Love What You Do: The Life Coach

Listen to an interview with Andrea Jacques featured on the After Jet Podcast. Below, see a rough, abridged transcription: David Reiling:  …today we join my guest, Andrea Jacques, who participated in After Jet conferences as a career coach. We talk about work-life balance, handling stress, and figuring out what a fulfilling job — and therefore life — actually means. My name is Andrea Jacques and I am the founder...

Where a Smart Entrepreneur Spends Money

As an entrepreneur, how do you know when is it best to spend, and when is it best to save? How do you know how much to invest and in which types of services? Unfortunately there’s no easy answer, no golden rule for when and how to spend money on your business. Some things can and should be bootstrapped for a few hundred bucks. But be aware: this is nearly always...

Wabi-Sabi Wisdom — Available on Amazon!

The Kyosei team is proud to announce the publication of Andrea Jacques’ new book Wabi-Sabi Wisdom: Inspiration for an Authentic Life.  We live fast-paced, imperfect lives, rushing to and from work and back again. Our Google Calendars are bursting. We’re juggling meetings, hobbies and family obligations with occasional rest. It’s no surprise then that many of us are exhausted and eventually succumb to stress. After all, how often does anyone...

Startup Entrepreneurs Risk Overspending

Many of the deadly sins we examine in this series are intimately linked. That’s what makes them so dangerous: they feed off each other and multiply to eat away at the foundations of your fledgling business. We introduce extravagance here because the previously mentioned sin, impatience, and the upcoming one, arrogance, fuel extravagant spending. Would-be entrepreneurs in a hurry to reap the rewards are much more likely to overspend...

Smart Entrepreneurs Don’t Fixate on Frugality

Smart entrepreneurs know how dangerous it can be to overspend in the early years of your business. There are times, however, when you need to spend money to do things right. These are usually the times when spending enough money in the beginning means saving a lot down the road. Fear is the underlying driver of being too frugal. When you are uncertain whether you are making the right decision,...

Conscious Entrepreneurs Balance Impatience and Perfectionism

We’ve covered some of the weaknesses and strengths of both impatience and perfectionism in past posts, but being a conscious entrepreneur requires finding the right balance between these two extremes. Here are a few strategies for walking the noble path to success: If you tend to be an impatient entrepreneur, consider taking the following steps to course-correct: Write a business plan and refer to it on a regular basis. Update...

Dogfooding is Key to Entrepreneurial Success

Perfectionism is a character trait that regularly stalls entrepreneurial success. No matter how great your idea, how much planning and research you do, and how smart you are growing a business from startup to success is fraught with trial and error. In their attempt to avoid mistakes, perfectionist entrepreneurs try to put off the trial part of this equation until they can ensure success. This mindset is counterproductive. Ask any...

How to Remove Stress by Sticking to Priorities

You know that setting priorities is important for success in both business and life. If you are like me, however, sticking to them can cause stress. Why? The very nature of priorities requires choosing some things over others. This past year, I realized that there are actually two different levels that this choice occurs at, and that the secret to reducing stress lies in ensuring you have made the...

Red Socks and Tattoos: 2 New Ways to Think About Stress

This past month, I’ve encountered two powerful metaphors that have helped me think about the choices I make in life and at work: red socks and tattoos. Let’s start with the socks. Red socks (or really any red item) in your laundry can stain all of your light clothes pink. It doesn’t matter if you have a dozen offending items or just one, the outcome is the same –...

4 Ways to Fuel Energy and Well-being at Work

Our last post about staying genki (a Japanese word for energized and enthusiastic) at work focused on physiological strategies for enhancing your well-being. This post focuses on some less tangible strategies to ramp up your energy and enthusiasm in life and work. Identify and Plug Energy Leaks Have you ever experienced that tight feeling in your chest or gut when you do something that doesn’t feel quite right? Maybe you went along...