Implement These Three Leadership Tactics from Abe Lincoln Today

by murika Comment Closed
During the early part of the Civil War, the Union was facing great difficulty in the Eastern Theater. Robert E. Lee was routinely trouncing on the U.S. Army from early 1862 through mid-1863. Lincoln tried out four or five Union commanders, all of whom were fired. As I reflect on my entrepreneurial voyage, I have some appreciation for how hard it must have been for Lincoln to fire all of these generals, who we have to remember were at the very top of the military command system. Of course, Lincoln eventually landed on Ulysses S. Grant and put him in charge, which I believe turned the war to the Union's favor. There are three attributes of Lincoln that would make him a good entrepreneur today. ...
Read More

Thou Shall Not Fall in Love With Your Job and Employer

by murika Comment Closed
Mediamax Networks Ltd media company has just sent home a huge number of employees. Poleni sana. But I want to take this opportunity to ask you not to take this redundancy personal. I’ts not a rejection. Mediamax hasn’t weighed you and found you wanting. It’s not a statement of your performance. Look at it from the point of view that it cannot afford your services anymore. In 2002, I was made redundant by Reuters. My detractors ran around Nairobi gossiping about I being a non-performer. The company itself mumbled incoherently about why it was sending me home. Shortly, those who were laughing at me followed me out. Cashflow issues. ...
Read More

Stop Calling Yourself the ‘CEO’ and Start Telling People What You Do

by murika Comment Closed
J D Wetherspoon is well-known in the United Kingdom for its more than 890 pubs, as well as a chain of upscale bars and boutique hotels. The firm, founded in 1979 by Tim Martin, grosses about $2.2 billion a year and employs more than 37,000 people. Martin prides himself on visiting anywhere from 10 to 20 of his establishments each week. He writes notes on the staff, the cutlery, the quality of food and, of course, the beer. Oh, and he consumes about two to four pints of it just about every day. Martin's official title at Wetherspoon, which is a publicly held company, is chairman and founder. But, don't you dare call him that. "I'm a publican," he said in a recent BBC interview. "My day-to-day life is running pubs."...
Read More

If You Aren’t a Morning Person, Neuroscience Says Please Stop Trying to Be

by murika Comment Closed
Tim Cook gets up at 3.45 a.m. Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi gets up at 4 a.m. Disney CEO Bob Iger is a 4.30 kind of guy. Jack Dorsey sleeps in until 5.30. So does my buddy Richard Branson. Rarely do night owls get good press. Because hey: Successful people wake up early. Well, at least some of them do. As Adam Grant says, "The world's most successful people aren't worried about what time others wake up. They wake and work on the schedule that works for them." ...
Read More

Michael Acton Smith: How to Turn Your Craziest Business Ideas Into Reality

by murika Comment Closed
As a young entrepreneur, Michael Acton Smith had big ideas for his business. Communicating that vision to investors was the challenge for Smith, the co-founder and co-CEO of mindfulness and meditation app Calm. The app launched in 2012, and finally found significant traction after being named Apple's App of the Year in 2017. Now, it's valued at more than $1 billion. Looking back, Smith says, being able to tell a great story about your brand's future is a crucial part of selling your idea. It's equally important, he adds, to constantly take small, actionable steps toward realizing that future. "You do need that wild vision," says Smith. "But you also need to get out of bed, roll your sleeves, and do that critical execution work every single day to get to each step of many steps on the journey." Experimenting regularly and staying disciplined about your goals can help turn a big vision into a business reality. That's one of the key takeaways from this week's episode of Inc.'s What I Know podcast,...
Read More

How to Collaborate with People You Don’t Like

by murika Comment Closed
A few months ago, a former client — let’s call her Kacie— called me to check in. I had supported her through her transition when she had joined a prestigious global financial services firm several months prior. Given how deliberately and thoughtfully she’d gone through the process, I expected that our conversation would be about her early wins. Instead, Kacie confessed that she had a simple but serious problem: she wasn’t getting along well with a peer-level executive — let’s call her Marta. The two had gotten off on the wrong foot, and as time passed things weren’t getting any better. Kacie told me that it was becoming painfully clear that her inability to get along with Marta was going to impede her success, and possibly derail her career at the company. As Kacie and I explored the situation, she told me that Marta was seen as a highly talented, accomplished, and well-liked executive — she wasn’t toxic or difficult. But Kacie admitted...
Read More

Want More Clients? Focus On Your Personal Brand

by murika Comment Closed
How would it feel to run a competition-proof business? Wouldn't you just love to have your client roster full? How about a waiting list of hot prospects impatiently longing for an opportunity to tap into your genius? Here is the secret to making it happen with ease: Focus on your personal brand, and start building your visibility and audience online. Social media offers a brilliant platform to establish yourself as a sought-after expert in your niche. When you commit to showing up as who you are, regardless of your previous status or even the size of your audience, you can immediately experience some delightful advantages of getting more “personal” in your marketing. People trust other people more than they trust brands When you create content around who you are as a person (your values, your experiences, your passions), your audience develops a much deeper connection and trust, as they feel like they almost know you personally....
Read More

4 Ways to Survive a Crisis as a Public Speaker

by murika Comment Closed
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only been difficult from a health perspective. It’s also been really challenging financially for those whose careers largely depend on in-person interactions, like public speakers. In my own case, I’ve lost many great speaking gigs, including an opportunity to speak at SXSW. But that doesn’t mean I have to just wait around, with no income, until conferences and other events can resume. Public speakers like myself can survive this crisis by focusing on digital opportunities in the short term and looking long term toward future in-person opportunities. Specifically, you can take these four steps:...
Read More

Want to Avoid Being a Bad Boss? Here Are 5 Ways to Take Your Leadership from Good to Great

by murika Comment Closed
No one wants to be a bad boss. Unfortunately, there appear to be more bad bosses out there than good ones. Research shows that 90 percent of people lack natural leadership skills, and 60 percent of employees plan to leave their company because of a bad boss. This does not have to be the case at all. Shane Metcalf is chief culture officer and co-founder of HR tech company 15Five. 15Five recently launched Best Self Academy, a free online education platform that provides managers with the tools and training to unlock the potential of each and every employee, effectively increasing employee retention, productivity, and their overall contribution to the company. ...
Read More

If You Don’t Listen to Your Employees, Someone Else Will

by murika Comment Closed
The Conference Board’s C-Suite Challenge 2019 survey revealed that the top internal concern of global CEOs and executives isn’t disruptive technology or ever-evolving data privacy rules -- it’s keeping good people. As a business owner and CEO, I’m inclined to agree. Top talent is hard to find (especially in the current labor market), and it’s even harder to keep. Take the millennials portion of the workforce. Its members generally have different expectations of work than their predecessors.They demand rapid mobility and new experiences, and they frequently seek out companies that share their personal values. Members of this cohort also know about and use a multitude of websites, recruiting services and apps to connect them with potential employers; and the gig economy gives them options for making ends meet until the right full-time opportunity shows up....
Read More

9 Personal-Finance Secrets of Successful, Wealthy People

by murika Comment Closed
If you're patient and lucky and work hard at your business, one day you may find yourself facing the ultimate privileged problem: What do you do with all this money? It's a question I've been asked frequently since Inc. columnist Helaine Olen and I wrote a book about the financial advice that can fit on an index card. Now I hear from people lucky enough to have become millionaires--but who struggle to manage the dilemmas that accompany visible success, including requests for financial help from friends and relatives, and offers of investment opportunities. All of my advice to them fits on an index card. If you're selling your business, taking it public, or coming into some other business or personal fortune, this can help you, too. ...
Read More

8 Smart Ways to Handle a Professional Disagreement

by murika Comment Closed
While effective teamwork is important to any business, not everyone will be on the same page 100 percent of the time. Disagreements, big or small, are inevitable when working with others -- but that doesn't mean your team is doomed. It is possible to work through a dispute and move forward as a team, with better understanding than before. We asked eight successful entrepreneurs to share their best approaches for handling disagreements with colleagues. Follow their advice the next time you and your colleagues seem to be butting heads so you can return to a state of cooperative collaboration. Bring everyone together and nip it in the bud. Saloni Doshi, co-owner and CEO of Eco Enclose, LLC, views gossip as a mushroom: It thrives in the dark and shrinks when light is shed on it. To avoid this, it's important to gather everyone together as quickly as possible to solve the problem before it gets bigger. "As soon as we hear discontent, we try to bring involved parties together to...
Read More

Research Shows People Become Increasingly Unhappy Until Age 47.2.

by murika Comment Closed
If you're 30 years old and feel less happy than you did when you were 20, science says you're not alone. If you're 40 years old and feel less happy than when you were 30, science says you're also not alone. And if you're 47.2 years old and feel less happy than you did when you were 40, recent research says you're definitely not alone. Why? Research conducted by Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower on hundreds of thousands of people in 132 countries shows that people around the world experience an inverted, U-shaped "happiness curve." Starting at age 18, your happiness level begins to decrease, reaching peak unhappiness at 47.2 in developed countries and 48.2 in developing countries. The good news is that happiness levels then gradually increase. The bad news is you're unlikely to feel as happy as you did when you were 18 until you're in your mid-60s. (Eek.) Money isn't really a factor. According to Blanchflower, "The curve's trajectory holds true in countries where the median wage is high and where it is not," he says. Nor are a few other...
Read More

6 Things Managers Should Never Ask Their Employees to Do

by murika Comment Closed
While your team may have no issue with following your leadership blindly, being transparent and treating employees as equals are qualities all managers should possess. Six entrepreneurs share which tasks you as a manager should never ask your employees to do and why. Judge or evaluate colleagues. If peer evaluation is an approach you're considering to evaluate performance, consider how this could negatively impact morale. "In my experience, peer evaluations seem to bring toxicity to most working environments, no matter how carefully they're done," says Adam Steele, owner and operator of link-building company Loganix. "You can't really act on anything without giving away who said what, and even protecting anonymity leads to people feeling paranoid." Steele recommends you stay close to your people instead so you don't feel the need to ask them to provide details on one another. ...
Read More

How a Canceled Government Project Caused Elon Musk to Change His Career Plans

by murika Comment Closed
In high school, Elon Musk planned to pursue a career in physics. But then, in 1993, Congress voted to pull funding from the Superconducting Super Collider, which had been under construction in Texas for about 10 years. That event made a deep impression on Musk and set him on the career path he's still traveling today. "When I was in high school, I thought I'd most likely be doing physics at a particle accelerator," Musk said in a recent Third Row Tesla podcast. "I got distinctions in two areas, physics and computer science. Those were my two best subjects, and I thought, OK, I want to figure out what's the nature of the universe and so go try to work with people banging particles together and see what happens." Accordingly, Musk, who had started life in South Africa and then emigrated to Canada, attended the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in physics and economics. But then came the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, a victim of budget...
Read More