Tips To Grow Your Small Business [INTERVIEW]

Pixmac is led by CEO Vitezslav Valka (a.k.a Vita) and supported by his dream team.

“We’re a small bunch of motivated people that are building up a site from scratch. We started in 2008 and everyone enjoys the progress we make every month. We’re not afraid of new things and that brings a lot of new ideas.”

Personally, I have learned a lot about business and life from him. So, I thought it might be a good idea to have Vita on this post to share his experience and tips to growing small businesses.

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1. In general, what do you think is the greatest challenge for small businesses?

Running a business is pretty complex at times, the greatest challenge is to remain focused on certain things that help boost your  business significantly. Here are some examples of my key focuses:

a. Conquer part of the world from your living room and beat the big and static competitors.

b. Make friends out of your customers.

c. Keep up with the speed of change

On a side note, one of the greatest advantages that small business has over the big brother is being small. A small team makes your business quick, flexible and adaptable. And when everyone does his/her job well, the success usually comes to you somehow naturally. Don’t push it too hard. Stay alert, watch the world and catch the news coming in. Be friendly and open. And suddenly, you’re successful

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2. What are Pixmac’s Goals?

- Become one of the TOP 6 stores with stock photos for micro prices

- Have a team of Territory Managers that build and feel the local markets

- Keep the site simple, friendly and have a great customer support

- Invest the money we make back into the product

- My personal: make the most effective and usable photo site in the world

Always remember that you need a team to achieve big goals. As for our strategy, I would like to keep it a secret.

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3. What are your personal tips to grow a small business?

- Never stop learning new things, reading books and working hard

- Be fair and friendly to your customers, listen to them

- Search for innovations, remove features that nobody use

- Find the thing that makes your product different and love it

- Drink tea, don’t smoke and take your girl for a dinner sometime

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4. So, more specifically, what are the key ingredients leading to Pixmac’s success?

The Team: Our team members complement each other. Michal Prynych and Martin Talavasek are coding a great engine. Lucie Navratilova is focusing on website testing and support to customers. Martin Vlcko is our search engine guru, and all that is glued together by me. Actually I’m just a glue that sticks everyone’s work together

The Satisfaction: Satisfaction doesn’t only come from results and financial rewards. It is also important to work in a happy environment, which is made up of our customers, office employees, territory managers and bloggers.  Life’s too short to focus solely on superficial things. I want to do a great job, be satisfied and keep important people close. Money is a by-product (:

Hopefully, our spirit and personality would shine out of Pixmac.

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5. A 140 characters advice for our readers please.

Work with the right people. Don’t forget your family. Think of your time as money in your wallet and invest wisely.

Source : www.penn-olson.com