ReportWire

Tag: Business Culture

  • 5 Simple Ways to Overcome the Fear of Missing Out

    5 Simple Ways to Overcome the Fear of Missing Out

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    If you’re digital-savvy, you’ve probably experienced FOMO (fear of missing out) every once in a while — from feeling inadequate to comparing yourself to others. Social media is a FOMO enabler. In fact, a study shows that the dual nature of online personas is one of its drivers. Let’s face it: We live in a day and age where it’s all about comparisons, competition and stepping your best foot forward in projecting an image. While what others post online is a mere illusion, it still plays a tricky game in our heads.

    From episodes of anxiety to damaged self-esteem, the negative effects of FOMO on a person are insurmountable and could lead to long-term problems. But just like any other challenge, there are ways to navigate and manage this sinking feeling of inadequacy. Here are five ways to let go of FOMO:

    Related: 5 Smartphone Tips to Overcome FOMO

    1. Focus on yourself and your own activities

    When we were kids, our teachers used to say “eyes on your own paper.” Back then, the context felt strictly pointing to our own homework and exams. But in retrospect, it resonates as focusing on your own journey and building tunnel vision. This line is still as universal as it used to be — only now, as adults, we’re constantly reminded to put ourselves above everything else — from our strengths, weaknesses and challenges to our unique opportunities.

    Occasionally checking out what and how other people are doing for personal inspiration is healthy. After all, we need our heroes to drive us to get where we want. But the relentless comparisons offer nothing but toxicity. Keep in mind that comparisons yield nothing but empty outputs — it gives you no real value.

    It’s wise to constantly remind yourself that every person has a different path, pacing and set of circumstances. You will get there eventually on your own terms and in your own ways.

    2. Be present in each moment

    Sometimes we get too caught up in reaching a certain goal that we forget to relish our own efforts in getting there. You know what they say: The real prize is the rainbow, as well as the pot of gold at the end of it. Stay present in each moment, focus on your process, think of ways to improve in each step, and let tomorrow be an opportunity to take valuable action.

    Related: How to Beat FOMO and Live a Healthier Life

    3. Take a social media break

    One of the most effective hacks for letting go of FOMO is taking a social media break. Whether it’s muting your apps altogether or simply turning your phone off for a day, the wonders of social media detox are unparalleled for a mental and emotional reset.

    Technically, the online world doesn’t exist, yet people spend too much time, energy, effort and emotions on something as abstract as social media. Take a day off to spend time with your friends, walk in the park, eat at your favorite restaurant or check up on your loved ones. The best way to declutter your mind from the pressures of the digital community is to exist in the real world.

    5. Keep calm and carry on

    Give yourself a break. Keep in mind that you’re human, not AI. Don’t beat yourself up if you feel burned out. Taking breaks to unwind is just as important as grinding hard at work. And in an era where mental health awareness is paramount, the most crucial key to self-fulfillment is self-care.

    Related: You Can’t Do Everything, and If You Try to You’ll Do Even Less

    FOMO wasn’t a thing until 2004 and was extensively used throughout the last two decades in the heyday of social media. Arguably, it’s a self-inflicted phenomenon that was manufactured by the media until everyone bought it. Is FOMO real? It sure is. But is it innate to humans? No, so take it with caution. The trick here is to filter noise — not everything you see in the media is relevant to you, no matter how tempting it is to think that everything matters. At the end of the day, rely on your willpower to brush things off that bear no importance.

    The takeaway here is that FOMO is inevitable in today’s modern age. However, remind yourself that you have the upper hand in controlling it. Maneuver your path; don’t let it take over you. Be the driver of your vehicle, put in the hard work, and focus on the road you’re on.

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    Omri Hurwitz

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  • How to Find Inspiration Everywhere

    How to Find Inspiration Everywhere

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Just like lightning strikes at random, so does the opportunity for inspiration that can spur your business or further your leadership skills. Whether you are actively seeking it or taking a break to reset your mind, there are always opportunities to revisit what you have experienced and glean insightful takeaways. For example, one of the best pieces of inspiration came from a simple conversation with my 9-year-old daughter. More on that later…

    If you are actively seeking opportunities for inspiration, here are some particular ones that have inspired me as a co-founder and CEO.

    Related: 22 Successful Entrepreneurs Share What Inspires Them to Keep Going

    Books

    As an avid reader, I have found a lot of inspiration from books. When you’re in a leadership role, absorbing ideas from others not only opens your perspective and inspires you to change the way you work but can also reinforce your intuition and validate your initial thoughts. Some of the standout books that I have read include:

    • The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz — a must-read for emerging and veteran entrepreneurs, this book candidly discusses the pros and cons of running your own business and key lessons every CEO should learn.  
    • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson — this book helps you identify what matters to you. As your company grows, what is the most important to your business, and where can you make an impact? If you stay true to those two values, it helps you filter out the rest of the noise and remain focused on succeeding and bringing your business to fruition.
    • The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle — another book on culture, as it is vital to a company’s overall success — especially in the current market that we are in today. This engaging book inspires us to transform how teams operate so they can perform together more efficiently.

    Related: 3 Books That Will Make You 6 Figures  

    Movies

    Sometimes you’ll find that inspiration comes when you take the time to unwind. Recently, I sat down to watch some TV with my family, and two documentaries we watched have stayed with me:

    • All or Nothing: Arsenal (available on Amazon TV): Aside from being entertaining as it is all about my favorite sport, soccer, watching Mikel Arteta’s leadership in bringing his team to the front of the Premier League was inspiring. Mikel doesn’t compromise on his or the club’s values, and his passion for the sport inspires his squad to perform at the next level. As leaders, we should all proudly showcase our love for what we do to lead by example and inspire our teams.
    • Kiss the Ground (available on Netflix): This documentary, centered on finding a solution for our climate crisis, uses compelling data to illustrate how a simple solution — dating back hundreds of years — can help address our climate crisis and create healthier food for people. My takeaway from this as an entrepreneur was three-fold: first, there are always opportunities to evolve and rethink the status quo to devise a solution to a problem. Second, look back to history to see what was successful and why. Lastly, look at the larger picture to ask yourself: what impact are we making on humanity and this planet?

    Related: How to Get Over a Burnout and Find Inspiration Again

    Other

    My final note of a place I found unexpected inspiration came from my daughter, who was nine at the time. This image had come up during the workday, and I was looking at it at home and contemplating the correct answer. As it illustrates, are there four bars, or are there three?

    She took one look at it and said that both characters in this image were right without hesitating. The answer isn’t about who is right or wrong but their perspective and how they interpret it. That simple revelation from her has stuck with me throughout the years: my main takeaway was that communication is essential and, in life and business, many scenarios are not “right or wrong” — the important thing is that even if you disagree with them, listen to the other’s reasoning to come to an understanding of their point of view.

    At the end of the day, whether you actively seek it or take a break from the hustle of life and enjoy the moment, you can find inspiration everywhere. Take a moment to reflect upon the content you consume or the conversations you have had, and you will become a more well-rounded character.

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    Jurgi Camblong

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  • 3 Critical Lessons When Changing Your Business and Journey

    3 Critical Lessons When Changing Your Business and Journey

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Leadership isn’t easy, nor is entrepreneurship. Bringing a new idea or concept to market is a dream for many, but it can often feel daunting. When reflecting on my journey to CEO, I recently asked myself, what are the three important lessons I would tell my younger self?

    I came up with the following: Always listen to your customers, choose progress over perfection and get your employees involved. Keeping these lessons in mind will help your quest for entrepreneurial excellence and change in your business. Here’s why I think so.

    Related: Entrepreneurship is Risky. Follow This Less Risky Path For Entrepreneurial Success

    1. Listen to your customers

    When changing your business or product, customers will usually react in one of two ways. On the one hand, they may be receptive and open to change. Often, this occurs when the change doesn’t require a significant shift in customer behavior. Customers don’t want to be pushed too far outside their comfort zone (or their existing process), so if the change requires a substantial shift in attitude or perhaps a change in how they interact with your business, they might be more resistant.

    Knowing this, it is essential to listen to — and acknowledge — their concerns. As a leader, you probably won’t be able to solve all their problems, but by listening and acknowledging, you can move people down the path toward accepting changes. In addition, you’re supporting the notion that they are on the same team as you, which helps bolster change.

    Another effective way to reinforce a new belief is to focus on “peak moments” — i.e., specific parts of the consumer decision journey that have a disproportionate impact and that consumers tend to remember most.

    Peak moments often include first-time experiences with a product or service, touchpoints at critical milestones in the customer journey (such as the first renewal cycle), and other moments of intense consumer interaction (and reaction).

    Related: How to Quickly Adapt to Change and Future-Proof Your Business

    2. Progress over perfection

    In today’s competitive start-up landscape, it is tempting to strive for perfection when launching a new product, idea or solution — especially those of us with an engineering bent. No one wants to go to market with something that feels “less than.” However, grasping for the goal of perfection can be a barrier to real growth. Like the well-worn aphorism says, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

    Without making mistakes and allowing the chance to improve, we’d never know what success looks like — that’s the danger of letting perfection be the enemy of good. And honestly, it’s those ups and downs that make entrepreneurship life interesting.

    Related: Seek Progress, Not Perfection: Why Your Business Should Embrace the “Toothpick Rule”

    During my career, I have witnessed the transition in both thinking and execution from so-called waterfall to agile — essentially moving from sequential to iterative. It is a huge difference maker in quickly demonstrating (or not) progress. While it might sound scary to release something small and seemingly incomplete, realize that as consumers, we have grown accustomed to that approach of consuming new products and processes — think about the last mobile app you downloaded.

    Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and your teams to take high-risk and high-reward opportunities. Taking the time to experiment, learn from problems and discover new solutions is all part of the process. It not only allows you and your business to grow but encourages your team’s development as well.

    3. Get employees involved

    While the C-suite garners a lot of attention and credit when a company performs well, each employee is part of the beating heart of the organization and plays a vital role in enacting change. So, think holistically about change from the bottom to the top.

    To make this happen, as a leader, you should strive to cultivate an environment of trust, curiosity and learning. Leaders must build trust rather than undermine it to spark a sense of commitment and create a culture of motivation and professional development in their business. This helps encourage more discussions and synthesis about what is and isn’t working.

    Also, companies that make innovation, transparency and trust a core value of their culture often attract similar qualities in the employees they hire. There is no doubt that the next generation of talent is making waves in the workforce landscape. From the pandemic to the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, there’s a shift in what employees look for in their employers.

    The needs of each employee and organization differ, but generally speaking, it’s not surprising that employees want to be valued and take responsibility for high-value initiatives. To be clear, success here starts with attracting talent that embodies your company’s values.

    Related: Entrepreneurs Are Struggling With Mental Illness. Here are 5 Ways to Manage Your Mental Health As An Entrepreneur

    Moving forward

    All in all, change in your business, your products and the market can and should take time. Accomplishment doesn’t happen overnight. Be open and wise to this. Also, be prepared to learn as you go. There is a difference between reading about and experiencing these lessons firsthand.

    And perhaps most importantly, don’t underestimate what your team can accomplish when given a clear vision and the resources to execute — empowerment is the secret sauce of top-performing organizations.

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    Jim Contardi

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  • 5 Essential Things Leaders Can Learn From Their Employees

    5 Essential Things Leaders Can Learn From Their Employees

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In the era of entrepreneurship and business ownership, many aspiring leaders focus on collecting as much knowledge as possible in terms of running a company or maintaining dazzling team performance. Everyone wants to be the best version of themselves when it comes to professional growth and development.

    Entrepreneurs worldwide try to be constantly on the right track with approaches, business models, leadership strategies, etc. — the world provides plenty of resources and education in the shape of books, courses, seminars and university degrees.

    When it comes to hard skills, though, entrepreneurs can definitely reach out to plenty of resources. We all know, however, that successful leadership is closely connected with soft skills and certain management strategies. What if the employees themselves could teach entrepreneurs useful tips?

    Related: 5 Lessons a Boss Should Learn From Employees

    The team is the mirror an entrepreneur looks straight into

    Usually, we tend to believe that the entrepreneur is the one who teaches their employees all things important when it comes to business and work ethic.

    But much like every major aspect of life, it’s a two-way street. A leader can surely share plenty of useful knowledge with their team but the other way around is definitely as important. Being part of a team is incredibly beneficial both for the employees and the entrepreneur. Through tasks and duties, the team can in fact share beneficial knowledge in terms of soft skills and personal growth — they both are crucial when it comes to successful leadership.

    All it takes is for the leader to actually listen and pay attention to their surroundings. They’d be surprised to know just how much they can learn through daily communication with the team members. At the end of the day, a leader’s success is measured mostly by the success of the team — what’s important here is that this success is not because of the leader only; the employees themselves contribute a great deal by showcasing their personal experiences, work ethic and communication strategies.

    Related: Why Lifelong Learning is the Key to Entrepreneurial Success

    5 things employees can teach leaders

    A good leader is someone who never stops trying to improve themselves work-wise. And while books and courses are always a great option, we can actually add some additional sources of knowledge and experience. Here are five things an entrepreneur can indeed learn from their relationship with the employees at the office.

    1. Diversity in teams, even when challenging, is definitely worth the effort. A team may (and should) consist of different people with different backgrounds and experiences. This way everyone can easily contribute to the whole group by sharing thoughts and beneficial ideas. The trick for the leader here is to learn how to balance out all the diverse opinions and work approaches. Essentially, this could teach them a thing or two about flexibility and team growth.
    2. Communicating with the employees daily requires the leader to put all theoretical knowledge into practice. Teamwork is indeed a great source of various types of situations and issues that need solving and fixing. Even if an entrepreneur has mastered the management theory, only a live situation can actually showcase all this knowledge in practice. That’s why it’s often said that a good leader is someone who manages to keep their team happy and content with the work they do. Without the team, the feedback and the plethora of situations a workday presents, we, as entrepreneurs, could never really improve our theoretical knowledge and check whether it’s suitable for actual situations.
    3. There’s a close connection between the leader trusting their team and trusting themselves as well. We all know that trust is essential when it comes to establishing great professional relationships. If a leader fails to trust their team, then delegating work may soon result in interpersonal issues and arguments. Since building trust is mutual, whenever a leader allows themselves to let go of control and trust their team members, they also showcase trust in themselves. Why? Simply because the team’s success proves the leader’s fair judgment. Whenever an entrepreneur sees how well they’ve managed to distribute work, they ultimately begin trusting their skills as well.
    4. Since the team often consists of professionals, there’s a high chance the leader can oftentimes take the role of a student. There’s beauty in not knowing everything all the time. This way, any person can allow themselves to submerge in other people’s knowledge and expertise. Coming from a place of respect and trust, entrepreneurs can learn a lot of skills from their employees that later could be used in their own experiences. We all are teachers and students at the same time — the fact that someone is a team leader doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve got nothing to learn from the members of that same team.
    5. While money is important, being happy with what you do is more important. Nowadays, a great majority of employees worldwide tend to choose satisfaction and happiness over big paychecks, especially if the latter is at the expense of the first. Through this constant chase after work fulfillment, entrepreneurs and leaders could indeed stop for a second and remember what truly makes their engine run. Essentially, this is the core of truly successful businesses.

    Related: How Becoming a Lifelong Learner Is a Must If You Want to Achieve and Maintain Success

    Being part of a team, regardless of the role, is an incredible opportunity for everyone to learn so much and further elevate their professional expertise and personal development.

    Entrepreneurs and leaders worldwide can indeed benefit quite a lot if they listen and pay attention to their teams. Through this enriching experience, they can gather additional information and knowledge on all things worthy and self-improving. It would be for the better if they play the role of a student from time to time since this position allows them to truly open the door toward successful leadership and business ownership.

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    Ivan Popov

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  • How To Lead With Validation and Become A Better Leader

    How To Lead With Validation and Become A Better Leader

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    On the final episode of her TV show, Oprah declared: “I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common. They all wanted validation.”

    All humans share this innate need and intense desire. When we look at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, three out of five components are related to validation: safety, love and belonging and esteem.

    Related: 5 Rock-Solid Leadership Strategies That Drive Success

    But, what is validation really?

    Validation is allowing and acknowledging someone’s unique emotional experience, thoughts, values, dreams, beliefs, concerns and contributions.

    Allowing: This happens through practicing silence and providing space for full expression.

    Acknowledging: This means expressing that you recognize that what was shared is accurate, valid and important.

    Validation is the feedback that sends the clear message: “You are seen, safe and supported.”

    Related: Your Employees Are Probably Feeling Triggered at Work

    Why does validation matter?

    Validation helps build stronger relationships because it helps people feel valued. Validation is essential to create a deep connection with another human being and is a necessary skill for leaders.

    When we validate others, their needs of safety, love, belonging and esteem are met. These are the requirements for self-actualization. When someone feels invalidated, they cannot fulfill their potential — it may even stunt their growth.

    Validation is so much more than rewarding extraordinary work with money, perks or verbal praise. It requires genuine care and an appreciation of the whole person — not just their accomplishments and efforts.

    Even top performers stop growing when they don’t feel validated or feel invalidated. Invalidation is the unspoken barrier to vulnerability, authenticity and belonging.

    Related: The Pursuit of Happiness: Self-Actualization and Maslow’s Mistake

    Validation is the prerequisite for vulnerability

    In recent years, we’ve all heard about the power of vulnerability and the need for authenticity in every aspect of our lives. I believe everyone understands the value of being vulnerable. And most of us want to be vulnerable. For many of us, it’s a deep desire.

    However, many of us are constantly invalidated, making us cautious or even close to attempting to be vulnerable again. We guard ourselves against people who invalidate our experiences.

    For people to be vulnerable and authentic, they need a safe place. They need a safe person.

    Validation is the prerequisite for vulnerability. When someone validates our experience after we’ve shared something vulnerable, we are likely to be vulnerable again with them. However, we become hesitant or resistant to open up when we are invalidated.

    Related: The Benefits of Practicing Vulnerability in the Office

    What is invalidation?

    Many of us think of invalidation as saying something mean to another person when in reality, many of our invalidating responses actually come from a good place.

    Invalidation can happen by denying, dismissing, or diminishing someone’s experience.

    Denying is overt invalidation. When you tell someone that what they perceive as true didn’t happen or is not happening, it is evident that they will feel unseen, unsafe and unsupported. However, dismissing and diminishing is a more covert message often disguised as motivation. I call this “motivational shame.”

    Most leaders have been trained to motivate their teams. But motivation is not enough. Motivation can be detrimental when it invalidates someone, no matter how great your intentions might be. Invalidation happens when someone expresses concern, and you reply: “You’ll be fine” or “You’ve got this!”

    Invalidation looks like someone sharing an experience they consider painful and receiving the reply: “It’s not such a big deal” or “It could be worse.” Many people would go as far as to share those worst cases with them.

    Even sharing solutions like a mantra or positive affirmation can be an invalidating experience because when people share their feelings, they are not necessarily seeking solutions. They are just seeking confirmation that they are not wrong or fundamentally flawed for feeling them.

    Essentially, being invalidated is getting the message that we are not being rational in our feelings and that we shouldn’t feel that way. This leaves us feeling worse and leads us to shut down, affecting our state, health and performance.

    Validation helps create a safe culture where your psychological safety is a possible reality.

    Fostering an inclusive environment

    It’s a great step to encourage your employees to be transparent, but saying phrases like “be your true self” or “bring your whole self to work” is not enough. Authenticity still feels daring and must be validated for that person to remain authentic.

    Without validation, you cannot have a genuinely inclusive environment because inclusion is not a policy.

    We feel included when we can be authentic and don’t have to strive to fit in. When we are validated, we feel that we belong, just as we are.

    Related: 4 Ways to Cultivate Inclusion and Compassion In the Workplace

    How to validate those you lead

    Validating is a critical leadership skill, even in self-leadership. I’m sharing some examples of validation in the workplace to illustrate how simple it can be:

    Experience: “Wow, being a woman of color in this company sounds difficult.”

    Thoughts: “I really appreciate your willingness to share your ideas!”

    Values: “Wow… I can see why that’s important to you.”

    Dreams: “You sound so excited about this new goal, and with your work ethic, I’m sure you can do it!”

    Beliefs: “Can you tell me more about that?”

    Concerns: “I can understand why you feel that way. I’d be worried too!”

    Contribution: “You’ve put so much into this project. I’m so happy for you. What an amazing accomplishment!”

    Validating is an effective way to connect with those you lead because it communicates that you care about them. To make a difference in the people you lead, you must create an environment where they feel valued. I encourage you to think about how you might replace motivation with validation. As you do this, you can genuinely be the impactful leader you want to be.

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    Elayna Fernandez

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  • The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding With Marketing Analytics

    The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding With Marketing Analytics

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how to succeed in marketing analytics, as the field is constantly evolving, and the best practices for success are always changing. However, some essential tips can help you get started on the right foot and set you up for success in this exciting and ever-changing field. In this ultimate guide, we’ll define marketing analytics, review the different types of marketing analytics, discuss how to use marketing analytics to improve your business, explain what data/tools you need to succeed, and ultimately, learn how to use marketing analytics effectively.

    So, what is marketing analytics? The process consists of measuring, managing and analyzing marketing performance to optimize marketing campaigns and improve ROI. Marketing analytics can track any marketing metric, including brand awareness, website traffic, conversion rates, lead generation and sales. To succeed in marketing analytics, you must have a strong understanding of data analysis and interpretation. You also need to be able to use data-driven insights to improve your marketing strategy.

    Related: 5 of the Easiest Ways to Make Data an Integral Part of Your Business’ Digital Marketing

    The different types of marketing analytics

    There are many different types of marketing analytics, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Here is a brief overview of some of the most commonly used types:

    1. Descriptive analytics: This type of analytics focuses on understanding what has happened in the past. It can be used to identify trends and patterns and to understand why certain events occurred. However, it cannot be used to predict future events.

    2. Predictive analytics: This type of analytics uses past data to predict future events. It can identify potential risks and opportunities and decide where to allocate resources.

    3. Prescriptive analytics: This type of analytics goes beyond prediction and prescribes actions that should be taken to achieve specific goals. It can be used to optimize marketing campaigns and automate decision-making processes.

    4. Social media analytics: This type of analytics analyzes social media data to understand customer sentiment and behavior. It can be used to improve customer service and to create targeted marketing campaigns.

    5. Web analytics: This type of analytics analyzes website data to understand how users interact. It can be used to improve website design and to identify which marketing campaigns are most effective.

    How to use marketing analytics to improve your business

    Marketing analytics can help you understand how your customers respond to your marketing campaigns and identify areas where you need to adjust your strategy. It can also help you track the progress of your marketing efforts over time to see whether they’re achieving their goals. There are a few things that you need to take into account when using marketing analytics:

    • It’s best to understand your customers’ needs and wants clearly.

    • You need to know what kind of message will most likely reach them and why.

    • You’ll want to track which elements of your campaign are working best and which ones aren’t.

    • You need to determine what changes (if any) you should make to improve results.

    • You need to be able to act on the findings promptly so that you don’t lose momentum or hit a plateau in your campaign.

    Overall, marketing analytics is essential for any business looking to improve its performance. Using this information, you can better target your marketing campaigns and boost sales figures accordingly.

    Related: 5 Analytics Tools to Supercharge Your Marketing Strategy

    Types of data you need to track in order to succeed with marketing analytics

    Before you can start tracking your marketing data, you need to know what kind of data you need to collect. There are a few different types of data that are essential for effective marketing analytics:

    • Demographic data: This includes information about your customers’ age, sex, income, etc. Understanding your target audience and creating tailored campaigns that appeal to them is essential.

    • Qualitative data: Qualitative research captures user feedback and opinion to better understand customer attitudes and preferences. This information is especially useful in creating new products or services.

    • Quantitative data: Quantitative research measures the performance of your campaigns using numerical measurements like clicks or conversions. This information can improve your campaigns and help you make informed decisions about the best ones.

    You can track this data in several ways, but the most reliable method is using a tool like Google Analytics or Mixpanel. These tools allow you to easily collect and store all your data in one place to access it whenever you need it.

    The tools and software that can help you achieve your goals with marketing analytics

    If you’re new to marketing analytics, the first step is to determine your needs. Are you looking for insights into how your campaigns are performing? Do you want to track customer behavior over time? Are you looking for ways to optimize your content or advertising? Once you know what you need, the next step is to find the right tool or software for the job. There are several different options available, and choosing the one that will fit your specific needs is essential.

    Some popular marketing analytics tools include reporting tools like Google Analytics and ClickStream, web tracking tools like CrazyEgg, social media analysis platforms like Mixpanel and email tracking tools like GetResponse. There’s also a wealth of software specifically designed for marketing professionals, such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot CRM. However, it’s important to note that not all of these programs are perfect for every business; testing out different options is essential to see which one suits your needs best.

    Related: To Better Understand Your Users, Learn About These 4 Categories of Marketing Analytics Tools

    Tips for using marketing analytics effectively

    Here are a few tips for using marketing analytics effectively:

    • Measure everything: Start by measuring the most important things to you, and then add more metrics as you realize how valuable they are. By tracking multiple channels and data points, you’ll get a complete picture of how your campaigns are performing.

    • Use data visualization tools: Seeing data in a way that’s easy to understand will help you make better decisions about where to focus your efforts. Some popular data visualization tools include Tableau Public and Google Sheets.

    • Compare and contrast results: Once you’ve gathered some data, it’s essential to compare it against previous versions of the same campaign or product. This will help you identify any changes or improvements you may have made and areas where further improvement is needed.

    • Don’t be afraid to experiment: If a marketing strategy isn’t working as intended, don’t be scared to try something new. However, ensure that you test the new approach in a limited way to monitor its performance closely.

    Marketing is one of the most important aspects of running a business, and if done right, can lead to exponential growth for your business. Once you better understand the field and its needs, you can put your best foot forward and optimize marketing campaigns to boost ROI.

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    Piyanka Jain

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  • How to Create a Culture of Gentle Accountability in 3 Steps

    How to Create a Culture of Gentle Accountability in 3 Steps

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I see it every week: the frustration over blown deadlines, the I’ll-get-this-to-you-by-tomorrow commitment that floats into next week, the helplessness with always waiting on the same person to follow through on what they said they would do. So many leaders I work with are discouraged with their culture of accountability, not only because they believe they can’t trust their reports, but also because they really want to. They feel like they’re on a tightrope, balancing between being a compassionate, inspiring leader and a deadline-minded hardass.

    Accountability is an important part of culture, but according to the Workplace Accountability Study from Partners in Leadership (now Culture Partners), as many as 93% of employees are “unable to align their work or take accountability for desired results.” How do effective leaders hold that tension between giving autonomy and holding a commitment to results? How do they motivate their team while keeping an eye on the dependencies in their work outputs? It begins, like it ends, with clear agreements.

    Related: Here’s How to Foster a Culture of Accountability at Your Business

    Agree on clear agreements

    A clear agreement is an agreement that has three crucial components: who is going to do what by when. It’s all very head-noddable, and I see how simple it sounds. It’s probably nothing new to you, actually. But like most simple, important things, it’s also really hard.

    Think about your current requests or tasks due. Does each one have a clear owner, or is ownership implied or diffused amongst several people? Is the outcome crystal clear and ideally in the form of a deliverable, such that completion is unambiguous? And is there clarity on when the total task or milestones are due? “This week” and “end of day” aren’t specific, and they mean different things to different people. Contrast that ambiguity with a clear, thoughtful request: “Jane, do you agree to send me a one-page summary of the product capabilities by 5:00 p.m. Eastern tomorrow?”

    The way to arrive at this clarity, though, isn’t as simple as just starting it from scratch. Sure, this clarity is valuable, but any agreement is, by definition, between two or more people. And this way of communicating is, in itself, an agreement. As a first step, take time with your direct reports to share that you’re going to form clear agreements with them. Explain what you mean by this, and ask if they agree to form clear agreements, too. This gives them a chance to opt in and gives you a social contract to fall back on later.

    Honor most of your agreements

    The Conscious Leadership Group suggests that good leaders keep about 90% of their agreements. Life happens, and nobody is perfect, but the aspiration is to keep agreements as often as possible. When you realize that you can’t keep an agreement made, move quickly to renegotiate the agreement. A renegotiation means more than simply letting people know you can’t keep your agreement. Just like an agreement requires two or more people, so too does a renegotiated agreement.

    The important role of the leader, here, is to role model making and keeping agreements. Setting a culture of gentle accountability begins with this commitment. As a starting point, hold yourself to the highest standard of clear agreements. Include a clear who, what and by when, and then make your follow-through visible. Hold to your agreements as a signal to your sincerity of them.

    Related: How to Increase Accountability Without Breathing Down People’s Necks

    Clean up any broken agreements

    Despite our best intentions and efforts, though, we will break some of our agreements. Again, this is an opportunity to role model and support the commitment to clear agreements. In fact, this is the most important opportunity to reinforce this. Agreements will inevitably be broken, and unless they are cleaned up quickly and deliberately, the commitment to clear agreements will start to dissolve.

    The very first step is to acknowledge that you were out of integrity with your agreement. Integrity, here, is acknowledging that you made a commitment to do something by a certain time and that you lapsed in that commitment. It’s a heavy word by design, but it doesn’t need to be a heavy conversation. If I’m late to a session with a client, I simply say “I want to acknowledge that I’m two minutes late to our meeting and I’m out of integrity with my agreement to start at the top of the hour.”

    The second step is to ask what can be done to repair trust. Being late to a meeting might only require a recommitment to being on time. Being chronically late or breaching a more sensitive agreement might require a more significant conversation and change. This is a critical step. Note that this is not an apology. This is a sincere acknowledgment of a broken agreement and a heartfelt bid to repair trust going forward.

    Related: Want Accountability Within Your Team? Start at the Top

    Building a culture of gentle accountability begins and ends with clear agreements. A foundational conversation on committing to clear agreements, a pre-agreement, is the starting point. The commitment then lives with your actions as a role model, and it grows with your attention on renegotiating and clearing up broken agreements.

    This is what it means to have gentle accountability. When leaders role model integrity and set expectations of clear agreements for everyone, including themselves, accountability moves away from a hardened practice of timelines and consequences. It simply becomes part of the cultural fabric and a shared way of communicating. It becomes supportive and meaningful. Good luck on your journey.

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    Jason R. Waller

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  • How to Activate and Align Your Values When Under Pressure

    How to Activate and Align Your Values When Under Pressure

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In times of high pressure, aspirational core values can seem entirely impractical. Who has time for being “bold,” “innovative” or “connected” when they’re slammed by a barrage of emails and threatened by volatility or disruption?

    In these situations, values are relegated to vinyl stickers on an office wall or words tucked away on the About Us page of a website. How many people can recall their company’s values, never mind using them as a blueprint for decision-making and the basis for team alignment and trust?

    Related: Want Success? Define Your Company Values

    How workplace values emerge

    Values are what is important. Whether you can articulate them clearly or not, you have values. Your company has values and they are set by the executive — not the marketing — team.

    Leadership values shape employee behavior. If leaders value financial performance over all else, employee well-being, environmental impact or social connectivity may be neglected. Values contagion is a real phenomenon, and no training initiative will shift your culture if leadership values are misaligned or inconsistent. Employees roll their eyes at what they perceive as phony company values when leaders don’t walk the talk.

    Values in distress

    Distress arises when there is a misalignment of values. For example, imagine that you’re working late nights and sacrificing family time. If a core value is family, you’ll start feeling resentful toward work. Or perhaps you’re spending too much time caring for your family when a core value is productivity. You might then resent your family. There is no right or wrong; your values profile is entirely unique.

    In life’s journey, purpose is your North Star and values are the flame lighting your way. The terrain may be challenging, but knowing what is important and acting in alignment reduces ambiguity and increases fulfillment. You’ll have a reason “why” and a torch to guide your “how.” If the flame of your values burns low, you — and your team — may feel lost. In an environment of uncertainty, we activate ancient survival mechanisms, including our negativity bias, to secure our safety.

    Are values purely cognitive?

    The missing link in values alignment is our physiological state. When distressed, under threat or unwell, our values shift from aspirational and collaborative to primal and protective.

    There’s an ancient part of the brain called the amygdala. It scans input arriving via our senses and triggers strong emotions to help protect us from perceived threats. This can save our life if a lion wanders into the office. It saved the lives of our ancestors who navigated challenging environments where direct threats to survival were the norm. Fast forward to modern life, where inboxes overflow, amplified by pressure to perform and conflicting demands. We are our worst enemies because to manage complexity, we need to be calm, present and energized — yet we’re sleeping less and worrying more than ever.

    The flame of our values is reduced to embers under chronic distress. Our window of tolerance shrinks. We become a less human version of ourselves. Driven by basic survival emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, craving or disgust, the potential for creativity and collaboration is impaired. Our values downgrade to surviving rather than thriving.

    Related: A Set of Core Values Is What Makes Company Culture a Real Thing

    Find your baseline of calm

    Values-based leadership requires deliberately shifting from fight, flight or freeze into a state of calm coherence: body, emotion and mind. How do you establish calm? Create space in your day. Schedule micro-breaks. Use breathing techniques, meditation, and time in nature to reboot your nervous system.

    Train yourself out of habituated busyness by silencing your phone when it is not in use. Your phone is a tool, don’t mistake it for a friend. It is an extractive technology, and it is mining your attention.

    Polyvagal theory suggests that our nervous system is capable of progressing from calm to playfulness, trust, and high performance. In high performance, you can purposefully ride the edge of fight-flight while in a deeply immersive flow state. Here lies the golden zone for values-based action — and a 500% productivity boost.

    When you trust your environment, yourself and your team, you unlock psychological safety and a shift towards a values-driven culture.

    Values as habits

    Your values should be actionable. Instead of words describing desired traits, they should be an identity you believe in. For example, if you value kindness, your identity is: I am a kind person. Now, what does a kind person do? Simply, they treat others with respect, care and compassion.

    So we proceed to build micro-habits around this identity. Start with what you can achieve in 60 seconds or less. Prepare your environment by leaving strategically positioned cues or reminders. As a kind person, I might choose gratitude as a micro-habit worth implementing. So I set a reminder at 4 p.m. every day to reach out to one person in appreciation, care or support. With repetition, this is embedded in my operating system as a habit. I consistently send positive ripples across my circle of influence. I’m becoming the person I aspire to be through targeted, decisive and practical action.

    We are the sum of our habits. Even a company value like innovation requires a web of supporting practices, ranging from vitality to goal-setting. Leaders valuing innovation need to allocate space for it to emerge. Habits such as relaxation, which shifts us out of fight-flight mode, contemplation and play will support innovation.

    Follow a phased approach, upscaling the habits that work. Build rhythm in your work and life.

    Related: The 8 Values Every Company Should Live By

    Conclusion

    Instead of espousing aspirational values, lead with values-based behavior. You’ll transform yourself, your team and your business one micro-habit at a time.

    Remember that the most significant risk to values is distress — so stay calm. Be the change you wish to see in your organization. Nurture your values flame so that you burn bright instead of burning out. Light the way, and your team and culture will follow.

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    Bradley Hook

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  • 7 Secrets of Truly Successful Personal Brands

    7 Secrets of Truly Successful Personal Brands

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The choice to launch your brand is noticeable. But creating a solid brand is essential. Authenticity, consistency, initiative, confidence, courage, and time are required to complete everything.

    Personal branding is not a thing to do because social media says so. Today it’s an essential element in your communication strategy, used by not only famous and influential people and big businesses but also every individual that wants to be seen, heard and ultimately valued.

    Globally, everyday people are already creating their own brands. The corporate branding machine enslavement is too much, so many professionals are leaving employment. It is crucial to build your brand authority because other than leading to commercial and reputational opportunities, it’s also positive for your self-expression.

    Better clientele, industry recognition and financial gains result from it. Due to declining trust in our institutions, customers trust individuals more than businesses; therefore, you should concentrate on establishing your personal (and business) brand as part of your elevation strategy.

    Check out these seven personal branding success secrets:

    1. Find and curate your “A-Team”

    A new brand’s path can be pretty tricky and resemble an endless race of overcoming technical, emotional and personal obstacles. A key component of overcoming these obstacles is finding and building a solid team that shares your vision and mission.

    Co-founders, workers, advisers, consultants, mentors, coaches and even dependable family members may be a part of your team — link your team selection to your values and ideals and favor compatibility above competence.

    Related: I’ve Interviewed and Hired Thousands of People. Here’s What to Keep in Mind Before Offering the Job.

    2. Tap into future trends and needs

    Adapting based on future trends and customer needs is pivotal because the world is evolving daily. For example, if Jeff Bezos tried setting up an online bookstore today, he would most possibly fail miserably. However, his foresight to know what customers need drove Amazon to a global ecommerce store today. Timing is everything!

    Likewise, knowing the market’s future can help your brand make the right moves and become successful. But it doesn’t imply it’s impossible to foresee how the corporate world will develop. What matters most is how analytically sound you are and how well-equipped you are to anticipate future events.

    Even though it won’t always be exact to a tee, this will give you a solid idea of where things are going. Making assumptions about future trends carries some calculated risk, but staying safe will never help you or your brand grow.

    Related: Looking for a New Business Idea? Here’s How to Identify What People Really Need

    3. Unlearn outdated trends to make way for the new

    For a brand to flourish, it is vital to unlearn in business. We can only build something fresh and distinctive if we let go of our outdated attitudes and practices—discovering a new project or closing a transaction with unexpected customers results from curiosity.

    Unlearning is a systematic strategy to advance and overcome barriers one at a time.

    Entrepreneurship success is composed of 20% learning and 80% unlearning. Remove the restrictive presumptions to make room for helpful information.

    4. Think fast for solutions and act fast

    One of the secrets to a great brand is having the capacity to think and respond quickly. Since environmental issues are worsening, the brand must move soon, seek eco-alternatives and sustainable solutions that reduce their adverse effects, and convey the concept of conscious living to the next generation as quickly as possible.

    Simply acting quickly and moving quickly to find answers can give you a competitive edge. If you are not in a technology-dominant business-like distribution, manufacturing, or something not typically controlled by technology firms, your rivals are probably advancing slowly. We must make many daily decisions, but some are more crucial than others.

    For example, eating is essential, but whether you choose a salad, chicken or a Big Mac is less important at the moment. You can think more rapidly if you can swiftly pick what to eat. Even if your choice weren’t the best, the effects would be minimal in the short term.

    5. Be adaptable and flexible

    Being an entrepreneur entails weighing possibilities and dangers equally. This will help you create a distinct brand and ensure its long-term survival and competitiveness. Many new brands tend to concentrate on a single item or service.

    Meanwhile, they frequently need to see the value of brand creation right away. Startup brands often think that the benefits of their products are evident and that the brand can speak for itself. You can only place that much faith in some potential consumers.

    You must include the development of your brand skills in your content strategy and make sure that the visuals reflect this.

    You must evaluate new items in light of your company values as you grow. Check to see if your objectives are compatible, and if not, make any necessary modifications.

    6. Become an autodidact

    After college, education for most people typically comes to an end. However, your reputation will continue to rise if you develop a passion for studying and being an autodidact.

    However, in this day and age of information overload and many online distractions, being an effective autodidact can be taxing. Therefore, staying focused on your mission is more crucial than ever.

    Some people contend that the age of the autodidact, or self-directed learning, is currently upon us. After all, the internet is brimming with tools for self-learning that you can utilize to build your brand. However, beware that some may lack substance and are merely shiny bells and whistles.

    Related: 6 Little-Known Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs

    7. Be street smart

    Being “street smart,” or able to foresee and handle unexpected everyday business issues, is generally seen as a crucial ability for brand owners and entrepreneurs.

    Most investors claim to be able to spot this capacity when they see it, but the experience is necessary to describe it. To be a street-smart person, you need to comprehend your brand’s surroundings or condition well.

    You are consciously aware of your surroundings. Moreover, you can see what’s happening around you even when you can’t see it. You can form opinions about the situation based on lived experience, the environment and the people in it, giving you the confidence to put your faith in these opinions.

    Related: Are You ‘Intelligent’ Enough to Be an Entrepreneur?

    Conclusion

    To succeed at personal branding, you must be a brand new, evolving you. In a world full of imitators, be genuine and authentic to yourself.

    Authentic personal branding is more than simply self-promotion and marketing commonly seen online. It focuses more on making a courageous difference in people’s lives and inspiring them to live better lives. It can also be about inspiring humanity to do good. After 33 years in this game, I believe and practice that “doing good” is all possible.

    You must invest time and effort to be the “go-to” authority in your chosen area. All things worth doing must be done well; therefore, it’s better to make the most of that time and effort!

    Applying the seven tips above will help you create an authentic personal brand that is true to you and enjoy the success that will inevitably follow.

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    Jon Michail

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  • Are You Treating Customers Right? Ask Yourself These Questions

    Are You Treating Customers Right? Ask Yourself These Questions

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    We hear it all the time: Businesses are more digital than ever before, and this continues to affect almost every aspect of how things are run within a company. But even in a “post”-Covid-19 world, what is something we will (hopefully) never replace with digital? Human interaction.

    Connecting with others remains crucial to pretty much any successful relationship, business or otherwise. Strong customer relationships are the crux of just about every business out there — that one-on-one relationship helps them to know what their customer needs and anticipate problems before they arise. It’s one of the only things that really separates a company from its competitors, especially as new ones seem to pop up every day.

    So what techniques do businesses need to be implementing so that they continue to foster personalized relationships in the midst of all things digital? Here are three questions every business owner should be asking themselves.

    Related: The 7 Stages Of Customer Relationship Management

    Question #1: Do we have a single, comprehensive view of our customer data, interactions and information that is shared across the entire company?

    To begin, you need to assess where your company is at when it comes to having a single view of the customer and their journey with your organization. All internal teams that ladder into each customer relationship should have information that is in real-time. You need to not only know which products they are using but also any problems they’ve had, what their ultimate goals are for their organizations and their communication preferences — anything and everything. Further, once you have all of that information available to you, everyone needs to access it; your sales, marketing, customer support and operations folks all need access to the same set of data.

    Recently, we surveyed 500 B2B sales, marketing, customer success and operations professionals from mid-market organizations to find out how teams are leveraging CRM for a better customer experience. When asked what their strategic priorities were for the year ahead, only 17% cited aligned departments as a top priority, yet 55% cited improving the customer experience.

    What many don’t realize is you simply cannot have one without the other. Real-time feedback and aligning your business’s data and departments have a direct effect on customer experience and of those surveyed, the businesses that reported the best customer service were 2.5 times more likely to report significant revenue growth. Simply put, a focus on customer experience makes a huge difference.

    Related: Customer Relationship Management: It’s More Than Just Conversions

    Question #2: How can we go deeper with our personalization tactics?

    Once you’ve got your data from real-time feedback that has been shared across all internal departments, you’re ready to get personal. And in case you’re not caught up, personalization in sales and marketing today has gone way beyond using a customer’s first name in an email campaign.

    Personalized interactions and service will allow for those exceptional one-on-one relationships mentioned above. How can you possibly serve your customers with exceptional service if you are not addressing their very individualized wants and needs? You need to know what their pain points are, what their successes are and what they need most in order to make things happen.

    In short, do your research, then craft your personalized outreach. Note: There is no shortcut here. The calories you burn doing research or merging data will result in better outcomes.

    Further, personalization can help mitigate any tone-deaf missteps in communication. If a customer is having an issue with something, the last thing you want is your marketing team sending them an email with an offer or an upsell. Plus, you should always be procuring and incorporating as much direct customer feedback as you can — field surveys, post questions and polls on social media and ask direct questions. One tactic is to have your customer service team host quarterly business reviews with customers. A 30-minute meeting once per quarter can mitigate issues before they snowball, while also looking for upsell opportunities. Once you get the answers, as mentioned earlier, that data should get shared across internal departments so your employees can continue making personal interactions.

    Related: Staying Ahead of the Curve: How the Customer Experience Is Evolving

    Question #3: Are we taking every opportunity to have a human touch?

    When we do have a chance to share our human sides, we should excel at it.

    Virtual backgrounds were all the rage early on in video conferencing because they presented a neat, homogenized view of every caller. Guess what? That’s boring, and it could be a missed opportunity for a better, deeper connection. Let your clients see your real background. Is that a guitar? A piece of art you admire? A plant that you are tending to or a book you’re reading?

    How can we use these cues to start real conversations and connect as humans? While there were likely some exceptions early on in the pandemic when people rushed home to haphazard and makeshift workspaces, today’s remote worker will likely have a space that reflects his/her personality and can add value to an interaction.

    Another place to be more human is LinkedIn. If I’m going to do business with you and I visit your LinkedIn profile, what will I see? A laundry list of your qualifications is good, but I’d love a short story as to why you chose this field, what successes you have had and where your passion lies. Don’t miss out on these chances to inject humanity into the digital world.

    Related: How to Create Authentic Relationships and Build Customer Trust

    Moving forward

    By implementing these tactics within your organization, you will be better poised to foster successful customer relationships as things continue to move more and more towards digital, because let’s not forget what’s most important: human interaction.

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    Chip House

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  • 4 Ways Black Diversity Leaders Succeed, and How Executive Peers Can Make Sure They Do

    4 Ways Black Diversity Leaders Succeed, and How Executive Peers Can Make Sure They Do

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In a previous article, I explored several reasons Black diversity officers struggle and how their CEOs can help. That opens the door to more straight talk about how the leaders themselves can step into their success and how their executive colleagues can be part of that success story.

    I focus on diversity leaders who identify as Black for three reasons: a majority of diversity leaders in America are Black, their Blackness matters and the opportunities they have are familiar to every diversity leader. At this point in history, inclusive leaders are learning to focus on race and keep other aspects of identity in view simultaneously.

    Let’s look at four ways you, as a diversity leader — or as one of your executive peers — can thrive in this vital role.

    1. Ensure that the Diversity Leader’s role is scoped and resourced for achievement

    The ‘DEI Why’ has to be clear and achievable. Yes, it’s crucial to have an aspirational vision for the work, but the successful DEI leader equips other leaders to build their point of view around DEI and lead more inclusively. When you are a high-performing Chief Diversity Officer, you lead a center of excellence that improves company results with talent and customers by reducing bias and generating opportunity.

    So your success as a DEI leader is at serious risk if soaring expectations for what you will achieve languish from a laughably small budget and insufficient sponsorship.

    The CEO and CHRO come in here, ensuring that the agenda, objectives, resources and metrics owned by the diversity leader are reasonable, impactful and communicated. Like any investment, the right team and an actual budget will produce returns.

    Every executive peer to a diversity leader should be asking a behavioral question: How am I substantively supporting our CDO’s success?

    Related: These Are the Biggest Blind Spots in Diversity Initiatives, According to 8 Women Experts

    2. The organization is investing in the Diversity Leader’s development

    Diversity leaders get to improve like every employee. The right commitment to a Black CDO’s growth includes two investments:

    • Business Savvy — Integrate the CDO into the business’s goals, challenges and budgeting core, certainly in policy development, key customer relationships and strategy building with the Board. Center DEI in the company by centering the senior diversity leader in how decisions are made and resources are assigned.
    • Competency Building — Every executive has room to grow. CDOs need active, personal guidance for establishing their brand, optimizing their strengths and minimizing their shortcomings. Black diversity leaders, in particular, require empathetic and honest feedback because white colleagues, in particular, may have been afraid to provide them with the right mix of praise and coaching for improvement. If you’re a white executive like me, commit to care and honesty to grow a relationship of trust with your CDO.

    3. The Diversity Leader relies on influence partners

    The critical context for executive success is peer relationship quality, especially for Black DEI leaders. If trust is “the making and keeping of promises over time and across differences,” and accountability is “behaving in ways that grow trust,” then it is no surprise that diversity leaders of every identity thrive when surrounded by high-trust relationships with their peers in senior leadership.

    You know you’re an influence partner for your CDO when you’re asking yourself two questions: How can I follow their expertise and leadership to become a more effective and inclusive leader myself? In what other ways am I supporting her success?

    One of my favorite metrics, especially if you are a black CDO, is the number of executives influence partners you enjoy.

    Related: 7 Ways Leaders Can Level Up Their DEI Workplace Strategy

    4. The Diversity Leader is disciplined about self-care and leads with an authentic voice

    I’m speaking directly to Diversity Leaders here: You know it’s going well when you’re not struggling to care for yourself, and people are listening to you. You succeed when work is not overwhelming, your voice and agency are growing, and your self-doubt finds little traction. Personal renewal is a challenge for every senior leader — for every adult human, for that matter — and the amount of energy you are spending to remember to care for yourself and then doing so is an excellent indicator of your efficacy as a DEI leader.

    To those who serve as an influence partner to a Black CDO in particular, I offer this: attend to their wellness as friends and colleagues. Are they taking vacations? Are they working 60 or more hours every week? Do you regularly hear them laugh? Are their teams hitting deadlines and generating good ideas? The pandemic is teaching us to lead with genuine empathy, and diversity leaders in your organization deserve as much honest care as you can.

    Related: Self-Care for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

    The senior diversity leader in your firm, and their team, embody and lead the organization’s commitment to DEI as a strategy to dramatically grow the company’s performance and character. If you’re in such a role, dial into your success factors, and deprioritize everything else. To focus like this, secure the support from those above you and a growing circle of your influence partners. And if you are a peer to a Chief Diversity Officer, you can play a key role in her success.

    When diversity executives thrive, the DEI initiative produces results for the business. So we need our CDOs to succeed. Each one of us can help that happen.

    Related: 5 Examples of Unconscious Bias at Work and How to Solve Them

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    Chuck H. Shelton

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  • Is My Customer More Important Than My Employees?

    Is My Customer More Important Than My Employees?

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Which came first? It’s a fierce dinner table debate. Dinosaurs laid eggs, so they came first. But did the chicken egg come first?

    One much simpler problem to discuss is whether the customer or the employee came first.

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    Joanna Swash

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  • How to Engage Employees Through Core Values

    How to Engage Employees Through Core Values

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Whether you run a start-up that focuses on a single market or own a large business that operates worldwide, defining the company’s mission and values is the fundamental thing needed to communicate its reason for existence, connect to customers and organize the group of people who will work toward a common business goal.

    This is what the “First Who, Then What” concept presented by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great refers to. It also encourages entrepreneurs at the helm of building successful organizations to “get right people on the bus” — in the key seats — and only then decide where to steer the bus. My company quickly became convinced of this idea’s veracity, and I am willing to share how we ensure no “random passengers” on board.

    Related: How Establishing Core Values Drives Success

    People come first

    When we saw our company growing 10x in the first three months after launch, we understood that this increase was most likely to continue along the same lines. And now, after ten months of operation, the monthly revenue exceeds $3 million from zero, which is an even greater performance, meaning that our assumptions were right. So we needed a more advanced approach to business to keep pace with it.

    After consulting with a few highly skilled entrepreneurs from various niches, we summarized our research and concluded that any great organization’s first and foremost criterion was quality recruitment.

    Сompany values that let the workforce know the essential parts of doing any given business are what underlies the hiring processes. They serve as a reliable guideline for an employer who seeks long-term and productive cooperation.

    While hard skills can be corrected or enhanced over time, a potential employee’s values are usually immutable. In case a candidate’s inner culture runs counter to your company’s principles, making a job offer:

    • poses a threat of wasting time and energy on training;
    • can cost you thousands of dollars — our HR department calculated that the losses are six monthly salaries of a bad hire plus indirect costs of the organization’s inefficiency;
    • will eventually require more efforts to revitalize the search for a better employee.

    Setting your company’s core values helps avoid these outcomes, systematize the qualities that you need your staff to have and better understand what workforce should be fired. If employees easily get discouraged by what they do after a month of operation, do not learn from their failures or do not want to grow, they are not with us for long. The passengers of our bus never give up and always strive for more.

    Related: Stand for Something: How to Establish Authentic Core Values

    Only true values have power

    When working on your company’s culture, consider the values that matter to you. Do not motivate your employees to lead a moderate and thrifty lifestyle if you purchase a luxury purse every time you walk past an expensive boutique. Otherwise, your employees will soon sense the difference, and communicating with the team will be much more challenging.

    If several entrepreneurs manage a business, all co-founders must agree on the company’s values to avoid future misunderstandings and conflicts. As three co-founders, we came to common opinions about our company. Among them, we believe that we need to be first in everything. Thus we are waiting for a job candidate who is not just a good employee, but a top performer. Also, we do not tolerate gossip and rumors, so we cannot go any further with those who demonstrate that they are prone to backstabbing.

    Related: 7 Traits You Must Find In A Co-Founder

    Implementing your values into business

    Based on our experience, the best solution is to integrate your values into all employee development activities, which requires excellent internal communication. We started by presenting the company’s mission and values to our C-level executives to assess whether they could settle down in the team. As soon as some positive progress was made, we designed our own culture fit scoring system, which implies:

    1. Holding an extra interview with a competent expert to determine whether the candidate’s values correlate with the company’s fundamental beliefs. In cases with C-level managers and team leads, often the co-founders themselves perform this role. Ideally, you should involve an impartial specialist who did not previously participate in the hiring process and will never even cross paths with a candidate at this job. Thus, you manage to avoid the bias as people unconsciously sympathize with those they already put time and energy into. This tactic is a good hedge against the risks – third-party opinions have already saved us from multiple bad hires.
    2. Including acquaintance of new employees with the core values into the list of the onboarding activities so that every specialist knows what qualities you appreciate along with hard skills;
    3. Launching individual training plans and performance reviews for employees who are generally good performers but lack a few essential qualities. For example, suppose people are afraid of making decisions. In that case, managers are gradually delegating relevant tasks to them. Then the discussion of the results takes place.

    As an ending note, I would like to share one good method my company uses as part of culture fit when selecting suitable candidates during interviews: appeal to your senses. This means that the first part of the conversation you spend being diligent and attentive to details, but then you distance yourself from what you hear, focus on your inner thoughts and try to feel the candidate in front of you. Sometimes employers become too keen on the process and ignore their doubts when having doubts should be a key signal for refusal.

    Creating the company’s culture is more important than coming up with strategies because strategies are executed by people who get genuinely inspired by your mission and values. Setting the right culture fit scoring system may significantly increase your recruitment’s effectiveness and ensure your business’s long-term success.

    Related: Having A Work-Life Balance is Nonsense. To Reach Your Goals, Follow Another Approach

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    Roman Kumar Vyas

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  • 3 Difficult Personalities That Are Great Hires

    3 Difficult Personalities That Are Great Hires

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The concept of personality types, temperaments and working styles has been foundational in organizational behavior for years. As entrepreneurs or managers, we frequently assess personality to determine ideal team composition and workflows. While toxic personalities certainly exist, many others that seem difficult can offer severe advantages to start-up organizations. Oppositionality, non-conformity, perfectionism and the fickleness that often accompanies abstract thinking should not be deal-breaking traits.

    As a founder, I tend to have strong opinions about the working styles and personalities of those I consider creative, resourceful and hard-working people. At the same time, certain characters tend to clash within small teams, creating a challenging work environment. However, hiring managers can quickly write off people who are “difficult” as toxic — which can cost a startup its competitive edge. I, for one, appreciate the contributions that seemingly “difficult” people make. Here are three challenging personalities that frequently make great hires and give startup teams the edge they wouldn’t have without them.

    Related: Smart Advice for Networking With These 4 Personality Types

    1. Demanding yet artistically brilliant

    Just about any founder or CEO would appreciate a genius as part of their team, yet these rare outside-the-box thinkers can be notoriously difficult employees. They can be prickly, fiercely individualistic, anti-team players and have fragile personal lives.

    At my former design retail business, a set stylist we worked with fit the bill perfectly. Not only did he demand twice the market rate, but he also wanted my constant attention and would not allow anyone else on the team to address his concerns. That said, he successfully delivered the most beautiful sets in the most unlikely and underwhelming locations: he could turn a cave into a castle for the camera.

    In today’s ultra-competitive consumer product market, where hundreds of versions of every item are available, the differentiation of brilliant design can make or break your brand.

    Despite the obstacles, hiring a category-defying genius paid off for us. The key is to manage these individuals with empathy, awareness and appreciation for their unique contributions — while still setting the requisite boundaries for your sanity. Set your expectations that these hires will be individual contributors — not necessarily team players — and budget your time accordingly.

    Related: Are You Asking for Employee Feedback? If Not, Good Luck With Retention.

    2. Absent-minded abstract thinker

    For rational, linear thinkers who prioritize planning and organization, absent-mindedness can drive you crazy. Yet the same mental process that leads to fickleness can fuel fresh ideas and uncharted solutions.

    According to a study published in Psychological Science, mind-wandering spurs what neuroscientists call “creative incubation,” allowing a disjointed train of thought to make unlikely and uncommon connections that yield unique and creative solutions.

    Although one of the most inspired web developers I worked with often didn’t know what day of the week it was or where to find the printer he used every day, he figured out how to fashion a basic Shopify ecommerce system to deliver a fully custom site with sophisticated and unique UX features, flexible navigation and a robust backend–the likes of which even enterprise-level systems don’t often offer.

    The key to working with these absent-minded gems is to pair them with a colleague who can provide extra operational support.

    3. Problem-finding contrarian

    While working with someone forever finding problems can be discouraging and morale-crushing, a team that enthusiastically supports an unrealistic product idea is headed for failure. The right balance is hiring that smart contrarian: “Someone who looks for business practices that don’t make sense, who’s not too reliant on a small group of like-minded people, who can embrace diversity, and who’s happier on the sidelines.”

    A founder I mentored shared with me that she only hired people who showed extreme enthusiasm for her product — a scheduling app. She wanted to avoid negativity. As a result, no one on her team paused the beta launch to address a known glitch, and her app experienced a significant feature failure.

    Having that smart contrarian to call out real concerns at the right time, even if it’s not the popular or politically correct move, can help ensure problems are addressed before too many resources are invested, or larger issues ensue. While contrarians can be frustrating, they spot critical gaps others might fear speaking out about. To work effectively with contrarian personalities, practice prioritizing their observations and be prepared to translate unsolicited criticism into better ideas and more innovative solutions.

    Related: 5 Ways to Make Your Company’s Hiring Process More Fair

    The final decision

    Ultimately, you’ll need to weigh the costs and benefits of working with challenging personalities in your organization. While many demand special accommodation, buffering and hand-holding, I have found that their contributions are worth the investment.

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    Marina Glazman

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  • 7 Tips to Manage a Fully Remote International Business

    7 Tips to Manage a Fully Remote International Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    More companies are ditching the overhead costs of dedicated office spaces and unlocking global growth opportunities by transitioning to a fully remote business operation.

    While the potential benefits are significant, business leaders will face various challenges. Follow these tips to manage your fully remote company better.

    Related: 7 Outdated Habits That Will Paralyze Your Business

    1. Clearly define your mission and vision

    Steering a company in a strategic direction is challenging when everyone is located within the same building, and it is even harder for fully remote organizations.

    A clearly defined and adequately communicated mission and vision are vital for every successful remote business as this serves as a roadmap to guide the actions of every employee and the organization.

    If your employees connect with your mission and vision, everyone understands what they are working towards, how the company plans to get there, and what is expected from them. This unified vision is increasingly essential in an organization characterized by diverse backgrounds, cultures and languages.

    2. Don’t think local. Think global

    A fully remote business gives you access to new markets and a global customer base and opens up opportunities to tap into global talent pools.

    Don’t fall into the trap of keeping your hiring strategies and recruitment drives contained to home markets.

    For example, despite an ample supply of English-speaking Eastern European teachers, when Novakid was ready to launch, the founders looked for native English speakers from across the globe via Facebook groups.

    Building a globally distributed workforce enabled the business to expand into new markets with teachers in each region rapidly. This approach also created a pool of non-native English-speaking tutors who are highly proficient in the language but offer services at a lower cost to the company.

    Furthermore, offering classes with bilingual teachers from different regions created unique opportunities for students to experience diverse cultures and accents, which became a competitive differentiator for the company.

    A globally distributed workforce also provides additional benefits, such as better business continuity and diverse thinking, which can drive innovation and greater organizational agility.

    Related: Are Fully-Remote Businesses the Future?

    3. Build a company culture based on accountability

    The lack of direct oversight of employee time often causes concern for business leaders as their company transitions from a brick-and-mortar operation to a fully remote business. While keeping a tight rein on working hours is tempting, it is vital that every remote business finds the balance between flexibility and accountability. Rigid rules and set working hours can stifle innovation and complicate working arrangements.

    Instead, give employees the flexibility to structure their workdays around their individual needs, circumstances and preferences. The key is to set clear expectations regarding outputs and deliverables rather than tightly monitoring their inputs.

    Employees who understand this dynamic will have the discipline to manage their time effectively to complete their work tasks while also getting to the personal things they plan for their day — be it a family time or an exercise session.

    4. Empower your employees to act independently

    Building a company culture based on values like trust, honesty, discipline, courage, integrity and curiosity are the ingredients for a thriving remote international business.

    Over time, this gives employees the courage to take the initiative, make decisions, solve problems independently and, ultimately, take responsibility for their actions and outcomes when they don’t have direct access to management or colleagues. And waiting for feedback via online collaboration tools can also create bottlenecks that slow implementation and reduce organizational agility.

    As such, successful remote organizations give staff the autonomy to make their own decisions and the space they need to be brave.

    Fostering a culture of trust nurtures other positive traits within a remote workforce, such as curiosity, bravery, innovative thinking and bold experimentation. The freedom and confidence to explore, develop and try new methodologies and new ways of working can create a competitive advantage for your organization.

    This environment also supports a trend known as the “culture of everyone,” where employees become responsible for their development and learning paths. This is a powerful tool to boost employee motivation and satisfaction and can serve as an effective way to attract and retain talent.

    5. Prioritize talent and experience

    A key element in my company’s success as a remote international business has been our preference for hiring people with expertise and experience. While some companies prefer hiring junior people and developing them internally to keep salary costs low, this is not always the most appropriate option for remote organizations.

    The time and resources this approach requires often comes with an opportunity cost. And a junior person with no experience has to learn a lot. However, the nature of remote work means that managers cannot always provide the access and availability needed to quickly get junior staff up to speed.

    Bringing in people with expertise and experience means you get staff who can self-manage and work with freedom while delivering the quality outputs they require.

    6. Implement technologies that help employees

    Technology offers the ideal solution to transcend the geographic boundaries and time zones that remote international companies deal with daily.

    Online productivity tools like Slack create clear communication channels for different goals and purposes while supporting collaboration between dispersed teams and different workstreams.

    Video conferencing tools are another indispensable tool. They ensure that remote companies maintain interpersonal face-to-face interactions, which are vital to building rapport and conveying meaning beyond verbal or written communication. These interpersonal interactions are also important to transmit corporate culture.

    Productivity management tools provide managers with insights into workforce efficiency and outputs. The resultant analytics can help identify improvement areas or highlight workflows or processes that need refinement.

    7. Champion internal communication

    Fully remote international businesses require the appropriate tools, processes and procedures to drive clear and concise organization-wide communication and foster collaboration among employees in remote teams.

    Remote teams must frequently communicate transparently and correctly, regardless of the channel. Management and leadership must ensure they can effectively convey their messages to the right targets.

    Effective communication fosters trust through transparency and ensures remote employees clearly understand their tasks, roles and responsibilities.

    Creating multiple channels for staff to give their feedback and opinions, ask questions, share ideas, profile great work or simply voice their concerns allows remote workers to communicate their value and makes them feel heard and empowered.

    Related: Maintaining a Collaborative Culture in a Hybrid and Remote World

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    Max Azarov

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  • Want to Create a Culture of Innovation? Ask These Questions

    Want to Create a Culture of Innovation? Ask These Questions

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    This past weekend, I had a rare opportunity to kick back and relax. I needed a few supplies before I settled into my couch, so I grabbed my Amazon Fire phone and headed out to the local shops. I didn’t need to bring any cash — my Amazon Wallet had me covered. When I got home, I nearly tripped over the box of laundry detergent my Amazon Dash had ordered. I remembered to book my trip to New York City on Amazon Destinations, and just as I confirmed my hotel, the doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of my order from Amazon Restaurants. I grabbed my food, settled into my comfy couch and spent the rest of the day playing Amazon’s online game, Crucible.

    Of course, none of this happened. Because while all of these Amazon products and services are real, they no longer exist. They were experiments that failed to achieve critical milestones, and Amazon shut them down.

    One of the things that made Jeff Bezos a great founder was his embrace of experimentation and failure. He relentlessly invested in new product development. But he didn’t fall in love with any one product or tactic to fulfill his vision. Instead, if an experiment failed to meet minimum expectations for performance, regardless of the amount of time and effort invested, he was quick to pull the plug, making space for future experiments.

    Innovation and experimentation are crucial to the journey of a startup. You’re in search of scalable product-market fit. Many of your assumptions are going to be wrong. Many of your experiments and tests will fail. That’s okay as long as you follow one essential rule.

    Believe in your vision, but be ruthless in shutting down initiatives that don’t meet expectations. If you don’t quickly shut down unsuccessful projects, your team will become mired in work that can’t scale, draining time and money from much higher potential ideas. Here are three questions to ask when evaluating the potential of a new product or service:

    Related: Fostering a Culture of Innovation, and What It Takes to Do It Right

    1. Will your early adopters accelerate organic growth?

    When you first launch a product, you should be able to find a core group of early adopters. Your target early adopters have problems to solve. You are launching a product that addresses those problems. If you hit the mark on features and price and can easily convey your value proposition, they should be willing to try your product with very little incentive or marketing effort. If they like it, they can quickly become evangelists within their community, creating your initial flywheel of organic growth.

    You have a critical decision to make if you cannot find a group of early adopters that will help drive organic growth. Iterate and test again, or kill the product and move on to your next idea. Unfortunately, most startups’ biggest mistake at this crucial crossroads is to ramp up spending on marketing beyond a sustainable level under the mistaken assumption that they have a marketing problem rather than a product problem. This path only leads to accelerating cash burn and missed opportunities.

    Related: 3 Common Mistakes That Are Inflating Your Marketing Budget

    2. Are your customers coming back for more?

    Once you discover messaging that attracts customers to your product, you must deliver on their expectations. Do they continue to use your product after those first few attempts? Do they keep coming back to buy more from you? Or are you suffering from high return rates, cancellations or product abandonment? You should have clear KPIs for customer behavior, consistently measuring to ensure you’re building a sticky enough offering to scale your business.

    Successful startups are built on the back of customer lifetime value (LTV) that can sustain profitable, scalable growth. High LTV is powered by strong customer retention and consistent repeat buyer behavior. If most of your customers are one-and-done, it’s unlikely you can profitably scale your company.

    Related: Are You Sitting on a Customer Retention Goldmine?

    3. Do you have enough pricing power to deliver profitability?

    Sales volume and customer retention only matter if each sale generates enough profit. The path to profitability and positive cash flow is a healthy contribution margin. Contribution margin is calculated by subtracting the variable costs required to produce and sell your product from your net sales price.

    It’s easy enough to get customers to order a free trial or accept delivery of a try-before-you-buy subscription box. But can you attract enough customers willing to pay a price that delivers an acceptable contribution margin? Too many startups fall into the trap of focusing on vanity metrics to measure the performance of their products — downloads, gross sales and free trial downloads. In the end, your product, and your startup, will only be successful if you can consistently charge a price that will generate the profits you need to support sales and marketing, new product development and your day-to-day operations.

    Related: 4 Reasons Why Pricing Is the Key to Startup Success

    The Amazon Fire phone may have failed, but the technology developed for the phone accelerated the development of two very successful products: the Echo and Alexa. Building a culture of innovation isn’t easy. It requires an acceptance of failure, supported by a culture of measurement and accountability. But it’s a powerful force for finding product-market fit, profitability scaling your startup and building enterprise value. It’s also a much more fun and fulfilling way to build your company.

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    Eric Ashman

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  • What Happened to Chippendales? Founders, Murders and More

    What Happened to Chippendales? Founders, Murders and More

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    Whether you’ve been to a live show or you’re more familiar with Chris Farley’s SNL rendition, the all-male strip club Chippendales has been a household name for decades.


    Photo by Denise Truscello/WireImage

    The brand is known as the first strip joint to cater to female desires with its signature shows featuring buff men in cuffs and bow ties – sans shirts.

    Founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee opened the strip club for the first time in Los Angeles in 1979, and the brand is still “thriving” today, reps told Entrepreneur, with its permanent Las Vegas show and a world-touring dance troupe.

    The brand has attracted the likes of Hollywood, with Magic Mike pulling inspiration from the iconic show, and some stars have even participated in the live performance, including Jersey Shore’s Vinny Guadagnino.

    However, things were a lot less glamorous for Banerjee and the club behind the scenes, with several murders, arson, and other crimes connected to the club.

    Hulu is set to unpack the dark and twisted history behind Chippendales with its new series, “Welcome to Chippendales,” premiering on November 22, with new weekly episodes through Jan. 3, 2023.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DchtacgVLbQ

    How Did Chippendales Start And Who Are the Founders?

    Chippendales was the brainchild of Somen “Steve” Banerjee, who is being portrayed by Kumail Nanjiani in the Hulu series. Originally from India, Banerjee immigrated to the United States and worked as a gas station attendant before finding entrepreneurship, according to Entertainment Tonight.

    Banerjee owned two gas stations and eventually opened a nightclub called Destiny II in 1975 with his partner Bruce Nahin, according to LA Magazine. Nahin and his father bought 10% of the club to help Banerjee’s cash flow, but he segued to filmmaking in 1987, Nahin said in an interview with The Drill.

    After trying magic shows and other entertainment to bring customers in, nightclub promoter and regular Paul Snider suggested an all-male strip club.

    In 1980, they changed the name of the club to “Chippendales” — after the British furniture brand — for a “classier” vibe, and Chippendales as we know it was born.

    In the early days of Chippendales, Snider and his wife, Playboy‘s 1980 Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten, were instrumental in shaping the club’s look. In fact, Stratten coined the dancers’ iconic “cuffs and collars uniform” and even got Hugh Hefner on board.

    Banerjee was seen as the brains behind the operation, and he brought on producer Nick De Noia to choreograph the live shows in 1981. Although the pair helped shape the iconic brand into what it is today, they consistently butted heads.

    De Noia took credit for creating Chippendales’ signature choreography and expanding to a New York location in 1983, per LA Magazine.

    The duo’s contentious relationship led them to part ways after three years in business together.

    De Noia was able to negotiate the rights to take Chippendales on tour with a signed cocktail napkin contract in 1984, per The U.S. Sun. But when the tour proved to be a success, generating $80,000 in profits a week, Banerjee was displeased and fought to regain the rights to the traveling show. He was unsuccessful.

    What Are the Chippendales Murders?

    The first tragedy to hit Chippendales occurred shortly after Dorothy Stratten negotiated the deal with Playboy and was honored with Playmate of the Year. Hugh Hefner had taken a liking to Stratten, and although Stratten’s husband, Paul Snider, had helped connect the two and launch Stratten’s career, Hefner did what he could to push Snider out. In 1980, Snider murdered Stratten and committed suicide thereafter.

    Meanwhile, De Noia’s tour was booming, but because the napkin contract gave De Noia the rights to the tour, Banerjee wasn’t entitled to any of the profits, to his dismay.

    On April 7, 1987, De Noia was murdered by a hired gunman. Following a long FBI investigation, Banerjee was arrested and charged with the second-degree murder of De Noia and conspiracy to commit murders of two competitive dancers in 1993.

    Banerjee was also connected to three arson attempts aimed at the brand’s competition.

    While Banerjee was facing 26 years in prison after taking a plea bargain and pleading guilty, he took his life while awaiting his sentencing in 1994 in his jail cell.

    Image credit: Courtesy of Chippendales

    Who Owns Chippendales Now and How Much Is it Worth?

    Despite the chaos that plagued Chippendales in its early days, the brand is still alive and well.

    However, the original Chippendales club in Los Angeles closed shortly after losing its liquor license in 1988 and after several other lawsuits and violations.

    After Banerjee pleaded guilty, the Chippendales brand went to his wife, Irene, during their divorce.

    According to The U.S. Sun, she sold the brand for $2.5 million.

    Since then, Chippendales has been in the hands of several people. A 2013 report from The New Yorker says former boy band manager Lou Pearlman purchased the brand in the ’90s before going to prison for fraud.

    According to a representative from the brand, “a private equity of owners” has been at the helm since 2000, they told Entrepreneur in a request for comment.

    Chippendales’ closed its New York location shortly after September 11, 2001, per The New Yorker, but it found a second life after managing partner Kevin Denberg got a bus and took the dancers on tour, traveling around the country until they landed in Las Vegas.

    Chippendales laid roots in Las Vegas in 2002 and its show and tour are still “thriving” today. Katerina Tabakhov currently serves as the production’s director of operations, the brand rep shared, while Denberg is no longer involved in the day-to-day operation.

    “The Chippendales are STILL performing to sold-out houses at our home at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas (for over 20 years), as well as our domestic and international tours,” the brand confirmed to Entrepreneur.

    The Sin City show is complete with its $10 million custom complex, and tickets range from $49.95 to $149.95.

    Or you can catch the Chippendales on tour, which hits six continents and over 25 countries, according to the brand’s website.

    Today, the brand generates between $5 million and $25 million in annual revenue, according to Signal Hire.

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    Sam Silverman

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  • How To Invite Your Employees Back To The Office

    How To Invite Your Employees Back To The Office

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It was easy to go home because we had to. Now, how do we get people to want to come back?

    In 2019, less than 6% of American workers worked primarily from home. Then COVID hit, and by May 2020, 35% of workers worked completely remotely, as high as 57% among professional and management occupations.

    Now, business leaders want people back in the office. Without in-person workplace interactions, leaders see workers missing out on building vital connections that facilitate collaboration and innovation and the soft skills gained by interacting with people at various levels within the company.

    But according to Pew research, 61% of remote workers say they work from home because they prefer to. Among knowledge workers unsatisfied with their current workplace flexibility, 71% said they were open to finding another job in the oncoming year. Demanding workers come back will drive quit rates and turn off new talent.

    The best way to bring workers back to the office is by inviting them and making it an inviting place where people want and need to be.

    Related: Should You Bring Employees Back to the Office?

    Social engagement is a good start.

    A 2022 workplace trends survey found that 77% of responding organizations had adopted a hybrid model and most employed an “at-will” policy of office attendance. To encourage people to return, 88 % use incentives to draw people to the office, including exaggerated efforts, like Microsoft’s beer and wine tastings, Qualcomm’s group fitness classes and Google’s private concert featuring Lizzo.

    Many companies have made similar, less extravagant, efforts to lure people back with promises of food and social activities, which is a great place to start. According to the 2022 Microsoft Work Trend Index, 85% of employees said rebuilding team bonds would motivate them to return to the office. Other 2022 surveys also found face-to-face collaboration and socialization as the top draws of office time.

    As we come back from nearly two years of working outside of the office, a focus on building social capital is important, but the office can’t be all about parties. The benefits of improved collaboration and innovation come from a healthy culture where people are free to bring themselves to work. Socialization can get that ball rolling and be a significant draw to get people back to the office, but more efforts are needed to make it a necessary place to work.

    Related: The Case For Going Back To The Office

    Build an inviting space

    Invest in creating a physical environment conducive to a hybrid world where people need and want to be to get their best work done. Renovate office spaces to fit evolving intentions. In an Envoy workplace survey of 800 workers, 61% said their companies had changed their physical workplace to accommodate a hybrid model. Leaders at Marriot, Capital One and Spotify are prioritizing comfortability, communal spaces and more conference rooms for collaboration and dialogue.

    People don’t come back to the office to work in a cube. They come back to sit together and work with others in ways that Zoom is less effective. At Clearfield, we are creating the image of what we want our home base mothership (and we do call it the “mothership”) office to become in this hybrid world, starting with significant renovations. We kept the bright, open, well-lit space, and we did away with most of the aisles of cube farms. We built conference rooms and a lot of training spaces.

    Related: It Might be a Company-Ending Mistake to Go Back to the Office

    Invite them to learn more and grow

    In our shift to hybrid, one of our strongest considerations is a focus on training. By building dedicated training rooms, we support internal growth opportunities, incentivizing people to be at the office to gain more knowledge and grow. It also introduces social opportunities to hold recognition ceremonies at the office as people are promoted.

    Interaction among our sales organization had typically been with customers, not one another, so when we got sent home, they felt the benefits of working remotely full-time. But as we grew larger and started to train and promote people from within, the salespeople who became leads and supervisors suddenly realized the need to bring in their teams and train. From the leadership position of a growing company, it becomes easier to see what makes coming together to learn and advance so critical.

    Attract people to the office with training and opportunities to do their jobs better, and let them see room for growth within the company. I believe people want to do their jobs well and want access to information that could help them do that. Our new office training rooms give employees access to resources to improve their hard and soft skills. We’re also investing in a learning management system to help track all of our training opportunities and to get them out to more of our employees.

    Invite with expectations

    Invite people back, but with expectations. Some leaders enter into a hybrid or work-from-home model and remain unclear in their expectations. They want people in the office but let team members’ level of “hybrid” be user-led. The trend of companies allowing unlimited PTO, for example, will enable people to define the total time they take off individually. Still, unless everyone really believes they can and should be allowed to take six or seven weeks of vacation, they would probably never attempt to test those boundaries. Without expectations, so much autonomy exists in a cloud of uncertainty.

    Leaders should also set expectations around meetings and schedule them with intention. Our design engineers lead our product innovation programs and typically host weekly product reviews, but after COVID, we had to start doing them over Zoom. Once we could, these meetings were the first thing we brought back. Lead engineers needed their peers to touch the prototypes and experience them first-hand with a full range of senses, including the sixth sense — intuition — that got lost over a Zoom call.

    Inviting people back to the office is much more powerful than demanding that they come back, but that invitation needs to come with more than free food and parties — it should come with planning and clear expectations. Turn the office into a place where people want and need to go and draw them there in ways that encourage them to be more productive.

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    Cheri Beranek

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  • Why Having Emotional Awareness Is Crucial for All Leaders

    Why Having Emotional Awareness Is Crucial for All Leaders

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Nearly all entrepreneurs are looking for ways to optimize their workflow. However, it’s common for business leaders to focus on solving problems externally in their business, instead of looking within themselves. The purpose of your business should not only be to fulfill a desire for success. Moreover, it’s important that your workflow aligns with the deeper parts of who you are, what you stand for and what you wish to share with others.

    As the CEO of Jumpspeak.com, I make plenty of small to grand decisions that can impact the direction of the business. I can tell you that the bad decisions I regret making are always the ones I’ve made with high emotions.

    Business owners are on the road to burnout when they aren’t leading with service. By understanding how to be emotionally aware as a leader, you can manage your emotions and expand into a place of abundance. In this article, I will share some tips on how to enhance your leadership skills by healing your mindset, managing your emotions and leading with intention.

    Related: 5 Ways Emotional Intelligence Will Make You a Better Leader

    Manage your emotions

    As an entrepreneur, it’s difficult to create boundaries when the lines between business and personal feel so blurred. However, when you ignore your emotions, they don’t disappear. They get bottled up within you and may even create symptoms within your physical body.

    Sofia Sundari, who coaches high-performing entrepreneurs on emotional mastery, says that anger is connected to the liver, so ignoring it will only cause deeper concerns with your overall wellness. Her advice is to stop running from your emotions and let them flow. If you are present with how you feel, you are able to be present in your business. Being emotionally aware allows leaders to make decisions that are true to their core since it opens gateways to a smarter intuition.

    Reverse your scarcity mindset

    People who are givers thrive when it comes to managing an abundance mindset. It’s important to know that business is not a zero-sum game. One person’s success will not affect yours. Oftentimes, it grows the entire market demand, making everyone more successful.

    Everyone can benefit from learning to act from a place of abundance instead of scarcity, even if you have to fool yourself at times. Know that you have to walk the walk in your everyday life, which sometimes includes taxes, tipping, paying for cheaper tickets and more. When leaders emulate the leadership skills they strive to embody, they are able to step into their true authentic power.

    Think about actionable things in your business, team and personal life that you have a limiting belief about. Then try to apply the abundance framework in that exact situation. You may be pleasantly surprised to find out that there are other solutions to your problems.

    Related: 2 Keys to Improving Leaders’ Mental and Emotional Wellbeing

    It’s okay to mix business and personal

    Leaders who have an entrepreneurial spirit can struggle with maintaining both work and business relationships. The pressure leaders place on themselves ends up interfering with their ability to be intentional and emotionally aware in their work life. In Sundari’s opinion, the dynamics of intimate relationships mirror business relationships.

    She found that if her intimate relationships were going well, the business was stagnating, and vice versa. Instead of trying to keep everything separated, she made the decision to incorporate the two together, which proved successful.

    Slowly start unraveling these limiting beliefs about how you “should” operate as a leader, and lean into what makes the most sense for your personal and professional priorities. If you are aware of what you need from the start, you can fill up your own cup and ensure your business moves in the right direction.

    An emotionally blocked leader is not able to help themselves or their business, which is why it’s important to create a roadmap for how you want to show up in your professional life. Analyze the different areas of your personal and business life to ensure everything feels right for you.

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    Sean Kim

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  • How Founders Can Improve Their Tolerance for Uncertainty

    How Founders Can Improve Their Tolerance for Uncertainty

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Businesses, especially startups, are characterized by uncertainty. From the viability of a business idea to investors’ decisions, as well as how users would respond to your latest product feature, you’re never exactly sure what’s coming. Externally, political, technological and competitive uncertainties are causes for worry as well.

    Studies have shown that uncertainties are constant in entrepreneurship, and a leader’s ability to tolerate and manage them will greatly support the success of their venture. However, repeated exposure to high levels of uncertainty can send entrepreneurs into an emotional rollercoaster that could affect their self-image. Early-stage and first-time founders run greater risks of being broken by the twists and turns of rapidly changing business environments.

    More fascinating, though, is that some — especially serial entrepreneurs — are hooked to the uncertainties synonymous with startups. And their ability to tolerate these uncertainties and adjust accordingly to changing environments has helped them succeed. You, too, can learn to do the same by incorporating these four attitudes into your life:

    Related: 3 Ways to Overcome Uncertainty About Your Business’ Future

    1. Avoid micro-managing your team

    Delegate some uncertainties. So many activities go into building a company. A majority of those activities carry fair amounts of uncertainty. And it’s easy to get roped into bouts of worry trying to figure out how things could go wrong.

    It could be a marketing campaign that your team is trying out for the first time or a new product that your company is working on. Rather than actively engaging in these activities and interfering with your team’s every move, you can rid yourself of the anxiety that comes with the process and focus your energy where it’s needed the most.

    Studies by the Harvard Business Review reveal that micro-managing a team could significantly add to a boss’s stress and anxiety levels. Just lay back a bit, and let the marketing or product team worry about the uncertainty associated with their roles. You’ll thank yourself for it.

    2. Accept what you cannot control

    As far as entrepreneurship is concerned, so many events take place that are beyond the entrepreneur’s control. It could be some government policy changes that threaten the survival of your business. Maybe a key employee is quitting to spend more time with family. Whatever it is, there might be absolutely nothing you can do to change things. And you have to accept that.

    Yes, it’s easier said than done. You’ll most likely feel vile for being in such a position. That’s okay. Feelings make us humans, and you don’t have to deny them. The University of Utah Health Care psychiatrist, Maria Reyes, predicates that recognizing and acknowledging our feelings towards circumstances beyond our control is the first step to managing anxieties related to uncertainty.

    Also, you might need to disengage from the situation a bit. Stepping back helps you gain a better view of what seems like an obstacle to your success. Some entrepreneurs make the best of this step-back moment, by doing things like playing golf or engaging in hobbies of various sorts. You can give it a shot.

    Related: The 4 Things Leaders Need to Do First When Faced With Uncertainty

    3. Be grateful (for the little things)

    Gratitude is an antidote for the negative emotions that uncertainty engenders, wrote psychologist Guy Winch in his book, Emotional First Aid. Being grateful has a joyous effect on the mind. Studies have shown that expressing gratitude causes the release of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. These hormones are associated with happiness, higher self-esteem and motivation.

    Endeavor to take small breaks to reflect on your experiences. Identify the little things that often go unnoticed, and imagine how life would have turned out without them. It could be as trivial as being able to refuel your car at the gas station the day before. If it’s helped move you forward in the slightest bit, then it’s worth expressing gratitude for.

    An act as simple as being grateful, if done repeatedly, can help you build tolerance for uncertainty because you believe that there will be good things to be grateful for either way.

    Related: How to Practice Gratitude as a Business Skill

    4. Make contingency plans

    Building a business requires making assumptions and following gut feelings. A majority of the time, those assumptions are wrong. Worst off, verifiable market research data may look so wrong when reality sets in. If they were always right, I guess uncertainty would be every entrepreneur’s least problem.

    So, as you make assumptions and lay out plans to succeed, it’s crucial to also plan for failure. What would you do if reality renders your assumptions nonviable? What are your Plan B and Plan C?

    You have to figure these out. According to a report by the Harvard Business Review, in times of uncertainty, the best entrepreneurs create contingency plans that can allow them to change course quickly. This is particularly helpful because most lethal circumstances are beyond the entrepreneur’s control. Talk about changes in market trends, and like in 2020, the pandemic.

    Related: 6 Strategies You Need to Run Your Company Through Uncertainty

    It’s very easy to get tangled up in the need to control your future and that of your company. And knowing that some things just aren’t fated can be unsettling. That’s understandable. You’re not alone. Many have learned to live with it. And so can you.

    The best approach to tolerating uncertainty is to stop resisting change and accept what you can’t control. Also, reduce the amount of uncertainty that you need to deal with by delegating some of them while making plans to recover from possible failures.

    Most importantly, don’t forget to pause and appreciate the little things that you experience along the way. As with most processes, building tolerance for uncertainty is a worthwhile journey. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to be grateful.

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    Judah Longgrear

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