PalPad helps people succeed—one relationship at a time. Whether it’s a college student looking for an internship, or a business consultant seeking new clients,
people are the key to their success.PalPad facilitates relationship building by offering a number of features to track details of your friends’ lives. These details then serve as the catalyst for long-term friendship building.
What inspired you to create a service like PalPad and who did you have in mind when creating this service?PalPad was developed out of my own need for an easy, reliable place to record people I met. I envisioned being able to login to my networking control panel from any computer, and being able to develop my network of relationships. Other contact management tools I looked at were insufficient or overcomplicated for me as a networker – I wanted something that actually multiplied my networking efforts instead of taking up extra time.
I’ve been using this tool privately for 4 months now, and honestly I’ve been amazed with the results. People I causually met 4 months ago have partnered with me for profitable ventures—and I don’t think I would have remembered them without using PalPad. Because of experiences like this, I think I’ve only begun to grasp the power of relationship-based business.
How did you develop the site?
I outsourced site development: programming to a local college student, and graphic design to a contact in England. As a solopreneur, it’s vital to know what to delegate and what to do yourself. I’ve found that my time is best spent developing strategy, so I leave detailed programming to a specialist.
Would you say PalPad is an essential tool for business persons considering there are so many new ways to network these days and the number of contacts one typically has has grown exponentially due to the Internet and such?
You’re right, networking online has become very popular over the past couple years. And some great sites already exist for doing that – I’m not trying to compete with them. My intention is to create a whole new kind of tool.
I believe that the largest number of interactions each day come offline. Whether you’re intentionally networking or not, you run into dozens of people each day that could turn into customers, clients, mentors, or joint venture partners. When you systematically record each of these people each day, you are building the framework for success in your career and business.
I like to tell people, ”If you’re networking online, use LinkedIn. But for networking in the real world, use PalPad.”
Looking back at the development process, is there anything you would have done differently?
Absolutely. As many web service businesses know, it can be hard to meet deadlines using outsourced programmers. I lost a couple key months by mismanaging the people working for me. I would encourage anyone working with freelancers to offer performance-based income incentives.
What is the best thing you did during “pre-launch” time?
Without a doubt, it was creating the pre-launch site. Maintaining a blog forced me to keep writing and putting together new articles. The blog also raised awareness for PalPad, and helped establish a stream of visitors to the site.
I would highly recommend anyone working on a product like this to get a pre-launch site up as quickly as possible. It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned this past year.
How do you plan on spreading the word about your service to professionals everywhere?
I’ve been learning a lot about free promotional techniques recently, and am eager to begin using them. No-cost marketing has three benefits: 1) it’s free, 2) it forces you to be creative, and 3) it can often be more effective than paid advertising. Small companies need to think differently in order to succeed.
Where do you expect PalPad to be in one year?
Over the next year, I will be working to spread the message behind PalPad to as many people as possible. I plan on gradually introducing new features that help people manage their network in more efficient ways. But my overall goal is to raise awareness that connections with people are the most important part of your business.
To learn more about PalPad, visit myPalPad.com.
It’s especially good for those just starting out as it focuses on those just starting out (like in this post titled, Starting a Business? Then Start Small). The blog is run by the very entrepreneurial Aaron Kuroiwa from Pheonix, AZ. He notes that his goals for the blog are to
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