Four Ways To Improve Mental Toughness

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elesh d modi

If you want to succeed in business — and life in general — mental toughness is essential. When it comes to the leaders of any business or industry, they are all mentally strong. They have the ability to bounce back from failure, learn and grow from the challenges they encounter. If you are looking to improve your life, start with yourself. Start with improving your mental toughness, and you will likely see everything else fall into place.

1) Focus On What Motivates You

In order to achieve your goals, you need to be focused. We are most susceptible to a lack of resolve when we are not absolutely focused on what we need to accomplish. While it is easy to stay focused when things are going well, it can be exponentially more difficult when things get tough. The mentally tough are able to remain focus on what matters most when the going get tough.

2) Ignore The Haters

Sometimes, outside influences can have a negative impact and distract you from what you are trying to accomplish. While our supporters help to motivate us and push us forward, the naysayers continuously drain our mental reserves. If you want to remain mentally tough, you need to be able to block out these ‘haters.’ Do not dwell on what they say and never let them slow you down. Turn the negative energy into motivation to move closer to your goals.

3) Redefine Success

Only you truly know how much effort you are giving on a daily basis. Therefore, only you can hold yourself truly accountable for your work ethic. A great way to boost your mental toughness is to increase your personal standard for success to 100 percent maximum effort on personally critical tasks. Through this process of challenging yourself to higher standards, and monitoring your progress, will help to increase your mental toughness over the long-run.

4) Take Care Of Your Mind And Body

We are most susceptible to giving into our fears or finishing short of our goals when we are at less-than our best physically. The best leaders understand that burning the candle at both ends will eventually lead to mistakes and an inevitable crash. Be smart and take care of yourself. This is the only way to ensure that you will have plenty of mental strength in reserve for when you need it most.

 

Etsy & Entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurship has long been a vestige of the creative and driven. Self-starters with ingenuity find ways to make their dreams a reality every day. A helping hand to those daring enough to grasp it, Etsy is offering a platform for many creatives to reach a massive audience. Seeing the benefit of further educating entrepreneurs in the ways of conducting their business, the executives at Etsy Inc have begun a training program for those brave men and women of business.

The three-week program is due to start in Louisville this month, and will provide necessary training to struggling entrepreneurs in the ways of finance, business, and self-promotion. Dubbed the Etsy Craft Entrepreneurship, Louisville will be offering this program for free to local residents. WIth the program set to cost $1,000 to $2,000, any interested locals should leap at the opportunity to save money and learn how to make more.

Etsy’s program curriculum will touch upon a wide variety of subject. Shipping, brand building, marketing and pricing make up a small portion of important lessons for the up and coming entrepreneur. Held between 4 and 6 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, classes will be led by local entrepreneur Jordan McMullen. Selected by Etsy, Louisville believes the success of this program will surely lead to a positive return in the community. Citing how several of their citizens sell their homemade wares at small, intermittent craft fairs. Louisville officials feel that a brief commitment from locals could result in a greater profit and better quality of life.

Doors will soon be open to any locals looking to better sell their wares. 14 lucky students over 18 years old, with a product to sell, access to a computer, and an existing bank account will be able to expand their reach to a global market. Louisville hopes that by teaching a struggling population h

Entrepreneurship For The Youth

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The enterprising spirit of business doesn’t belong only to the aged. Inspiring our youth to aim higher in their career goals and possibly join the ranks of the entrepreneur can instill creativity, independence, and a vigor for work that’s so often neglected. In a time where so many students are graduating college with a mountain of debt, even fewer are finding work in the fields they’ve worked so hard to enter. How can a few small steps encourage children to form their own futures?

Traditionally, allowances are given upon completion of tasks around the house. This encourages a work for wages attitude, and teaches the child in order to get paid, a series of tasks not their own need to be completed. Alternatively, giving the child an allowance without needing to complete a set of chores illustrates how to manage money. Should they spend their allotment frivolously, remind them that doing chores doesn’t make money appear. And next time, if they’d like to hang onto their money, a smarter management plan needs to be followed.

Involve your children in your business with small, manageable tasks. When attempting to illustrate what it means to be an entrepreneur, children oftentimes learn best while doing. Whether you’d prefer to have them assist in the writing of an email or help with your daily routine, by including your children in your work they will better understand what an entrepreneur’s life means.

Talk to your kids and find what their passions are. If you were staring your own business, you’d ideally center it around an activity or subject you love. Show your children that the same is possible with their interests. Though the concept may seem simple, the world will open up to a child when they understand that they don’t need to sacrifice what they love for work.

By following these few suggestions, you can plant the seeds of a concept most don’t understand or appreciate until far later in life. Such a simple idea can alter the course of a child’s future.

Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

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elesh modi entrepreneurA recent article from CNN correctly points out that there is often a disconnect between the general perception of what it is like to be an entrepreneur and the reality of it.  People often imagine the benefits of having no boss, making your own schedule, and a myriad of other things that are half true, yet undermine the reality of the hard work, extra hours, and extra effort that need to be put in to succeed in any meaningful sense. The article outlines six traits of successful entrepreneurs, which are also summarized below.

Persistence – An entrepreneur must have the unique ability to continue pushing, and pushing hard, often times in the face of constant doubt and repeated failure. The need for persistence should immediately undermine any benefit to making your own hours – often you “make” them because you somehow need to find several extra every day.

Adaptivity – The ability to wear several hats, or sometimes even dozens, is imperative. Additionally, changes in your product or in the market can occur, new ideas can develop from old ones, and various crises lead to necessary solutions. They must be ready for their visions to change and for new ideas to be incorporated.

Risk Taking – Entrepreneurs need to be willing to go all in to their idea. This means giving up other opportunities that might distract. They must even give in to the possibility of living uncomfortably for a period of time, because in the start up world – and this will undermine another one of those myths – there is no easy money.

Imaginative – Without fail, unforeseen problems will arise. Creative ways to deal with and move past them in an efficient and instructive way is of paramount importance.

Confidence – This will be necessary for successfully encountering the previously mentioned repeated failure. Entrepreneurs will also find confidence to be quite helpful when they need to convince others to be as certain as they are that their product is important and needed in the market place.

Trustworthy – This is important for creating a comfortable environment with those around you. It’s also important because when you’re trying to raise funds, no one is going to give money to someone they don’t trust.

Entrepreneur of the Year

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Elesh Modi Porch

USA Today recently named their top entrepreneur of the year. The main criteria for receiving this award, according to USA today, were leading a company that exhibited significant growth over the past year and solving a common consumer problem. The award went to Matt Ehrlichman, who is the CEO of porch.com.

The best way to summarize what porch.com is all about is in the words of Ehrlichman himself (I’m quoting from the USA Today article): “Whether it’s to clean your gutters or fix an electrical problem, we’re busy building a network of certified professionals with whom we’ve pre-negotiated pricing so there’s no surprise on that front…. We hope it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever been frustrated by home repair work.” So, that explains the common consumer problem that this company solves. According to the article, Ehrlichman came up with the idea in the first place when he was encountering frustration in the home building and remodeling process himself.

As far as exhibiting significant growth, porch.com went from 30 to 300 team members this year. The biggest boost for the company came from Lowe’s, the huge national hardware store, which incorporated porch.com’s software in all of its stores.

The article ends with a couple of pieces of advice from Ehrlichman for entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs, and I think they are worth sharing here. First, build a good team, and be selective about who you hire. Also, be passionate about your product. These are both pretty obvious pieces of advice, but good to keep in the forefront of your mind.