To succeed as an entrepreneur, make these 8 investments

Contributed by Noah B. Rosenfarb, a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and a certified public accountant who helps entrepreneurs increase cash flow, sell their companies successfully, manage their wealth and create predictable passive income.

1. Invest in Yourself

We all invest our time and money in people and things. The best investment for entrepreneurs is always going to be in themselves. This could mean your health, education, well-being or relationships—anything that can fine-tune and improve your life will bring the highest return on investment because the cost is often very small.

Invest in yourself in both small and big ways. For example, hire a housekeeper so that you can stay focused on higher-value tasks. Get a massage every week to relax. Spend time with your family without distractions. Often, prioritizing time to exercise your body and mind will produce great returns.

Giving yourself set times to think and focus is a valuable investment. Look at the schedule of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and you’ll uncover that comprehensive wellness is a high priority.

My best personal investments include memberships in EO and YPO, coaching programs, mindfulness training, as well as reading a book a week and taking three workdays each month to enjoy alone time with my wife.

2. Invest in Your Business

If you can’t create the highest return on investment in your present company—then maybe you should rethink continuing to operate your business. Entrepreneurs should flow to the area where they can generate the highest returns on time and money.

When you think about investing in your business, consider adding talent and equipment. Look toward creating new sales and marketing structures that perpetuate your sales cycle. Oftentimes, entrepreneurs focus almost exclusively on top-line revenue growth that will lead to bottom-line profit gain. However, it is still critically important to focus on risk factors in one’s business.

All companies are sold using a simple formula of earnings times a multiple. The multiple is driven by the risk factors inherent in the business. If we can reduce the risk factors, we can increase the multiple. Sometimes, decreasing the risks provides greater returns than one can achieve by focusing on increasing profits. This is especially true in the years leading up to a sale.

My most productive recent business investment has been building our back office team in the Philippines, which expanded our capacity at half the cost of a team in the US. I’ve also generated a surprisingly high return from content creation and social media.

3. Invest in Tax Strategy

Successful entrepreneurs may not realize that their single biggest personal expense is their income taxes. By evaluating options to lower their taxes, entrepreneurs can often increase their net income anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent with only small changes in the way that they operate their business and personal life.

This increased cash flow, if reinvested wisely, can dramatically impact your future. We believe that once an entrepreneur is making more money than they need to cover their living expenses, then they should be focusing on building their tax structures.

Our most effective tax strategy was to open two businesses in Puerto Rico, where we pay only 4 percent in corporate taxes. We also structured these companies to be owned by a Roth 401k plan, so we never pay taxes on our dividends and we can invest our profits tax-free for our lifetime.

4. Invest in Real Estate

Real estate is another area where entrepreneurs should allocate capital. Real estate can often be used to house the business of the entrepreneur. I’ve seen many instances where the entrepreneurs’ net proceeds from the sale of their real estate are greater than that of the sale of their business.

Real estate has many qualities that enhance its attractiveness, including tax benefits, the ability to use as leverage, inflation protection and more.

My real estate strategy is to buy apartment complexes where we can implement our Infinite Return model.

5. Invest in Life Insurance

Entrepreneurs too often dismiss investing in life insurance structures. Most life insurance is sold, not bought. Unfortunately, that creates a conflict of interest for the person that educates the entrepreneur about the insurance. When an entrepreneur purchases life insurance, the advisor receives a big commission. That is definitely something to be aware of, but life insurance is an incredible tool that can be used to enhance an overall financial plan.

One thing most entrepreneurs don’t realize is that banks will pay the majority of insurance premiums on their behalf. This can create positive leverage that produces net returns that can rival real estate investments while also providing protection to the entrepreneur’s family if they die unexpectedly.

I purchased my first whole life insurance policy at 27, before I had children, as a place to park cash that I could borrow as needed. I purchased term insurance when my kids were born to make sure my family could live the lifestyle I created even if I died. More recently, I’ve used premium financing to acquire insurance that will provide me with tax-free retirement income.

6. Invest in Private Debt

High-performing entrepreneurs have good cash flow and little need for ongoing significant liquidity, especially if they’ve been able to establish lines of credit. As a result, we find entrepreneurs often have more cash and liquid investments than they need to accomplish their goals. By allocating their conservative investments to private debt instead of publicly traded bonds, the entrepreneur trades liquidity for a higher yield. Often this results in 3 percent to 6 percent per year of additional returns.

I started a private debt fund in 2011 to take advantage of this reality for my family and our clients. We make short term loans where the borrower can use our capital to make more money for their business. Often the collateral is real estate, purchase orders, accounts receivable or even business equity.

7. Invest in Other Companies

When entrepreneurs have succeeded in growing their own business, they may find value in investing in other people’s companies, either actively or passively. Private equity returns are some of the highest of any asset class, but they also come with significant risks and a greater standard deviation between return expectations.

In layman’s terms, that means a lot of people lose money investing in companies. The best private equity investors can make 30 percent or greater annual returns. It’s critical to develop your own opportunity filter so when you begin to seek investments, you know precisely what to look for.

I built a unique company, FIGI, that enables me to invest in online businesses using the power of a royalty structure. I also hold significant minority interests in small private companies where I provide strategic advice, but have no role in daily operations.

8. Invest in Stocks

I would be remiss to not suggest that entrepreneurs also should build a diversified portfolio of publicly traded stocks. Over time, publicly traded companies produce average returns that exceed inflation by 4 percent to 8 percent. The primary advantage of stocks over the above items is the ability to sell them and generate cash within days.

Compounding your investments in public companies over a lifetime should result in significant wealth creation.

Personally, I have avoided building a portfolio of stocks and bonds because I haven’t found value in the liquidity it can provide. My cash flow exceeds my lifestyle expenses and if I had an unexpected need for capital, I have sources I could use (like my life insurance or my home equity line of credit) to tide me over. Still, my family office has deep expertise in constructing and managing portfolios of stocks and bonds for our clients.

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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Financial planning during a pandemic

Devin Salinas joined the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in early 2020. As a wealth management advisor and managing director at Northwestern Mutual Santa Monica, he’s seen the need for financial planning grow during the pandemic. 

What is your advice during this time of uncertainty? 

Seek professional advice. Financial success is built on a foundation of discipline and consistency.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received—and that I consistently share with my clients—is that we should never make long-term decisions based on short-term emotions or circumstances, particularly when it comes to our finances.

A financial plan should never be set in stone, and especially in times of turbulence it’s important to have a relationship with a team that understands your goals and can help navigate the ups and downs.

What is your specialty?

Integrated comprehensive financial planning. It’s not about picking investments or buying insurance products; it’s about combining investments and insurance tools through a written financial plan that helps our clients achieve their goals as efficiently as possible.

How has your business changed during this time? 

We are growing! While much of the financial sector and global economy is contracting, we have more demand than ever to serve our clients in the local community. We’re committed to continuing to bring in top talent to help us serve our new and existing clients.

Should people continue to save for retirement during the pandemic? 

Absolutely! One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to time the market. It’s nearly impossible to pick the exact right day to get out of the market and certainly to try to time when to get back in.

History has shown that time spent in the market rather than timing the market has been a true driver to success.

What’s most rewarding about your work?

Seeing our clients actualize their vision. There is nothing more rewarding than helping our clients pay for college, transition into retirement with confidence or plan to transfer their hard-earned wealth to the people and causes they care about most.

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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Knowing what you know now, how would you have prepared for COVID-19?

If nothing else, the 2020 pandemic has shown everybody—particularly business owners and entrepreneurs—the value of being prepared and ready to pivot.

We asked members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization what they would have done differently knowing what they know now. 

Declutter. Declutter. Declutter.

Andrea Grisdale, founder and CEO at IC Bellagio

Had I known back then what I know today, I would:

• Declutter all aspects of my life and lead a much leaner life both professionally and personally
• Appreciate the simple things in life and appreciate the difference they can make to the day
• Take more time to fully think things through
• Juggle fewer balls
• Remove the “fat” from all aspects of my business

Ensure that your cash position is not skinny

Daniel Dickson, managing director at Amarco Enterprises

Ensure the balance sheet is in good condition, and the cashflow and cash reserves can support the business closing for an unknown period of time—without the assistance of government subsidies and laying off staff. Ensuring that your cash position is not skinny going into a pandemic is the greatest business relief.

Also, ensure that supplier agreements allow special dispensation in times of a pandemic.

Ensure your staff stay informed. It’s an enormous relief for people to not have uncertainty as to what is next.

Have a plan for the worst-case scenario

David Fastuca, founder at Ambisie and Locomote

Have a plan for the worst-case scenario. For example, what if your business had no revenue for 12 months?

Some questions to consider are:

• If my business had no revenue for 12 months, what does this reality look like?
• What actions need to take place so that my business survives?
  How fast do I need to act?
• What does my business need to look like so that it can survive 12 months without revenue?

Embrace remote teams and cloud-based technology

Jamie Skella, chief operating and product officer at Mogul

I’ve had the privilege of building distributed teams and working almost exclusively with cloud-based systems for about a decade now—often with no office or no on-premise IT infrastructure. I have used Zoom for more than half of that period.

The picture looks very similar in my current business, which has left me—let alone the entire company—in the fortunate position of frictionless transition into a COVID-19 world.

You could call this lucky; no one could have predicted this pandemic (although Bill Gates came close). But I’ve long been a believer in the stark benefits that flexible working environments enable. It felt inevitable that the world would follow suit.

However, I did not expect that our hands would be forced in this manner, leading to an incredible acceleration of decentralised workforces and processes.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, summarised this new reality with a startling yet unsurprising remark on the company’s recent quarterly earnings call: “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

Transition completely to virtual and focus on profit vs. revenue

Keith Roberts, founder and creative director at Zenman

There are two things I would have focused on:

1. Transition completely to a virtual workplace. COVID-19 has shown us that we can be productive and can collaborate effectively in a remote environment.
2. Have laser-focus on profit versus revenue. Put more in the coffers for rainy days, and operate as lean as possible whilst still producing exceptional work.

It’s what you do before the storm comes that most determines how you look after the storm passes

Kym Huynh, founder at WeTeachMe

I subscribe to the adage “fortune favours the prepared” (and the disciplined). The application of this idea in my life reveals itself in the strategic decision that I only enter battles that have been won before the fighting starts.

On being prepared, the main question I ask myself is: “Have we built disciplines in our personal, family and business that we live and breathe during both times of good and bad?”

On discipline, the questions I ask myself are:

• Business: Are the meeting rhythms set in stone, diarised, communicated and running like clockwork? (Daily huddle, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.)
• Personal: Have I scheduled in regular check-ins with myself?
• Family: Have I scheduled in regularly touch-points with my family?
• Business: Do we have a regular communications cadence? (During bad times, increase the communications cadence.)
• Business, personal, family: Do we have cash buffers and reserves? (How long can my business, myself and my family survive without external assistance? How many months, years do we/I need so that we/I feel safe?)  Is my business, my family and I maintaining the discipline of regularly setting aside a portion of the income in a difficult-to-access savings account? Are my key relationships strong? Cash and capital is oxygen, but the best kind of capital are my relationships.
• Business: Do I regularly check-in and cultivate the relationships with people and businesses that have a vested interest in my or my businesses’ survival and success?
• Personal, family: Am I cultivating the relationships with the people most important in my life?

COVID-19 is not the first global pandemic and it won’t be the last global pandemic. We know with 100 percent certainty that there will be more, we just don’t know what they will look like and when they will appear. So when the inevitable storm hits, maintaining my discipline and protecting the things that keep me disciplined, keeps me in good form.

The importance of time, and the importance of people

Raymond Chou, founder and CEO at Infront Consulting Asia Pacific

Time is a resource that once taken, cannot be returned. However, how many of us really shape our lives around this? COVID-19 taught me that there may not be a tomorrow so I like to do things now.

I also look into who I invest my time with, who I invite to join me on my life journey, and what I need to engineer in my environment so that I achieve my goals in structured and date-stamped manner (rest and relaxation included).

On people, I have taken the time given back to me during COVID-19 to be more honest with myself and really consider the people around me as they have an indelible influence on the shape of my life.

A version of this article originally appeared on Kym Huynh’s blog.

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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What does gen Z want at work?

Business owners and hiring managers, take note: Generation Z is entering the workforce and you don’t want to confuse them with millennials. Zippia’s 2020 Job Seeker Report reveals that the youngest generation of workers—people under 25—have distinct needs and desires when it comes to the workplace.

We’ve gathered key takeaways from Zippia’s survey of 1,000 American job seekers.

Which benefits will attract Gen Z? 

Gone are the days that employers can install a high-end espresso machine or set up a foosball table and then claim employee satisfaction.

Health insurance, the option to work remotely and retirement benefits top their list. They are also more likely to want student loan assistance than millennials. (Not surprisingly, since Pew Research finds that Gen Z job candidates are the most highly educated generation.)

Work-life balance is key for Gen Z

The numbers show that this younger generation values balance more than any other generation. Even so, a surprising 47 percent of respondents would be willing to take one week or less of paid time off. However, the majority would prefer a shorter work week. 

Why do they leave jobs?

Unlike older workers, many Gen Z believe it’s fine to stay at a job for less than a year. In fact, 47 percent of respondents reported being at their last job for under 12 months. 

When asked, these younger workers cite lack of advancement opportunity as a top motivation to leave a job. Work-life balance and pay were other top reasons.  

On the hunt for a job

Where do members of Generation Z look for their next position? While the majority of all ages search job sites, Gen Z in paritcular values the opinions of friends, family and connections on social media. Companies should keep this in mind as they maintain their social platforms.  

Insights on interviews

A whopping 66 percent of respondents would consider turning down a job after an unfriendly interview. Another turn-off is a long, complicated interview process. 

For more details on this up and coming generation of employees—plus the survey methodology—go to Zippia’s 2020 Generation Z Job Seeker Report. 

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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Why borderless innovation is more important than ever

Contributed by Alex Lazarow, a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation and author of OUT-INNOVATE: How Global Entrepreneurs–from Delhi to Detroit–Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley.

World leaders are putting up walls. For some, it is seen as a necessity to stem the growth of COVID cases in the domestic population. The European Union, for example, has extended its moratorium on flights from the United States, among other countries, because of coronavirus fears.

For other leaders, it is as good an excuse as any to push forward an established policy goal of protectionism and anti-immigration. In the US, the Trump administration announced its suspension of H-1B skilled visas, as well as other visa programs, to protect against COVID case growth and to prioritize Americans for domestic jobs as the economic recovery hastens.

Yet it is the same COVID story that tells us the importance of global collaboration for world-changing innovation. These days, some of the most promising vaccine candidates are coming out of the UK, China, France, Germany, and the US, and learnings from Liberia during the last Ebola outbreak are helping with contact tracing.

The global innovation supply chain, by which the best ideas come from everywhere, and are improved as they scale, has proven to be one of the strongest drivers of progress for businesses and consumers alike. The flow of people and ideas have led to the replication of products, services, and business models all over the world, and, importantly, to innovative iterations upon them. Disrupting this movement will have short- and long-term consequences.

Cross-pollinators power the world of innovation

Ideas spread through cross-pollinators: entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders that connect the dots. Immigrants are the ultimate cross-pollinators, bringing ideas and life experience from another geography. They bring a fresh perspective to existing issues and usually a desire to succeed and thrive in their new home. Because of this, immigrants have had disproportionate success in scaling innovations and kick-starting ecosystems.

Just look at the role that immigrants play in the US startup scene. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, more than 50 percent of US-based unicorns have an immigrant founder. These companies have a collective market capitalization of nearly $250 billion, which, for perspective, exceeds the stock markets of Argentina, Colombia and Ireland. Further, more than 80 percent of US billion-dollar companies have an immigrant in a key executive position.

Immigration also helps countries acquire much needed global talent. Imagine a professional soccer team that could only draw from its local city: They would be disadvantaged compared to their more open competitors. The same is true in the world of innovation. To find the best workers for certain jobs often requires looking for skilled workers outside of domestic borders.

Countries that use the unfortunate outbreak of COVID to close borders to skilled workers are only shooting themselves in the foot.

The best ideas come from everywhere

These days, innovative ideas are not just coming from Silicon Valley. They come from everywhere. Cross-pollinators—immigrants, global students and entrepreneurial nomads—contribute to a global network of ideas.

Take the case of Udaan, an Indian SMB trade platform. The company scaled to be valued at US$2.5 billion, and has spawned replicators among the emerging markets which share high degrees of informality. This includes Bazaar in Pakistan, Ula in Indonesia and Dropstore in South Africa.

Similarly, born-in-an-emerging-market company Oyo Rooms is an Indian hotel chain founded by a 19-year-old entrepreneur which (while having run into troubles in its global expansion) has inspired hospitality companies, including RedDoorz in southeast Asia.

M-Pesa is another example of a product in an emerging market. The mobile banking service, which started in Kenya, sparked a wave of similar companies. There are now more than one billion mobile money accounts with 290 live services in 95, according to GSMA’s 2019 report.

Inspiration is multidirectional, too. As much as Uber inspired the next big ride-sharing app in China called Didi, TikTok has inspired new American short-form video apps like Quibi. And as these companies start to add features and iterate on their offerings, innovation will continue to bounce back and forth between markets.

Ideas improve as they scale globally

The most enduring business models require adaptation, iteration and reinvention to succeed. As innovation scales globally, the model is duplicated and improved upon more rapidly across multiple geographies, ultimately yielding a stronger outcome.

Digital banking gives us a clear example about how a basic concept—a branchless app-based bank—resulted in different regional winners with unique products and distinct advantages.

In Europe, thanks to regulatory reform, big players arose like N26, Monzo and others. These companies had built an ecosystem model that offered multiple services to consumers. In Brazil, Nubank, today valued at US$10B, was a credit-first model. In the US, the leader is Chime (full disclosure, the fund I work with is an investor), where debit interchange has proven to be the model that succeeded. On the surface, the headline of digital banks is similar, but under the hood, how these businesses reach customers and monetize could not be more different. Today, players are emerging all over the world, leveraging elements of each of these approaches.

These ideas improve as they scale. Go-Jek the ride-sharing app in Indonesia valued at over US$12 billion is a good example. It originally leveraged the ride-sharing models pioneered in Silicon Valley. Yet it improved the idea, borrowing inspiration from super-apps in China. Through its network of drivers, Go-Jek offers a range of services spanning financial services, meal delivery as well as cell phone top ups, doctor visits and even massages. Go-Jek and other global evolutions ended up inspiring the original as well, as we have seen the growth of UberEats and more recently its credit card and wallet.

Real innovation happens when entrepreneurs have the freedom to take an idea and iterate upon it, to build something that the world has not yet seen. Oftentimes these products are tailored to a new customer base, and the consumers and local economies stand to benefit. But through this process, we all have a chance to benefit because the ideas improve as they get attempted around the world.

We must keep innovation channels open

To continue to spur the world’s innovation movement we still need global connection. This of course starts with smart policies that are built on facts, not fear. The business and academic communities also have an important role to play in finding new ways of supporting the global innovation supply chain amidst the lock down and travel restrictions.

Companies must speak up about the ways in which immigration propels their business forward through innovation and growth. Likewise, academic institutions must weigh in. The nonprofit sector should continue to double down on global entrepreneurial communities.

To solve the world’s thorniest problems, we need the innovation supply chain to keep flowing.

Alex Lazarow is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation and author of OUT-INNOVATE: How Global Entrepreneurs–from Delhi to Detroit–Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley.

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The world can’t afford entrepreneurial extinction

Contributed by Pam Kosanke, global marketing leader for EOS Worldwide.

We’ve seen more than our share of changes in the last six months, but one of the most disturbing has been the rapid disappearance of small businesses. While large corporations consolidate their power (and the stock market rises in response), entrepreneurs are becoming an endangered species. This has widespread implications for our economic future and the health of our world, and we need all hands on deck to reverse the trend.

Most people have no idea how much value entrepreneurs bring to the US economy. Before the pandemic hit, 44 percent of economic activity in the US came from smaller businesses. Since the pandemic, 42 percent of small business owners have reported shuttered operations. 

That’s a recipe for stagnation. Innovation suffocates when the dominant force is an oppressive, controlling government or a handful of monopolistic companies. It thrives when entrepreneurs have the freedom to explore ideas, create innovation and jobs, and change the world. Entrepreneurs—especially minority entrepreneurs—are the key to getting us out of this tailspin. To use a more timely metaphor, entrepreneurs are the economic vaccine that’s going to prevent future illnesses and get us back to health.

Here are three strategies to protect you from endangerment and keep your innovative ideas, jobs and businesses alive and thriving:

1. Put your mask on first—figuratively speaking.

You’ve probably heard it a million times: When you’re leading in any crisis, you need to take care of your primary needs before you can take care of others’ needs.

In terms of navigating the entrepreneurial world during the pandemic, your top priorities should be keeping yourself healthy, positive and motivated. Only then will you have the strength and energy to be empathetic and compassionate to those around you.

Staying healthy includes checking in mentally, too. Ask yourself if you’re truly committed to navigating this crisis as an entrepreneur. Don’t simply ask yourself, “Do I have what it takes?” Make yourself answer the bigger question: “Do I want to do what it takes?” If the answer is “yes,” then it’s time to get moving.

2. Don’t overlook the importance of virtual meeting strategies.

When the world went virtual in early 2020, companies with existing strong meeting strategies transitioned operations online with relative ease. Those without them floundered.

This aspect of entrepreneurship might seem like a trivial detail, but it’s not. Meetings dominate our professional lives. Unfocused and out-of-control meetings chew up everyone’s valuable time and energy, and they can send your business spiraling.

To avoid this, focus on the structure, organization and frequency of all your meetings. Share your expectations and ground rules with attendees before every event. For instance, you may ask Zoom participants to turn off their cellphones and limit distractions. You may also want to make better use of chats, polls and breakout discussion rooms to promote involvement and avoid monopolizing every session.

3. Tap unrealized potential by getting serious about combating racial and social injustice.

COVID-19 isn’t the only disease we’re fighting right now. It’s nice to say that you’re all about inclusivity, but you have to back up your words with actions. Doing so isn’t just “PC” or politically wise. If you want to remain competitive and nimble, it’s the right thing to do and a vital business strategy.

For example, a Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with more diverse management teams have innovation revenue that is 19 percentage points higher. As an entrepreneur, you need to tap the full spectrum of talent and potential for your business. When you do that, you also fight injustice. A win-win!

One step toward more inclusivity is to rethink your traditional methods of recruitment and hiring, as well as your onboarding processes and policies. Invest in unconscious bias training for yourself and everyone on your team, and use what you learn to make interviews and job descriptions as nondiscriminatory as possible. Then generate an action plan that sets up diversity as a core belief in your organization.

Don’t just talk about equity; live it. You might be surprised to see how many customers (and talented employees) come your way when you align your corporate values with their personal ones.

The silver lining

We’ve never seen this kind of fear, uncertainty or health and economic stress felt around the world simultaneously. But here’s the silver lining: Many entrepreneurs are realizing that the ways they’ve been forced to collaborate and communicate during COVID-19 are actually an improvement. I’ve heard several say, “We should have been operating this way all along.”

Whether you’re already an entrepreneur or are taking the first steps into business ownership, stay the course. The road may be rocky at the moment, but survival isn’t just for the lucky few. It’s for leaders like you with the foresight to acknowledge the changing landscape and pivot with confidence.

At this point, you might be a little tired of hearing, “we’re all in this together,” but it remains true. It’s been a rough year, but we’re all figuring it out together. Now more than ever, we must keep supporting one another and moving forward. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the world depends on it.

Pam Kosanke is the global marketing leader for EOS Worldwide and a Professional EOS Implementer®. She has experience at both the corporate and small business levels and is eager to help entrepreneurial leadership teams and companies learn to champion brand skills, gain more control, and experience real traction in their business.

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The need for diversity and inclusion remains

Here’s a fact: No matter how diverse or inclusive you believe your organization is, there is always more work to be done.

As you hire new staff members, as you assign projects, as you assess salaries, as you engage with potential clients, as you set goals for growth, as you market your services—all the areas of running a business are impacted by how intentionally you advocate for equality, diversity and inclusivity.

What’s one way to keep the topic at the forefront of our minds as entrepreneurs? Let’s continue discussing it and exploring ways to support these critical priorities in our workplace.

What can you learn about workplace diversity and inclusion from two entrepreneurs and members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization? 

“Throughout my journey as an entrepreneur and even as an individual, I have been very fortunate to meet people from diverse backgrounds who helped me get to where I am now. I believe diversity and inclusion occur when different people from different experiences come together with their shared stories and talents to work collaboratively,” says Anou Khanijou, the director of IFOTA Group and managing director at Anouconcept.

Anou believes that practising diversity and inclusion in the workplace is essential for a thriving business. “It encourages innovation, creativity and a sense of belonging and purpose. In my companies—IFOTA, a uniform wholesaler, and Anouconcept, a PR and marketing firm—we have team members from diverse backgrounds. We have a work culture that embraces diversity and promotes equality.”

She explains, “Culture may seem amorphous and vague, but to us, it means concrete actions. These include, for example, having both men and women in leadership or management roles, hiring people from a variety of backgrounds, asking team members to contribute ideas, and respecting those ideas by turning them into action. Even simple activities like shared lunches from different cultural backgrounds promote unity in diversity.”

“I work with a lot of creative minds and being inclusive means acknowledging their skills, giving them the freedom to be innovative and to make suggestions, and allowing them to be themselves at work. We need to recognise that not everybody has the same experience and lessons in life.”

“I got to where I am today because I learned from my failures and I was given second and third chances. My team deserves the same, and I see mistakes as learning opportunities,” she says.

Anou offers three tips to effectively promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace:

1. Know your staff and know them well. Know what they have to offer and encourage them to participate based on their unique skills and needs.
2. Be open to learning. Listen and learn from and together with others.
3. Practice what you preach and set an example. By doing so, you create an empowering work environment where your team members trust you and want to collaborate with you.

“For us,” says Nyree Hibberd, CEO of Koh Living, “the key to inclusion is to ensure that we appreciate the differences in each other while bringing everyone back to our core values in the business. This way, we’re all on the same page, looking to achieve the same core goals within the business.”

“At Koh Living, both myself and my business partner, Tui Cordemans, are out and proudly gay! I remember 15 years ago when we were first hiring staff, we would routinely ask candidates if they had an issue working with people that are gay. Today, it’s absurd to think that we even asked those questions, and we’re grateful for our growth and changes in society,” Nyree shares.

Having a joint purpose, no matter what their role in the business, has always kept Nyree and Tui on track. “We focus on the things we have in common, not the things we have that are different,” she says.

Because human connections and relationships are at the heart of their business, “Making people feel important” is one of their corporate values where they promote and practise respect and responsibility. Whether it’s a customer, supplier or service provider, everyone is important at Koh Living.

Nyree shares a few tips to those who want to advance diversity and inclusion in their teams:

1. Be aware of the diversity within your teams, and if any staff that are sensitive to particular things.
2. Ensure that there is no room for sarcasm and putting down. We make it clear what is and isn’t acceptable.
3. Ensure each team member understands the important role they play in the overall goal of the business. We create quarterly and weekly goals. We check in with each person, asking about their high priority activities for the week to help the business achieve its quarter goal. We find that this makes everyone feel they are on the same team, and there is little room for not feeling included when you’re part of the big picture.

The original version of this article appeared here.

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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Your path to happiness & success: 3 ways to hack your daily habits

 

Contributed by Shawn Johal, business growth coach, leadership speaker and co-founder of DALS Lighting, Inc. He is also an active member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Montreal chapter. 

“Successful people aren’t born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don’t like to do.”
– William Makepeace Thackeray

An iPhone starts ringing, startling me out of my deep sleep. I lean over and grab it, immediately hitting snooze on the alarm.

Minutes later, it blares again. This time I turn off the alarm and start scrolling. First the news, where I see all at once the tragic situations happening around the world. Next up are my emails, where I get hit by a rush of dopamine seeing several messages that require immediate action.

I start replying quickly, wanting to get as much accomplished as possible. Now my mind is reeling, because only so much can be done in bed. I have fires to extinguish, people to call and answers to send in every direction. The day has just started and I already feel behind.

This is how I started my days for years. I never thought about the consequences, until I learned a better way to start my day.

Changing my morning routine helped me gain tremendous clarity. Next came better workout habits, followed by a new evening shutdown process. Eventually, I integrated all of these amazing tools into my daily schedule.

For years, I underestimated the power of good habits.

Being reactive seemed natural—and easier. As mere mortals, we’re often drawn to the path of least resistance. Being proactive is harder and takes discipline. But once we see the results of taking action, we can cultivate, step by step, a new way of doing things that will change our productivity levels, our energy and, most importantly, the successful outcomes we all want to achieve.

Here are three ways you can level up your game and begin habit-hacking your life.

1. Implement the 10-10-10 rule

I had the amazing privilege of attending GLA: Global Leadership Academy. This is an exclusive leadership program run by the Entrepreneur’s Organization, the world’s largest peer-to-peer network of entrepreneurs. For five days, we were immersed in deep learning about our habits, mindset and performance. A truly transformative experience.

The most powerful tool I learned during this immersive week was a practice called the 10-10-10 rule. The numbers represent minutes. As you wake up, you take the first 30 minutes to prepare your day for success:

1. The first 10 minutes are dedicated to meditation and intention-setting.
2. The next 10 minutes are for stretching and visualization.
3. Finally, the last 10 minutes are used for reading positive and inspiring literature.

Since starting this practice, I have gained tremendous clarity of vision. I’m no longer reactive, but rather focus my energy on accomplishing specific goals.

When I teach this method to people, many feel it is too long. They feel they don’t have this amount of time available in the morning. I suggest they start small: 5-5-5. Boom! You cut the time in half and can still get the amazing benefits of setting your day up the right way.

2. Master your schedule

You are the master of your schedule. Yes, we all have commitments and work. We have partners, kids, pets and a million things to do on any given day. But we all have the same 24 hours to work with. How many excuses are we making?

I have learned that scheduling time for breaks and workouts is absolutely key in having sustained productivity for the entire day. These are energy-adding activities: they provide an opportunity to clear your mind and bring a fresh perspective to your work and life.

Put them in your schedule and do not compromise on them. Treat breaks and workouts the way you would treat a meeting with an important client. Make them non-negotiable. Once integrated, they will become a cornerstone of your forward progress.

3. Gratitude journal and letters

Yes, it’s time to show some gratitude for this amazing life we live. Think of the millions of cells we have, with our blood flowing, heart pumping, breathing every day without giving it a second thought. We are truly blessed to be alive and it is a gift to be cherished.

Once per day, at any time you choose, write down three to five things for which you are grateful. These don’t need to be awe-inspiring events—and often the simplest ones are the most powerful. Talking with a friend, having a meal with family, connecting with a butterfly, landing a new client—these are equally amazing events. Cherish each and appreciate all.

Here’s another way to show gratitude and focus on the positive: Write a letter to someone you wish to thank. Psychologist Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman tested the impact of positive psychology on more than 400 people.

Participants were assigned to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for their kindness. He then tested happiness scores and found a massive increase that lasted for months after the exercise.

Habit-hacking works

We don’t need to strive for high performance. Being “ambitious” is a choice—and not one we all necessarily want to choose. But all of us can try being happier and more productive, which can often lead to more time doing the things we love.

By creating better routines and integrating new energy-producing habits, we can focus on success outcomes instead of reacting to every situation that comes our way.

The only way to know if it works is by trying it. Give yourself small goals each day. Try one new routine and do it every day until it feels right for you. Then move on to the next habit you want to integrate. Slowly but surely, you will become amazing at habit-hacking—and you’ll win the day, everyday.

Shawn Johal is a Scaling Up Certified Coach currently working with several entrepreneurs and their businesses to help accelerate their growth, while finding personal balance and happiness.

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Three steps to a successful pivot

In today’s business vocabulary, the word pivot—as a verb or a noun—has become shorthand for any change or shift. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, forced many of us to initiate wholesale and all-encompassing pivots in order to stay afloat. 

We talked with entrepreneurs and members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) who recently overhauled their businesses in order to survive—and perhaps even thrive—in a post-pandemic landscape.

From their experiences, we learn three key steps to making a successful pivot. 

1. Adjust your services to be relevant today

WooHah Productions is based near Melbourne, Australia, and provides audio-visual equipment. Before coronavirus, they primarily catered to in-person events and live entertainment activities. When those became scarce, the company found itself with few prospects.

Arosh Fernando, creative director of WooHah Productions, says, “When our core business was not permited to function due to the government restrictions, we realized we had to change everything.”

The team had to come up with a new way to make their products and services relevant in the current times. With that, Studio 45 by WooHah Productions was born.

“We turned our warehouse into a television and live-stream broadcast centre. We created Studio 45, our pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a state-of-the-art studio with the latest audio, lighting and video technology as well as a 14m-wide digital LED screen and broadcast cameras to enrich virtual events,” explains Arosh.

The studio has become the venue for various live stream events—from Easter Sunday church services to five-day virtual conferences. “We also helped funeral homes during lockdown period by live-streaming services for family members and friends.”

Additionally, says Arosh, “we built an online ticketing platform to help event agencies and organizers make money on virtual and live-streamed events.”

Arosh notes that “all these changes helped us, as we would have no income if it wasn’t for them.”

2. Stay true to your brand and commited to your clients

Brad Hampel, director at Solution Entertainment, faced the same industry challenges as Arosh Fernando. With in-person events drying up, he pivoted his venture to an online engagement platform that blends technology and experiences to connect and unite workforces.

His new company, All In, brings colleagues and communities together, even when they are physically apart. All In delivers hundreds of curated experiences around five key pillars that touch on today’s greatest needs: community, mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing, education and entertainment.

“For over a decade, Solution Entertainment has made connection our currency. We bring brands, businesses and people together through experiences that are exciting, rewarding and memorable. In this challenging time, we may need to do it a little differently but that’s exactly what we intend to keep on doing,” Brad explains. “That’s why, no matter whether we’re together or apart, we wanted to continue to give our clients access to experiences that inform, inspire and delight.”

3. Maintain a narrow focus

“The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly delivered huge challenges for business owners both around the globe,” says the creative director at ManBrands, Trent Dyball. A subsidiary of Norman Connell Advertising, ManBrands is an advertising agency that develops creatively inspired strategic campaigns that speak to men.

Instead of focusing on the negative, Trent focused on how he and his team could make the most of the situation. “Owning a marketing and content agency during this period has provided me with an opportunity to help many businesses successfully change course to survive and, in some cases, increase profitability.”

The common thread for those organization that succeed? Change only one element of their go-to-market strategy.

Trent explains, “In our experience, businesses that stay focused on their existing target market have secured success quickly.”

According to Trent, “Modifying your product or service offering or providing alternate delivery methods to continue to fulfil your current target market’s needs is a simple and effective pivot strategy. Finding a new product or service to offer to your existing target market has also proven successful.”

“This allows businesses to increase their share of wallet and is easier and more cost-effective than identifying and nurturing a completely new target audience.”

“Of course, identifying a new target market for your existing product or service can also deliver outstanding results, but generally over a longer period,” he adds. “We recommend our clients ask existing customers how they use their products. As a result, they often discover potential new applications and target markets.”

Internally, their agency has shifted its focus from deliverables to strategy. “While still extremely challenging, it is also quite exciting to help clients adapt and explore new opportunities. The old saying still rings true: Play to your strengths.”

A version of this article originally appeared on EO Melbourne’s blog. 

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog. 

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How EO taught me I’m a no-good dirty liar (even though I wrote the book on honesty)

When I turned 30—four long years ago—two things happened:

First, I was told I should join the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), to which I promptly answered, what the heck is EO? (Don’t worry, I did join— thankfully so.)

Second, I decided I hadn’t achieved enough in my life. But, in fact, that’s an understatement.

The truth is, I beat myself up about not having achieved enough in my life, and right then and there I created new goals for myself.

They included writing for Inc. and Forbes, doing a TEDx Talk, going back to Columbia to get an MBA, and, last but certainly not least, becoming a published author.

By August 2020, every one of those big goals had come to fruition. And it felt…weird.See, I never meant to write this particular book, Honest to Greatness, about how today’s greatest leaders use strategic, brutal honesty to achieve success in their lives and businesses.

I actually meant to write a marketing book because my biggest company, GEM, is a marketing agency. But instead, I ended up writing a book about the thing which, to my shock and horror, I had been lacking all along: brutal honesty.

The lies we tell ourselves know no bounds

If the quarter-life crisis is a real thing, then my 30th birthday was it, and for no good reason whatsoever.

I had built a million-dollar business, after all. Wasn’t that enough? Unfortunately, sitting in my own self-loathing, it wasn’t.

In response, I created a set of goals for myself that included some of the most egotistical desires known to mankind, including an Ivy League degree, notoriety on stages and in print and enough social proof to be considered legally alcoholic.

Want to know the worst part? I told myself those were all business-building activities. Spoiler alert: They weren’t.

Those goals were what many of us succumb to—those of us members of the entrepreneurial intelligentsia who think we, like Midas, have the golden touch in all manner of self-gratifying projects.

As I learned from an expensive, painful, brain-scrambling book launch this past summer that missed the goal by only several thousand copies, we don’t always strike gold (though we sure like to buy the best-lookin’, golden pickaxe as our weapon of choice).

Which brings me back to how weird it’s been to achieve those ego-driven goals in the first place…and be forced to reflect back on how those goals have forever redefined my life.

What started as a quarter-life crisis turned into my goal to write a marketing book, which morphed, in the care and guidance of far more intelligent folks than I, into something so much more: a treatise on why we lie, how our biases, self-limiting beliefs and ego damage our lives and businesses, and how, ironically, a lesson we all learned in preschool turns out to be one of the greatest strategies to achieve remarkable success—both in business and in life.

Only through that journey did I learn the brutal truth: 30 hit me hard because I had allowed some early-in-life failures to knock me down a peg and tell me I’d never achieve greatness. And the thing about those kinds of lies is that they’re always true…as long as we believe them.

Now, even as I’m still evolving into a monk of self-honesty, I’ve become the guy who runs around and convinces business audiences everywhere that honesty truly is the best policy and strategy—especially if you’re a lying  entrepreneur (like me).

After all the lies and truths, here’s what I learned

The thing about writing a book on honesty is that I get to be honest. So, for better or worse, my way of solving self-loathing was to achieve the most validating goals I could dream up.

And yes, those lofty goals at 30 were ego-trips. Big ones. With Prada bags and first-class tickets that I’ll be paying off for a while.

But you know what else they were? Experiences. Memories. Close encounters of the kind I never thought possible—like with Barbara Corcoran, who endorsed Honest to Greatness, and with the CEOs of some Fortune 500 companies that wrote me to say “I look forward to reading this.”

The whole ordeal reminds me of two phrases that one of my professors at Columbia liked to repeat. The first was, “You can never discount the fact that the person you’re interacting with may, in fact, be an actual idiot.”
But the second, more pertinent phrase, was, “The best kind of altruism is selfish altruism. That way, everybody wins.”

So perhaps our ego trips are worth it—both to us and to others. They sure make for some great experience shares in our EO Forums and in our social groups, in our marriages and for the amusement of our mentors.

Plus, why else do we become entrepreneurs than to experience the freedom of choice—be they good ones or bad—as long as they’re ours?

In that light, perhaps all we can do is take solace in our evolving ability to at least get honest about what those trips really are. Then we can claim self-awareness…if not self-control in the first place. And who knows, maybe there’s no other way to fumble through the forest of self-identity than to run headlong into a few trees along the way.

But here’s what’s most odd of all: No matter how much shame or guilt or elation or pride I feel about the egotistical traps I set for myself just four long years ago, I just have to be honest.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Peter Kozodoy is a member of EO East Link and former member of EO New York. He’s the author of Honest to Greatness: How Today’s Greatest Leaders Use Brutal Honesty to Achieve Massive Success, an Inc. 5000 serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and business coach who works with organizations and their leaders to help them overcome self-limiting lies and use honesty to achieve greatness. To strike up an honest conversation, visit PeterKozodoy.com.

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