How To Lift Employee Morale During A Crisis

The mental health and well-being of your employees should be a priority right now if it wasn’t already. The coronavirus panic has made things very difficult for a lot of them, and they need your support now more than ever. Morale issues were already a big problem for companies before the pandemic and they are a challenge that many businesses will have to concentrate more of their time and resources on. Here are a few tips for lifting your team’s morale during the coronavirus crisis. 

Show That You Care About Their Safety 

The first thing you have to do is make sure that you show them that their safety is a priority. You have to make sure that you have clear protocols in place and that everyone follows them. You don’t have to stick to CDC or your state’s guidelines either. If you want to enforce things like mandatory PPE or a sneeze guard even if they are not mandated by your local government, go ahead. This will show your commitment not only to your employees, but the public as well. 

If you don’t have sneeze guards already, we suggest you look for a sneeze guard company that will be able to build custom guards for you. They will be able to provide partitions for office spaces or to protect client-facing employees. 

Consider Going Hybrid Instead Of Fully Remote 

A lot of businesses have decided to go either fully remote for their operations, or for a hybrid workplace. Hybrid workplaces are the best for morale as they allow your employees to choose the best environment for them. Some may feel isolated working from home, and it can start eroding their motivation and morale. Allowing for hot-desking with proper social distancing also allows for better cooperation and teamwork. This working arrangement could also outlive the pandemic and allow you to give your employees the freedom to work from whichever setting they prefer. 

Stay In Touch 

If you decide to go remote, you have to make sure that you keep your team in the loop all the time. You also want to let them know of any milestones or accomplishments the business has made. You still want to make them feel like you’re working as a team. You want to congratulate your whole team, but also individual performers. You have to let them know how valuable they are to the team and how much you need them. On the other hand, you also want to speak with those who may be falling behind. While in some cases, it might be because of morale issues, you also have to be able to tell when it is a lack of effort. Some employees might not be the best suited to this format since they need constant reinforcement. These are the ones you will need to keep your eye on the most for your workers. 

Maximize Morale

There are plenty of things that you can do to keep your employees engaged during those difficult times. The first is to make sure that you let them know that you are there for them. When you show your employees you actually care, it can help to maximize morale as much as possible in the new normal.

Overcoming Obstacles: One-Eyed Surfing Cat Kuli

Do you think your life is challenging? Are you unsure that you can adapt to your current business landscape? Have you been making excuses for your lack of success or for not trying new things?

You can learn something from Kuli, the one-eyed cat that loves to swim and surf. Weighing only 1 pound at the time of adoption, Kuli overcame his obstacles and instinctual fear of water to become a better surfer than most people in the world are capable of being. When life gets tough, think of Kuli!! Or just hit the waves and get in a workout and some sun. 

Sometimes motivation comes in unexpected forms. It might take an unorthodox example of excellence like a one-eyed cat to get you off your butt and achieving your goals. But whatever it takes, you need to stop settling and making excuses.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post about lean startup living.

Interested in more articles from Lean Startup Life?

Read Related Resources:

• How To Keep Company Culture Consistent 

• Positions You Need To Fill To Have A Successful Startup

• The Importance Of A Company Recycling Program

More Lean Startup Life Below 

Entrepreneur Inspiration: Jeff Bezos Amazon HQ 1999

If you are a lean startup owner or co-founder, you are quite familiar with humble beginnings and bootstrapping your business to greatness. We have all heard of the rags to riches stories that so many entrepreneurs have lived to tell about, if they are lucky. Some have lived in their cars and others have maxed out a dozen credit cards to give themselves a shot. 

One of the most impressive of these frugal beginnings has got to be Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. 

The picture above shows the world's richest / second richest man (along with Bill Gates depending on the prices of Microsoft and Amazon stock on any given day) in his office in 1999. This marketing mastermind started his business in the mid to late 90's when the internet began, was laughed at, but then picked up steam after the dotcom bubble burst. 

Now Amazon is one of the most valuable brands on earth and Jeff Bezos could be on track to be the world's first trillionaire. You might need to live lean and humble early on, but it can pay off like you never could imagine!

Last year, Amazon was worth $800 billion. To put this number in perspective… if you spent $1 every second (or $3,600 an hour, or almost $85,000 per day) you’d spend a million dollars in 12 days. A billion at the same rate would take you 31 YEARS. Which means that if Amazon were to spend every last penny they are worth at the rate of $1 every second, it would take them 8,680 years. To put that in perspective… the length of the entire recorded history is about 5,000 years, give or take. Here is what most people who want to make money online via email and ecommerce don’t realize. 

Regardless of what they pick as their business model - information products, services,  drop shipping, Amazon FBA, YouTube, Facebook, or whatever. They want to become the “Amazon” of their niche right away! Which - you might have already guessed - is not how things work. If you try to run before you can crawl, you just won’t be able to do it. No amount of positive thinking will help you. It is like if I went to a gym and tried to deadlift 1,104.52 pounds (the current world record). 

No matter how excited I am or how positive my thinking is, if I haven’t trained for years and I haven’t eaten right for years, it is not happening. I have to start with less. In this scenario, “fail your way to success” doesn’t really apply either. You only learn when you fail at things that are within your reach because then you are able to figure out what went wrong.  If you try something that’s completely out of your reach, well… you’re not going to learn anything. (Except maybe reinforce your inner belief that you’re not good at anything — which is what you don’t want to do!) Yet, that is the way almost every failing internet marketer tries to do things. 

Here is what you do instead. Before you serve a hundred thousand people, you have to serve a thousand. Before you serve a thousand, you have to serve ten. And before you serve ten, you have to serve ONE. When Amazon started, they were a simple online bookstore. They were not anywhere close to the ubiquitous online behemoth they are now. 

Amazon, too, had to serve their first customer and I happen to know who that was. It was someone named John Wainwright, an Australian software engineer based in Sunnyvale, CA, who bought a (presumably, very exciting) book named “Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought” by Douglas Hofstadter. And the rest is history for Amazon. What about you? Are you paralyzed about having to serve a whole ton of people? Are you overwhelmed about having to build logistics to serve thousands and thousands of customers? 

Don’t be. Start with one. Then, scale to ten. Then, to a thousand… a hundred thousand… and more. Everything will become much easier when you adopt this mindset - no matter what it is you decide to do to create your wealth online. Oh, and you don’t even need all that many customers to do well. If you only charge 10 people $1,000 for something, you are $10,000 richer, just like that.


I hope you enjoyed this blog post about lean startup living.

Interested in more articles from Lean Startup Life?

Read Related Resources:

• How To Keep Company Culture Consistent 

• Positions You Need To Fill To Have A Successful Startup

• The Importance Of A Company Recycling Program

More Lean Startup Life Below 

Facebook Reject Brian Acton Sells WhatsApp For $19 Billion

Brian Acton was a software engineer that was looking for a new opportunity but was met with the obstacle known as rejection. While he worked for over a decade at Yahoo & Apple, he got turned down by Twitter and then Facebook. These days both of those companies sincerely regret that decision. 

When Brian Acton couldn't find work at another big-name company, he took his chances on the start-up route instead. Teaming up with another Yahoo alum Jan Koum that helped build messaging app WhatsApp. In 2014 Facebook bought WhatsApp for a stunning $19 billion in stock and cash. Now he is incredibly wealth and set for life in 2024.

What will you do next time you are rejected? Persistence and resiliency could be worth billions! Never give up!

Need more entrepreneurial motivation?

Read my posts:

- Shark Tank Reject Sells Company For $1 Billion to Amazon

- Humble Beginnings For World's Richest Man Jeff Bezos

Read More Lean Startup Life Posts Below:

The Best Motivational Business Quotes

Hard work, ingenuity, resiliency, an innovation all come to mind. There are countless factors (including some luck) that come into play when it comes to success in business. But motivation is also key to continued growth and success with your entrepreneurial exploits. Inspiration is essential when living the lean startup life. 

It is challenging to try and just pick a few of the greatest inspirational quotes. It really depends on who you are trying to inspire, and quote meaning can evolve over time. My personal favorite biz quote is Disney CEO Bob Iger saying “The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo”.

For young entrepreneurs and students, it can be especially important to stay motivated. Keeping students motivated is crucial to helping them tap into their potential. Being motivated in school can help carry over into being motivated in their personal and professional lives years later. 

It is hard to pick a single motivational quote or even several of the best ones because different messages appeal to different people. Pick an entrepreneur or leader that appeals to you and your personal story to learn from and be inspired by.

Keep refilling the tank of motivation by reading books about business success, perusing quality quotes, listening to inspiring podcasts, meditating, praying, or whatever works for you. 

Now Read:  Jeff Bezos Humble Beginnings (Inspirational!)


I hope you enjoyed this blog post about lean startup living and motivational business quotes to keep you inspired.

Interested in more articles or inspiring quotes from Lean Startup Life?

Read Related Resources:

• How To Keep Company Culture Consistent 

• Positions You Need To Fill To Have A Successful Startup

• The Importance Of A Company Recycling Program

More Lean Startup Life Below