Business Opportunities From COVID-19

With the COVID 19 pandemic now affecting the entire world, we need to be prepared for the upcoming changes that it will bring to those who don't get sick. This implies huge shifts in the way we work and how we make a living.  Unfortunately, with businesses being closed down, many people are going to be without pay or worse without jobs.

The good news is that there are other jobs that are going to be created in other industries and will most likely thrive throughout this crisis. Here are a few things to watch out for.

Remote work will finally become more widespread.
In order to reduce the spread of COVID-19, many companies around the world have either had to close their doors, or have made it mandatory for their employees to do their work from home.

Businesses will realize after a couple of months of this that they can trust their office-dwelling employees to be just as productive when working from home.  The existing technologies for video conferencing, IP telephony, IT security and cloud computing will allow employees to do that.  So it's very likely that most companies will end up wanting to save on real estate costs, commute times, and absenteeism by no longer limiting "work from home" to specific roles (sales, consultants, virtual assistants, web developers, IT support, podcasting, etc.).

What might be interesting here is that many more jobs will be created by large businesses who won't need to hire locally because the job can be done using the right technology.

The rise of Virtual Training / Learning

This kinda relates to the point above about remote work, but with the same technologies being used for leisure. With gyms, yoga and dance studios, martial arts schools and other activities with big groups of people being shut down temporarily, it won't be long before virtual classes rise in popularity. Sure some people can follow YouTube videos for instruction, but having an instructor who can see you and correct what you're doing in real time without the risk of catching a virus is the next best thing.

The same goes for other education. With schools and universities closed down, lectures and homework are now being made available online. Again, with the technologies now available, expect to see more and more flexible, web-based, academic programs.

While these virtual classes might not replace the real person training when these locations are finally allowed to re-open, they will make for great supplementary material and additional income streams later on.

Delivery services will become more streamlined
The risks of spreading viruses by going into crowded spaces to shop will create new jobs in delivery services. Whether it's groceries, restaurant food, toilet paper, soap, alcohol, cannabis, or any other necessity, the fact that most people will need to stay home will create an even greater demand for delivery services. Yes, companies like Amazon, Uber, FedEx, UPS and of course the post office already have massive networks to deliver to your door.

However, with demand rapidly increasing, other companies will invest and innovate to further improve these delivery methods making it much easier for customers to get something sent to their door. With summer coming, we should also expect more and more local niche entrepreneurs offering delivery services that can promise faster delivery times than the logistical behemoths.

Streaming Services and Podcasts

Entertainment is going to be incredibly important with people staying indoors. Whether it's bored kids or adults needing escapist entertainment from the doom and gloom news stories, we're going to need something to distract us.

Getting easy access to Internet-based entertainment is going to be crucial.  We've already seen huge jumps in subscription numbers for Netflix, Amazon Prime video and Disney plus.  YouTube had to reduce their video quality to save bandwidth, expecting a higher volume of streaming.

So if you're a vlogger, a podcaster, a YouTuber or any kind of web content creator, the opportunities to build an audience and eventually monetize is bigger than ever.

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I am very thankful for being one of the lucky ones who has the ability to work from home. Yes the current pandemic has caused the loss of plenty of jobs. Instability and uncertainty seem to be the norm.  Despite all the economic doom and gloom news, there are going to be new opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs to pivot.  It's going to be possible for many of us to thrive during a crisis and come out of it stronger than before.

Develop credibility, humility, and a love of learning using a simple phrase

In the modern economy, expertise, skills and knowledge are some of the best measures of your competence. Many of us are afraid to admit whenever there's something we don't know. Despite that, one of the most important skills we need in the age of information is the ability to say "I don't know" both to ourselves and to others.

First, being able to admit that you don't know something forces you to stay humble. Being honest with yourself and others by saying "I don't know" means that you don't overstate your area(s) of expertise. This prevents you from receiving false recognition, which prevents arrogance and over-inflation of the ego.

Being able to say "I don't know" also keeps you curious and ready to learn. I'm not sure how most people are, but personally, if I'm asked a question and I don't know the answer, it bothers me. I want to find out the answer and look it up. That kind of behaviour develops curiosity and a love for learning new things. All because I admitted to myself and whoever is asking me a question that I don't know the answer.

Most importantly, in the long term, saying "I don't know" will keep you from losing credibility. There's always pressure to be a "subject matter expert", as well as the pressure to provide immediate answers without knowing what you're talking about. What will likely happen in this situation is that you'll give inaccurate information.  The person who receives that inaccurate information will make decisions, act on that information, and suffer the consequences.  When they do, you'll be blamed for their failure and be thought of as unreliable or worse, a liar.

Yes, it's important to be knowledgeable and skilled.  It's important to be able to answer questions about your field of expertise.  This is what competence in any field looks like. However, no matter how competent you are, there will always be something that you won't know. And that's all right. We're now in a world where almost all of human knowledge can be accessed almost instantaneously using a device in your pocket. You're better off saying "I don't know. I'll give you an answer as soon as I find out."

The Myth of "Easy"

We've all probably heard our friends, colleagues and family members say things that are similar to the following:

"It's easier to skip the gym and not exercise."

"It's easier to spend and not to save money."

"It's too difficult to stay disciplined when it comes to eating healthy."

"It's easier to goof off instead of going to school and to learning a skill."

"It's difficult to get up and go to work. I'd rather sleep in and call in sick."

"It's easier to use an app to get McDonald's delivered to my door than to go grocery shopping and cooking myself a healthy meal."

"It's easier to plop on the couch next to my significant other and watch Netflix instead of taking the time to sit down and have a conversation."

In the short term, sure the examples above may seem like the "easier" options. I would make the argument that if you look at the long term, going for the "difficult" options are actually what will make your life easier in the future.

Here are a few examples:

What's easier? Regularly exercising to strengthen your body or being so weak in your old age that you're living in constant fear of falling down and not being able to get up?

What's easier? Eating a serving of vegetables at each meal, or having to go a doctor because you're so constipated that you've only pooped once in the last 3 days?

What's easier? Getting up and going to school and/or work every day or being homeless at 60 years old?

What's easier? Delaying that major purchase to put money away for your retirement or being in your 70s and not having enough money to buy both food AND medication?

What's easier?  Making the effort to have small, meaningful, daily conversations with your significant other or going through divorce proceedings?

What's easier?  Going to school and getting an education or being unable to pay your bills because you can't get a job due to your lack of credentials and training?

Sure, some of these examples are maybe a bit extreme or "strawman-ish" but you get the idea. A lot of what we're doing (or not doing) in the short term might feel like the "easier" thing to do, but if you take a long term look, what we're actually doing is choosing to make our life harder in the long term.  So the next time you hear your inner voice telling you to take the easy path, just ask yourself, if it really is easier in the long run.

How to Stay "Motivated"

Just to be clear I'm not a fan of "motivation" to help someone stick to whatever activity it is that they want to stick to.  Motivation can be OK to get you started but not really the best at getting you going when things get difficult.  Discipline and having an overall view of why you're doing something will always be better than looking at motivational quotes and videos on social media.

That said, for those who really want to stay "motivated", I would say that the best way is to constantly look for what you're not good at and finding ways to improve it.  Set an achievable goal and work on that weakness.

Let's take martial arts as an example.  If you think that you've gotten good at punches, make a goal to make your kicks better.  From that goal you can pick an aspect of kicking that you can improve.  You can try to improve your hip mobility and leg flexibility to kick higher; or maybe try to improve the speed of your kicks; or develop the reaction time to use your kicks as intercepting counter-attacks; or make the accuracy of your kicks better.

You get the idea.  The point is, be honest with yourself and find out what your weaknesses are. Then set a goal to improve on those weaknesses by breaking them up in smaller sub-goals.  Completing those smaller tasks will help you see that you're progressing and the pursuit of those "small wins" can be very helpful in keeping someone motivated.

Excellence Means You Can't Live a "Balanced Life"

In a previous post, I outlined the simple, 2-step formula to become good at anything:

1) Practice a lot
2) Put in a lot of conscious effort to what you're practicing

Here's a revised version of the formula, if you want to become THE BEST at anything:

1) Practice exponentially more than before
2) Practice with conscious effort and nearly singular focus

3) Be lucky

Assuming you have the luck required, you will also need to drastically increase the amount of practice you do.  Because of the increased amount of practice required, you'll have to sacrifice time for other things: social life, sleep, time with family, leisure activities, etc.  You are focused almost entirely on whatever it is you're trying to be the best at.

This is true no matter what profession or field you want to become the best at.  Whether you want to become the most renowned neurosurgeon, the funniest stand-up comedian, an Olympic gold medalist, the most successful CEO, an elite professional hockey player, the most published and cited academic, or a world-champion MMA fighter, you will have terrible "work-life balance".  You'll need to sacrifice a lot of time not only to reach the pinnacle of your field but also to stay at the elite level.

This goes beyond the level of a hobby. You can't clock out at 5pm. Having the goal of being the best at something for a certain amount of time will come at the expense of other things in your life. If the concept of "work-life balance" is important to you, you will never become part of the elite in your field.  The truth is, at one point or another, we all wanted to be excellent something.  Becoming excellent requires an unbalanced lifestyle. For most of us, living that way for a long time is unsustainable.

Your New Year's Resolutions Suck and You'll Never Keep Them

It's January 1st again. So we're going to hear our friends and loved-ones make resolutions. We're going to see the social media "motivational" posts talking about their resolutions.  We've heard it all before (or read it on our friends' social media):

This year, I resolve to:

• lose weight
• be more positive
• make 'self-care' a priority
• save more money
• make more money
• cut out 'toxic' people
• eat more healthy
• drink less alcohol
• drink more water
• exercise more
• be more fit

There's nothing wrong with setting goals.  I admire and respect people who take the steps required to better themselves and their lives. The problem with resolutions is that most are not SMART.

They're not specific and extremely vague.  Success and progress are difficult to measure because most people don't give themselves the proper steps to take to get their goals.  Most resolutions makers can be so overly enthusiastic and motivated that the goals they set for themselves aren't achievable and realistic. Even if you measure your progress, you realize that you can't reach your lofty goal and you end up getting discouraged.

Of course, most people making resolutions don't give themselves a proper time frame to achieve and succeed. Meaning that because they don't give themselves deadlines, they end up simply meandering instead of achieving what they set out to do.

Aside from the quality of the resolutions, if you really thought that whatever you're resolving to do was important, you wouldn't be waiting for an arbitrary day of the year to start doing it.  You'd be working on that goal right now.  You would have made it a priority already and adjusted your habits accordingly.  You already would have been looking for ways to stay focused and disciplined to achieve your goals. You wouldn't be relying on "motivational" pictures and videos while going on social media to tell everyone that "New year, new me" will so totally happen in 2020.

Money Can Buy Happiness

Many of us who didn't grow up with a lot of money were always told that money won't buy happiness. I think in most cases it's said by our parents to try to shut us up when we were whining about not being able to afford the latest and greatest toys being shown on TV commercials.

Yes, it is true that having money to buy material luxuries won't necessarily make you happier. However, there are many things that you can buy with money that will contribute to your happiness.

Here are a few examples of how to use money to buy / increase your happiness.

The Basics
It's very difficult to admit how happy you are in life if you don't have the basic needs covered.  If you're unable to buy food, to afford a safe place to live, to pay for clothing, health care, electricity and heating for yourself and your family, I doubt very much that you'll consider yourself to be happy.  Money allows you to pay for those basic needs.

Not convinced?  In the next few weeks, when the bleakest part of winter comes and it's minus 20 degrees outside, there's over 30 cm of snow on the ground and the polar winds are making your face turn red, go find a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk in the cold.  Ask him or her if having some money so they can have a place to stay would make them happier.

Or simply take a look at any person who doesn't make enough money to pay for rent, groceries, electricity and other necessities.  They're up to their ears in debt to make ends meet.  We all know someone like this.  See how stressed out that person. Now think: how much happier they would be if they had just a little more money to get out of debt and pay all their bills on time.

Time

In a previous post, I wrote about not being able to earn more of time spent the same way you can do with money. However, if you have enough money, you can buy yourself more time to do the things that make you happy.

For example, with enough money, instead of spending hours doing laundry, cooking, cleaning my home and washing dishes, I could hire someone to do those chores. The time I saved can then be spent on fun activities with my wife, my friends and my family, thus making me happier.

Another example of this is bribing your way to the front of the line. Yes, it's a bit of a dick move and no, it's not fair to those who came in advance and waited. But hey, there's a certain feeling of satisfaction knowing that you've saved yourself some time and got what you needed faster by subtly slipping someone a folded up bill.

The ability to say "No" with little to no repercussions
This is also known as having "fuck you" money. The more money you have, the more you're able to refuse requests, orders and drudgery that, while lucrative, can be a detriment to your happiness.  Having "fuck you" money makes it easier for you to avoid lousy jobs with terrible hours, long commutes, and stressful environments.

It means you won't have to deal with bullying bosses or rude clients.  Having "fuck you" money means that you can afford to say no while using the corresponding expletives without the risk of putting yourself and your family in financial trouble.  All this while pursuing work that actually increases your overall happiness.

Acts of altruism
This is actually one of my favourite examples because of the "double-whammy" effect.  Recent economics and psychology studies show that people who donate money to charity and seeing the positive results of their donation end up feeling happier and feeling better about themselves.  So, not only are you helping people in need (thus allowing them to purchase "the basics" and increase their happiness), you're also making yourself happier in the process.

It doesn't even have to be charity.  Many of us have parents who have always wanted to take a dream vacation that they were never able to afford because they were trying to pay bills while raising us.  I'm sure that a lot of us, if we could afford it, would be more than happy to pay for that dream vacation of theirs.  In this case, not only would we make ourselves happier, people we love would be happier as well.

If that's not buying happiness with money, I don't know what is.

Final thoughts
If you've noticed, none of my examples of money buying happiness include buying mansions, fast cars, jewelry, the latest and greatest giant flat screen TV, the newest iPhone, etc.  Those are the things people first think of when they say "money doesn't buy happiness".  They're right.  Trying to buy and accumulate material possessions as a way to fill whatever emotional void you have is never going to work. You'll just end up being a hoarder with so much clutter in your home that you can barely move around in it.

Money CAN HELP make you happier by allowing you to gain experiences that others with less money won't get.  Having money gives you the option to say no to lucrative, but time-consuming and unnecessarily stressful endeavours.  Thus allowing you to spend your time on more enjoyable activities with people that you actually want to be with. 

Become Good at Saying No

If you've ever taken an Intro to Economics class, you would have probably heard of the concept of "Opportunity Cost". Briefly, the opportunity cost of making a choice are the missed benefits of choosing one alternative over another.

Because everyone has limited time, energy and resources, that means that when you agree to do something, you will miss out on other things. By saying "Yes" to do one thing, you're indirectly saying "No" to doing other things.

This is why one of the most important (and difficult) skills everyone needs to develop is how to say "No". Whether it's a business opportunity or friends and family members asking you to do them favours, you will receive requests that will require you to give up a combination of your time, energy and resources.

When thinking about saying "Yes" to any of these requests out of guilt, an unhealthy need to please others or perhaps a miscalculation of financial gain, remember what you're potentially giving up. Just ask yourself how much whatever you're being asked to commit to is going to cost in terms of your sanity, time away from loved ones, your physical health and/or your financial well-being. Then you'll realize why "No" can be one of the most valuable words in your vocabulary.

Never be Afraid to Quit

We've all heard the adage: "Winners never quit.  Quitters never win."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The better adage is: "You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run."

Yes, persistence and perseverance can get you far.  You can become very successful by sticking to something for a long time while trying to improve.  It's a skill that can help you in life.

However, knowing when and how to quit something is actually equally important.  At some point, we have to recognize when we're no longer able to improve on a situation despite the amount of resources you've sunk into it.

We all need to recognize the point when, despite any additional effort, failure is inevitable. When that happens, learn from your failure, quit, then divert your remaining resources and energy on other endeavours (or a modified version of the failed one). This is how quitting will lead to future success.

Time is Money? Nope

"Time is money."  It's an old, false adage that many people in business just perpetuated.  The truth is that if you spend money, you can still make it back later on by trading your time.  When it comes to time, there's no amount of money that will allow you to get back time that you lost.  It's gone. If you're fortunate enough you'll be able to pay someone to do things you don't want so you can have more time for the things you want to do.

 

Learning how to spend our hard-earned money is incredibly important. Learning how to spend your time is even more so.  Most of us need to be smarter when choosing which activities to engage in when offered money in exchange for your time.  On the flip side, it's just as crucial to respect other peoples' time by providing them value when they've made a decision to give any amount of it to you.

Banning Ring Card Girls is Anti-Feminist and Prevents Women's Empowerment

Anyone who watches professional combat sports will notice that there are always scantily-clad women carrying large cards around a ring or a cage to remind viewers what round in the fight we're in.

Apparently, some very well-meaning, though misguided feminist activists and politicians in Australia have decided that enough is enough.  They want to end the objectification and exploitation of women by banning ring card girls (a.k.a. "round progress managers") at a championship boxing match this past August.  They are now even petitioning the UFC not to have the iconic Octagon girls in between rounds in the upcoming event this coming October.

Are current feminists all of a sudden uncomfortable at the thought of women showing their bodies and getting paid handsomely for it if they want to? I was under the impression that a way to empower women is by giving them choices in the types of work they do.  If a woman wants to show off as much or as little of her body in public as she wants, nobody should be able to tell her otherwise
 
I can see where the "objectification" argument might come from, but as for "exploitation", I tend to disagree. None of these politicians and activists actually asked the women doing the ring girl jobs if they've ever felt exploited or forced to do this.

By banning these jobs, these politicians and activists are effectively taking away these women's right to make a living legally. And yes, I do call this work for the simple reason that it takes commitment and discipline when it comes to exercise and diet to maintain the physical condition that these women have.  Also, if you do any research, you'll learn that many of these women have actually used the platform of combat sports as a launching point for extremely lucrative partnerships, sponsorships and careers in modeling, art, broadcasting, podcasting, and other fields.

Maybe it's a question of representation.  Would there be as many complaints and bans if more "plus-sized" women were represented in the job the same way that we now have an increasing amount of "plus-sized" models?  What if we had more women over the age of 45 doing the job?  Or maybe more women in wheelchairs?

Would there also be as many complaints if in addition to having ring card girls during men's fights, we had ring card guys during women's fights?  The all-women MMA promotion Invicta FC debuted Canadian pro-fighter Elias Theodoru as their ring card boy last year.  He hasn't done it since, but I think it would be more interesting to see dudes doing the same type of job in other organizations.

How many feminists and activists would complain if pro-fighter Elias Theodoru continued working as a Ring Card boy on the side?

 

Personally, I've always thought that it was a bit weird to see ring card girls in between rounds of a women's MMA championship fight.  So it would make more sense to have more ring card guys reminding us what round it is.  It would be somewhat sexist and regressive to consider this job as exclusively "women's work" after all.

The point I'm trying to make is this.  The Australian bans are simply an attack on soft targets that make it look like they're doing something when they're really just trying to show off how much more virtuous they are than the rest of us.  If politicians and feminists were really looking to empower women, stop exploitation and objectification, they would be aiming their outrage at real issues of violence against women and lack of education for girls in other countries outside of the Western world.

Go Take an Actual Vacation

Vacation mode: ON !!!

A recent article from QZ was discussing how our one or two-week vacations are way too short for people to decompress and relieve the stress from work-related burnout.  Some are even suggesting that you should just take longer breaks for every two hours of work during your day to be less stressed out.

Sure we can't be all like the Europeans who work for companies that allow 4 to 6 week vacations.

Instead, how about we, as North Americans, change the way that we treat vacations?  One of the worst things that I see are email "out-of-office" replies saying that the person is on vacation but that they will "monitor their emails and cell phones in case there's an urgent matter".

No wonder people are feeling stressed out.

Instead of keeping yourself electronically tethered to your desk, why not disconnect from work and spend time with your family and friends? What's the point of spending money on a flight, on hotels, museums and on booze on the beach if you're not even going to try to temporarily escape the pressures of your job?

Maybe you legitimately like your job and you don't really want to go on vacation.  Maybe you feel like you're pressured by your employer and the company's culture to stay connected almost 24/7.  Maybe the company's culture has no respect for work/life balance. Maybe you're a control freak who thinks that if you leave, people backing you up won't be competent enough to cover you for a couple of weeks.  Or worse, maybe you're scared that your colleagues won't notice that you're gone because you secretly think that your job is not really that valuable to the company in the first place.  Maybe you're just a really nice person who doesn't want to leave their colleagues hanging out to dry if something goes wrong while you're away.

Sadly many of us see taking vacations as a source of stress. Many people feel stressed before they leave because they do double duty to complete things in advance before they leave.  They also feel stressed immediately after coming back because of the work that's piled up while they were away.

This is why you have people backing you up. In all likelihood, unless your employer sucks at hiring, there should be enough competent and intelligent people who can help pick up the slack while you're away. Trust these colleagues of yours because they'll be trusting you to do the same for them when they go away for vacation.

And for high-achievers who really think that vacations can be detrimental to their businesses, just remember, you can't perform at your optimum level if you're not rested.  Vacations are meant to recharge your batteries so you can push even harder to succeed.  Unless your job has life-or-death consequences, you really shouldn't be allowing anyone to interrupt your vacation.

So enjoy the beach, the lake, the woods, the new city that you're visiting, the taste of the new foods you'll try and/or the historic monuments that you'll see.  You're allowed to leave work for a while and actually enjoy your life.

We Are NOT Created Equal

This is a follow up on the previous piece on how to get good at anything.

The premise of practicing with full conscious effort will definitely get you as far as you potentially can in any given field. However, there are limitations to how far each individual can get because we are not born with the same genetic potential and predispositions.

Some people have the genetic predisposition to have more fast-twitch muscle. Some are more likely to have certain types of addictions. Other individuals are more likely to get certain kinds of cancer. Some will be born with missing limbs. Some have genes that cause them to have osteoporosis and arthritis before the age of 40. Others will be predisposed to have higher muscular endurance and a higher pain threshold. Some people will be born to be potentially 7 feet tall while others won't grow taller than 4 feet.

I could quit my day job, train for 8 hours a day and try to get faster at sprinting for the next 4 years. Despite the 10,000 hours of dedicated training I will never even come close to catching a retired, "out-of-shape" Usain Bolt in a 100 meter dash. Although I might be able to outdo him in other things (here's hoping any way).

 

Bottom line: constant practice with conscious effort will make you better at any skill. However, there is an upper limit that we can get to for each field, be it sports, intellectual pursuits, martial arts, music, or entrepreneurship.

Guess what! Life isn't fair. Every individual will have certain biological advantages over other people in certain fields while having disadvantages in others. Despite what any idealist with their heart in the right place will tell you, we are not all created equal. What's important is that we give everyone the equal opportunity to find, acquire and develop the skills that best fit with their strengths.

How to Get Good at Anything

It's a very simple formula.  Simple, but not easy.

To gain skills, be it playing a musical instrument, sports, stand-up comedy, acting, martial arts, math, languages, computer programming, public speaking, video editing, or even entrepreneurship, there is a very simple formula if you want to get better at any skill:

1) Practice a lot
2) Put in a lot of conscious effort to what you're practicing

The first point, you've heard before.  The "magic number" of 10,000 hours has been thrown around as the minimum needed to master a skill.  While it's been argued that this magic number is more or less legit, the point is, to get somewhat good at a skill, you need to have a lot of repetitions.  Without the practice, you won't get better.

What's more important though is the second point. You can "practice" something for 16 hours a day. If you are not consciously making the effort to practice whatever you're doing without trying to do it correctly, you're wasting your time. By practicing something without effort or without thinking for long periods of time, you'll just end up making yourself worse at that skill and develop bad habits. Instead, you need to go through the correct progressions, acknowledge that you made mistakes during practice and learn how to avoid them in the future.

Really you're just trying to find ways to be better than you were since the last time you practiced.



That's it.  No special shortcuts, no simple hacks.  Just put in time and conscious effort.

If Your Boss is an A**hole, Then We're All to Blame (Indirectly)

The same can also be said about your a**hole co-workers

It's almost stereotypical.  Some of you have even seen it in person: the executive or even a middle manager of an organization losing their temper.  There have been CEOs yelling, bullying, berating and being overall jerks to their employees.

A former, now deceased, CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world (company name rhymes with "grapple") was notoriously aggressive at publicly berating employees who didn't "live up to his standards of quality".

You've also got managers who expect you to be constantly connected on weekends and holidays. They end up shaming you if front of your peers if you decide that you'd rather spend time with your family instead of answering the email they sent at 11:45pm.

Another famous CEO who runs the largest online store in the world (no, it's not Amazon) is making it a requirement for his employees to work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Anything less will get you shamed and fired, despite how well you perform while working less hours.

Yes, it's abusive behaviour.  Yes it creates a hostile work environment and a bullying company culture. It causes stress and burn out.

Guess what: we are all to blame for these terrible work environments. Here's why.

Admiration for "Getting Sh*t Done"

One of the problems is that humans as a society seem to have evolved to want to follow the alpha monkey as our leader. 

We end up admiring the conqueror (unless you're the one being conquered), the assertive/aggressive boss who won't let "useless processes" become roadblocks to their goals.  We like the person who isn't necessarily worried about hurting feelings or being a bully to "get the job done".  We see their seemingly demanding traits and interpret that as a leader having a high standard that we should all strive for.  

At the same time, we are captivated by a confident, charismatic public speaker who will be falsely self-deprecating to make themselves seem relatable and authentic. They make mild jokes in an attempt to get their employees to see how likeable they are when they're not being bullies.

To us, these characteristics are signs of the strong leader.   Incidentally, these are also some of the main characteristics found in clinical narcissists and sociopaths.  In any case, these are the kinds of traits that we like to see in our leaders.  

Because we, as a collective society and culture like those traits, people like that end up getting hired in those positions of power in the companies we work for.

The"Hustle Culture" Fetish

 
If you spend enough time following "entrepreneur", "motivational" and "influencer" accounts on social media, you'll see that a lot of them are posting about hustling and "rising and grinding".  It's not unusual to see these highly successful people showing videos and pictures of themselves getting up at 4:30am so that they can start lifting heavy kettlebells and running hill sprints.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with having goals and working hard to reach them.  I'm all for people wanting to work as hard as they want, as many hours as they need to feel great about themselves and to make their business successful.

The problem is that the constant stream of these social media posts has led to the creation of "hustle porn".  Hard work has become so fetishistic on social media that we as a society have come to admire the business leaders who get up early, work so hard late into the night on a daily basis to the point of burn out while wearing stress as a badge of honor.

The narcissist/sociopath business leader then sees this as an example to emulate, you know, because the Instagram post is getting so many likes.  And of course, if they're doing that, then they expect all of their employees to be "hustlers" as well.  It becomes inexcusable for employees to be unreachable on evenings and weekends because they want to spend time with their kids. In their minds, there's no excuse for being sick in bed not working because you can have a laptop or a smartphone with you on your bedside table.
Doing less is just being a lazy employee.

Overly Coddling Customers

In the end, all of these bullying behaviors stem from every businesses' fear of losing clients to the competition. As consumers, we've been spoiled to want every thing yesterday. If the toilet paper ordered online doesn't come within 24 hours, negative reviews get written and complaints are sent to customer service.

We as a society are all customers with these "immediate gratification" expectations at the lowest possible price from the businesses we patronize. Is it really a wonder that businesses then need to transfer that kind of pressure on business managers who in turn put pressure on their employees to deliver?  

In short, our attitudes as demanding, spoiled consumers who won't do anything inconvenient are partially to blame for our abusive bosses.  Instead of immediately writing a bad review or complaining to a manager because you received your double-shot grande caramel macchiato with soy milk 37 seconds longer than you expected, we need to take a step back and have a bit of perspective on how easy it is for us now to get whatever product product we want in the first place.

"Follow your Passion" is Terrible Career Advice

We’ve all heard the career advice during our younger, more idealistic days:

Find something that you’re passionate about and you’ll never work a day in your life.

The sentiment is great. The advice will make you feel good in the short run until of course you try to implement it.

Finding your actual passion requires actual work

If you actually look at the origin of the word “passion”, it comes from the Latin word for “suffer”. That’s actually a very different meaning from our modern-day association to a blissful existence.

The modern-day premise of following your passion almost implies that you will immediately love what you’re doing. In addition, if something truly is your passion, then it should come to you easily. 

The reality is that it takes a lot of time and effort to become “passionate” about something. More importantly, becoming passionate at something is highly connected to how good you are at something. That takes a lot of work.

Because we’ve been led to believe that our passion should come relatively easily, as soon as things get difficult in our pursuit, we’re more likely to give up. With a mindset like that, it might actually make it impossible to find your “true passion”.

Turning your passion into work will ruin your passion

One of the most well-meaning, but misguided advice about passion is:

If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing at work, you’re wasting your life.

The implication is that you should leave your “soul-sucking”, albeit steady job to pursue the true thing that you’re passionate about. It’s a romantic idea.

Who hasn’t dreamed of leaving their job, take whatever they’re passionate about, and try to turn it into their single source of income? After all, if you don’t have enough “skin in the game” by going all in, you won’t succeed in the pursuit of your passion. Right?

The problem is that you’ve now turned your passion into a job. With your passion project being your sole source of income, there is now a lot of pressure for it not to fail. Because there’s now stress involved, it’s no longer being done for fun. It’s become something that now keeps you up at night.

Following your passion most likely won’t be profitable… at least not immediately

 

On a personal level, I’m passionate about visiting new places, learning martial arts and even teaching it. However, just because I’m passionate about traveling, practicing and teaching martial arts, doesn’t mean that I can make a living off of it. At least not immediately.

It can be doable, but again, it will take lots of time and effort for this activity to produce a livable wage. Quitting my day job right now to be a full-time, “professional, traveling martial artist” might not be the best idea just yet. It will take time to develop the skills needed to be successful enough to monetize. In the meantime, I still have bills to pay, groceries to buy, and a wife and (hopefully future kids) to support. Dropping everything to follow my passion would probably be a bit irresponsible.

Develop your passion instead

So does all this mean that pursuing a passion is a futile endeavor? Should we just give up and take the job that requires us to live the rest of our lives in a cubicle listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements? Not exactly.

The problem lies in the fact that the advice given to us when we’re young implies that you must be passionate about your job. That your job is what will give your life the fulfillment and sense of accomplishment that you need while at the same time allowing you to buy groceries and pay your rent and heating bill. Why should that be? Why can’t your job just be a method to make enough money to pay for the bare necessities, while outside of working hours, you are developing what you’re really passionate about?

Why not separate the two?

The day job can certainly give you that sense of accomplishment, but it can mainly function as the method for acquiring the resources you need to both pay your bills and develop your real passion.

By passion development, I’m talking about finding a hobby or activity that you can become better at over time by hours of practice. It would be the pursuit of mastery of this activity that will help bring you that sense of accomplishment that you might not necessarily get from your job.

Side-hustling: Monetizing your passions

Of course, if you do manage to find a way to monetize your passion, more power to you. What I would suggest though, boring as it may be, is to start small. I wouldn’t recommend leaving your day job just yet. Again, leaving a day job with a steady paycheck in favor of following a passion project will not only put financial stress on yourself and your family, but will essentially kill whatever love you have for that project.

The smart play to begin monetizing that passion is by creating a side-hustle. This prevents you from throwing yourself head first into something that may or may not fail. Because you’re forced to do this at a smaller scale you won’t feel the constant pressure to grow the business that you would have if you were doing this full time. Instead, it gives you the time to actually develop the passion and get better at what you’re doing. This allows you to play around with your ideas, test strategies and see what works with minimal impact if you fail. All while marginally adding extra income.

So is there still a way for me to follow my passion?

For most of us, that day may never come, but if you're lucky, it is possible to get to a point where you’re free to follow your passion and do it full time as a business. There are two criteria:

First, you’re now making enough money off it that you no longer have a need for the revenue from your day job. Second, more and more of your time is required and your day job is actually getting in the way of the project’s growth.

If and only if you are able those two criteria, then you can make the gradual shift from the day-job employee to the passion-project entrepreneur

 

How to Keep Your Staff from Quitting

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One of the most difficult things about being a business owner or manager is hiring and retaining the right people. Your staff can make the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. So how can you hire and retain for success?

Here are a few tips that might help you.

Make the hiring requirements challenging

All right, if the applicant is young, tell him he’s too young. Old, too old. Fat, too fat. If the applicant then waits for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement he may then enter and begin his training.

That might have sounded a bit over-the-top, but there is something to it. This is a simple concept you’ll find in any social psychology textbook. The more difficult it is for people to join a group, the more positively they will view that group if they are accepted into it. Think of hazing rituals done in military organizations world wide, or even in college fraternities.

To relieve their cognitive dissonance, they will rationalize that the group must be worth joining after they got burned several times while they were jumping through all flaming hoops to get accepted. Because they’ve made that rationalization in their minds, these new hires are going to be more likely to overlook any negative aspects of your organization. Or at least it will take them longer to realize that the group they joined isn’t that special and they would be better off leaving for greener pastures.

The other principle is a very common cognitive bias called the “sunk cost” fallacy. Basically, the more you invest in something, the less likely you are to divest. Being forced to go through a rigorous interview process, your new hire will feel that they’ve spent so much mental energy just to get in, that they would feel that it would be a waste if they ended up quitting.

Structure the business to keep employees motivated

Employee: The thing is, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Consultant 1: Don’t… don’t care?
Employee: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and the company ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime; so where’s the motivation? And here’s something else: I have eight different bosses right now.
Consultant 2: I beg your pardon?
Employee: Eight bosses.
Consultant 2: Eight?
Employee: Eight. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

This is a no-brainer. If your employees only want to avoid getting fired or avoid getting hassled, you’ll eventually lose them to a company that incentivizes them properly for their work. If you’re hiring sales people, the base + commission model works pretty well.

Of course, employees who aren’t in sales roles need to be incentivized as well. Even if they aren’t directly getting financial compensation, at the very least, communicate to your employees that their contributions will help the growth of the company and the eventual increases in their pay. If your employees feel like they’re just another small cog in the larger machine (especially if it is true), you’re going to lose them. You have to at least make them feel like what they’re doing matters.

The other point about structure has to do with many large organizations having seemingly too many managers overseeing the work of one person. To justify their existence (especially when it comes to highly-paid executives), a lot of micromanagement happens, which causes them to hassle the sole employee doing the actual work.

Reinforce the fear and uncertainty of leaving your company

So if you fail to structure for motivation this is a last-ditch, Machiavellian alternative. If you’re willing to go to great lengths to keep your employees from going to the competition, it might be necessary.

Admit to your employees that they’re not in a perfect company. Of course, you can still point out that they’ve got a sure thing as to where their company is going as opposed to leaving for another company. If they leave, there are no guarantees that the new job will be better. Will they really get paid better? How secure will their potentially new job be “in this economy”? What if their new boss is an ever worse a-hole than the one they have now?

This process should be done in a very implicit way. Little hints should be dropped to cast doubt at what going elsewhere would be like.

At the same time semi-random acts of kindness and generosity on behalf of the company should be done for employees. 

The result is essentially the same as what happens in an abusive relationship where the abused party just can’t bring themselves to leave. The rare acts of kindness combined with the fear of the unknown is just enough for them to rationalize staying.

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Inevitably, you will eventually lose employees no matter how well you treat them or how much you try to manipulate them. The modern worker has a tendency to job hop after a couple of years in any particular role. Since modern business has historically shown that their employees are expendable, employees don’t have the incentive to act loyally towards their employers. 

However, at the end of the day, without your staff your business can’t function. Hiring new people, training them, only to have them leave when they finally have a productive grasp of your business is not only frustrating. It’s very costly. Unfortunately you will need to resort to some tricks to keep them.

An Executive’s Guide to Looking Effective (Without necessarily being effective)

Originally published on Medium:

The cool thing about getting a job as an executive is that because it can pay so well, you can leave a company or a department after a couple years with a lot of money in your pocket. In all likelihood, the long-term consequences of your short-term decisions won’t be too apparent. This is especially true if you’re in a publicly traded company where “performance” is measured every 3 months instead of years or decades.

If you’re an executive, your ability to make effective strategic decisions is secondary. Actually having knowledge of how the business works is tertiary. After all, you don’t really need to stay there that long if you’re good at negotiating salaries and bonuses and you’re smart with your money.

To show your value to shareholders and investors what’s more important are the optics. What you actually accomplish isn’t necessarily as important as what it looks like you’re doing to improve the business on a quarterly basis.

Here are a few tips to help you look like you’re worth the large amount of money they’re paying you.

 

Adopt an “executive persona”

Think of the most iconic, charismatic leaders in the business world. They’ve all got a persona (whether it’s real or not):

• You can be the tough, all-nighter-pulling, Alpha executive in a well-tailored power suit.
• The supermom exec who successfully finds the balance between crushing board meetings and coaching her kids’ hockey team
• You can be the quirky, hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley CEO.
• An executive who wears the same outfit on a daily basis to “save their mental energy” for more important decisions.
• You can pretend that you’re the rebellious, “think-outside-the-box”, jet-setting, risk-taking, jeans-wearing, entrepreneurial exec.

Here’s a persona that many an executive in the financial industry has adopted almost too well.

It doesn’t matter which persona you pick. You just have to make sure that the persona you pick follows these two criteria:

1. It just has to be different enough from the person you replaced. This will give both employees and shareholders the impression that you’re there to shake things up and make some sweeping changes for the better of the company.
2. It has to be believable enough to show off your authenticity. For this, I would do what the most successful WWE professional wrestlers do. They take a real quirk in their personality and just exaggerate it to a point that it becomes a new character.

WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump using his created “executive persona” in the ring alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vince McMahon and Bobby Lashley.

Be “helpful”

Always present yourself to your employees (preferably when in a group setting) as someone who is willing to provide executive help for any “roadblocks” they might face in their day-to-day. Don’t actually help them, though. You’re busy. Actually helping takes time and effort that you don’t necessarily want to get mixed up in. We’re talking optics here. You need to project an image that you’re willing to help.

Remember, you must only ask how you can help when you’re in a public setting. That way, whoever actually wants to ask for help will have to do so in front of the entire company. Putting people on the spot like that will reduce the likelihood of them asking for anything for fear of looking foolish, weak or incompetent in front of the rest of the company. At the extreme, they risk asking something inappropriate from the high-level executive and get themselves fired.

Either way, the result is that you look like the benevolent leader with an “open door” policy, but because everyone’s so scared, you won’t actually have to do the work of making any changes.

Make your micro-management and bullying tactics look like you’re just “hands-on” and “getting shit done”

Yes, we all teach our kids that bullying is wrong. In this case, since you’re the boss, it’s not really bullying. No, not really. You’re simply showing employees that you’re forcefully getting things done. You’re not ineffectual like the last exec. As the new leader, you don’t want to get bogged down by useless processes. You are simply “passionate” and can get emotional when it comes to making sure that the business succeeds under your tenure.

To make it look like you’re getting things done, make sure that all emails you send to your middle-managers get marked as “Important” or “Urgent” or “Priority”. Ensure that cons

equences for employees who don’t respond to these emails on time are made clear.

You might be seen as micro-managing, but really, you simply want to make sure that your employees are staying focused on the strategic tasks at hand. You’re simply showing that you’re “hands on” and interested in how the business functions. It’s part of “being helpful”.

Of course, the most important thing if you get called out on your aggressive behaviour is to never apologize. Employees should just be grateful that you are sharing your wisdom and helping them succeed in their day-to-day.

Offer your employees “training opportunities”

Offering skills training to employees looking for both lateral and upward moves in the company is necessary. That should be standard in any good company.

However, if you want to look like you’re a great executive going above and beyond, you need to sponsor mandatory training programs that will make your company look like it’s also socially conscious and woke.

Here are some examples, in no particular order:

• Diversity training courses
• Anti-bullying classes
• Mindfulness training
• Anti-harassment training
• Business ethics
• Environmental consciousness training
• Employee engagement initiatives
• Et cetera…

Sure, those types of training programs can have some inherent value, especially if your company has a history of harassment, bullying or even employee burn-outs. However, the biggest value that they bring is really how good it makes the executive (and the company) look to employees, shareholders, the media and even the general public.

Let’s face it. The courses themselves can be empty or simply lip service. But for a relatively low investment, an executive can now have a great PR talking point. Now, his HR minions can brag about the company’s commitment to “preventing harassment in the workplace”, for example. Whether this actually stops sexual harassment in the company is irrelevant. The executive can now wash his or her hands when wrongdoing is reported because current employees have already received the training. If future harassment happens, the exec can always point to this training and say that the company isn’t to blame for the inappropriate behaviour of a few “bad apples”.

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Being an executive can be a great, but difficult job opportunity. Latest studies of the S&P 500 companies show that the median tenure of a CEO for example is about 5 years. In that short a time, could you really make a huge difference to justify the bonuses and salary that you negotiated so well? If you’re exceptional, sure. If you’re able to ride an upward trend and make it look like it was your leadership instead of luck, maybe. If you can turn a company around from the brink of bankruptcy, of course.

The truth is, making a difference in a company is difficult. Sure you can make strategic decisions, but for the most part, results of those will take a lot of time to actually show. You can only be shown to be effective by what you look like you’re doing during the quarter, not by what you’ve done. So instead doing the actual heavy lifting with results that won’t be seen until after you leave, just do the noisy, but ineffectual things that everyone will see. If you’re good, you can sell them on the value that you added to the company as you leave laughing to the bank and on to a new executive job at a different company to start the process over again.