For some people a 9-5 is not enough. In fact, being at a 9-5 knowing you could do better for yourself and your family is slowly killing you.
If you are reading this post, it means you are one of those entrepreneurs. By now you have started something on the side or plan to. Either way, you will profit greatly from reading this post to help you cross the finish line.
I can tell you building a business while working at a job is a tough act, but it is not impossible. I live by the notion you should always give your job about 60% and yourself 100%. You are your most valuable asset.
Working on a job while trying to start a business will drain you faster. At times you will want to give up on your business, because your job seems to take less effort.
I am here to help you pass that roadblock and show you how to stay motivated while you create greatness on the side.
HOW MUCH TIME ARE YOU WILLING TO COMMIT?
Building a successful business takes time, and working while trying to do it, you need to decide on how much time you are willing to put in your business.
If you get up early from bed, chase traffic to put in hours at a place you hate, that is what you are willing to give. I was willing to put in 8 hours in my overnight job I hated so much.
When I arrived home at about 7:30am in the morning, I was exhausted. But before even going to my room to lay down and take a break, I took my work shirt off, sat my butt in front of my laptop and got to work.
I’d put in as much hours as I could and at times I fell asleep at the desk. Putting in 10-30 mins is not worth anything. Other blogs may have told you it is, but I am telling you it is not. 2hours plus says you know quitting time is coming and you will not have to suffer at a place that is draining you.
I believe in you, so put in the time.
KEEP IT TO YOURSELF
We are social creatures. It’s only right that we feel the need to tell people about our plans. Even from a young age we loved getting attention. It made us feel warm inside and a little more important, even when we didn’t feel it for ourselves.
But as pleasurable as that sounds, telling people about your plans can be one of the main causes for a failed business.
Not everyone will be happy about it, especially if they aren’t doing it and don’t want you to succeed. Broke minded people think it is better to bring you down to their level rather than encourage you and do something themselves. Not to mention people expect things to go faster than it should.
After a year of hard work and you have nothing to show for it, they will bring it to your attention about your so called great business. They will want to know where it is and you will end up rushing to please others rather than focus on building your empire.
If it happened that your first business failed, which many do, they will rub it in your face and you will be discouraged to learn from your attempts and try again. A person cannot become successful without ever failing and learning how to do it better the next time.
Keep it to yourself, at least in the beginning. A little down the road when you start making a little bit of progress you can talk about it a with some trusted friends that will not try and belittle you.
As fascinating as that sounds, avoid doing that. Not because it is impossible, but from my own experience, it is not worth it.
I used to put in 18 hour and 20 hour days, sitting in front of a computer screen, working non-stop unless it was a bathroom break. At times I would forget to eat.
I wanted things to go faster. I wanted to flick my bosses off and tell them to suck it. To have some income coming in to tell my girlfriend she could stop stressing and leave.
18-20hours 7 days a week felt great, while I crammed down star energy drinks; but for the long run, health will always be more important than wealth. Don’t rush, because most things require time to grow and that is not optional.
It is a good idea to take a break and relax for 30 mins, maybe stand and stretch to get the blood flow circulating again. Giving your mind a break helps it come back ever more strong.
Taking a break goes hand in hand with celebrating small wins. Celebrating small wins boost your energy and motivation level even when you don’t notice.
Taking breaks to celebrate sometimes seem like you’re not doing anything, but it’s actually better than putting in countless hours with no breaks.
Because a business takes time, there is no need to overwork. over working will lead to burning out quicker.
I also encourage 12hours of work if you are a vet in the entrepreneur sphere, especially if the work you do requires a lot of thinking.
SET ACHIEVABLE GOALS
Setting achievable goals is the most important part of staying motivated when starting your business. It’s ok to aim too high, but set small milestones to hit to get you there. Don’t go at it expecting things to just take off. Doing it that way is a great way to disappoint yourself and feel things aren’t working.
Have a small to do list that you actually work on daily and cross off. A to do list is good to have, but use it incorrectly and it will work against you.
Learning how to set goals is a skill every entrepreneur should master. Setting goals makes your dream that much closer to becoming reality. Not all goal setting is the same, just as not all to do list are the same.
Remember, even the greats have a hard time when operating their business. Learn from your surroundings and remember reading an article Is not enough. You must keep your mind at its peak by reading and constantly learning something new.
Hard times will come, but they will not last. Apply these simple rules to get pass them. If anything you can always come back to this blog and get yourself motivated.
Writing things down is the best way to make a commitment. Start by writing down what you are going to do in the comments below. If you already own a business, help someone that is just starting out by telling them about it and the other ways you overcame de-motivation.
Our team kicked off the new year by attending Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. The conference brought together thousands of professionals from the online marketing world to discuss the latest trends and learn from experts in the industry. With an exciting new year of opportunities ahead, the conference was buzzing with insightful discussions on how to find success. One subject that is always top of mind at conferences is how to boost ROI to make campaigns more profitable. As always, we were eager to join in on this important conversation. Drawing on the educational sessions from ASW 2016, we’re breaking down three ways to boost ROI for your online campaigns.
1) Do Your Research
This was a common theme amongst many speakers at ASW. You may have heard it before, but even though it’s a new year, some tactics for success remain the same. Doing your research before diving into a campaign should always be your first step. Whether its monitoring trends on Google Alerts, researching top affiliate offers or analyzing your competitor’s strategy, research needs to be done. This allows you to:
Determine if the opportunity is worth investing in
Discover who is already succeeding at this in your industry
Establish benchmarks for ROI
Set yourself up for success with an informed strategy
There is an endless amount of resources out there for you to leverage in your research process. Find the ones that are relevant to your industry, target market and business and you’ll be on your way to a profitable campaign in no time.
2) Get Personal Through Relevancy
Advancements in technology are giving brands and marketers the opportunity to create more and more unique, personalized experiences for customers. As a result, customers have come to expect a more personal experience from their favorite brands. In fact, they actually feel more positive towards brands that do so. How can you get more personal with your digital campaigns? Be relevant. According to Dale Carr, Founder and CEO of Leadbolt, advertisers can use advanced targeting to reach audiences ‘in the moment’. For example, creating campaigns that are specific to holidays, celebrations or events and the people that partake in them. Targeting your audience at the right place and time builds a stronger connection, which should influence purchases.
Snapchat does this effectively with their live-story filters. They allow users to apply holiday, location or event-specific filters to images if they are in the geographic area where it’s taking place. Everyone else on Snapchat can then experience these moments from wherever they are in the world. Whether it’s the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show or celebrating the New Year in various locations, Snapchat creates extremely relevant advertising opportunities for brands and unique experiences for users.
3) Optimize or Die
Shannon Macleod, Optimization Strategist at Conversion Geek, gave a stellar presentation that drove this point home. The best way to optimize? Invest time into fully understanding what works so that you know instead of guessing what your next move should be. For example, if your landing page isn’t converting, take time to understand why. Consider the point where most customers are leaving the conversion process and then determine how you can change the design to prevent drop-off. Perform an A/B test until you find the optimal design. This will take time, but investing in it now will yield greater results in your conversions and ROI later. Check out specific examples from Macleod’s presentation here.
If improving ROI is one of your goals for 2016, don’t forget to do your research, get personal and remember to optimize.
Huge thanks to Affiliate Summit for putting on another incredible conference. Make sure to subscribe to our blog to get updates on what conferences we’ll be attending next!
Ever wondered what success habits separate high achievers from the rest of the dreamers?
Some people perform better. They achieve more and always succeed in what they do. But what more do they have that helps them get such results?
Truth is, they aren’t any different from us – at the beginning we’re all equal. But what differentiates them from the rest is the behavior they adopt on the way to achieving their dreams.
15 Success Habits High Achievers Have
High achievers have different habits than the average people. Their days consist of others activities and their head is full of other thoughts.
So here are the success habits and best practices of such people that make them stand out, get things done and move forward:
1) They Get Up Early
The average person needs a lot of time to wake up. That’s because he usually goes to bed late, stays in front of the computer, and is now hitting the snooze button, trying to put off starting the day.
But if that’s the firth thing you want and think about in the morning – how to avoid an early start of the day – then how do you expect the rest of it to be any better?
A different approach, however, is to go to bed earlier and have a good sleep. To wake up motivated to take action because you got stuff to do. To face the day, make the most of it, realize what a gift it is and be excited about what it will bring.
2) They Read
Instead of checking email and using your phone all the time, watching TV, being on all social medias and constantly updating random statuses, you should sit down and do some reading, or writing.
That’s an activity for your free time that will make you think, grow, learn and improve in general. And it’s what high achievers do daily.
The benefits are amazing – you get energized, boost productivity, jumpstart the day, have time for yourself, plan out the stuff you need to get done later, and have a peaceful morning. So think about it if you don’t have a routine already.
When you’re serious about becoming successful and achieving more in life, sleeping in is not an option. But it’s also important how you spend that first hour after leaving bed. And filling it with productive, positive and creative activities like meditation, a quick workout and some writing or reading, is the best option.
4) They Have A Vision
A life without direction is pointless.
Those who actually achieve something and get somewhere, are seeing that place much earlier than the time they actually get there. Because in their minds, they’re constantly visualizing the upcoming success in details.
That’s a powerful technique that can get you closer to whatever it is that you want in life. No matter how big.
5) They Rest Properly
Successful people sleep well, take breaks, power nap, meditate to clear their mind every day, and have other rituals that help them relax, rest their body and mind, and not feel drained at the end of the day.
This helps them work harder, be more focused, get better results, and eliminate stress and depression.
6) They Take Responsibility for their Actions
Blaming other people, or even circumstances or life in general, is an awful habit many people share. But that’s not how a determined person sees things.
Instead, he takes responsibility for his actions, even if he’s made a mistake, learns from it, accepts it, and moves on trying to do it right next time.
7) They Talk About Ideas with Other Purpose-Driven People
If you’re surrounded by negative people who let you down, complain about their lives all the time, or are just talking about other people and events in their life, you won’t change for the better.
But you can still turn that around and choose to communicate with positive individuals, spend time with creative people, full of life and positivity, ambitious human beings with goals and dreams. And soon you’ll see yourself thriving.
After all, environment is crucial for success and we’re the average of the five people we spend most time with.
8) They Have an Evening Routine
For maximum results you should start the day with a morning routine, and end it with a bedtime ritual.
It may include stuff like examining the day and assessing your performance, making a plan for tomorrow, brushing your teeth and flossing, meditating (again), and doing some reading so that you can go to sleep faster.
And it definitely doesn’t include any food, electronic devices, alcohol, or falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV.
9) They Prioritize
Even if you have 50 things to do today, there are just a few that are really important. Your job is to define them and focus on them first.
These are the things that help you move towards your goals, that help you improve, earn more, be in a better shape, etc.
10) They Say ‘NO’ to Some Things
High achievers know they have to say ‘no’ to stuff that seems pretty tempting now, but which can only harm them in the long term.
So they often miss parties or other social events, get up early even though they really want to stay in bed, work out when their mind tells them to stay in front of the computer for a little more, and don’t eat the junk food they crave.
Sacrifices like that are what shapes your character and make you the person you need to become in order to lead the lifestyle you imagine.
11) They Grow Spiritually
As I mentioned, some of their best (and daily) practices include reading, meditating, interacting with creative and passionate people, etc.
And all that helps them grow. Soon, it becomes a habit for them to look for chances to learn new stuff, try new things, gain experience and evolve.
12) They Eliminate Distractions
Distractions are everywhere. And always will be. But if we realize how important our current activity is, and choose to focus only on it, other people coming in the room, notifications, worries, fears and random thoughts won’t matter that much.
So concentrate on what you’re doing now. And if it’s connected to your dreams, you’ll find a way to eliminate everything that distracts you and will actually get some work done.
13) They Take Immediate Decisions
People usually spend too much time trying to make a decision. Even if it’s an easy one, they struggle with choosing an option as they try to choose the best one.
But you should let go of perfectionism. And, instead, just take one of the two things and make the best of it.
14) They Get Rid of Time-Wasting Activities
Most of the things we do daily aren’t productive. In fact, they are only slowing down our self-improvement process. And the best we can do is stop doing them and do more of what works and has helped so far.
Reading newspapers may not have any positive effect on you, but if you spend that time planning out your whole day in details, you’ll be much more productive and will see the bigger picture of where you’re heading in life.
15) They Approach Other Successful People
Often we’re too scared to even try to talk to someone that’s superior to us. But people like that are usually friendlier and more open-minded than we expect.
After all, they too started somewhere and wanted to change and ask more successful individuals for advice. So they might as well take the time now to give you some tips, help you in some way or encourage you and give you feedback.
Great habits, right? And none of them are hard. You can start applying them right now. But start small – one change at a time.
Can you add other practices that lead to greater results in life?
THE FORMER APPLE RETAIL GURU WAS SEVERELY HUMBLED AFTER FLAMING OUT AT JC PENNEY. ONLY A STARTUP COULD SAVE HIM.
Most mornings, Ron Johnson rises just after 4 a.m., without the use of an alarm clock, and sets off on a five-mile run. "My strategy is, if I wake up before 3 a.m., I go back to sleep," he explains to a group of his employees, a dozen men and women in their twenties who listen with a mix of awe and a little horror. Next, he hits 50 chip shots in his backyard in Atherton, California—"because your short game matters"—and then, as the sun is coming up, he spends a couple of hours answering emails.
Johnson’s goal is to get his blood flowing before he ever sets foot in the offices of Enjoy, the Silicon Valley e-commerce startup he founded last year, and which officially launched in May. He tries to spend the entire workday in meetings, usually receiving updates and conducting informal reviews with groups of employees like this one.
Johnson has a desk with a computer on it, but he almost never sits there, and although he carries an iPhone, he mostly gestures with it. In my time with him, I never once saw him even glance at the screen. "Anytime you’re going to your phone, it’s a withdrawal from a relationship," Johnson says. "The team needs to feel your presence, your concentration, your interest."
Johnson, 56, has found that he can be efficient this way, so much so that on most days, he heads home around 3 p.m. Family matters to him—he’s married and has a daughter, 20, and a son who’s 18—and, as he explains, he’s not as young as he once was. "You’ll find, when you get older, the cycles tend to get the better of you," he says, leaning back in his chair, allowing his legs to slide forward and his hands to fall behind his head, as he breaks into a wide smile.
His audience, part of a team that delivers high-end consumer electronics to people’s homes, laughs politely. Many of them started their careers at the Apple Store, which Johnson helped create, so they regard him as a hero, and also as a bit of an alien. Although we are sitting in the offices of a small Bay Area tech company, the CEO is dressed as if he’d just stepped off the back nine at Pinehurst—white Lacoste polo shirt, light-blue trousers, athletic socks, and golf shoes. Johnson’s background, habits, and mannerisms run contrary to just about every stereotype about what makes for a successful startup CEO.
Most tech company founders are coolly rational engineers; Johnson is a marketing guy with strong emotions and a penchant for showmanship. He is a regular churchgoer, a man of faith. Most Silicon Valley founders are proud workaholics; Johnson sports a tan acquired during a nearly monthlong summer vacation on the French Riviera. And then there’s the age thing: Johnson is almost twice as old as the typical founder of a venture-capital-backed tech startup, according to a Harvard Business Review study.
Still, he is among the most accomplished retail minds of the past two decades, having orchestrated the design partnerships that turned Target, the Minnesota-born discount chain, into "Tar-zhay", the middlebrow mega-retailer, while developing a playbook that H&M, Uniqlo, and many others have copied. Johnson’s work at the Apple Store created a business that makes more money per square foot than any other retailer in America and helped to transform a geeky niche brand into one as ubiquitous, beloved, and profitable as any American company in history.
Then, he had the audacity to attempt one of the most ambitious business turnarounds in modern memory—remaking JCPenney, the ailing department store chain. Even after the public humiliation of his firing, Johnson could have found work with any number of other struggling retailers, become a very well-paid consultant or investor, or even retired. Instead he is going for broke, having raised $80 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Highland Capital Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz, among other investors, including Johnson himself, to found Enjoy. The company sells consumer electronics via the web—AT&T iPhones, GoPro video cameras, Sonos speaker systems, DJI drones—and has its couriers, or "Experts," in Johnson’s parlance, act as modern-day Maytag Men, hand-delivering the items in as little as four hours (currently in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York) and giving customers lessons on how to use them. The company offers service calls, too, with Experts showing up at your house and helping you learn how to use your digital camera or smartphone. The cost is $99 per visit, though it’s free if you buy something through Enjoy. "What we’re trying to do is deliver unimagined customer experience," Johnson says. "It’s better than a store, it’s the same price as online, and it’s faster than even Amazon Prime."
Enjoy, like all startups these days, dreams of both changing the world and becoming an insanely valuable enterprise. But for Johnson, Enjoy is more than even that. It’s a chance to find himself.
"If you have thoughts, jump in," Johnson says to me as he convenes a 9 a.m. meeting with eight employees in Enjoy’s Menlo Park headquarters late this summer. "Why not?" Having started his career as a trainee at Mervyn’s department stores, he runs Enjoy like a retail manager, paying little attention to hierarchy, preferring huddles to one-on-one meetings, and asking for direct feedback from anyone who happens to be in the room.
At the time of our meeting, Enjoy is about a month away from the biggest day in its brief history: the launch of Apple’s new iPhones 6s and 6s Plus. Thanks to a deal Johnson made with AT&T, hundreds of the carrier’s customers in Enjoy’s delivery areas are expected to buy phones each day, which means that the company’s Experts will have to hustle to fulfill all of those orders. But for the partnership to work for Enjoy, AT&T customers need to see the service as more than merely free delivery. Johnson slouches in his chair, sips from a big bottle of Smart Water, and counsels the group packed into a small conference room. "You’re in the relationship business," he says. "The measure of success is if they come back" and buy something else. "You don’t go on a date to see the movie; you go to a movie because you’re interested in a relationship."
Enjoy’s Experts hope they’ll be able to form emotional bonds with these new customers, but they will also need to gather a raft of data, including email addresses and their technology preferences, so that Enjoy will be able to market to those customers directly. The current plan is to do this through a survey on an iPad, but Johnson thinks that sounds a little tacky. "What if the Expert could do it through a natural conversation?" he asks. "That’s very different from, ‘Give us all your information.’" He suggests that the Expert memorize the responses to input later, the way waiters at fancy restaurants take orders without a notepad.
Johnson, who grew up in Edina, Minnesota, is still very much the humble Midwesterner—he often begins sentences with "my instinct" or "my intuition"—but there’s no doubt who is in charge. When the company’s head of supply chain, Omar Devlin, a former Apple operations guru, suggests that Enjoy shoot to have its Experts show up on time 95% of the time, which he says would be an appropriately impressive, and achievable, goal, Johnson starts to lose his composure. "Ninety what?" he asks. "Ninety-five percent would be a very good accomplishment. But 98% is a better goal." When I ask Johnson about it later, he tells me that he rarely prepares for meetings, choosing instead to react emotionally to what’s being discussed. "I want to create a space where everything is in the moment."
Johnson is full of these Zen-like aphorisms, often telling employees to "ruthlessly eliminate hurry." He projects this calm in part by hurrying when nobody is looking. "Underneath that calm is a boiling cauldron," says Bill Campbell, a former Apple board member and a longtime friend of Johnson’s.
If Johnson’s management style sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s modeled after that of one of his mentors: Steve Jobs. By 2000, Johnson had become a retail wunderkind (at almost 40) after recruiting acclaimed architect and designer Michael Graves to produce a housewares collection for Target, where Johnson was the VP of merchandising. Jobs was in the market for a retail genius to run his planned stores. "Steve and I connected right away," Johnson tells me. After all, he sold Graves by telling him, "Good design shouldn’t be expensive." Jobs saw a kindred spirit in Johnson.
The Apple Stores were, by every measure, an unprecedented success and made Johnson’s then-counterintuitive decisions—the high-end locations for a computer store, the layouts that emphasized what you could do with Apple’s products, and, of course, the Genius Bar—into retail orthodoxy. Less appreciated, then and even now, is Johnson’s idea that he could find enough employees who, as he puts it, "know technology and can love people." He personally interviewed every Apple Store leader and insisted that those folks personally interview every employee on his or her team (often 100 people or more) to imbue Apple Stores with a culture of personal service. "My whole goal was that everyone knew someone well who knew me well," he says.
Johnson’s bet on people was expensive, but it is one of the secrets to Apple Stores’ success. "There’s a Midwestern warmth," says Campbell. "Ron put that humanness in there."
By 2011, Apple Stores were generating $5,600 per square foot, and Johnson was the biggest star in American retail. Johnson admits now that running it had begun to feel "like hitting golf balls"—fun, yes, but no longer some great adventure. "We knew how to design a store, we knew how to deliver a great experience," he says, "but it wasn’t challenging." Not only that, but Jobs had already indicated that Tim Cook would succeed him as CEO; it was unlikely that Johnson would ever get that job.
A few months before Jobs’s death in October of that year, the activist investor Bill Ackman approached Johnson with a particularly intriguing challenge: Could the guy who made Apple a cool retailer do the same for the venerable but dowdy department store JCPenney?
Johnson’s roots were in department stores, so he was tempted. He could stay at Apple for the rest of his career, but should he? Penney’s may have been a faded brand, but it was also a very recognizable name. As Peter Bell, a friend of Johnson’s and a partner at Highland Capital Partners (which led Enjoy’s $50 million second round of financing), tells me, "You can say that Ron had bad judgment. But it would have been glorious if it had worked." He accepted the job.
Johnson’s troubles as CEO started almost immediately. His first public move at Penney’s was to stage an Apple-style launch event, where he unveiled a more youthful logo and a "fair and square" pricing scheme that ditched coupons and sales in favor of round numbers. The changes, bolstered by a dramatic new ad campaign starring Ellen DeGeneres that first aired during the Oscars, represented an elegant solution to the problem of rampant discounting, albeit one that none of the company’s customers, many of them coupon-loving senior citizens, had asked for. (In his 12 years at Apple, Johnson had internalized Jobs’s disdain for focus groups and customer tests, so he hadn’t bothered vetting any of his new ideas.) "We insulted the core customer," he now admits.
Not surprisingly, sales fell precipitously, the company lost close to $1 billion for the year, and the board began to wonder if Johnson knew what he was doing. "You watch Steve [Jobs] do a turnaround and you sit there and think, ‘I would like to be the architect of something like that,’ " says Campbell, explaining Johnson’s thought process. But, he notes, Apple’s turnaround "took seven or eight years, and Ron did not have that chance." Under pressure, Johnson dug in, stubbornly refusing to test new initiatives and reportedly approaching the old Penney’s culture with the sort of contempt Jobs had once reserved for Apple’s competitors. With his family in Menlo Park, Johnson commuted to Plano, Texas, by private jet—all while laying off 19,000 employees.
The adventure, which ended with still more losses and Johnson’s firing in April 2013, damaged his reputation (commentators began to suggest that he’d merely coasted off of Jobs’s brilliance) and his bank account. He had invested $50 million personally in JCPenney warrants, which will only mature if the stock price rises above $30 a share by 2018. Today, the share price is around $10 and Johnson’s investment looks, essentially, worthless.
Those closest to Johnson say he approached failure in much the same way he approaches everything: with preternatural cheeriness. "Ron is relentlessly positive," says John Ortberg, the senior pastor at Menlo.Church, where Johnson regularly attends services. Even so, Ortberg continues, "the criticisms marked him. There’s a recognition of things he can’t control."
Johnson’s friend Marc Andreessen advised him to take a year off, but soon after his firing, startup CEOs started calling, asking him to speak to their teams. "I think they felt sorry for me after the Penney’s thing," he says with a chuckle. He spoke at Airbnb, Dropbox, Box, and Google, and met with founders of up-and-coming retail startups, such as the Bay Area’s Philz Coffee and the L.A.–based clothing brand Nasty Gal. (He’s now an investor in both.) He also met with a number of consumer electronics startups, including Jawbone and Sonos, which were looking for better ways to get their products into consumers’ hands. "The question that kept coming up was, ‘How do we go to market?’ " he says. "The old way is not working."
In a meeting with Sonos CEO John MacFarlane, Johnson suggested that Sonos send representatives to customers’ homes to sell the company’s high-end sound systems. MacFarlane loved the idea—"The best place to experience a Sonos product is in your own home," he tells me—but told Johnson that Sonos, which reportedly sells more than $1 billion in products annually, could not support such an operation. He suggested that Johnson do it himself, with a startup.
Enjoy initially came to Johnson as a tagline. "One day I woke up and said, ‘Order today, enjoy tomorrow,’ " he recalls. The original concept was simple: "What if we just brought the best of the Apple Store to the customer," Johnson suggested to Tom Suiter, a former Apple creative director who had worked with him on Apple Store displays. Suiter, who would join Enjoy as cofounder and its head of creative, loved the idea and began working on branding right away. "I really felt like if there was anybody who could do this, it was Ron," he says.
For Johnson, who was raised Lutheran, the decision to start Enjoy was partly spiritual. He had regular lunches with Ortberg, who encouraged him to think about work as an extension of his beliefs, as "love made visible." Johnson has never talked about his faith publicly, but it’s been a part of who he is since he was a little boy. It informs how he thinks about designing stores and creating great customer experiences. "I’d sum up the whole Bible in four words: Love God, love others," Johnson says. "Most love is not emotional love. It’s rooted in compassion or help. Look at the Genius Bar. You’re just helping people. And so that’s what my governor is: How do you create an environment where you feel this love? Because love is contagious."
Johnson’s rebirth as a startup entrepreneur allowed him to recast the trajectory of his entire career. What he’d loved about Apple, partly, was that Jobs had essentially given him a blank slate. And what had doomed him at Penney’s was that it was an entrenched brand, making the wild changes he’d sought all but impossible. "I realized big companies are not my thing," he says, despite having spent his life working within them. "I love creating, and I love beginnings. It felt like, ‘I can do this.’ "
Johnson was not shy about using his Rolodex to give Enjoy a leg up. His first call was to AT&T Mobile CEO Ralph de la Vega, who agreed to become Enjoy’s first partner, and one of Johnson’s initial investors was Oak Investment Partners, where Johnson’s mentor at Mervyn’s, Jerry Gallagher, had worked before he died in 2014. Johnson did not ask Apple CEO Tim Cook for help; he wanted to prove himself as an entrepreneur first. "If I went to Tim, it’d feel like he was doing me a favor," he says. "I want to earn the right to serve Apple."
On a Saturday night this summer, on a bit of a whim—and okay, maybe after a glass of wine or two—I log on to Enjoy’s website. I’m tempted by a $1,500 Boosted electric skateboard, but my wife quickly vetoes that idea. I then gravitate toward the Sonos Playbar, which is basically a fancy speaker for your television that costs $700, plus tax. Seven hundred dollars seems like a lot of money to spend on a single speaker, but it’s half the price of what I really want, and my wife is open to something that would improve the sound on our TV. Enjoy has a generous return policy, so if I have any regrets, I can always send it back. And hey, this is for work, right?
The following morning, my phone rings. "Hi, I’m your Enjoy Expert, Omar." He sounds genuinely enthusiastic even though he has been assigned to come to my apartment at 5 p.m. on a Sunday. He promises to send me a text when he’s an hour away. Omar turns out to be Omar Pouerie, 26, a former Apple Store employee with a mohawk and a calming presence. He arrives at my front door at 5 p.m. sharp, having already tested and updated the software on my new speaker back at the Enjoy "house," as the company calls its home base in each city. (Enjoy does not have traditional retail space, but rents hip lofts in New York and Menlo Park for its Experts to commune. Johnson is already looking at possible locations in Los Angeles, where it’ll likely land next.)
Omar, who wears a uniform Johnson designed with Uniqlo to convey trust—white button-down shirt, blue puffer vest—works efficiently, and he quickly walks me and my wife through the basics of how to use the speaker. He supervises as we each download the Sonos app onto our phones, and shows me how to connect my Spotify account so that we can stream music. Omar and I trade parenting tips—my wife and I had recently had a baby; Omar also has young children—and within 25 minutes he makes a discreet exit, without pausing for a tip, which Enjoy prohibits. "You gotta have really good EQ," says Johnson, referring to the measure of emotional intelligence. "But you don’t want to get too personal."
The experience is incredibly convenient, and perhaps, more importantly, it makes buyer’s remorse seem unthinkable. By the time Omar walks out the door, I am committed to my extravagant purchase. After all, it’s already blasting music.
This is by design. When Johnson and I speak three days later in Menlo Park, he informs me that over the company’s first 1,000 or so orders, Enjoy hasn’t had a single return, which is one of the reasons the company can afford such high-touch service. Based on typical retail margins, Enjoy probably made about $200 on my Sonos order, which means that Omar only has to make a few visits each day before Enjoy can profitably afford to pay his salary. And Omar does make a salary. Though Enjoy allows its Experts to set their own hours and work remotely like Uber drivers, they get the flexibility of the gig economy with the economic security of a very good retail job—salaried employment, with stock options and health benefits.
If my Enjoy visit felt special, that’s because it literally was. During my time with Johnson and Enjoy in New York later in August, I learn that Johnson’s company—with 135 employees in two cities and $80 million in venture capital in the bank—is only selling a handful of items each day. Johnson proudly notes that on the previous day, a Monday, Enjoy Experts made 20 visits in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, a record for the company up until that point.
The number seems small to me, but not to Johnson. "When you start something new, by definition it’s going to be small," he tells his staff during an all-hands meeting shortly after lunch. "We always tend to want to be in a hurry, but what’s exciting is how quickly we’re learning and improving." He notes that Enjoy is just nearly 100 days old, and that the 20-order day puts it roughly on pace with Uber’s run rate over the same time period.
The numbers will get much bigger this fall with the new iPhone launch, when Enjoy expects to add 10,000 new customers over six weeks. "That’s what’s going to catapult us into the public consciousness," he says, reminding his team that Apple Stores once weren’t much farther along. Johnson recalls that on the morning of the Apple Store’s 100th day, he was driving into the company’s Cupertino headquarters when he got an irate call from Jobs, complaining about a store Johnson’s team had recently opened in the Willow Bend shopping mall, not far from JCPenney’s Plano, Texas, headquarters. "The new store we opened is awful!" Johnson screams, doing his best Steve Jobs imitation.
Johnson tells the story with a fond nostalgia. "These things are hard," he says. "But we’re going to have a better 100th day, aren’t we? And no one’s gonna call me about Willow Bend."
He pauses and glances around the room. "Now, today’s sales could be lower," he adds, with just a hint of concern. "I don’t want to ask how we’re doing today. I hope it’s good." He smiles at the crowd—first at the Experts and then at the executives who are lined up near the company kitchen. He very much wants to know how today’s numbers look.
"A drone [order] just went through," a young woman calls out. The DJI drones that Enjoy sells start at $700, and it's another customer who may return to buy a new iPhone this fall.
It’s just one sale, Johnson knows, but he exhales and a wide smile forms across his face.
