This theory was developed by event strategist, workplace “fixer,” and CEO and Founder of RDC Robyn Duda. She saw how many organizations created wellness initiatives to mask the real problem. The workforce at large is overworked, underequipped, and rarely compensated fairly. These are all massive stressors. Unfortunately, you can have all the wellness initiatives and so-called health perks, but it doesn’t make up for workers feeling undervalued.

Duda’s number one piece of advice? We should be looking at the “Return on Energy.” What does that mean exactly? Well, think about the time spent in meetings, the number of emails, drafts of presentations, and the toll it takes on an employee. But also (and likely more important) the number of moments that elicit epiphanies, connections deepened and even innovations uncovered—the more motivating moments. There is a diminishing return when the toll outweighs the motivation. That is where we need to be looking versus an EOY result. 

“Return on energy is the idea that energy spent has value,” said Duda. “Companies should measure this to understand the toll an output has on their human capital. People do not have an infinite amount of energy to expend, meaning there must be a value placed on their energy relative to the thing they are using it on. 

For example, we should look at the number of emails, time spent in meetings, drafts, v1s v2s, and the psychological toll something takes on an employee. And, we should compare that to the number of innovations created, epiphanies had, connections made, etc. 

What does a return on energy look like in action? “The first step should be showing your employees you value them,” said Duda. “It is a way of exercising personalization in the workplace. It’s an indicator of the potential burnout of top talent, as well as overall culture and workplace improvements. Mindsets and emotions are real in the workplace and a variable to growth for every employer.”

She added, “While work is a transaction—output for money—it’s affected by many outside variables. So having a pulse on key metrics like hours spent in meetings and number of emails in a day versus how someone is feeling (their emotion) could help employers understand where potential vulnerabilities lie in the overall employee experience.”

Duda’s energy hypothesis comes from her award-winning event strategist and experience designer work. She’s created event strategies for some of the most recognized brands in the world, including Coca-Cola, Spotify, Visa, and IBM. As a result, she has become known for thinking differently and creating bold change. And the goal at the end of the day is to harness growth for her clients. 

It’s this experiential touchpoint Duda found throughout her events career that she believes can make a difference in every workplace. 

“I’ve been on the strategy side of events for many years, exploring the intersection of design thinking and experience psychology,” said Duda. “Understanding more about the humans we design for, their motivations, their mindsets, and their emotions has opened my eyes to the impact of an experience.”

The post The One Thing Companies Should do to Increase Employee Loyalty appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Outdated or worn-out furniture can make even the most stylish room feel shabby and uninviting. Furthermore, old furniture is often less comfortable and functional than newer pieces.

When looking for a place to stay, hotel guests often look for unique experiences and value for their money. That’s why you need to meet their needs and provide them with excellent hospitality services. 

Upgrading your hotel furniture regularly is a wise investment that will pay off in the form of happy guests and increased bookings. 

In addition to attracting new guests, new furniture can create a more positive working environment for your employees, leading to improved morale and service. 

Also, you don’t have to have a huge budget to upgrade your hotel furniture. If you know where to look and how to choose a partner supplier or manufacturer, you can have functional, stylish, and comfortable furniture within a reasonable budget.

Ultimately, investing in high-quality hotel furniture is an investment in your business that will provide lasting benefits. 

Here are just a few of the many reasons why upgrading your hotel furniture is a wise investment: 

1. Better guest satisfaction

One of the most important aspects of running a successful hotel is ensuring guests are happy with their stay. Upgrading your furniture is one of the best ways to guarantee guest satisfaction. 

When guests are uncomfortable or unable to use the furniture in their room, they’re likely to have a negative experience and give your hotel a poor review. 

By providing guests with comfortable, stylish furniture, you’ll ensure they have a positive experience at your hotel and are more likely to return in the future. Customer retention is much cheaper than trying to attract new customers.

2. Increased profits

When guests are satisfied with their stay, they’re more likely to leave positive reviews online and recommend your hotel to others. This word-of-mouth advertising is invaluable for bringing in new business and boosting profits.

3. Brand personality

Upgrading your furniture allows you to design your hotel to reflect the brand personality that you want to impart. Brand personality is essential for leaving a great impression on your guests and making them remember your hotel.

Hotel guests will likely book again with a hotel brand they know, like, and trust. That’s possible when you make their stay memorable.

4. Connection with customers

The way you design your room allows you to connect with your customers. Customer preferences and needs evolve, so investing in new furniture to meet those factors helps your hotel stay relevant.

5. More efficient use of space

Aside from the room’s aesthetics, it also matters to customers that they can utilize the furniture optimally. Modern furniture pieces aren’t only stylish; they’re also highly customizable so that you can fit them strategically and efficiently in hotel rooms.

6. Improved staff productivity

High-quality furniture can also lead to increased productivity among your staff. If your employees are comfortable and have everything they need at their fingertips, they’ll be able to work more efficiently and provide better service to guests.

The bottom line

Upgrading your hotel furniture unfolds many benefits beyond the aesthetic appeal of hotel rooms. It allows you to provide a better and unique customer experience, improve your brand, boost profits, connect with customers, and improve staff productivity. In addition, you can upgrade your furniture without hurting your budget, and it will be a wise investment that will pay off in many ways.

The post Why Upgrading Your Hotel Furniture is a Wise Investment appeared first on Grit Daily News.

By leveraging the creativity of its community members and producing partners, $FLIX can generate revenue for film projects while at the same time increasing the token value for investors. And because $FLIX isn’t beholden to the old system of gatekeepers, they have the freedom to take creative risks, ultimately making the kinds of movies Hollywood is too afraid to make. 

So, how does it work?

$FLIX uses a percentage of every transaction to fund movie projects, then successful projects fuel interest in the coin, interest fuels volume, and volume funds the “film wallet.” Once a film, script, or concept is sold, money from that sale is used to buy back tokens and “burn” them. This makes the token deflationary: over time, there will be fewer and fewer tokens worth more and more. 

“At $FLIX, we believe that Web 3.0 is the meaning economy: community replaces clicks, and storytelling trumps algorithms.” Co-Founder Micho Rutare continues, “Crypto investors aren’t just looking at their bottom lines; in this era of the Great Resignation, people are looking to align their investments with their passions. So $FLIX is all about the story: the storytelling of the films, the story of the coin, and the story of how a community of film lovers, filmmakers, and crypto investors comes together to change the way.”  

$FLIX began as a meme coin, a hyped-up cryptocurrency. But while most meme coins are pump and dump schemes, Rutare and Rosenblatt intend to pump and not dump. Instead, they are building long-term value with our film projects and our community. And while they are prioritizing long-term value, they want to generate enough activity to make the coin an attractive short-term investment. 

In the short run, $FLIX is focused on developing a slate of projects, building value with the product rather than hype. Secondly, they plan to produce and release films, with community involvement along the way. Lastly, they want $FLIX to become a real currency, both in the metaverse and at brick-and-mortar theater chains. 

How does this change the landscape of crypto in general? With the recent contraction of the market, the speculative bubble of meme tokens and NFTs is coming to a close. As a result, investors are looking for real value and are more reluctant to throw money at whatever coin is mooning on a given day. “We believe that this current contraction is a lot like the Dot Com Bubble of the early 00s–it took the crash to clear the underbrush, paving the way for the FANG companies to define the Web2 era,” said Rutare. “$FLIX is well-positioned to be one of the giants of the Web3 economy, harnessing the power of the blockchain and using it to create real-world consumer experiences.”

Rutare added, “Ultimately, $FLIX will be a vertical filmmaking platform, generating revenue at every phase, from development through exhibition. For film finance, we want to do what Apple did for personal computing–to create a user-friendly consumer brand that eventually builds its own walled garden ecosystem.”

The post The “Sharknado” Creator Developed a Cryptocurrency Token Revolutionizing Film Financing  appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Do you feel that certain companies were better positioned for the Great Resignation because of how they were hired previously?  

“It’s clear the Pandemic has triggered or brought to light trends on how employees viewed their work previously lurking underneath the surface. For example, McKinsey found that two-thirds of US-based employees said that COVID-19 has caused them to reflect on their purpose in life and nearly half of those surveyed said they are reconsidering the kind of work they do because of the pandemic. With so many employees wanting to feel a purpose or values fit with their employer, companies focused on values-based hiring and engagement were obviously better positioned.”

“The key is learning from what has happened and changing how hiring is approached. For example, when companies hire intending to find the right personality type for the role, this creates a path for employees to feel engaged with the organization and thrive. The business will also be better equipped to engage with that employee and deal with paradigm-shifting events like COVID.” 

You say that you can fix the Great Resignation quickly. How? 

“Our investigations found that although managers recognize the need for a culture fit and believe in the benefits of a values-based recruitment process, implementing such a process is time-consuming and expensive. So Simply was created to fill this market gap. We have adapted proven methodologies into a simple software platform that makes values-based hiring easier and cheaper for a significantly wider market.”

In terms of hiring, what should companies/HR teams be doing?

“As mentioned, the Great Resignation has highlighted that many employees seek a job that aligns with their values and offers purpose. However, many recruitment processes and the recruitment tools available to managers focus on qualifications and experience in hiring, meaning they overlook this demand for values fit from candidates. So, the HR landscape has changed, and there is a gap between current HR technology tools and what candidates want, evidenced by the Great Resignation.”

What are three ways that companies should change their hiring process and why?

To meet the challenges of a now changed recruitment landscape, I would recommend companies consider the following:

1. Hire for values and purpose: In the words of Adam Nicoll, Group Marketing Director at Randstad UK, this is no longer a nice to have. If you’re not hiring for values and purpose, you’re just not going to attract and retain the best people.

2. Implement a diversity recruitment strategy: This is morally the right thing to do, but the research is detailed that this will help your company perform better and access a potential untapped talent pool.

3. Level up your HR technology game: I think we agree that the HR landscape and ‘world of work’ have changed in the last two years. If your technology hasn’t, then you’re being left behind. It’s that simple.

The recruitment landscape has changed, but our skills as companies and HR teams are still valid. We just need technology to help us bridge the gap to this new reality.

The post HR Expert Reveals How Companies Can Combat the Great Resignation appeared first on Grit Daily News.

But for the most successful business people, staying passionate is a staple of their everyday activity. It forms the basis of growth patterns that exceed their contemporaries. Dr. Wajiha Basir, a dental professional for 15 years and an experienced trainer, has shared how you can implement passion into your ventures with enlightening results:

Share passion between your professional and personal life

People with distinct private and public lives may often feel the need to position their level of interest firmly on one side. However, this approach could cause an imbalance that is unhealthy and unsustainable. 

Rather than being forced into a choice of one or the other, you can aim to be passionate about your life’s personal and professional aspects by considering expanding your business and looking into different franchise opportunities. “You don’t need to separate what goes on at home and work if you love both,” Dr. Basir said. 

If passion is abundant, you can treat both facets of life as mutually beneficial, resulting in enlightenment and prosperity.

Mentor the next generation

Tutelage or mentorship is commonly done in the twilight of your career, once your individual goals have been achieved. But some of the best teachers see tutoring as an opportunity for personal growth and for maintaining a passion for your profession. Teaching can be seen as conducive to self-fulfillment rather than its result.

The benefits of mentoring the next generation are threefold. “Becoming a trainer allows you to refine your skills while passing them on to new people,” Dr. Basir explained. “It also pushes you to be your best at all times as you have to set the standard for those you are teaching. Finally, it provides you with an opportunity to explore new things, which helps you grow and learn more about your field.”

These three advantages have the collective benefit of inciting a refreshed passion in your activity. One of Dr. Basir’s most notable aims is to inspire and guide fellow working mothers into realizing their potential in the thing they are passionate about. The desire to convince others in her position to follow their dreams is something that keeps Dr. Basir coming back to dentistry.

Get invested in your client experience

For some, the service to their clients begins and ends with the work they are obliged to complete. The problem this creates for passion is that the professional is no longer invested in their clients on a personal level and becomes isolated from the complete experience they are manifesting.

Putting up barriers between you and your clients may seem advantageous for efficiency, but it could come at the expense of your business’ appeal. Like the sharing of passion across your personal and professional lives, connection with clients should not be something you shy away from. Instead, escaping the stringencies of your job role can create an individualized appeal for each of your clients.

“Connect with your client first, and everything else should fall into place,” Dr. Basir said. In service-led industries, businesses can separate themselves by paying attention to their client experience as a whole. If standards rise and competition intensifies, you can set yourself apart through your passion.

The post Three Ways Passion Can Generate Growth for Your Business appeared first on Grit Daily News.

How Big is the Energy Drink Market?

Energy drink sales grew 12.6% in 2021 alone. With a total of $14 billion (USD) in energy drink sales, the industry value continues to grow last year. This sum is up from the industry total of $11 billion (USD) in 2017 – a difference that reveals astounding annual growth in addition to last year’s notable month-to-month growth in sales.

The top three selling energy drink brands for 2021, in descending order, were Red Bull, Monster Energy, and Bang Energy. Bringing in $3.26 billion (USD), and accounting for one-fourth of the global energy drink’s total revenue, Red Bull was the leading energy beverage brand last year. Its two extension brands, Red Bull Sugarfree and Red Bull Editions, taking fourth and fifth place respectively. Monster Energy almost matched Red Bull’s success, with an annual revenue of $3.23 billion (USD), taking second place. Lastly, Bang Energy brought in $1.2 billion (USD), reflecting a statistically significant 6.6% growth in sales last year alone.

Energy Shots are Declining

In a fiscal climb, energy drinks are savoring unprecedented success while energy shots are dwelling in an unprecedented low. The year 2021 saw energy shot sales totaled $824 million (USD). This reflected a 16% decline in sales from the previous year when energy shot sales reached $978 million (USD).  5-Hour Energy remains the most successful energy shot brand, with the company accounting for 88% of the industry market share. Reduced convenience store runs and situations that require impulsive energy boosts declined since the COVID-19 pandemic. These were two primary factors for the decline.

Pandemic stay-at-home orders kept consumers from purchasing energy drinks. Convenience stores are a primary source of revenue for energy beverage brands. A sales venue that accounts for 10% of bottled water sales, 10% of sports drink sales. Additionally, 27% of carbonated beverage sales, and 31% of energy drink sales, lockdown mandates kept customers away from this primary sales channel, and as a result, revenue away from energy drink brands. Post-lockdown gym reopenings, however, helped energy drink brands rise from the ashes, as sales skyrocketed and people eagerly enjoyed the world’s reopening.

Energy Drinks and the eSports Market

Energy drinks have recently found new financial fertility via the eSports industry. Gamers turn to caffeine to enhance their cognition, accelerate response time, maintain alertness, and ward off any fatigue, stabilizing their performance. Energy drinks have a market value of $1.8 billion (USD) in 2022 and 31.4 million eSports viewers each month. Brands find more relevance and expand brand loyalty by sponsoring the most successful eSports teams. Energy beverage company G Fuel has a $410 million sponsorship contract with team TSM, Rockstar Energy has invested $190 million in 100 Thieves, and Monster Energy has a $310 million sponsorship with Team Liquid. As more energy drink brands join the collaborative eSports trend, both industries benefit.

Harness the business of energy drinks, an industry proving to be powerful, and profitable, and find your power as a result.

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Trivium Packaging’s recently released 2022 Global Buying Green Report reveals that 86% of consumers among younger generations (under 44) showed a willingness to pay more for sustainable packaging. In contrast, more than half of consumers are “less likely” to buy products in harmful packaging.

Interestingly, a sustainability trend that most consumers wanted to see more of was refillable solutions. The report noted that 74% of consumers said they would be interested in buying products that come in refillable packaging. And 68% of consumers have chosen a product in the last six months based on its sustainability credentials.

Yes, consumers want products in recyclable packaging, but they also recognize the value of extending packaging life through reuse. Therefore, refillable packaging is a versatile and valuable solution for consumer products.

“The data in this year’s Buying Green report presents a strong case that transitioning to sustainable packaging is not only the right decision for the environment but also the right decision for any business,” said Jenny Wassenaar, Chief Sustainability Officer Trivium Packaging. “Metal packaging is perfectly aligned with a circular economy. Once produced, metals exist forever and can be used, reused, and recycled endlessly without losing quality.”

Brands already ahead of the curve are Petal—which offers stylish aluminum hand-soap dispensers that can be refilled with soap pods—and Three Main has taken a similar approach with home cleaning products. And Bubble Tree is a refillable bubble solution that makes its classic bubble-making product in colorful, kid-friendly aluminum packaging.

“Brands that take a more holistic approach to sustainability by making packaging material part of their story can help align perceptions with reality and strengthen their sustainability credentials,” said Trivium Packaging C.E.O. Michael Mapes. “The consumer demand for eco-friendly packaging is higher than ever, and the consumer behaviors, as a result, speak for themselves – businesses need to step up.”

This shift, despite consumers being less focused on sustainability during the pandemic, is likely due to the fact they were spending more time at home. This forced people to see more of their own waste and become aware of the volume of packaging associated with online purchases. In fact, according to the NielsenIQ Report Sustainable Business: The New Force to Be Reckoned With, “The pandemic spurred consumers to shop their values more than ever.”

The 2022 Buying Green Report is based on a survey of more than 15,000 consumers across Europe, North America, and South America, ranging in age, gender, and income distribution. The data collected through these surveys over the last three years provide keen insight into consumer trends related to sustainable packaging and includes the impact of the changing world (i.e., the pandemic) on behaviors and values.

Read the entire report here. 

The post New Study Reveals Consumers Want More Refillable Packaging appeared first on Grit Daily News.

In some cases, intentionally limiting certain aspects of development can lead to more sustainable use of resources. These cases are especially dire when companies receive large influxes of investment. Often it seems that pursuing pure growth, mostly through hiring practices, is the best course of action.

Unfortunately, there might not be enough opportunities to go around. There might not be enough scalability. Growth for the sake of growth leads only to wasted resources and difficulties down the road.

Scalability

Before any growth goals are pursued, a clear understanding of the scalability of business processes and services should be acquired. Several key factors that determine overall scalability:

• Market openness and clarity of focus. Ideal customer profiles (ICP) have to be developed either through existing data or by acquiring it. Market evaluations should then be performed to gain insight into possible avenues of expansion.

• Standardization of solutions. Only highly standardized and repeatable solutions are scalable. Each client might need some slight modifications; nevertheless, these should be the exception and not the rule.

• Space for expansion. Operations and products should have enough business opportunities that would entice a business to keep increasing their teams. There’s always more work to be done. However, ROI on some activities can run into quick diminishing returns.

These three factors are essential to any scalability and, in turn, growth. After some time, it often becomes obvious that some of these don’t improve as quickly as some would like to believe. Hiring can often be done much quicker than these factors improve.

Space for expansion, for example, is reliant on the ability to acquire new clients and capture new markets. These factors are highly influenced by marketing and sales performance but aren’t directly correlated to the number of employees working in these departments.

As such, ensuring scalability and the proper foundations are in place is the first step before pursuing growth, explosive or sustainable. The former, however, is often an erroneous approach as the factors don’t scale as well as explosive growth would ideally have it be.

Clarity of purpose

A key determinant in whether resources are and will be used effectively is clarity of purpose. In other words, all resources should have clearly predefined goals. These should be outlined as early as possible.

One area where I think a lot of businesses make a mistake is the hiring process. While it has gotten significantly better over the years, some businesses still opt to go for “hire first, decide later”. These issues are especially pressing when newer companies with strong financial backing enter the market.

Going by the previous analysis, these businesses often have little room for expansion, yet pursue growth through hiring processes. In turn, they run into diminishing returns while acquiring a high level of expertise. But that expertise has limited applicability.

Often, it is partly an issue of the overarching strategy not aligning with the smaller objectives, be they quarterly or yearly. If these are drafted correctly (i.e., progress is easily measurable, achieving each delivers clear value, etc.), it should spill over into the hiring practices.

With the strategy and smaller objectives in line, clear roles and responsibilities can be defined. If not enough resources are available, then the hiring process can begin. Such a process is definitely not as fun or as attractive as hiring first, being productive later, but it leads to fewer problems down the road.

Expanding outwards

All businesses expand over time, even if the daily operations remain the same. As the customer base grows, managing it requires an increasingly large amount of resources. These cases, however, are fairly easy to get right. Two of the more complicated instances are:

• Startups or fresh businesses. These are the most susceptible to chaotic growth and, potentially, mistakes. Resources are needed in all parts of the business, but it isn’t always clear how much. While the risks might be lower with third-party investments, these make it easier to “cover up” mistakes, which can be costly in the long run.

• Development of a new product or service. Moving away from established operations will often require either small scale reorganization or new personnel to take care of the project. Either way, resources must be reallocated, and hiring is usually necessary.

At Oxylabs, our long-held belief that experimentation leads to innovation has helped us develop a repeatable process for new products and services. We start with the seemingly obvious – defining the roles needed for any scaling.

Additionally, our new projects receive OKRs like any other already existing product. While we provide more leeway for them, quarterly goals help us benchmark growth against other services.

As all of our products and services will be at least tangentially related to our existing brand, our teams already have lots of overlapping experience that would be useful for the project. As such, we carefully evaluate how many people are needed and who would be available.

Projects, in some sense, start as part time ventures that are evaluated with that in mind. Slowly, as they become more successful, we start adding full time people to the project. Eventually, it becomes so big that it can branch out to be completely independent.

Such an approach saves us a significant amount of resources and potential heartbreak. Explosive growth can lead to cases where massive reorganization might be required, resulting in people being moved to projects they don’t enjoy or even in firings.

Conclusion

Explosive growth is possible and has a lot of potential. The cases where it is applicable, however, are few and far between. If implemented improperly, it can create a huge resource sink and cause many issues in the long run.

Therefore, taking things slow and pursuing sustainable growth is the right thing to do more often than not. It will save a lot of time, resources, and heartache. Finally, it will even show the project’s true potential even better as a lot of mistakes can be covered up by throwing money at them.

The post Explosive vs Sustainable Business Growth appeared first on Grit Daily News.

After two-plus years of living through a pandemic, a lot of us are starting to feel it. We’re exhausted. We’re overwhelmed. Many of us are overworked and stretched thin. So why are we ignoring our mental health? Why aren’t we paying attention to burnout?

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and while most people are aware that mental health is a “thing,” they don’t really know how to address it or treat it—or even how to stay mentally healthy. While mental illness is a serious medical concern, it isn’t treated with the same urgency as a broken arm or chest pains. Oftentimes, mental health concerns are ignored or downplayed—and it’s becoming a problem.

That’s why mental health apps are now such a big trend, and why they’re paving the way to better managing burnout in the workplace.

According to the World Health Organization, burnout is a syndrome resulting from workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It’s characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy. Pandemic-related stressors like work-from-home complexities, social health needs, childcare concerns, and teammate turnover likely won’t stop anytime soon, so stress-reducing measures should be top of mind for employers.

We’re managing multiple things at once, from the usual family and friend-related responsibilities to work schedules, to a prolonged and potentially life-threatening health scare—and all while pivoting regularly based on changing global health recommendations and dealing with the Great Resignation. It’s a lot to handle, and sometimes we simply can’t do it alone.

That’s why we need to think of mental health holistically, not just in terms of work-related burnout, but in terms of how every component of our lives plays into stressors (or stress-relievers), and they all need to be taken into consideration. One solution to help get a holistic picture of one’s mental health is to track mental health patterns 24/7. It seems impossible to do without having a personal psychologist following you around, but one company is using tech to try to accomplish this goal. 

The Behavidence Android app takes advantage of modern consumer technology (your smartphone) to accurately diagnose mental health flare-ups. Behavidence uses machine learning-based tools to detect and assist with remote monitoring and management of mental health conditions through passive digital biomarkers. 

The app is designed to predict disorders such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more by assessing patterns in consumer behavior. The digital phenotyping measurement-based outcomes of the app are the first of their kind, and Behavidence hopes that having a wealth of data to measure in relation to mental health diagnoses will improve psychology and psychiatric research—leading to more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans.  

From a consumer perspective, the app can be used by individuals to monitor their own behaviors, making them more self-aware, and empowering them to seek medical attention as they see negative trends. Employees can monitor changes in their mental health by reviewing their daily mental health similarity scores. As an employee experiences mental decline, the app will begin to show changes in the digital behavioral metrics, in some cases, before the employee even notices the symptoms.

When it comes to managing stressful situations for those that do not currently suffer from a mental health condition, prevention is key. Cue: Mindfulness, which may just be one of the hottest trends of 2022. Through meditation—breathing exercises intended to center your body and mind—mindfulness can be achieved. But you can also practice mindfulness simply by being present and not allowing your mind to wander to past or future worries. Once you learn how to clear your mind and focus on being in the moment, you’re one step closer to avoiding burnout.

New to the mindfulness movement? There are apps for that, too. Apps like Headspace and Calm partner well with Behavidence and offer employees guided meditations and tools to support them through burnout moments. With calming sounds, peaceful visuals, and centering your thoughts, you’re able to get to a better mental space—and that’s good not just for employees but for everyone around them.

Employees are going above and beyond to avoid the burnout and stressors of past years. But tracking and understanding mental health is a science, and we need to start treating it like one. Apps that use digital phenotyping to track patterns over time allow users and their physicians to better understand the intricacies of mental health. With the right data in hand, and an urgency to achieve mental wellness, we can all make proactive decisions to improve our quality of life and to better support those around us. 

The post How Mental Health Apps Are Helping Employees Better Manage Burnout appeared first on Grit Daily News.

If you’re looking for books to help you grow your business and increase sales, we suggest looking to the experts and reading what they’re reading. After all, they’re successful for a reason.

We chatted to one such expert, Abbie White, founder, and CEO of Sales Redefined with a client list of some of Australia’s leading banks, tech, and telco companies. Before starting Sales Redefined in 2017, Abbie managed a $100 million-plus portfolio with leading tech giant IBM and has since become a leading voice in the sales and marketing community.

As an avid reader, Abbie has done the leg work to scour the best business and sales books for inspiration and fresh techniques. Here are her Top 7 book recommendations to get you started on your sales journey. 

1. The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies and is one of the leading teachers in sales and marketing. With a 4.6 rating on Amazon, this is a great book to start with.

“This book offers highly practical sales strategies,” Abbie says. “My favorite concept out of the book is the Dream 100 which identifies who would be your dream 100 clients, and then creates regular touchpoints with those clients. Chet Holmes also talks about needing pig-headed discipline if you are to win with sales.”

 2. Sales EQ, by Jeb Blount

‘Emotional intelligence’ is the new buzzword in sales and marketing and what many experts describe as the key to sales success. If improving your ROI is at the core of your mission, this one is for you.

“For a long time, people thought sales was just about relationships and product,” says Abbie. “There’s substantial research these days showing how high-performance salespeople are higher in EQ.”

 3. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

New York Times bestselling authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne are professors of Strategy at INSEAD. If you’re looking to pivot your business in a different direction or shift to a new strategy, there is no better hands to be in.

As Abbie says, Blue Ocean Strategy offers readers a new strategy that moves away from the ‘red ocean’ where everyone is fighting with each other for clients.

“Fighting in the ‘red ocean’ essentially boils down to price,” Abbie says. “If it’s only about price, it’s a race to the bottom. But through carving out a “blue ocean” you are in an uncontested marketplace where you can win.”  

4. How to Make Millions With Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy

Who doesn’t love a catchy title? Reminiscent of 90’s self-help books, this is an oldie but a goodie with lots of practical tools and real-life case studies.

Abbie says, “It’s an old-school book although the strategies are easily modernized. A lot of it is about the little things that have a big impact.”

5. Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson

Russell Brunson is the founder of ClickFunnels, a million-dollar company and one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world. Here, Russell shares his secrets to his success, a worthy bible when you’re in need of inspiration.

Abbie says, “In my opinion, Russell Brunson is one of the best thought leaders globally on sales funnels.”

6. Chapter One – You Have the Power to Change Stuff by Daniel Flynn

This is the ultimate playbook for entrepreneurs just starting out. Its raw, grassroots approach is both entertaining and inspiring. If this book doesn’t empower you to start now, nothing will.

“There are just so many lessons in this book,” Abbie says. “It’s about how you make a massive impact, how you cut through the noise, how you get traction on sales but with absolutely no budget and from ground zero. Also, it’s about doing good along the way.”

7. The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Jim Huling and Sean Covey

If you’re looking for a tried and tested method, a ‘winning formula’ for success, this is where you start. The 4 disciplines set out in this book, from notable and award-winning authors and business leaders, have been tested and refined by over 100,000 teams from all over the world.

“Often, when mistakes are made, it’s not for lack of strategy or good ideas, but rather an error at the execution stage,” says Abbie. “This book gives you the tools to execute your well-considered strategy to ensure the best possible outcomes”.

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