Blog

Preventing burnout protects your overall health and your career. However, if the way you work changed radically over the past year, your old defenses may not be enough.

How do you know if you’re burned out?

Some of the most common signs include depression, irritability, and lack of motivation. You feel tired and unable to control your circumstances. Your physical health can be affected too, putting you at increased risk for heart conditions and diabetes.

If you’re feeling down and your productivity has dropped, you can recover. Try these 14 strategies for bouncing back from burnout.

Fighting Burnout During Work Hours:

1. Evaluate your expectations. Burnout is often caused by pushing yourself too hard for too long. Look at your to do list and see what you can eliminate or delegate. Focus on your top priorities.
2. Set goals. Working towards something you want to achieve provides instant inspiration. Break long term objectives down into daily and weekly...

As an entrepreneur, you’re likely to reach a turning point in your career. You start out relying on your vision and critical thinking to launch your new venture. Then, as your operations grow, you find that leadership and management skills become more important.

You may consider yourself a natural born leader, or you may have to work at some aspects of your new role. With practice, you can strengthen your leadership skills in these essential areas.

Communication Skills for Entrepreneurs:

1. Create connections. Engage your employees and develop the relationships you need internally and externally. Build a support network that enables you to seek advice, discuss ideas, and discover other points of view.
2. Ask questions. Show others that you care by taking an interest in them. Find out more about what motivates your employees and what their personal goals are. Seek help when you need it, so you can make sound decisions and benefit from the experience of others.
3. Share feedback....

A high percentage of people who opt to run their own business find themselves working longer hours for less money than the job they worked so hard to escape from. That’s not all bad news, though, because they at least have the freedom that they craved. They don’t have to answer to anyone.

What if it could be different?

If you started a business of your own, and within a year it was making twice the salary of your current job, you would be pretty happy, right? But what if, in addition to that, you were only working half the hours of your current job?  So, now you’re working half the hours for twice the pay. Nobody is telling you what to do. Plus, there’s no commute. How would that feel to you? Pretty good, right? How would that go down in your social circle? Do you think your friends would be a little envious?

You would have time to take your kids to school, learn new skills, get in shape, make new plans, and the money to fund them. THAT is what most...

8 Effective Habits for the Successful Entrepreneur

Every career has a set of habits that greatly increase the odds of success. The habits necessary for success will vary from career to career. Fortunately, there are many successful entrepreneurs that we can look to for guidance. It’s not surprising that many of them share the same habits.

There’s no reason why you can’t have the same habits as some of the most successful people in the world!

Increase your odds for success with these habits:

1. An incredible work ethic. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow a company. It's necessary at first to be a jack-of-all-trades. Until you can grow enough to hire others to cover all the required skills your company needs to thrive, you're going to have to carry a lot of weight.  Make sure that you create processes that can be replicated by others, so that when you are ready to delegate and grow you will be able to train others to do the tasks that have made you...

Marketing has greatly evolved over the years. Businesses used to rely on door-to-door marketing to find customers. Then print, radio, and TV advertising came into play. The new game in town is social media marketing, and it seems like it’s here to stay.

Over 60% of adults worldwide utilize social media in some form. Over a billion people use Facebook each month. Twitter draws 500,000 users each month. Therefore, every business might want to consider taking advantage of social media marketing.

Follow this simple plan to get started with social media marketing:

1. Define your goals and target customers. Goals are always important because they make you think about where you are and where you eventually want to be.

• What are your goals? Are you trying to drive more customers to your website? Do you want to boost the presence of your brand? Are you trying to share coupons and special offers? Do you want to communicate more with your customers? Are you trying to...

Scheduling allows for more productive days.

Planning my work prevents me from feeling overwhelmed by my responsibilities. Although unexpected situations sometimes arise, I am able to manage them because I build in time for them. Being proactive about planning also makes me more productive. I focus on the important things first and earn bigger wins that way. 

Whenever my day feels chaotic, I take a step back and look at what is in front of me. I allow myself to filter out what I am able to postpone and concentrate on the urgent matters.

Even my personal time is scheduled because it allows me to achieve balance. Enjoying too much downtime leads to a declining work ethic. I like being able to stay mentally sharp so I add constructive activities to my days off as well.

Being productive means more than achieving work tasks. It also means being able to spend time on building relationships.  My friends and family members are important to me. I work on quality time with them so...

7 Tips to Help You Avoid Repeating the Same Mistakes

Most of us live lives riddled with the same mistakes relived time and time again. This is incredibly common, but life doesn't have to be this way. We have the ability to learn from our past. We can make wiser decisions and behave differently in the future. Those that can do this successfully find life to be much easier than those that can't.

Imagine a life where you only make a particular mistake once. How much easier and more successful would your life be? Many of the mistakes we repeat severely limit our progress.  Eliminating repeated mistakes can be more powerful than learning new information or developing new skills.

Consider these ideas to make the most of your mistakes and never repeat them again:

1. Identify your mistakes. You can’t avoid what you don’t identify. Look back over the last few days and think about the mistakes you’ve made. Do the same with the past year, and then your...

The Coronavirus has everyone trying to make changes and "weather the storm" of this pandemic.  I have put together a list of some things you can implement today to help get you through this time, and that will help you even when things are back to "normal."

1. Simplify your processes:  While you are stuck at home, take time to evaluate your processes and make necessary adjustments that will allow you to still be successful in the "virtual world."  If you navigate these times with a simplified process, then it will make you even more efficient once you have a full roster of resources at your disposal.  

If you are thinking of ways to streamline your business, are there products or services that you offer that take up more than their fair share of your time and resources?  If so, maybe you should consider removing or modifying those first.

2. Maximize Your Profit Margin: Look at the way you are pricing your products and services and ensure that it makes...

You've probably heard the saying, "know your why!"  Have  you ever stopped to think about what that really means to you and your business?  As entrepreneurs, we often get busy with the "grind," but lose sight of what got us started in the first place.

Often, when people hear this question, they immediately think of their family, their financial needs, or what they get from delivering on the product or service.  Today I want you to think about the why behind what you offer.  I want you to take some time to really consider what your core focus is in  your business.

To determine your core focus, you must determine your reason for being and what is your niche.  Why does your organization exist?  What is your purpose, cause, or passion?  When your purpose, cause, or passion is clear, you won't be able to tell what business you're in.  You should be able to take it into any industry.  

After you have determined your purpose,...

As we approach the end of 2019, we are busy preparing marketing strategies for the new year for all of our clients.  The goal setting sessions and planning got me thinking about the trends and a few predictions I think we will see in 2020.

1. Facebook and Google will continue to dominate as the main source of paid digital advertising.  According to eMarketer, 72% of all online spend will be between these two platforms.  I personally believe that the percentage will rise as Instagram ads continue to grow in popularity and get "lumped into" the Facebook bucket.

2. The integration of A.I. into the marketing space will continue to grow in 2020.  Many marketing analysts have begun referring to this as conversational marketing.  Most of the impact of this trend may still be a few year away, but the integration of "smart speakers" and similar devices will be a major factor in 2020.  According to Gartner research, 60% of owners used the device to make a...