How Marketing Ideas Have Changed Over The Last 100 Years

https://www.bridgesstrategies.com/bridges-digital-and-inbound-ideas/how-marketing-ideas-have-changed-over-the-last-100-years?utm_campaign=Inbound%20Marketing&utm_source=BrightInfo&bi_sid=hFIyjl4HLMyKRGDDj6f7&bi_pid=14489&bi_campaign=BrightinfoAds&bi_medium=cpc&bi_source=www.themarketingblog.co.uk
Marie Gomez, M.A., B.S. 

The history of marketing goes a long, long way back: did you know that already in ancient Rome, the most successful gladiators were getting paid to wear and advertise products? Ever since people have had things to sell, there has been marketing.

Sales and marketing interact with changes in society and advances in technology, always searching for the best way to get people to buy what you’re selling. Let’s go over the biggest developments in marketing ideas over the last 100 years:

BEFORE 1900

Since goods were produced in small batches, usually by hand, marketing was usually done by word of mouth, recommendations, and influencer marketing - having popular and respected people use and recommend your goods to others. As mass production set in, it became necessary to sell more and more products, and marketing as we know it was born.

EARLY 1900S

In 1904, the University of Pennsylvania offers a course in "The Marketing of Products", and the term “marketing” is officially born. At the time, the industry was focused on increasing production, and at the time marketing was little more than efficient product distribution.

1910

A famous quote from Henry Ford sums up the spirit of marketing in this decade perfectly: "They can have any color they want as long as it's black." Marketing efforts at this time focused on pushing what you were producing, since products pretty much sell themselves at this point.

"They can have any color they want... as long as it's black." - Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company

1930

 

The birth of radio in the 1920s increases the reach of advertisers, and marketing ideas start to look for the best way to use this new technology, although at this point it is mainly to make customers aware that a product exists. The Great Depression puts a stop to mass production, and companies must now focus on selling their existing stock. Sales are not as easy as they used to be, and companies start looking for professionals who will increase sales; some do this through aggressive and unethical means including false advertising, which is later regulated.

1950

With the advent of TV in 1941 and an increase in phone use in the 40s, the 50s are a hotbed for marketing ideas. As marketing professionals look for ways to capitalize on new communication technologies and to deal with savvier customers, the marketing concept/marketing mix is born: the search for the balance between Product, Price, Promotion, and Place/Distribution.

1970

The 70s were a great time for new marketing ideas, and they mark the birth of synergy marketing. Synergy is defined as “the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements.”

Synergy marketing is what happens for example when a new animated movie comes out, McDonald’s offers the toys for the film with the Happy Meal, Disney parks create an attraction related to the film, and the film manages to name drop McDonald’s.

"The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it." - Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's

Everyone involved wins much more exposure and sales than if they had all advertised independently.

1980

Marketing gets personal in the 80s, when experts in the field start seeing sales as building a relationship instead of a one-time transaction. CRM (customer relationship management) becomes a powerful tool for marketing, as interactions with potential customers are now tracked to follow up on what is now called “the customer lifecycle” from cold prospect to buyer.

Another interesting marketing idea from the 80s is “guerrilla marketing”, which relies on shock and originality to advertise and promote a product or service with very little budget.

"The road to profitability is paved with credibility. Credibility is something you earn by how you market, where you market, how you treat people, how you act, and your overall level of professionalism. Away from the business arena, the term is street cred, and it's the road to respect." - Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing

1990

The Internet changed the world as we knew it, and marketing professionals quickly started testing new marketing ideas on this exciting new medium. One digital advertising strategy that went on to be universally loathed is “spam”, the Internet equivalent of flyers and a disruptive and disrespectful approach to marketing.

A much smarter marketing idea born in this decade is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which tries to rank a product or service at the top of Google or yahoo’s search results to give the seller an edge.

2000

With the new millennium comes another huge milestone for marketing: MySpace and the birth of social media. The Internet is now highly personal, and customers have access to information and communication like they never did before.

Marketing professionals have to change their strategies and approaches to approach savvy customers leveraging the power of social media.

2010

The Internet turned out to be a double-edged sword for marketers, because while it afforded unprecedented access and information about potential customers, it also allowed those customers to filter or block advertising, as well as to compare and shop around in ways that were not possible before. Marketing now becomes about catering to customers’ needs and desires, and about building relationships of trust.

Inbound marketing gathers force, as companies put forth valuable content that savvy customers seek out. The integration of smartphones to everyday life expands marketing opportunities, which now also include email marketing and mobile marketing campaigns. Tools such as HubSpot help marketing professionals stay on top of the many sides of their integrated marketing campaigns, while sticking to the usually tight marketing budget of a small company.

TODAY

"People do not buy goods & services. They buy relations, stories & magic." - Seth Godin

With social media evolved into 24/7 personal broadcasting, everyone has the ability of becoming an influencer online. In this way marketing history has come full circle.

About the Author

Marie Gomez is the Senior Copywriter at Bridges Strategies. After earning her Master’s degree in Goldsmiths College of London, Marie specialized in writing for inbound marketing and SEO. She is passionate about writing, loves helping new writers develop and find their voice, and is constantly reading about the latest trends and techniques for effective inbound marketing writing. 

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Lack of sleep is killing your productivity. Here's how to fix it

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/not-getting-enough-sleep-is-killing-your-productivity-this-is-what-you-can-do-about-it?utm_content=buffer8502e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Travis Bradberry
Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board.Image: REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil

The next time you tell yourself that you'll sleep when you're dead, realize that you're making a decision that can make that day come much sooner. Pushing late into the night is a health and productivity killer.

According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, the short-term productivity gains from skipping sleep to work are quickly washed away by the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on your mood, ability to focus, and access to higher-level brain functions for days to come. The negative effects of sleep deprivation are so great that people who are drunk outperform those lacking sleep.

Why You Need Adequate Sleep to Perform

We've always known that sleep is good for your brain, but new research from the University of Rochester provides the first direct evidence for why your brain cells need you to sleep (and sleep the right way—more on that later). The study found that when you sleep your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you're awake. 

Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you're asleep. So when you don't get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix.

Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board. It slows your ability to process information and problem solve, kills your creativity, and catapults your stress levels and emotional reactivity.

What Sleep Deprivation Does to Your Health

Sleep deprivation is linked to a variety of serious health problems, including heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. It stresses you out because your body overproduces the stress hormone cortisol when it's sleep deprived. While excess cortisol has a host of negative health effects that come from the havoc it wreaks on your immune system, it also makes you look older, because cortisol breaks down skin collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic. In men specifically, not sleeping enough reduces testosterone levels and lowers sperm count.

Too many studies to list have shown that people who get enough sleep live longer, healthier lives, but I understand that sometimes this isn't motivation enough. So consider this—not sleeping enough makes you fat. Sleep deprivation compromises your body's ability to metabolize carbohydrates and control food intake. When you sleep less you eat more and have more difficulty burning the calories you consume. Sleep deprivation makes you hungrier by increasing the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin and makes it harder for you to get full by reducing levels of the satiety-inducing hormone leptin. People who sleep less than 6 hours a night are 30% more likely to become obese than those who sleep 7 to 9 hours a night.

How Much Sleep Is Enough?

Most people need 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to feel sufficiently rested. Few people are at their best with less than 7 hours, and few require more than 9 without an underlying health condition. And that’s a major problem, since more than half of Americans get less than the necessary 7 hours of sleep each night, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

For go-getters, it's even worse.

A recent survey of Inc. 500 CEOs found that half of them are sleeping less than 6 hours a night. And the problem doesn't stop at the top. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a third of U.S. workers get less than 6 hours of sleep each night, and sleep deprivation costs U.S. businesses more than $63 billion annually in lost productivity.

Doing Something about It

Beyond the obvious sleep benefits of thinking clearly and staying healthy, the ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are high in emotional intelligence (EQ). These individuals are skilled at understanding and using emotions to their benefit, and good sleep hygiene is one of the greatest tools at their disposal.

High-EQ individuals know it's not just how much you sleep that matters, but also how you sleep. When life gets in the way of getting the amount of sleep you need, it's absolutely essential that you increase the quality of your sleep through good sleep hygiene. There are many hidden killers of quality sleep. The 10 strategies that follow will help you identify these killers and clean up your sleep hygiene. Follow them, and you'll reap the performance and health benefits that come with getting the right quantity and quality of sleep.

1. Stay Away from Sleeping Pills

When I say sleeping pills, I mean anything you take that sedates you so that you can sleep. Whether it's alcohol, Nyquil, Benadryl, Valium, Ambien, or what have you, these substances greatly disrupt your brain's natural sleep process. Have you ever noticed that sedatives can give you some really strange dreams? As you sleep and your brain removes harmful toxins, it cycles through an elaborate series of stages, at times shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams). Sedation interferes with these cycles, altering the brain's natural process.

Anything that interferes with the brain's natural sleep process has dire consequences for the quality of your sleep. Many of the strategies that follow eliminate factors that disrupt this recovery process. If getting off sleeping pills proves difficult, make certain you try some of the other strategies (such as cutting down on caffeine) that will make it easier for you to fall asleep naturally and reduce your dependence upon sedatives.

2. Stop Drinking Caffeine (at Least after Lunch)

You can sleep more and vastly improve the quality of the sleep you get by reducing your caffeine intake. Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that interferes with sleep by increasing adrenaline production and blocking sleep-inducing chemicals in the brain. Caffeine has a 6-hour half-life, which means it takes a full 24 hours to work its way out of your system. Have a cup of joe at 8 a.m., and you’ll still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at 8 p.m. Anything you drink after noon will still be near 50% strength at bedtime. Any caffeine in your bloodstream—the negative effects increasing with the dose—makes it harder to fall and stay asleep.

When you do finally fall asleep, the worst is yet to come. Caffeine disrupts the quality of your sleep by reducing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deep sleep when your body recuperates most. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with a cognitive and emotional handicap. You’ll be naturally inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel more alert, which very quickly creates a vicious cycle.

3. Avoid Blue Light at Night

This is a big one—most people don't even realize it impacts their sleep. Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level, and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains high concentrations of this "blue" light. When your eyes are exposed to it directly (not through a window or while wearing sunglasses), the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert. This is great, and exposure to a.m. sunlight can improve your mood and energy levels. If the sun isn't an option for you, try a blue light device.

In the afternoon, the sun's rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to produce melatonin and start making you sleepy. By the evening, your brain does not expect any blue light exposure and is very sensitive to it. The problem this creates for sleep is that most of our favorite evening devices—laptops, tablets, televisions, and mobile phones—emit short-wavelength blue light. And in the case of your laptop, tablet, and phone, they do so brightly and right in your face. This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off. Remember, the sleep cycle is a daylong process for your brain. When you confuse your brain by exposing it in the evening to what it thinks is a.m. sunlight, this derails the entire process with effects that linger long after you power down. The best thing you can do is avoid these devices after dinner (television is okay for most people as long as they sit far enough away from the set). If you must use one of these devices in the evening, you can limit your exposure with a filter or protective eye wear.

4. Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day

Consistency is key to a good night's sleep, especially when it comes to waking up. Waking up at the same time every day improves your mood and sleep quality by regulating your circadian rhythm. When you have a consistent wake-up time, your brain acclimates to this and moves through the sleep cycle in preparation for you to feel rested and alert at your wake-up time. Roughly an hour before you wake, hormone levels increase gradually (along with your body temperature and blood pressure), causing you to become more alert. This is why you'll often find yourself waking up right before your alarm goes off.

When you don't wake up at the same time every day, your brain doesn't know when to complete the sleep process and when it should prepare you to be awake. Long ago, sunlight ensured a consistent wake-up time. These days, an alarm is the only way most people can pull this off, and doing this successfully requires resisting the temptation to sleep in when you're feeling tired because you know you'll actually feel better by keeping your wake-up time in tact.

5. No Binge Sleeping (In) on the Weekend

Sleeping in on the weekend is a counterproductive way to catch up on your sleep. It messes with your circadian rhythm by giving you an inconsistent wake-up time. When you wake up at the same time during the work week but sleep past this time on the weekend, you end up feeling groggy and tired because your brain hasn't prepared your body to be awake. This isn't a big deal on your day off, but it makes you less productive on Monday because it throws your cycle off and makes it hard to get going again on your regular schedule.

6. Learn How Much Sleep You Really Need

The amount of sleep you need is something that you can't control, and scientists are beginning to discover the genes that dictate it. The problem is, most people sleep much less than they really need and are under-performing because they think they're getting enough. Some discover this the hard way. Ariana Huffington was one of those frantic types who underslept and overworked, until she collapsed unexpectedly from exhaustion one afternoon. She credits her success and well-being since then to the changes she's made to her sleep habits. "I began getting 30 minutes more sleep a night, until gradually I got to 7 to 8 hours. The result has been transformational," 

Huffington says, adding that, "all the science now demonstrates unequivocally that when we get enough sleep, everything is better: our health; our mental capacity and clarity; our joy at life; and our ability to live life without reacting to every bad thing that happens."

Huffington isn't the only one. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Sheryl Sandberg have all touted the virtues of getting enough sleep. Even Bill Gates, an infamous night owl, has affirmed the benefits of figuring out how much sleep you really need: “I like to get 7 hours of sleep a night because that’s what I need to stay sharp and creative and upbeat.” It's time to bite the bullet and start going to bed earlier until you find the magic number that enables you to perform at your best.

7. Stop Working

When you work in the evening, it puts you into a stimulated, alert state when you should be winding down and relaxing in preparation for sleep. Recent surveys show that roughly 60% of people monitor their smartphones for work emails until they go to sleep. Staying off blue light-emitting devices (discussed above) after a certain time each evening is also a great way to avoid working so you can relax and prepare for sleep, but any type of work before bed should be avoided if you want quality sleep.

8. Eliminate Interruptions

Unfortunately for those with small children, the quality of your sleep does suffer when it is interrupted. The key here is to eliminate all the interruptions that are under your control. If you have loud neighbors, wear earplugs to bed. If your mother likes to call at all hours of the night, make certain you silence your ringer before you go to bed. If you had to wake up extra early in the morning, make sure your alarm clock is back on its regular time when you go to bed. Don't drink too much water in the evening to avoid a bathroom trip in the middle of the night. If your partner snores . . . well, you get the idea. If you think hard enough, there are lots of little things you can do to eliminate unnecessary interruptions to your sleep.

9. Learn to Meditate

Many people who learn to meditate report that it improves the quality of their sleep and that they can get the rest they need even if they aren't able to significantly increase the number of hours they sleep. At the Stanford Medical Center, insomniacs participated in a 6-week mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy course. At the end of the study, participants' average time to fall asleep was cut in half (from 40 to 20 minutes), and 60% of subjects no longer qualified as insomniacs. The subjects retained these gains upon follow-up a full year later. A similar study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that 91% of participants either reduced the amount of medication they needed to sleep or stopped taking medication entirely after a mindfulness and sleep therapy course. Give mindfulness a try. At minimum, you'll fall asleep faster, as it will teach you how to relax and quiet your mind once you hit the pillow.

10. When All Else Fails: Take Naps

One of the biggest peaks in melatonin production happens during the 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. time frame, which explains why most people feel sleepy in the afternoon. Companies like Google and Zappos are capitalizing on this need by giving employees the opportunity to take short afternoon naps. If you aren't getting enough sleep at night, you're likely going to feel an overwhelming desire to sleep in the afternoon. When this happens, you're better off taking a short nap (even as short as 15 minutes) than resorting to caffeine to keep you awake. A short nap will give you the rest you need to get through the rest of the afternoon, and you'll sleep much better in the evening than if you drink caffeine or take a long afternoon nap.

Bringing It All Together

I know many of you reading this piece are thinking something along the lines of "but I know a guy (or gal) who is always up at all hours of the night working or socializing, and he's the number one performer at our branch." My answer for you is simple: this guy is underperforming. We all have innate abilities that we must maximize to reach our full potential. My job is to help people do that—to help the good become great by removing unseen performance barriers. Being number one in your branch is an accomplishment, but I guarantee that this guy has his sights set on bigger things that he isn't achieving because sleep deprivation has him performing at a fraction of his full potential. You should send him this article. It just might shake something loose.

After all, the only thing worth catching up on at night is your sleep.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.

10 ways smart people handle negative people

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ways-smart-people-handle-negative-people-2017-3?IR=T&r=US&IR=T

• Travis Bradberry, Entrepreneur

Build a bridge. Flickr/Mathias Klang

Difficult people defy logic.

Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people's buttons.

Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife, and worst of all, stress.

Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain.

Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus — an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory.

Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small “arms” that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success — when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.

Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you're bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It's the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.

Recent research from the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions — the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with difficult people — caused subjects' brains to have a massive stress response. Whether it's negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome or just plain craziness, difficult people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs.

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we've found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. One of their greatest gifts is the ability to neutralize difficult people. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ to keep difficult people at bay.

While I've run across numerous effective strategies that smart people employ when dealing with difficult people, what follows are some of the best. To deal with difficult people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can't. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize.

1. They set limits

Complainers and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don't want to be seen as callous or rude, but there's a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spiral.

You can avoid this only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary. Think of it this way: if the complainer were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You'd distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers. A great way to set limits is to ask complainers how they intend to fix the problem. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

2. They rise above

Difficult people drive you crazy because their behavior is so irrational. Make no mistake about it; their behavior truly goes against reason. So why do you allow yourself to respond to them emotionally and get sucked into the mix? The more irrational and off-base someone is, the easier it should be for you to remove yourself from their traps.

Quit trying to beat them at their own game. Distance yourself from them emotionally and approach your interactions like they're a science project (or you're their shrink, if you prefer the analogy). You don't need to respond to the emotional chaos — only the facts.

3. They stay aware of their emotions

Maintaining an emotional distance requires awareness. You can't stop someone from pushing your buttons if you don't recognize when it's happening. Sometimes you'll find yourself in situations where you'll need to regroup and choose the best way forward. This is fine and you shouldn't be afraid to buy yourself some time to do so.

Think of it this way — if a mentally unstable person approaches you on the street and tells you he's John F. Kennedy, you're unlikely to set him straight. When you find yourself with a coworker who is engaged in similarly derailed thinking, sometimes it's best to just smile and nod. If you're going to have to straighten them out, it's better to give yourself some time to plan the best way to go about it.

4. They establish boundaries

This is the area where most people tend to sell themselves short. They feel like because they work or live with someone, they have no way to control the chaos. This couldn't be further from the truth. Once you've found your way to Rise Above a person, you'll begin to find their behavior more predictable and easier to understand.

This will equip you to think rationally about when and where you have to put up with them and when you don't. For example, even if you work with someone closely on a project team, that doesn't mean that you need to have the same level of one-on-one interaction with them that you have with other team members.

You can establish a boundary, but you'll have to do so consciously and proactively. If you let things happen naturally, you are bound to find yourself constantly embroiled in difficult conversations. If you set boundaries and decide when and where you'll engage a difficult person, you can control much of the chaos. The only trick is to stick to your guns and keep boundaries in place when the person tries to encroach upon them, which they will.

5. They don't die in the fight

Smart people know how important it is to live to fight another day, especially when your foe is a toxic individual. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you're able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.

6. They don't focus on problems — only solutions

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems you're facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress. When you focus on actions to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and reduces stress.

When it comes to toxic people, fixating on how crazy and difficult they are gives them power over you. Quit thinking about how troubling your difficult person is, and focus instead on how you're going to go about handling them. This makes you more effective by putting you in control, and it will reduce the amount of stress you experience when interacting with them.

You can establish a boundary, but you'll have to do so consciously and proactively. If you let things happen naturally, you are bound to find yourself constantly embroiled in difficult conversations. If you set boundaries and decide when and where you'll engage a difficult person, you can control much of the chaos. The only trick is to stick to your guns and keep boundaries in place when the person tries to encroach upon them, which they will.

7. They don't forget

Emotionally intelligent people are quick to forgive, but that doesn't mean that they forget. Forgiveness requires letting go of what's happened so that you can move on. It doesn't mean you'll give a wrongdoer another chance. Smart people are unwilling to be bogged down unnecessarily by others' mistakes, so they let them go quickly and are assertive in protecting themselves from future harm.

8. They squash negative self-talk

Sometimes you absorb the negativity of other people. There's nothing wrong with feeling bad about how someone is treating you, but your self-talk (the thoughts you have about your feelings) can either intensify the negativity or help you move past it. Negative self-talk is unrealistic, unnecessary and self-defeating. It sends you into a downward emotional spiral that is difficult to pull out of. You should avoid negative self-talk at all costs.

9. They get some sleep

I've beaten this one to death over the years and can't say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, so that you wake up alert and clear-headed.

Your self-control, attention and memory are all reduced when you don't get enough — or the right kind — of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. A good night's sleep makes you more positive, creative and proactive in your approach to toxic people, giving you the perspective you need to deal effectively with them.

10. They use their support system

It's tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To deal with toxic people, you need to recognize the weaknesses in your approach to them. This means tapping into your support system to gain perspective on a challenging person. Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation.

Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as explaining the situation can lead to a new perspective. Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can't because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation.

Bringing it all together

Before you get this system to work brilliantly, you're going to have to pass some tests. Most of the time, you will find yourself tested by touchy interactions with problem people. Thankfully, the plasticity of the brain allows it to mold and change as you practice new behaviors, even when you fail. Implementing these healthy, stress-relieving techniques for dealing with difficult people will train your brain to handle stress more effectively and decrease the likelihood of ill effects.

Read the original article on Entrepreneur. Copyright 2017. Follow Entrepreneur on Twitter.

This Married Couple Built a $30 Million Company--Selling Fancy Bedsheets to Millennial Hipsters

http://www.inc.com/emily-canal/brooklinen-millennials.html?cid=sf01001&sr_share=twitter

By Emily Canal

 

Rich and Vicki Fulop built Brooklinen by understanding who their customers were and what they wanted

Rich and Vicki Fulop, co-founders of Brooklinen.

 CREDIT: Courtesy of Brooklinen

Rich and Vicki Fulop, the co-founders of Brooklinen, have a leg up when it comes to understanding who their consumers are and what they really want. Like their core consumer base, they are also Millennials who can spend a little more on high-quality products.

That knowledge has helped the husband-and-wife duo build Brooklinen, a startup that sells luxury bedding and other home accouterments like candles and blankets--all under $200, and only purchasable online. On Thursday, the company announced it has raised $10 million in series A funding from FirstMark Capital, an investor in Airbnb. Since it's inception in 2014, Brooklinen has generated more than $30 million in sales.

The Fulops, both 31, came up with the idea for Brooklinen after trying to buy a set of sheets they liked at a hotel. The bedding cost about $800, a price way out of their budget. As they searched online for other alternatives, they discovered older chat forums where other folks faced the same dilemma. The couple soon realized that when it came to bedding, there were only two purchasing options: High-quality and pricey, or low-quality and cheap.

"We were 20-something Millennials who had our own apartment, and no one was making cool and chic bedsheets that were both awesome quality and affordable," says Rich, who is also CEO of Brooklinen. "We knew there were enough people out there looking for the same thing."

Rich and Vicki began building out their startup plan with a rigorous amount of research. They wanted to know exactly who their customers would be, and how to appeal to them. As it turns out, they are Millennials with a steady income who prefer to shop online. Through email campaigns and in-person surveys, the couple asked about 500 of their target consumers what they wanted in bedding and how much they would pay. The two looked into which blogs these people frequented, what magazines they read, and even what coffee shops they visited.

Once they had a physical product and price point, they rented a van and delivered sheets to editors at multiple publications. Each included a hand-written note that asked them to try the products and write an article if they were impressed. The reception was positive, the Fulops say.

Early in Brooklinen's development, the Fulops approached investors that Rich met through connections at New York University Stern School of Business. But they didn't take the idea seriously. To prove their concept, the couple decided to launch a Kickstarter in 2014, with an initial ask of $50,000. Instead, they received $236,888 in pre-orders.

In 2015, Brooklinen's subway ads filled a station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a well-known hipster haven. Vicki, who had previously worked in public relations, wanted the ads to be creative and show the product in a real way. The advertisements featured people eating, snuggling, and lounging in bed.

The bedding industry may have similar companies fighting for business, but the market is large: the home textiles industry is a $22 billion market, according to Home and Textiles Today. Brooklinen isn't the only startup hawking sheets. Similar companies, like Parachute and Casper, also sell luxury bedding within the same price range. However, Parachute offers additional goods like towels and Casper also acts as a mattress company. But Brooklinen considers retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, Bloomingdales, and Macy's as their competition. 

As business continues to grow, the Fulops make a point to stay connected to their clients. The company continues to collects feedback, suggestions, and complaints to come up with new new product ideas and improve existing items.

"We bank everything they are saying and asking for and implement changes quickly," says Vicki, adding that these requests have included "long side" or "short side" tags on sheets or bigger buttons. "Everything our customers say, we really listen to. It's a community-driven brand."

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