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Many people only notice entrepreneurial success — the money, the cars, the new office. But what they don’t see are the sacrifices entrepreneurs make to create success — likely for years. Many people don’t see the mental health problems that occur in entrepreneurs — like depression and anxiety. It becomes crucial to battle anxiety and depression as an entrepreneur.

The rise of depression amongst entrepreneurs is growing to an all-time high. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to find information on how entrepreneurs can manage and overcome depression. Society often encourages entrepreneurs to ignore the signs. Many feel isolated and afraid that their peers will judge them.  Since COVID-19 has contributed even more to anxiety and depression among entrepreneurs.

The Causes & Studies on Depression

Depression is identified as a serious medical condition. Being sad is not the same as being depressed. Depression impacts the way you feel, think, and act (or react).  Almost 30 percent of entrepreneurs experience depression in their lives.  There are many reasons for this. First, society puts a lot of pressure on the entrepreneur to succeed. Small business owners work extended work hours. They often struggle to form a vibrant personal life.  The constant grind of turning an idea into a reality can be overwhelming. Stress pervades.

Unfortunately, these stressful periods last a long time. Many entrepreneurs are in hustle mode for 3-5 years before their product attracts a large customer base. For some, it’s even longer. To complicate matters, many entrepreneurs, in their haste to become profitable and successful, neglect their physical and mental well-being. Many skip meals, choose work to oversleep and fail to exercise their brains and bodies. Each of these excessive choices negatively impacts mental health and can lead to burnout or severe depression.

Identifying Depression

Clinical depression requires a medical diagnosis. However, there are warning signs that any entrepreneur can identify before talking to a medical professional. Symptoms include loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed, increased fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, loss or increase in appetite, or irritability. Depression is different for most people, but if you see these symptoms, please get checked.

Ways to Seek Help

While many entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of seeking help through an employer, they do have many other options they can use should they suffer from depression. Eating right, regularly exercising, and taking breaks are all important. But, it’s also crucial to go a bit deeper in how you seek help.

For one, many entrepreneurs need a strong personal foundation. Due to the nature of the entrepreneurial journey, there is additional job isolation and long work hours are all too common. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people, who stay in your corner through your ups and downs — is extremely important. Watching out for the other person who may be suffering is important also. That way, you know you’re not alone, even if your depression wants you to believe you are.

Most importantly, as an entrepreneur, don’t neglect your feelings and thoughts. The sooner you search for a diagnosis — or at the very least, seek-help, the better your chances of fighting and winning. It’s okay to admit you’re not okay and to seek that help that you need and deserve.

While depression may affect one in three entrepreneurs, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Talk about the topic. Don’t be afraid to admit that you’re not okay. Expressing yourself should be safe, and can open dialogue among entrepreneurs that can increase awareness, offer you support, and more. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t feel like they must suffer to find success.  Depression is real, but it can also be beaten.

 

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To rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, industrials must undertake a journey that begins with resolve and ends with fundamental reform.

During coronavirus pandemic, protecting lives is the first priority, but we must also protect our livelihoods. For automotive and industrial companies, surviving and emerging stronger at the far end of this crisis will require thinking beyond the next fiscal quarter. Success in the long run will require a journey across five stages: Resolve, Resilience, Return, Re-imagination, and Reforms.

Resolve

The first stage, Resolve, involves determining the scale, pace, and depth of action required. To do so, companies in advanced industries must take the following steps:

(a)       Establishing a nerve center to steer the organization, serve as the information hub, manage risk and responses, and align all stakeholders.

(b)       Protecting employees by making their health the paramount concern and adjusting production as needed

(c)        Screening and safeguarding the supply chain by understanding risks and taking action to address disruption

(d)       Adapting marketing and sales by identifying and mitigating the risks of declining sales while meeting critical customer needs

(e)       Maintaining financial health by improving liquidity, reducing costs, and establishing a spend control tower

Resilience

As industrials experience virus-related shutdowns and economic pressures, they should move quickly to address near-term cash management challenges and broader resiliency issues.

To understand what makes companies resilient, past downturns provide helpful insight. Some companies also flourish during those hard times—typically those that took significant action at the outset.  Resilient companies, defined as those in the top quintile of total revenue share within their sectors, took several key steps:

(a)       They sustained organic revenue growth throughout the recession and out-performed on earnings and on revenue in recovery.

(b)       They moved faster and harder on productivity, which preserved growth capacity.

(c)        They divested 1.5 times more during the downturn and acquired 1.2 times more in the recovery.

(d)       They maintain clean balance sheets long before a downturn starts.

Return

Restarting production facilities can be more challenging than shutting them down. It requires a thoughtful approach to revive the supply chain, match volume to actual demand, and, most importantly, protect the workforce. Given the complexity of global supply chains, ramping up factories in a coordinated way will be mission critical. This will include four important phases:

(a)       Preparation: Companies reach full transparency about systems, networks, and workforce, including the parts and people available.

(b)       System filling: Leaders monitor their global supplier networks to ensure readiness.

(c)        Stabilization: Employees become familiar with the new normal and prepare for volume increase.

(d)       Ramping up: Companies produce the full product portfolio, matching supply and demand.

Re-imagination

The coronavirus pandemic could fundamentally shift how people live, work, and use technology. Advanced industries will likely see a shift in preferences as the expectations of workers and leaders begin to change. The organizations that reinvent themselves will emerge much stronger than those that simply work to reclaim their pre-COVID-19 position.

For industrial companies, this global health crisis may lead to a re-imagination of the following:

(a)       The go-to market approach, as businesses shift to e-commerce and companies digitize their sales experiences or place greater emphasis on new business models, such as rentals and leasing, to overcome consumer reluctance about purchases that involve a greater commitment.

(b)       Cooperation and alliances.

(c)        Workers’ roles.

(e)       Geographic footprint.

(f)        Sourcing.

(g)       Costs.

Reform

In addition to dealing with the significant societal changes coming in the next few months, industrial companies may want to consider strategies for addressing some of the persistent issues affecting the sector to avoid the next crisis. For example, they may want to minimize supply-chain risks by increasing local production or dividing production among more sites. Other imperatives include sustainability, workforce flexibility, and adaptability to accommodate changing tariffs. Above all, companies need to retool their operations to produce medical equipment.  Keeping in view the demand of such products around the world due to current situation, it will be a great move not only towards meeting the need to fight against COVID-19 but also generating revenue by consuming such products within the country as well as abroad.

 

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The world is shrinking and flattening at breakneck speed, which means that the choices someone makes in Wuhan or Beijing have a measurable and predictable impact elsewhere in the world and that supply chains—not just raw materials—are interlinked and interdependent. Opportunities and challenges resulting from globalization leave us with one simple lesson: we cannot ignore the fact that prioritizing self-reliance is what made us resilient in the past and is what will ensure national resolve and an ability to lead the world in times of crisis.

As globalization steamrolls our daily lives, it’s important to recall the wisdom of our fore-bearers, which held that self-reliance is a virtue at any scale—from an individual on the grassland to a nation on the world stage. Whether it is worldwide travel, necessary weather services or the supply chain dependencies that come with globalization, new challenges and their solutions illustrate both the leadership opportunities and promises that growing connectivity can afford.  It begins with self-reliance, with nations being able to develop and produce their own goods and services.

As the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis response is evolving and adapting, the new space economy is noticeably contributing in ways that are helping first res-ponders, policy makers and even the general public make real time decisions that would have been impossible a few years ago.  Satellite imaging can enable scientists to discover things about the context of an outbreak that other methods can’t, as well as aid in pinpointing where the next one could occur.  Orbital Insight is contributing as well, enabled by data collected by Planet Lab satellites, placed into orbit by Spaceflight Services, that allow us to continue with our work and classes remotely using a variety of next generation tech apps like Uber, Amazon Prime and Zoom. These all rely on satellite communications, precision navigation and timing from an earlier generation of space tech.

The resilience enabled by this new space economy will play a vital role in our survival in the coming decades at-casinos.com.  There are many different challenges the world faces today, as in every era of modern history, but never such a time where the revolution in satellite tech and business could play such an integral role in solving these challenges.  Even small businesses, operating globally due to advances in technology, can both lead and impact the networked world. They might not make the business section headlines, but 99% of the space industry is made up of small businesses and these are the people driving the future of innovation.

In only the first few weeks of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we can see how the next generation of space tech, which is supported by many of these small businesses, is informing the world to adapt. Small businesses are uniquely positioned to supply the technology and innovation necessary to secure our future. The current crisis as well as those we face in the future will be addressed more swiftly, with greater transparency and trust because of this new space economy.

Our hegemonic rivals are dead serious about leading the world into the future of space, especially the commercial economy.  As a space scientist, entrepreneur or enthusiast, this is the most exciting time in human history. Proving the Earth and planets revolve around the sun shifted an egocentric world view. Putting a man on the moon and delivering him safely home opened the heavens for exploration and pushed the bounds of human possibility. Democratizing space by creating and growing businesses will create jobs and improve the lives and future of humanity. This new chapter of globalization will affect the world and its human inhabitants in a truly priceless way.

 

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For aviation, and many industries, the COVID-19 crisis is hitting faster and harder than any previous crisis.  For the past six weeks airline capacity cuts, fleet groundings, and sadly, layoffs, have happened at a shocking pace, along with talk of halting jetliner production, many more layoffs, and of government aid for the afflicted parties. Time is racing by, and it’s very difficult to anticipate developments five days, or even five hours, ahead.

Strangely, it might be easier to discuss five years ahead. What will the long-term impact be of this unprecedented disaster on the aviation industry? Here are the following possibilities;

Private aviation boosted, or not.

Whenever a pandemic or terrorist incident strikes, there’s an anecdotal upsurge in wealthy people considering private aviation as an alternative to scheduled air transport. This makes sense, but has never proven to be sustainable beyond the short-term. Worse, this crisis is very badly hitting equities markets and corporate profits, both of which are closely linked to business jet demand. Perhaps worst of all, this crisis is hammering fuel prices. Resource-rich countries and energy extraction companies are crucial to large cabin jet demand, so that segment will likely be hit hardest.

More Teleconferencing instead of travel.

For decades, air transport observers have fretted that the remarkable increase in telecommunications technology will enable more remote meetings, at the expense of in-person meetings and conferences. There’s no evidence whatsoever of this – business travel demand growth has if anything accelerated over the past ten years. But this pandemic and the associated lockdowns is forcing people to rely much more heavily on these technologies, which in turn continue to get better. This trend, coupled with rising corporate environmental awareness and outright flight shaming, could lead to a tipping point where teleconferencing is seen as a viable substitute, thereby hurting air travel demand, particularly for airlines’ most lucrative customers.

China going its own way.

China’s economic, air travel, and jetliner market woes actually began early in 2019, well before COVID-19. Worse, this crisis has exacerbated tensions with the US and the West. As economic nationalism increases, and as state aid plays a bigger role in many economies, China might just decide to pursue an autarkic future. Commercial jets are already a priority in the country’s 2035 plan, and while the results so far have been poor, that problem could be solved with high trade barriers. Chinese airlines would be forced, against their will, to buy local jets. Since China is the biggest and fastest growing export market for Western jets, this would be a serious impairment to future industry growth.

Slower growth with de-globalization.

This goes beyond China-Western relations. The biggest question of all concerns the geopolitical and macroeconomic drivers behind the aviation industry’s remarkable jet age growth. We’ve lived in a happy world where businesses are global, trade was increasingly free, and people are free to discover exciting new places and cultures anywhere on the planet. But those trade barriers could persist for years, affecting the entire business world, not just aviation. Even without government pressure, the disruption to supply chains induced by this crisis will likely further move toward inshoring, for many industries. Meanwhile, the increased public, corporate, and personal debt resulting from this crisis could crimp economic growth for years to come.

Chances are, the macro trends that have benefited aviation will resume their historical direction, with a typical strong post-crisis jetliner market recovery. But it’s almost as easy to envision a dystopian future with slower growth and higher borders. That would not be good for the aviation industry at all. Except, that is, for the military side.

 

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