How to Succeed in Business: Tips From a Consultant Turned Superstar Tech Entrepreneur

Yves Salama and I are office mates at 55 Broad Street. Our gray hair brings up the average age in our suite. We both enjoy bouncing ideas off one another and the rest of our colleagues.

Yves has a wealth of experience as a consultant under his belt, and I’m sure we can all benefit from someone who has the courage to keep exploring new opportunities. It’s my pleasure to introduce him to you.

David: How did you arrive on your current path?  

Yves: My background as a business process consultant made me see the need to organize the emerging, growing technology of social media in companies. There’s no question that social media is here to stay and that it brings new challenges to organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit): coordination with marketing, creation of relevant content, collaboration among contributors, keeping the message consistent, engaging with communities, protecting the brand, training.

 We created Teem’d to stimulate the development of relevant, original, and localized content from contributors throughout the organization. Designed around groups, the application allows teams to create content together using an intuitive review and approval process. Different groups collaborate across departments or locations and share content with other groups throughout the organization. Local groups can customize these suggestions for their locale or audience. Teem’d was designed to solve the pain of contributors who have a full-time job, (as opposed to the pain of specialists whose full-time job is social media), and helps address the distributed community throughout the organization, (as opposed to the generally centralized effort of the social media group).

David: What does your typical day look like?

Yves:

1.  Meet with prospects
2.  Create and/or review social media content for Teem’d
3.  Find new ways to approach new prospects
4.  Participate in industry events to keep current and continue to prospect

David: What are some of the hardest truths to face up to in business?

Yves: It’s harder than you think:

1.  Don’t outsource product development, it won’t work
2.  Product development is difficult even when done locally
3.  Business development takes longer than you would hope
4.  Costs are higher than expected
5.  Closing the sale is more complex than you can imagine

David: What are the most common issues you notice that keep entrepreneurs and small businesspeople from reaching their full potential?

Yves:

1.  Lack of conviction
2.  Lack of vision
3.  Bad timing
4.  Working with the wrong people

David: What are some of your own professional development challenges? How are you working on them?

Yves: As chief cook and bottle washer I’ve learned that being an idea person is not enough, that I need to understand how developers work. I also have had to learn how to pitch and sell to prospects, investors and, most important, employees. Here is how I am meeting these challenges:

• Get advice from the right people
• Make sure I “get in the weeds” and understand the details of how everything works
• Stay current on industry trends and who are the best people to contact

Yves Salama is the CEO of Teem’d, an online application designed to help users manage their social media presence. You can check out their website at www.teemd.com.

What do you think of what Yves has to say? Let us know in the Comments Section Below.