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#Leadership : How To #FindAJob That Keeps You Happy In The Long Term…Looking for a #NewJob Takes Time & Energy, so Be Sure you Know What you Want Before you Even Start the Process.

January 18, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If you’re thinking about jumping ship this year, you’re not alone. According to a new survey from Glassdoor, 35% of recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers anticipate that more employees will leave their companies within the next 12 months.

While finding another job is often an important catalyst for positive change, let’s be honest: The process itself is not exactly anyone’s idea of a good time. Between resume and cover letter drafting, interviewing and negotiating salary, job seeking can be time-consuming, stressful and draining–so ideally, you want to go through that process as few times as possible.

The key to accomplishing that, of course, is finding a job that you’ll be happy with for years to come. But how exactly do you find that?

The answer, hiring decision makers believe, is to inform yourself as much as possible during the job search. So the next time you find yourself seeking out a new position, make sure to take the following steps.

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FIND JOBS THAT ALIGN WITH YOUR SALARY EXPECTATIONS

Nearly half of the those surveyed (45%) said that the primary motivating factor for employees’ departure was salary, and over one third (37%) believed that employees would be significantly more likely to stay on for longer if they were more informed about salary during the interview process. After all, if you accept a role that satisfies your pay requirements, you won’t have to seek a better-paying job elsewhere.

To provide job seekers with increased transparency, Glassdoor now includes salary estimates on about 52% of U.S. job listings, with that number expected to grow in the future. By looking at these estimates, you can quickly and easily screen out positions that don’t meet your salary needs, saving you valuable time and improving the odds of securing the salary you deserve. Not quite sure what you should be aiming for? Try Glassdoor’s Know Your Worth™ tool to get a free, personalized estimate of what you should be making.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ROOM FOR GROWTH

Besides salary, career advancement opportunities were the second biggest reason that hiring professionals believed employees were leaving. It’s easy to fixate on the present when you’re looking for a new job, but if you want to stay at a company for years to come, that short-sighted thinking is not enough. Eventually, you’ll probably want to move up in your career, whether that means a more senior title, bigger paycheck or additional responsibilities. A few signs that the company you’re looking at will help support your future growth? Clear paths to promotion, training, career development programs and formal mentorship opportunities.

EVALUATE THE BENEFITS PACKAGE

Another major reason employees leave their current positions, survey participants said, was to seek better benefits. It makes sense–after all, salary isn’t everything. Besides your take-home pay, perks and benefits are also core components of your total compensation. A company with incredible benefits like premium-free health coverage, parental leave, and generous paid vacation time may end up saving you more money in the long run than one with higher starting salaries. Alternatively, you might just be willing to accept a lower salary in exchange for a particularly enticing perk. For example, plenty of folks have no problem making a little less if it means that they get to work from home.

GET THE SCOOP ON LOCALE

The last key reason survey participants said employees chose to look elsewhere for employment? Location. If you’re excited enough for an opportunity, a 45-minute commute one way may seem like no big deal–but after the honeymoon period ends, you might not feel the same way. When you receive a job offer, carefully consider where the position is located. Would you have a quick and easy commute? Is it close to public transportation? Would you have to move, leaving your friends and family behind? Some of these factors will undoubtedly matter to you more than others, but it’s still worth taking a good, hard look at the whole picture–you don’t want to commit to a job only to regret your choice six months later.

The bottom line: Well-informed job seekers make for happier employees. Before you even accept an offer–or perhaps before you even apply–figure out what matters the most to you and see how the company you’re considering stacks up. Not only will this help you narrow down the number of applications you send out–it will help ensure long-term career satisfaction.

FastCompany.com | January 18, 2018 | BY EMILY MOORE—GLASSDOOR 3 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : A Simple but Ruthless Exercise Reveals who your #StarEmployees Are & Who Should be #Fired … A #Strategy you Might Call the “Six-Month Exercise”. You Should Do it Regularly & Here’s How it Works

January 18, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Patty McCord is the former chief talent officer at Netflix. She now runs her own consulting business.
In her new book, “Powerful,” McCord says managers should always consider whether the team they have now is the team they’ll need in six months.
If not, they should let go of the employees who don’t have the requisite skills and knowledge.

Being a manager requires practicality bordering on ruthlessness — at least according to Patty McCord.

McCord was the chief talent officer at Netflix from 1998 to 2012; she and Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings created the company’s infamous culture deck. Now she runs her own consulting business.

McCord has just published a book titled “Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility,” in which she distills the lessons she learned at Netflix and as a consultant into insights any manager can use.

One of the most jarring insights is that the team you have now may not be the team you’ll need going forward. And since a manager’s goal is to build the best team possible, you may have to make some tough decisions about which employees to keep on — and which to let go.

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To that end, McCord recommends a strategy you might call the “six-month exercise.” You should do it regularly, she writes. Here’s how it works:

1. “Write down what the team will be accomplishing six months from now that it’s not accomplishing now.” It could be a product they’re building, or money they’re making.

2. “Think about how things are being done differently from the way they are currently done.” Imagine yourself walking around the office — maybe there’s more collaboration, or fewer meetings.

3. Think: “In order for those things to be happening, what would people need to know how to do?” It could be technical knowledge, or negotiating skill.

Now here comes the hard part. Does your current team have the right skills, knowledge, and experience? If not, you may need to bring in people who do, potentially even replacing some of your current team members.

In an interview with Business Insider, McCord said that companies’ missions should be “hiring the best people to solve the problems that you need to solve in your particular company — and then making sure that those teams are always comprised of those kinds of people.” But — and here’s the kicker — “it’s not always the same people.”

Netflix is clear that it only keeps its most effective employees

Netflix doesn’t appear to have changed its management practices very much since McCord left. In the “culture” section on its website, Netflix makes clear that they “keep only our highly effective people.” The website reads: “Succeeding on a dream team is about being effective, not about working hard. Sustained ‘B’ performance, despite an ‘A’ for effort, gets a respectful generous severance package.”

It’s worth noting here that McCord was let go in 2013. “I am the ultimate product of the culture that I helped create,” she told Business Insider, noting that she’s had a successful career since leaving Netflix and is still in touch with many of her former colleagues.

This isn’t an easy way to manage people — in fact it might seem downright unfair. McCord’s argument in the book is that “you’re building a team, not raising a family.” That is to say, you’re not responsible for your employees’ career development.

McCord told Business Insider that employees should steel themselves against this reality. “You should be wary of expecting a company to take care of your career for you, because that’s not their job. Their job is to take care of their customers and their clients.”

Businessinsider.com | January 18, 2018 | Shana Lebowitz

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#Leadership : 9 Phrases only #MBAs Understand…Every Industry has its Own Lingo. #BusinessSchool Jargon may be Especially Perplexing to Outsiders.

January 17, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

To help clear up some of the confusion, we asked two MBA grads about the most unusual terms and phrases they picked up in business school.

Paul Ollinger graduated from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 1997 and was an early Facebook employee before becoming a standup comedian. He recently published a comedic career guide titled, “You Should Totally Get an MBA,” which includes a glossary of “MBA Talk.”

Alex Dea graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2015 and is now a product marketing manager at Salesforce. He also runs the blog MBASchooled, which is a resource for business school students, applicants, and alumni.

Read on to find out what MBAs really mean when they call you a “Herbie.”

Resume lock

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design/Flickr

The “resume lock” is a high-level review of your resume during an interview.

Dea said: “It’s almost like a very short, succinct elevator pitch about your background or what you’ve done, the skills that you have, anything that gleans a little bit into how your personal and professional life connect.”

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PAR and STAR

Strelka Institute/Flickr

These are two frameworks that MBA students use either to describe their accomplishments on a resume or to answer interview questions, Dea said. “You don’t always get a lot of time for interviews, so you want to make sure that you’re being concise.”

PAR stands for “Problem, Action, Result.” If you’re using this format, Dea said, “you would talk about the problem, then you would dig into the actions that you took to help solve the problem, and then you would finally close with the end result that you specifically made.” STAR is very similar — it stands for “Situation, Task, Action, Result.”

Blue ocean and red ocean

OldakQuill/Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ollinger describes both terms in his glossary.

Blue ocean is a “nerdy way of describing a market that has yet to be chummed up with competitors or great whites (which are, by the way, man-eating killing machines).”

Red ocean is a “nerdy way of describing a market chummed up with competitors and man-killing sharks.”

The 4 P’s of marketing

Dan Kitwood / Staff / Getty Images

“Four things — Product, Place, Price, Promotion — contribute to make a product successful or not,” Ollinger writes in his book.

The four P’s are also called the “marketing mix,” a term that was popularized in the 1950s by Neil Borden.

The 3 C’s

Apple/YouTube

Ollinger defines the term in his book: A “business model developed by Kenichi Ohmae. … It analyzes how the dynamics of Customer, Competition, and Corporation lead to strategic advantage.”

Circle of death

University of Exeter/Flickr

At a business-school networking event, Dea said, there will typically be more students than potential employers. And all the students are eager to talk to the employers.

“What ends up happening is that a lot of students end up congregating around one employee,” Dea said. “It looks like a circle where there’s one employee and the rest of the students are around him or her and it is a game of back and forth of question and answer.”

The term is tongue-in-cheek, Dea added, because all MBA students know it’s an unfortunate part of the recruitment process.

MECE

Flickr / frankieleon

Ollinger says MECE is an acronym for “a McKinsey-created data analysis concept called ‘Mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive.'”

For example, categorizing people by age group would be MECE. That’s because no one can appear in more than one category and all the categories together cover all the options.

Categorizing people by their hobbies is not MECE, because one person may have more than one hobby.

Herbie

Paxson Woelber/Flickr

The 1984 novel “The Goal,” by business consultant Eliyahu M. Goldratt, is often assigned at top business programs, Dea said. The novel explores principles of operations and supply chains.

In one story line, a boy named Herbie is on a Boy Scout hike and ends up holding up the rest of the troops. So “Herbie” has become synonymous for “bottleneck,” or the thing that’s holding people up.

Dea said MBA grads will often say things like, “Don’t be the Herbie” or, “Stop being the Herbie.”

SWOT analysis

REUTERS/Grigory Dukor

Ollinger says this term is a “framework for analyzing a business’ situation by looking at their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.”

Businessinsider.com | January 17, 2018 | Shana Lebowitz

#Leadership : Why January Is Your Least #Productive Month & What To Do About…It It’s the Coldest, Darkest Month of the Year. Shouldn’t you Really Just Hunker Down and Get to Work?

January 17, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

January can be a bit of a buzzkill. You’re coming off of the fun of the holidays. Depending on your location, winter is firmly entrenched with cold temps, snow, and ice. And daylight hours are in short supply. What’s to love?

You might think the dreary conditions would cause us to throw ourselves into work. Not so, finds a study by the data collaboration software provider Redbooth. In fact, January is our least productive month. We complete just 7.2% of our yearly tasks (it should be 8.33% if you do the math), and February is negligibly better at 7.6%.

Instead of simply bundling up and waiting out the slump, here are four things you can do to boost your productivity or take advantage of the downtime.

1. FOCUS ON SELF-CARE

Being productive means understanding your strengths, and January should be a time to make your schedule less about what you want to get done, and more about who you want to become, says Tyler Scott, lead pastor of Community Presbyterian Church in Danville, Calif.

“When our emotional tank is full, we are most productive and operate at our best,” he says. “Identify five things that replenish you. For me it’s prayer, family time, satisfying work, being connected to a small group, and exercise.”

Let go of the things that deplete your life, such as social media, toxic relationships, or unhealthy habits. “If we’re not intentional with how we want to spend our time, we will instead drift into a life that is overwhelmed, exhausted, over-scheduled and unproductive,” says Scott.

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2. IDENTIFY YOUR PRIORITIES

Get clear on where you’re headed by setting priorities based on the results you want to accomplish this year, says leadership consultant Doug Ringer. “Limit yourself to three priorities,” he says. “If you have more than three priorities, you have none.”

Instead of creating a big to-do list, work backward from your goals to determine your plan of action, suggests Ringer. “Write what you are going to do in your calendar,” he says. “When the day and time occurs, do it.”

3. SET UP FUTURE SUCCESSES

If your workload has lightened up, use January to prepare for future months. Organize your office, clear out your inbox, and create systems for handling new work and projects. Your workspace impacts your productivity, so set up your desk by taking some tips from productivity experts. For example, David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, keeps just four things on his desk: a limited number of supplies, reference materials, decorations, and equipment. Anything else is stored somewhere else.

You can also take this time to invest in education. Take a learning sabbatical, catch up on reading, or sign up for a free online class on a platform such as edX, Khan Academy or Alison.

4. OR JUST GET OVER IT

Productivity cannot be expected to be uniform, over a day, over a week, or over a year, says Cindi Fukami, professor of management at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Instead of trying to fight it, acknowledge and accept it.

“The rhythms of life ebb and flow, and so also will productivity,” says Fukami. “A company’s business goes through cycles and this is commonly accepted. Perhaps companies should be accepting of employee cycles. If a company wants uniform productivity, it would be wise to invest in robotic process automation, which can perform routine operations 24/7/365.”

FastCompany.com | Janurary 17, 2018 | BY STEPHANIE VOZZA 2 MINUTE READ

Your #Career : How To Talk About The Gap In Your #WorkHistory ..Sometimes, Addressing it Directly Can Be your Best Option.

January 16, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Whether you’re gearing up for a triumphant return to the workforce or grappling with the best way to explain a recent gap in your employment history, addressing time away from the professional world can be a daunting task. Given that a glaring hole on your resume will likely be a red flag to prospective employers, you’ll want to take steps to proactively answer questions they may have.

Balancing your need to provide a reasonable explanation with your right to privacy might be a bit tricky, but it’s far from impossible. Employment gaps can easily be addressed directly on a resume, mentioned in a cover letter, or discussed during an interview. Read through the approaches below to determine the strategy (or strategies!) that’ll work best for you.

ADDRESSING GAPS DIRECTLY ON YOUR RESUME

When it comes to a gap in employment on your resume, it’s best not to leave recruiters guessing. Including a brief blurb about your time away from the workforce will serve to proactively address any questions or concerns prospective employers may have. It’ll also make answering questions about that gap on your resume much easier when it comes time to interview, as you’ll have already laid the foundation for a direct, concise response. Let’s take a look at five common scenarios and how to address them.

1) YOU WERE RAISING A FAMILY

Taking time away from the workforce to raise a child is often a deeply personal decision–-one that you may not want to discuss with a prospective employer. This is perfectly understandable, and frankly, no one’s business! That said, being upfront about your time away could increase your chances of landing an interview by as much as 40%, so it’s worth including a brief, professional explanation. Try creating a “recent experience” section below your previous, more relevant work history, or use a single line in your chronological experience section to explain your time away. Something as simple as, “Family Care Provider, 2013–Present” will do the trick.

Highlighting charity work or continuing education courses will help to smooth over a gap, too. Volunteering in a classroom, helping out with a friend’s business, or taking professional courses can all be included as relevant recent experience.

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2) YOU WERE CARING FOR YOURSELF OR A LOVED ONE

Your medical history or the health of a loved one aren’t really anyone else’s business (and interviewers aren’t legally allowed to ask), but most hiring managers can appreciate your need to take time away from the workforce to manage a health issue. Your explanation can be something as simple as “took a leave of absence to care for a loved one” or “took a healthcare sabbatical to address a now fully resolved medical matter.” List this at the top of your experience section, include the dates of your leave, and keep the explanation to 1 to 2 lines. Then dive right in to highlighting your most recent experience.

3) YOU WENT BACK TO SCHOOL

Going back to school to finish a degree, gain additional expertise, or earn a certification are all perfectly acceptable reasons to step away from a job. Be sure to include your education at the top of your resume (this strategy is typically reserved for current or recent students, only) so that recruiters can easily see the progression of your career timeline. If you’d like to include additional details about your program or coursework, you can also list your education as experience.

4) YOU WERE PURSUING A PASSION (LIKE TRAVELING OR WRITING A BOOK)

Unless your passion project is somewhat related to the jobs you’re now pursuing, you’ll want to keep this explanation nice and simple. That said, it doesn’t hurt to highlight a few interesting tidbits or compelling accomplishments here, either. Include a brief one- or two-line description of how you spent your career pause, and use a couple of bullet points (if relevant) to highlight your newly gained skills or achievements. When in doubt, a concise line like “Backpacked 2,190 miles across the Appalachian Trail, March 2016–October 2016” is all you need.

5) YOU WERE UNEXPECTEDLY UNEMPLOYED

If you were unexpectedly let go from a job, chances are you didn’t have something new lined up right away. Depending on how recently you became unemployed, you may not have to address a gap at all. If it’s just been a couple of months, updating your resume and highlighting your most relevant achievements will probably be your most potent strategy. That said, if you were laid off, it wouldn’t hurt to include a brief explanation next to your end date. Something like, “(laid off due to loss of funding)” would be perfectly acceptable.

Unfortunately, if you were fired and it’s been more than a few months since you were last employed, addressing your employment gap could get a bit tricky. If you can supplement your time off with volunteer experience, temp jobs or part-time work, you’ll be in pretty good shape. But if you don’t have any interim experience to highlight, try including a concise explanation like, (“departed due to shift in company priorities”). This won’t scream “fired!” but will also allow space for you to explain the circumstances of your termination in an interview.

LEVERAGING YOUR COVER LETTER

Cover letters provide a great opportunity for you to supplement the information on your resume. If you choose to include a cover letter with your application, consider addressing your employment gap in the body of your letter. Saying something as simple as, “After taking a personal leave to care for an immediate family member, I’m eager to dive into a new professional challenge” should do the trick.

Bonus: If you spent your time off learning a new skill, or if you have a relevant, compelling anecdote to share about your career pause, your cover letter is the place to elaborate!

DISCUSSING EMPLOYMENT GAPS IN AN INTERVIEW

The beauty of proactively addressing gaps in employment on your resume or cover letter is that you’ll be less likely to be asked about your time away during an interview. If the hiring manager knows that you were caring for your family for the past two years, she probably won’t have any follow-up questions for you. That means you’ll be able to spend more time talking about all the great skills and experiences you bring to the table!

If your employment gap does come up during an interview, keep your explanation short and sweet. Say something like, “I’ve been lucky enough to spend the past three years focused on raising my family, but now that my children are a bit older, I’m eager to step back into a professional role. I’m particularly excited about this opportunity because . . . ” or “I’ve always wanted to pursue a career in advertising, and decided that it was time to complete my marketing degree. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m excited to leverage everything I learned in the classroom as I continue to grow my expertise in a role like this.” Notice how the first sentence addresses the reason for taking time off, while the second line pivots the conversation to your applicable experience or enthusiasm for the role. The key is to answer the question succinctly, then move the conversation forward.

Gaps in employment can be challenging to address, but if you’re honest, concise, and straightforward, you can proactively explain your time away, ease your prospective employer’s concerns, and efficiently redirect the conversation to your relevant skills and achievements.

FastCompany.com | January 16, 2018 | BY JACLYN WESTLAKE—FAIRYGODBOSS 6 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : 12 Ways to Automate #YourBusiness & Boost Efficiency…With the Right Systems, You can Maximize #Efficiency & #Profits.

January 15, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Too often, repetition, waste, and unnecessary bureaucracy slow down business. Members of The Oracles share their systems to streamline your business to run like a Swiss watch.

Patrick Byrne

Image credit: The Oracles

1. Implement AI and machine learning.

It’s now possible to convert your business metrics into data points and then turn those data points over to an artificial intelligence engine that optimizes many things like price and digital marketing spend. Getting familiar with artificial intelligence and machine learning is crucial.

Get your company on the Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Google Cloud has built-in tools for automation and you’ll automatically get the latest advancements as Google regularly updates it. Microsoft Azure is coming along right behind them and is priced competitively. With the right machine-learning tools, you can achieve maximum efficiency and turbocharge your business. —Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com and tZERO

Grant Cardone

Image credit: The Oracles

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2. Create both a sales cycle and business cycle.

A sales cycle starts when a customer shows interest and ends when they buy. With a business cycle, you market and drive people toward your product or service. Most people don’t have the money to establish a business cycle when starting out. Big corporations live in the business cycle. They spend money creating traffic. To automate, you need a business cycle that gets constant eyeballs on your business. —Grant Cardone, top sales expert who has built a $500-million real estate empire, and NYT-bestselling author; follow Grant onFacebook or YouTube

Creative Ways to Delight Your Customers and Make Them Loyal to Your Brand

By Staples

Tim Draper

Image credit: The Oracles

3. Look for repetition.

To find missed automation opportunities, I get my team together to discuss what we’re doing that is repetitive. Then, we look for an automated solution that can perform the task as well or better, while delivering exceptional service. We’ve had great success in taking menial tasks like sorting and responding to emails and automating them. This enhanced rather than harmed the customer experience. —Tim Draper, VC, founder of Draper Associates and DFJ

Rob Kosberg

Image credit: The Oracles

4. Make it simple and repeatable.

Automation does not need to be complicated to be effective. A complicated system requires more maintenance and is vulnerable to breaking. Each day, people apply to our program and book a call with one of our author development coaches. Our author liaison matches the applications with appointments, so calls are distributed fairly, and appointments are booked quickly. —Rob Kosberg, #1 bestselling author and CEO of Best Seller Publishing, whose strategies have positioned U.S. Ambassadors, professional athletes, and CEOs as thought leaders

Tai Lopez

Image credit: The Oracles

5. Have a nuclear team, plus ninja contractors.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, said, “The best management style is not to micromanage or be completely hands-off; it’s to look over the shoulder.”

No one does everything well so I hire a fleet of super-specialized “ninja contractors” for specific tasks like social media, email marketing, and copywriting. Meanwhile, my small team of full-time team manages everything else, with me looking over their shoulder.

Automation means building the most efficient team around you. By outsourcing specific tasks to contractors, you cut costs. And since you’re not their only income source, they don’t drag things out. —Tai Lopez, investor and advisor to multiple multimillion-dollar businesses, who has built an eight-figure online empire; connect with Tai on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube

Jared Goetz

Image credit: The Oracles

6. Only work 20 minutes a day.

I set my e-commerce business up so I only need to contribute 20 minutes per day to keep things running. At first, I ran everything, then gradually replaced myself. My obstacle was trusting other people to do my job. But when you invest time and money into others, they often become even better than you!

It’s essential to train new people and create standard operating procedures, so your team knows how to handle problems. For my first customer support agent, I copied all my email threads into a document. At that point, I’d answered every question a customer could have, so when an inquiry came in, she knew exactly how to respond. —Jared Goetz, serial entrepreneur and e-commerce expert; co-founder of four multimillion-dollar companies in five years

Com Mirza

Image credit: The Oracles

7. Work on your business, not in it.

You can’t escape the launch work when starting a business. It demands attention, effort, and late nights. After launching, extract yourself from the daily operations to work on your business, not in it.

Ask yourself what your time is worth. Anything below your pay grade — that can be done cheaper, better, or faster — should be outsourced. Create a weekly reporting structure, and monitor it three times a week to hold your team accountable. This will free up more time to work on growth. —Com Mirza, “The $500 Million Man” and CEO of Mirza Holdings; failed in eight companies back to back and today, runs a nine-figure empire with over 600 employees

LeNae Goolsby

Image credit: The Oracles

8. Empower, educate, and outsource.

Having a team that takes ownership of your business is paramount. Set clear policies and procedures, and encourage their input. Educate your team by providing supportive, ongoing mentorship coupled with knowledge assessments via the Socratic method (which focuses on asking questions instead of providing answers).

Then, outsource the necessities with trusted experts in areas like marketing, sales, billing, collections, bookkeeping, and incoming calls. This keeps the business running. —LeNae Goolsby, cofounder of Infinite Health and founder of Empowered Medicine TV

Joshua Harris

Image credit: The Oracles

9. Streamline task management and communication.

We use Slack and Trello to centralize communications and tasks so nothing slips through the cracks.

With that in place, create defined roles so a virtual assistant can route tasks to the appropriate team member. Tools like ScheduleOnce can automate appointments.

When making systems for employees, I use a two-step process: film yourself doing a task with a tool like Loom, then break that video down into a checklist of steps. —Joshua Harris, founder of Agency Growth Secrets; teaches entrepreneurs how to use machine learning and AI to produce unbeatable client results

Danny Morel

Image credit: The Oracles

10. Commit to a five-step plan.

One, learn everything yourself. Learn the ins and outs of the most critical positions so you can replace yourself. Two, don’t spend company money. Pay yourself a salary and only spend that. Three, know your weakness. Hiring a COO was the smartest investment I ever made. He took my weakness (documenting procedures) and made it a strength of our organization. Four, know the mental makeup that every position requires and hire for that. Five, let it go! There are people much better than you at a particular function in your business. Trust them to do their job. —Danny Morel, author of “The Resilience Roadmap” and founder of M.PIRE university; connect with Danny on Facebook and Instagram

Ken Lebovic

Image credit: The Oracles

11. Be patient, with a human touch.

Unless your new business is an app, most businesses require personal attention and a “human touch” to start. A new business can’t be automated out of the box.

Be patient. Take the time to make sure your business is working smoothly, and keep bringing a personal, human touch as you grow. Over time, figure a way to automate just those areas of your business that won’t affect the customer getting excellent service.

You don’t want to lose a first-time customer in a new business by not having your process personally tailored to their experience. —Ken Lebovic, president of North Shore Holdings; built a real estate empire acquiring thousands of properties in 20 years

Sharran Srivatsaa

Image credit: The Oracles

12. Commit to delivering consistent delight.

When I first met Issy Sharp, founder of Four Seasons Hotels, he told me something that stuck with me: “Systematize the predictable. Humanize the exceptional.”

I force one particular question regularly upon all the entrepreneurs that I mentor: “How can you create once and delight many times?” High-achiever personalities feel like they need to be intimately involved with every touchpoint with clients to delight. This is a fallacy and operationally frustrating.

Email automation is one of the simplest ways to automate “humanly.” I’ve used platforms like Emma and ConvertKit to deliver “sequences” of pre-written emails that don’t take away authenticity and consistently deliver delight. —Sharran Srivatsaa, angel investor and president of brokerage (western region) at Douglas Elliman; grew Teles Properties10X in five years

Thanks to reader Nathaniel Amanor for this topic suggestion!

Want to share your insights like those above in a future column? If you’re an experienced entrepreneur, please get in touch here.

Want to suggest a future topic for these entrepreneurs to answer? Email suggestion@theoracles.com and it’s very possible we’ll make your suggestion the focus of a future article!

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#Leadership : Hiring Remote Workers Made My Entire #Team More Productive…One CEO Explains How Surprised he was to Find the #RemoteTeams he Hired Reshaping his Company’s In-Office #WorkCulture for the Better.

January 14, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

“Want to get lunch?” This is a phrase you’ll rarely hear at our office. It’s not that we don’t eat or spend time together, but it’s physically impossible for our entire team to be in the same place at the same time. Sixty percent of our team works remotely, so for us, grabbing lunch is, “let’s meet on Google Hangout.”

It wasn’t always that way. Originally at Traitify, our entire workforce was based in one Baltimore office. We had a two-floor space and separated teams by department–developers downstairs, business and data upstairs.

Before long we noticed those two teams ended up forming separate cultures; the space literally caused a divide within our company. We tried intermingling the teams, but new floor members took on the same behaviors as those we moved. To cut down this friction we decided to look for a larger space on a single floor. The company was growing–and we didn’t want culture issues to bite us later on.

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Around this time we were also expanding our development team, and kept finding great talent outside our physical geography. We didn’t want to lose excellent talent based on location, so eventually we decided to give remote workers a shot. It was a risk considering the culture issues we were already dealing with onsite, but it paid off–and then some. Here’s how.

REMOTE WORKERS IMPROVED OUR ONSITE CULTURE AND PRODUCTIVITY

We started slow at first, by hiring our first CTO into a remote role. This led to the hiring of another remote developer, and another. Many of our hires came through referrals, so they had ties to the company already. And to our surprise, integrating them was incredibly easy.

In fact, we realized after a few months that hiring remote workers helped lessen our office divide. The remote workers we hired displayed high levels of self-motivation and responsibility, and were generally less antagonistic and better team players. Over time, those traits ended up rubbing off on other team members. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you can measure an applicants’ personality before hiring them; we build a product that lets us do exactly that.)

Productivity is a top concern for companies considering remote workers. But we found that they actually made us more productive overall. For starters, we’re forced to use Slack to its maximum potential to make that sure our team members, whether they’re in the office or around the country, feel like they’re sitting next to each other all day.

While Slack can be a distraction, it can lead to fewer interruptions if your whole team uses it properly (i.e. not for every single thing). For instance, we have a policy that if an update requires more than a quick Slack message or email, we get on a video call. Facetime makes it feel similar to being in the same room as your colleagues, but it forces the requestor to think about priority level (Is it urgent? Can it wait until my colleague says she’s free?) and ultimately boosts efficiency.

There are challenges, too. If you’re not sitting across from someone, you can miss nonverbal communication like body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and posture, all of which build camaraderie and trust. But we’ve worked to mitigate that risk by planning team off-sites, work-away trips, and occasional company-wide gatherings, which we hope to make more frequent over time.

THE BENEFITS OF A HYBRID MODEL

For Traitify, the remote workforce concept has been a swinging pendulum. We’ve learned that while some roles, like developers, can work well remotely, there are certain teams–like sales and customer success–that benefit tremendously from being physically together. Still, we’ve chosen to embrace this arrangement that we’d initially just stumbled across.

Having a physical “hub” creates and reinforces the core element of Traitify’s company culture–a place where customers and investors can see “who” your company is and experience the energy firsthand. However, in order to attract the best talent, we also recognized the need to be open to hiring candidates outside our immediate geography.

Some founders insist on an all-or-nothing approach, but we don’t believe that’s the only way to make remote work successful. Instead, we’ve set explicit guidelines to reinforce the benefits of both remote and onsite work so our in-office and far-flung teams can work well in tandem with minimal impediments.

All our staff in our physical headquarters now work on the same floor. And when we hire remote workers, we screen their personalities to make sure they’re self-motivated and responsible, then we train them to use collaborative tools in a way that optimizes their productivity.

I believe companies need to embrace remote workers, but they don’t necessarily have to resort to an exclusively remote workforce. It’s a great model to source talent, but the benefits of a physical hub are hard to overstate, especially when it comes to building a work culture. If our experience is any indicator, you really can–and maybe should–have it both ways.

Dan Sines is co-founder & CEO of Traitify, the company behind image-based personality assessments for employers and personal career growth.

FastCompany.com | January 14, 2018

Three Ways To Highlight Your Career Successes On Your Resume.

January 12, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

It’s amazing how often someone I’m working with will begin lamenting their lack of career success. And almost every time, during the course of our chatting and doing a “deep dive” into this person’s work history, I’ll come away dumbfounded at how wrong they are.

It’s not that you don’t have enough successes; it’s that you’re taking most of them for granted! Correcting this is essential if your resume is going to stand out. Here are three ways to get there:

1. FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

Let’s say you have a shortlist going of roles you’d be perfect for. Take a close look at the major things they’re asking for and ask yourself: What projects have I worked on that touch on this? Let’s take the following job posting excerpt for a Director of Change Management position:

Liaised with Organizational Effectiveness Leader on global HR change strategies and initiatives.

You can use this for fodder for a great accomplishment such as:

Played integral role in the development and launch of “ONECompany” initiative transforming a regional, U.S.-based HR function into a global one. Defined HR change strategies in close partnership with Organizational Effectiveness Leader, and worked heavily with counterparts in Asia and UK to achieve critical roll-out milestones.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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2. FROM THE INSIDE OUT

What drives you? Is it the challenge and exhilaration of turning a cutting-edge technology into a launched product? Is it solving internal conflicts and getting teams playing on the same page? Is it leveraging analytics to improve the user experience? Jot down three to five of your key driving motivators. Now use them as fodder for resume accomplishments.

Here’s an example of a resume accomplishment inspired by a driving motivator:

Revitalized vendor and partner relationships through deploying a value-driven sales and marketing strategy emphasizing long-term relationships versus “quick wins.”

3. PROGRESSIVE GRANULARITY

Be on the lookout for opportunities to either elaborate upon, or else split up, major successes into a series of accomplishments. I call this “progressive granularity” because you’re finding new material through getting more detailed about the work.

Here are three “before” examples:

I turned the underperforming New Mexico region into one of the biggest U.S. sales growth drivers for the company.
I generated over $26 million in annual, recurring revenue through closing deals with major healthcare and security companies.
I cut the formerly eight-day month-end closing process for product allocations down to two.

And now here are three “after” examples that demonstrate progressive granularity in action:

Transformed New Mexico region into a top-three U.S. sales growth driver through:
Building three high-performance sales teams from the ground up and introducing customized strategies across Home Health, Hospice and TeleHealth product lines.
Reinventing the product demonstration process for greater impact and a shorter sales cycle.
Identifying and differentiating high-value (or Tier 1) business opportunities from lower-value (Tier 2 and lower) opportunities, and efficiently allocating company resources accordingly.
Secured over $26 million in annual, recurring revenue through closing deals with Company X, Company Y, and Company Z, with the latter a multi-year exclusive.
Leveraged deep understanding of the Healthcare and Security sectors to achieve buy-in at the highest levels.
Cut eight-day month-end close process for product allocations down to two through building a comprehensive suite of standardized processes and tools, garnering buy-in from department heads, and training staff in adoption.

FastCompany.com | January 12, 2018 | BY ANISH MAJUMDAR—GLASSDOOR 2 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : How To Lead A Productive #PerformanceReview …How Can you Make the Performance Review something of Value for You & your Employee?

January 12, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Employees dread the performance review. They look to this yearly evaluation with angst, annoyance and anger. It’s a measure of their whole year bottled into a one- to two-hour meeting that will determine their promotion, raise, etc. They often don’t even leave with feedback on how to grow; it’s mostly a waste of time.

Leaders don’t like the performance review much, either. The process typically takes them at least five times longer than it takes their employees — and they often see a less engaged employee on the other end.

It’s a hard process. It’s time-consuming, vague and not focused. Still, the performance review process shouldn’t be scrapped. It can be done better — it can serve as a tool to align leader and employee, connect your team and organizational goals and be a catalyst for employee growth.

How can you make the performance review something of value for you and your employee?

Let’s start with the intention of the performance review process. The purpose of the performance review is to assess your employee’s work over the past year (or quarter, etc.), agree on actions for improvement, and align on next year’s (or quarter’s) goals as they relate to the company’s core objectives.

I’ve broken the process down into a few simple steps to remove the vagueness, provide concrete actions to take and set you up with a framework to hold more productive performance reviews for your team.

Step 1. Assess successes and opportunities. You can’t just walk into a performance review meeting and wing it. It does take preparation. It should not, however, take more than 60-90 minutes to prepare for each employee.

In reviewing their performance, look at each of your employee’s goals in the following ways.

• Analyze the outcome. Did she reach her goal, yes or no? What are her tangible metrics?

• Identify actions you want her to repeat. What did she do well that helped her towards this goal? What was the impact of her actions? Make sure to provide specific examples.

• Identify actions you see as opportunities. What could she have done better? What was the impact? What is the potential impact of adapting? Share specific examples.

Write down notes and examples. It’s okay to use them during the conversation, it shows your employee you care about their growth and have dedicated time to giving thoughtful feedback. Ask your employee to do the same. Have her come to the meeting prepared to share her results. Following this structure will set each meeting up for success.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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Step 2. Hold the conversation. This is your employee’s meeting. Sit back, listen and ask questions for clarity. Then give your feedback.

For an ideal review, follow the four As: ask, add, agree, align.

• Ask and listen. How did you see your performance over the last year? What were some of your significant accomplishments? What didn’t quite go as planned? What happened, and what did you learn?

• Add your feedback. This is the time to share your feedback. What actions did she do well? What are some opportunities for growth? Share specific examples for each.

• Agree with the assessment. Do you agree with her assessment? What do you have to add to it? Does she agree with your assessment? What does she have to add?

• Align with new goals. Now that you’ve agreed on the assessment of her performance, it’s time to look forward. It’s a chance to set new goals based on company objectives and her desired areas of growth.

Where should she focus her energies to achieve business objectives for the next year (or quarter)? Where does she want to grow and develop herself? You should leave with three to five S.M.A.R.T goals for the upcoming year (or quarter).

You’ll know if you’ve been successful if your employee does most of the talking. It’s her meeting, about her work, and her success is your success.

Step 3. Follow up and follow through. This is where most bosses miss the mark. We spend all of this time preparing for the meeting, the meeting happens, and we never bring it up again. In turn, nothing changes.

There are a few simple elements that will help make it easy for you to follow up with your employee and follow through on the actions you agreed to in the meeting.

• Follow up on review outcomes. Send a recap email summarizing the results of the conversation and the three to five goals set. Ask your employee to review and confirm. This is a great way to make sure what you heard in the meeting is the same as what she heard.

• Track follow-through on action towards goals. Once a month, review progress on these goals with your employee. What’s working? What’s holding her back? How can you support her? Asking her about these goals highlights their importance and your dedication to her growth and allows room for adaptation and adjustments in real time.

Stop looking at reviews as a burden and time suck. They’re an opportunity to align and lead your team more powerfully.

When done well, the performance review process will engage your employee, create more clarity and make your role as a leader easier in the long run.

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Forbes.com | January 12, 2018

Your #Career : This Is How To Conquer Even The Most Hardcore #Networking Anxiety…Having #SocialAnxiety isn’t the Same as just Being a Natural #Introvert, which Means there are Steps you can Take to Mitigate It.

January 11, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

As an anxious person, there are few things I dread more than large, unstructured networking events. Hell is nothing if not balancing a plate of hors d’oeuvres while desperately scanning the room for a kindly looking duo or trio who might welcome me into their conversation.

Despite fearing these situations, I know they’re an important part of growing a career. Yet when I force myself to network, I often find myself spiraling through escalating negativity that usually goes something like this:

Oh, there’s that woman I met before. I should go say hi to her. Wait, what if she doesn’t remember me? She probably doesn’t want to talk to me anyway. Oh God, I’m just standing here now. Everyone can see how awkward I am! GO TALK TO SOMEONE! TALK TO ANYONE, YOU CRAZY WEIRDO!

Then I sweat through another 15 minutes of psychological distress before treating myself to a nice break of hiding in the bathroom.

The truth is, almost everybody experiences some level of anxiety in different social situations, and you can absolutely be anxious and still make positive connections at networking events. It just might take a bit more focus and patience than it does for the naturally extroverted schmoozers and hand-shakers out there.

GET TO KNOW YOUR ANXIETY

While many introverts are also socially anxious, having social anxiety isn’t the same as just being being introverted or shy–it’s not a personality thing. “It’s a specific fear about being negatively evaluated by other people,” psychotherapist Noah Clyman, director of NYC Cognitive Therapy, explains.

This fear is usually linked to negative beliefs that the sufferer has about himself or herself, like, “I’m a failure,” or “I’m incompetent,” or “I’m stupid.” It’s totally human to think self-deprecating thoughts occasionally, but for folks with social anxiety, these aren’t rare instances of self-criticism but deeply ingrained thought patterns. As a result, social interactions foment the concern that others will see them in the same negative way they perceive themselves–often leading social anxiety sufferers to avoid those encounters or approach them with fear and trembling.

Ironically, since a key trait of social anxiety is being hyper-conscious about others’ experiences, anxious folks tend to have little to worry about in reality. Clyman says that people with social anxiety typically “have pretty good skills socially, and they just get in their own way because they’re thinking too much.”

Still, I know firsthand that it’s pretty much useless to tell someone with anxiety not to worry. (Do birds not fly? Do fish not swim?) Thankfully, there are several evidence-based techniques for reducing the power of self-critical thoughts. I explored many of them in a recent episode of Group, the podcast I host about mental health and mental illness, but here are a handful to get you started.

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FACE YOUR FEARS BIT BY BIT (IN A CONTROLLED SETTING)

Claire Eastham, author of We’re All Mad Here: The No-Nonsense Guide to Living with Social Anxiety, credits so-called “exposure therapy” as one of the treatment forms that “really, really works” for her. It’s exactly what it sounds like. “You kind of expose yourself to something that makes you uncomfortable a little bit at a time, which is difficult, because it’s the last thing that you want to do,” Eastham explains. “It seems absurd to put yourself in a situation that makes you feel afraid, but it kind of gave me back that ground, that control, that territory.”

In his practice, Clyman’s method of exposure therapy often involves filming a patient (with their consent) doing whatever it is that makes them anxious. For someone with my neuroses, he might record us simulating small talk together at a pretend networking event. Before watching the video, Clyman will ask his patients to rate how they believe they presented themselves.

Then, he says, “we’ll watch it back, and what people see is that they come across much better than they think they actually do.” Acknowledging this contrast between a self-critical perception and the much milder reality makes it easier for anxious folks to challenge their negative thinking–including in interactions outsideof the safety of their therapists’ offices.

Eastham admits she often obsesses over the idea that she’s “ruined her life” after certain social encounters. “When in reality,” she says, “when you have a look at what you did, and how you behaved to an outsider, I mean, those people, they won’t remember it!”

CATCH YOURSELF COMMITTING A “THOUGHT ERROR”

When that negative inner monologue starts rolling, self-critical thoughts and ideas pop into your head. Therapists call these “automatic thoughts” and tend to pair exposure therapy with “cognitive behavioral therapy,” a series of habits for identifying and challenging those automatic thoughts with more balanced appraisals.

“Often these thoughts are really exaggerated in a negative direction,” Clyman says, “so that the person is making some kind of error or errors in their thinking.” One common “thought error” that socially anxious folks fall tend to make is “catastrophizing,” or imagining the worst-case scenario when other scenarios are actually more likely. A therapist like Clyman might work with a patient to think through many possible scenarios, maybe even writing them out.

One automatic thought I often have at networking events is a version of “everyone thinks I’m awkward.” If I catch myself thinking that, then use it as a cue to step back and mentally examine other possible scenarios, I’m usually forced to admit that it’s unlikely everyone is thinking about how weird I am. Chances are they’re just as fixated on their own experiences, and probably aren’t observing me critically at all.

PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

When I’m feeling anxious during a networking event, I’m hyper-conscious of how I’m standing, the way I’m speaking, and the general way I’m presenting myself. The problem, says Clyman, is that “when people are focused on themselves, they don’t have the opportunity to observe whether others are actually looking at them in a judgmental way.” Mindfulness exercises can break this self-focus just enough to gain a more objective sense of the situation.

Personally, I’ve found that meditation apps like Headspace useful for training myself how to get out of my own head and be more present. When I practice mindfulness regularly in situations that feel “safe” (when I’m spending time alone, or with close friends), I’m better able to remain calm and present in nervier environments, too–like when I speak with industry professionals at networking events.

NOW ABOUT THOSE SWEATY PALMS . . .

Social anxiety can also bring physical symptoms: a pounding heart, blushing, shaking, breathlessness. Eastham, for example, has a hand tremor that becomes evident when her anxiety is especially intense. Eastham has found that beta blockers, which are typically used to treat high blood pressure and migraines “help take the edge off” if those physical symptoms become unbearable. They can only be prescribed by a doctor and won’t treat the psychological experience of anxiety, but it maybe worth asking your healthcare provider if it’s an option you should consider.

The technique of “scripting” can also help you get through a networking event: “Spend some time planning how you would like it to go,” says Clyman. “Write down: What are three things that I could say about myself, or what are three things I could ask the person about themselves?” However, he cautions, once you finish that activity, make sure to move on. It’s easy to obsess or ruminate over how you want a situation to go, and spending hours mapping a hypothetical conversation isn’t going to be beneficial for your mental health–or your career.

Rebecca Lee Douglas is a multimedia producer and the host of Group, a lighthearted podcast about mental health and mental illness. You can follow her on Twitter at @RebeccaLDouglas and subscribe to Group on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you download your podcasts.

FastCompany.com | January 11, 2018 | BY REBECCA LEE DOUGLAS