Best Reads of 2024: The Top 10 Posts from EO on Inc.

 

 

By Anne-Wallis Droter, EO Staff Writer

Sharing first-hand experiences to inspire and empower other entrepreneurs is at the heart of what it means to be an EO member. To quench their thirst for learning, members published 48 posts on EO’s Inc.com channel in 2024. Their thought leadership benefits not only EO members, but also the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem.

From the best ways to deal with stress and stay happy along your entrepreneurial journey, to increasing your propensity, to delegating tasks to your team, to slashing meeting times by up to 50% — EO thought leaders shared their personal experiences plus actionable takeaways that can benefit both you and your business.

In case you didn’t catch them all, following are the top 10 blog posts EO members wrote for EO on Inc. in 2024:

1. You've Been Dealing With Stress All Wrong, According to Neuroscience 

Dr. Amy Serin, EO Arizona, is a neuropsychologist specializing in stress management and the founder of Serin Center.

In her EO on Inc. debut, Serin clarifies what stress is, noting that “The messaging around stress ignores current neuroscience and suffers from fatal flaws that can keep you stuck in an unhealthy stress loop.”

Serin calls out the flaws in six popular stress-busting treatments and shares pro tips on how better to handle stressors in a way that won’t negatively impact your productivity or future self. 

Read Serin's post to learn how to deal with your stress healthfully in real-time, and check out Serin’s book, The Stress Switch.

2. Why Employee Bonuses Do Not Work (and What to Do Instead)

Kent Lewis, EO Portland, is the founder of pdxMindShare, an online career community focused on Portland professionals. Lewis shares his real-world experience of how a cash bonus program gone wrong inspired him to implement a more effective reward system that encourages employee behaviors that resonate with your company’s core values. 

“Cash bonuses virtually disappeared, yet our team morale was higher than ever because we empowered employees toward greater success and aligned recognition with our vision, mission, and core values instead of financial targets,” Lewis explains.

Read Lewis' post to learn why cash bonuses don’t accomplish what most business owners want them to, and discover an alternative that ties bonuses with employee behaviors you want to change over time.

3. How to Boost Success by Overcoming the Illusion of Control

Franziska Iseli, EO APAC Bridge, is the author of The Courage Map, co-founder and CEO of Basic Bananas, which provides marketing mentoring for small businesses, and the founder of Oceanlovers.

“The need to control the uncontrollable is often a root cause of suffering,” Iseli shares. “The more we attempt to manage the uncontrollable, the more frustration, anxiety, and worry we experience, creating a vicious downward spiral.” The solution? By detaching from the need to control, you can grow more comfortable with outcomes that are beyond your influence.

Read Iseli's post to learn three questions to ask yourself to help move forward gracefully from such situations.

4. A Blueprint for How to Become and Stay HAPPY

Stephen Shortt, EO Ireland, is a career and talent strategist, helping individuals and businesses match the right people to the right careers. He created the HAPPY Work Life Map to help people live happier, more fulfilling and rewarding lives.

Shortt offers a blueprint for entrepreneurial happiness, focusing more on the journey than the destination. “Happiness boils down to progress toward your purpose rather than achieving one big goal and then moving to the next,” he explains.

Read Shortt's post to learn his five-pronged approach to aligning your entrepreneurial journey with your values to make a more meaningful — and happier! — impact.

5. Want to Keep Growing? Accept These 3 Truths About Entrepreneurship

Doug Adlam, EO Canada Bridge, is an exponential entrepreneur, global speaker, and tech disruptor. Doug shares lessons from the world of hockey that equipped him to succeed on the turbulent path of entrepreneurship.

“Entrepreneurship is unpredictable. Sometimes bad things happen to good companies,” he says. “Living through these experiences reminded me that as an entrepreneur, you must sometimes take a colossal gamble on whether others will buy into your vision."

Read Adlam's post to learn how accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly lessons of entrepreneurship can help you stay open to continued growth.

6. How to Manage the Overemployed Workers in Your Company

Tina Hamilton, EO Philadelphia, is the founder and CEO of myHR Partner, a human resources outsourcing firm that manages HR for small and midsize businesses in 40 states. She shared insider insights on the growing trend of remote workers being employed full-time by two companies at once.

“The rise of remote work and flexible arrangements has provided fertile ground for the spread of overemployment,” Hamilton explains. “The digital landscape becomes the opportunity to live life under ‘dual identities,’ seamlessly transitioning from one virtual workspace to another, often within the same 40-hour workweek that their employers each believe is dedicated to their organization."

Read Hamilton's post to discover why some employees opt for dual employment and to learn the telltale signs that one of your employees is operating in this shadowy reality.

7. Meet Like a Billionaire: 5 Tactics to Slash Meeting Times by 50 Percent

Barry Raber, EO Portland, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Business Property Trust, shared how he runs his company with minimal meetings.

“The overriding thought process: Get on a meeting diet and skinny things way down. When structured properly, meetings can be far more productive in a fraction of the time,” Raber says. “Bonus benefit: Your team will love you for it.”

Read Raber's post to learn his five rules to help you gain back half the time you — and your team — spend in meetings. Also, check out Real Simple Business, where Raber shares a wealth of successful business secrets.

8. The Future of Real Estate: 5 Disruptive Tech Innovations to Watch

Kirill Bensonoff, EO Boston, is the co-founder of New Silver, a fintech company with a mission to improve local communities by providing fast, convenient, and flexible capital to real estate investors using data and technology to streamline the process.

“The market is becoming more dynamic and accessible than ever before,” Bensonoff says. “Harness virtual reality, AI, big data, and blockchain technology to create a bright future for your investing journey through insights and more informed decision-making.”

Read Bensonoff's post to discover how technology is changing the real estate industry for the better and how it can benefit your investment strategy.

9. The Greatest Obstacles to Effective Delegation and How to Overcome Them

Adi Klevit, EO Portland, is the co-founder of Business Success Consulting Group, which helps leaders create and document custom processes and tailor-made management systems so they can take control of their businesses and thrive.

It’s a fact: Delegation can be an enormous challenge for entrepreneurs who built their companies from the ground up.

“A lack of communication tops the list of obstacles to effective delegation,” Klevit explains. So how can you solve that? “By building well-structured and time-tested processes and procedures. And, if you need to delegate before processes are mature (which many of us need to do), bring the employee in on the ground floor and ask them to help you build the new process or update an existing one.”

Read Klevit's post to learn the four primary concerns around delegating a task and how you can get past them to reclaim your focus on business growth.

10. 6 Ways Businesses Can Fail From the Beginning

Jeremy Ames, EO Idaho, is a serial business builder and co-founder of Guidant Financial, a leader in progressive funding for small businesses. After helping thousands of entrepreneurs in startup mode, Ames chronicles some common mistakes businesses make in their critical early stages.

“You can dramatically increase your chances of success with a little bit of due diligence and some intentionality in your planning and focus,” Ames says. “New entrepreneurs who do that go on to do great things. The ones who don’t burn out, sell the business for pennies on the dollar, or go out of business.”

Read Ames' post to discover his tips for overcoming the six most common pre-launch issues that contribute to business failure.

Do you have thought leadership to contribute to EO on Inc. or EO Blog? Email EO Content with your topic ideas and you may find your post on this list next year!