Startups are notorious for having long hours, a lot of bumps in the road and many projects occurring simultaneously. When times get tough and your team is down, here are seven ways to keep them motivated. In many ways, startup employees are easy to motivate early on in a company’s life. Like founders, the earliest team members are hungry for a challenge, passionate about their product or solution and eager for knowledge and financial rewards. Nonetheless, it takes a significant amount of time for a successful company to develop, sell and iterate. Most companies are not Mailbox (which famously sold to Dropbox a month after launching). This leaves founders (and startup managers) with a big question: After months or even years of late nights and weekends, how do you keep your team motivated? Based on my two years of managing experience with Travefy -- an online group travel planner -- here are seven budget-friendly tips to keep your startup team motivated. Related: 10 Insights on Building, Motivating and Managing an Exceptional Team 1. Reiterate your vision. Then, reiterate your vision. When starting your company, you likely recruited talent not with the promise of dazzling six-figure paychecks or state-of-the-art facilities but rather with a strong vision of your company or product. The pay cuts and long hours are made worthwhile because of a belief in what you’re building and a desire to be a part of something new. Nonetheless, as time goes on, many founders stop sharing their vision or roadmap as they themselves get into the weeds. Don’t fall into this trap! Constantly share with your team the ever-changing visions and goals of the company. Remind them of what you’re all building towards and let them feel the excitement. 2. Remember that equity aligns interests. To this end, make sure that all interests are aligned by giving your team true company ownership -- through an employee stock options plan. Equity changes the employee mindset from “going to a job” to “being an owner.” This feeling of ownership can be an intense motivator throughout the long startup road. 3. Never create false urgency. Credibility is established over time and lost in an instant. False urgency or deadlines are a huge deterrent to morale and an easy way to lose credibility. Related: 7 Motivational Quotes Entrepreneurs Need to Live By By sharing your vision and roadmap, as well as ownership, you can organically ensure everyone understands the race against cash burn that all startups face. Don’t create burnout and distrust. Save those chips for the real times an insane deadline pops up -- because they will. 4. Recognize the power of food. Among the countless extrinsic motivators, food is inexpensive, universal and easy to manage. A weekly team lunch (or dinner for staying late) is a relative drop in the bucket compared to the goodwill and motivation it will create. Moreover, having food is also literally a productivity booster. The time employees would normally spend leaving to buy and eat food will now be spent as team bonding and a good meal will keep your team alert for the remainder of their daily tasks. As a note, this does not mean you need to hire a Google-style executive chef. At Travefy, we’ve had fun team barbecues with hot dogs and chips for eight people for less than $10 total. 5. Celebrate wins. While every day feels like a race from one project deliverable to the next, take the time to celebrate wins and milestones. Whether it’s a big development release, a customer-engagement milestone, or even a new skill mastered by a teammate, acknowledge it. Additionally, celebrating milestones helps put the overarching progress your team has undoubtedly made into perspective, which can be difficult on the day to day. 6. Plan non-work “team days”. From free things like a day in the park or an in-office video game night to budget friendly golf or beach outings, take the time to plan social “team days”. Everyone needs time to rejuvenate and social activities encourage friendships among coworkers. Don’t forget to invite families to team days or even those boyfriends and girlfriends who are also affected by long working days. 7. Be flexible . Look for opportunities to be accommodating to your team. This not only shows you trust your employees but allows people to focus on work product – the most important thing If it’s ever helpful for your team, let employees do things like work from home, time-shift hours or take an ad-hoc family day. Happy employees, who feel like their company has their best interests at heart, make for productive employees.
Mortgage Applications Have Biggest May Collapse Since Financial Crisis Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/22/2013 12:58 -0400 Ben Bernanke Exchange Traded Fund recovery It seems that the recent rise in interest rates, instead of the typical (pre-depression) behavioral tendency to make people nervous and rush to lock in low rates , has once again stalled any hope of an organic housing recovery occurring. While the reams of hard data show that the housing recovery remains a fast-money investment-driven enigma ( here , here , and here ) - as opposed to real confidence-driven house-buying; we are still told day after day that housing is the backbone of the economy (despite construction jobs languishing and affordability plunging again). The fact of the matter is that the last 2 weeks have seen mortgage applications plunge at their fastest rate for this time of year (a typically busy time) since the financial crisis began . But that doesn't matter because housing must be recovering because the homebuilder ETF is up 2% today... January and February we saw the rate rises (blue line dropping) spark a renewed (more behaviorally normal) interest in locking in low rates and buying... but since then the relationshio has invferted once again as the Bernanke put on bonds has now found its way into the real world. The last 2 weeks have seen rates rise and mortgage apps plunge... at the fastest rate for this time of year since the crisis began... What could possibly go wrong? Charts: Bloomberg Average: 4 Your rating: None Average: 4 ( 7 votes) Tweet - advertisements - VectorVest Stock Analysis. Find out Whether a Stock is a Buy, Sell or Hold. Get your Free Stock Analysis simply by clicking here! Login or register to post comments 10635 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: 2012 Year In Review - Free Markets, Rule of Law, And Other Urban Legends David Stockman On The Fed's Path Of Destruction Why The UK Trail Of The MF Global Collapse May Have "Apocalyptic" Consequences For The Eurozone, Canadian Banks, Jefferies And Everyone Else No Hints Of QE In Latest Bernanke Word Cloud "The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Madhouse…..Yet Again!"
Forget Class-Warfare; It's Age-Warfare We Should Worry About Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/10/2012 13:52 -0400 Demographics Savings Rate As class-warfare implicitly breaks out - trumpeted by our political leaders - it seems that there is another, much more relevant, trend that is occurring that strikes at the heart of our nation. With Friday's jobs number still fresh in our minds, Citi's Steve Englander takes a look at one small slice of the demographics subject and found a rather concerning and little discussed fact. Employment-to-population ratios among older individuals have gone up in recent years, in contrast to the so-called prime-aged 25-54 cohort, where employment-to-population is much lower than earlier . It seems the real divide in this nation is not between rich and poor but old and young - as the 55-plus (and even more 65-plus) are forced to stay in the workplace as retirement remains a dream (thanks to ZIRP and Keynesianism's excess crises from boom-to-bust leave median wealth well down - even if the rich are 'ok'). Via Steve Englander of CitiFX, Figure 1 shows the percentage point change in the employment to population for the three age groups since 2007. One characteristic which is striking is that the employment-to-population ratios for older people based very quickly after the financial crisis hit . In fact, it barely moved in 2007-09 among the 55+ age group. The trend in the 25-54 age group is more sideways than up so far. (As a side comment, it suggests that the drop in the overall employment-to-population probably has a modest demographic component since the lower participation rate of the elderly is being offset by the additional jobs they are finding.) It is hard to tell what is driving this upturn in older worker participation. We suspect it is a combination of: pure demographics – older people are healthier than in the past; structural retirement issues – it is hard to retire at 65 (or younger) and beyond 80 when the gross national savings rate averages around 15% and the net national savings rate around 3% (and negative since Q4 2008!); the wealth effect – even if QE3 has propped up asset prices, personal wealth is still far off where it was at the beginning of 2008. For the USD the increase in older people’s employment is probably a modest positive rather than a negative. Compare two situations: a) early retirement and consumption out of wealth and; b) later retirement and consumption out of production rather than wealth. The imbalance between national consumption and production (often called absorption) is lower in the second case than the first. If the trend to spend out of income rather than wealth continues, the US current account balance would tend to fall. That said, the actual USD impact thus far is probably modest since the actual shifts are small. A sharper increase in participation rates among the elderly could contribute a stronger USD effect . The second conclusion is that this may be another avenue by which QE weakens the USD . A big positive impact of QE is via the wealth affect because QE forces lower the discount factor that is applied to any stream of returns. If this pure wealth effect supports consumption because individuals who feel richer consume a portion of their wealth, we have exactly the opposite effect – more consumption but no additional production. This would increase external funding needs . Once could also argue that the lowering interest rates also discourages the inflow of capital, so successful QE will very likely be a USD negative, even if the weaker USD is not the explicit intention of the Fed. (As a last concern, there is the dependence of this wealth on a low discount factor rather than faster topline growth, but we will leave this aside for now.) Average: 3.666665 Your rating: None Average: 3.7 ( 3 votes) Tweet Login or register to post comments 10410 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: America's Demographic Cliff: The Real Issue In The Coming, And All Future Presidential Elections Two Reasons Why the Global Economy Will Slow and Government Promises to Retirees Will be Broken Guest Post: The Chart Of The Decade The twin lost decades in housing and stocks The US Labor Market Is In A Full-Blown Depression
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