Staying fresh has always been about three related things: staying mentally fresh for work; staying healthy; and making sure I have enough time for myself that's not about work. All of this plays into what Stephen Covey calls “Sharpening the Saw,” in his books The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit—both worth reading.
I was reminded recently of one of my favorite entrepreneur sayings: What drives me nuts isn't the inevitable presence of highs and lows of running a new company; it's when they happen at the same time.
It's one thing to get used to the roller coaster ride of running a startup. That's part of the fun and the challenge of it all. There are great moments when everything's working beautifully. Your strategy is proving to be spot-on. Your team is executing brilliantly. Your biggest client renews and gives you a testimonial. Then there are the dark moments of despair. You're running out of cash. The new product release is behind schedule. A competitor steals a top client. No one lives for the lows but you at least grow to anticipate them and realize that “this, too, shall pass.”
The thing I can never get used to is when those highs and lows occur simultaneously. It just seems unfair. Let me enjoy the good news—whatever it is—for at least a day or two before clocking me with something terrible! But perhaps that's just another, even more poignant part of the humbling process that comes with running a startup.
The best way to handle the stresses of the highs and lows is to keep yourself fresh! One analogy I tend to use around the topic of keeping myself fresh is about running shoes. I usually get new running shoes every three to six months, depending on how much mileage I'm logging. I find the same thing every time: I may not realize I'm uncomfortable running in the old shoes but the minute I put the new ones on, I realize just how far the old ones had deteriorated and just how much better life is in the new ones. Same model shoe—just a fresh pair. I run faster, stronger and happier.
I often find that small tweaks to renew and refresh existing processes, relationships, thought patterns and work product make an enormous difference in the energy I bring to work and in the quality of the work I do. Recently, for example, I had two such events.
First, I did my periodic overhaul of my Operating System. I changed some categories and formatting, rethought some items, cleaned out dead ones, added some new ones. Voila! I went from semi-ignoring the system to running my priorities by it once again. I've had my most productive week in a long time.
Second, I completely rethought the dynamics of my relationship with someone on the team. It had grown stale. Check-in meetings weren't interesting or productive any more, just perfunctory. We sat down and crafted a new way of working together, a new list of topics we were going to tackle together that added more value to the organization. It was like a breath of fresh air.
These were minor tweaks, not major overhauls. And yet, they were as valuable—and refreshing—as a new pair of running shoes.
I keep myself mentally fresh for work by maintaining a basic level of self-discipline. Having my act together in small ways makes me feel like I have my act together in all ways. It's a little like the “Broken Windows” theory of policing formulated by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the early 1980s: if you crack down on graffiti and broken windows, you stop more violent crime, in part because the same people commit small and large crimes and in part because you create a more orderly society in visible, if sometimes a bit small and symbolic, ways.
These are some of the ways I apply the “Broken Windows” theory to my own life and work as a CEO:
I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. A little self-discipline goes a long way at work—and in life!
Besides working on self-discipline, I also try to keep mentally fresh by exercising my work brain in nonwork ways. Let me give you a couple of examples of that.
First, I like to spend time mentoring other entrepreneurs. I do this occasionally in formal ways via programs like TechStars or SeedCamp but I've done this informally for probably a dozen different entrepreneurs over the years. Even the occasional networking breakfast with a new CEO who knows people in common with me counts. While I hope my time spent with other entrepreneurs is useful for them, they're also useful for me. They help me generate good, specific ideas for my own business. I think I come away from every single meeting I have with any entrepreneur with at least one new to do for myself and my team at Return Path. There's nothing quite like seeing how another company or entrepreneur operates to spur on good thinking. Second, these meetings help me to crystallize my own thoughts and ideas. Much like writing my blog and this book, problem/solution sessions with other entrepreneurs force me to condense a cloud of ideas down to a simple sentence or paragraph.
Second, I try to focus my extracurricular time on helping organizations with the challenges that I'm most used to working in and around professionally. Earlier in my career, that meant I was helping organizations understand and use technology or online marketing and communication more effectively. One of these organizations was the golf course where I play and the other was my cousins' new wine store. Through both experiences, I had to define business requirements, work with vendors from selection through contract and then work with the vendor and the organization on deployment and process change. Both bits of work were directly useful for me to take lessons back and apply them to our processes and work with clients at Return Path, because I was suddenly The Client as opposed to my usual role as The Vendor. The learnings from the other side of the table are incredibly valuable and kept me mentally fresh.
PetCareRx CEO (and Amateur Positive Psychologist) Jonathan Shapiro on Ensuring Your Own Happiness
Jonathan Shapiro, three-time CEO of Lillian Vernon, MediaWhiz and now PetCareRX, is currently getting his master's degree in positive psychology—on the side! Here, he offers some great advice about staying fresh and happy on the job.
Entrepreneurship is a noble endeavor. Entrepreneurs are society's creators and they put their financial and emotional lives on the line for the creative process. While noble, entrepreneurship is hard. Even when they succeed, all new businesses will have to overcome numerous challenges. Having decided to jump into this noble arena, the key to staying fresh and energized is enjoying the journey.
Research can help make your travels most rewarding. Over the past decade, world renowned researchers like Martin Seligman, Chris Peterson, Barbara Fredrickson, and Sonja Lyubomirsky have led an explosion in the scientific understanding of what leads to human flourishing. This science makes it clear that our well-being and emotional energy depend not only on achievement but also on good relationships, engagement, positive affect (i.e., a little fun), and meaning. Following this science suggests a few travel tips to help you along your entrepreneurial expedition.
While not a psychologist or social scientist, perhaps Teddy Roosevelt said it best.
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. (Author's note: I had selected this quote for the epigram to the book before seeing Jonathan's contribution—it's so good that it's worth printing twice in the same book.)
If you have jumped into the entrepreneurial arena, you are “daring greatly” to serve a “worthy cause”—the creation of something new. Remember to enjoy the journey, travel with friends, learn along the way, celebrate the wins and make your business about something great.
Jonathan Shapiro, CEO, PetCareRx
I had breakfast with a relatively new CEO the other day who said one of the things he was struggling with was being tired and feeling overworked. I told him that one of the things I make sure I do, come hell or high water, is to exercise at least three times per week and usually four or five times. He said he used to be a serious athlete but that he had stopped exercising when he started the business and asked me how I could afford those three hours per week to exercise. I asked him how he could afford not to spend that time!
There's a virtual cycle that comes from being in shape. You have more energy. You think more clearly. You eat more healthfully and drink less. You sleep much better at night. Of course, the opposite is also true: there's a vicious circle of being out of shape. You don't sleep as well, so you are more dependent on caffeine. You're not as focused during the workday. You probably eat and drink more, later at night. All of which leads to not sleeping well another night—and then the cycle repeats.
I try to think of the three hours of exercise every week as an investment in my own productivity. Here's my quick and dirty math on my “investment” of three hours per week of working out:
Is there anyone out there that doesn't think you're 6 percent more productive when you're in shape? I'm not even factoring in the side benefit of (most likely) waking up earlier in the morning and getting a jump on your day as part of regular exercise. Or the fact that people who exercise need less sleep.
All that said, regular exercise doesn't just impact your productivity and give you more energy; it helps keep you healthy. Obviously, there is more to staying healthy than just exercise but it's a good start!
Union Square Hospitality Founder and CEO Danny Meyer on Balancing Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit
Danny Meyer is one the most successful restaurateurs in the world and someone I've had the pleasure of knowing a bit over the years. In a field famously dominated by hotheads and egomaniacs, he's found a way to strike that elusive “work-life” balance—or, rather, to move past it toward something that's actually achievable.
Like every CEO, I started failing at “balancing work and home” long before I became a CEO. If I had to assign a start date to that particular failure, it would probably be 1985: at the age of 27, after a few months as an assistant manager at Pesca in Manhattan and a few more months of culinary training in Italy and Bordeaux, I decided to open my first restaurant, Union Square Cafe. The response was universal: “You're nuts!”
They might have been right. Restaurants are a complex business and I didn't know anything about that business when I opened my first one. I just had a hunch: the key was treating customers right. In 1992, my hunch was validated when Union Square Cafe won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Service. The naysayers were wrong about my first restaurant, so I gave them something else to naysay about: a second restaurant. To further complicate matters, my wife, Audrey and I had just had our first child. It didn't take long for the chorus to start again: “You're nuts!”
Perhaps, but I kept going. Within a few years, I had four restaurants and three kids. When I get to four restaurants and four kids, Audrey informed me that there weren't going to be any more kids. There were still going to be more restaurants. There was going to be something else. In 2005, around the time I opened The Modern, I decided to take on a new challenge: writing a book. A business book. I knew what everybody would say, so I didn't tell anybody. Not my family. Not my staff. I wrote the book in secret, on flights and on the subway. Setting the Table was another success—but it was time to admit that I had gone nuts.
For two decades, I'd been trying to achieve that elusive “work/home balance.” I never could. There was never enough of me to go around. I wasn't fully present at home because I was anxious about work and I expected my staff to read my mind when I was anxious about not spending more time at home. Finally, I found a new path. Balance is important but “work” and “home” are the wrong categories.
What you must keep in balance are your “body,” “mind,” “heart,” and “spirit.” If those are out of balance, no startup CEO—nobody at all, for that matter—can achieve their maximum potential. More important, you can cater to all four at work and at home.
Today, I can be fully present for my staff when I'm at the office, for my customers when I'm at one of the restaurants and for my family when I'm at home. I can run alongside Riverside Drive with my wife, shut off my thoughts after a difficult day and serve body, mind, heart, and spirit at once. Neglect them and all you can do is try to buy your way out. Eventually, the cost will be too high.
Danny Meyer, Founder and CEO, Union Square Hospitality
Exercise is a perfect segue to “me time”: time that you're not spending working or actively thinking about work. It's impossible to not have work running in the background at some level. My concept of “me time” has been pretty straightforward over the years, though it has gotten more difficult, along with the rest of my time management, as my company and my family have gotten larger. These things aren't necessarily right for everyone but I do my best to:
As a CEO, you can always do one more thing. Send one more email. Read one more document. Sometimes you just need to draw the line, go home and stop working! The world we operate in is so dynamic that it's nearly impossible to ever feel like you're completely on top of your job. There's always more to be done and the trick to doing it well is knowing when to say “no” and take time for yourself.
Management Moment
Be Vulnerable
Brad Feld has a great opening to a post on his blog with this same title:
We are told that leaders must be strong. They must be confident. They must be unflinching. They must hide their fear. They must never blink. They cannot be soft in any way.
Bullshit.
It's true that sometimes, some leaders need to be unflinching. If the president of the United States were to tell one of our enemies that he's scared of them, we would have a serious national security problem on our hands. Most of the time, CEOs gain much more by being vulnerable than they give up.
I talk in a few places in this book about the value of admitting mistakes, which is one form of vulnerability. Another form of vulnerability is simply saying, “I don't know” when posed with a tough question. Yet another is to let a colleague in on your emotions about a particularly tough decision you have to make or your reaction to something that adversely impacted your company. There are even more extreme examples as well: although I certainly didn't plan on it, I once actually started to tear up in a development session with my senior team when discussing a couple of aspects of my nonwork life.
What all these things have in common is the presentation of CEO as Human Being. They make it okay for everyone around you to also be human beings. They do as much to create an environment of trust as anything else you can do.
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