7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Invest in Themselves

Startup entrepreneurs often go it alone or almost alone, serving every function in their new companies. They are the idea people, the passionate leaders, the team builders, engineers, marketing experts, logistics officers, bookkeepers and strategists all in one.  

The reality is that often this phase is necessary. That means that one of the most challenging things for the startup-minded to do is to keep investing, keep building their own personal skills and abilities. Time and focus-wise, it’s a monumental challenge. Most entrepreneurs skip the personal investments because those investments seem disconnected from their businesses and products. If an entrepreneur has an extra hour, for example, many prefer to invest in their company over investing in themselves.

The problem with that approach is that most entrepreneurs are their brands and products.

Moreover, if you can take a step back and see that your entire entrepreneurial venture rests on a single set of shoulders, it makes business sense to ensure that those shoulders are as prepared, as skilled and as strong as possible. That means investing in yourself because, from that perspective, it’s the same as investing in your product.

Because entrepreneurs spend so little time thinking about boosting their personal skills and strengths, remaining focused on their work, they often don’t know where to start. Since I’ve spent most of my professional life at the intersection of business and education, I have a few suggestions on how you can keep making investments in yourself, even if you’re an overwhelmed entrepreneur. Here are seven:

Go to school

Few things do more to enhance both your credibility and intellectual capacity than higher education. The learning environment itself can provide new connections and spark creativity. There are incubators offering specialized training now in every city. Finishing your degree or starting a new one can make a big difference and just about every school has a part-time or returning student or executive program.

Teach

A school environment is just as powerful if you’re teaching. And, like an advanced degree, being a teacher confers a great deal of credibility. Teaching also forces you to know what you’re teaching at expert level, confront and consider new ideas and explain things in new ways. If you’re an expert in something, reach out to community learning programs or colleges in your area and get in the classroom.

Online program

While the online learning environment is still buyer beware, more and more very credible institutions and incubators are offering online courses and programs. It’s possible to earn certifications in a variety of business-related subjects from places such as Harvard or Stanford or any number of state universities.  Even if you’re just exercising your mind or staying up-to-date on current topics and trends, it’s a good investment.

Read unrelated things

If you’re a reader, make sure your reading list includes topics that are unrelated to your business endeavors. Read crime thrillers or romance novels or theoretical physics – whatever will distract you from your hour-to-hour obsessions. Giving your mind a break will inspire creative problem solving and invigorate your work when you return to it. Just a few hours a week of reading about ants or Adam Ant can make a big difference.

“I read spy and espionage thrillers exactly because they district me from trying to run and grow my business,” said Edgar M. Duarte ofDuarte Monteiro Group in Miami. “If I read all business books or things in my field, I’d absolutely get sick of it. Taking a mental break allows me to really focus on business when I need to.”

Physical health

Among the biggest oversights entrepreneurs make is neglecting their physical health. If your ability to work is the most essential thing to your business success, it makes no sense to risk it. I know how hard it is, but get to the gym, make good health and diet choices. Take vacations. As with all these suggestions, staying healthy is an investment in your business – it may help to think of it that way.

Co-working

Consider moving yourself and your business to a co-working community. The collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit of shared ambition and sacrifice can be intoxicating and empowering. By co-locating, you’ll find mentors, partners and different-thinkers – all of whom can add to your personal growth and strategic creativity.

Network

Join organizations and attend events. Most people view networking as opportunities to advance their businesses. But they are just as important in building personal connections – assets you can take with you from project to project or business to business. Investing in networking and getting to know your network personally will increase your personal reach and capacity.

Amy Rosen

Why Positivity Matters -- and 3 Ways to Achieve It

We’ve all received the well-meaning advice to "stay positive." The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking.

The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.

That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind’s tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These “threats” magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going -- and/or are going to go -- poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced the project you’re working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life.

Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you’re going to overcome the brain’s tendency to focus on threats. It won’t happen by accident. That’s why positivity is the skill that I’ll be giving extra attention in 2016.

Positivity and Your Health

Pessimism is trouble because it’s bad for your health. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists.

Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania has conducted extensive research on the topic. Seligman worked with researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan on a study that followed people from age 25 to 65 to see how their levels of pessimism or optimism influenced their overall health. The researchers found that pessimists’ health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.

Seligman’s findings are similar to research conducted by the Mayo Clinic that found optimists have lower levels of cardiovascular disease and longer life-spans. Although the exact mechanism through which pessimism affects health hasn’t been identified, researchers at Yale and the University of Colorado found that pessimism is associated with a weakened immune response to tumors and infection.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky went so far as to inject optimists and pessimists with a virus to measure their immune response. The researchers found optimists had a much stronger immune response than pessimists.

Positivity and Performance

Keeping a positive attitude isn’t just good for your health. Martin Seligman has also studied the connection between positivity and performance. In one study in particular, he measured the degree to which insurance salespeople were optimistic or pessimistic in their work. Optimistic salespeople sold 37 percent more policies than pessimists, who were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.

Seligman has studied positivity more than anyone, and he believes in the ability to turn pessimistic thoughts and tendencies around with simple effort and know-how. But Seligman doesn’t just believe this. His research shows that people can transform a tendency toward pessimistic thinking into positive thinking through simple techniques that create lasting changes in behavior long after they are discovered.

Here are three things that I’ll be doing this year to stay positive.

1. Separate Fact from Fiction

The first step in learning to focus on the positive requires knowing how to stop negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that -- thoughts, not facts.

When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking. Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity. Evaluate these statements to see if they’re factual. You can bet the statements aren’t true any time you see words like never, always, worst, ever, etc.

Do you really always lose your keys? Of course not. Perhaps you forget them frequently, but most days you do remember them. Are you never going to find a solution to your problem? If you really are that stuck, maybe you’ve been resisting asking for help. Or if it really is an intractable problem, then why are you wasting your time beating your head against the wall? If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you can trust, and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out.

When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts asthoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

2. Identify a Positive

Once you snap yourself out of self-defeating, negative thoughts, it’s time to help your brain learn what you want it to focus on -- the positive.

This will come naturally after some practice, but first you have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your brain’s attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps there is an exciting event you are looking forward to that you can focus your attention on.

The point here is you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative. Step one stripped the power from negative thoughts by separating fact from fiction. Step two is to replace the negative with a positive. Once you have identified a positive thought, draw your attention to that thought each time you find yourself dwelling on the negative. If that proves difficult, you can repeat the process of writing down the negative thoughts to discredit their validity, and then allow yourself to freely enjoy positive thoughts.

3. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the “right” thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23 percent. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels.

You cultivate an attitude of gratitude by taking time out every day to focus on the positive. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.  

Bringing It All Together

I realize these three tips sound incredibly basic, but they have tremendous power because they train your brain to have a positive focus. They break old habits, if you force yourself to use them. Given the mind’s natural tendency to wander toward negative thoughts, we can all use a little help with staying positive. Join me in putting these steps to use this year, and you’ll reap the physical, mental, and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.

Travis Bradberry

10 Ways to Crush It in 2015

At the beginning of the every new year and even a little bit before then, everyone has the same theme, or at least they think so. This theme is, “This is going to be my best year yet!” Unfortunately, once the end of the year rolls around again, they quickly realize that the past year was just like all the other years.

Nothing was really different. The same habits, the same achievements, the same goals and the same mediocre results. Please don’t fall into this category that will rob so many people of greatness this upcoming year.

Related: 20 High-Powered Business Leaders Share Their New Year's Resolutions

Here are 10 ways to help you crush it in 2015.

1. Get serious!

To truly make this year your best year yet and absolutely crush it in 2015, you must get serious about doing just that. A majority of people will get excited for the first 30 days and then fall victim to complacency and just coast along from that point on. Get serious about your life. Get serious about your business. Get serious about your health. Get serious!

2. Learn and let go of 2014.

The whole last week of every year I spend every single day reflecting on how my previous year went and how I can grow and get better from it. I analyze my wins and losses and how I can build momentum going into the New Year. 

But once I am finished with this process, I let the previous year completely go. I erase it from my thinking and encourage you to do the same. If it was a successful year for you, great, but don’t let that define your 2015. Build new successes and reach for new heights. If it wasn’t the best of year for you, there's incredible opportunity ahead because you have a whole year to absolutely crush it and make up for lost ground in 2014. Don’t let one bad year turn into a bad life.

3. Take your health and fitness to the next level.

If you are going to take your success, income and business to the next level, then you must not forget about your health and fitness. This is one of the greatest assets that you have. Never take your health for granted. If you keep your body in unbelievable shape, you will increase your productivity levels like crazy and boost your self confidence.

4. Get very clear about what you want.

Setting a goal to lose weight, get in better shape or make more money won’t cut it. Maybe for the first month you might be motivated but over time this type of clarity won’t cut it. When you get extremely clear about what it is you want, your desire and commitment to actually make it a reality will skyrocket. Get clear about what you want.

5. Take massive action.

If people decided to actually get going on their new year goals and resolutions instead of just talking about them they would begin to see an amazing shift take place. One thing is for certain if you are going to really crush it in 2015: You must take massive action! Less talking and more doing.

Related: 5 Things to Do Every Day in 2015 to Be a Better Entrepreneur

6. Let this be the year you let your mind work for you, not against you.

As hard as it may be at times, we fully control what goes into our minds and what we think about. Instead of letting your fears get the best of you or letting self-diminishing thoughts convince you that you are not capable, really work at what goes into your mind and what you think about. Come up with a routine that nourishes your mind and builds you up. Read the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen to help get you started.

7. Hang around those who are doing better than you.

Take the time to analyze your relationships. As I say all the time, “Association is everything.” If you constantly surround yourself with others who aren’t doing big things then guess what? You won’t do big things. The weak and mediocre get jealous when they are surrounded by others who are doing better than them. Champions, on the other hand, love being in the presence of greatness. They not only admire other peoples’ success, they let it fuel them to be great themselves.

8. Create a personal growth plan.

Make 2015 all about your growth as an individual. I am a big believer that self-education is the best kind of education. Possibly nothing else could impact your life more in 2015 than creating a personal growth plan.

9. Stop the take-take mentality and operate out of the give-give mentality.

In business and in the game of life, always try to give more than you take. Be known as someone who gives freely and is always looking to serve others.

10. Create a sense of urgency!

Nothing gets on my nerves more than someone with a lack of urgency. Life is short, so live that way! If there if something you want to do, do it. If there is someone you love, tell them. If you have a passion, follow it. What a shame it would be if you missed out on something special all because of a lack of urgency. I see it happen all the time.  

I hope this year is the year everything changes for you. I hope this year is your best year yet. I hope this year is the year you absolutely crush it and end up changing your life and business forever. Don’t settle for average. Happy New Year!

Related: Want to Ace Your New Year's Resolutions? Remember, Attitude Is Everything.

Matt Mayberry

There Are 8 Indispensable Elements of Real Wealth and 7 Aren't Money

What’s the purpose of life?

That's a powerful question that deserves your attention. My answer has drastically changed the past five to 10 years, and will continue to evolve. Success is part of life's purpose but I know that on the other side of success is the quest for more success, more milestones, more achievements, more people to help and learn from, more money to be made. That's great. Life becomes mundane and boring without goals and dreams to reach for but I believe there is more to life and real wealth.

Don’t get me wrong. Becoming a millionaire is a valid desire for everyone, but there is no higher success than building and maintaining a world class life with meaning and significance. Awareness precedes choice, and your choices determine the quality of your life. I’ve put some serious thought into what makes a world class life. Here are the eight forms you must adapt and start improving if you want to live an exceptional life with no regret.

1. A world-class inner life.

Your outer world, who you are and the quality of your life, is 100 percent determined by your inner world. Your inner world consists of your peace of mind, the quality of your thinking and living authentically. Are you living your true values or doing things based out of fear and worry? Your inner world determines your self worth and how connected you are to your core.

2. World-class health.

Your health is a very important part of wealth. If you don’t have your health, you have nothing. At the end of your life, the things you now perceive as the big things might be the little things. When we are young, we will compromise our health for wealth, but when we are old we will gladly sacrifice all of our wealth for just a little bit of health.

It’s extremely important to put health first, if you really want a world class life. We take our health for granted until we lose it, then we spend all our waking time trying to get it back. Those who don’t make time for exercise must eventually make time for illness.

3. World-class family life.

Having loved ones around you, and being able to see your family whenever you choose, is a crucial part of success. Gary Vaynerchuktold me his business is extremely important, but a distant second to his family. The greatest support system in the world is good family and friends. You can’t be careless here, you need great relationships and those who make you better. Remember, you can’t change your family, and trying to do so will cause you endless stress and frustration. Love them and appreciate them for who they are. 

4. World-class profession/career.

The attitude you bring to your days determine your destiny and it's extremely hard to carry a great attitude when you don't enjoy what you do. According to the new Gallup survey "71 percent of employees are activity disengaged at work."

Be patient and figure out your strengths. Purposefully choosing (or creating) your ideal professional is crucial to a world-class life. When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. It's important to get to the end of your career knowing you gave your best. Yes, unexpected circumstances do happen but you are in control of your own future through the choices you make. Life is not easy nor promised, but it's how you adapt and adjust that determines what happens next. Never settle.

5. World-class financial freedom.

Less than 5 percent of our society will be financially stable by age 65. WTF? Money is extremely important and makes the world go round. It also gives you one of the most important aspects of a world-class life --freedom.

Money allows you the choices to do what you want, when you want, wherever you want, so you can live on your own terms. What’s your game plan to assure a financially free future?

6. World-class circle of genius.

You become who you spend the most time with. Are the people you’re associating with holding you to higher standards and challenging you? If you spend time with people who are playing at a world class level, you drastically increase your chances of doing the same. Their ways of being will rub off on you. You’ll adapt their philosophies and perspectives.

Start surrounding yourself with people whose lives you want to emulate. Keep company with those who are thinking and acting at an extraordinary level.

7. World-class experiences.

Ultimately, life is an adventure. Experiences and memories are what separate the elite lives from the mediocre. I’ve recently started focusing more on producing instead of consuming, and valuing experiences over material things. I like both, and appreciate the finer things in life, but after studying countless world-class people, it’s clear they are constantly creating memorable experiences. What's the point of doing something if you’re not having fun? 

8. World-class impact and legacy.

The worthiest aim of life is service to the world around us. How much difference are you making in the world around you? Are you adding consistent value that improves the lives of others?

Generosity the key that unlocks happiness. There is no greater feeling than when you help or give to others, asking for nothing back. Whether it is a compliment or a small gift, do something nice for somebody every day. Realize every tweet, every blog post and every conversation you have is part of your legacy.

I challenge you not to postpone your life. Most say “when I have more time I will take time for myself” but the reality is life waits for no one. Don't postpone travel or chasing your dreams. Nobody knows when their time is up, so make the most of it by focusing on these eight forms of real wealth.

Peter Voogd