Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Categories
Success Attitude

5 Secrets to Feel the Fear and Knock it Out of the Court!

I woke up at 4.30am with my heart pounding, completely disoriented and with no idea why I felt such panic.

Then I remembered, it was the big day. The day I had been planning for for over 9 months, it was the big event.

I tried to fall back asleep but realized it was useless. I started visualizing my day and felt the pain in my stomach intensify.

It was excruciating. I was sick with fear. And yet excited and happy and ready to take to the stage.

I had prepared more for this than anything I’d ever done before. I had spent weeks walking the story, telling it to anyone who would listen.

I had been coached, received a ton of feedback, written and rewritten, recited and practiced.

If not now, I would never be ready.

And yet I was sick with nerves.

Now, let me tell you, this was not unexpected. I mean, it’s not like it had never happened before. I had spent years as a sufferer of stage fright where it had gotten the better of me and I never performed. And years since, that I had handled it quite well and managed to even enjoy the stage.

And this was a tough one – it was hitting me hard.

So I started my routine.

And as I felt me pulse ease and my excitement and nerves channeled to where I needed them – I began to cherish my process, seeing how beautifully it worked.

So here are the 5 secrets to feeling the fear and knocking it out of the court!

  1. Get Moving! – stretch, walk, dance, jump – do whatever gets your circulation going and makes you feel good. Be careful not to exhaust yourself but make sure you whole body feels the movement.

  2. Get Thinking! – review your notes, practice a few last times, remind yourself that you know this stuff really well, and for sure, a lot more than your audience knows.

  3. Get Looking Good! – take a shower, put on your nicest and most comfortable clothes, arrange your hair and face, smile!

  4. Get Food! – don’t forget to eat something small, light and preferably really fresh (fruit, salad, protein – keep away from carbs. & fats)

  5. Get Help! – call the person that loves all you do and all you are – tell them you need a boost, tell them you’re nervous, ask for reassurance!

So, I called my love. He said, ‘Lis, you’ve gotta get over this’ – I thought at first that wasn’t so supportive. And then he said, ‘because I know there is so much more of this scale of work coming your way, and no one deserves it more than you’.

That worked!

Last but not least. I got on the stage before the audience arrived, to check it out, to get into the atmosphere, to practice. Something was missing. I didn’t feel as connected as I wanted to feel.

As they announced my name and invited me on to the stage, I took off my shoes. Barefoot, deeply connected and channeling all the nerves and fear into being of service and with great respect and love for my audience, I started the story.

It was one of the best performances of my life!

Categories
Human Resource

8 Simple Things That Make Employees Happier and More Productive

 

How happy are your employees? The answer to that question can determine how productive they are and how much revenue your business brings in.

Through hundreds of studies researchers have found that happiness begets success, not the other way around. Employees that feel happy at work are more productive, creative and motivated. There’s such a strong correlation that it’s now being dubbed the “happiness advantage”.

The problem – only 47.7% of employees are happy, and a Staples study of small businesses found that over half of employees feel overworked. It’s time to turn those frowns upside down and give your business a serious boost with a few happiness-inducing additions.

An Office Entertainment Space

There’s a reason why watching television is America’s number one pastime – people enjoy it. Creating an entertainment area where employees can unwind is an effective way to boost happiness. All it takes is adding a few comfortable seats, mounting a flat screen TV.

Free Snacks

A recent survey from Peapod revealed that offices that offered free snacks and drinks had happier employees. Stocking up on healthy snacks can also help employees avoid brain fatigue. Research from Florida State University has shown that as people make decisions throughout the day glucose levels decrease and mental fatigue sets in. A snack can bump up the glucose levels and restore energy reserves.

Flexible Scheduling

Creating flex schedules may take a little effort at the beginning, but once a system is set in place this is an easy way to make employees much happier. Study after study shows that employees who are given the freedom to work from home are more productive. There are a number of reasons, including less break time and sick leave, but happiness is also a factor. Another residual benefit is that employees who have more control over when and where they work are less likely to quit.

Give Praise Often

Positive feedback on a regular basis has proven to keep employees happier than less frequent, grander forms of praise. Small words of encouragement and signs of appreciation once a week are enough to keep employees happy and motivation all year long.

Create a Meditation Room

Meditating for just two minutes can provide benefits for the brain and body. Up that to 20 minutes of meditation and the benefits are far greater. Researchers from Harvard found that meditating for 20 minutes a day decreases stress while increasing focus, productivity and creativity. Any space can work for meditating as long as it’s quiet and free of distractions.

Encourage Breaks

Half of employees in small companies feel like they can’t step away to take breaks during work. Burn out is going to make even the best employees disgruntle from time to time. Taking breaks during the workday has been shown to increase productivity and can significantly improve happiness. Encouraging employees to take breaks is often enough to help them avoid burn out and unnecessary stress. Bonus: when employees take breaks they socialize, which can make them even happier and fosters teamwork.

Do Away With the Majority of Emails

Employees get bombarded with emails these days. It creates stress and is cited as a reason for always feeling like they are “on” even when they aren’t at work. Not to mention it can significantly hinder productivity. Make an effort to reduce the number of emails that are sent out to employees. It’s also a good idea to create a prioritization system for emails. Come up with designators like “URGENT” that can be used in the subject line so employees feel less pressured to open everything immediately.

Surprise Employees With Special Treats

Surprises make more of a mental impact because they aren’t expected. Surprising employees with lunch every now and then or giving everyone a few hours off one afternoon will dramatically improve everyone’s mood. These nice surprises make employees happier and also help to offset the occasional bad news.

Your employees are the most valuable asset of your business. These eight simple strategies will help ensure that they are as satisfied and productive as possible, which makes everyone happy.

Categories
Online Business

Ways to Increase Productivity for E-Commerce Entrepreneurs

Many would-be entrepreneurs bolt out of the gate with excitement when it comes to setting up their new ecommerce business, only to find that the business fizzles out after only a few months. It’s important to find ways to manage your business and stay on task, so that you can create and fulfil orders in the most productive manner.

Use the Right Tools

Advances in technology are what allow more and more home entrepreneurs to run their own ecommerce shops with ease and convenience. For example, using an ecommerce website builder is a great way to get started with creating a new website. This type of software provides the ecommerce web hosting you need. You can also expect to have access to website templates, a centralized dashboard allowing you to manage your content, and assistance with marketing and analytics to get your business off the ground. Investing in the right tools will help you stay focused and productive in the initial setup and on-going maintenance of your new business.

Find a Product you Love

There are several factors to take into consideration when you’re first choosing the inventory to fill your online shop. On one hand, you’ll want to think about which industries are showing growth and what will sell to your target demographic. Yet it’s also important to set up an ecommerce store that you’ll be happy to run, with a product you feel enthusiastic about. This will make you far more likely to put strong effort into it and enjoy your work. It’s helpful to remember that in ecommerce shops, you can sell physical products as well as services, and even virtual products such as digital artwork or books.

Manage your Inventory in Categories

The layout of your online catalogue is extremely important. Not only will well-organized merchandise be easier for your customers to browse through and find what they’re looking for, but it will also be easier for you to manage. The top ecommerce software will help you with this task, allowing you to group your products into logical categories. You can also include specialty categories like gift ideas or promotional items, to draw more attention to your wares.

Create a Work Schedule

If working from home or running your own business is a new concept to you, it can be difficult to determine how you are going to manage your project efficiently. Setting up a work schedule with daily tasks and to-do lists is a good way to stay on top of your shop. You can set up instant notifications and email alerts when new sales are made, which will allow you to ship your products more efficiently. It’s recommended to work on building your website every day, whether it’s managing new blog content, reaching out to clients through social media avenues, or searching for new inventory to stock your shop. With small daily strides, you can start building an online empire.

Categories
Online Business

How Ecommerce is Bringing Merchants Higher Returns

Thanks to advancement in technology merchants can now balance the need to be at their customers’ disposal, with the challenge of promoting their brand while building loyalty. Since up to 40% of online users begin their product searches on Amazon, staying glued to your branded storefront is not the best approach.

However, if you try competing in markets like eBay and Amazon, you run the risk of losing control over your original brand and going through a tough time managing logistics over numerous channels. With Amazon and other social settings experiencing exponential growth merchants are now forced to maximize on Omni-channel selling to remain competitive, which also comes with its challenges.

When branching into several channels, offering discounts, managing records, and handling shipping at the same time becomes overpowering. The novelties in ecommerce seek to assist merchants in solving this problem, and the foremost concern is to answer the merchants’ main question: how do I sell across several channels while maintaining my brand without experiencing logistical challenges?

Better Marketing tools

Ecommerce thinks about modernization as providing unswerving, incremental improvements to assist you to sell better- always tweaking, optimizing and experimenting to maximize conversion and in turn, increase returns. Take the case of a brand’s homepage. Consumers navigating to your brand site have expectations, if the page is slow, or looks like an artifact, the prospect is likely to navigate back to the search engine and visit the next site. Conversely, a striking, exceptional storefront will attract the customer.

What you choose to show on-site matters because your site is a direct representation of your brand. This year we expect to see more advances in tools that assist marketers use the appropriate channels to offer the right products and discounts, to ensure higher conversion rates.

Make the most of the increase in Mobile spending

Another field where ecommerce needs to up its game is Mobile Commerce, which has also proven to be a good way to increase conversion. It’s like consumers are spending more cash when they purchase and make payments on impulse and with minimum friction. While browsing online shops with smartphones is common among users, there are setbacks when it comes to buying goods.

The hassle of typing a 16-digit card number along with other details of a credit card prevents most customers from carrying out mobile purchases. However, digital wallets like PayPal have stepped in to ease the conversion, and we expect a rise in the number of mobile purchases. If you are looking to make the most of the mobile spending habits of consumers you need an ecommerce platform that supports digital wallets and also provides an outstanding mobile experience for on-the-move shoppers.

Managing logistics made easier

Making sales across multiple channels is not as easy as it sounds if carelessly done it can result in a logistical nightmare. One slip-up in record management could lead to a damaged customer relationship. To avoid such mistakes, ecommerce should work on a tool that will help you manage all inventories from a central location and updates all channels where you make sales in real-time.

Categories
Planning & Management

5 of the Most Common Business Risks

Whether you are an enthusiastic entrepreneur who has just formed their business or at the helm of a corporate behemoth, your business could face an array of challenges. Whether those challenges are just starting to emerge or a distant speck on the horizon, you should learn how to tackle them.

Fortunately, many other businesses have been in the situations that your own could soon encounter. Here are five examples of common corporate risks, plus ways that you could help to counter them.

Skipping too many legal obligations

Your company has a broad array of responsibilities, some of which might even be enshrined in law. For example, in the UK, it isn’t legally palatable to spurn employers’ liability insurance. This sheds light on the importance of looking for business insurance quotes from a reliable source, like a broker.

Sadly, while companies tend to be stringent in complying to operations, they are typically slacker with employee-related compliance like wage and hour laws, Inc. observes.

Neglecting to develop operational infrastructure

If your company is a relatively young one recording rapid growth, you could be so overcome with excitement that you forget to implement the operational infrastructure necessary for sustainable gains. Don’t forget to assess and, if necessary, revise your planning and decision-making processes.

You should also be careful not to make the blunder, to which many senior executives are prone, of confusing “infrastructure” with “overheads”. Put customer care at the forefront.

Drops in product and service quality

Failing to pay prolonged attention to that operational infrastructure can risk your products and services faltering in quality. As soon as this happens, your business willbe negatively impacted.

You might have become obsessed with the philosophy of “growth for growth’s sake”, but you need to break this paradigm to get out of the rut.By preserving standards, you can foster customer loyalty – a strategy five times less expensive than reaching out to new customers.

Sacrificing integrity

You can be under heavy pressure both on a company level – for example, to meet estimates with quarterly earnings – and on a personal level, such as when a big bonus is being dangled before you.

Given these pressures, you might be tempted to cut corners. However, in acting on that temptation, you could cultivate a culture of unscrupulousness in your workforce. If employees become more prone to a little lying or stealing, this can undermine trust previously built up within the company.

Recruiting the right staff

You can likely easily comprehend the frustration which many business executives experience when looking for suitable staff. Even on occasions when there is a large pool of unemployed people to pick from, you might still struggle to find candidates who seem a good fit for your firm’s culture.

Forbes advises that, to overcome this challenge, you “learn how to deal with different personalities, figure out what drives each individual team member and tailor your management accordingly.” If your firm is still small, even just one poorly-chosen worker can hugely hurt the corporate harmony.