The 5-Step Checklist to Help You Through Any Stressful Situation
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What do you consider an emergency?

  • Experiencing explosive decompression on your airplane?
  • Losing your phone?
  • Losing your passport?
  • Having a security breach within your company?
  • Being detained by the military in a foreign country?

At what level does it become an emergency?

Recently, I was on a flight that suffered explosive decompression. As I remained calm and assessed the situation, I realized the only action I could take was send quick text messages to certain people. I unwittingly set off a chain of different reactions in those three people:

  • The first person was unfazed–he knew he could do nothingto affect the outcome.
  • The second person was concerned, but also knew he couldn’t do anything.
  • The third person worried, tracking my plane, and grew concerned when it disappeared from radar.

Often, as entrepreneurs, everything we do has the urgency of an “emergency” attached. It goes something like this: If I don’t make this deadline, Iwill lose my funding opportunity. If I lose my funding, the company will fail. If the company fails, my life is over. This is called “catastrophizing.”

Living with this type of mindset can cause extended periods of stress, and heightened emotional states. These emotional states can lead to decisions made from fear, which reduce the likelihood of good judgment.

While I’ve personally experienced all of the above “emergencies,” I’ve managed to handle all of them without feeling outwardly stressed. Here are my five steps to help you through anything life throws your way:

1. Stay calm.

While this seems too simple, it all starts here. You need to be completely in control of yourself and your emotions before doing anything else.

Once, after finding that I had been pick-pocketed of my passport in a foreign airport,I first took a few deep breaths to center myself. I thought of a time when I wasfully calm–and toldmy mind to “play pretend” that I was in that place instead.

Once I was calm, I looked for a “police” symbol, walked to it, and used my phone to type out my problem into Google Translate. The policeman and I typed back and forth to each other, and the officer was able to use security cameras tofind my passport within minutes.

2. Take stock.

Once you have a clear mind, you need to mentally analyze the situation. Define the problem clearly. What resources are available to you?

We’ve all left cell phones in Ubers. After this happened to me, I ran through a mental checklist of what was available to me in that moment. Uber hada lost-and-found option in the receipt, which I could access via a computer–and I had my laptop with me. No reason to panic.

A more business-specific situation: We lose files all the time in business–whether emailing them to the wrong person, or deleting and emptying the trash. Knowing the possibilities to retrieve them ahead of time can keep you calm.

3.Take action.

Once you’ve determined what resources you have and what is possible for you to do, it’s time for you to act.

Sometimes, it’s proactive. While handling a security breach at Evernote, where I used to work, I made suretechnical support was constantly keepingcustomers apprised of the situation, even when we had no new information to give.

Other times, it’s reactive. If you accidentally email the wrong file to someone, Google has an “undo send” feature (if you’ve turned it on ahead of time). You canask the other person to delete the email. You should probablylet your IT team know.

Dosomething.

4.Reflect.

See if there’s anything youmissed. Did you let yourself get stressed? Was there an action you could’vetaken? Did you use all the resources at hand?

Once, when traveling abroad, my partner and I were separated from each other at a military checkpoint. Women were being taken away with no warning or explanation after they’d already taken all of our electronics.

After we were reunited, we made a plan to have each other’s phone numbers memorized as well as the number for the US Embassy in case this type of thing happened again. When it happened to us again in another country, we were able to remain calm–we had a plan.

5.Keep things in perspective.

Everyone is different. The “end of the world” to you may not even be noticeable to someone else.

So, you didn’t sign this client? Take a few breaths, remain calm, and understand that not everyone is your target. Ask them why they weren’t interested in you–their feedback will get you closer to someone who will be a better fit for your product.

By following these five steps, you’ll guide your waythrough any situation with aplomb.

Feb 27, 2018
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT

When New York State went into quarantine in mid-March, Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had just moved JCRT, their direct-to-consumer shirt company, to a new office on Pier 59 in New York City. Founded in 2016, JCRT celebrates all things plaid and camouflage, with colorful patterns named after David Bowie and Kate Bush albums and movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Stuck in a rentalhome in rural New Jersey,the married Costello andTagliapietragot to work. Heartsick that the city that had been their base and home for years was the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, they wanted to do something to help friends on the frontlines.Costello began sewing masks from whatever sample fabrics he had on hand.Tagliapietra boxed them “by the hundreds” and the couplesentthem to wherever they heard PPE was needed.

“Everything was sort of unknown at that point,” Tagliapietra says. “We were very happy to be able to even do that.”

After sewing about 600 masks (“My hands were tired!” Costello jokes), they were able to reopentheir factory in the Dominican Republic, which been closed due to government quarantine and curfew rules, and began producing masks for sale and donation, giving more than 12,000 to first responders. They’re donating a portion of their retail sales to the New York City Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund, benefiting health care workers, supporting small businesses, and vulnerable workers and families. Without any marketing other than their social feeds, Tagliapietra and Costello estimate they’ve sold 45,000 masks through JCRT and raised more than $65,000.

Now they’re selling masks and collared shirts made from a black, red, and green plaid, with proceeds going to Movement for Black Lives. Over the Father’s Day weekend, which also included the commemoration of Juneteenth, they donated 100 percentof the sales of those goods to the organization.

JCRT is a second act for Costello and Tagliapietra, who previously founded a women’s wear business called Costello Tagliapietra in 2005. Their runway shows were written up in glossy fashion magazines and the founders got a lot of press for their shared plaid-on-plaid aesthetic and impressive beards, which led to theirbeing dubbed “the lumberjacks of fashion.”

Keeping their operation small also allows the foundersto decide where and how to focus their energies, including supporting the causes they careabout. They’re nowat work on another fundraiser, this one for Pride month,with proceeds going to the Ali Forney Center, a New York City-based program for LGBTQ homeless youth.With their factory up and running, JCRT also continues to release new designs, sellingdressshirts, pants, jackets, bags, and accessoriesthrough their website.

Jun 23, 2020

The 5 Things Vcs Consider When Funding Your Next Business Idea.Html

Money

The 5 Things VCs Consider When Funding Your Next Business Idea

When creating your next business, take care of these things before anything else.

Jun 1, 2020
The 5 Things VCs Consider When Funding Your Next Business Idea
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People come up with ideas all the time — and many of them don’t becomegreat businesses.Perhaps the idea has already beeninvented and patented. Maybe licensing is too expensive to go forward. If the idea is entirely dependent on something that isn’t available to the mainstream yet, you can’t even begin development.

Before founding his third company, Phil Libin had discussions about creating a “ribbonof information” that would capture the stream of someone’s life. Eventually, that researchled toa billion-dollar company, Evernote.

Mastrad, a company founded in 1994 that had its IPO in 2006, has done a combination of licensing and direct distribution for their products. Both companies have filed extensive patents throughout their years of operating.

How can you determine if your idea is worthy of moving forward for funding? Here are a few things to consider:

Market potential

Quite simply, this is how many people your product affects. You want to understand exactly who the target market of your product is so you can clearly identify the size of their spend in that category. That way you can show the potential return on any investment that someone puts in your company.

For example, when creating a new line of IoT (Internet of Things) cooking thermometers, French company Mastrad needed to consider the “Smart Kitchen Appliance” market, which was roughly $890 Million in the U.S. in 2018.

Team viability

Have you ever wondered why many of the funded teams have similar backgrounds, whether educational or work history? Investors like to know what they are getting. They need to knowthe team can do what it says it can do, and past history of success– be it through personal experience or institutional credibility– goes a long way.

For Evernote, Libin looked to people he already knew, like his college friends, family, and myself, to help build his vision.

Future earnings potential

In line with understanding your customer demographics, you also need to know the financial trends of that market. Learn what they spent in that (and related) categories for the past five years, and project out to the next ten. If it’s not a nice big upward trend, it isn’t interesting. In the world of VC funding, “steady is deadly.”

For companies in the FoodTech industry, like Mastrad, the growth potential can be enormous right now. The market was$520 Million in 2014, and it’s projected to hit $3 billion by 2024.

Investor interest

Too many people go to the wrong investors to ask for money. If the person you are talking to is interested in FinTech and you are a FoodTech group, the deal won’t close no matter how nice you are.

Even the most minimal research on your potential investors will help you to understand their expertise. As Warren Buffet says, you shouldn’t invest in businesses you don’t understand, so approaching people who don’t have an understanding of your industry is likely to get you turned down.

Investor Mood

Even if you have everything else lined up perfectly, you still might not get funded because you caught the investor on a bad day, and they saw your deal negatively because of that. They’ve got 20 other options in the pipeline so it’s not a big deal to them.

Any team that wishes to receive funding must satisfactorily pass all of those tests in the eyes of their investor. The streets of Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) are littered with teams who have not.

May 31, 2019

The 3 Reasons Female Founders Dont Raise As Much As Men.Html

Lead

The 3 Reasons Female Founders Don’t Raise as Much as Men

While more women are starting businesses, and in different sectors, men still receive the lion’s share of funding.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

Jun 1, 2020
The 3 Reasons Female Founders Don't Raise as Much as Men
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While it should come as a shock to absolutely no one, there’s something I need to share with you:Women and men are different.

(No, really.)

Whether it is biological, through cultural conditioning— or as a byproduct of near-constant scrutiny — there are general differences in how women and men process and react to information. In turn, this results in behavior that is common enough to form patterns across gender lines.

Take, for instance, the report that Michelle Williams received merely a daily $80 per diem for her reshoots during the movie All the Money in the World,compared to Mark Walberg’s $1.5 millionfor the same amount of work. Her reasoning was “It never would have occurred to me to ask to be paid for that.” (When Walberg found out, he donated the entire paycheck in her name to TimesUp, a fund established as part of the #MeToo movement.) While the outcome was positive, Williams also said the attention “made a private pain public.

For female founders, the disparity can be especially painful. A recent Quartzreport showed that we’ve raised only 22.12 percentof the amount that men have in similar companies. Our company valuations are only 16.38 percentthat of men’s. Worse, our companies don’t increase in value over time in the same way that male-founded companies do.

As a co-founder and CTO of multiple female-led companies that have successfully raised significant capital, I have a few ideas as to why this is the case. Yes, these are generalizations–but I’ve yet to personally encounter many male entrepreneurs with these same traits:

1.Female founders are more conservative.

As a female founder, I willdevelop new features and products only after I have a business case for them. I’ll spend more time with prototypes (Typeform anyone?) and client surveys making sure I have enough of a reason to expend development resources.

This runs counter to the Agile “fail fast” methodology that the traditionally male-oriented Techstars and YCombinator-type startups have, where they are urged to develop their MVP feature set and release it as quickly as possible — then move on to the next thing.

2.Female founders don’t like spending other people’s money.

For the majority of female founders I’ve spoken to, it’s a familiar refrain: “We need to save money” and “decrease our burn rate.”I’ve seen my female colleagues time and again hire people at alarmingly low rates, even demanding free work — or insisting they will simply take care of “it” themselves. Unsurprisingly, 63% of female foundersin a recent Inc survey said they funded their startup through personal savings.

Research by FingerPrint For Success shows that successful male founders are more willing to burn through investment capital quickly in order to determine if a product is viable or not–which speaks further to that “fail fast” mindset.

3.Female founders humanize their investors.

Most female founders I know are acutely aware of each name on their term sheets and how much money was given to them. Almost unanimously, these investments are seen as a sign of trust and a great honor. I have seen more than one woman break down at the thought of not being able to pay back her investors should her business fail.

Quartz’s findings purport that the reason for such a disparity in valuations is that women simply aren’t asking for as much money as men — because they don’t spend as much.

This logic reminds me of my time working in the government.

At the end of each year, we’d have to work out our departmental budgets for the following year. Usually, we’d simply choose the same number that we had the previous year — and as long as we spent exactly that amount each year (or more), we’d be fine. If we spent less, then we’d have less the following year.

This meant that we had a lot of extraneous purchases toward the end of the year — including a supply closet filled to the brim with expired highlighters — simply to make sure we spent every dollar. It certainly prepared me for the startup world, where startups raise $1.5 million,spend it all on kombucha and beanbag chairs, and go bust in a year.

I suspect, as with most things, the right answer is somewhere in the middle. Perhaps, if men and women joined together in business more frequently — like Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — you’d have the best of both worlds.

Sep 18, 2018
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

The 1 Tweet That Caused A Ban On Electronics On Airlines.Html

Best-Kept Travel Secrets

The 1 Tweet That Caused a Ban On Electronics on Airlines

Electronics travel ban got you down? You can stay sane with these simple measures.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

The 1 Tweet That Caused a Ban On Electronics on Airlines
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If you have been on any international flights since March 2017, or have had any scheduled, you may have heard a rumor that electronics are no longer allowed in an aircraft cabin. For some people, it may seem nothing to worry about, but for those (like me) who have experienced it first-hand, it is a confusing, harrowing and even dangerous situation both personally and professionally.

A quick timeline:

On March 20th, Royal Jordanian Airways tweeted “Following instructions from the concerned US departments, we kindly inform our dearest passengers departing to and arriving from the United States that carrying any electronic or electrical device on board the flight cabins is strictly prohibited.”

It is important to note that prior to this, there was no electronics ban to any Middle Eastern country from the US.

After this, however, other airlines noted that they had received intelligence notices from the US suggesting that they implement measures by March 24th that would affect flights in 10 airports within the Middle East — but only on 8 airlines that serve those locations.

The nature of the ban is itself confusing. All “electronics items larger than a cell phone” are to be confiscated, checked into the cargo area of the aircraft, and can be reclaimed later.

Recently, while traveling on Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, I saw this in action. Only my personal laptop, kindle and laptop power cord were taken, leaving me with my external cell phone power packs (li-on) and cell phones.

For others, it was not so clear; I saw noise-cancelling headsets, electric razors, laptops, portable keyboards, external hard drives, etc, taken and placed into anonymous black cases.

As a security professional, this sight alone made me reticent to continue to do business that takes me to the Middle East — and that may be the entire point of this ban.

For this 11-hour flight, all of the business people on this flight, and hundreds of other flights per day to and from the Middle East, are now separated from their data. If you’re like me, you keep it encrypted. However, you have no control over what happens to it while in the care of the airline.

Therefore, for entrepreneurs and business travelers, while this ban is in place, here are my three recommendations for how to survive the ban while keeping your company and client data safe.

1. Keep important files off your computer.

If its something that you have a duty to protect, or is confidential, make sure it is something that you aren’t handing over to someone else. Keep client files on an encrypted thumb drive that remains on your person, or in an encrypted cloud storage solution that you always have access to.

2. Travel with as few electronics as possible.

Your cell phone is as powerful as a computer, so for a short trip, you may be able to get away with your phone and an external keyboard. The airline I flew, Turkish, provided all travelers with free WiFi access for the duration of the flight, to allow us to do business anyway.

3. Keep flying.

This is not the fault of the airlines, so please don’t cancel your flights or plans. While flying Turkish Airlines, they gave us stellar treatment despite the poor circumstances surrounding the ban.

While I’m hopeful this will be a temporary measure, with these simple steps you’ll be able to keep sane while flying.

Jun 5, 2017
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT

When New York State went into quarantine in mid-March, Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had just moved JCRT, their direct-to-consumer shirt company, to a new office on Pier 59 in New York City. Founded in 2016, JCRT celebrates all things plaid and camouflage, with colorful patterns named after David Bowie and Kate Bush albums and movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Stuck in a rentalhome in rural New Jersey,the married Costello andTagliapietragot to work. Heartsick that the city that had been their base and home for years was the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, they wanted to do something to help friends on the frontlines.Costello began sewing masks from whatever sample fabrics he had on hand.Tagliapietra boxed them “by the hundreds” and the couplesentthem to wherever they heard PPE was needed.

“Everything was sort of unknown at that point,” Tagliapietra says. “We were very happy to be able to even do that.”

After sewing about 600 masks (“My hands were tired!” Costello jokes), they were able to reopentheir factory in the Dominican Republic, which been closed due to government quarantine and curfew rules, and began producing masks for sale and donation, giving more than 12,000 to first responders. They’re donating a portion of their retail sales to the New York City Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund, benefiting health care workers, supporting small businesses, and vulnerable workers and families. Without any marketing other than their social feeds, Tagliapietra and Costello estimate they’ve sold 45,000 masks through JCRT and raised more than $65,000.

Now they’re selling masks and collared shirts made from a black, red, and green plaid, with proceeds going to Movement for Black Lives. Over the Father’s Day weekend, which also included the commemoration of Juneteenth, they donated 100 percentof the sales of those goods to the organization.

JCRT is a second act for Costello and Tagliapietra, who previously founded a women’s wear business called Costello Tagliapietra in 2005. Their runway shows were written up in glossy fashion magazines and the founders got a lot of press for their shared plaid-on-plaid aesthetic and impressive beards, which led to theirbeing dubbed “the lumberjacks of fashion.”

Keeping their operation small also allows the foundersto decide where and how to focus their energies, including supporting the causes they careabout. They’re nowat work on another fundraiser, this one for Pride month,with proceeds going to the Ali Forney Center, a New York City-based program for LGBTQ homeless youth.With their factory up and running, JCRT also continues to release new designs, sellingdressshirts, pants, jackets, bags, and accessoriesthrough their website.

Jun 23, 2020

The 1 Thing You Need To Do Right Now To Fund Your Startup.Html

Money

The 1 Thing You Need to Do Right Now to Fund Your Startup

Trying to get money for your idea? Stop having coffee dates and do this instead.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

The 1 Thing You Need to Do Right Now to Fund Your Startup
Getty Images

Have you got an amazing idea?

Is it something that will change the world?

Would you give up everything you have to turn your idea into a reality?

If you answered yes to those three questions, it’s likely that you have a bit of entrepreneurial blood in you. However, being entrepreneurial does not necessarily mean that you are business savvy, nor that you have the skills and practical expertise bring an idea to life.

This is where most people go wrong.

Often, people think that those three things are the only factors in raising capital, when investors barely consider them at all.

You don’t know what you don’t know

Admitting you need help is a difficult thing, and it becomes especially hard when you aren’t sure who or what to ask for. When all you have is an idea (even if you’re clear on that idea) it’s easy to become paralyzed by where to go next.

Seeking a patent for your idea may seem like the right move, and depending on the type of idea, you may be right. In 2015, there were almost 650,000 patent applications in the US, compared to only 300,000 in 2000, due in part to the rise of services like InventHelp.

However, patents are expensive, can take a long time to be issued, and even once you have one, they’re exceptionally hard to enforce if you have no entity with deep pockets behind you.

Finding mentors and advisors might also seem like a good idea, especially if you’re looking to put together a solid team to build your product, but you need to be clear on what these people will do for you. If they’re simply people who will answer an email once a year, they’re not very helpful.

If they will give you their time, money, and domain expertise (at a minimum), then they’re worth your time. But attracting people to an idea is difficult unless you’re a charismatic person, and keeping them around for very long is even harder.

The key to success

Before spending your money on filing a patent or your valuable time on finding mentors and advisors, you need to validate your product.

As an investor, the main question I want answered about a product is:

How will this make me money?

As the founder, therefore, before you ever come think of coming to me, you need to have that answered back, front, upside down and sideways. Prove your concept.

This means you are going to have to put real time and effort (and probably a lot of your own, your friends and your family’s money) into talking to people, gathering data, building a prototype, and building buzz about what you’re doing before getting to the phase where someone else will put substantial money behind you.

Coincidentally, this is why the majority of Kickstarters and Indiegogo campaigns fail — if you try to launch them before you’ve validated your product, then you’ll quickly find that people aren’t interested. Instead, wait until you’ve gotten a moderate amount of interest in the form of a mailing list and social followers before attempting to crowdfund.

Stop wasting time trying to get other people interested in putting money behind your idea; instead, build something for them to be interested in.

Mar 31, 2017
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of JCRT

When New York State went into quarantine in mid-March, Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had just moved JCRT, their direct-to-consumer shirt company, to a new office on Pier 59 in New York City. Founded in 2016, JCRT celebrates all things plaid and camouflage, with colorful patterns named after David Bowie and Kate Bush albums and movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Stuck in a rentalhome in rural New Jersey,the married Costello andTagliapietragot to work. Heartsick that the city that had been their base and home for years was the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, they wanted to do something to help friends on the frontlines.Costello began sewing masks from whatever sample fabrics he had on hand.Tagliapietra boxed them “by the hundreds” and the couplesentthem to wherever they heard PPE was needed.

“Everything was sort of unknown at that point,” Tagliapietra says. “We were very happy to be able to even do that.”

After sewing about 600 masks (“My hands were tired!” Costello jokes), they were able to reopentheir factory in the Dominican Republic, which been closed due to government quarantine and curfew rules, and began producing masks for sale and donation, giving more than 12,000 to first responders. They’re donating a portion of their retail sales to the New York City Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund, benefiting health care workers, supporting small businesses, and vulnerable workers and families. Without any marketing other than their social feeds, Tagliapietra and Costello estimate they’ve sold 45,000 masks through JCRT and raised more than $65,000.

Now they’re selling masks and collared shirts made from a black, red, and green plaid, with proceeds going to Movement for Black Lives. Over the Father’s Day weekend, which also included the commemoration of Juneteenth, they donated 100 percentof the sales of those goods to the organization.

JCRT is a second act for Costello and Tagliapietra, who previously founded a women’s wear business called Costello Tagliapietra in 2005. Their runway shows were written up in glossy fashion magazines and the founders got a lot of press for their shared plaid-on-plaid aesthetic and impressive beards, which led to theirbeing dubbed “the lumberjacks of fashion.”

Keeping their operation small also allows the foundersto decide where and how to focus their energies, including supporting the causes they careabout. They’re nowat work on another fundraiser, this one for Pride month,with proceeds going to the Ali Forney Center, a New York City-based program for LGBTQ homeless youth.With their factory up and running, JCRT also continues to release new designs, sellingdressshirts, pants, jackets, bags, and accessoriesthrough their website.

Jun 23, 2020

The 1 Airline Rule You Must Know To Keep You From .Html

Best-Kept Travel Secrets

The 1 Airline Rule You Must Know to Keep You From Getting Stranded

Have you ever been stuck at the airport? Hidden within the fine print of your ticket are terms that can make your situation better.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

Covid Resource Center

How Everlywell’s Julia Cheek Makes Big Decisions Quickly

The Austin-based healthtech entrepreneur talked with Inc. about the strategic moves that led to her company’s breakthrough success.

The 1 Airline Rule You Must Know to Keep You From Getting Stranded
Getty Images

Have you ever booked a flight only to find out later that it was delayed, or worse–canceled?

You’re not alone. In only a single month of 2016, over 120,000 travelers were affected by canceled flights out of London Heathrow. Due to a problem with the baggage system, customers were left stranded in the airport for days, many having to cancel their holidays.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, solving a logistical mess like this is not easy. More passengers end up stuck due to overbooking and strict airline schedules, which can mean if you miss your original flight, you could be waiting a while for another one.

Even as a seasoned traveler, I’m not immune to the effects of system delays. On a recent trip, I was notified via email and text alert by United Airlines that the first leg of my three-flight journey was going to be delayed, causing what is called a “misconnect.”

There was no need to panic. I simply used the following three steps to make sure I still got to my final destination on time:

1. Know your rights.

The first thing to always do when traveling is to familiarize yourself with the contract of carriage for your particular airline. Different airlines have different rules around what they will cover in the event of a delay or cancellation, and even what the very definition of “cancel” or “delay” is.

In the instance of my United flight, a mechanical delay was causing the issue. This afforded me multiple options, including the right to ask United to book me on another airline if a seat in the same class of service is available.

A great source of finding updated Contracts of Carriage for your airline in plain text can be found on Airfare Watchdog.

2. Find an alternate route.

Once you know the general framework, you can now start to get creative on how to get to your final destination. Before talking to the airline, come up with another way for you to get there.

Is there another flight on your airline that will work? Maybe there’s a different airport you wanted to fly into or out of. Here’s your chance to do the legwork to find a brand new itinerary.

In my case, after a quick scan of flights, I found that while there was no way for me to make either of my next two legs due to the delay, there was a completely different itinerary I could take that would get me to my final destination only half an hour later.

A great tool for this is Tripit Pro. It also has the bonus feature of letting you know ahead of time when your flights are going to be delayed, before even the airlines send out the memo.

3. Call the airline.

I cannot stress this enough–do not wait until you are at the airport to handle any issues. There are a limited number of agents at the airport and a large number of passengers. If you wait until you arrive, you may lose the possibility of your newly found itinerary.

The majority of the time, if you call up the airline already having done the research to find new flights that work for you, they’ll be appreciative and book you on whatever it is, no matter if that flight cost $1,500 to your $99 basic economy ticket.

You’re doing them a favor by being polite and helpful. So, of course, remember to be polite and helpful, and don’t panic.

While I was waiting politely on the phone for my rebooking, the agent apologized to me multiple times and managed to snag me the last bulkhead seat available on my international flight at no extra charge.

If all else fails…

If you can’t find an alternative, and you are stuck at the airport, there are still things that can help. Airlines offer differing amounts of monetary and other compensation depending on where you’re flying in and out of, and depending on the type of delay, your credit card may as well.

Refund.me is a service that helps passengers on flights to and from the EU claim compensation from delayed and canceled flights.

While things turned out OK for me, for many other passengers on my flight trying to make connections it wasn’t so rosy–they ended up with an unplanned overnight in our connecting city. The airline provided hotel vouchers for them and rebooked them for the next day.

However, with these tips, you can slide through any delay like a pro, and avoid having to wait it out for days at the airport.

Aug 15, 2017
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
How Everlywell's Julia Cheek Makes Big Decisions Quickly

When Julia Cheek founded Everlywell in June 2015, she was, by her own estimation, “perhaps the least qualified person to start a health care startup.” And yet, as her Austin-basedat-home lab testing companyapproaches its fifth anniversary, she finds herself overseeing a staff of about 100 people, providing home tests for allergies, food sensitivities, thyroid conditions, and, as of May 2020, Covid-19. The company raised $50 million in its last round of funding and was listed at No. 3 on the Inc. 5000 regional ranking for Texas this year.

In anInc. Real Talk: Business Rebootlivestream, Cheek, 36, spoke withInc. editor-at-large Tom Foster and took questions from viewers.Their conversation ranged fromhelping her team cope with quarantine to making big decisions. Here are some highlights.

Think Big and Think Fast

In May, Cheek and her board decided to give away $1 million to labs across the U.S.to help them develop a working test for Covid-19. For a startup still counting every dime, it wasn’t an easy check to write.However, Cheek saysthey made the decision quickly. “It took about an hour,” she says. “It was one of the fastest and easiest decisions made in the history of the company.”

She knew that funding those labs would speed up development of an at-hometest. She also had to make decisions internally to offset that cost while doing everything possible to maintain head count. That meant scaling back every discretionary dollar her team could find–Goodbye, office coffee!–in order to do the right thing and keepher team. “I wanted to protect as many jobs as possible,” she says.

“It was the right decisionmade at the right time,” she says now. A month later, she’s hiring.

Look Out for Your People

When asked how she deals with the challenges of running a companyfrom home (with a new baby) as well as whilewitnessing the protests in the streets, Cheek was quick to stress the importance ofmakingsure her colleagues are able to cope. “I worry like a mom about every one of our team members,” she says. That means asking herself how her team is doing all the time and asking herselfhow she can make their days better. Sometimes that means encouraging them to disconnect from Zoom or other digital platforms and take care of themselves. “Our primary focus is: What does every employee need for their mental health?” she says.

As for her own self care, she’sbeen developingwellness routines, including taking many meetings while walking and doing her best to separate her home workspace from the rest of her house.

The Funding Challenge

Cheek spoke at length about the difficulties she encountered while seeking funding as a female founder, despite the fact that she went to Harvard Business School and had a strong network.

“It was hard for me,” she says. “So you can imagine how hard it is for people of color, especiallywomen of color. I heard a lot of noes. What I learned is that it only takes one yes.” Among those yeseswas one on-air boost from Shark Tank‘s Lori Greiner, which doubled Everlywell’s sales overnight.

Ultimately, Cheek says, people needto talk about funding obstaclesopenly and honestly and encourage entrepreneursand investors to confront theirbiases. “It’s important that founders hear stories and become part of the solution,” she says.

Related:

Jun 4, 2020

Studies Prove That Power Posing Doesnt Work Heres What To Do Instead.Html

Lead

Studies Prove That Power Posing Doesn’t Work. Here’s What to Do Instead

It turns out that the feel-good shortcut to success may be just a placebo.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

Jun 1, 2020
Studies Prove That Power Posing Doesn't Work. Here's What to Do Instead
Getty Images

You have five minutes before an important meeting. You will play a significant part in how it all turns out. Do you spend the time going over your notes until you are irrefutable, or stand in front of a mirror in a “Superman” pose? If you do the latter, you’re not alone.

Almost 55 million people have watched the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy, “Your body language may shape who you are,” in which she discusses the practice of power-posing. She specifically claims that by adopting a an expansive body posture, aka, a “Power Pose,”will lead to two effects:increasing feelings of power and altering a person’s hormonal response.

The practice is, in essence, a”fake it till you make it.”

The problem is, the science behind it was never really that strong to begin with. It turns out, Cuddy’s original research did not pass the “p-curve” test –in other words, the 2010 studyjust barely met the criteria for statistical significance. Additionally, no team — including Cuddy’s own — has ever been able to successfully duplicate both original claims.

In 2017, both the European Association of Social Psychology published the results of seven and Michican State University another fourindependent studiesshowing that “feeling powerful may feel good, but on its own does not translate into powerful or effective behaviors.” In addition, they found that the measured effect is no better than that of placebo.

In response,in 2018 Amy Cuddy and her team publisheda 2017study of their owntorefute the contradictory studiesthat proved that power posing makes peoplefeelpowerful. However, it does not go as far as her original paper in provinganycorrelation to a real, hormonal change.

So, if power posing doesn’t actually work — then what does? Here are some things you can do that have been proven to positively affect your body:

1. Practice assertiveness.

There is a fine line between being polite and being aggressive – and for many this is one of the most difficult skills to learn. However, it can be one of the easiest places to start when building your confidence.

The next time you order something at a restaurant that isn’t exactly how you wanted it, politely –but firmly –bring up the error and ask for a resolution. The more assertive you are about the little things, the more confident you will be in all aspects of your life.

2. Become a sponge.

One of the main reasons that people feel a lack of confidence is that they feel outclassed by the people around them. If you’re suffering from imposter syndrome –the conviction that you don’t know enough about a particular topic when other people think you do –the best way to overcome that is to start learning.

In my first managerial role, I was asked to do many tasks that I had no idea how to do. Instead of letting my lack of experience hinder myself and the company, I asked questions, read books and gained additional certifications to ensure that I had knowledge and skillset required.

3. Support others success(and failure).

While it may seem counterintuitive, one of the best things you can do for your own self-confidence is to sincerely appreciate other people’s skills and successes. If you try to measure yourself against someone else, instead of simply understanding the value other people bring and building trust, you will become jealous –and that will lead to negative results.

I frequently have deep conversations with colleagues about their successes and failures –and we don’t shy from asking personal questions either. This enables us to have a strong support network where we feel naturally confident.

Thereisa strong correlation between confidence and success — more confident you appear, the more people will trust in you. Unfortunately, while there are no shortcuts to becoming more self-confident, practicing these steps will give you real, long-term results.

Oct 30, 2019
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

Stop Wasting Time On Clients Who Wont Close Heres How Ai Will Make You Better At Sales.Html

Sales

Stop Wasting Time on Clients Who Won’t Close. Here’s How AI Will Make You Better at Sales

By sticking to his strengths, CEO Andy Byrne has gotten Sequoia to back three companies in a row. Can gold strike three times?

Inc. 5000

This Entrepreneur Hated PowerPoint So Much That She Invented Her Own Presentation Software

With the Digideck, Sportsdigita founder Angelina Lawton created a media-rich sales tool used by pro sports organizations all over the world. Now she’s seeking to corner a new market: the pitch-from-home sales team.

Stop Wasting Time on Clients Who Won't Close. Here's How AI Will Make You Better at Sales
Getty Images

No matter what type of company you have, how many people you convince to use your product or service can mean the difference between success and failure.

While we may use marketing, advertising or good-old-fashioned chutzpah to reach our goals, for many the most reliable way to get people to convert into customers is still using some sort of sales force. Some companies have eliminated the humans that do this, relying on their newsletter signups,landing pages and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)tools like Hubspotto get the job done. Others have full-blown sales teams — but no matter which way you go, the process looks eerily similar.

It’s a problem that Clari CEO Andy Byrnehas seen before.

Early in his career, he started working with Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital, who then funded him in his second company, Clearwell, which they then sold for $410 million. When looking to start his third, he and CTO Venkat Rengan were kicking around ideas on a whiteboard in his garage. They decided to focus on machine learning for the enterprise market. With that simple premise, they approached Sequoia, and with their previous track record had no trouble raising a Series A.

And what is that premise? As Byrneputs it, “In the last 10 to 20 years, the best way to get data was from humans, but that is a flawed approach. The modern approach is to automatically harvest multiple signals from emails and calendars and call logs, etc. As you extend that automation, you can track sales team and customer engagement, behavior and interest.”

Quite simply, CRMs are antiquated.With machine learning and AI, you can have a better chance of closing those all-important sales.

AI frees up people to do useful work.

AI is good at doing repetitive tasks — but not so good at the “human touch” stuff. By minimizing the amount of busy work they have to do (like looking up previous emails and calls), your staff will have much more meaningful interactions with potential clients.

It gives you more data.

Current CRMs are designed to capture the information that people put into them. With an AI tool, you can have pre-populated systems acting proactively, giving sales teams background information they need ahead of time, freeing up more resources.

It captures the right information.

Says Byrne, “CRM’s are designed poorly. The user experience needs to morph to different workflows and speak to the human.” In other words, you’re only as good as the tool you have — and if it doesn’t prompt you for the right information up front, it can’t display it for you later.

Tools like Clari don’t come cheap — as an integration with Salesforce (and other tools), you’ll pay an additional 25 percenton top of your subscriptions. (Similar tools like Spiro and Aviso, incur similar monthly rates.) However, Byrne feels the 300 percentreturn you get from the service is worth it.

“AI will be the death of BI. We won’t be hearing that term much longer.”

With his pedigree, you can’t help but believe he’s on to something.

Jul 12, 2018
Angelina Lawton
Angelina Lawton

When Angelina Lawton ran communications for the Tampa Bay Lightning, she could never understand how a company with such an exciting product–professional hockey, for goodness sake–managed to be so dull when it came time to pitch potential sponsors.

“We were doing these huge pitches for naming rights with these boring PowerPoint presentations. It felt very stale,” says Lawton. “I kept thinking, we can do better.”

Her frustration spurred her to start a boutique agency, Sportsdigita, whichspecializesin making flashy presentations for pro sports sales departments–“a movie-trailer for franchises” is how she describes them. Nine years later, executives at more than450 teams, stadiums, and arenas haveused her multimedia slideshows, called Digidecks, to sell everything from merchandise licenses to luxury suites, she says.

But now the pandemic haspostponed professionalsports seasons, and widespread protestshaveLawton’s bread-and-butter clients–the sales groups–lying low. To keep revenue growing and her company afloat,Lawton ispivoting to target customers in new fields from financial services to health care.

Work-at-home sales teams at all kinds of businesses must now figure out how to close deals from afar–and they can use all the help they can get.

“Covid-19 has opened up people’s eyes to remote selling and collaborating,” says Lawton. “Our product is perfect for that.”

When Lawton first started marketing souped-up sales decks to sports and events companies, the multimedia opportunitieswere obvious.Looking to sell advertising rights to the billboards in the outfield? Show a star centerfielder leaping for a catch in front of them. Marketing the luxury suites for your arena? Play clips of the games, concerts, and monster truck rallies that clients will be able to see up-close from the box.

In 2016, she decided to focus on the hard part, the software–andbegan selling it as a service sosalespeople could produce the digidecks in-house. The move put her into direct competition with legacy competitors like Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as subscription-based online software, such asPrezi. Even so, since pivoting to this software-as-a-service model, Sportsdigita revenue has grown over 200 percent, to $4 million in 2018, which putthe company at No. 1,993 on last year’sInc. 5000 ranking of fastest-growing private U.S. businesses. It ranked at No. 146 on this year’s Inc. 5000 series Midwest list. Today, 80 percent of the company’s revenue comes from software subscriptions, and the rest fromservices. Clients include the Los Angeles Lakers, the Philadelphia Eagles, and U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Now, with sporting events on hold and tensions high from weeks of protests, high-profile sports teams don’t want to be seen as tone-deaf amid the unrest. Like entrepreneurs across the world, Lawton was forced to rethinkbasic assumptions about her company and customers.

Her company has already made some early scores: insurerMutual of America, Cargill, the giant food conglomerate, and Jostens, the seller of high school yearbooks and class rings, have signed on as clients. They haveexisting libraries of media–salespeople can populate the decks with pre-loaded photo and video options from their ownexisting ads, and then present them in tandem with Zoom calls or other videoconferencing software.

Next, Sportsdigita is planning to add videoconferencing to Digideckas well, requiring new kinds of software expertise and putting the company up against the likes of Zoom.

For Sportsdigita, the new revenue has offset the slump in sports, andLawton says the company is once again on track with its pre-Covid growth targets.And her new clients? Their presentations may lack the same jaw-dropping action of their pro sports counterparts–but their infographics and bullet points are leaping off the screen like all-stars.

Jun 15, 2020

Steve Jobs Convinced Mark Zuckerberg To Focus On Community By Understanding This 1 Thing.Html

Marketing

Steve Jobs Convinced Mark Zuckerberg To Focus On Community By Understanding This 1 Thing

Stop trying to get everyone to be your customer. By instead focusing on the way people are convinced to buy, you’ll increase your conversion rate.

By Heather Wilde, CTO, ROCeteer@heathriel

Covid Resource Center

How Everlywell’s Julia Cheek Makes Big Decisions Quickly

The Austin-based healthtech entrepreneur talked with Inc. about the strategic moves that led to her company’s breakthrough success.

Steve Jobs Convinced Mark Zuckerberg To Focus On Community By Understanding This 1 Thing
Getty Images

One of the hardest parts of being an entrepreneur is getting sales. Often, we focus so hard on creating the best products that we don’t have any effort left to find andconvert customers.

This leads to more money spent to acquire customers and more frustration in the long run. Often, companies end up failing for just the simple reason: they can’t convert sales.

There are multiple factors that come together to determine what type of information someone needs to understand something. Additionally, there are other, completely different factors that determine how a person can be convinced to purchase your product.

A person can either be convinced by seeing, hearing, readingor doing.In addition to these four patterns, people are either convinced in one of the following ways:

  1. Automatically (right away)
  2. After a Period of Time (different for every person, can be measured in minutes, years, or in between.)
  3. After a Number of Times (a finite number, such as the classic seventouchpoints to close a customer.)
  4. Constantly -(in other words, these people always need new proof to be convinced.)

While people may have dominant learning styles, their convincing patterns are not necessarily connected. An experiential learner might need to read about someone else’s experience before going out on their own.

If you’re working as a traditional sales person with one-on-one interactions, it’s easy enough to identify your customer’s convincing pattern- you can simply ask them questions and then change the conversation appropriately.

However, when doing online marketing, you’re going to have to have a multi-pronged approach that can check all the boxes.

The first step to understanding what type of materials to create for your product is to understand the behaviors of people with these patterns.

1. Convinced by Seeing

Have you ever heard the phrase: “I’ll believe it when I see it?” Someone who is convinced by seeing will use “visual” language when they speak. They will say things like “We need to see this through” or “Can you picture this?” This type of person will want instructional videos, infographics, and visual representation of your product that they can physically see in order to be convinced to buy it.

The Dollar Shave Clubadis a goodexample of showingproduct in an engaging way.

2. Convinced by Hearing

People who are convinced in this way are looking for the quality of someone’s voice and the authority provided by it. They say things like “Sounds good!” and “You hear what I’m saying?” and they look for support in the words that people say out loud.

Using testimonial videos and other social proof is a great way to convince people by “hearing.”

3. Convinced by Doing

For some people, the only way to convince them is to let them try things for themselves. By accomplishing a task, they’ll be able to come to their own conclusion. The only thing you will be able to do is give them the task and let them go.

Steve Jobs famously asked Mark Zuckerberg to go to India to learn about community – which then helped shape the future of Facebook.

4. Convinced by Reading

This type of person wants to scan information in written form. They will be convinced by having documentation, either summarized or long-form, but they want to consume it themselves.

Reportedly, Director Rian Johnson was only convinced to take on directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi after reading the script.

    As an entrepreneur, you should aim to sell to people who are relatively easy to convince. Avoid those who require you to consistently try to advertise to them, as the cost is too high to convert them.

    For online sales, people who are convinced automatically and after a number of times are the easiest to tackle, and depending on the phase of your product the easiest way to go is via “Hearing”, through social/viral content. The second easiest is a combination of”Seeing” and “Reading”, with content in video and written channels.

    For scaling purposes, avoid anything that requires you to target “Doing” types, as well as people convinced “after a period of time” or “constantly”, as thoseboth represent high effort and low return.

    That said, in today’s internet, be cautious. While there can be some funny side effects of these convincing patterns, such as the “conspiracy” surrounding a non-existent movie in the ’90s (that often affect people who are Automatically Convinced by Reading) these can also have dangerous consequences. Ensure that you are clear on your purpose and intent when publishing any content.

    By understanding these simple patterns, you should be able to convert the maximum number of people to your product.

    Dec 19, 2017
    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
    How Everlywell's Julia Cheek Makes Big Decisions Quickly

    When Julia Cheek founded Everlywell in June 2015, she was, by her own estimation, “perhaps the least qualified person to start a health care startup.” And yet, as her Austin-basedat-home lab testing companyapproaches its fifth anniversary, she finds herself overseeing a staff of about 100 people, providing home tests for allergies, food sensitivities, thyroid conditions, and, as of May 2020, Covid-19. The company raised $50 million in its last round of funding and was listed at No. 3 on the Inc. 5000 regional ranking for Texas this year.

    In anInc. Real Talk: Business Rebootlivestream, Cheek, 36, spoke withInc. editor-at-large Tom Foster and took questions from viewers.Their conversation ranged fromhelping her team cope with quarantine to making big decisions. Here are some highlights.

    Think Big and Think Fast

    In May, Cheek and her board decided to give away $1 million to labs across the U.S.to help them develop a working test for Covid-19. For a startup still counting every dime, it wasn’t an easy check to write.However, Cheek saysthey made the decision quickly. “It took about an hour,” she says. “It was one of the fastest and easiest decisions made in the history of the company.”

    She knew that funding those labs would speed up development of an at-hometest. She also had to make decisions internally to offset that cost while doing everything possible to maintain head count. That meant scaling back every discretionary dollar her team could find–Goodbye, office coffee!–in order to do the right thing and keepher team. “I wanted to protect as many jobs as possible,” she says.

    “It was the right decisionmade at the right time,” she says now. A month later, she’s hiring.

    Look Out for Your People

    When asked how she deals with the challenges of running a companyfrom home (with a new baby) as well as whilewitnessing the protests in the streets, Cheek was quick to stress the importance ofmakingsure her colleagues are able to cope. “I worry like a mom about every one of our team members,” she says. That means asking herself how her team is doing all the time and asking herselfhow she can make their days better. Sometimes that means encouraging them to disconnect from Zoom or other digital platforms and take care of themselves. “Our primary focus is: What does every employee need for their mental health?” she says.

    As for her own self care, she’sbeen developingwellness routines, including taking many meetings while walking and doing her best to separate her home workspace from the rest of her house.

    The Funding Challenge

    Cheek spoke at length about the difficulties she encountered while seeking funding as a female founder, despite the fact that she went to Harvard Business School and had a strong network.

    “It was hard for me,” she says. “So you can imagine how hard it is for people of color, especiallywomen of color. I heard a lot of noes. What I learned is that it only takes one yes.” Among those yeseswas one on-air boost from Shark Tank‘s Lori Greiner, which doubled Everlywell’s sales overnight.

    Ultimately, Cheek says, people needto talk about funding obstaclesopenly and honestly and encourage entrepreneursand investors to confront theirbiases. “It’s important that founders hear stories and become part of the solution,” she says.

    Related:

    Jun 4, 2020

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