Archives for March 2015
Signs That You May Be About to Burn Out
The life of an entrepreneur can become very hectic. Long hours, lots of responsibility, high expectations for yourself â all of these issues can contribute to your stress level in a big way. Do you find your self hitting that wall? Ever feel like you aren't productive? Have you had trouble staying focused?
Every now and then, itâs important to take a step back and breathe, especially if you feel yourself starting to burn out. Here are a few warning signs that you should be on guard for:
⢠Constant exhaustion. If you feel as though you never get enough sleep and you easily get tired throughout the day, youâre probably working too long of hours. Sleep is extremely 
important â a well-rested person is a lot more productive than someone who stays up late and wakes up early to get some extra work done.
⢠Poor health choices. If, for example, you notice that youâre opting for unhealthy food or that youâre going through the drive through too often to save time, you should probably reevaluate how much time youâre spending on work. You should leave time for yourself to prepare good, healthy meals and get plenty of exercise.
⢠Certain health problems. Issues like anxiety, depression, heartburn, headaches and low energy could all be issues caused by stress, so the more of these types of symptoms you have, the more likely it is that youâre burning yourself out.
⢠Canât stop thinking about work. Because entrepreneurs often donât hold traditional nine-to-five work hours, it can be difficult to create a separation between your work life and your personal life. If youâre spending every waking hour thinking about what you need to accomplish with work, then itâs probably a sign that you need to dial it back a bit.
⢠Irritability. Constant irritability is probably a result of a lot of other burnout symptoms building up inside of you. If you feel your emotions beginning to get out of your control, itâs probably best to start taking more time to yourself.
⢠Poor performance. If youâre burning the candle at both ends, thatâs going to be an unsustainable level of work to keep up. Sooner or later your performance will dip. This is another reason why itâs important to give yourself some much-needed breaks.
Donât let yourself burn outâas soon as you notice these symptoms, itâs time to give yourself a break.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Yes, serial entrepreneurs are peculiar. How do they create these successful start-ups?
Opportunity creation and innovation are critical to success. We need to execute on our strategic plans faster than ever before. This is true whether you are an entrepreneur or a team member for a Fortune 500 company. Entrepreneurs are the best at doing it all. They are masters at it.
Yes, serial entrepreneurs are peculiar. Their attire and behavior confirms it. Little can be learned by judging this book by their characteristics. You need to dig deep to understand them. What is important is how they think! How do they create these successful start-ups? Why are they so good at beating the odds? Who raised these people? What rock did they crawl out from under? Those questions have little to do with how they think or what they care about.
All serial entrepreneurs start their companies the same way. It looks something like this:
- They start as loners. They do not fit in the mold society wants to pigeon hole them into. They have a goal and they start small. Really small!
- Pull themselves up by the bootstraps. It may be a full time job to hitch their ride to their start-up; it's all about funds and a job to fuel the ride. They fund it through minimal initial revenue, if any. At most through the support a significant other – or a full-time gig they hate. The later is just a means to an end.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves â so business can be fun again. | When we were first starting off, our journey would have been so much easier if we had someone there to give us guidance, knowledge or even simple encouragement. This is why we dedicate ourselves to helping small business owners stay motivated and achieve all of their business goals. We believe that your needs should always come first, and our âgive firstâ mentality of customer service ensures that you will always have a dedicated team of small business professionals helping you find success.
- Baby steps are proving grounds. Once they take their offer to a select few, they pause, regroup, reload and modify their offer and its presentation.
- Crawl, don't leap. The next step is to stick the toes deeper into the water. They never jump in with both feet. They take what they learned from the baby steps to their crawl. They know that upsetting a few will go viral. They have to get their core offer right!
- Rinse and repeat. Building a start-up into a viable and sustainable small business takes patience, action, advancement of knowledge and perseverance. They've mastered this!
- An idea is worthless without execution. Creating a foundational strategic plan is indeed important. Gaining ideas from the likes of Brendon Burchard, Ryan Deiss or Jill Konrath indeed keeps the creative juices flowing. However, let's actually act on those ideas and execute a plan. Serial entrepreneurs are masters at it.
This approach is a wonderment. It takes little time to launch. Your prospects and customers will give input that can immediately be acted upon in small steps. If you plan does not attract and convert in a profitable fashion, you have lost little and have the resources to battle for market share once again. If you're successful, you now have the foundation for a sustainable company that can act quickly.
Serial entrepreneurs can teach you an awful lot about being creative, fluid, responsive and acting on opportunity.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Why You Shouldnât Work with Jerks
Life is too short to constantly have to work with people that you canât stand. So whether youâre hiring people to your team or looking at doing work with a new client, you should be just as concerned with the character of that client or employee as you are with their qualifications or the prospect to do a lot of business.
Here are some reasons why you shouldnât work with jerks:
⢠Youâll recruit (and keep) better employees. People want to work in an environment where they get along with everyone that they work with. Hiring employees with toxic attitudes or
Reality based conversations. | We get real and we stay that way. We know that no amount of great marketing, sales techniques, software as a service (Saas) or operational consulting will fix a bad entrepreneur. We are prepared to deliver our best, to enable you to raise your anchor through the one set of activities that sets the best apart from the rest.
personalities will âpoison the well,â which will make it harder to hold on to your best workers and to bring in new quality employees. Additionally, holding on to clients that are huge jerks simply because they are good for your bottom line will likely burn out your employees.
⢠Youâll have happier customers. The fewer people with bad attitudes that you have working in your company, the less likely it is that youâll run into a situation where a customer is treated poorly. You should be focused on doing everything you can to create the best possible experience for your customers, and that includes making sure you hire the right kind of people.
⢠Youâll strengthen your brand. You want your business to be known as a place where customers and employees alike enjoy their experience. You could even make it part of your brand image, emphasizing the customer experience and polite, happy employees as part of your marketing efforts. People are naturally drawn to positivity.
⢠Youâll be more productive. When you are constantly worrying about how to deal with clients or employees that are causing problems in your company, youâre taking a lot of time away from other important tasks to deal with something that shouldnât even be a problem in the first place. Youâre busy enough without having to worry about how to stop someone from being a jerk.
Consider implementing a âno jerks allowedâ policy in your business, and see how it affects your company.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Change Management – A Bird's Eye View of the What, How and Why Aspects of Change Management.
At Viral Solutions, we understand the trials and tribulations that many new owners of small businesses face in the early going. The commitment of time and resources that is necessary at the outset can leave many business owners frustrated or exhausted. Weâve experienced this ourselves in our own business operations, so we know just how unpleasant it is and how it can come close to crushing the motivation you had that led you to start the business in the first place.
Change is an inevitable. It happens in every moment. Just now, reading this sentence change is happening. There are many forms of change that occurs. There is the change that management proactive plan and change that management did not expect to happen, but arises. There is the change that in a moment can ultimately make or break a situation. There is the change that is so small that it goes under the radar. Change simply is a part of life. It can be a dynamic, fun, and exciting part of life, or it can be miserable. It depends on the situation. The purpose of this post is to identify, describe, and analyze the change management process to aid managing small to massive change.
What: Change management is the process of identifying, organizing, implementing, monitoring and controlling concrete initiatives for change within an organization.
How: Dr. John Kotter, Harvard Business School Professor, Author, and Entrepreneur stated “leaders who successfully transform businesses do eight things right and in the correct order.” The change management process can be broken down into the following tried and true steps:
- Create a sense of urgency.
- Form a coalition of powerful people to support the change initiative.
- Create a vision.
- Communicate the vision.
- Empower others to act on the vision.
- Plan, create and reward short-term wins.
- Consolidate improvements and manage new change(s).
- Institutionalize new change(s).
Success leaves clues. Change success also leaves clues. The ability to create a sense of urgency, get people to support the change and help facilitate the direction of initiatives, and create a clear vision of change is the first part. Like many things, if there is a lack of communication the buck will stop there. As such, it is essential to communicate the vision effectively. That communication has to be such that it is clear, precise, and empowers others to act on the vision. Empowerment is delightfully complex. The methods used to empower may vary organization to organization, individual to individual and so on. The key is to plan and establish specific short-term wins that will aid fostering and rewarding such empowered action that aligns with the vision. Monitoring the vital initiatives and outcomes is yet, another quintessential aspect of consolidating improvements and managing new change(s). Lastly, the new changes need to be institutionalized.
Why: Change matters. Ineffective change management practices can result in monetary, productivity, employee 
morale, clients, and competitiveness. The level of influence surrounded by not taking change seriously can be disastrous. Likewise, the opposite is a possibility. Whereas, if effective change management occurs miraculous outcomes may result. Although, some may beg to differ on the term “miraculous” if the system and steps used were what led up to the successful outcome of change management. However, by definition, “miraculous is a highly improbable and extraordinary and bringing very welcome consequences.” There are some changes that are so disruptive that with effective planning and implementation of change management practices still face high odds of failure, i.e. mergers and acquisitions have 66% failure rate to achieve the desired synergies.
In conclusion, change management matters. This post is a simple prima facie identification, description, and analysis of change management. Stay tuned for future posts over the next month that takes on each step of the change management process. The purpose of this change management series is to provide you with a deeper understanding of the change management steps. The additional detail and analysis of each step will also aid in helping you to implement such strategies within your operational, marketing, sales, or human resource management sides of your organization. For questions or to carry on an intellectually stimulating conversation about change feel free to reach out.
Have a blessed day.
by Katie Doseck, PhD MBA
Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC
Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.
Change Management – A Bird’s Eye View of the What, How and Why Aspects of Change Management.
At Viral Solutions, we understand the trials and tribulations that many new owners of small businesses face in the early going. The commitment of time and resources that is necessary at the outset can leave many business owners frustrated or exhausted. Weâve experienced this ourselves in our own business operations, so we know just how unpleasant it is and how it can come close to crushing the motivation you had that led you to start the business in the first place.
Change is an inevitable. It happens in every moment. Just now, reading this sentence change is happening. There are many forms of change that occurs. There is the change that management proactive plan and change that management did not expect to happen, but arises. There is the change that in a moment can ultimately make or break a situation. There is the change that is so small that it goes under the radar. Change simply is a part of life. It can be a dynamic, fun, and exciting part of life, or it can be miserable. It depends on the situation. The purpose of this post is to identify, describe, and analyze the change management process to aid managing small to massive change.
What: Change management is the process of identifying, organizing, implementing, monitoring and controlling concrete initiatives for change within an organization.
How: Dr. John Kotter, Harvard Business School Professor, Author, and Entrepreneur stated “leaders who successfully transform businesses do eight things right and in the correct order.” The change management process can be broken down into the following tried and true steps:
- Create a sense of urgency.
- Form a coalition of powerful people to support the change initiative.
- Create a vision.
- Communicate the vision.
- Empower others to act on the vision.
- Plan, create and reward short-term wins.
- Consolidate improvements and manage new change(s).
- Institutionalize new change(s).
Success leaves clues. Change success also leaves clues. The ability to create a sense of urgency, get people to support the change and help facilitate the direction of initiatives, and create a clear vision of change is the first part. Like many things, if there is a lack of communication the buck will stop there. As such, it is essential to communicate the vision effectively. That communication has to be such that it is clear, precise, and empowers others to act on the vision. Empowerment is delightfully complex. The methods used to empower may vary organization to organization, individual to individual and so on. The key is to plan and establish specific short-term wins that will aid fostering and rewarding such empowered action that aligns with the vision. Monitoring the vital initiatives and outcomes is yet, another quintessential aspect of consolidating improvements and managing new change(s). Lastly, the new changes need to be institutionalized.
Why: Change matters. Ineffective change management practices can result in monetary, productivity, employee morale, clients, and competitiveness. The level of influence surrounded by not taking change seriously can be disastrous. Likewise, the opposite is a possibility. Whereas, if effective change management occurs miraculous outcomes may result. Although, some may beg to differ on the term “miraculous” if the system and steps used were what led up to the successful outcome of change management. However, by definition, “miraculous is a highly improbable and extraordinary and bringing very welcome consequences.” There are some changes that are so disruptive that with effective planning and implementation of change management practices still face high odds of failure, i.e. mergers and acquisitions have 66% failure rate to achieve the desired synergies.
In conclusion, change management matters. This post is a simple prima facie identification, description, and analysis of change management. Stay tuned for future posts over the next month that takes on each step of the change management process. The purpose of this change management series is to provide you with a deeper understanding of the change management steps. The additional detail and analysis of each step will also aid in helping you to implement such strategies within your operational, marketing, sales, or human resource management sides of your organization. For questions or to carry on an intellectually stimulating conversation about change feel free to reach out.
Have a blessed day.
by Katie Doseck, PhD MBA
Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC
Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.