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Tag: Leadership

  • How to Build a Culture of Emotional Intelligence

    How to Build a Culture of Emotional Intelligence

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It’s no secret that emotional intelligence is a valuable skill for business leaders. However, many CEOs struggle to cultivate it within their team. Read along as we discuss the benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace and how to develop it to enhance your leadership skills and business strategy.


    Shivendu Jauhari | Getty Images

    What is emotional intelligence?

    Emotional intelligence is “the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively. Some experts suggest that emotional intelligence is more important than IQ for success in life,” (Verywell Mind).

    Utilizing emotional intelligence can help facilitate open communication and strengthen relationships between executives, managers and employees, creating an improved work culture overall. It’s important for leaders to not only know how to foster emotional intelligence within themselves but how to encourage it from their team as well.

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

    5 pillars of emotional intelligence

    In his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, psychologist and author Daniel Goleman crafts a framework in which leaders can leverage five key traits to successfully implement emotional intelligence in the workplace. These traits are influenced both by experience and intuitiveness. The five pillars are:

    1. Self-awareness:

    Our emotions do not only affect us, they affect those around us as well. The ability to recognize your own emotional state and its impact on others is a skill that can be developed over time. For example, employees may be reluctant to ask for help if they can see that their boss is already stressed out with other tasks. While you should not hide your emotions, it’s important to be cognizant of how they come across to others.

    2) Self-regulation:

    Though we can’t always control our emotions, we can control the way we react to them. Self-regulation (impulse control) is critical to maintaining good relationships in the workplace. Leaders who are able to check themselves before reacting are better able to handle difficult situations and are more respectable.

    Self-regulation also promotes accountability as it helps create a clear set of expectations for how to act in the workplace.

    3) Motivation:

    Goleman writes, “Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal.”

    Motivating your employees is perhaps the most important action toward achieving alignment within your team. When all team members are motivated and focused on the same goal, you are more likely to hit your targets. Motivate your employees by setting clear objectives, celebrating wins and victories, and recognizing individual contributions.

    4. Empathy:

    Empathic leaders are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes and act with fairness. They are generally well-liked by employees, as they are more understanding and able to relate on a personal level. Having empathy does not just mean caring about others — it means being able to recognize others’ emotions even when they are not forthcoming and being able to conduct conversations appropriately with the other person’s emotional state in mind.

    A study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that “managers who practiced empathetic leadership toward direct reports were viewed as better performers by their bosses.” Empathic leadership is not restricted to C-suite executives — managers and other level employees can benefit from practicing empathy at work.

    5. Social skills:

    Social skills like active listening and verbal/nonverbal communication will lead to stronger trust among a team. Leaders with social skills are better communicators and know how to work with different types of people. Effective communication is one of the most important skills for a leader to have and proves useful when addressing issues or tough topics. Having good social skills also makes leaders appear more approachable to their team members, enabling positive working relationships and an effective feedback loop.

    Related: Use These 7 Emotional Intelligence Tips to Be a Better Leader

    Benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace

    Exhibiting emotional intelligence in your business can lead to countless improvements, from enhanced performance to a better culture. We’ve outlined a few of the main benefits below:

    • Team alignment: Rally your team members around a common goal. This creates cohesiveness across the board and helps ensure no boxes in your strategic execution are left unchecked.

    • Increased productivity: Employees will work harder and faster with the right motivation. They will be encouraged to ask questions for clarity and explore new ideas as they work toward the specified company goals.

    • Increased transparency and accountability: Emotional awareness is a desirable trait among leaders when it comes to the way employees see them. This prompts them to be more open and truthful with their team, creating opportunities for increased transparency in the company. By being upfront about certain initiatives, metrics and company information, leaders gain trust and understanding from their team. Establishing this kind of transparency and accountability helps fill in gaps and ensures that the right people are working toward the right goals.

    • Better communication: Communication is king when it comes to getting anything done as a team, and it’s easier to communicate when you know how you feel. Emotionally intelligent leaders are able to effectively express what is needed in a way that can be understood by others. They are also good listeners and know how to get a point across while also taking into account the other person’s viewpoints and opinions. This ties into the pillar of self-regulation, as being able to control impulsive responses is another important part of effective communication.

    Related: How to Cultivate Higher Emotional Intelligence in Your Employees

    Steps to improve emotional intelligence in your organization

    It’s no coincidence that the five pillars of emotional intelligence are also key traits of a good leader. It’s important for leaders to not only exhibit traits of emotional intelligence but also to recognize and celebrate them within their team. So, how can leaders cultivate emotional intelligence?

    1. Show appreciation:

    It’s easy for executives to overlook the importance of employee appreciation, even though the smallest gestures can make a huge difference. When employees are happy, the whole business benefits. Research has shown that having happy employees increases productivity, sales, employee retention, employer net promoter Scores (eNPS); the list goes on.

    Remember to give praise for a job well done and ensure your employees know their hard work does not go unnoticed. This can be as simple as a shoutout in your all-hands team meeting or a handwritten “thank-you” note. When employees receive praise, they feel valued. And when they feel valued, they are more motivated to work hard and deliver exceptional results.

    2. Practice what you preach:

    Respectable people lead by example. This includes making an effort to exhibit the positive traits that you expect to see from your team and acting in solidarity with them. In order to be effective, a team must be unified from the top down. Actions like giving thanks, admitting to wrongdoings and having an open-door policy will help create a healthier environment.

    3. Get to know yourself:

    Understanding yourself is the foundation of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness and reflection involve understanding one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives. It’s a major factor in emotional regulation, as it helps provide insight into one’s emotional reactions and makes it easier to control them. Make an effort to be mindful of how you react in different situations, and get comfortable with the idea of self-reflection. This kind of reflection is not just good for enhancing your leadership skills, but for the soul as well.

    4. Get to know your people:

    You know it’s important to establish good working relationships with your coworkers, but establishing good personal relationships goes a long way, too. Knowing your employees on a personal level means being able to better understand them and their emotional states and allows you to determine how to best work with them.

    Don’t underestimate the importance of one-on-one time between CEOs/managers and team members. Having frequent and consistent 1:1 meetings helps drive performance but also provides opportunities for open communication and relationship-building. Team members are more likely to provide truthful and constructive feedback if they feel like they are being heard.

    5. Provide training:

    As mentioned, emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed and improved with practice. It’s important to invest in emotional intelligence training and development programs if you want your team to be successful. This includes both emotional awareness and emotional regulation, as well as communication skills, decision-making skills and more.

    Developing emotional intelligence requires practice, but it can have a huge impact on the success of an organization. By recognizing emotional intelligence within your team and investing in emotional intelligence training, you can create a better working environment that leads to improved performance and higher morale.

    Emotional intelligence is not something that can be forced on people or taught overnight. It takes time and commitment from leaders, but it can have a positive and lasting impact on the team as a whole when practiced and supported regularly. It’s a valuable tool that can help business leaders be more effective, improve communication and increase trust.

    By investing in emotional intelligence, your business will be able to reap the rewards of a better-connected workforce that feels appreciated, respected and motivated to succeed.

    Doug Walner

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  • How to Make Better Decisions More Quickly

    How to Make Better Decisions More Quickly

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    My phone kept ringing off the hook. I was receiving a flood of notifications, and the news kept giving mixed reports. March of 2020 wasn’t just a frenzy, it was absolute chaos. But I don’t need to remind you of that fact — it’s hard not to recall those initial days of the pandemic.

    Back then, nobody seemed to know what was going on. There are no “founder guidelines” for what to do when an unprecedented pandemic hits. In those moments, it’s just you and your choices.

    Colleagues were scrambling to set up Zoom meetings and re-structuring their organizations due to the new economic uncertainty. And we all had to address the biggest question of all: What’s going to happen?

    In their enlightening story for Harvard Business Review, contributors David J. Snowden and Mary E Boone note that “Working in unfamiliar environments can help leaders and experts approach decision-making more creatively.”

    As CEO of my company, Jotform, there were no easy answers to give, but I knew that it was up to me to remain a steady harbor for my team. We’d have to work together to develop new coping mechanisms. And it was also up to me to figure out a variety of decisions. This meant that I needed to leave my comfort zone and come up with an entirely new way of leading.

    Why leaders need to choose the right framework for decision-making

    When settings are unfamiliar and challenging, we shouldn’t rely on our old ways of doing things. Instead, we need to learn to identify the signals of when a shift in leadership is needed.

    For instance, I know of many business colleagues who were paralyzed when the pandemic struck. It took them a long time to change the way they made their decisions — meaning their teams were also caught in this limbo.

    That’s the thing about being a leader: People are looking to you for reassurance and guidance. We have to be ultra-clear about our communication and our decisions.

    Researchers Snowden and Boone identified several frameworks for decision-making. However, I’d like to share some of the strategies that worked for me during the upheaval of 2020 and have continued to help me navigate the following years up until now.

    Related: “Quitting Is A Virtue”: Why This Decision-Making Expert Says That Quitting Can Be A Growth Strategy

    1. Learn to make quick decisions

    Entrepreneur contributor Sanchita Dash writes that “One of the most important traits of being an entrepreneur is being able to take quick decisions that more often than not, decide the fate of your company.” She wrote this back in 2018 when this practice wasn’t nearly as essential as it has become today.

    A fast approach doesn’t just guarantee you don’t remain stuck, but it also ensures your employees feel a greater sense of psychological safety — which will affect your organization’s morale and productivity in the long run.

    There are many articles about why we need to slow down to make the wisest decisions during a crisis, but I believe that leaders also need to develop agility. Of course, this doesn’t mean going into stressful overdrive thinking you have to rapidly resolve every problem cropping up. You’ll only make yourself sick and burn out.

    I’m generally a big proponent of growing slowly and steadily as a business — it’s one of the main pillars of my company. But when it comes to decision-making, I agree with the founder of Polash Ventures, Lalit Upadhyay. “As an entrepreneur, you need to take decisions quickly as the active time frame for a current decision is going to be very short,” he tells Dash. “The result of the decision one has taken will show whether it was a quality decision or not.”

    Moreover, he affirms that “the entrepreneurial journey is all about taking the right decisions with confidence and positivity, firmly at the right time, one after another.”

    Related: Want to Be More Memorable to People? Ask Yourself This One Thing.

    2. During a crisis, avoid micromanaging at all costs

    Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about the importance of cutting out hard deadlines from your organization. Why? Because people who feel the pressure to produce won’t do their best work. In the case of my form-building company, I’ve come up with a framework for leading that is about avoiding any kind of micromanaging. It has no place here.

    This was especially vital to cut out during 2020 when the world came to a halt. Suddenly, every employee was forced to juggle their work and home responsibilities like never before — and flexibility wasn’t just a nice option, it was mandatory. We couldn’t demand that our teams finish a project by the same means they had done in days past.

    Earlier this year Ivan Popov made the case for why leaders need to stop micromanaging their teams and learn to let go. “Employees all over the world work in a constantly changing and evolving work environment,” he wrote for Entrepreneur. “While leaders and managers should focus on ways to improve their team’s overall work experience, they should also not forget about upgrading their leadership strategies.”

    Taking the above into consideration, your framework for decision-making shouldn’t just be about your bottom line, but also lead to a more fluid workflow and more dynamic culture.

    Related: Ask This One Question If You Want to Succeed

    3. Don’t try to find all the right answers — just act

    This one is particularly tricky for perfectionists who believe they can burn the candle at both ends figuring out the right solution for each problem.

    As someone who struggles with this tendency, I’m here to tell you that the adage is right when it says “done is better than perfect.”

    Snowden and Boone note that the pandemic demands decisive action, but that good leadership also “requires openness to change on an individual level.”

    They add: “Truly adept leaders will know not only how to identify the context they’re working in at any given time but also how to change their behavior and their decisions to match that context.”

    I humbly attribute my ability to manage this crisis with a dose of confidence and grace to my agility as a leader.

    Related: How to Use Mental Models to Make Better Decisions Faster

    Aytekin Tank

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  • 3 Ways Mindfulness Can Make You a Better Entrepreneur

    3 Ways Mindfulness Can Make You a Better Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As the owner of several digital marketing companies, I’ve found that mindfulness has played a crucial role in my success over the years. Not only has it helped me to stay focused and productive, but it has also allowed me to approach challenges and difficult situations with a clear and calm mind.

    Mindfulness helps us to stay focused and present in the moment. As entrepreneurs, we often have a lot of tasks and responsibilities vying for our attention, whether it’s two dozen tabs open in our browser or six consecutive Zoom meetings on a Tuesday afternoon. It can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of what’s most important. Mindfulness allows us to quiet our racing thoughts and stay focused on the task at hand, which can greatly improve our productivity and effectiveness.

    I think all entrepreneurs can benefit from this important aspect of self-improvement, and in this article, I’ll outline some of the key benefits and importance of mindfulness for entrepreneurs like myself.

    Related: What Every Entrepreneur Can Gain From Mindfulness

    What is mindfulness?

    Mindfulness is a mental state of being fully present and aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and surroundings. It is the practice of bringing one’s attention to the present moment, without judging oneself or one’s experiences. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation and other forms of contemplative practice, but I try to go beyond meditation by incorporating it into daily activities such as eating, walking and even working.

    For me, the goal of mindfulness is to help me develop a greater sense of clarity, focus and peace of mind. But the benefits at work, I find, are the strongest. If I’m present and less distracted at work, I can do more in 3 or 4 hours than I often do all day when I’m in a less mindful and more restless state.

    Achieving mindfulness at work

    One specific way that mindfulness can improve focus and concentration is through the practice of mindfulness meditation. This involves sitting in a comfortable position with a straight back, closing my eyes and focusing on my breath. When my mind starts to wander, which it inevitably will, I simply acknowledge the thought and then return my focus to my breath. This practice trains my mind to be more present and focused on my work, which has amplified my productivity dramatically over my career.

    Sometimes, even just sitting in my office chair and counting 10 deep, mindful breaths is enough to put me in a more mindful state.

    Benefit 1: Improved concentration and productivity

    Mindfulness can improve focus by helping identify and let go of distracting thoughts and emotions. For example, if you are working on a project, and your mind keeps wandering to other tasks or worries, mindfulness can help you become aware of these distractions and let them go, allowing you to refocus on the task at hand

    For example, writing a 500-word piece of copy might take me an hour or two, depending on the subject matter. However, after a 10-minute meditation session, I’m able to concentrate for long enough to write the same amount of copy in 30 minutes. Ultimately, I save time, and I’m more productive.

    Related: Benefits of Mindfulness and Awareness Meditation

    Benefit 2: Reducing stress and anxiety

    High levels of stress and anxiety can have a negative impact on an entrepreneur’s physical and mental health, leading to health issues and decreased well-being.

    One way I reduce stress and anxiety is by prioritizing self-care. This can include taking regular breaks, engaging in physical activity, getting enough sleep, and, of course, practicing mindful relaxation techniques such as meditation or deep breathing. It is also important to create a work-life balance and set boundaries between work and personal time, which mindfulness meditation and distraction-free living can help you achieve.

    Benefit 3: Enhanced creativity and innovation

    Mindfulness is the practice of bringing one’s attention to the present moment, without judgment. This can help to increase focus and concentration, which are important for creativity and innovation. When we are mindful, we are more likely to notice things that we might otherwise overlook, and this can spark new ideas and creative solutions to problems.

    Additionally, mindfulness can help to reduce stress and increase feelings of well-being, which can make us more open to new ideas and more receptive to the creative process. For me, mindfulness creates the conditions that are conducive to creativity and innovation.

    Benefit 4: Improved relationships and business communication

    When leading a company, mindfulness can help improve business relationships and communication through greater focus, clarity and empathy. When we are mindful, we are better able to listen actively and fully engage with others, which can foster better understanding and collaboration.

    Mindfulness can also help reduce stress and improve overall mental and emotional well-being, which can enhance our ability to communicate effectively and build positive relationships with colleagues. A more mindful frame of being also helps us to be more self-aware and in control of our own thoughts and actions, which can prevent misunderstandings and conflicts from arising.

    This is what has made mindfulness such a valuable tool for improving my communication and building stronger, more positive business relationships in my entrepreneurial life.

    Related: 5 Ways to Boost Mindfulness Even on Busy Days

    Putting it all together

    Next time you’re at your work desk, try minimizing your web browser, relaxing your eyes and counting a few deep breaths. Notice the things around you. Acknowledge your thoughts as merely thoughts, and discard them if they aren’t useful for achieving your present goals. Take a walk outdoors, and observe your surroundings in the same way.

    This, for me, is the core component of mindfulness as an entrepreneur. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find that your business results will be greatly amplified as a result of the improved focus, communication and useful relaxation that mindfulness brings.

    Amine Rahal

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  • 5 Goal-Setting Frameworks to Help You Live Your Dream

    5 Goal-Setting Frameworks to Help You Live Your Dream

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Are you an entrepreneur wanting to make your mark on the world but finding that it’s just not happening? Maybe you’ve come up with big ideas and taken action only for them to fizzle out, leaving you feeling demotivated and questioning if all of the work is even worth it.


    Klaus Vedfelt | Getty Images

    Don’t give up on living your dream life! We have 5 goal-setting frameworks that can help turn the tide. Take control over your goals, break them down into smaller chunks and use these techniques to see results fast. Read on if you’re ready to start making progress toward achieving success.

    Need a mentor to help you on your journey? Use Intro to connect with the perfect advisor.

    Stay focused, go after your dreams and keep moving toward your goals. — LL Cool J.

    1. SMART goals

    A framework suggesting setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

    • Specific – Write out clear, concise goals. What will be accomplished?
    • Measurable – The ability to track results quantitatively. What data will measure the goal?
    • Achievable – Make sure they are challenging but attainable. Is it doable? Do you have the skills/resources?
    • Relevant – Needs to be important and aligned with your priorities. Why is the result important?
    • Time-bound – Must have a target finished date. What is the time frame?

    2. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)

    The founders of Zillow and Reddit are famous for their use of OKRs.

    Objectives are the “what.” They are very qualitative and describe the path forward, the place you want to be. When you are unlocking your inner Einstein during a journal session, gut-check your objectives with these prompts:

    • Are they meaningful?
    • Are they audacious?
    • Are they inspiring?

    Key Results are the “how.” Now, these are quantitative. They provide the roadmap for accomplishing your Objectives. Pressure test these key results by asking yourself:

    • Are they specific and time-bound?
    • Are they aggressive, yet realistic?
    • Are they measurable and verifiable?

    Input-related KRs are really all the rage. Jeff Bezos is famous for clearly defining the inputs at Amazon. Writer James Clear’s Atomic Habits is obsessed with inputs. The father of OKRs and former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, popularized OKRs with well-defined outputs.

    3. HARD goals

    If you’re trying to reach a goal, then it’s time to go HARD.

    HARD stands for Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult. It’s not just a catchy acronym; it’s a powerful way to set yourself up for success. HARD goals are the key to reaching your highest potential. Let’s break it down and look at each component of HARD goals:

    • Heartfelt – meaningful and important to you.
    • Animated – vivid in your mind. You can visualize.
    • Required – necessary for you to achieve your long-term vision and mission.
    • Difficult – stretch beyond your comfort zone.

    Related: Use the service to find the perfect mentor to help you achieve your goals

    4. The Wheel of Life

    When it comes to goal setting, the Wheel of Life framework can help us get out of our rut by creating a holistic plan that looks at all aspects of life. It’s a great way to jumpstart our motivation and get us headed in the direction we want. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the Wheel of Life and how it can help us create an effective goal-setting plan.

    The Wheel of Life is basically a framework that can be used to assess the different areas of our lives. We assess how satisfied we are in each area and use this assessment to identify areas that need improvement. This helps us identify which goals should be our priority.

    The most common subdivisions include:

    1. Health: Exercise, sleep, energy, and diet
    2. Environment: Think about relatives, colleagues, etc. Do they cause stress?
    3. Career: Are you satisfied?
    4. Relationships: Do you spend enough time with your family, partner, kids, and friends?
    5. Personal growth: Are you reading? Are you learning?
    6. Money: Are you good with your financial status?
    7. FUN: Do you have hobbies? What do you want to do?

    5. The Four Disciplines of Execution

    Welcome to the world of execution! The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is a simple yet powerful system for helping teams stay focused and achieve results. 4DX is based on four key disciplines:

    1. Focus on the wildly important
    2. Act on lead and lag measures
    3. Keep a compelling scoreboard to track progress
    4. Create a cadence of accountability

    These four disciplines will help you and your team stay focused on the things that matter most and execute those initiatives with discipline.

    2023 is your year.

    The above frameworks are a surefire way to stay focused and achieve amazing results. If you need help along the way, don’t be bashful and book world-class experts and get 1-on-1 advice over a video call.

    Go get it!

    Brad Klune

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  • 5 Best-Practice Tips for Onboarding Remote Employees

    5 Best-Practice Tips for Onboarding Remote Employees

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Few companies pay enough attention to employee onboarding — according to a recent Gallup survey, only 12% of employees think their company does it well. And it’s clear that effective onboarding is crucial for both company productivity and employee retention: Successful onboarding can improve employee performance by up to 15% and means an employee is nine times more likely to stay with the company.

    Our organization supports companies all over the world with remote onboarding. Here, I want to highlight some onboarding practices that we have found useful both within our own team and when supporting other teams.

    Related: 4 Building Blocks for a Successful Remote Employee Onboarding Process

    What does remote onboarding cover?

    Standard employee onboarding covers all the steps that must be taken to set up a new employee to be successful within the company. This includes introducing new hires to the team, ensuring that they have the right equipment and providing training on key company policies.

    In remote onboarding, the process must be applied virtually, losing the in-person element which may make it easier to make employees feel at ease and welcomed. To succeed with remote onboarding, we recommend the following:

    1. Master “preboarding”

    “Preboarding” covers all those steps for setting up a new team member before the formal employment period begins. This includes:

    • checking that all contracts and additional documents (such as non-disclosure agreements) are signed

    • providing essential company documents and policies, such as the code of conduct and health & safety policies

    • ensuring the remote workstation is set up with everything the new hire needs to hit the ground running (e.g., the company laptop has been dispatched and accounts with all the necessary remote work software have been created).

    Nailing the preboarding process ensures that the employee can begin building momentum in their new role from the very first day of employment.

    2. Apply a culture of documentation

    In a traditional office environment, it is relatively easy for new hires to approach other staff and ask how things are done. This more casual approach doesn’t work in a remote-first work environment. Many prefer to work asynchronously (so may have limited availability), and Zoom fatigue means that many want to keep meetings to a minimum.

    This means, more than ever, the collective knowledge of the company needs to be documented and accessible for new staff. This should extend from process (e.g., how to use the employee HR portal or how to change passwords) to substantive knowledge for specific roles (e.g., sales scripts or answers to common customer queries).

    A documentation culture means:

    • a secure repository (we have found Confluence a useful tool for retaining information in a familiar ‘wiki’ structure)

    • regular updates, so that documents are a source of trust

    • access privileges, which means that employees can view and edit all documents that they need to, but access to sensitive information is restricted.

    Related: 4 Strategies to Successfully Onboard New Remote Employees

    3. Take cybersecurity seriously

    Remote work enlarges the potential “attack surface” of an organization — employees are likely to be working from non-secure connections and locations. This means they may be putting company IP or employee/customer personal data at risk or opening up the organization to phishing and other cyberattacks.

    Onboarding remote employees for cybersecurity means not just reciting the company’s security policies, but implementing online training and putting controls in place to ensure that those processes are being followed. Important steps here usually include applying two-factor (2FA) identification, requiring password resets at regular intervals and only allowing employee access through a VPN.

    4. Ensure new employees are welcomed and feel included

    Without the benefit of in-person introductions and social events, onboarding managers need to be intentional in helping new employees feel part of the team. This might include team members creating introduction videos for the onboardee (Loom is a good tool for this) and establishing virtual coffee breaks with key team members.

    As part of this, ensure new employees are included in all existing community-building initiatives: Make sure they have access to socially-oriented Slack or Teams channels and are invited to upcoming company events.

    Welcoming new employees with company “swag” is also a nice touch (stationery, coffee mugs and company hoodies are all popular).

    Related: 3 Onboarding Tips That Close the Gap for Remote Employees

    5. Implement “buddies” for all onboardees

    All remote onboardees should be assigned a “buddy” to whom they can feel comfortable asking any questions in relation to the company and their new role within it. Different than a mentor or supervisor, it can be advantageous for the buddy to be peer of the onboardee. Buddies should volunteer for the role, have a thorough understanding of the company and its processes and have a good reputation within the company.

    When you implement a buddy system, it is important to regularly check in on the system and make sure it is refined based on onboardee and buddy feedback.

    Onboarding new employees is a challenge for the remote-first work environment. Lack of physical proximity, use of remote work tools and a tendency towards asynchronous work can all make it more challenging for an employee to thrive in their new role. To get ahead of this challenge, companies need to be strategic about employee onboarding and ensure all new hires have the company support and tools to thrive in their new role.

    Antoine Boquen

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  • 6 Mindsets You Need to Adopt to Reach Your Marketing Goals

    6 Mindsets You Need to Adopt to Reach Your Marketing Goals

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Understanding the fundamentals of marketing psychology can help entrepreneurs create effective customer experiences and build customer loyalty. It can sound a bit complicated if you’re new to the term — and don’t get me wrong, it is — but in this article, I’ll break down the six key mindsets every entrepreneur must adopt to maximize the power of marketing psychology and reach their goals.

    Marketing psychology, sometimes called “neuromarketing,” is the practice of understanding consumer behavior and utilizing psychological principles to influence that behavior. It’s based on the belief that consumers’ buying decisions are influenced by a variety of factors, including personal experiences, beliefs, preferences, motivations and emotions.

    By understanding how these elements affect decision-making processes, marketers can create effective campaigns to reach their target audiences (even if those target audiences don’t necessarily behave logically). Here are six key mindsets I believe every entrepreneur needs to reach their business goals:

    Related: The Intersection of Psychology and Marketing

    1. Empathy

    Being able to put yourself in your customer’s shoes is essential when it comes to understanding what they want and need from your business. Empathy allows you to understand how your customers think, feel and behave so you can create experiences tailored to them.

    It also helps you understand why they make certain decisions, which can be invaluable when it comes to developing effective marketing campaigns.

    2. Storytelling

    Telling stories is a great way to captivate your audience and draw them into your narrative. Stories are an effective tool for creating emotional connections with customers because they allow you to show rather than tell why people should care about your product or service.

    Additionally, stories are memorable and can help differentiate your brand from competitors by making it stand out in customers’ minds.

    3. Curiosity

    Being curious about your customers’ needs helps you better understand what drives them and how best to engage with them on an individual level. Asking questions allows you to further develop relationships with customers and discover opportunities for improvement within your business model or customer experience strategy.

    Additionally, curiosity helps spark creative ideas, which can provide new insights into how you deliver value through your products or services.

    Related: 6 Ways You Can Leverage Consumer Psychology to Drive More Sales

    4. Brand authenticity

    When it comes to building trust with potential customers, authenticity is key as people want genuine interactions with brands they interact with online or in person.

    It’s important for entrepreneurs to be honest about who they are as a brand and what value they offer their customers so that those looking for solutions know exactly where to turn when making purchasing decisions. This also ensures that any content created reflects the true essence of the brand instead of generic messaging that won’t resonate with its target audience.

    5. Experimentation

    Nothing beats testing different strategies when trying something new or evaluating existing tactics used by competitors. The more data gathered during experiments, the better-informed decisions entrepreneurs can make regarding their own offerings.

    Experimentation also provides valuable insight into customer preferences, which helps inform further marketing strategies down the line.

    6. User experience

    Ultimately, user experience is at the heart of successful marketing campaigns, as people are more likely to buy from brands they trust and find easy to use. Focusing on creating positive experiences throughout every interaction builds loyalty among customers, increases engagement and boosts conversions over time.

    Taking the time necessary to ensure users have a seamless journey across all touchpoints pays off in spades over time.

    Related: 5 Insights Into Human Behavior That Will Boost Your Sales and Marketing

    The key mindsets discussed above form the foundation for any successful entrepreneur’s use of marketing psychology in their business pursuits. By adopting these mindsets, entrepreneurs will be one step closer to reaching their goals as each mindset provides unique insight into understanding customer behavior, engaging effectively with current or potential clients, delivering exceptional user experiences and ultimately providing valuable solutions through storytelling or experimentation.

    With these six essential mindsets at hand, entrepreneurs will be well on their way toward leveraging marketing psychology effectively within their businesses!

    Jacinda Santora

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  • 3 Marketing Trends You Need To Look Out For

    3 Marketing Trends You Need To Look Out For

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The beginning of a new year is a great time to review business plans, reassess marketing strategies and finalize budgets. When it comes to marketing, there’s no shortage of ideas, trends and new tools. As a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience scaling marketing initiatives and teams, I’ve found that every business has its own success formula at the end of the day.

    To help you find your formula, here’s my take on three trends that I believe are critical for business growth this year and beyond.

    1. AI technology

    As customer expectations for personalized experiences continue to grow, businesses of all sizes are constantly looking for ways to provide a faster and better service and compete with audiences distracted by more content than ever before.

    From writing sales emails to answering customer questions to creating images for marketing campaigns, AI-based tools, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, can help scale customer interactions, test marketing ideas, and grow business without increasing overhead costs.

    While you can’t completely outsource your marketing to AI (still need to check for accuracy, relevancy and brand alignment), AI platforms like ChatGPT — which can generate copy that closely resembles human-produced content and is capable of accurately interpreting highly customized requests — can help you get started on projects, maintain consistent customer outreach and save time.

    Instead of endlessly revising a blog post, spending all of your “marketing” time on social media, or skipping a holiday email because you don’t have enough time to write it, you can use AI tools to keep up with marketing outreach without feeling overwhelmed or losing sight of other parts of your business.

    AI’s potential in marketing is vast, and that by itself can be overwhelming. Start small — make a list of repeatable tasks you want to outsource and work from there.

    Related: Princeton Student Builds ChatGPT Detection App to Fight AI Plagiarism

    2. Digital accessibility

    As a marketing leader who built a career at leading tech companies in the United States, I rarely saw digital accessibility — or the practice of making websites, digital tools, and technologies accessible and usable for people with disabilities – prioritized in planning and developing websites.

    Until recently.

    As digital accessibility lawsuits skyrocketed and the Department of Justice (DOJ) cracked down on healthcare companies during the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses began to pay attention.

    Among the key reasons contributing to the increase in lawsuits and, more importantly, to a widely inaccessible internet (97%!) is the general lack of awareness and concerns around the cost of digital accessibility.

    Yet, by making your website more accessible, you can reach millions of Americans with disabilities who, according to the Return on Disability Report 2020, with their family and friends, control over 8 trillion dollars in disposable income in the United States.

    As more people search for products and services online, your website’s search ranking will continue to impact your business’s discoverability. Accessibility best practices, such as clear and descriptive headings and text descriptions for images, help people with disabilities navigate content and also make it easier for search engines to crawl and interpret websites.

    Accessible websites are also more discoverable to people who use voice search. A Google Mobile Voice Study found that 41% of US adults and 55% of teens use voice search daily.

    Here are a few steps you can take right now to make your website more accessible:

    1. Add alt text, or a written description, to all your images, which screen readers can read aloud for people with visual impairments, sensory processing disorders, or learning disorders.
    2. Use video captions and descriptions for people with hearing impairments. Make sure to review and correct any mistakes made by automated tools.
    3. Make your emails accessible – avoid using images as an entire email, underline inline links, and describe links accurately, so people who use screen readers know when text is linked and get a clear idea of where a link will take them.
    4. Use a color contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. You can check your website and other digital content color contrast using a free color contrast checker.
    5. If you’re working with a digital agency, ask if they can provide you with a digital accessibility solution. If not, consider getting a solution that will continuously monitor your website for accessibility errors and fix at least the majority of common errors in real time, helping you maintain an accessible website without breaking the bank (manual audits and fixes are expensive).

    Related: Use These 5 Steps to Create a Marketing Plan

    3. Influencers

    Influencers come in different shapes and sizes: macro influencers, such as celebrities and bloggers with millions of followers on social media; micro-influencers with under 100K followers; and nano influencers — those with fewer than 10K followers.

    While macro and micro-influencers might be out of budget for you (unless they organically find your product and like it enough to start promoting it before making a deal with you), nano influencers might already be in your network — loyal customers, industry experts, your employees and partners with large social media following. Cultivating these relationships and organically tapping into influencers’ networks can help you get more exposure exponentially and build brand equity.

    To make the most of these organic influencer relationships, create opportunities for social sharing — events, product news, helpful content, etc. — that would benefit your brand and theirs.

    Related: Influencer Marketing 101: A Blueprint for Running a Successful Campaign

    AI technology, digital accessibility and influencers all share a common thread: customer experience. AI technology makes it easier for small businesses to consistently provide timely and personalized online experiences to their customers. Digital accessibility is critical in creating inclusive experiences and providing equal access to products and services for people with different abilities. And finally, outstanding customer experiences are key to building relationships with influencers and earning their and their followers’ trust in a brand.

    I hope you’ll find my take on marketing trends valuable as you decide where to invest your time and marketing dollars in 2023.

    David Mazza

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  • I’ve Been a Tech Entrepreneur for Over 20 Years — Here Are 5 Key Lessons I’ve Learned Along the Way

    I’ve Been a Tech Entrepreneur for Over 20 Years — Here Are 5 Key Lessons I’ve Learned Along the Way

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    From the moment of conception to the pinnacle of success and beyond, startups encounter bumps, grazes and sometimes giant crashes along the way. Building a successful company that goes “all the way” takes grit and determination — and learning from others is one of the best ways to get inspired.

    Throughout my many years in the world of tech startups, there are a few key ideas that have stayed with me. Here are five objectives that have proven useful:

    Related: 6 Timeless Strategies That Drive Successful Entrepreneurship

    1. Understanding your audience

    When it comes to understanding the needs, wants and mindset of your target audience, the dogfooding theory is a great way to go. It is irrelevant to produce a product or business for a customer you think exists. Instead, you must ask yourself the following: Would I actually use this? Does it give added value? Does this customer actually exist?

    While I was leading the development of Windows Defender at Microsoft, we would “dog food” everything — the whole operating system and every piece of software included in it. It’s a critical element of developmental experimentation. We used to see these huge corporations building products they think people want, but they weren’t actually consumers of the product themselves. Like a chef creating a dish that he himself wouldn’t eat. Why make the products when you don’t believe in their value?

    Feedback and constant testing are also imperative. Keep going until you get the top results that you desire. There’s no law about how many times you can improve a version of a product.

    2. Importance of building the MVP-way

    The phrase MVP (Minimum Viable Product) was first coined and defined in 2001 by Frank Robinson and later popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. In his book, The Lean Startup, Ries commented:

    “The minimum viable product is that version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”

    Establishing an MVP is a critical way for companies to develop a gateway to success. Through an MVP, you can gauge how well something is working and whether people actually want it and find it useful. Put simply, building an MVP is a useful way to assess risk. Once it’s circulating, you can see where and what you need to improve — but taking that first step by putting something out there is crucial. Then you can test away to your heart’s content and utilize feedback where it’s constructive.

    Related: The Most Valuable Lessons These 5 Top Entrepreneurs Have Learned

    3. The F-word

    Another important aspect of business-building is that dreaded word: Failure. However, failure is okay and actually a necessary evil. Failure can give you a sense of perspective and open up new windows of opportunity in the future. Failure is acceptable.

    Many great entrepreneurs failed multiple times first. From Edison’s legendary multiple tries before he created the electric light bulb to Henry Ford’s initial failure with William H. Murphy in the late 1890s. Yet failure builds resilience, so you must pick yourself up and try again. More than that, though, failure teaches us how to overcome obstacles. You learn where the gaps are.

    4. Have a flexible end goal

    Success in the startup world is not all about unicorns. There’s nothing wrong with slow growth. “Slow and steady wins the race” is an expression for a reason. You don’t have to take your startup public. There are different ways to exit a startup, and being a unicorn isn’t the only option.

    In the tech world especially, everyone wants to be the next explosive big thing — the next Figma, Slack or TikTok. This isn’t typical, though. There are successful companies that built themselves up a lot slower. So, don’t be beholden to what the stereotypical idea of “startup success” is. Goals differ between various companies and products.

    Related: 8 Important Lessons From Leading Entrepreneurs

    5. Don’t be afraid to pivot

    Knowing when to pivot and when to say, “Enough! It’s not working. Let’s try something else” is key in working towards your end goal. Sometimes you do need to simply throw it all away and start from scratch. Typically, it’s easier for a startup than a legacy company to pivot. Take Netflix as an example. They pivoted from DVDs to streaming and then from the reliance on content from other companies to making their own content. Where is Blockbuster today?

    In 2022, we see the same within the antivirus industry. Legacy corporations aren’t innovating in the way the new-generation startups are to protect against next-generation threats. An example of this is the recent attack vector that RAV researchers discovered involving the metaverse and virtual reality.

    More often than not, the solution for legacy corporations is to buy up other products. Their business model is so stable that they are afraid to take on new technology and systems and disrupt their business. Conversely, young tech companies are constantly innovating their own products. We aren’t afraid to change or to take risks. Risk can be a good thing. It may not work all the time, but you may need to take some risks in order to advance your business.

    The main conclusions to be drawn from here are: If you fail — learn from it. Take what you’ve learned, and apply it to future ventures. Additionally, calculated risks often prove worthwhile. Knowing your audience is another major key to success, as is knowing yourself. Taking something you love to do and running with it is always the best jumping-off point.

    Andrew Newman

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  • Survive The Recession by Tackling This Widespread Workplace Issue

    Survive The Recession by Tackling This Widespread Workplace Issue

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    According to a January 2022 article from the American Psychological Association, employee burnout is hitting record highs around the globe, and in every industry — with “…nearly 3 in 5 employees report[ing] negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation or energy.” This not only harms employees but your business will likely be hit hard too, in the form of reduced productivity, errors, healthcare costs, incivility and attrition. To recession-proof your business, you need to help your people heal from burnout, and then shift your culture to eliminate the causes using the science-backed strategies provided.

    What is burnout?

    Put simply, this term is defined as a medically diagnosable condition of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion due to long-term stress. Authors of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (Ballantine Books, 2019), sisters Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. and Amelia Nagoski, D.M.A. have identified its three main components:

    Britt Andreatta

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  • New Employees Are Less Productive in a Hybrid Work Setting — But Why?

    New Employees Are Less Productive in a Hybrid Work Setting — But Why?

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Marc Benioff, cofounder and co-CEO of Salesforce, recently sent a company-wide Slack message complaining about the low productivity of recent hires made during the pandemic and asked, “Are we not building tribal knowledge with new employees without an office culture?” Salesforce permits a high degree of flexibility for employees: teams and their leaders can choose what kind of work arrangements suit their needs best. But does such flexibility threaten the development and integration of recently-hired junior staff?

    That’s a concern raised by many companies I advise on transitioning to permanent hybrid work arrangements. They recognize that research shows staff are more productive working remotely, but worry this may not apply to junior staff who have not yet learned the systems, processes and practices of the company. They also worry about the professional growth and cultural integration of junior staff. After all, the future of any organization depends on developing its junior staff into future leaders.

    Thus, many leaders join Benioff in expressing serious reservations about a flexible hybrid model. Instead, they advocate for a return to the office as a means of addressing such concerns and reinvigorating what Benioff termed an “office culture.”

    I tell such leaders that their concerns are real and need to be addressed. Yet there’s no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Flexibility helps improve productivity and retention while cutting costs; it’s important and viable to find a win-win approach that retains these benefits while also facilitating the development of junior staff.

    In fact, a full-time office return is likely to have a negative effect on junior staff, not a positive one. According to the ADP Research Institute report, “People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View,” Gen Z are the most likely age group to say that “if my employer insisted on me returning to my workplace full-time, I would consider looking for another job,” at 71%. By contrast, 56% of those 45-54 said they would consider looking for another job.

    Related: How Has Remote Work Impacted Our Relationships With Other Employees? The Findings of This Study Will Surprise You.

    Instead, the solutions I work on with clients involve a more targeted approach customized to the needs of junior staff. It does involve newer staff coming into the office more often, but not simply randomly: They’re not going to just pick up the culture and work habits of a company by osmosis, especially given that more experienced staff won’t be coming in as often as junior staff.

    What’s needed is a deliberate, intentional and structured program to facilitate their development and integration into company culture while maintaining flexible hybrid work arrangements. This policy is distinct from a company’s onboarding program, but should build on and plug into it, so that junior staff transition seamlessly from the onboarding program in their first several weeks into the development and integration program for the first couple of years.

    A key component of a hybrid development and integration program involves on-the-job training. Such training comes primarily in the form of senior staff responding immediately to questions and concerns raised by recent hires: showing them how to do the tasks associated with the role, guiding them into best practices and unwritten rules and norms and introducing them to important internal and external stakeholders. Likewise, such training involves senior staff observing the performance of junior staff and proactively providing them with feedback and suggestions for improvements.

    Fortunately, such on-the-job training can easily be done in a small-group style, with one senior staff member helping train six to eight junior employees. It takes having senior staff members coordinate schedules with junior staff to come to the office on the same days, and then work in the same open office space.

    All of the employees will work on their individual tasks. When a recent hire has a question, they ask it, and the experienced employee will answer and explain the context; doing so ensures that the whole group gets the benefit of the explanation, without the senior staffer having to repeat it for each person in a one-on-one training setting. Additionally, the senior staff member will occasionally walk around and check in on the tasks of junior staff members, providing them with guidance and coaching as needed. Again, this helps the whole group learn how to do this task.

    This kind of activity does impede the efficiency of senior staffers and needs to be considered in their performance evaluations as a service to the company. But this impediment is relatively small, because of a one-to-many dynamic of teaching many recent hires at once. No one person should be overburdened with training: this task should be distributed among a number of senior staffers known as good on-the-job trainers. It’s helpful for junior staff to get on-the-job training from a variety of senior staff members rather than from just a single individual; recent hires get multiple perspectives and tactics for accomplishing work outcomes, while also learning about and connecting with different networks and stakeholders within a company.

    As part of the development and integration program, it’s also helpful to provide formal mentoring for newer employees. Most of the mentoring should take place in the office since it’s easier to have conversations where recent hires can be vulnerable and admit a lack of confidence face-to-face, rather than via video conference.

    Make sure to have one senior staff member from the junior colleague’s immediate team. The goal of the senior person within their own team is to help the person with on-the-job learning specific to the team’s tasks and with understanding team dynamics. Also include two from outside the team. One should be from the junior staff members’ business unit, and another one should be from a different unit. At least one should be located in a different geographical area if the company is large enough. These two mentors will be needed to overcome one of the key problems uncovered by research on company culture in hybrid work: the decrease in cross-functional connections across the staff.

    Having three mentors decreases the burden on each, allowing meetings once or twice a month with each. As a result, such formal mentoring is easily manageable for experienced employees.

    What about the days when recent hires work remotely? To facilitate on-the-job learning through virtual settings, as well as to promote effective team collaboration, employ digital coworking. It involves team members spending an hour or two per day working on their own tasks while on a video conference call with their teammates.

    To start a digital coworking session, team members should first join a video conference call. During this call, each team member should share their plans to work on their own tasks for the session and then turn off their microphone while keeping their speakers on, with video optional. Then, team members work independently on their own tasks while still being able to communicate with each other by turning on their microphones if they have a question or comment. More experienced team members would then respond to the question, including using screen sharing or a virtual whiteboard to demonstrate how to complete a task. Digital coworking helps to replicate the experience of working alongside coworkers in a shared office space, which is helpful for on-the-job training for junior staffers.

    Related: Once a Skeptic, Elon Musk Now Embraces This Divisive Workplace Policy — and You Should, Too.

    Benioff isn’t wrong to call out the challenges in developing junior staff in a hybrid setting. Yet the solution doesn’t involve returning everyone to the office to ensure an “office culture.” Instead of a broad-brush approach that sacrifices flexibility, and its benefits for retention, productivity and cost savings, my clients find it helps to have a narrow, targeted approach that addresses the problem. The solution is a structured program that transitions recent hires smoothly from onboarding in the first several weeks into integration and development for the first couple of years, with in-office on-the-job training and mentoring, along with digital coworking.

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  • 4 Ways Your Business Can Take Advantage of a Recession

    4 Ways Your Business Can Take Advantage of a Recession

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Today’s macroeconomic environment is marked by high inflation, low consumer confidence, abysmal stock market performance and rising interest rates. Few sectors of the economy are exempt from the current malaise, and discretionary spending by consumers and businesses alike is at an all-time low.

    In times like these, it’s natural for entrepreneurs to focus on surviving rather than thriving. But recessions can actually be fertile ground for companies that are prepared to seize opportunity. Here are four ways entrepreneurs can take advantage of a recession to achieve massive growth:

    Related: How to Turn Inflation and Recession into Your Largest Business Opportunity

    1. Look for white space in the market

    In a recession, many companies trim their product lines and focus on their core offerings. This creates opportunities for companies that are able to identify and fill gaps in the market.

    For instance, in September, Facebook shuttered Novi, its digital wallet. The move comes as no surprise. Facebook is facing big challenges in maintaining both user and investor confidence amidst a slowdown in growth, all while its metaverse dreams flounder. But the death of Novi opens up an opportunity for a new entrant to provide a digital wallet. In fact, a phoenix has already risen from the ashes: A Web3 wallet, Martian, raised a $3 million pre-seed following Facebook’s announcement.

    Just as Novi aimed to provide a simple way to store digital currencies and make payments, Martian is said to “allow users to hold, store, and use multiple digital assets.” The key difference is that Martian is being built on top of open-source technology, rather than Facebook’s centralized infrastructure.

    In another example from the Web3 world, the FTX exchange famously collapsed, leaving thousands of users looking for other trading solutions. Yuriy Sorokin, the CEO of 3Commas, explains in an article that, amidst this volatility, their “goal remains the same as always: to meet the needs of every crypto investor by providing industry-leading services and professional-grade tools.”

    Rather than suffer from an industry downturn, Sorokin found an opportunity to double down. These kinds of opportunities are everywhere in a recession. As incumbent companies focus on their core offerings, new entrants can swoop in and provide the missing piece of the puzzle. In another example, while Ford is reducing the production of its trucks and SUVs, Tesla is gearing up to mass produce its Cybertruck.

    2. Attract top talent

    From Google to Facebook to Uber, many of the most successful tech companies have announced layoffs this year. While this is devastating news for the employees who are impacted, it’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs who are looking to attract top talent.

    In a recession, it’s not just big companies that are making layoffs. Small businesses are cutting back as well. But as employees at all levels find themselves out of work, they’ll be looking for opportunities that offer both security and upside potential. For entrepreneurs, this presents a golden opportunity to attract the best and the brightest to their team.

    Some recruiters have already started to take advantage of the current climate. As Reuters reports, following layoffs at Google and Apple, Stack Overflow more than doubled its headcount. Stack Overflow isn’t alone, as a survey of startup tech executives found that more than 40% of them boosted their hiring plans in the first half of 2022.

    If you’re an entrepreneur, now is the time to start thinking about how you can attract top talent to your company.

    Related: For Savvy Entrepreneurs, an Economic Downturn Creates Opportunity

    3. Take advantage of lower costs

    A recession can be a great time to get discounts on everything from office space to advertising. As businesses contract, they’re often willing to negotiate better terms with their vendors in order to free up cash. This presents a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs who are looking to get more bang for their buck.

    One way to take advantage of lower costs is to negotiate longer-term contracts. For example, if you’re looking for office space, you may be able to get a longer lease at a lower rate. Or if you’re looking to expand your team, you may be able to get a better deal on salaries if you’re willing to lock in employees for a longer period of time.

    4. Deploy cost-optimization technologies

    When faced with a budget crunch, businesses of all sizes are looking for ways to reduce costs. This has created a demand for cost-optimization technologies that can help businesses slash their spending.

    For entrepreneurs, this presents a unique opportunity to develop and market technologies that can help businesses save money. For instance, there’s currently a big push for energy-efficiency technologies that can help businesses lower their utility bills. Likewise, there’s a growing market for software that can help businesses streamline their operations and reduce waste.

    Cloud spend, in particular, is an area where businesses are looking to save money. In recent years, businesses have been moving more and more of their workloads to the cloud. However, as businesses have become more reliant on cloud services, their spending on these services has ballooned.

    This has led to a search for cost-effective cloud strategies, and this is where entrepreneurs can play a big role. Recently, a number of cloud optimization startups have raised big rounds of funding. Zesty, which automatically adjusts use of cloud resources in real time, raised $75 million while Keebo, a data warehouse optimization tool, raised $10.5 million.

    Related: Don’t Let a Recession Ruin Your Business. Here’s How Your Business Can Thrive During Hard Times

    As businesses look to save money in a recession, entrepreneurs who can provide cost-effective solutions will be in high demand. Financial technology solutions, too, can help firms cut costs, and therefore see greater adoption in a downturn. Solid, a banking-as-a-platform solution, recently raised a $63 million Series B and claims to have experienced 10X growth in the past year.

    Recessions are often seen as a time of contraction and doom and gloom. But for entrepreneurs who are willing to seize opportunity, recessions can actually be a time of massive growth. By looking for white space in the market, attracting top talent, taking advantage of lower costs and deploying cost-optimization technologies, entrepreneurs can position their companies for success in the years to come.

    Frederik Bussler

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  • How to Grow Your Business and Maintain Your Independence

    How to Grow Your Business and Maintain Your Independence

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In my last post, I shared some of the personal qualities that underlie entrepreneurial success, which I spoke about in a recent speech at my alma mater, Cornell. I’d now like to share some of the business advice that I gave in the same speech. Once you perfect the personal qualities of success, you still must understand the strategies that contribute to growing a successful company.


    Luis Alvarez | Getty Images

    Each of these strategies have something in common: They are focused on not just growth at any cost, but on sustainable growth that will maintain your independence. After all, most entrepreneurs get into the game because they want personal freedom and control over their own destiny. It’s important to never give that up.

    Related: 7 Steps to Finding Freedom in Your Business

    1. Don’t eat the free lunch

    That’s why the first strategy is to never eat the free lunch. In truth, nothing is free. The minute you accept someone else’s hospitality or gift, you take a subservient role.

    As a new entrepreneur, when I would go to a lunch or dinner, I aggressively fought to pick up the check, even when we didn’t have much money. The law of reciprocity holds true in business as well as life: If you are generous, people will be generous to you. If you live off the generosity of others, they will own you.

    This is why my company has never received any venture capital money, and I always recommend that other entrepreneurs resist the temptation as well. In many ways, you can’t be a pure founder if you take the easy money. As soon as you accept big bucks from the financiers, you work for them. You are limited in your ability to call shots.

    So, how do you avoid relying on venture capital or private equity? The key is to be thrifty and prioritize organic growth. If you don’t waste money, you don’t need to take other people’s money.

    Yes, capital is still required for many businesses. You might need some bank financing or money from friends and family. But a little bit of money is all it takes to test your idea and build proof of concept. And, of course, put as much of your own money in as you can.

    When I was able to pay my friends and family back for their investments in my company, it was one of the most rewarding things in my life. We got them their money back at 21x their original investment. It took us about 6 or 7 years, but rewarding the risk they took on our company was a form of success in itself. I’d always much rather reward friends and family than financiers who see you as just another cash cow — and treat you accordingly.

    2. Cultivate diverse revenue streams

    The second rule, and another crucial way to maintain independence, is to diversify your revenue streams. Diversity is good in all things, whether in the teams you hire or the revenue streams you create.

    A business built around a single cash source lacks resilience. I learned that the hard way during the pandemic. We were the largest online group hotel booking platform in the world. That’s a status you don’t want during a global pandemic when everyone’s locked down and not traveling in groups. We had to do a major pivot and switch from group to individual hotel sales. We set up a first-of-its-kind “gig economy” call center, where remote agents can answer inbound customer calls, which has resulted in much higher booking conversion rates for us compared to online. Now, we’re a much stronger company because we’ve built up an alternative revenue stream.

    Building a diverse business allows you to maintain your independence even when the going gets tough. The temptation to take venture capital or private equity money isn’t only strong in the beginning, it can also come up when you face hard times. That’s why it’s so important to plan ahead and maintain your rugged independence. Think of yourself like the Henry David Thoreau of your industry.

    Ultimately, taking the easy financing is a shortcut that leads to a trap. It’s like an athlete who takes steroids rather than putting in the work. Easy growth rarely leads to sustainable or enduring growth. There have been a lot of rewards for “blitz growth” in recent years, particularly in the tech industry. But that has changed in the last year with a big market correction. It’s best to put in the work, take the longer road and set yourself up for sustainable and lasting success.

    Related: 4 Ways To Achieve Sustainable Growth

    3. Be an expert — and act like one

    The final rule I’d like to highlight is the importance of developing your own expertise. This is also where people become tempted by dangerous shortcuts. It may seem appealing to hire someone else to be the resident expert in your industry, but then you risk forfeiting control over your business.

    Your clients or customers need you to be an expert. This requires putting in the work by constantly learning, meeting new people in your industry and staying on top of the latest innovations and trends. I like to tell aspiring entrepreneurs: You should always attend that industry conference or next event, no matter how tired you are. You can find time for sleep later.

    One of the reasons my company succeeded was by becoming the group hotel booking engine for sites like Priceline, Expedia and Hotels.com, and that came from being at every conference. The minute the big CEO walked in the room, I went up to them. I would reach out and say, “That was a great speech. I loved what you had to say. Oh, we work with your company” or “We would like to work with your company.” I probably did it to the point of being annoying, but it worked.

    If you’re a founder entrepreneur, nobody’s going to come up to you and introduce themselves — at least not at first. You’re going to have to open those doors yourself. That requires not being shy and going everywhere you possibly can.

    Of course, being an expert doesn’t mean developing expertise in every area. Hiring smart people and delegating is critical, as long as you don’t become lazy and outsource all of your company’s strategic thinking and hustle to others.

    At the end of the day, the only true way to be a leader is to be worthy of the respect of those who follow you. That requires being the expert — and acting like it. It doesn’t mean you are arrogant or a know-it-all; it simply means you have confidence in your own ability to identify trends, make decisions and lead your company forward.

    Related: 5 Essentials for Succeeding When You Become Your Own Boss

    By following each of these rules, you will not only grow your company but maintain full control, even in the face of hardship. You will preserve your rugged independence while still working effectively with others.

    If you are ever tempted to take the shortcut, just remember why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. You started a business to work for yourself and be the master of your own fate. Never give that up, no matter what.

    Tim Hentschel

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  • Why Business Executives with Disabilities Must Take Back Their HealthCare Now

    Why Business Executives with Disabilities Must Take Back Their HealthCare Now

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Anything less than full throttle is not an option for any business leader, but when you’re running the company with a disability, it takes something more than overcoming a lack of confidence or changing perceptions in the boardroom.

    It’s already tough to get to the top, let alone run your own business. When you get there, taking a day off is not an option; neither is calling in sick. If you require special accommodations, your biggest fear is that corporate heads will put someone else in your role — someone without the need for doctor’s visits, work accommodations, or even surgeries.

    Leaders with limitations often push themselves to prove to stockholders and CEOs that they can thrive in a stressful environment, outperform others gunning for the top role, and do everything themselves. But this is an unrealistic and dangerous way of thinking; this mindset is often responsible for deteriorating health and well-being as leaders put off important medical visits, forego physical therapy or miss medications.

    There is a way to take control of your health and wellness, but it takes a proactive, intentional approach. You can run your personal healthcare strategy the way you run your company — using the skills that brought you your current success. Here are three ways to take back the reins and manage your health.

    Related: How Hiring People With Disabilities Will Make Your Business Stronger

    1. Seize your day

    You may feel you don’t have time for your condition, but if you intentionally plan your medical visits, you can take control of every facet of your personal health care by choosing when you see health care providers. You can decide the time of day and, most often, the frequency of visits to physicians and therapists.

    Think about which appointments are taxing and which help you and your mindset; in other words, which visits work with your day rather than against it. Some physical therapy sessions, for example, might look like a gym routine; for others, therapy might be more relaxing, such as massage or meditation. Think about where in the day your medical visit would best help your productivity — and plan accordingly.

    If therapy relieves you, schedule it early in the day, perhaps at the beginning. You can choose your medical professional based on availability in the morning. But if you’re going through something that puts you in a negative mental or emotional state, save it for the end of the day or even the weekend.

    Business leaders with limitations often complain that they don’t like leaving work, where they feel most confident and take pride in what they do, to walk into a doctor’s office feeling helpless and out of control. If you’re in corporate leadership, you may feel that the negativity you experience going to the doctor goes against the positive mindset you need to motivate others and run your company effectively. But the skills you employ daily running your business can take you far in planning and managing your healthcare needs.

    Related: Why Leaders with Disabilities Bring a Secret Weapon to the Negotiating Table

    2. Be your own advocate

    As a leader, you’ve been hired to solve the tough problems for your company. You can apply this same know-how to your healthcare by assembling a team of positive, upbeat and effective healthcare providers to help you achieve your wellness goals. So often, we accept assigned healthcare workers or doctors on referral. We don’t look past the general requirements of insurance policies to ask questions that could help us find the right individuals to form a healthcare team to support our needs.

    Find like-minded people to care for you. If you need a physical therapist with a “coach” mindset, do the research, read the reviews and find one. If you need a counselor for talk therapy to help you cope with your condition, keep digging and asking questions until you find the right person.

    Since you’re giving up a large portion of your day to attend to your health needs, use the same mindset you have for hiring people at the workplace. Does each person on your team have a positive mindset? Do you feel uplifted when you leave the clinic, even if all the news isn’t good? Does each member of your healthcare team listen to your needs and help you find solutions? Why would you sacrifice your health by accepting unvetted practitioners if you don’t accept inferior performance at work?

    Don’t accept “No,” for an answer, and don’t listen when someone says that a much-needed treatment is not covered by insurance. Often, a little self-advocating can go a long way. You will eventually find a person willing to help you get answers. Using your leadership skills to advocate for yourself and how you stand in the gap for your company is important.

    Related: Employers Need Workers. Now They’re Realizing The Untapped Talent of These People.

    3. Delegate to create a work-life balance

    If you’re in a leadership role, you may not hire employees directly, but knowing who to trust in your workforce is central to managing your company if you have a disability. You’ll need a “go-to” person to step in for you. Find the person who can keep the home fires burning, take that person under your wing, and bring them up to speed on the specific needs of your role in the company. Share with them how you do things, especially the daily schedule, the “musts” of your job, and where to find important information.

    You can simplify this for others if you learn to embrace technology. Invest in researching tech that keeps you in the loop, even if you’re in physical therapy or recovering from surgery. Look for training on iPhone or Android technology that can help you see spreadsheets, scan reports, analyze productivity or go over profit and loss figures, all from your phone.

    Thriving at work is essential; however, managing your time is key to taking control of your wholeness. Your well-being is as vital to the company as it is to you and your loved ones. There’s always time to invest in a healthier and more productive future. You can turn the tide on your health needs using the know-how that brought you to lead in the first place.

    Nancy Solari

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  • Once a Skeptic, Elon Musk Now Embraces This Divisive Workplace Policy — and You Should, Too.

    Once a Skeptic, Elon Musk Now Embraces This Divisive Workplace Policy — and You Should, Too.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As part of ongoing cost-cutting measures under new owner and CEO Elon Musk, Twitter is shutting down its Seattle offices and instructing employees to work remotely. That’s despite Musk earlier claiming that remote workers are only “pretending to work” and banning remote work at Twitter upon taking it over in early November.

    So what explains his change of heart? Apparently, it’s the costs associated with the company’s Seattle office, including rent but also services such as cleaning and security.

    The fact that Musk — an extreme skeptic of remote work — acknowledged its cost-cutting benefits illustrates the future of remote work for the U.S. economy. It highlights the misleading nature of many headlines that claim an impending recession would lead to the end of remote work since a cooling labor market will give executives more control to require employees to return to the office. That’s because many employees prefer to work remotely and most executives want their employees in the office.

    However, the reality is that the impact of a recession on remote work is more complex than simple leverage from a cooling labor market. Of course, it’s true that during a recession, employers have more leverage. At the same time, they need to focus on maximizing the return on investment from their employees.

    Related: They Say Remote Work Is Bad For Employees, But Most Research Suggests Otherwise — A Behavioral Economist Explains.

    In times of economic growth, executives have more freedom to make decisions based on their personal preferences and intuitions. But during a recession, they may need to hunker down, be more disciplined, and rely on data to make decisions that make the most financial sense for the company — like Musk choosing to have Twitter staff work remotely for the sake of cutting costs. This focus on profitability over personal preferences benefits remote work.

    Evidence shows that remote work is more productive than in-office work, which makes facilitating remote work especially important in a time of cutting costs since higher productivity means companies need fewer employees to do the same amount of work. A study from Stanford University reported remote workers were 5% more productive than in-office workers in the summer of 2020. By the spring of 2022, this productivity gap had increased to 9% as companies continued to improve their remote work practices and invested in technology that supported remote work. A different study used employee monitoring software, and also found that remote workers are more productive than in-office workers. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study found that productivity growth in industries with a high reliance on remote work, such as IT and finance, grew from 1.1% between 2010 and 2019 to 3.3% since the start of the pandemic. In contrast, industries that rely on in-person contact, such as transportation, dining, and hospitality, experienced a change in productivity growth from an average increase of 0.6% between 2010 and 2019 to a decrease of 2.6% since the start of the pandemic.

    While collaboration and innovation may be weaker in a remote setting compared to an office setting, this can be addressed by using best practices for collaboration and innovation in remote settings, such as virtual asynchronous brainstorming. Studies have also found that greater worker autonomy and flexibility can lead to more innovation, and remote work facilitates autonomy.

    In addition to being more productive, remote workers show a willingness to work for lower pay, another factor that will boost reliance on remote work in an upcoming recession. An NBER study illustrates that remote work lowered wage growth by 2% over the first two years of the pandemic, as employees often view remote work as a valuable benefit and decreased salary demands in exchange for remote work options. For a specific example, a survey of 3,000 workers at top companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft found that 64% would prefer to work from home permanently rather than receive a $30,000 pay raise. Companies that offer remote work opportunities may also benefit from lower cost-of-living expenses, as they can hire employees from lower-cost-of-living areas within the U.S. or even outside the country.

    Even during a recession, companies need to hire to replace people who leave, and we’re in an unusual situation of a surprisingly tight labor market despite the negative economic news. Remote work makes it easier for companies to attract top talent, as a Morning Consult survey found that over 60% of respondents would be more likely to apply for a job that offered remote work options.

    Remote work can also improve employee retention, and it’s very costly to replace employees, especially given the challenge of hiring good talent in our current labor market. A survey by the ADP Institute found that nearly two-thirds of respondents would consider looking for a new job if they were required to work in the office full-time. Flexibility is a key factor in job satisfaction, and a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that offering a hybrid work schedule, which includes both remote and in-office work, can improve retention by over a third, compared to a fully office-centric schedule. In fact, one of my clients who I helped figure out future work arrangements, made the decision to adopt a fully remote model after finding that over 85% of its employees preferred full-time remote work.

    Even the Biden administration has recognized the benefits of remote work. After initially encouraging federal workers to return to the office, the administration now changed its stance and began advocating for remote work as a way to improve recruitment, retention and productivity among government employees. That stance matches a Cisco survey of federal government workers, which found that 66% prefer to work remotely more than half the time, with 85% saying that the ability to work from home significantly improves their job satisfaction.

    As the cost savings and productivity benefits of remote work become more apparent, more traditionalist executives will recognize the benefits of supporting their employees working remotely on a full-or-part-time basis. However, this shift may prove challenging for these leaders due to cognitive dissonance, or the difficulty in reconciling conflicting information, such as their personal preferences and the financial realities of remote work. Moreover, traditionalist leaders struggle to adapt to new work models due to cognitive biases, which impair decision-making in various areas of life. The most effective leaders are willing to change their minds when confronted with new information, while less capable leaders may fall victim to confirmation bias, seeking out information that supports their preexisting beliefs, or the ostrich effect, denying negative facts about the world. As a result, companies with inflexible leaders will underperform compared to more adaptable organizations, and these leaders will ultimately be replaced by those who embrace remote work.

    Leaders need to show much more discipline in troubled economic times, focusing on company bottom lines over personal preferences. Remote work means greater productivity and lower salary costs, along with decreased costs through improved recruitment and retention. These people-related cost benefits add on top of the cuts in expenses for rent, cleaning, and security as companies give up now-unnecessary office space. In my conversations with clients who I help transition to hybrid and remote work, these cost savings have been increasingly important in recent months as a recession looms. And if even hard-line opponents of remote work like Musk see these obvious benefits, we can anticipate that a recession will prove a major boost to remote work.

    Gleb Tsipursky

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  • Securing Venture Capital for Your Business Means Getting Back to Basics

    Securing Venture Capital for Your Business Means Getting Back to Basics

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It’s tough out there for businesses looking to raise money. After several record-breaking years, startups saw funding cut in half in the third quarter of 2022, according to Crunchbase News. Even as many of us wonder if we’ve hit bottom, there’s reason to be hopeful that dollars in reserve could boost prospects in 2023. Whatever the market holds, venture capital funding will likely look different in the coming years, with VCs prioritizing evidence of focused, sustainable growth in the companies they back.

    Simply put: In this environment, it’s about going back to basics.

    Douglas Wilber

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  • Southwest Airlines meltdown highlights insular management team: ‘A founder-based culture can only take it so far’

    Southwest Airlines meltdown highlights insular management team: ‘A founder-based culture can only take it so far’

    In the aftermath of a meltdown that led to 16,700 flight cancellations and may cost the airline more than $800 million, blame has fallen on an outmoded crew scheduling system and an unusual point-to-point route network. Southwest was overwhelmed and unable to adapt as a severe storm swept the US.

    But behind those specific issues is an insular management team that critics say lacks the imagination and technology expertise to help avoid such crises. While the bootstrap culture instilled by co-founder Herb Kelleher turned Southwest into one of the nation’s largest carriers, the size of the company now demands new ways of thinking and investment in innovation.

    “It makes you wonder if there isn’t sort of a correlation or cause and effect here, where you’ve got a fairly entrenched, stagnant board, a grow-your-own leadership team since it was a very small, scrappy airline,” said Keith Meyer, global leader of the CEO and board practice at executive search firm Allegis Partners. “A founder-based culture can only take it so far.”

    Southwest is full of lifers. Bob Jordan, who took over as chief executive officer in February, has been with the airline 34 years. The chief financial officer and communications chief have each worked there 30 years, while the chief commercial and chief legal officers have been around at least 20. The closest to a newbie among Southwest’s top management might be Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson, who joined a decade ago from Hawaiian Airlines.

    Jordan doesn’t see it as a problem.

    “We’ve always been proud of the fact we’ve developed leaders here and that we have folks with so much tenure,” he said in an interview. “They have a very deep airline knowledge, functional knowledge and very deep relationship that serves you well in normal times and when you get into an incident like this.”

    Southwest isn’t alone in recruiting from within. American Airlines Group Inc.’s top leadership had been together since the mid-1990s, first at America West Airlines, then US Airways before a merger with American. The group first began to fracture when Scott Kirby moved to United Airlines Holdings Inc. in 2016 and later became CEO there.

    “The aviation industry more broadly has been a bit of a laggard experimenting with executives from outside, let alone their boards,” said Jason Hanold, CEO of executive search firm Hanold Associates.

    The Southwest mindset

    But Southwest is in a unique position, with the challenges of a major carrier and the mindset of a small one.

    The airline, which began flying between a handful of cities within Texas in 1971, has grown into a behemoth that has carried more domestic passengers than any other airline in recent years. That expansion has added complexity to its keep-it-simple business model, and resulting cost pressures mean it often can’t offer the cheapest fares.

    The airline’s focus on stretching every dollar has also made it more conservative than other carriers in a highly regulated, safety-focused industry that rewards consistency, said Samuel Engel, senior vice president for innovation at ICF, and former head of the consultant’s aviation group. It leans more on insiders because of “the continued belief that Southwest is different.”

    Southwest’s 13-member board has an average tenure of nearly 12 years, compared with about six and a half at Delta Air Lines Inc. and American and five and a half at United, which agreed to a board revamp in 2016 at the behest of activist investors. None of Southwest’s directors has a background in tech.

    The carrier has a long-standing reputation of being slow to adopt new technology, and spent years implementing a new reservation system and updating its maintenance operations. It’s now spending $2 billion to improve a balky Wi-Fi system, add power ports at seats and install larger overhead bins. 

    “Southwest is the largest domestic airline in the US and it should start behaving that way,” Helane Becker, an analyst with Cowen Inc., said in a research note. “There are probably a lot of smart technology people who are getting laid off from tech companies that could help it out.”

    Southwest has acknowledged putting updates to its crew scheduling system behind other improvements, despite long-standing complaints from pilots and flight attendants. Watterson called the system its “Achilles’ heel” in the December breakdown.

    The airline has said it’s looking at every aspect of operations to find what produced the meltdown, and expects to “swiftly” reach conclusions. It hasn’t said how many passengers were affected, but the company is reimbursing travelers for canceled flights and hotels, meals and other related expenses.

    Its shares have fallen slightly since the travel fiasco, even as the broader market has gained. Southwest tumbled 21% in 2022, the second-worst performance among the five biggest US carriers. The reputational damage may lead to more volatility, and its shares will underperform the S&P 500 Index by 5% over the next two months, according to Nir Kossovsky, CEO of reputation risk insurer Steel City Re.

    Jordan said he’s committed to getting the company back on track, regardless of what it takes.

    “We have a 51-year history of doing really well, operating really well,” he said. “This one event, which is significant, won’t define us.”

    Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives. Subscribe here.

    Mary Schlangenstein, Bloomberg

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  • 3 Easy New Year’s Resolutions Every Business Owner Should Make in 2023

    3 Easy New Year’s Resolutions Every Business Owner Should Make in 2023

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    New year’s resolutions are a bit of a joke these days. Let’s be honest. To the point that breaking them seems par for the course. Only 9-12% of the 41% of Americans who make resolutions in the first place follow through with them.

    As business owners, we face this every year too. We set goals for our team, or we have growth forecasts to hit. Right from the jump, we commit ourselves to deliver a long list of lofty promises.

    And do we come through?

    It would be very glib of me to accuse you of writing checks your…um…”bottom” can’t cash. But statistically, that’s precisely what you’re doing. In the warm, cozy confines of the Christmas holidays and new year celebrations, you concoct all of these wonderful new milestones for you and your business.

    Then reality hits. The day-to-day operational issues, supplier delays and client requests. They all conspire to slow your progress to a crawl. Before you know it, you’re preparing for Christmas again, having hardly achieved any of it!

    Related: 10 New Year’s Resolutions Entrepreneurs Should Make Every Year

    The problem is that you tried to change too much!

    We all look for magic bullet solutions, but your mind is just not set up to cope with massive and sudden changes. As much as 97% of your decision-making is done subconsciously. That means that no matter how strong your intellectual resolve is — unless you can internalize your intentions and communicate them favorably to your subconscious — you’re unlikely to see them to fruition.

    You might think that working on your subconscious is a personal indulgence you don’t have time for, but trust me: you have to. Like it or not, your business is an extension of you. It exists because you created it and gave it purpose.

    If you are locked in a personal battle between your consciously held desires and your subconscious emotional programming, your business will rapidly lose direction and focus.

    So with that said, here are three easy new years resolutions that every business owner should make in 2023.

    1. Make ‘check-ins’ a part of your everyday routine

    What do I mean by this?

    I’m talking about taking five or ten minutes twice daily to take yourself off to a quiet space and check in with yourself.

    We can often become derailed as we go through our day. We unknowingly carry the baggage of the various issues we encounter into our subsequent decisions on unrelated matters.

    By checking in regularly, you’ll be able to hear and let go of your frustrations. Your ‘stuck states’ will be freed, enabling you to address your needs with a level head. Thus improving your ability to lead and your team’s ability to deliver.

    Related: This is Why Entrepreneurs Seriously Need to Take a Break

    2. Take regular ‘VIP Days’

    I do this at least once or twice a month, but it’s crucial in getting that 97% of your brain onboard.

    A VIP day involves you indulging in your favorite things to do. This could be shopping, a spa treatment, going to your favorite restaurant for lunch…anything.

    A big part of why you face so much internal resistance to change is because you are hardwired (thanks to millions of years of inherited, genetic wisdom) to resist it. The change represents the unknown, and the unknown is unsafe!

    Bearing in mind that this simple reasoning pre-dates language, reasoning and certainly globalization. It simply doesn’t have the awareness that your conscious mind does. What taking a VIP day will do for you is show your subconscious that you are a person who has taken chances and they have given your more security. Not less.

    A significant point of resistance to growth for so many of us is that we simply do not see ourselves as successful. By enforcing the taking of regular VIP days, you’re actively stepping into becoming that new person holistically. And your subconscious will notice.

    Related: Would You Rather Change or Let Your Business Die?

    3. Set micro-goals for your business

    It’s easy to drag everyone into a meeting on their first day at work of the new year and proclaim that “this year we’re going to aim to double growth in sales!” before dusting your hands off and returning to your office.

    Setting top-level goals is your responsibility, sure. But you won’t get there in one leap!

    Going back to what I just said about your subconscious programming. Looking at a high-level goal like that, with no conceivable way to break it down, is simply going to result in overwhelm for you and your team. You need to think about the lower-level steps along the way to achieving that end result and then walk those through with your team.

    Related: Do You Have a Love/Hate Relationship With Goals?

    Of course: delegate operational responsibility for them, but recognize your responsibility to understand what they are in the first place! When everyone can see the path clearly, understand precisely how to execute their part in it and feel confident in their ability to do so: you’ll be unstoppable.

    Limiting these to three and keeping them simple is to avoid overcommitting yourself and risking a shutdown. The reason for giving your three personal resolutions (rather than ones for your business directly) is to better resource you in terms of your mental resilience so that you can handle whatever comes your way.

    Make no mistake: the challenges of 2022 are likely to continue well into 2023. The best way to hedge against them is by better equipping yourself with the internal resources to guide your team decisively.

    Daniel Mangena

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  • How Leaders and Their Teams Flourish Through Continuing Education

    How Leaders and Their Teams Flourish Through Continuing Education

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    After likely spending years in college and excitedly anticipating a professional life, it’s easy to be sympathetic to an entrepreneur’s hesitancy about returning to the classroom. But being excellence-and stability-driven, like it or not, also means nurturing knowledge and skills as leaders, as well as those of staff members. Put simply, at some point, to keep careers, businesses and overall satisfaction growing, it’s occasionally necessary to plunge back into the scholastic pool.

    Why further education could be the right choice for you

    Significant payoffs of ongoing learning include value creation, career satisfaction and engagement, as well as closing collegiate skill gaps and reducing churn.

    Let’s look at the value side first: The more you know and can do, the greater your value to all parties — investors, partners and staff. Diverse and up-to-date knowledge increases the ability to identify opportunities and problem-solve.

    Keeping your knowledge and skills current also puts you in the best position to explore new business opportunities and lead authoritatively. In doing so, you’re positioning both yourself and (ideally) your team as experts as a way to stay market competitive. If you’re starting a company or buying an asset, that extra education symbolizes commitment and capability that can give you an edge in attracting partners and winning over investors.

    Sometimes, college doesn’t prepare new graduates for everything needed to be capable and successful in entrepreneurial or other professional pursuits. Many industries, such as tech, finance, commercial real estate and other dynamic fields are evolving so quickly that a gap exists between expertise needed in the real world and that provided via college curriculums. So, you and/or your team may well need specialized vocational training provided by industry organizations and experts to build and maintain a competitive advantage. And for enterprises that require licensing, it’s often obligatory to do so.

    This brings to mind another essential reason to stay current: avoiding liability. If you operate a business in an industry that carries a fair amount of malpractice risk, such as law, architecture or real estate, showing that you took best-practice measures to keep team abilities at their peak will help protect against professional negligence claims.

    Data abundantly points to the value of continuing education, particularly as it applies to providing ongoing learning to employees. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees reported being more loyal to employers that invest in their education, and no less than 63% of working adults described themselves as being “professional learners” (taken career courses or other training in the last twelve months according to a 2016 Pew Research Center article. That latter research also indicates that 69% of workers living in households earning more than $75,000 per year are likewise self-described professional learners.

    Related: Here Are Some of the Best Continuing Education Options for Entrepreneurs

    Growth and satisfaction

    Both business and personal lives can become tedious when a person is stuck doing the same task repeatedly, particularly without variation or the opportunity to expand. This is what tends to happen when knowledge and experience in new areas haven’t been developed for an extended period.

    When we’re trying to build a reliable team, boredom is among the primary opponents. Intellectually stymied employees are likely to become disengaged and have diminishing views of their futures, making them much more likely to look for a new job.

    Further education challenges entrepreneurs and employees personally and professionally and opens opportunities for growth and creativity. The chance to try something new, get a better or novel result or simply offer a different perspective keeps work fresh and boosts engagement and fulfillment. The potential opened by ongoing learning allows us to redefine entrepreneurial and professional identities and find what truly fits our personalities and talents.

    Related: What Benjamin Franklin and Tony Robbins Can Teach You About Self-Improvement

    Educational avenues

    Fortunately, depending on preferences, objectives, budget, industry and available time, there are plenty of options for pursuing additional education. If you’re considering diversifying into a new sector, the conventional route is going back to college (or hiring managers and technicians with the needed skill sets). While this can be costly and time-consuming, it’s also valuable and rewarding. Even if you already have a particular level of degree (bachelor’s, master’s, etc.), there’s no limit to how many degrees you can get on the same level. In other words, just because you already have a bachelor’s doesn’t mean that the mandatory next step is a master’s, particularly if the goal is to change industries.

    As an alternative route, higher education institutions offer certificate programs that can be completed in three to 18 months. These allow you to supplement a skill set in your current leadership role and broaden your capabilities.

    Related: How to Recreate Your Career and Start Over

    Beyond formal education channels, industry organizations provide many professional and vocational options. These include credential/designation programs, industry conferences, academies and workshops. These can be a great choice, even fresh out of college, if you or your employees need to reinforce knowledge that’s fueled by practical insights from active experts in your industry.

    Finally, leaders and workers alike can learn by exploring new roles in the current company or in a new venture, where existing skills can be applied while being exposed to new ideas, methodologies and skill sets. So, if you have a staff, consider offering in-house training programs, because supporting and sponsoring this education pays substantial dividends, including being an incubator for new leaders.

    Robert Finlay

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  • 4 Commitments All Inclusive Leaders Must Follow

    4 Commitments All Inclusive Leaders Must Follow

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    2022 was the first year of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion accountability for inclusive leaders. Our future will be filled with increasing expectations from employees, customers and business partners, looking for us to step up and courageously respond to societal needs and problems across human differences. It won’t be easy, but it will be good.

    Let’s bring some substance into our learning of how to lead more inclusively. Here’s a deeper dive into four crucial concepts and skills for inclusive leaders in the coming year.

    1. Choose kindness over making others wrong

    I’m unsure when or why we permitted kindness to become a sign of fragility or ineffectiveness. We have a nauseating array of “leaders” who demonize people who disagree politically with them, call names, refuse to care and instead foment the pain of trans people. The examples of meanness and cruelty are simply too long to list. Kindness is often seen as a weakness in the workplace. There’s an epidemic of giving into the self-obsessed impulse to make ourselves right and make others wrong, almost for the insidious sport of it. That is a way to shred relationships. And we see massive malice on social media.

    Kindness is respecting another person’s dignity in ways that help them be happy, comforted, heard or whole.

    Inclusion can be defined in the same way. As an inclusive leader, how do you ensure that your colleagues know that you care about their psychological safety, day-to-day struggles and ambitions? Choose kindness and equip others to be alright, not wrong. Prioritize relationships.

    Related: Why Kindness Is A Crucial Quality For Leaders

    2. Commit to evidence-based decision making

    Inclusive leaders think critically, use credible data and make decisions on that basis. They include their teams and peers in decision-making. This is not an argument for cold-hearted objectivity — inclusive leaders take the complexity of human identities into account and seek to factor in the emotions of all involved. Evidence, facts, truth: whatever words you use, the idea is central for effective and inclusive leaders.

    Inclusive leaders must reject conspiracy-based opinions without evidence, excessively emotional pleas that are more about advocacy than the business you’re there to conduct or unending deliberations or analyses that claim to be ‘inclusive’ at the expense of actually making a good and timely decision.

    Diversity, equity and inclusion should be a source of rigor in your leadership work. Build a healthy definition of ‘evidence’ (and emotions are one kind of evidence), and stay in the game by making inclusive decisions.

    3. Center the future on realities from the past

    This is not a complicated point: we cannot prepare ourselves and our children for the future if we are afraid of our collective past. No committed inclusive leader will accept a law, a policy or a practice to censor history because it makes someone uncomfortable. We need to say this plainly: it’s pure fear and unproductive denial to pass laws that “protect white people from discomfort” when solving the ongoing impacts of racism or antisemitism, or homophobia.

    Such a stance stifles learning, refuses to prepare all our children for the multiracial and otherwise diverse reality of the world we already live in, and directly supports the forms of systemic bias that real patriots fight every day. Suppose your school district or government has passed such laws or policies as an inclusive leader. In that case, you should consider how to change such decisions with powerful education and insistent kindness.

    Related: Don’t Let Fear Conquer Your Greatness

    4. Champion demography as destiny

    The multicultural future has already arrived. Maybe even our families have evolved: babies of color have been the majority of children born for six years, and interracial marriages are now commonplace. Study the 2020 Census, and you will realize our population has been diversifying for generations. The identity mix of your customers and employees is completely profound right now. The way to learn about diversity is widening: neurodivergence, working across generations, navigating languages and cultures to grow globally, understanding the impact of spirituality and religious differences, etc.

    Demographics cause us to consider how our future is already here and coming close. And the elements of DEI will only expand ‘in the future.’ All this change is pushing on your business model: where you source product and talent, how you manage differences with customers and reach new ones, how you work with suppliers and regulators, how DEI equips you to measure what matters in your unit, why you invest in a market or a merger. Inclusive leaders engage demography, so we have the chance to thrive.

    These are some profound challenges for inclusive leaders in the coming years. I encourage you to pursue these Four C’s: choose kindness, commit to evidence-based decision-making, center a future on the realities of the past and champion demographics.

    And a final thought: leading with these challenges in view will help you mend and tend to family relationships during the holiday season and beyond. We can listen to build trust and practice inclusive leadership wherever we go.

    Chuck H. Shelton

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  • This Dangerous Judgement Error Could Cost You Your Business

    This Dangerous Judgement Error Could Cost You Your Business

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Congress just cleared the Boeing 737 Max 10 jet for certification in the omnibus end-of-year spending bill without further safety enhancements. That’s despite significant opposition by those demanding a safety upgrade: from the union representing the 15,000 pilots at American Airlines, from the families of those killed in the two deadly crashes in 2019, and from Rep. Peter DeFazio, chair of the House Transportation Committee. Rep. DeFazio led the key congressional investigation into the Max crashes and said the language in the spending bill was included over his objection.

    This rushed clearance stemmed from the pressure of lobbying by Boeing and its allies. It suggests neither Boeing nor Congress learned the lesson of Boeing’s earlier 737 Max fiasco: when 346 people lost their lives; Boeing lost $5 billion in direct revenue and over $25 billion when counting damage to the brand and losing customers; and Boeing fired its CEO Dennis Muilenburg.

    What caused the disaster for Boeing? At a high level, it was the company’s desire to keep up with Airbus’s newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft, the Airbus 320. To do this, Boeing rushed the production of the 737 Max and provided misleading information to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in order to receive fast approval for the plane. In the process, Boeing disregarded the safety systems that its own engineers had recommended and did not fix known software issues with the 737 Max, which ultimately led to the crashes.

    The new normal

    The root cause of the disaster at Boeing can be traced back to a cognitive error known as normalcy bias. This bias causes people to overestimate the likelihood that things will continue as they have been and underestimate the potential consequences of a disaster occurring.

    Ironically, the transformation of the airline industry in recent decades to make airplanes much safer and accidents incredibly rare is key to understanding Boeing’s disaster. The Boeing leadership was overconfident in the safety record of their airplanes and saw the FAA certification process as an obstacle to doing business rather than a necessary safety measure. This normalcy bias contributed to their decision to rush the production of the 737 Max and overlook known software issues.

    Boeing’s 737 Max disaster is a classic case of the normalcy bias. The Boeing leadership felt utter confidence in the safety record of the airplanes it produced in the last couple of decades, deservedly so, according to statistics on crashes. From their perspective, it would be impossible to imagine that the 737 Max would be less safe than these other recent-model airplanes. They saw the typical FAA certification process as simply another bureaucratic hassle that got in the way of doing business and competing with Airbus, as opposed to ensuring safety.

    Think it’s only big companies? Think again. The normalcy bias is a big reason for bubbles: in stocks, housing prices, loans and other areas. It’s as though we’re incapable of remembering the previous bubble, even if occurred only a few years ago.

    Similarly, the normalcy bias helps explain why leaders at companies of all sizes were so vastly underprepared for Covid-19 and its impact. While pandemics pose a major threat, it’s a low-likelihood, high-impact, slow-moving disaster. The normalcy bias keeps tripping us up on such disasters unless we take effective steps to deal with this problem.

    Related: How You Can Crush the Biggest Sales-Killing Mental Bias

    Normalcy bias in a tech start-up

    Of course, the normalcy bias hits mid-size and small companies hard as well.

    At one of my frequent trainings for small and mid-size company executives, Brodie, a tech entrepreneur shared the story of a startup he founded with a good friend. They complemented each other well: Brodie had strong technical skills, and his friend brought strong marketing and selling capacity.

    Things went great for the first two and a half years, with a growing client list — until his friend got into a bad motorcycle accident that left him unable to talk. Brodie had to deal not only with the emotional trauma but also with covering his co-founder’s work roles.

    Unfortunately, his co-founder failed to keep good notes. He also did not introduce Brodie to his contacts at the client companies. In turn, Brodie —a strong introvert — struggled with selling. Eventually, the startup burned through its cash and had to close its doors.

    The normalcy bias is one of many dangerous judgment errors, and mental blindspots resulting from how our brains are wired. Researchers in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call them cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent research in these fields shows how you can use pragmatic strategies to address these dangerous judgment errors in your professional life.

    Preventing normalcy bias disasters

    It really helps to use the strategy of considering and addressing potential alternative futures that are much more negative than you intuitively feel are likely. That’s the strategy that Brodie and I explored in my coaching with him after the training session, as he felt ready to get back to the startup world.

    While Brodie definitely knew he wouldn’t be up to starting a new business himself, he also wanted to avoid the previous problems. So we discussed how he would from the start push for creating systems and processes that would enable each co-founder to back up the other in cases of emergencies. Moreover, the co-founders would commit to sharing important contacts from their side of the business with each other, so that relationships could be maintained if the other person was out of commission for a while.

    So what are the broader principles here?

    1. Be much more pessimistic about the possibility and impact of disasters than you intuitively feel or can easily imagine getting over the challenges caused by the normalcy bias.
    2. Use effective strategic planning techniques to scan for potential disasters and try to address them in advance, as Brodie did with his plans for the new business.
    3. Of course, you can’t predict everything, so retain some extra capacity in your system — of time, money, and other resources — that you can use to deal with unknown unknowns, also called black swans.
    4. Finally, if you see a hint of a disaster, react much more quickly than you intuitively feel you should to overcome the gut reaction’s dismissal of the likelihood and impact of disasters.

    Unfortunately, Boeing — and Congress — did not appear to learn this lesson in the rushed approval of the new 737 Max model. The fact that they failed to make the safety upgrade demanded by so many diverse external stakeholders signals that more deadly lessons may be in store for us in the future.

    Gleb Tsipursky

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