62. Giving Students Better Access to Work and Supporting Local Communities, with Joseph Black

During his time in university, Joseph Black discovered a pivotal flaw in the current education to employment gap. Many of his peers either lacked the experience to go into their desired field after graduating, or had to leave school altogether due to the rising cost of living, so Joseph decided to create a platform to change that. As the Co-Founder & CEO of UniTaskr, Joseph built a platform connecting students with quick & reliable part-time work by providing tasks set by members of the local community.

Join Joseph and Jim as they talk about building Joseph and his co-founder’s vision of tackling the student financial crisis into a usable, successful platform. They’ll get into mistakes and pivots made early on in the process, marketing strategies to grow the platform (Word on the street Gen-Z uses this platform called TikTok)and UniTaskr’s evolution from local to global by focusing on the demand for highly skilled remote workers.

3 Key Takeaways

• The Difference Between a Boss and a Leader: “A boss will dictate, a leader will work alongside you.” As a founder, it can be easy to fall into the mindset that you have to always be the boss, but a leader keeps their team motivated, creates transparency, and gets people invested in the company values. Are you a boss, or are you a leader?
• Know Your Employees with Regular Touchpoints: At UniTaskr, they have “quarterly appraisals'' that act as a touchpoint with each employee to give them the opportunity to discuss their progress at work, set key milestones, and share how they’re feeling within their day-to-day roles. This creates happier employees more invested in your company’s vision and more likely to stick with you.
• Having a Technical Cofounder Helps: Newsflash - It can be tough to build a tech company if none of the founding team knows how to code. As you’re looking to start a company, find people that fill the gaps you have; none more important than someone that can build the product!

Resources
Joseph’s LinkedIn

About
From a reusable golf ball seller at age 11 to safari ranger at 16, Joseph’s journey to founding his current company (UniTaskr) at 19 has been a meteoric rise.

UniTaskr - The Student Marketplace, has been created in order to tackle the student financial crisis. Students all over the world are constantly on the lookout for ways to earn money effectively around their studies. Meanwhile members of the general public and local businesses are constantly on the lookout for ways of cutting costs.

UniTaskr allows students to find quick & reliable part time work, through accepting tasks set by members of the local community. Upon signing up, students are able to highlight any key tasks they believe they can complete, then when a member of the public posts a request, the right students are notified.

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