Entrepreneurship Archives - Page 3 of 23

Work-Life Balance Doesn’t Exist – Let Me Explain Why

Every modern entrepreneur needs to know this.

You can’t crack work/life balance (no matter how hard you try). It’s BS. It’s a myth. It doesn’t exist.

Two decades in the trenches have made that abundantly clear. Work and life will always bleed into each other. Keep chasing that balance and you’ll stay caught, trapped in that messy middle place, battling forever to escape.

There’s no work/life balance.

It’s just Entrepreneurial Life.

But there is a better way. A path to a calmer, more natural, less stressed life as a business owner.

So if you want to enjoy more freedom, make more money, beat burnout and quit worrying about how to stop every new idea you have from bleeding into your personal life… Here are 5 EASY things you need to do.

1. Set Boundaries

Designate specific times for your work and personal activities. Stick to it as much as possible. Spending time on self-care is how you recharge your entrepreneurial energy. And that only ever improves your productivity for the day. Boundaries ensure that your work doesn’t consume every waking hour, allowing you to maintain a semblance of personal life even amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship.

2. Schedule Time for Your Hobbies

No, hobbies are not a luxury. Yes, you do have time for them. Saying you don’t is a feeble excuse. This is how you recalibrate your mental bandwidth and push faster and further than you imagined possible. And yes, SCHEDULE it. If it doesn’t get scheduled, it doesn’t get done. Engaging in hobbies keeps your mind fresh and creative, which is essential for innovative thinking in your business.

3. Leverage Tech

Use the right tools to make your life smoother and easier. Project management tools, communication tools, time-tracking apps – anything to help you individually, and your company. Aim to delegate and automate. That’s the ultimate one-two combo to:

• Achieve more in less time

• Reduce your leadership burden

• Become more mindful and focused

• Free up your time for that all-important self-care

By leveraging technology, you can streamline operations, enhance productivity, and create a more manageable workload for yourself and your team.

4. Embrace Flexibility

Some days you’ll spend more time on work things. Other days you’ll spend more time on personal things. Accept that. Flexibility is the hallmark of a successful entrepreneur. Recognize that the nature of your work might not always fit into a rigid schedule and adapt accordingly. Flexibility allows you to respond to the ever-changing demands of your business and personal life without feeling overwhelmed.

5. Prioritize What Truly Matters

Evaluate what is genuinely important in both your business and personal life. Focus your energy and resources on those priorities. This might mean saying no to certain projects or delegating tasks that do not align with your core goals. By prioritizing effectively, you ensure that your efforts are directed towards activities that bring the most value and satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

Abandoning the myth of work/life balance doesn’t mean succumbing to a life of constant chaos. Instead, it means embracing a more realistic and fulfilling approach to entrepreneurial life. By setting boundaries, scheduling hobbies, leveraging technology, embracing flexibility, and prioritizing what truly matters, you can enjoy more freedom, make more money, and beat burnout.

Quit worrying about stopping every new idea from bleeding into your personal life. Instead, integrate these strategies into your routine and pave the way to a calmer, more natural, and less stressed life as a business owner.

Here’s to thriving in the beautiful chaos of entrepreneurial life!

There are No Failures. Only Outcomes.

Would you keep going after 1,009 rejections?

There are no failures, there are only outcomes.

Every setback, every rejection, every ‘no’ is simply a stepping stone on the path to success.

Take Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, as an example. Before he struck gold with his famous chicken recipe, he faced a staggering 1,009 rejections. That’s right – 1,009 people told him ‘no,’ that his idea would never work, that he should just ‘give up and go home.’

But Colonel Sanders refused to see those rejections as failures. Instead, he viewed them as opportunities to learn, to refine his pitch, and to keep pushing forward. He knew that every ‘no’ was simply bringing him one step closer to the inevitable ‘yes’ that would change his life and the fast food industry forever.

The same principle applies to business and to life.

Every failure is simply an outcome, a data point that we can use to adjust our course and keep moving forward.

When we pitch a potential investor and get rejected, we haven’t failed – we’ve simply learned what doesn’t work, and we can use that knowledge to craft a better pitch next time.

When we launch a product that flops, we haven’t failed – we’ve simply gathered valuable data about what our customers don’t want, and we can use that insight to create something that truly meets their needs.

The key is to reframe our thinking around failure and success.

Instead of seeing failure as a dead end, we need to view it as a necessary part of the journey. We need to embrace the idea that every ‘no’ is simply a redirection, a chance to pivot and try a different approach.

And just like Colonel Sanders, we need to have the resilience and the tenacity to keep pushing forward, no matter how many rejections we face. We need to believe in ourselves and our ideas, even when no one else does. We need to have the courage to keep knocking on doors, even when it feels like no one is listening.

So the next time you face a failure, remember Colonel Sanders and his 1,009 rejections.

And remember that there are no failures, only outcomes – and it’s up to you to use those outcomes to create the success you want to see in the world.

5 Ways To Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Vision [How to Go Further, Faster!]

Have you ever thought to yourself that your business is not progressing the way you had hoped, that you are trying everything you can possibly think of and yet you still find yourself disappointed with the speed of the outcome.

Have you considered that there may be things that you’re doing or not doing, unintentionally or subconsciously, that could in fact be slowing you down, when it comes to your entrepreneurial vision.

Here are five potential reasons why you may not be doing as well as you’d hoped, and how you can speed up your progress as an entrepreneur and go further, faster!

1. You’re Not Outsourcing

Are you trying to do everything yourself simply because you can? It’s great that you can do everything, but that doesn’t mean to say that you should be doing everything. There are only so many hours in a day that you are available to work on your ideas, your projects and your business.

We would all like more time, and we can all get it, by investing in other people’s time to get our jobs done. The quicker you can finish what you started, the quicker you can start generating an income from it.

So start delegating to virtual staff and more.

2. You’re Not Giving Yourself A Break

Serial entrepreneurs, especially those of us building a business around our expertise, are renowned for working ‘every waking hour,’ and while to many of us who love what we do, we don’t mind putting all these hours in to nurture our ideas, it’s a simple fact that eventually, if you don’t take a break – you will burn out, and if you do burn out, things could grind to a halt.

Look after yourself, so that you can look after your business and keep the ball consistently rolling. Underneath the surface we are all built the same, (unless you are one of Stan Lee’s “super-humans” of course) and we all need to give our minds and our bodies time to recharge so our own performance doesn’t suffer and slow us down.

For example myself and my wife take 10-days off at the end of Q1 and the beginning of Q4 each and every year.

In addition, each August we take the entire month for a full-blown sabbatical.

It helps to re-energize us, and personally, from a mental bandwidth perspective, I need it at that point in the year!

3. You Are Working Harder Rather Than Smarter

Many entrepreneurs, when they are going through the learning curve, tend to take the scenic route – we all need to learn from trial and error, and that’s often what makes us such experts at what we do, however we also need to find a way to limit the potential impact from the duration of this learning curve.

Many years ago I had a revelation after reading The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss – “eliminate” and “automate”, what a simple yet outstanding concept, but once you have done this and outsourced whatever you can, you then need to “prioritise”, for example, if you’re a start-up, you may want to begin investing your time and energy only into things that will bring in a profit as quickly as possible.

Whatever your primary goal is, prioritise the things that are going to get you there, the fastest. That’s focus on your entrepreneurial vision.

Your “to do” list will seem far less overwhelming this way.

4. You Have The “Protection” Mindset

Collaboration is not just for teams, or for people working together. If you are in the mindset that you have created something wonderful and unique, yet you are desperately trying to protect your idea from the competition, and you are trying to build an empire all on your own, you could be “trying” forever.

You need to network and collaborate, and in many cases working directly with your competition is the best way to accelerate your growth, as they already have the audience you need and there could be a way that you can work together for mutually beneficial gains. Switching to the “abundance” mindset, will likely accelerate your growth.

5. You’re Not Taking Big Enough Risks

It’s virtually impossible to get where you want to be as an entrepreneur, as well as constantly developing and growing your entrepreneurial vision, with any kind of speed, without taking a few risks and stepping outside of your comfort zone.

If you’re always going to do the same thing, then you will most likely always get the same results.

What’s got you to ‘here’, won’t get you to where you want to go.

Look at your business honestly and objectively, study your return on investment, and if something just isn’t working for you, no matter how many experts say it should, “scrap it” and do something new and infinitely more exciting that what you were doing.

Raise your game, change your strategy, and you will eventually succeed!

How to Claim YOUR Piece of the YouEconomy!

The age of the Youpreneur is well and truly here, as more and more entrepreneurs build long-term and successful businesses based on their personal brands.

As our audiences become more particular with how they want to be treated as potential customers, it’s all about bringing a more personal approach to educating, inspiring and helping people that will set us apart from other faceless companies, or brands.

To help you claim your own own slice of the ‘YouEconomy’ pie, something that Success Magazine covered in quite some detail recently – as well as featuring yours truly as part of the August 2016 issue, check out this new video, where I share five quick tips to help you develop your personal brand, establish entrepreneurial relationships and become THE influencer in whatever market you’re focusing on serving.

In the video I discuss the following and more:

Why you should be providing solutions to your audience’s problems.
The importance of gaining experience in your niche before attempting to help people.
The one thing you should be putting a premium on, when building your business. Hint: it’s probably not what you think it is!
Why it’s important to be ‘seen to sell’ as an influencer.
The key ingredient you need, when building the ‘Business of YOU’.

It’s these very principles and more that we focus on inside of the Youpreneur Community, a private mastermind of personal brand entrepreneurs that are 100% all-in on building, marketing, monetizing and growing a business around their expertise and what they can do to ‘move the needle’ in the lives of people they come into contact with.If that sounds like you, please do join us inside – I know you’ll appreciate the support and accountability.

Let’s Not Forget What’s REALLY Important

As you lay down the groundwork for your personal brand, it’s always important to remember that it can change and evolve just like you do, on a regular basis.

This is why it’s important to always pay attention to what your audience says. It might be the ‘youeconomy’, but never forget it’s your audience that’ll shape how your business grows over time. We’ve got to keep focusing in on that. That focus on supporting and helping a group of people, ie. your tribe.

Enjoy this video post? I’d love to hear from you. Please drop me a tweet, or a quick message on my Facebook Page!

And, as always, if you know someone that might benefit from today’s post, please do share it with them – they won’t be mad at you for providing them value. Promise!

The Super Easy 6-Step Email Marketing Funnel [Infographic]

IMPORTANT: If you’ve not started with your email marketing yet, I strongly suggest you get setup with Convertkit. It’s the service I use. It’s brilliantly priced, the support is incredible and the company is a cool one to be teaming up with to help grow your business – in a nutshell, they just ‘get it’. Plus, use my special link and you’ll get an entire month for FREE!

Building out an email marketing funnel can be one of the trickier aspects of growing a successful online business.

Many ‘new’ online entrepreneurs (if you’re like many of my readers, you might not be new to running a business – but, perhaps could just be getting started on building your online offering!) struggle with this subject, but it needn’t be a stressful activity to get to grips with.

Unfortunately many don’t see it that way, with some being downright intimidated by the idea – leading them to constantly put it off, or even worse – to simply imitate someone else’s marketing structure / sequence. I’ve talked about the importance of being original before – so won’t be ranting on that today!

Developing and growing your email list should always be the number one priority when building your business online. However, in order for your email marketing funnel to make an impact on your audience, you need to take a more strategic and personalized approach.

If you haven’t gotten started on building your own email marketing funnel, here are six quick steps to help you make sure that you are on your way to growing that email list the right way, for the right reasons – and most importantly… at the same time as helping the right people!

To further support this infographic, I strongly suggest you listen in on Episode 118 of Youpreneur.FM, where I chat with Greg Hickman on the in’s and out’s of funnel creation and building.

Greg and I got into a lot of great detail on this subject, and he laid down an incredible step by step guide that you can ‘borrow’ yourself, to get started on either building your email marketing funnel from scratch, or simply refining the one that is already alive and kicking!

Focus in on this side of your online business, and you won’t go wrong.

Did this infographic help you? If so, please consider sharing it and be sure to tweet me and let me know your biggest takeaway! Alternatively, pop over to Facebook and say ‘Hi!’ there.

What Exactly IS Your Brand? Here’s the Answer!

Click HERE to Tweet this Value Bomb!

As an entrepreneur, making it a priority to build my own personal brand has quite frankly turned out to be the best business move I’ve made in my entire career – and I don’t say that lightly, believe me. It’s brought about more opportunities than I could shake a stick at, and helped me grow my businesses bigger than I ever thought possible in the process.

Building your Brand is SMART because it:

Creates awareness of what we, as entrepreneurs stand for.
Gives us opportunities to become liked and followed consistently.
Elevates our credibility, because we embrace being ‘out there’ for the world to find.
Allows us to gain trust – which ultimately leads to more business!

Over the last few months I’ve talked a fair amount on the subject of personal branding, as well as the importance of building a brand online on a number of occasions – all of the content has been very well received and I’ve got lots of positive emails and tweets on the subject for the readers of this blog.

What I’ve Experienced Thanks to My Personal Brand

Here are a handful of amazing things that have happened to me, as a result of consciously building my own brand a few years ago:

I’ve become the number one go-to source in my industry.
I’ve been featured, countless times, in Entrepreneur Magazine.
I’ve been featured by Inc.com, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Success Magazine and other press outlets.
I’ve launched and catapulted a speaking career.
I’ve landed a traditional book deal (which has since become a bestseller!)
I’ve netted a large social media and blog following.
I’ve grown an active mailing list of well over 50,000 subscribers.

If all that wasn’t enough, like I said, I’ve also been able to grow my three businesses to a level I never would have imagined, with over 400 full-time employees working for me, and clients from all around the world.

10 Quick Tips to Branding Building Brilliance

#1) Have a Unique Blog Design – Don’t copy anyone. Create something new looking, and stand out. People want to do business with innovators.
#2) Get a Proper Logo Designed – Cheap (home-made) logos always look bad. Invest in a good one, use a service like 99designs.com.
#3) Think About Creating a Tagline – You don’t ‘need’ it, but it might help get your message across quickly, especially in a crowded niche.
#4) Create an ‘About Me’ Page – Tell people about who you are, and most importantly how you will help them. Think about things properly and then do it. Check mine out here, too.
#5) Add Links to your Social Media Channels – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ – take the conversation off your blog.
#6) Publish a Podcast – The ability to literally be inserted into someones earbuds is untouched online today. It’s a medium that everyone loves.
#7) Publish Online Video via YouTube – YouTube is just like another search engine. Provide it some good content and people will find you.
#8) Create Unique, Compelling Content – Listen to your audience, they will help you solve problems and answer questions for them.
#9) Have a Unique Free (Opt-In) Offer – Work hard on building something you could charge $100 for, then give it away to build your email list!
#10) Be Yourself – Always. People can read right through the ‘Online BS’. So, be you. People want to do business with other people.

Build your brand, people. Build your brand.

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know on my Facebook page or via Twitter. And… if you have some likeminded friends, I’d love for you to share it with them. Thank you!

5 New Words for Entrepreneurial Fear

Following my annual community survey last month, I noticed a trend.

Over and over again, the 1,300+ of you who took time out of your day to tell me about yourselves and your businesses (thank you!) used a single word to describe what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. The theme was so pervasive, in fact, that I started to wonder if you’d all gone in with each other behind my back just to make sure I was paying attention.

And I am!

The word didn’t surprise me, and it won’t surprise you, either. I experience it regularly myself, and I’ve come to see it as a blessing and a curse in everything I want to accomplish.

What is it? Fear. Entrepreneurial fear, to be precise. Every entrepreneur is afraid, and given the opportunity, every entrepreneur wants to talk about it.

So let’s talk about it.

How We Talk About Fear

At least in this community of personal brand-building entrepreneurs, fear sounds like a lot of different things. From the survey, I noticed people using phrases like these to describe their hesitations:

I don’t know what makes my personal brand unique
What if people don’t want the ‘thing’ I’m really good at?
I’m still trying to figure out who I want to serve
Is it too late for me to start building an online business?
I think the market is too crowded for me
I’m not original enough

Sound familiar? I think everyone wonders at times if the next step is the right one, and we can work ourselves into all kinds of anxiety trying to figure out how to do it all perfectly. There was a point in my own business where I was so skeptical of live streaming. After all, it’s very LIVE, isn’t it? However, once I got myself into a rhythm with Periscope, I was a total believer.

But that’s exactly the point. The fears you share with me, and the ones I share with you, aren’t really about the details. The specifics don’t matter as much as we think they do. I may have been wary of live video streaming, and you may be nervous about webinar platforms, but in the end, what matters isn’t the things we’re afraid of. What matters is the mindset behind them, and the very real risk of trying to succeed from a place of fear.

If I may be so bold, I don’t care what you’re afraid of. I care that you’re always afraid.

New Words for Entrepreneurial Fear

Words have power, my friends. You already know this because you used such an important one over and over again in the survey. And just like you all got my attention with the fear theme, I now want to get your attention with some alternatives. Next time you’re tempted to say “I’m afraid” of something, try out these five phrases instead. And I promise, if you put the same energy behind them that you put into feeling fearful, you’ll see business success you never could’ve dreamed of.

Instead of “I’m scared,” say…

I’m inspired – See something new in the online space? See someone trying out a new platform, technique, or project that would be perfect for your business? You’re not afraid to give it a go—you’re inspired to put your own spin on it and try it yourself. In fact, you’re so inspired that you might just reach out to the person already doing it and tell them directly that they’ve convinced you it’s worth doing.

I’m in demand – See an opportunity to grow your audience, reach more clients, serve more people? Of course you do. Entrepreneurs see possibility everywhere, and guess what? You’re not afraid to pursue those opportunities—you’re seeing exactly where your expertise is needed in your community. That group of people is waiting for you to show up and help them, and ultimately, that’s what entrepreneurs do, day after day. You show up. You serve. You make it about them—and about HOW you can serve them with the solutions you create to solve the problems they’re experiencing.

I’m summoned – Oh, there’s a new social media platform that every other business owner is yapping about? There’s a new launch funnel that’s converting like mad? You’re not afraid that technology is moving too fast for your online business to keep up—you’re called to become a better entrepreneur today than you were yesterday.

Yes, the world of online business changes rapidly. The game itself changes faster than any of us can stay on top of, but that’s no excuse to sit out the whole round. If you ask me, that’s the fuel to rise to the occasion. You’ll need it on a regular basis to take your business to the next level. Over and over again.

I’m capable – Your launch failed, you lost money on an investment, you made a mistake that cost you big? You’re not afraid to try again—you’re newly capable of avoiding those missteps next time around. Trust me, I have failed far more times than I’ve succeeded in life, and if I’d been too afraid to try again after any of those failures, I never would’ve made my first three figures, let alone my first seven!!!

Capability is not a measure of how many times you’ve succeeded. It’s a measure of how often you’ve failed and kept going.

I’m ready – There’s a reason you’re afraid to be an entrepreneur, and it’s not because you’re not ready. It’s because you are. It’s because your idea matters to you (as it should!). It’s because you know you’re the right person, with the right idea, at the right time.

The world needs what you have to offer, and because my online community is all about building a business around your personal brand, I can’t say it enough: no one else can do the thing you want to do. If you don’t do it, it simply won’t get done. Ever. The potentially limitless audience that needs you will never get the solutions, the service, and the inspiration that they’re waiting for. You owe it to them to deliver.

You’re not afraid. You’re ready. There is no more entrepreneurial fear inside of you.

The Final Word on ‘Fear’

You may not ever completely banish fear from business. It’s the four-letter F-word that kept us alive in caveman times, so it’s instinctual, but now, more often than necessary, it just “protects” us from our own potential. We mistake every little fear as life-threatening. We give fear more power than it deserves by telling ourselves over and over that we’re afraid.

This week, I challenge you to change the tape that plays on loop in that brilliant entrepreneurial mind of yours.

Stop saying you’re afraid.

Start saying you’re inspired, in demand, summoned, capable, and ready.

And then, get out of your own way already! You’ve got places to be.

7 ‘Must Listen’ Podcast Episodes for Personal Brand Entrepreneurs

If you’re anything like me, and the majority of the members of our Youpreneur Community, the chances are that you’re an entrepreneur that’s on the go a lot of the time.

Traveling to speak at live events, holding workshops, doing book tours, interviews for press, visiting coaching clients – all that time adds up. Which is fine, it comes with the territory. However, what isn’t fine is if we’re wasting that time by watching movies on the plane, or snoozing in the back of the taxi.

Thanks to the world of podcasts, we can utilize this time to our advantage by tuning into great, free content that’ll help us incrementally move the needle, when it comes to our personal brand and business growth.

With this in mind, I decided to put together this quick list of seven of the best episodes of Youpreneur.FM, along with highlighting what you can expect to gain from tuning into them, on your next trip! Enjoy.

1. The Business of YOU: Why Building Your Brand is Paramount to Success

When it comes to creating a business with long-term in mind, there’s nothing better than focusing on building it around you, your experiences and how you can best serve your clients and community. This episode is the perfect overview of the ‘no competition economy’, as I like to call it – LISTEN NOW!

2. How to Build Your First ‘Real’ Email Marketing Funnel

This is so important, that I feel like we should discuss it on every episode! My good friend, Greg Hickman (who personally manages a lot of my marketing online) joins me to break down exactly, step-by-step how we can grow a high converting email marketing funnel – LISTEN NOW!

3. How to Convert Your Podcast Listeners into Email Subscribers (and Paying Customers!)

One of the easiest ways to build a brand online is to start your own podcast. However, getting listeners is just the beginning. In this episode with Tim Paige we deep dive into strategies (a lot of ’em!) that’ll take your listeners on a zero-friction journey to become email subscribers – LISTEN NOW!

4. How to Launch and Grow a Membership Site

In this episode I sit down with bestselling author, Robbie Kellman Baxter to discuss the ‘membership economy’ and why, exactly, all personal brand entrepreneurs should be considering building a membership driven business, in order to bring insane value to those that follow them – LISTEN NOW!

5. How to Build Your Brand on Facebook and Beyond

This is a real goodie. In this episode I’m joined by Kimra Luna, who grew a massive following on Facebook in a very short space of time, and is now making well over seven figures, as a result. She drops some great strategies, you need to take note of – LISTEN NOW!

6. Top Tips on Understanding and Navigating the Branding Landscape

Here I’m joined by branding expert Karen Hardie and we talk all about the differences between big brand names and those building businesses around their personal brands. It’s a real eye-opener of an episode, with lots of insights from this seasoned professional – LISTEN NOW!

7. How to Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout When Building a Personal Brand

Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING… is more important than taking care of ourselves as we focus on building our brand focused business. The problem is we routinely forget that fact, and here I discuss how we can re-focus and avoid hitting burnout – LISTEN NOW!

‘Listening’ is Just The Beginning!

Now, I will say that in the past I’ve been guilty of sitting down and listening to a podcast episode, expecting to learn lots – actually do so… and then doing nothing about it!

Not anymore, I assure you.

As a personal brand entrepreneur myself, I’ve now started taking instant action on what I learn from my podcast consumption time – be it by actually doing something myself, making really in-depth notes and saving them (along with calendar alerts) to act on in the new future, or perhaps by delegating something to one of my virtual staff. Either way – I take action.

That’s what YOU need to do, too – it moves the needle. It gets things happening… and that’s the difference between us truly GROWING our brands and businesses and not. So, promise me you’ll take some action after you tune into some of the shows above, okay?!

What did you think of this post? I’d love to hear from you. Please drop me a tweet, or a quick message on my Facebook Page! And, as always, if you know of someone that might benefit from seeing this, please do share it with them, I’d appreciate it.

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Invest in a Stand-Up Desk

What if you burned out, and put in place a one year goal to remove yourself from your business completely?

What if, after achieving that goal and enjoying a couple of years of entrepreneurial freedom, you ended up in hospital with a blown L5-S1 disc in your lower back, along with the fact that you needed invasive spine surgery that was going to have you on the operating table for 6-hours and facing a recovery period of 6-months, to a year… to fix it?

Well, welcome to my life!

All that happened to me in 2012, and I’m happy to say I came out on top of it all with a fixed back and a new focus on health and wellness.

During my recovery I started researching into stand-up desks. I had heard of them before, and even knew of a couple of people that were already using them, but, I had never tried one for myself – how I wish I’d decided to invest in a stand-up desk years back (pun intended!), as it probably would have saved me from needing surgery.

The importance of looking after our health as entrepreneurs is often swept under the rug. Ignored. Pushed to one side.

It shouldn’t be that way.

I invested in a stand-up desk shortly after my recovery period had come to an end and I ‘graduated’ from physiotherapy – it was one of the best moves I’ve made towards living a healthier lifestyle as an entrepreneur, and it’s one I wanted to introduce to you, properly, so that you can perhaps give it a serious thought.

My Personal Stand-up Desk Gear

Now, I agree that we all have different tastes when it comes to things like furniture – especially when it’s in our home.

However, I thought a suitable place to start ‘showing’ you these desks would be to simply show you mine. And not just the desk – the full ‘set up’ that I’ve adopted with the main component – the standup desk itself.

The Desk

The one I have is the MultiTable Adjustable Height Standing Desk with Manual Base. This is the base only, which means its totally customizable. I picked a smooth table top with a slight design to it, but I know several other business owners that have this and just picked up a simply desk top from Ikea for next to nothing. It’s super easy to put together, and just as easy to operate.

As you can see from the side view image above, there is plenty of room on the desk to work in comfort and I find that standing also gives me a slight ‘birds eye view’ of the desk and therefore helps me keep it cleaner and less cluttered!

The Mat

An additional, important part of my personal set-up is the standing mat that I use. Mine is the Imprint Comfort Mat Nantucket Series and helps with supporting my foot arches (I have high ones!), as well as easing any back and neck fatigue. This is the perfect addition to when you decide to invest in a stand-up desk. I thoroughly recommend you get a mat if you go down this route – it makes the transition so much easier, and just feels great – in, or out of shoes!

And… The Chair

Obviously, I’m not standing all day long. The chair I have in my home office (I also have the exact same chair in my company HQ, too – it’s that good!) is the ErgoHuman ME7ERG Black Mesh Executive Chair w/ Headrest. I use it for around 30% of my working day… the rest of the time I stand.

What if (lack of) Office Space is an Issue?

I’ve been around enough startup’s and entrepreneurs to know that sometimes space is a constraint – especially if they’re working from home. If you’re working in a small environment, you can try grabbing a mini stand-up desk.

The one I like the look of is this one from X-Elite Pro. It fits a laptop perfectly, along with space for a mouse and additional bits and pieces, too. However, the really cool thing about this desk is that it folds up, so you can really save space.

Another couple of cool resources for standup desks are:

This great article on Lifehacker
The brilliant selection of standup desks from the guys over at Varidesk
These sweet dsigns from the team at Updesk

No matter what way you decide to go with getting a standup desk into your office, the fact that you’ll be doing it is all that really matters.

I love my standup desk and wouldn’t be with it now – and I’m pretty sure that you’ll feel the same way, too!

What did you think today’s post? I’d love to know. Please tweet me, or drop me a message on Facebook. If you have entrepreneurial friends that you think could do with this post as a resources, please share it with them. I’d greatly appreciate it!

How to Organize and Run a Mastermind Session [Infographic]

Sometimes getting caught up in the everyday grind of your business makes it way too easy to fall into a rut. This can lead to missed opportunities, or not being able to see problems the way an outsider can – and it can happen without you even realizing it!

It’s happened to me. Many times – but, not anymore!

Mastermind groups have become such a staple in my entrepreneurial life, and it’s no wonder why that is. Having a core group of peers to help support, inspire and give you that nudge in the right direction can make such a huge difference in how you run and grow your business – it’s honestly changed the way that I’ve built my businesses over the years.

In fact, they’ve made such a remarkable change in my business that I even started an online mastermind community, Youpreneur.com.

This concept has become so important to me, that nowadays I run several mastermind sessions, live, in-person throughout the course of the year – including my Tropical Think Tank event, which is my big annual event in the Philippines! The interaction and energy you get with other like-minded entrepreneurs sharing ideas and experiences is so invaluable. I love it!

There’s no fast success formula to running a successful mastermind group, but just in case you feel like you are ready to jump into hosting your own mastermind then here are some tips to help you get started.

To further support this infographic, I strongly suggest you listen in on Episode 151 of YoupreneurFM, where I go into a number of other points on the subject of mastermind groups, and why they are so very important to help entrepreneurs grow as individuals, as well as the perfect way to cure the ‘loneliness’ factor that we sometimes feel as entrepreneurs, too.

I also go into detail on how you can create your first one, as well as how to run a mastermind group a lot easier than you might think, as well as how to actually run a mastermind session from afar. It’s a great, quick listen episode that I know you’ll appreciate investing the time listening to.

Did this infographic help you? If so, please consider sharing it and be sure to tweet me and let me know your biggest takeaway!