While most entrepreneurs are comfortable wading into the unknown and weighing risks against rewards, they have to recognize that their employees probably won’t be. When they let their ability to shift focus bleed over into their interactions with staff, employees may get differing (and confusing) messages. Entrepreneurs who forget to communicate the “why” will often have trouble getting people to shift the “how.” One marketing agency owner I know struggled to get his team excited about moving from one type of marketing to another.A tendency to change gears can be a great asset for entrepreneurs, but for those who aren’t careful, that same nimbleness can come across as flighty, confusing and inconsistent to employees.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Brian Tracy discusses some tips to keep your brain healthy and active. Click the video to hear each of Tracy's tips for maintaing an active and healthy mind. Entrepreneur Network is a premium video network providing entertainment, education and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Watch video from our network partners on demand on Roku, Apple TV and the Entrepreneur App available on iOS and Android devices.

According to recent projections by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, MBA graduates are predicted to earn roughly $25,000 more after graduating than their bachelor's degree counterparts. Case in point: The University of Maryland's MicroMasters® MBA program, available now from Entrepreneur for 13 percent off the $1,500 retail price at $1,299. This outstanding program is led by the same professors who teach Maryland's #9-ranked Online MBA program, helping you to develop business insights and learn how to lead others towards strategic goals. It's a distillation of the Core MBA program you would get at a leading university like the University of Maryland only for a fraction of the cost and taken on your own time.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Business Rockstars talks with Lana Bramletter, the founder of Lana Jewelry. The process of securing investors and their money is no walk in the park -- Bramletter speaks about the many hoops that are required to secure loans and start taking money from investors. Entrepreneur Network is a premium video network providing entertainment, education and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Watch video from our network partners on demand on Roku, Apple TV and the Entrepreneur App available on iOS and Android devices.

Last week, police in Kenosha County, Wisconsin raided the home of Jacob and Tyler Huffhines and uncovered a bounty of illegal THC cartridges, 31,000 full and 98,000 empty. According to Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, the brother hired at least 10 workers to inject the cartridges with THC  oil and then package them "to look like candy" with flavors such as Sour Patch. Last week, President Trump threated to ban all flavored e-cigarettes. The National Cannabis industry welcomes a call for regulation but also blamed prohibition for causing the illegal market in the first place.

As a natural-born problem solver who moved his way into people’s hearts in the world of professional ballet, he’s now captivating celebs and beauty fanatics alike with his cruelty-free yet efficacious skin-care line, Jordan Samuel Skin.“Knowing that ballet is a short career, I knew from the get-go I wouldn’t always be a professional dancer," says Pacitti. Now that I’m able to run my own business, I recognize the ability I have to make important decisions in this space that were not always available to me the ballet world.“My background in the competitive world of ballet has helped me in business like nothing else," says Pacitti.

Renee Wang, founder and CEO of Castbox, talks about the investments she made into making her dreams come true. Renee Wang, founder and CEO of podcast platform Castbox, discusses her entrepreneurial journey from landing a dream position as an app monetization expert at Google to launching her own company and becoming a disruptor in the podcast industry. Wang and The Playbook host David Meltzer cover topics including the acceptance of failure as your most important teacher, some of the most common struggles that entrepreneurs face and challenging yourself to become a better person. They also discuss the need to invest in yourself as an entrepreneur and whether you need to pay yourself when founding a startup.

The world of consulting is booming as businesses trend towards bringing in outside help for projects rather than hiring full-time employees. If you've already got some in-demand expertise, in project management or software engineering for example, you may be primed to launch a consulting business. Entrepreneur's How to Launch a Consulting Business will show you how to leverage your skills in pitch and proposal meetings to ensure you get the job. Grab How to Launch a Consulting Business for $19 today.

Because not only are hobbies fun ways to pass the time, they also increase our productivity, creativity, memory and mood. That’s why it’s important to remind ourselves of the benefits of leisure activities, as well as how to find new hobbies (if we don’t have enough already). Here’s where hobbies come in -- because spending time with non-work activities that we enjoy can be the antidote to burnout and stress, plus afford us a variety of other business-related benefits. Explained Dr. S. Ausim Azizi, chairman of the department of neurology at Temple University’s School of Medicine in Philadelphia, “When people do things that make them feel good, like a hobby, it activates an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens that controls how we feel about life.”

Having a rival can provide performance-enhancing effects for your venture. One study, for example, found that thinking about a rival caused participants to make more reactive decisions, even when a more cautious, thoughtful approach was needed to be successful. The sense of eagerness that comes with having a rival can not only cause you to make poorer decisions, but it can also lead you to take greater risks that put your venture in jeopardy. Finding a rival can be a great way to improve your motivation and enhance your venture’s performance, as long as you can avoid the pitfalls.

Jason House, CEO and founder of the Iridium Sports Agency, talks about his approach to representing some of the world's top MMA fighters. Jason House, CEO and founder of the Iridium Sports Agency, shares the philosophy he’s used to create one of the top agencies in mixed martial arts. House talks about how his educational and family backgrounds, as well as his experience as a college athlete, prepared him to become a successful agent. House and The Playbook host David Meltzer discuss the approach of using strong core values to establish life-long relationships with your athletes, how House handles the recruitment of athletes, their expectations for the continued evolution of the UFC and mixed martial arts and why agents should never make decisions solely about money.

Technology in education is changing how we think about learning and success. According to a report by market-research firm Metaari titled “The Stunning 2018 Global Learning Technology Investment Patterns: The Rise of the Global Edtech Unicorns,” the investments made to EdTech companies soared past $16.34 billion, with China and the U.S. leading the way, followed by India and Israel. EdTech companies like Early Adopter work with educators to create augmented-reality tutorials, including virtually transporting students to the surface of the moon while reading books about space. That's why companies like Brainly and OneClass have decided to connect the whole world as one collaborative learning group that's capable of adapting dynamically to global topics and trends.

Discover how to think like a journalist from Entrepreneur Editor-in-Chief Jason Feifer. In How to Get Media Coverage, you'll learn how to make your company stand out from someone who knows a little something about the media industry: Entrepreneur Editor-in-Chief Jason Feifer. In this course, Jason Feifer will show you how to think like a journalist so you'll know how to present your business in a way that makes the media want to cover you. Feifer will dig into his career (and inbox) to provide a blueprint to what journalists are looking for and show you how to develop a press strategy that works.

I recently caught up with Li, who shared the five principles he followed to grow The Rising while still in school, lessons applicable to entrepreneurs of any age balancing their core business and another significant time commitment. Though communication is central to any successful team’s ability to finish projects in a timely manner, meetings -- whether in-person or over the phone -- often take up a lot of time. That's why Li advises that, “Though it’s always fun to meet with prospective clients and partners, what I’ve found is that most, if not all, of what can be achieved in meetings can be done through email.” He adds: “And when you do need to meet, blocking out 15-minute slots instead of hour-long ones can save you, and whoever you’re meeting with, a ridiculous amount of time.”As Li tells it, “Even when you’re not necessarily spending money, investing your time in a project has inherent costs too.” In other words, when you spend time on a project that doesn’t pan out, that’s often a financial loss.

Scale gives you economic power to funnel back into your business if you can capitalize on the increasing size by improving processes to find efficiencies and economies of scale. It also helped me recognize that an excellent sign of a growing company is the need to uplevel, including hiring more advanced skills into key roles as the business demands it. It takes discipline to not chase the glitter, but we have learned early on that staying laser-focused to our business - and purpose - is key, which in turn allows us to drive the execution of our business plan, and find the momentum needed. You don’t want your success to be slowed down by something like cash flow, since that’s the sign of a great growing business.

PAUL: Absolutely. JON: Right. PAUL: Absolutely. JON: Right.

After conducting market research, company leaders concluded that mass-market customers would respond well to shoe customization, an offering that many heralded as innovative. You might think entrepreneurs should be able to easily predict customer requirements, but research tells another stor, showing that more than 160 cognitive biases can interfere with your ability to put yourself in customers’s shoes. To start accurately understanding customer needs, combat your confirmation bias. Plus, when you take the time to understand how users actually use your product, you’ll be able to catch instances of users failing to understand an interface or feature.

But the good news is that thriving with Instagram marketing isn't about burning millions of dollars or hiring the most prominent influencer to share your posts. The lesson for others is to piggyback on an already trending world event by making it your own with accompanying visuals on Instagram. The promotional video uploaded on Tesla's Instagram has garnered neartly two million views. Most marketers wrongly hold the perception that going viral and garnering millions of views on a single post is what you should be after.

We are dependent on others, and that’s okay, but in doing this, we have lost connection with ourselves – our hearts, our breath, our minds.A technique called "Box Breathing" is a great way to start and helpful for managing stress: inhale for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, pause at the bottom of the exhale for a count of 4, and repeat. My hope is that in the future, we will have a better connection to our hearts, and our obsession with “the struggle” will be replaced by feeling joy and gratitude, feeling more connected to ourselves, and ultimately, more alive. Because it’s the inhale and the exhale, our very own breaths, that keep us alive, right?

As Melonie Dodaro, author of LinkedIn Unlocked and founder of Top Dog Social Media warns in a blog post, “It takes only five people clicking the ‘I don’t know this person’ link in response to your invitation to land you in LinkedIn jail. As a result, LinkedIn will restrict your account, requiring you to know the email address of the person you want to send a connection request to. Effective LinkedIn prospecting often requires that you don’t immediately jump into the sales pitch after someone accepts your connection request. By undertaking these efforts to “warm-up” the connection and form a more personalized link, you will be better positioned to use your LinkedIn profile to fuel future sales success.

Check out these rituals from the book 'Recipes for Good Luck.'In her book Recipes for Good Luck, author Ellen Weinstein researched the superstitions and rituals of some of the most famous and successful people in modern history. As she writes in the introduction of this fascinating book, Weinstein hopes that learning about the quirks of these athletes, writers, scientists, artists and politicians will "encourage you to embrace the beliefs, rituals and routines that help you face the world with ambition and confidence and inspire you to go on making good luck of your own."Check out the following excerpts from Recipes for Good Luck by Ellen Weinstein (published by Chronicle Books 2018) and see if you share any superstitions with the rich and powerful.

“Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”Work hard in the gym, and you’ll make your body hard and ready to take a beating. You’ll understand how things come together, and you’ll have a fresh perspective on whatever problem is nagging you at work. You’ll never work a day in your life, but you’ll earn an obscene amount of money.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Phil Town busts some of the myths associated with millionaires, including their spending habits. The Entrepreneur Network partner shares he also lives by this idea. Entrepreneur Network is a premium video network providing entertainment, ewitducation and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Watch video from our network partners on demand on Roku, Apple TV and the Entrepreneur App available on iOS and Android devices.

In my book, Don’t Drop the Soap: Prison Life Hacks, Food Recipes, Workouts, Slang & More, I include loads of hilarious stories, prison recipes, entertaining commentary and engaging visuals designed to teach and entertain. Here are seven culinary delights I’ve collected from various prison sources and a couple I included from my own book.I’ve included this recipe in Don’t Drop the Soap:Now that you have the very best prison recipes and cost-saving food hacks, it’s time to put them to use.

Marketing plans are tools used to lay out the strategy for your marketing activities, from concept to execution. In How to Create a Compact Marketing Plan, you'll learn how to develop just that. In this course from Entrepreneur, you'll learn how to outline your business' target market, craft your message to that market, and identify how you'll turn them from prospects to customers. You can enroll in How to Create a Compact Marketing Plan for $19 now.

The first step toward getting more energy is recognizing your personal body clock, or “chronotype.” The times you wake up and go to bed and your personality type will help to determine your chronotype. For example, people who describe themselves as introverted, intelligent, detail-oriented or a perfectionist, and tend to wake up early and get to bed before midnight are “dolphins.” A dolphin’s energy comes in waves and the best time to focus is between 3 and 6 p.m. To the contrary, if you tend to go to bed late and wake up later, and you identify as creative, moody or an adrenaline junkie, you might be a “wolf.” Wolves tend to have the most energy between 5 a.m. and noon. Whatever chronotype you are, there are a variety of things you can do to boost your energy during those times when you might feel tired. To learn more simple ways to boost your energy, check out GetVoip’s infographic below.

Plus, there is a new self-checkout shopping cart making grocery shopping easier, and Google is using AI on its new baby monitor to help keep your baby safe. There is a new self-checkout shopping cart that makes grocery shopping easier. When you are shopping with a Caper cart, all you have to do is scan the item barcode and simply add it to your cart. Google is using AI on their new baby monitor to help keep your baby safe.

Most entrepreneurs will never build successful ventures, no matter how much they risk to start and grow and business. If you’re a hustler, an entrepreneur at heart and looking to create or grow wealth, build a small business -- not a startup. Here’s more about the difference between a startup and a small business. Obviously, building a successful venture that makes a difference in people’s lives is one way but if it’s one of the main reasons behind building a startup, it’s usually the worst way to build influence.

Michael Bowman, AKA "Mr. Hemp", is the founding board chair of the National Hemp Association, and co-founder of First Crop. The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill gave traditional farmers an opportunity to look at hemp as a legitimate third crop. If you think of the hemp crop as a protein and oil crop, then it basically is the same thing as the soybean, with the added bonus of the absorption of CO2 during its growing cycle. Now that hemp is legal, it’s my mission to promote the cultivation of hemp by small- and mid-sized farms, giving them products and services that they’re going to need to be successful.

Before I discuss how gratitude can make you a better leader -- I think everyone should be aware of why we know about the gratitude hook. But, what how can gratitude make you a better and more effective leader?If you’re ready to tap into the power of gratitude, here are nine simple ways you can practice gratitude day in and out.I would say that taking an interest could be the most natural thing you could do to show your employees your gratitude.

What started with The Ridge Wallet — which is now sitting in the front pocket of over a million people worldwide — has turned into a full suite of everyday essentials including phone cases, bags, Power Banks and charging cables."People say don’t work with your friends and family, but I started a company with my Dad and our first hire was my best friend. We want to take the streamlined-nature and durability found in our Ridge Wallet, and apply it across our product line to streamline and simplify how people carry their everyday items.I started The Ridge because I wanted to solve what seemed like a very personal problem of hating my wallet, and in doing so found over a million other people who were seeking the same solution.

Take these steps to increase your productivity and make headway on the goals that really matter to you and your business. But the most successful entrepreneurs have learned that urgent tasks can often be delegated and shouldn’t be prioritized based on time sensitivity alone. To start prioritizing, take a step back and think about your goals and your company’s goals. It requires an initial investment of time, but by setting priorities, you’ll increase your productivity, and make headway on the goals that really matter to you and your business.

Closing a sale is one thing, but ensuring your customer actually uses your product is another. Their tools, which help employees learn more about prospective customers, prioritize next steps in a sale and schedule meetings, aim to ensure greater efficiency and revenue. It’s AI-powered, and it allows sales representatives to get more engagement with their customers without as much effort or time. In particular, we’ve vastly expanded our enterprise customers, those larger-size customers.

Sean Lupton-Smith's Electric Bike Company wants to bring affordable and efficient transportation to the masses. Seeing the advent of electric bikes, particularly in Southern California, I thought that the concept of adding a motor and battery to an affordable frame and enabling the bicycle to be powered by solar panels, rather than relying on regular bicycles with range and power limitations, would be a great way to mobilize people and make traveling to work, school, and hospitals far more efficient. An independent reviewer of electric bikes saw our bike and awarded it the top-rated cruising bike in the U.S. and I thought this was the ideal opportunity to compete and therefore raise money to fund the philanthropic dream. Building our own bikes allows this “fanatic” in me to study each “detail” “part” component before it is put on a bike – and I think that makes the quality of the bike as a whole untouchable.

Calvin Johnson, known to millions as Megatron, has also launched a medical marijuana dispensary in Michigan. But Johnson is also taking his part in the industry a step further, giving money to Harvard University to help fund a study on the potential of cannabis treating CTE; which, according to a 2017 study from Boston University researchers, was found in 99% of former football players' brains studied. Johnson, who spent his career with the Detroit Lions and is making a six-figure donation to the research through his medical marijuana company, Primitive, told ESPN that he believes his company “can be in a position to develop a treatment for CTE. "Johnson and Sims decided to fund the CTE research after attending the Harvard's Global Catalyst Health Summit in May 2019.

I've taken steps to reduce my urgency addiction and cut down the time I spend online, but digital communication is a necessity for my work.I accept it must make me occasionally anti-social, but the truth is I work hard in an industry I adore and I try to employ colleagues whose approach is the same.I get it; if colleagues have a fulfilling life away from work, then they’ll be happier – and, the evidence suggests, more productive – when they’re at work. It helps some people to switch off completely, to separate work from life with a sharp divide.

Oatly is a non-dairy beverage company on track to exceed $200 million in sales this year. Related: Competition Is Getting Fierce in the White-Hot Oat Milk SpaceRelated: Competition Is Getting Fierce in the White-Hot Oat Milk Space“Good Idea” beverages are here to truly change the beverage industry.

It was moments like these when I had no choice but to stare into the blank canvas of my future and begin painting what lay ahead.I began painting my dream of owning a bar and club in Germany, one that was the epitome of my American roots. In painting the future, I was creating my reality. In order to make this into a habit and create an even deeper-seeded certainty, I journal what I painted, and then put that in an audiobook as a way of further reinforcing the messages needed to make that painting come to life.

If I’ve been able to accomplish so much with such poor time management, imagine what I can do when I implement better strategies and learn how to make time for what matters most?”It’s something I call The Billionaire Time Ownership Matrix and it’s guaranteed to help you make more time in your life. If you want to get more out of your life and business, you must make time through ruthless but simple self-reflection on how you use your time now and how you can improve in the future. For years, I thought, “This is just something I have to do” and wasted countless hours of “Magic Time” (the time of day where I’m more focused, productive, and creative than any other time of day) stuck on calls I didn’t enjoy.

Today, Tableau stands as one of the most important self-service business intelligence tools on the market, and it's making it easier for businesses to scale efficiently. Mastering Tableau: From Basic to Advanced - A hands-on, beginner-friendly, practical guide to learning Tableau Desktop 2019. Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Solutions: Vol.1 - Learn how to analyze data more effectively to make smarter business insights. Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Solutions: Vol.2 - Develop an understanding of Tableau's more advanced tools to solve more complex problems.

Scott Allan shares how he uses his engineering education to inform the way he helps to grow his company's brand. Scott Allan, SVP & Global General Manager of Hydro Flask, talks about the evolution of his career, which was influenced by an uncle who was both an engineer and an entrepreneur. Allan discusses what he learned about engineering through education and internships, as well as what it was like taking a sales job after graduation. Allan and The Playbook host David Meltzer cover topics such as seeking out experienced employees to learn more about a career or industry, when to divert from the career plan that you have laid out and how Allan uses his education and Silicon Valley experience to help grow the Hydro Flask brand.

The real lesser-known reason why entrepreneurs often reach a critical breaking point in their careers -- otherwise known as burnout -- is actually because they spend their days doing what I like to call busy work. Avoiding burnout as an entrepreneur begins with increasing your productivity. Entrepreneurs running already-successful businesses are just as susceptible to burnout as new entrepreneurs. If you want to feel a boost in your productivity and avoid reaching burnout, learn how to make decisions like the top 1 percent of people -- quickly and confidently.

The marketing departments at the so-called big CPG companies — such as Unilever, Procter & Gamble, General Mills and hundreds of others — are traditionally trained to consider all elements of the consumer journey, which ensures that there are more product hits than misses in a company’s portfolio. From understanding shopper needs and category white space, to uncovering Jobs-to-be-Done and innovation pathways, to hitting on just the right brand expression and messaging, to pricing products in that sweet spot to drive shopper purchase and company profit; these companies have succeeded in competitive business environments by ensuring their products resonate both rationally — and more importantly, emotionally — with shoppers. Generally speaking, though, it’s the idea of deeply understanding your consumer target, putting that consumer first throughout development and activation, and taking a long-term, strategic view of what a company needs to do to retain that consumer and attract newer ones. It's then up to these companies to determine how to best leverage these learnings, blended with other research insights and company priorities, to drive successful initiatives that will resonate with the shopper and turn them into dedicated consumers.

Given today's news, the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) is being proactive given the President's announcement today, staking its claim to challenge Congress to regulate cannabis, with advocates citing prohibition as the main driver of illicit market products linked to most cases. In a statement from the Executive Director of NCIA, Aaron Smith, he cited remorse for the unfortunate illnesses and deaths relating to vaping, but was quick to challenge Congress in changing policy relating to the current federal laws, which, in his words, "interfere with research, prevent federal regulatory agencies from establishing safety guidelines, discourage states from regulating cannabis, and make it more difficult for state-legal cannabis businesses to displace the illicit market."Additionally, the National Cannabis Industry Association is making the following recommendations to Congress in order to prevent further illnesses and/or deaths from vaping, hoping that federal regulation of cannabis will eliminate these so-called "irresponsible illicit market producers."The NCIA is fighting for federal regulation of cannabis, with such a move aimed to decrease or eliminate available products on the illicit market where irresponsible producers don't care about product safety or age controls.

A simple plan for giving your team constructive compliments that boost productivity. We as leaders need to learn how to give constructive compliments. But what is a constructive compliment?Here is the method I teach leaders to make sure a compliment is constructive:

Targeting first-time home buyers and utilizing a portfolio of strategies is key, according to RESICAP's founder. During the recession, we were buying entry-level houses, renovating them and then flipping them to first-time home buyers because at the time there was no institutional interest. We provide strategy recommendations, then execute on that strategy by providing a variety of our services. So we look at properties and say, “Is this a sell-as-is strategy, a renovate-and-rent or a renovate-and-sell?” Then we provide supporting documentation for that strategy recommendation and execute on it because we've internalized all the services required for all strategies.

Here are three critical features that a blockchain network must have to achieve wide adoption. MetaHash is a network based on blockchain 4.0 technology that’s applicable to a wide variety of industries. As blockchain matures, sharding will become more critical as the amount of permanently stored data increases to gargantuan sizes. Blockchain’s selling points include privacy, data security and an anonymity network.

Here are three reasons why today’s enterprise organizations should consider embracing an “all-in-it-to-win-it” startup mentality. To ensure employees grow with the company as a result of sharing their thoughts in a more laid-back, startup fashion, more top organizations are recognizing the value of Levin’s workshops, as well as those put on by the Management Training Institute, which address the “rising challenge of developing subordinates” for the greater company good.“I like to tell the story of an organization in which a third of the employees had difficulty speaking English,” says Levin. These employees felt empowered to make their recommendations in much the same way startup collaborators feel secure about presenting their ideas.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Eric Siu discusses how to drive more traffic to your website. Entrepreneur Network is a premium video network providing entertainment, education and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. We provide expertise and opportunities to accelerate brand growth and effectively monetize video and audio content distributed across all digital platforms for the business genre. Watch video from our network partners on demand on Amazon Fire, Roku, Apple TV and the Entrepreneur App available on iOS and Android devices.

Widely recognized as the “CBD queen,” this strain pre-dated many other CBD strains and helped spark the CBD movement of today. Lab tests conducted on Harlequin samples found that the strain contained between 8% to 16% CBD content and 4% to 7% THC content, according to the NCSM. Ringo's Gift is a high-CBD strain that is a cross between AC/DC and Harle-Tsu, two hybrid strains also recognized for their therapeutic value and immense amount of CBD content. First cultivated in Northern California at SoHum Seeds, the CBD genetics company founded by Ringo, Harle-Tsu is a high-CBD strain that is a cross between a Harlequin male and Sour Tsunami clone.