MBA1091 How to Have More Fun While Running a Business

Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Helping you build a business you're proud of every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you will learn how to have while running a business. Building and running a business is a lot of hard work. It's a lot of time spent. Most of your wakeful hours are spent in your business, so you might as well have some fun. How do you create a fun and engaging environment for your workplace? That's what today's episode's all about. Crafting a fun experience every day. So you look forward to going to work. Don't get me wrong, you're going to have tough days, challenging days, stressful days. But you're not a machine. You have to balance that with some fun that's incorporated in your business. Let's learn how. So let's get down to business. The $100 MBA show is brought to you by the audiobook edition of Dear Founder by Maynard Webb and Carly Adler, read by Chris Shula. Enter to win an audiobook copy now by going to macmillanaudio.com DearFounder it's for the busy leader and entrepreneur. Listen to valuable advice on obstacles that occur when starting a business, like how to finance your company, the personal challenges of leadership, and how to build a company that lasts. Enter to win@mcmillanaudio.com Dear Founder that's M A C M I L L A N A u d I o.com d e a r founder so in today's lesson, I have seven ways to incorporate more fun in your business. You let's jump right into number one. And number one is probably the most important one. And that's why it's number one. And it's simply to decide to have fun. You have to make the mental decision to say, you know what? I'm gonna have more fun every day in my business. You're gonna acknowledge the fact that, hey, you have challenges. Things are hard. You're gonna have tough days, stressful days, days where you get burnt out and you're gonna have fun. Not despite all that, but because of all that. You got to have sweet. So the sour is not so hard to bear. So step one is just deciding saying, you know what? I have to have more fun. Fun is a priority in my business. The businesses that last, the businesses that grow, the businesses that attract the right talent have the most fun. Ask people that work at Zappos or Amazon or Google. They're going to tell you, I don't work a day in my life. I have fun all day long while getting a ton done. Now you don't have those budgets. I totally get it. So all the tips today won't cost you an arm and a leg. They're going to be very affordable. But first step is to decide to have fun in your business. Make sure it's something that you prioritize. Second tip. And this is a super simple, very, very easy to implement, but makes a hell of a difference for most of us. And that's just incorporating music in your day. Music has the power to change your mood, to uplift you, to make maybe something that's mundane just a bit more tolerable. Some people love music without any words because it's less distracting when they have to write things or read things. There's a great Spotify playlist that Nicole and I like called Brain Food. No words, just some really good concentration music. If you work in an office or you run an office, make sure the music is not too loud. So if somebody's actually plugging in with their headphones to maybe watch a video on their computer, do some editing or whatever, it's not distracting. Some people like classical music, some people like movie scores. I'm a huge Hans Zimmer fan when I'm doing writing and a lot of marketing copy. I'm a huge fan of the soundtrack to Inception. Really makes it so much more fun. Number three, this one's totally physical and that's just smile. Be mindful if you're smiling or not throughout the day, put a post it note on your desk that says smile, you're living the dream. Smiling is incredibly powerful. When you change your physical state, your mental and emotional state will follow. Even your physical state will change by smiling. Your back will start to straighten out, your tone of voice will change, everything will be affected. But you have to be mindful of if you're smiling or not. It's hard not to have fun when you're smiling. I know this sounds like it's forced and it's okay to force it at the start. Your fun depends on it. Your business depends on it. So be mindful and smile more often. Smiling is a habit. Have you ever met people that always have a smile on their face or when you think about them in your head? They. The picture in your head is them smiling, right? But you also know people that never smile and you think about them, they are not smiling. They just got in the habit of not smiling. So you want to make sure you're one of those smiley people, those positive people that prioritize a smile on their face and it's going to be contagious. Other people around you will be smiling because they see you smiling. This is not some woo woo stuff, this is true. Try it. All right. Number four, schedule in your calendar time for guilt free banter. Often we are crushed by deadlines, we're really working hard and we don't really allow ourselves to have a little fun with our co workers. To joke around, to talk about what we did on the weekend, to talk about what we're going to do on the weekend, to get to know each other on a personal level, to crack a few jokes. Often we feel like we can't do that because we've got so much work to do. That's why you gotta schedule time for it so you know it happens, even if it's just minimal time. One of the strategies we learned from the team at Dribbble. Dribbble runs a remote team like us. If you're not familiar with Dribbble, it's a graphic design sort of repository where people can share designs they're working on. The point is they encouraged us to have some guilt free banter, some water cooler time. So once a month we have an all hands meeting where it's just not a serious meeting, there's no real serious agenda or to do's. The whole point is just to regroup, make some announcements, talk about how we're doing and just have some guilt free fun. And we do this on a video call once a month. It's not that often but we have time for it and it's just nice to do. It adds a little bit of camaraderie to the actual business as well as the fact that it's just some fun stuff. People share the movies they've watched, books they've read, what their plans are for their next vacation, things like that. Tip number five, bridge the day with an activity. Preferably a physical activity, but a fun activity. So the day is long, the day is hard, the day is filled with challenges. So you gotta break it up with some fun and with some activity. Let me give you some examples. Schedule a 20 or 30 minute session where you can do an activity maybe before lunch or after lunch, something like playing table tennis with one of your colleagues. If you work in a co working space, some of these facilities are available to you at any time. Play a game of pool at a local pub, go to the local park, play some volleyball, or even play some video games. I know it's not physical, unless maybe you're playing a Wii, but it breaks up the day with a fun activity. You're not spending a whole lot of time. It's not two hours, it's 20, 30 minutes where the simplest and easiest thing you can do is what I do is I hang up a basketball hoop in the back of a door in my office and I shoot a few hoops, a little soft nerf basketball and it's just fun and it releases some stress. I might challenge Nicole to a game of horse or I will try to challenge myself. See how many shots I can make in a row. Bridge the day with Activity Tip Number six Set up some events throughout the week and throughout the month that you can look forward to. Some of these are super simple to put in your schedule, especially if you are on meetup.com, you go to Eventbrite, you're part of a co working space. Most coworking spaces already have these things set up where they have like Friday night pizza and pitch parties where people pitch their business ideas or Monday morning breakfasts meetups. If you're not part of a coworking space, no problem. You'll find these@meetup.com or Eventbrite and go to those once a week without being part of a co working space. Another option is to enroll some people in your business to play a weekly sport together like a league game. Even if not all of you want to play, even if it's just one of you, you can sign up and it's something to look forward to. I play basketball in a league once a week and it's something I look forward to and it kind of helps the week go by and put me in a positive mood that day. Because hey, at the end of the day I'm going to be going to a game. So the more events you can put in your calendar, the better. Guys, I got more on today's topic. I got one more tip I want to share with you. When it comes to injecting more fun into your business, this one's a lot of fun. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Support for today's show comes from Mattress Firm. We all know that sleep, or lack of sleep, affects so much of our day to day life as entrepreneurs. From your health and physical appearance to your attentiveness and patience, Mattress Firm understands that a great night's Sleep is the ingredient for a great day and they want to make finding the perfect mattress at the perfect price. One less thing to worry about. Never wake up on the wrong side of the bed again. With Mattress Firm, they have unbelievable low prices and a wide array of mattress comforts and features. It's impossible not to re establish your love and appreciation for an uninterrupted night's sleep. Right now. When you go to mattressfirm.com podcast, you can take 10% off already low prices when you use promo code podcast10. That's podcast10. And if shopping online isn't your thing, they have more than 3,000 stores nationwide. So they're never too far away for you to drop in and find a mattress that fits your body and budget. Take 10% off@massressfirm.com podcast with promo code podcast10. That's podcast 10. Do your mind, your body and your wallet a favor and find your next mattress at Mattress Firm today. Alright, one more pro tip to having more fun in your business and that's to give out silly awards or contests. This is something that I read about and I want to implement in our business as well. Normally in the corporate environment, people get awards for like best dressed or the person that's always on time, or the person with the best sales goals or something like that. But we want to have a bit more fun. So some ideas, especially if you're in a remote business where you're working remotely with your teammates, is to have an award for like the best gif, you know, those animated GIF pictures. And you can run these awards or contests, you know, once a quarter, once a month, once a year, whatever you want. But it encourages people to use fun GIFs in their messages because, hey, they may win best GIF, GIF of the quarter or the month or whatever. Same thing with emojis, best use of an emoji, or an award for the worst joke. I'd probably get that one. You know, the person with the most corniest joke in the message board or in your chat messages or in your emails. The point is, is that they're not really serious and you're not taking yourself too seriously. You're having some fun and you're giving out some funny awards. And even if the prize is something very, very insignificant like a gift card at itunes or Amazon, it's the whole idea and the fact that you're giving out awards for funny stuff that allow people to really have a bit more fun, encouraged to have a bit more fun at work. Listen, if people are having fun when they're working, they're gonna enjoy it more, they're gonna do it more, they're gonna spend less time trying to slack off and not do the work. If they're having fun, if they're bored out of their mind, if they hate it, they're gonna do everything they can to avoid it. That's just human nature. So hopefully these tips help and you incorporate them in your business today. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Some people have the idea that if you have too much fun at work, people are just not going to take you seriously. They'll take advantage. It's a legitimate concern. But that's where your goals and outcomes and key performance indicators and all the things you set up for everybody's job roles come into play. You gotta make sure that people know what winning looks like in their position, how they do a good job. And you define that by hitting certain targets. And if they're hitting those targets, there's no reason why they can't have fun doing it. In fact, you should encourage it. You can't be the hard nosed boss all the time. No one's gonna want to work for you. Alright, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take. Sam.