as it seems.

Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say
The decline of print media and the rise of “citizen journalism” via blogs is raising a red flag with the FTC. Michael Bush from AdAge.com shares new information on some new potential guidelines that will apply to bloggers and online writers who are compensated to promote or review products.

A Video of Google’s Data Center
Here’s a rare look look inside of Google’s new container-based data center. I had to throw this in just for the “cool geekiness cred.” 🙂 Get your geek on!