9 Reasons to Quit Your Job As Soon As You Can

Quit your job to take a better paying position? Definitely. Quit your job for a great opportunity? Absolutely.

But there are a lot more reasons to quit your job (once you have something else lined up, of course.) And they all fall under one main category:

Life’s too short.

Life’s too short to go home every day feeling unfulfilled. Life's too short to work for a terrible boss. Life’s too short to go home every day feeling taken for granted, feeling taken less than seriously, or feeling taken advantage of.

Life’s short to not be as happy as you can be.

Say your grown daughter called and said, “I hate my job. I’m bored, frustrated, and feel like I'm going nowhere.” Wouldn’t you tell her to look for another job?

Shouldn’t you follow the same advice?

Here are reasons to stop being miserable and start looking for something better:

1. Your input is disregarded… or even not wanted.

Everyone has ideas. And everyone loves when their ideas are taken seriously – and implemented. The feeling that you’ve contributed in a special way is incredibly gratifying.

But when your boss or company shoots down or even laughs at your ideas, that’s not only insulting, it's demotivating. And pretty soon you stop caring.

Life’s too short not to care.

2. You get criticized publicly.

We all need constructive feedback. We all need a little nudge. We all need to be told when we can do something better – and how to do it better.

But we need to be told those things in private.

Life’s too short to walk around waiting for the next time you’ll be criticized – and even humiliated – in front of other people.

3. You never hear the word, “Thanks.”

Everyone also needs praise. We all need to know when we do something well (and everyone, even poor performers, do some things well.)

Life’s too short not to be recognized for the contributions you make.

4. Your boss manages up, not down.

You know the type: as a leader they should focus their time and attention on their direct reports, but they spend all their time “following” their boss. It seems like your only job is to contribute to the greater glory – and advancement – of your boss.

A great boss knows that if her team succeeds – and each individual on that team succeeds – then she will succeed too.

Life’s too short to spend your time developing your boss’s career at the expense of your own.

5. You feel like you have no purpose.

Everyone likes to feel a part of something bigger. Everyone likes to feel they make an impact not just on results but also on the lives of other people.

Life’s too short to go home every day feeling like you’ve worked… but you haven’t accomplished anything meaningful.

6. You feel like a number.

Everyone is replaceable. Everyone, ultimately, works for a paycheck. But everyone also wants to work for more than a paycheck. They want to work with people they respect admire… and they want to be respected and admired in return.

If your boss doesn’t occasionally stop for a quick discussion about family, an informal conversation to see if you need an help, or simply to say a kind word… then you’re just a cog in a larger machine.

Life’s too short to only be a cog in a larger machine.

7. You aren’t even mildly excited to go to work.

Every job has its downsides. (I’m willing to bet even Richard Branson has to do a few things he doesn’t enjoy.) But every job should also have some fun moments. Or exciting moments. Or challenging moments. Or some aspect that makes you think, “I’m looking forward to doing that…”

Life’s too short to spend only looking forward to quitting time.

8. You can’t see a future.

Every job should lead to something: hopefully a promotion, but if not the opportunity to take on additional responsibilities, learn new things, tackle new challenges… to feel like tomorrow has the potential to be different – in a good way – than today.

A decent boss works to improve the company’s future. A good boss works to improve her employees’ futures too, even if – especially if – that might mean some of those employees will eventually move on to bigger and better things.

Life’s too short to live without hope.

9. You don’t think you can do anything else.

That’s the best reason of all quit your job. I know what you’re thinking, “I make too much in my current job; I’ll never find something comparable.” Or, “There just aren’t any jobs where I live.” Or, “I’ve put too much time into this company (or career or industry.)”

All those things are true – if you let them be true.

You can do something else. You can do lots of something "elses."

You just have to believe – and trust that your creativity, perseverance, and effort will take you to new, happier, and more fulfilling places.

Life's too short to just stay where you are instead doing everything possible to live a better life.

Written by Jeff Haden

How I Launched My Health-Care Startup

With the Affordable Care Act in full swing, more entrepreneurs are trying to get a piece of the $2.8 trillion health-care pie.

Rami Rafeh worked in business development and innovation at Pfizer before launching New York-based spott3r, which enables employees to earn gym reimbursements or insurance wellness credits for exercising. As a professional who has worked on the established and startup sides of the health-care industry, he gave us his insights on how to operate in a sector where the only constant is change.

Why is it a good time to get into health care?

I've been surprised by how many big companies want to partner with startups--look at insurers Aetna and startup iTriage, or United Healthcare Group's Optum and Audax Health. Once you crack the customer-acquisition code, the value proposition to mature companies is very compelling. You may have to spend a lot of time courting them, but if you show a good track record, they're willing to work out a way to either do a pilot or to partner in some way. Many of them realize that because of internal politics, figuring out policies or just trying to get out of each other's way, it's easier to partner with a nimble startup.

For spott3r, we looked at forward-thinking brands like DavidBartonGym, the YMCA and Crunch, who wanted to reduce customer attrition and increase new-member registrations--known problems and industry standard metrics that are consistently being measured.

How do you work amid constant change?

It's an infinitely complex environment, and I don't think anyone has a clear view of a simple solution, so you just have to be ready to wake up every day thinking of a different way to approach a problem. If you can start small and own a process within that complex environment, and start working your way up from there, that's a recipe for success.

I remembered a gym reimbursement credit I used to file several years ago with New York Sports Clubs, and thought about how many steps there were in that reimbursement process. We realized that even if a person knew about it, they probably weren't claiming it, because there were so many steps involved. So we decided to use that as our business entry point and build from there.

What lessons did you learn from your launch?

I took a slow approach. I spent a year doing surveillance: looking at insurance companies and the policies they offer, filing a provisional patent and working on a website that never got launched because it was buggy and had features that were not core to the company's mission.

Today, I would suggest taking the opposite approach: Just dive in. Come up with a viable product, get something out there to test your hypothesis, and then iterate from that.

One major thing you need to pay attention to is not breaking any health-care laws. Patient safety and privacy are paramount. I hired a Columbia law professor to make sure what we were doing complied with health-care laws.

How do you keep from getting bogged down in regulation?

You have to learn how everything intertwines, including the policy consideration, the care consideration and how pharma fits into it all.

It's helpful to build a knowledge base of experts who can be your go-to consultants when needed. Sometimes it's great to have somebody on your team who has no health-care background at all, so they can say, "Can't we find a way to make this easier? You guys took a convoluted process and maybe reduced it by one step, but it's still convoluted, and you're not there yet."

From Entrepreneur

The Entrepreneur's Simple Guide to Business Concepts

Positioning is one of the hardest marketing concepts to not only understand, but to do right, as I detailed in my recently-completed series. It’s very conceptual, highly theoretical, and mostly emotional. Not everyone does well with that combination.

It’s also very confusing, especially when it’s not well crafted and when coordinated with other parts of defining your business and managing and marketing it. It occurred to me that perhaps I should take a step back again, and show how positioning is different from other parts of your business plan and other elements you are thinking about for your business.

Many people continue to get positioning mixed up with other business concepts, so here is the entrepreneur’s guide to business concepts, with simple definitions of common elements of a business plan -- quick phrases to help clarify and solidify terms that many get confused.

We’ll begin with where I started: positioning.

Positioning

The space you want to occupy in your customer’s mind when they think of your brand. While your positioning should remain consistent over time, it should also evolve with your business and the marketplace.

Mission

Your core purpose -- why you started the business. This should rarely change.

Vision

A lofty ideal of what your organization does. It’s not the “why” of a mission but more a “what” you do to accomplish that mission.

Values

The principles by which you run your business. If you have business values, and you should, you also need to communicate them to your customers.

Voice

How you represent your business and how you talk to your customers. It’s one thing to have a voice, but it’s even more important to consistently apply it in all that you do.

Objectives 

What you are seeking to accomplish in a given year. You are likely to have multiple objectives that change frequently over time.

Strategies 

How you plan to accomplish your objectives. You are likely to have multiple strategies for multiple objectives.

Tactics 

Specific programs you put in place to fulfill your strategies to accomplish your objectives. Tactics should be constantly changing to keep up with what you have to get done for your business.

Oh, and one last one.

Entrepreneur 

The backbone of American business and economic growth. ‘Nuff said.

From Entrepreneur

Train Your Brain to Think More Clearly

Neuroscience says that honing how you speak and write also hones the way you think.

According to the latest neuroscience, the human brain uses neurons in the left visual cortex to process written words as whole word units. The brain combines these words and their stored meanings to remember and understand information.

Analytical thinking is the process of remembering words and putting their meanings into context. This process is not simply accessing a mental dictionary. Every time you use words, you re-create their meaning.

The words you habitually use when you're thinking (and then expressing those thoughts) mold how you see the world. For example, people who habitually think (and speak and write) the word "hate" tend to find an ever-increasing number of things to hate.

This relationship between word usage and perception is hugely important in business. When you train yourself to speak and write using clearly defined words arranged into concise sentences, you're training your brain to think more clearly.

More important, when you write and speak more clearly, you increase your positive influence on your team. Due to their mirror neurons, they'll begin to imitate your clarity in their own thought processes. Clarity is contagious.

Conversely, if you habitually use fuzzy, ill-defined words crammed into long and convoluted sentences, you're training your brain--and the brains of your team members--to think lessclearly. Confusion is also contagious.

With that in mind, here are four easy ways to hone your word skills:

1. Mentally edit out fuzzy buzzwords.

While most business buzzwords are simply annoying (like saying "utilize" rather than "use"), some are so fuzzy and vague that they automatically lead to confused thinking.

The worst offenders are: alignment, best of breed, client-centric, core competency, crystallize, customer-centric, diversity, empowerment, holistic, leading, leverage, generation, paradigm, robust, seamless, stakeholder, sustainability, and synergy.

Take the term synergy. In physics, synergy describes the creation of a whole that's greater than the arithmetic sum of its parts. Classic example: combining flour, water, yeast and heat to create a loaf of bread.

In business, though, synergy generally pops up when disparate organizations are combined, as in a merger, acquisition, or corporate restructuring. In business, however, synergy is rare to the point of nonexistence.

"Even when you have a deal that looks lovely on paper," says Wharton's Emilie Feldman, "getting cultures to fit together, people to stay on board, merging I.T. systems and back offices: all these things are really hard."

Rather than ask difficult questions and think things thoroughly through, decision makers unconsciously use the word synergy to make problematic deals seem more palatable, like slathering ketchup over rancid meatloaf.

Mentally editing out the fuzzy, vague buzzwords when you talking, speaking, listening, or reading gradually clears your mind of the confusion they create, thereby making you smarter.

2. Simplify your business writing.

If you find yourself writing or reading long, complex sentences at work, edit and reedit them so that they express the gist in fewer words. Do this repeatedly and over time you'll automatically accustom your brain to shorter, clearer wordings.

Here's how this works. A subscriber to my free weekly newsletter recently sent me this fairly typical example of biz-blab:

Leveraging XYZ technology and compliance expertise can give your business an important competitive advantage. XYZ can help you manage the 'people side' of your businesses more effectively, avoiding compliance pitfalls and creating key benefits for the businesses and your employees, while simultaneously freeing up time for owners and executives to concentrate on growing their businesses by focusing on operations, strategy, and innovation.

While that paragraph is grammatically correct, it's using a lot of words to waltz around a fairly simple concept. I'm sure that if you read it carefully, you know what they're getting at, but it can obviously be worded with much more economy, like so:

XYZ handles your personnel busywork so that you can spend more time growing your business.

Simplifying biz-blab to the fewest number of words doesn't just make your writing crisper, it also habituates your mind to seek the simple essence of needlessly complex concepts. The more often you practice this clarification process, the smarter you get.

3. Play the "one syllable" game.

This exercise trains your brain to use smaller, easier-to-understand words rather than complex ones. The concept is simple: Try to communicate business ideas using words of only one syllable.

For example, if I were trying to communicate the rules of the game using those rules, I'd write: "The point of the game is to talk and write with words that are so short that they cannot be split."

While this kind of writing and speaking doesn't result in anything you'd actually use in a business discussion, the mental effort of oversimplifying accustoms your brain to reach for the small words rather than the overly complex ones.

Since complex words tend to "complexify" your thoughts (and your expression of them), habitually using common words leads toward clearer thinking.

From Inc. Magazine

How Entrepreneurs Can Put Away More Than $200,000 a Year for Retirement -- Tax-Free

You work and you work and you work, and you save, but it never feels like you’re stashing away enough money. There are always so many expenses it can become overwhelming.

But fear not. There’s at least one way entrepreneurs can save a significant amount of cash for retirement. Let me explain.

There’s been a slew of legislation that is punitive to small-business owners, from minimum wage increases throughout the country to the so-called Affordable Care Act. The tax code isn’t much better, and with many entrepreneurs using pass-through entities that have them paying tax at a personal income tax rate (vs. corporate income tax rate), any future corporate tax reform is not likely to affect the average entrepreneur favorably.

However, there is one part of the tax code that is favorable for entrepreneurs and that’s around tax benefits for retirement savings. While many entrepreneurs understand the basics of 401(k)s, many of them don’t realize that they, depending on the earnings of their business, may be able to put away six-figures a year for retirement, tax free.

Here is some information to help you get started, directly from the experts that I myself use.

If a small-business owner isn’t happy with his or her existing retirement plan or doesn’t have a plan, the first step is, “to consider what their objective is for the retirement plan,” says Sam Schroeder, president of ARS, an Illinois-based third party administrator (TPA) that helps small- and mid-size businesses establish, test and manage compliance related to retirement plans (including that of my own firm). “Is it to save for themselves or to offer their employees a savings vehicle? This will help guide them to a retirement plan that is a fit for their objectives.”

Once you have a sense of your objectives, you can speak with your accountant and a TPA about what types of plans are a fit. While traditional 401(k) contributions are limited annually ($17,500 for 2014, plus a catch-up contribution of $5,500 if you are 50 or older, and $18,000 and $6,000 catch-up, respectively for 2015), other plan types can help you save far more. Schroeder says that using a 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan, you can put away up to $52,000 tax-free for 2014 (or $57,500 if you are over 50) and $53,000 for 2015, depending on the earnings of your business for the year (which, Schroeder notes, are limited to 25 percent of compensation).

Schroeder also says that if you use a Defined Benefit and/or Cash Balance Plan structure, the amounts that you can put away are much greater, noting that, “the total benefit that one person can receive for 2014 is $210,000,” tax-free.

Again, the amount that you can and should put away this year depends on a number of factors related to you and your business, and your desire to tie up that much money in a retirement account, but if you are going to have an investment account or save for retirement, these plans can be very helpful to you as an entrepreneur.

In addition to having your accountant guide you through tax implications and the third party TPA helping set up your plan and helping with compliances services -- such as filings with the government, required annual testing and distribution of other related written materials -- you may also need an investment advisor or investment company to help you allocate monies into ultimate investments.

Most entrepreneurs and small-business owners will most likely not have the services of investment companies, advisers and TPAs bundled together, and that you can benefit from the flexibility from being able to choose each of the service providers that best meets your needs, Schroeder says.

In choosing the best service providers, the TPA choice is particularly critical, as legislation relating to retirement plans changes frequently with the unfortunate whim of political tides. “Very valuable, but less well-known options under a retirement plan will go a long way in ensuring that a small-business owner receives as much benefit from their retirement plan as they can, while maintaining the qualified status of the plan,” Schroeder says. “One such option is a method of allocating a profit sharing contribution called cross-testing. This requires additional testing, but enables the contribution that the small business owner receives to be greater on a percentage basis than the contribution that the employees receive.”

Plus, Schroeder warns to check as you would with any other service provider to see who will be performing the work and to beware of low-cost fee traps that seem like a bargain today but may be costly at the end of the day. “Some TPAs have lower-level staff preparing important documents and testing, which increases errors and needed corrections…It would not pay off long-term to be short-sighted on fees. IRS and DOL audits can go back many years, even to plan inception if there are problems.”

Barry Itzkowitz, a CPA and director with Midwest-based accounting firm SS&G (whom I also work with personally), says that you need to be focused on timing. “In order to take advantage of tax deductions for the calendar year 2014, most retirement plans must be in place before December 31^st,” he says. “Planning before year-end will provide valuable insight about current tax savings strategies for your business while estimating future retirement benefits for both you and the employees. Also, recent IRS limits have increased the funding limits for both 401(k) and employer contributions for 2015, so future benefit options can be considered if the December 31, 2014 implementation deadline is not met.”

Focusing on your qualified retirement plan may not seem like the obvious place to spend your time in business, but it can be quite valuable to you and even to your employees. Make it a plan to check in on your “plans” for the future.

From Entrepreneur

Pro Tip for Startups: Document Your Processes

"Document your processes" is a B-school chestnut that's been pounded into upper-management training for decades. But here's the thing: That same nugget applies to your 1-month-old, one-person startup, as well. You may think that's crazy as you bounce between different roles and duties every five minutes, and your company's product, target market and business plan are still being worked out, but it's not. Simply put, if you know where you want to go as a business, the step-by-step processes you implement will tell you how to get there.

To explain what that means, Joe Worth, a CFO for both public and private companies and Entrepreneur's "Ask the Money Guy" columnist, recounts a story about a small high-tech machine tool manufacturer he worked for, where every single process in the company was written out and housed in a row of three-ring binders. "They even spelled out how to clean and stock the company kitchen," Worth says. "I asked the owner why she'd gone to this level of detail, and she told me, 'I want to act like the company I want to become.' On an operational level, it was fantastic. I was able to grab the accounting process book put together by the outgoing controller, and within five minutes I was in business."

As Worth's experience points out, the biggest benefit to documenting processes is the control it gives you over your company and its future. Once done, you can delegate tasks to new hires, partners or contract workers, or more easily move employees from one position to another, freeing you up to focus on growing your business. "In a startup, new people are joining the company all the time," Worth says. "When there's a specific process in place, everyone knows what their job is and what's expected of them."

But even if it's just you running your business, writing out a checklist (for, say, sales calls, accounts payable and accounts receivable) or a packing list (for trade-shows or conferences) will help keep you on top of your business. "This is what every Fortune 500 company does, and it's what every franchisor has to do to enable complete strangers to execute their business model," Worth says. "If you do the same thing on day one of your startup, you're going to be well ahead of the competition in creating a more valuable company."

From Entrepreneur

12 Facts About the Human Brain That Will Make Your Marketing More Successful (Infographic)

Humans will remember something longer if it made them feel rather than think. They gravitate towards provocative images -- think food, sex and danger. They’re drawn toward images of faces. The color yellow puts them on edge.

Understanding how the human brain works is fascinating, but it’s also good business.

Marketing campaigns rooted in neurology are more likely to get and hold attention. And in the attention economy we are living in, where consumers have access to more emails and tweets than they could ever manage to read and digest fully, being able to get and hold attention is what separates the wheat from the chaff. That’s what gets consumers to spend.  

If you are looking to get more of your marketing efforts seen, then have a look at this infographic, embedded below, generated by Nashville, Tenn.-based Emma, an email-marketing software provider. The infographic highlights 12 biological trigger mechanisms that make the human brain light up.

Have a look and use these insights to improve your marketing instantly.

From Entrepreneur