BY JACEK GREBSKI

No one said it was easy, and although in business we tend to generally talk about strategies, objectives, finance, and other business related topics, emotions come into play as well, and I would say even more so when you’re trying to get something off the ground than when you’re working for someone else.

One of these emotional issues is burnout, depression, doubt in yourself, your business, what have you, if often comes and goes, and sometimes can be a truly stifling force in your life. Long story short, Entrepreneurship is difficult, some say even a more difficult profession than say Management Consulting, or IB. Whether that’s true is a different story all together but one thing is certain, there will be ups and down on your entrepreneurial journey and getting through the valleys to reach the peaks is an important thing you just need to cope with. Luckily, you’ve got F3FundIt and we’re here to help.

As such, here are five tips that are sure to help you deal with burnout.

Tip 1. Exercise. Not only is is just all around good for your body, but exercise has been proven to help increase dopamine levels in the brain. You know, that stuff that makes you happy. Not only that, it will also make you more energetic, and make you feel all around better.

Make time for it. Seriously. Starting to exercise can be stifling, but once you’re on your way, you’ll be all the more happy for it. Take 30 minutes a day in the morning, and go for a jog. Within a few weeks you’ll see that those valleys are getting smaller and smaller.

Tip 2. Work with others. I know at present four entrepreneurs who are working from home, alone. And it gets lonely. So if you know anyone else starting a business, working from alone from home, etc… set aside a day or two a week where either you work at theirs or they at yours. You’ll see your productivity skyrocket and it will most definitely kill the doldrums of another day working solo.

Tip 3. Get out of the house or office. If you’re working alone or with partner or two, you can always bring your office to a coffee shop, or the library. Free Wi-Fi access is easily accessible and you’ll notice that being out, and changing your scenery can help a lot. This is mostly due to the fact that humans are social animals by nature, and Entrepreneurs – extroverts. Add one and one together, and you need people.

Tip 4. Take a day off. Seems like something out of science fiction, doesn’t it? But unwinding is absolutely necessary. Sometimes when trying to make something out of nothing we forget that we’re not machines, and that we need our R&R. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I’ve seen just go go go. The truth is, that a missed e-mail, or phone call can be returned, and the party on the other end won’t think you all the less if it’s not immediate. So, turn off that mobile phone, shut your laptop and have a day for you, your friends, spend time with family. Not only will you feel a hundred times better the following day, but your loved ones will appreciate you for it all the more.

Tip 5. Have a 1 on 1 with yourself. Simply put, ask yourself why you’re down, identify the root of the problem. Is the burnout a result of you working too hard, is it lack of social interaction, or perhaps just stagnation in the markets. It’s hard to sit back and reflect sometimes when you’re constantly on the go, but this reflection will help not only you, but your business. Perhaps, you’re not approaching the market in the right way, perhaps no one has responded to your solicitations because you’re going about it wrong.

Simple, sit back, and think about it, and if you can’t identify the problem ask a friend. More often than not, outsiders can see what we can’t.

That said, live by these tips, they’ve gotten me through some thick and thin, and I’ve personally seen them do wonders for others as well. One thing to remember though. Sometimes the doubt, and exhaustion come from an idea that simply isn’t working, and while many will tell you to relentlessly and eternally pursue your passions. The sad truth is, some ideas aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. In that case, bin it, and start anew.

CI? Yes, competitive intelligence.

In today’s rapidly changing marketplace it is pivotal that any new start up keep an eye on the competition. What are they doing that we’re not, what’s their value proposition compared to ours, who is their target customer, who is ours? These along with many other questions are what you should be asking yourself and always keeping those questions in the back of your head, and apply your answers to the core of your competitive strategy.

Having a great idea and bringing it to market is not enough these days, and unless you’re a first mover in a completely new market, chances are you will have competition, and chances are that competition will be as well if not better prepared than you.

So how do you protect your business and track what their developments as compared to your own efforts?

The good news is, that you’re probably already taking some of the more important steps in CI gathering by simply reading industry news and following your competitors blog/twitter/facebooks etc… and subscribing to the relevant rss feeds. If not, then it’s definitely time to start. No better tool exists to build basic CI knowledge than to focus on the public information that is already out there.

But why would you want to involve yourself in basic CI gathering? And what can a young company get from actively disseminating the data that comes from CI?

The first and possibly the most important benefit of CI, is that as a young company it allows you to become more agile than your competition. Company agility is the ability to deploy rapid changes to your business model, and should a competitor with more resources enter the same space as you, having this CI will allow you to act by changing your value proposition, sales model or anything that will allow your startup to regain that competitive advantage.

However aside from agility, CI allows your startup to define certain market spaces which can allow you to establish a presence before your competitors, this along with Scenario Analysis can provide you with the tools to make the necessary decisions that can ensure a higher success rate in the face of stringent competition.

CI will undoubtedly also aid you in identifying root problems within your own startup, and is a great tool to compare your own organization to those within the same market space. However it’s important not to get caught up in becoming overly analytical of one’s own practices, instead use CI as a gauge of your activities to those of others.

Start there and you should be good to go regarding non formal CI. Remember as a startup, resources are scarce and should be applied as to create the most value to your organization, but basic CI gathering should be engrained in how you run your business.

If you want to know more on CI and how to apply it to your business, be sure to check out our resource page which we’ve updated with additional books to add to your entrepreneurial reading list / library.

Months of hard work, sleepless nights, sweat, stress, and who knows what else have all culminated into one day, the day that you bring our product to market and see what the average Joe thinks of it.

Stressful indeed, but there are ways to cope with it.

1. First and foremost it’s done. You’ve done what hopefully you can do and you did your best. So pat yourself on the back, getting anything to market is typically not an easy feat and you should be proud of yourself.

2. Know that problems will arise, the nature of man is to err and nothing that launches will be without error. As such be sure to have a plan designed to deal with those errors, be they service oriented, website oriented, or even a physical product. Remember that the customer is the most valued piece of the chain and that providing them with the best post-launch service will likely make any minor errors or bugs that you experience irrelevant if their concerns are met with a fair and decent response.

3. Examine and assess your launch strategy. If you’ve released a product and it’s failing to sell, seek out the root of that problem. Perhaps it is your marketing strategy that isn’t doing its job; perhaps your distribution network is not targeting the right customer. Analyze, assess and augment your action plan.

4. After launching your product you may a bit ambiguous as the focus of your role is inevitably going to shift now towards more marketing and sales oriented activities as opposed to internal development and overall more theoretical strategic formulation. And while it’s important not to lose hindsight of your overall company strategy, prepare for your workday to look a bit different than it did before.

5. Don’t panic. Keeping a cool head about you is pivotal not only to your well being but also to the product and your company. Of course you’re worried that things won’t go as planned, but even so, your employees, partners, mentors, investors, etc… need to see that you’re composed and analytical. You are the face of the company and the product and turning hysterical will help no one through this stressful process.

In any case, well done, and why not round the launch out with a launch party, if you’re a small startup remember, it doesn’t have to be something akin to New York Fashion week, but inviting your investors, friends, co-workers, mentors, supporters and a bit of press to a chic lounge in order to celebrate your hard work can help add some wood to the PR fire.

Take a chill pill, and relax.

Sometimes as Entrepreneurs we may see our days as simply work-sleep-work-sleep-work-etc… and while we hold a great passion for what we do, we sometimes tend to inadvertently run ourselves and our bodies into the ground.

The human after all is not a machine, we need our rest, our down time, and our relaxation, and that is where this article comes in.

As a hard working entrepreneur, ask yourself, when was the last time you took a break?

When was the last time you took a weekend to yourself, or even a few days off to go and enjoy some of the things in life?

It’s been a while hasn’t it? While working like a dog has it’s benefits – so does taking a few days to yourself. Sitting back and doing next to nothing, reading a book, and taking your mind away from the day-to-day can often invigorate you, and give you more clarity in your day to day tasks – and more importantly can make you more efficient, and help you solve problems in a more efficient and more acute manner.

How does this happen? Simple.

Relaxation helps to relax muscles and muscle tissue. In athletes it helps recovery times, and if you have problems relaxing on your own, think about getting a massage. A massage can help provide relief to trigger points.

Relaxation helps more than anything else to relieve stress, and we all know that as entreprenerus the one thing we have plenty of is stress. Stress aside from making you tense can also inhibit your ability to think and analyze problems clearly, this as you can imagine is detrimental to your and your business’ success.

Relaxation helps to increase circulation, meaning, more oxygen gets to the brain, and as such, allows you to again think better.

But what else helps you relax? We mentioned in a previous article, that exercise is is just all around good for your body, and has been proven to help increase dopamine levels in the brain. You know, that stuff that makes you happy.

Finally, taking a few days to yourself will also allow you time to spend with your family and friend, those things which we sometimes take for granted in our entrepreneurial lives while we’re running to make our business’ into the next Virgin “_enter word of your industry jargon here_”

So as Frankie who went to Hollywood said in 1984, Relax. When you relax your not stressed when your not stressed your happy and when your happy your healthy and when you’re healthy you’re more productive.

Every entrepreneur, or at least most of us will feel like a fraud at one point, we tell our friends and family we’re working – we invest money and time into things that may or may not work, we work from home, café’s and sometimes lack the office space that makes us feel “normal”. We tell ourselves and the world at large that “my product is doing A,B,C,D,E” and that it can save the world to self assured destruction or what have you. But the real question is, can it? Do we tell that to ourselves, our investors and pretty much everyone else involved be cause we feel that what we’re doing is a big joke, and we’re pulling a fast one over the community, our friends and family, the world? Do I event deserve the title of Director or CEO? After all aren’t those names reserved for magnates of industry?

The bad thing is, that as long as you’re an entrepreneur, these feelings won’t go away, the good news is, that they’re totally normal and many entrepreneurs have them. Turns out there’s a name for this feeling, it’s called “Impostor Syndrome” – and something to the effect of 40% of successful people have it, including doctors, graduate students, and the like.

If you have any of these feelings, turns out you may in fact be an “Impostor Syndrome” sufferer, but don’t stress too much, it’s not a real recognized disorder.

• Dismissal of compliments and praise
• Mild constructive criticisms can become crippling.
• Doubt in your talents, abilities, and intelligence.
• The belief that you’re wasting your time.
• Successful people are those with a job, a steady income and a mortgage.
• Taking credit for your accomplishments is difficult.

etc… etc… however this self doubt is in all actuality what keeps you going. The time spent reading about your industry, the time spend perfecting, honing your skills, reading up on current trends and “keeping up with the Joneses” are all positive activities that in fact make you more competitive and help you fight adversity. Each one of those doubts that you have regarding yourself pushes you closer to success.

But where do these feelings stem from? Even in societies that embrace risk such as the U.S., the majority of people will still be those that work for someone else, that have the 9-5 job, and bring home a monthly / weekly income. Companies are on the other hand are seen as large brands whose operations affect the lives of others in any manner of ways – not as a few people managing a few more people who make things. All the same, there is societal pressure to conform to those ideals and to become part of a larger more normal society. The thing is, that your average Joe doesn’t understand why you’ve decided to take a risk and start something totally new, most average Joe’s are satisfied with the status quo. We as entreprenerus are not.

So what does this all mean? Simply put two things, take your self doubt and make it into a positive force in your life and business.

• Learn more, read more, always challenge yourself, put that doubt to work for you.
• Take criticism lightly, and constructively, one of the best things you can do is have others tell you where things are lacking, they often see what you do not.
• If you don’t believe in the benefits of your company’s products, talk to your customers, not only are they the best people to make your product better, but they will appreciate the service that you offer and that you care about them. This builds loyalty.

Though swords often have two edges, and there exists a very real possibility that your doubt can have a negative effect on your life and your business. If you see that doubt is affecting your work, and you believe that you can’t do it, don’t give up, do it, work harder at it. If you believe that your products are lacking in quality and that being the reason no one is buying them, look at your products, it may not be their quality, it may be your marketing strategy, distribution, communication strategy instead. In the end, you have to analyze your doubt, and see how it can be channeled positively into making your business grow and succeed.

BY F3FUNDIT

Entrepreneurs are definitely a special breed, this is motivation, personality as well as a number of additional factors. So before you or someone you know wants to jump in and tackle the world, we recommend gauging your personality to see if you possess any of the critical success factors that make up an entrepreneur.

ENTREPRENEURIAL CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

1. Belief in success – if you doubt yourself, if you don’t think you can do it, climb up a mountain and conquer the world, or if you don’t have somewhat megalomaniacal expectations of yourself and understand that accomplishing event half of those expectations will mean success to others, read no further and go get a 9-5 day job.

2. Possess valuable practical world experience – you may have a great idea, but having real world experience is vital, schools can only teach you so much, and this experience will often mean sink or swim for your enterprise. Furthermore, you should always be getting this experience, before your venture, during it, and after.

3. Be unusual and unconventional - Let’s face it, normal never got anywhere. Are you unusual, quirky, do you visualize the world in a unique and peculiar way? Great. This factor is key to you identifying opportunity.

4. Embrace risk and failure – The majority of the population is risk averse, they don’t like it because it means, possible failure and people are afraid of failure because of the way it will be perceived by others. But what is failure other than a great learning experience?

5. Want to leave the large Co. behind – If you like the large company, the security of belonging to someone on a fortune something hundred list, then Entrepreneurship is not for you. Entrepreneurs are independent thinkers, they are leaders, not followers.

6. Think like or belong to a society where above normal expectations are welcome – If the expectations in your society are to get a comfy job, because that comfy job provides security, and better yet it’s a government job. You’ll have a a harder climb than someone who belongs to a society that encourages risk taking. See how your societal culture holds up, if need be, leave.

7. Be ambitious – If someone tells you you’re thinking too big, maybe you’re not thinking big enough. As innovation is the mother of invention, ambition is the mother of innovation, and even though the developers of some new iPhone app will tell you it’s the next most innovative thing since sliced bread. It probably isn’t. Real innovation sprs positive change, be ambitious, think you can change the world. Do you?

And we’ll close this with words from one successful entrepreneur, Sidney Pulitzer, who started an undergraduate entrepreneurship course at Tulane University with the following opener.

“95% of the people on this planet have no clue what the hell is going on, out of the other 5%, 3% do know what’s going on, but they’re too God damn afraid to do anything about it. Those last 2% boys and girls, they’re the movers and shakers, so take a moment and ask yourselves. Where do you belong?”

So… where Do you belong?

BY F3FUNDIT

You don’t feel effective or efficient, the doldrums got you down again, and you feel lost, bewildered, or simply think you’re not doing as well as you can. It’s natural, maybe you’re not going to the right meetings or are just starting to feel a little burned out. It happens, so here’s five tips, to making oneself more effective.

5. When you feel like you’re not going in the right direction, its common to help “reorganize” everything in order to see what’s missing, where you can be more effective, but reorganization takes time, and while it’s good to be organized to a degree don’t over-organize, at the end, it’s a big waste of time, and you wont see any benefit from it. In fact keeping over-organized will just suck up time you could be allocating to something more productive.

4. Use your time efficiently – i.e.

1. Do things only once -One of the things our brain does is re-remember things that haven’t been done yet and have/could/should be done. This is a waste of time.
2. Do things smarter -Almost every single task has been done by someone countless times before. A lot of people are looking to do things easier, faster and better in less time.
3. Automate things – Use software to do menial tasks. Someone’s probably already thought of a way to make _insert boring task_ easier.
4. Outsource things - Not good at web design, outsource it, not good at payroll or don’t have time, outsource it.

3. In your office draw up large schematics, sales targets, development targets, ideas, progress schematics, etc… etc… etc… on a large piece of paper, then hang them around your teams work space. You’ll see that those daily reminders will keep you moving forward and keep on reminding you of what needs to be done on the larger scale.

2. Keep a notebook. Splurge on a bound notebook, and carry it around with you everywhere you go, jot down ideas, concepts, people to call, soon you’ll be referencing it back, and trust us, no iPad, Laptop, or SmartPhone will be able to match a few pieces of paper and a pen.

1. Don’t Break the Chain – Sinefeld used it and touts it as a great motivation technique. Basically you tick off days where you’ve involved yourself in an activity. It’s not only great for keeping up with work, but for any activity such as exercise or even quitting smoking. As a concept it seems simplistic at best, but give it a go for a month, you’ll be hooked and feel super good about the level of stuff you’re getting done.