move over, silicon valley: utah has...

BRINGING INNOVATION TO MARKET

Move Over, Silicon Valley: UtahHas Arrived

When it comes to staggering sums of venture capital raised in 2014,there's Utah, and then there's everyone else.

Senior writer, Inc. IlanMochari! @" 2 COMMENTS

IMAGE: Getty Images

There's a reason HBO called its TV-series parody of startup culture Silicon Valley and notUtah. Silicon Valley, in every sense, is still where it's at, if the "it" in question is apreponderance of venture-capital-backed tech startups. Take, for example, these VCstats, courtesy of the Associated Press. The dollar amounts indicate VC funds investedin tech startups in the first nine months of 2014:

1. San Francisco, $9.32 billion, 506 deals

BY ILAN MOCHARI

Move Over, Silicon Valley: Utah Has Arrived http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/silicon-valley-utah.html

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2. San Jose, California (Silicon Valley), $3.78 billion, 237 deals3. New York City, $3.05 billion, 272 deals4. Boston, $1.05 billion, 158 deals5. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California (Silicon Beach), $768 million, 105 deals6. Oakland, California, $510 million, 41 deals7. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington, $471 million, 56 deals88.. PPrroovvoo--OOrreemm,, UUttaahh,, $$446622 mmiilllliioonn,, 99 ddeeaallss9. Washington, D.C., $456 million, 77 deals10. Chicago, $402 million, 57 deals11. Austin-San Marcos, Texas, $315 million, 58 deals1122.. SSaalltt LLaakkee CCiittyy--OOggddeenn,, UUttaahh,, $$227755 mmiilllliioonn,, 1166 ddeeaallss

Who's number one? San Francisco. Who's number two? Silicon Valley. Surprise, surprise.But why did I bold the Utah regions? Mainly because in Utah, the dollar-per-dealaverages were staggering. Look at it this way:

11.. PPrroovvoo--OOrreemm,, UUttaahh,, $$5511..33 mmiilllliioonn ppeerr ddeeaall aavveerraaggee2. San Francisco, $18.4 million per deal average33.. SSaalltt LLaakkee CCiittyy--OOggddeenn,, UUttaahh,, $$1177..22 mmiilllliioonn ppeerr ddeeaall aavveerraaggee 4. San Jose, California (Silicon Valley), $15.9 million per deal average5. Oakland, California, $12.4 million per deal average6. New York City, $11.2 million per deal average7. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington $8.4 million per deal average8. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California (Silicon Beach), $7.3 million per deal average9. Chicago, $7.1 million per deal average10. Boston, $6.6 million per deal average11. Washington, D.C., $5.9 million per deal average12. Austin-San Marcos, Texas, $5.4 million per deal average

It paints a different picture, does it not? Mind you, paeans to Utah's entrepreneur-friendly culture are nothing new. Nor are the leadership lessons you can cull fromMormon principles. Yet the astronomical per-deal averages in Utah indicate somethingbolder is afoot.

One entrepreneur in an ideal position to assess how Utah has (and hasn't) changed inrecent years is Todd Pedersen, founder and CEO of Vivint, a provider of smarthome-security technologies based in Provo. Pedersen, 45, started his first companywhen he was 22. After dropping out of Brigham Young University, he sold pest-controlproducts out of a trailer. Within a year he had 80 employees.

Seven years later, Pedersen--armed with firsthand wisdom about running a company


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and selling technology into homes--founded APX Alarm. APX eventually became Vivint,a $527 million business with more than 7,000 employees. In 2012, the Blackstone Groupacquired Vivint for more than $2 billion, an acquisition Pedersen's bio calls "the largesttech buyout in Utah history." Moreover, the Vivint Solar division went public a few weeksago.

I asked Pedersen for his take on why Utah's 2014 VC deals were so ginormous. "Thecompanies that get funded here are actual companies," he says. He cites Qualtrics,Vivint's neighbor in Provo, as an example.

Specifically, Qualtrics--a maker of customer analytics software founded in2002--received $150 million in Series B funding in September. Its Series A round of $70million came in 2012. In other words, Qualtrics was around for a decade before it took acent of VC loot. The VCs weren't even knocking until 2009. That long wait is a far cryfrom anything you'd see parodied on Silicon Valley.

"They're getting VC money, but they're way beyond startup phase," observes Pedersenof Utah's VC recipients. This, he adds, is what often happens to Utah tech companies:The VC heavies only show up after you've established years of revenue, profit, andhappy customers.

The per-deal sums are huge because the companies--by the time they receivethem--have major payrolls and products to support. Qualtrics, for example, had $48million in revenue and 300 employees when it received its Series A round. It was wellbeyond napkin-scrawled ideations and fail-fast iterations. Thus it was also a safe bet forany VC to make.

Another entrepreneur who's been down this road is Josh James. In 1996, heco-founded Omniture, a web analytics and online marketing company based in Orem.Omniture went public in 2006. It was sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion in 2009. In 2010,James founded Domo, a maker of business intelligence software based in SiliconSlopes, Utah.

While Domo has raised $250 million in capital thus far--including $125 million in Series Cfunding earlier this year--James believes Utah is "a long way from VCs spraying andpraying" like they should be, given the promising startups in Utah's midst. He believesthese startups "could be growing so much faster," but in the blink of an eye their Silicon

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Valley competitors have raised millions--and the race is effectively over before it'sbegun.

James has no qualms with how things turned out for Omniture. But leaving aside thatsuccessful outcome, he cannot quite forget how Omniture--when it was a startup--endured a needless three-year wait before receiving the venture capital it warranted. Heknew he was hardly the only Utah entrepreneur who felt slighted by the Silicon ValleyVC mainstream. So he founded Silicon Slopes, a promotional nonprofit to help with thebranding of Utah's tech community, "as a way for us to highlight how much is reallygoing on out here," he says.

"Ten years ago, [the Utah tech scene] wasn't getting any of the press," he adds. Despitethe successes of Vivint, Qualtrics, Omniture, and others, James still believes there's ageneral ignorance about Utah's entrepreneurial ecosystem. To underscore this notion,James cites the list I included at the top of this article. "Even ranking Provo-Orem andSalt Lake as separate entities highlights that there's still a lacking in people'sunderstanding," he says.

To his point, not one entrepreneur or investor I spoke to for this story even remotelyconsidered Provo-Orem and Salt Lake City as distinct or separate metro areas.Unanimously, they asserted that Utah's entrepreneurial community was statewide. Towit, Orem and Salt Lake City are only 40 miles apart. Los Angeles and Long Beach,treated as one entity on the fundraising list, are about 25 miles apart.

James adds that had Utah's two metro areas been considered as one entity, it would'veranked sixth on the list, ahead of Seattle, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

Taken from a national perspective, Salt Lake City, in particular, has emerged as whatCBRE, the commercial real estate company, calls a "high-value" market. "There's a largepool of high-tech companies and employees in that market, and you have a relativelylow cost of labor and of commercial office rent," summarizes CBRE's Colin Yasukochi.

As a comparison, San Francisco rents are roughly three times higher and wages are 50percent higher, he notes. Here, per CBRE's data, is how Salt Lake City's commercialrents stack up to those of a few other metro areas (prices are per square foot):

Manhattan: $65San Francisco: $59Silicon Valley: $43Boston: $32Los Angeles: $32Seattle: $30


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Salt Lake City: $20

Of course, the cost of office space is but one factor in determining an ideal startuplocation. You also need to be near top tech talent. To that end, Utah has a few distinctadvantages. For one thing, it is now on what many consider to be its third generation ofserious tech entrepreneurs.

The first generation spans from the late '60s through the '80s, with Adobe, Iomega,Novell, WordPerfect, and Evans & Sutherland leading the way. The second generation,companies emerging in the '90s, includes Ancestry.com and Omniture. The thirdgeneration is today's A list: Vivint, Qualtrics, and Domo, to be sure, not to mentionInsideSales.com and Pluralsight and several others.

All of which means there's now an abundance of experienced, local tech talent. As foryoung employees, the state universities and BYU have become a reliable feeder system.Pedersen, for one, believes he might have stayed in school had the BYU of his youthoffered the entrepreneurial courses and resources it does today. The University of Utah,for its part, just broke ground on the Lassonde Studios, which it describes like this:

Opening in fall 2016, the facility will merge 400 unique residences with a20,000-square-foot "garage" for all students to attend events, buildprototypes, enter competitions, launch their futures--or just hang out. Thefacility will be the hub for innovators, "makers," and entrepreneurs.

And yet, for all of the activity, part of what continues to drive both Pedersen and Jamesis the proverbial chip on the shoulder. Like unsung players on a small-market baseballteam, they'll always feel motivated to compete with--and outdo--the high-priced,glamorous talent from the New York Yankees, which in this case is the Bay Area.

Then again, one of Utah's chief draws as an entrepreneurial setting just might be how itremains, for all it has achieved, full of small-market charms. Theo Zourzouvillys, CTO atJive Communications, a telecom company based in Orem, is originally a native ofEngland. Formerly a Skype employee, he joined Jive and moved to Utah in large partbecause he was lured by the state's serene setting and family-first ethos.

Prior to joining Jive, he says, he was recruited by 15 to 20 high-tech companies over asix-month span. "But nothing really caught my attention," he says. "They were alwaysthe typical VC type of idiots. Just obnoxious." Specifically, Zourzouvillys was turned offby founders who felt that they, alone, were the reason their previous companies hadsucceeded.

Furthermore, not one of the companies recruiting him (prior to Jive) had acknowledged


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his two young daughters or his girlfriend in the process--even though, as a family offour, they'd all be potentially moving across the Atlantic together. "Jive was the onlyone that said, 'We'd love to fly you and your partner out to meet us," he says.

At that point, Zourzouvillys, 31, knew little of Utah "besides lots of snow and Amishpeople," he says, admitting that "somewhere along the line" he'd confused the Amishand the Mormons.

In January 2013, he and his girlfriend made their initial visit. They were dazzled by theview of snowy mountains outside their hotel window. At the Jive offices, Zourzouvillysasked for a cup of coffee. "They all just looked at me strangely," he recalls.

He started one week later. He says that in Utah he's found "the most awesome peopleI've ever met in my life." When he and his family arrived at their first residence in Orem,the entire neighborhood, it seemed, showed up to help him unload boxes and move in.Three months later, when they moved to a larger house in Orem, the new neighborsshowed up to help with the move.

On neither occasion did he or his family ask for help; the help simply materialized, whenword got around that his family was moving. In Utah, that's just neighbors beingneighbors. "I've moved 20 to 30 times in my life, and not once have my neighborshelped me," he says.

But in Utah, it's already happened twice. It might not be the sort of thing you seesatirized on TV shows about high-tech culture. But it's the way talent wars are won. Andif Utah keeps winning those wars, its next generation of high-tech companies will be thestrongest one yet.

LAST UPDATED: NOV 10, 2014

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BEST INDUSTRIES 2015

The Hot Software Niche in Searchof a New Name

In demand now: smart software that uses data to keep employeesmotivated and engaged in their jobs. But whatever you do, don't call it'gamification' software.

IlanMochari! @" 1 COMMENTS

BY ILAN MOCHARI

A great place to live canalso be a great place tostart a business.

The financial blog 24/7Wall St. recently rankedthe 50 best cities to live.They used CensusBureau data for 550cities, including statisticson employment growth,educational attainmentand housing affordabilityto determine which citiesare at the top of theheap.

Here are the top 10 citiesto live (and also start abusiness): --GrahamRapierIMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

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Ambition's founding foursome (left to right): Travis Truett, Brian Trautschold, Wes Kendall, and JaredHoughton.IMAGE: Courtesy company

EEddiittoorr''ss nnoottee:: This article is part of Inc.'s 2015 Best Industries report.

When Brian Trautschold, one of four co-founders of Ambition, an 18-employee softwarestartup based in Chattanooga, graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2009, heworked in "boiler room" sales situations for Hewlett-Packard and the logistics companyUS Xpress.

"It was a day-to-day grind," he recalls of the jobs. "What it taught me as a naive collegekid coming out of school was that no one there was excited about the job itself.Everyone just wanted to pay off a mortgage or a car loan or a student loan."

Though he didn't know it at the time, Trautschold was working in the sales settings thathave birthed a booming industry--one you could broadly call "inside sales," a subset ofwhich you could call "gamification software."

Inside sales refers to sales pursued via phone or email or other technology, as opposedto in-person. A decade ago, the idea of using data to make the sales process moreefficient was still novel. Since then, companies have embraced software to do just that,thanks to an increasing awareness that smartly managed inside sales--and motivatedsales people--can drastically decrease your cost of customer acquisition.


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Now there are countless vendors in the inside sales space, including the $50 millionpowerhouse InsideSales.com. But gamification software, which is Ambition's niche, isstill very much an opportunity for the taking. To wit, global research-firm Gartnerbelieves that by this year, "more than 50 percent of organizations that manageinnovation processes will gamify those processes." Here's how Ambition successfullycarved out its own niche in the highly competitive industry.

The demand.Ambition focuses specifically on gamifying the performance of sales teams. Its softwareprovides customers with a dashboard full of real-time metrics, such as calls made orleads generated or emails opened.

Through Ambition dashboards, employees (and of course, their managers) can trackperformance in relation to individual and team goals on their computers and mobiledevices. The software syncs with a company's CRM technology, as well as phonesystems and spreadsheets and any other tools an organization might use. The cost isbetween $20 and $30 per employee per month.

Using whatever metrics a client wants to track, the software creates an Ambition Score,which is an aggregate of all the metrics. A score of 100 means an employee or team hasreached every benchmark for a given time period.

All over the world, sales and marketing teams are hungry for products like this,observes Mark Lindwall, a senior analyst with Forrester Research who recentlyinterviewed 25 companies in the category, which (in lieu of gamification) he calls"strategic motivations programs or applications."

"Think about a sales manager. For his team, where does the employees' extrinsicmotivation come from?" he asks rhetorically. "The assumption is that the motivation forselling will come from money. But it's just not the case all the time," he says. "It's alwayssome combination of recognition and competition too."

Even though the demand for gamification software shows few signs of slowing, thereare downsides to launching a company in this category. For one thing, there's alwaysthe possibility that heavyweights in the software-as-a-service space--like the SAPs,IBMs, and Microsofts of the world--will start scooping up startups and integratinggamification features into their offerings.

Certainly Work.com, the startup formerly known as Rypple, is a candidate to emerge asthe category's 800-pound gorilla. It was acquired by Salesforce.com back in 2011 andboasts big-name customers like HubSpot. Then there are category leaders like


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LevelEleven, which boasts big-name clients including Comcast, Delta Airlines, theDetroit Pistons, and OpenTable. In addition, InsideSales.com itself, with its nine-digitsums of venture capital backing, looms as an overarching presence in the category withits own offering, PowerStandings.

Getting started.From his experience at US Xpress, Trautschold recognized that freight and transportcompanies would be an ideal vertical to target with Ambition. Many of them werelow-tech about tracking sales efforts, "not using Salesforce, not using anything new orsexy," notes Jared Houghton, another Ambition co-founder and its CSO.

Moreover, Trautschold knew how to reach decision makers at these organizations. Andthanks to the talents of fellow co-founder and CTO Wes Kendall, the company couldcraft solutions that synced with whatever the customer's existing (low-tech) systemswere.

The first transportation company that agreed to work with Ambition was Chattanooga,Tennessee-based Access America Transport (AAT). When Coyote Logistics, a titan in thefield, merged with AAT in March 2014, Ambition's sales team was already talking toCoyote reps. Soon Ambition closed on Coyote, landing its first Fortune 2000 customer.

A few months later, Ambition raised $2 million from SV Angel, Google Ventures, andothers, building on momentum from its sales wins and a Y Combinator stint at the endof 2013. Of course, this wasn't all the team was building on. Though Ambition wasformally founded in 2013, three of the co-founders--Houghton, Trautschold, and CEOTravis Truett--knew each other from college and had a history of working together,going back to business-plan competitions at the University of Tennessee.

Not that Ambition's path has been entirely easy. The team has made its share ofmistakes, including succumbing to the temptation to sell to all potential leads--ratherthan only to qualified leads.

"Every single startup can be better at qualifying customers, as opposed to selling toanyone who shows any interest in what you built," admits Truett. Specifically, thechallenge is to make sure a customer's culture is ready to use a product like Ambition tomotivate employees. There remain, to this day, many old-school sales leaders whoprefer whiteboards and gongs.

As such, there's at least one word that should never be part of the gamification softwarepitch: gamification. "Talk to 20 VPs of sales, and only a good half of them would haveeven heard of gamification," notes Bob Marsh, founder and CEO of


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Detroit-based LevelEleven, a leading company in the category (and a former columnistfor Inc). Ambition, for its, part, doesn't use the word even on its own site, for the samereason.

Ambition's 2014 revenues were under $1 million, but the aim in 2015 is "mid to highseven figures," Houghton says. Their approach is two-fold: Selling into new divisions ofexisting clients, and leveraging connections from Y Combinator and their investors forintros to decision makers at prospective customers.

They say the intros are the hardest part of the battle. "The demo normally does it fromthere," says Houghton.

And that's how the conversion from whiteboards to dashboards begins.

One boiler room at a time.

LAST UPDATED: FEB 4, 2015


8 BEST INDUSTRIES FOR STARTING A BUSINESS IN 2015

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IMAGE: Getty Images

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct linkto your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a millionpeople, and we've found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing theiremotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.

If you follow our newsletter, you've read some startling research summaries thatexplore the havoc stress can wreak on one's physical and mental health (such as theYale study, which found that prolonged stress causes degeneration in the area of thebrain responsible for self-control). The tricky thing about stress (and the anxiety thatcomes with it) is that it's an absolutely necessary emotion. Our brains are wired suchthat it's difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. Infact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderatelevels of stress. As long as the stress isn't prolonged, it's harmless.

Research from the University of California, Berkeley, reveals an upside to experiencingmoderate levels of stress. But it also reinforces how important it is to keep stress undercontrol. The study, led by post-doctoral fellow Elizabeth Kirby, found that the onset ofstress entices the brain into growing new cells responsible for improved memory.However, this effect is only seen when stress is intermittent. As soon as the stresscontinues beyond a few moments into a prolonged state, it suppresses the brain'sability to develop new cells.

"I think intermittent stressful events are probably what keeps the brain more alert, andyou perform better when you are alert," Kirby says. For animals, intermittent stress isthe bulk of what they experience, in the form of physical threats in their immediateenvironment. Long ago, this was also the case for humans. As the human brain evolved


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and increased in complexity, we've developed the ability to worry and perseverate onevents, which creates frequent experiences of prolonged stress.

Besides increasing your risk of heart disease, depression, and obesity, stress decreasesyour cognitive performance. Fortunately, though, unless a lion is chasing you, the bulkof your stress is subjective and under your control. Top performers have well-honedcoping strategies that they employ under stressful circumstances. This lowers theirstress levels regardless of what's happening in their environment, ensuring that thestress they experience is intermittent and not prolonged.

While I've run across numerous effective strategies that successful people employ whenfaced with stress, what follows are ten of the best. Some of these strategies may seemobvious, but the real challenge lies in recognizing when you need to use them andhaving the wherewithal to actually do so in spite of your stress.

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Taking time to contemplate what you're grateful for isn't merely the "right" thing to do.It also improves your mood, because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%.Research conducted at the University of California, Davis found that people who workeddaily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, andphysical well-being. It's likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

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"What if?" statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in amillion different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about thepossibilities, the less time you'll spend focusing on taking action that will calm youdown and keep your stress under control. Calm people know that asking "what if? willonly take them to a place they don't want--or need--to go.

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Positive thoughts help make stress intermittent by focusing your brain's attention ontosomething that is completely stress-free. You have to give your wandering brain a littlehelp by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thoughtwill do to refocus your attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good,this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded withnegative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day andidentify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can't think ofsomething from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week.Or perhaps you're looking forward to an exciting event that you can focus your


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attention on. The point here is that you must have something positive that you're readyto shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative.

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Given the importance of keeping stress intermittent, it's easy to see how taking regulartime off the grid can help keep your stress under control. When you make yourselfavailable to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors.Forcing yourself offline and even--gulp!--turning off your phone gives your body a breakfrom a constant source of stress. Studies have shown that something as simple as anemail break can lower stress levels.

Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should beavailable 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of workwhen an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking (read:stressing) about work can drop onto your phone at any moment. If detaching yourselffrom work-related communication on weekday evenings is too big a challenge, thenhow about the weekend? Choose blocks of time where you cut the cord and go offline.You'll be amazed at how refreshing these breaks are and how they reduce stress byputting a mental recharge into your weekly schedule. If you're worried about thenegative repercussions of taking this step, first try doing it at times when you're unlikelyto be contacted--maybe Sunday morning. As you grow more comfortable with it, and asyour coworkers begin to accept the time you spend offline, gradually expand theamount of time you spend away from technology.

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Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the"fight-or-flight" response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight orrun for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidestepsrational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you,but not so great when you're responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brainand body into this hyperaroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior.The stress that caffeine creates is far from intermittent, as its long half-life ensures thatit takes its sweet time working its way out of your body.

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I've beaten this one to death over the years and can't say enough about the importanceof sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels.When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day's memoriesand storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and


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clear-headed. Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don'tget enough--or the right kind--of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levelson its own, even without a stressor present. Stressful projects often make you feel as ifyou have no time to sleep, but taking the time to get a decent night's sleep is often theone thing keeping you from getting things under control.

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A big step in managing stress involves stopping negative self-talk in its tracks. The moreyou ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of ournegative thoughts are just that--thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believingthe negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it's time to stop and writethem down. Literally stop what you're doing and write down what you're thinking. Onceyou've taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, youwill be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity.

You can bet that your statements aren't true any time you use words like "never,""worst," "ever," etc. If your statements still look like facts once they're on paper, takethem to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he or she agrees with you. Then thetruth will surely come out. When it feels like something always or never happens, this isjust your brain's natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity ofan event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them fromthe facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive newoutlook.

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Stress and worry are fueled by our own skewed perception of events. It's easy to thinkthat unrealistic deadlines, unforgiving bosses, and out-of-control traffic are the reasonswe're so stressed all the time. You can't control your circumstances, but you can controlhow you respond to them. So before you spend too much time dwelling on something,take a minute to put the situation in perspective. If you aren't sure when you need to dothis, try looking for clues that your anxiety may not be proportional to the stressor. Ifyou're thinking in broad, sweeping statements such as "Everything is going wrong" or"Nothing will work out," then you need to reframe the situation. A great way to correctthis unproductive thought pattern is to list the specific things that actually are goingwrong or not working out. Most likely you will come up with just some things--noteverything--and the scope of these stressors will look much more limited than it initiallyappeared.

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The easiest way to make stress intermittent lies in something that you have to doeveryday anyway: breathing. The practice of being in the moment with your breathingwill begin to train your brain to focus solely on the task at hand and get the stressmonkey off your back. When you're feeling stressed, take a couple of minutes to focuson your breathing. Close the door, put away all other distractions, and just sit in a chairand breathe. The goal is to spend the entire time focused only on your breathing, whichwill prevent your mind from wandering. Think about how it feels to breathe in and out.This sounds simple, but it's hard to do for more than a minute or two. It's all right if youget sidetracked by another thought; this is sure to happen at the beginning, and youjust need to bring your focus back to your breathing. If staying focused on yourbreathing proves to be a real struggle, try counting each breath in and out until you getto 20, and then start again from 1. Don't worry if you lose count; you can always juststart over.

This task may seem too easy or even a little silly, but you'll be surprised by how calmyou feel afterward and how much easier it is to let go of distracting thoughts thatotherwise seem to have lodged permanently inside your brain.

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It's tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To becalm and productive, you need to recognize your weaknesses and ask for help whenyou need it. This means tapping into your support system when a situation ischallenging enough for you to feel overwhelmed. Everyone has someone at workand/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them getthe best from a difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make aneffort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple astalking about your worries will provide an outlet for your anxiety and stress and supplyyou with a new perspective on the situation. Most of the time, other people can see asolution that you can't because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation.Asking for help will mitigate your stress and strengthen your relationships with thoseyou rely upon.

LAST UPDATED: FEB 10, 2015


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17 of 18 2/10/15, 11:36 AM

Bad Boss Alert! Weknow them when we seethem. These bad bossarchetypes often showup in small businesswhen things get stressful,out of control, or themoney dries up. Theydrive profits andemployee morale intothe ground. Fortunately,they are easy to spot andcorrect if you exhibitthem.

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18 of 18 2/10/15, 11:36 AM

move over, silicon valley: utah has...

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