Welcome to My Blog

Within the past few years here at Element Three we’ve been growing as a marketing agency and elevating our brand to a place where some really smart, and capable people, want to come work for us. And people ask both me and our Director of Talent all the time, “What does it take to work at Element Three?” 

So, if I had a chance to meet with every single person who wanted to ask me that question, what you see here is what I’d tell them.

Keep in mind that we have a very high-performance environment where we give our staff a lot of responsibility, really fast. So these are the things someone would have to master if they wanted to be able to stand out and really prove themselves at Element Three.

With all that said, I really think these are applicable to lots of things that motivated people want to do, and to any organization. They’re the things that I find the best people who work for me have already mastered – and that new employees can often struggle with. You’ll note that few, if any, of these items have anything to do with the functional role they play in the organization.

So, here we go.

1) Have a Vision for the Day

I’m starting with this one because it’s just so important. Each and every day you come to work and let your inbox determine what’s going to get done that day, you are letting go of your goals. It is incredibly easy to get sidetracked by last minute interruptions, and work will always expand to fill the time available.

Have a vision for the day. Know what you want to get accomplished that day before you come in. If you don’t walk in and know that these are the two, three or four things that you absolutely have to get done to move your own priorities forward, you are going to let others move their priorities forward, and the things that you are accountable and responsible for are not going to get done.

Best tip: Figure it out the night before. Set out what has to happen the next day. If you wait until you get in, the distractions will already have begun.

2) Interrogate Urgency

This one is kind of a follow to “Have a vision for the day,” because throughout the day there always seem to be “urgent” issues popping up. But just because they’re urgent it doesn’t mean they should be weaseling themselves in front of the important things that need to take place. We’ve all got smartphones that tell us who’s calling. Do you really need to take that call right now? Do you really need to be in every meeting?

There’s something called the “hero complex,” where individuals think of themselves as critical to each and every decision that needs to be made in order for work to move forward. Especially when a fire drill pops up. Don’t take this the wrong way, but nobody’s that important. Not even me, the president of the company. So learn the difference between urgent and important. Don’t let the fire drills take over your day.

3) Examine Emotional

Especially when you get into a leadership position people will come roaring at you with their emotions. It could be because they’re scared that they don’t have the resources, or whatever. Often we fill our minds with assumptions and we create fears and boogeymen in our mind’s eye that really are imagined.

If you don’t stop and say, “Okay, what are the things that are making you feel that way?” Or, “What’s the evidence that’s making you believe that?” you may find yourself getting caught up in their emotional whirlwind, and then nobody can think straight. And emotion doesn’t solve problems. Start by identifying the root cause and go from there and don’t let the emotion cloud your quest for the logical solution.

4) Don’t Play the Blame Game

There’s not really a difference between ownership and delegation. Just because you delegated part of your assignment to someone else, that doesn’t mean you’ve passed on the responsibility too. If the project is yours, own it. If there are faults, whether it was directly or indirectly your doing, you are still completely and wholly accountable for the outcome. Too often young talent will start to say something like, “but I told so-and-so to do xyz and they didn’t. Blah, blah, blah.” I really don’t want to hear it.

Also, finger pointing is not a way to make friends. You alienate the people around you because they don’t see you as being on their team, no matter what. So stop to interrogate what role you played in contributing to the unsuccessful outcome. Then learn from it and move on. I had to learn this myself the hard way. I blamed the recession for my company falling on hard times in the early days, when really what I needed to do was look in the mirror and realize I was the one unequipped to lead an organization through a tough economy. Lesson learned on my part, and it won’t happen again.

5) Work Hard. Show Up

I’m not trying to make some kind of clever analogy here folks. When I say “Show up” I mean to show up. As in, physically show up. As a mother of three young girls, believe me when I tell you I’ve got a lot on my plate that could keep me home all day. So when I hear what I like to call “minor tragedies” keeping people from work (“my cat had a hairball,” “there’s two inches of snow on the road”) It doesn’t go over well.

Clearly, if there’s something in your personal life that requires you to be out of the office, then address it. But everyone at Element Three has a laptop and can access our cloud server from almost any location. So if you have to be out of the office, that doesn’t mean you can’t still “show up” to a certain extent and get your work done. And yes, we do allow our employees sick days and personal days. My point here is simply to not use minor excuses to get in the way of your work.

6) Try. It Gives you Experiences. Experiences Give you Wisdom.

It doesn’t matter what kind of GPA you left college with. I don’t care how many extra classes you took. What you experienced in college pales in comparison to what you’ll be experiencing in the real world. So work hard early in your career. A lot of work can lead to a lot of success. It gives a you a broader collection of experiences.

Say yes to more than you say no to. Be willing to take chances. Ask questions even when you think you know the answers. Nobody ever walked the first time they stood up. So get into the thick of things and learn. This doesn’t mean you have to go in there alone with no back up. If you need help, then ask. But don’t just sit on the sidelines and watch. As they say, “Otherwise you have nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

7) We Judge Ourselves by our Intentions and Others by their Behavior

This one’s a little different. It’s an observation. Not necessarily an action to take. But I believe this is a big lesson. So it goes like this: when we say we’re going to do something, we kind of give ourselves credit for having done it, even if we haven’t. It’s because our intention was to get it done on time.

It doesn’t matter that we didn’t do it. We still like to take credit for the fact that we took it on – because we feel like we’ve mostly completed what we said we would. Whereas when you’re on a team with someone else who isn’t completing the tasks they were assigned you judge them solely by their behavior. So keep this in mind as you take on tasks. Are your intentions and behavior really aligned? Don’t be patting yourself on the back just because your intentions were grandiose, but your behavior far less so.

8) Know Yourself

Teach others your weaknesses so they know how best to work with you. We have something at Element Three we use called the DISC® profile. It’s a personal assessment tool that breaks people’s personalities down into four distinct categories. We get our teams together to talk about where each individual in that team falls within the profiles, it’s funny how many people just assume that everyone else is just like them. But they’re not.

If you know that you’re not comfortable with making snap decisions, let the people you work with know that. That’s just one example, but just because we’re all different, that doesn’t mean we can’t all work as one. And once you’ve recognized your differences and weaknesses, learn how to manage yourself. Be reliable for your co-workers. Same thing with being organized. Be as organized as you can – if not for yourself, then for others.

9) Be Vulnerable

I’ll keep this one short. If you feel it, then say it. Because everybody in the room is probably already reading it in your body language anyway. I should also say to say it respectfully and professionally. Practice Emotional Intelligence.

10) Go With the Flow

Do what you can with whatever you’re given to tackle the task. Not everybody is sent into battle with everything they need. Improvise. Change is a constant in many organizations – learn how you can use change to expose yourself to new opportunities and new skills – don’t let it push you off your game because it challenges what you ‘thought’ was going to happen. Run towards it.

Do This, Not That

I could probably keep coming up with these observations forever, not because my employees are that heavily in need of adjustments, but because I enjoy finding solutions that can help my team be more successful in their careers. In many cases, it means looking at struggles I’ve had myself and sharing the solutions that I’ve found helped me. Perhaps I should end this with a bolt of lightning that’s just struck me that I’d start with on my next list of suggestions for anyone asking, “What does it take to work at Element Three?” And that suggestion is this: Know when to close the computer and go home to your family for the evening.

Think of NPS, or Net Promoter Score, like rocket fuel. If you leave it alone, it won’t do much. But when you load it into a responsive, proactive, customer-driven company: blast off. 

The most successful companies are those that take NPS data and use it to fuel and direct their marketing methods and even product development.

But while obtaining your NPS is easy, knowing how best to use the information is anything but. Ask any rocket scientist. Many of the highest-tech rockets don’t make it to orbit; they fall ‘clunk’ on the launch mat.

To help provide some clarity, we’d like to introduce you to four companies using NPS data in very interesting ways. Check them out below. 

What’s a Net Promoter Score?

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a simple metric to get. All you have to do is ask customers: “On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend this product?” Anyone who scores a 9 or 10 is a “promoter.” Your NPS comes from subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters, and dividing by the total number of respondents.

4 Interesting Ways to Use NPS Data

1) Use it to polish interactions with prospects and customers.

Tracking how likely your customers are to recommend you is the first step towards a customer-driven culture committed to improvement. Constant improvement. Because NPS doesn’t stand still. It shifts in response to your actions or inaction; it moves with trends and competitors.

No one understands this better than Bill Macaitis, CMO of Slack, former CMO of Zendesk, and former SVP of Online Marketing and Operations at Salesforce. It’s basically his job to create marketing teams for the fastest growing companies on the planet … and NPS is a central part of his method.

In an interview with Tomasz Tunguz in SaaS Office Hours, Macaitis answered the question “Which marketing metrics are most important?” with:

One metric that most SaaS marketers don’t measure frequently, but should, is Net Promoter Score. NPS measures the likelihood of customers to recommend the product. Best in class companies achieve a score of 70 on a scale of 100, but according to Zendesk data, the typical B2B software company achieves only 29.

NPS is a leading indicator of future growth. The larger the number of advocates for product, the lower the customer acquisition costs for the company, and the more effective customer success team will be.”

If you’ve been living in a cave with no internet service you may not know that Slack is on fire. The company has been setting record highs for growth, gaining a $1 billion valuation in just a year. How? Through word-of-mouth marketing tracked by NPS.

In a live Ask Me Anything with Jim Williams, VP of Marketing at Influitive, Macaitis summed it up like this:

Every CEO should be able to answer this question: What are the top 3 reasons why people recommend and do not recommend your brand?”

Macaitis uses NPS to polish every interaction prospects and customers have with Slack, taking a holistic view of UX that includes not just customer service and sales, but things like online ads and their legal terms of service. He says he’s not satisfied by prospects signing up for Slack, or becoming paying customers — the bar is set at whether they recommend it.

2) Use it as a product development tool.

Magoosh, an online test prep company for the GRE, GMAT, TOEFL and SAT exams, also considers NPS to be among the most important metrics they track. They understand better than most that in order for their service to be successful, their customers have to be successful and achieve their goals outside of their product. As Peter Poer writes on Magoosh’s blog:

It helps us determine not only whether students like our customer service and user interface, but also how well our products prepare students for their exams. And most importantly it has been a reliable leading indicator of growth in word-of-mouth referrals – our largest marketing channel.”

Magoosh’s NPS is inextricably tied to how well their customers perform on their real-world exams. This means that instead of asking the NPS question after purchase of their product, as most companies do, Magoosh had to wait until after the student took their exams and saw their final scores (which often aren’t sent out for weeks after exams take place).

Poer went on to explain:

The proof is in the pudding. You can’t fully decide if you’re willing to recommend Magoosh for GRE prep until you’ve taken the real GRE.”

So, when Magoosh noticed that their NPS sank for their GMAT product, it was a red flag that something was very wrong. That dip in their NPS led them to discover that students were complaining that the scores they had on their Magoosh practice tests didn’t match up with their real scores in the GMAT. Poer also spoke to this in his article: 

Our algorithm was telling students to expect one score, but, for some, their official reports were coming back lower — obviously a frustrating experience … We determined that we needed to fix our score prediction algorithm to be more accurate, but we were left with a major concern: would an improved algorithm that displayed a lower predicted score be demoralizing for students?  Which was worse for customer satisfaction — a lower predicted score while studying, or a disappointing final score after the exam?”

Magoosh had three problems:

1. They needed to make a change
2. That change could result in an even worse NPS
3. They wouldn’t know for months, because of testing and results dates

Making a significant change that could tank their word of mouth marketing, and not knowing for months if it worked, was too great a risk. So, Magoosh modified their NPS gathering technique to deliver faster answers while students were still studying. They used an NPS tool called Wootric to ask the NPS question within their own product. They were then able to A/B test their algorithm change with half of their GMAT students and track their “likely to refer” rating at the same time.

The change in algorithm didn’t end up demoralizing students, and when the change was implemented for all GMAT test-takers, their post-exam NPS scores improved dramatically.

3) Use it to reduce churn.

As a recruiting analytics software company, Entelo’s purpose is to help their customers achieve their recruiting goals. To do so, they have a designated Customer Success team, directed by Loni Spratt, who keeps careful tabs on NPS.

They field issues that improve customer experience every day, whether it’s a big change like improving their products, or small changes that help customers see more value. But, since one of the team’s main tasks is to reduce churn, monitoring customer satisfaction and reacting quickly to complaints is of primary importance.

When Spratt first joined the company, Entelo was collecting NPS data as part of a bi-annual survey, making it nearly impossible to track how customers were doing in real-time. Serious customer satisfaction issues could go unidentified and unaddressed for months — and that’s when customers bothered to respond to the survey at all.

Spratt now uses an in-app NPS tool to present the NPS question to their customers, which means customers can share their thoughts (or frustrations) instantly, as they experience them. More importantly, Spratt’s team can respond to any issues the same day. As Spratt said in a case study interview:

Some of our customers are actually shocked at how fast we react when a negative comment comes in. We’ve definitely received comments of, “Whoa. I just did this an hour ago. Is this an automated thing?” They think it’s really cool.”

Spratt’s customer success team can now predict with greater accuracy which customers are most at risk of churning, and can take action to prevent the churn from happening. But that isn’t the only benefit they’ve experienced from tracking NPS so closely.

Entelo’s sales department has also been getting in on the action by tracking which customers give high scores. They’ve found that these customers are more likely to be profitable targets for cross-sells and upsells. The marketing team appreciates the data too — they can identify their most satisfied customers for future case studies and use cases.

4) Use it as a channel for communication with customers.

When John Waldmann, founder of Homebase, employee scheduling software, realized that the personal, individual approach he preferred to take with his customers wouldn’t scale with his quickly-growing company, he searched for the next best thing: adopting NPS early to track customer feedback. His advice to other business owners is to “turn NPS on sooner than you think you need to.”

He uses NPS in a unique way, as a channel for open, constant communication between him and his users:

The original intent with Net Promoter Score was to give us a more quantitative view of how are we doing on the product, but it’s actually become a new channel of communication and feedback from users that we wouldn’t have received otherwise.”

Homebase serves two segments of users — business owners, and their employees. In other words, those who create schedules, and those who receive them.

For his customers to be successful, both sides of that equation have to be happy with his software, which requires a careful balancing act to not skew UX towards one side or the other.

To keep on top of making both sides happy, Homebase has built NPS surveys into their software as an integral part, and Waldmann delivers that NPS feedback to his team every week to alert them to issues that may arise and to keep product development focused and on target.

NPS: A Simple Solution to a Complicated Problem

NPS is very simple, but that one question can be used in a multitude of ways by companies of any size to improve customer experience, reduce churn, and increase the number of delighted customers who become brand advocates. Huge companies like Airbnb and Amazon use NPS. Quickly growing companies like Slack and Unbounce use NPS. Even small companies like Homebase and Entelo use NPS. And, of course, Hubspot uses NPS.

In Satmetrix 2015 Consumer Net Promoter Benchmarks, which ranks industries by average NPS, the “software and apps” segment ranks low — just above health insurance, cable, and internet service providers. Clearly, most software companies are leaving their users unsatisfied, likely focusing on acquisition goals instead of retention.

Consider this not as a warning, but as an opportunity. We work within a crowded marketplace, but by using NPS, we have a chance to set ourselves apart.

How does your company use NPS? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

As a marketer, you’re probably familiar with the number crunching and data analysis that goes along with presenting a monthly report to your team. And while it’s not always the most exciting task, it’s crucial to ensure your brand continues to grow.

Utilizing social media in all stages of the funnel is an essential element of your marketing strategy, and the need to evaluate these efforts is more really important. However, chances are the people you’re presenting to aren’t interested in hearing about every little bit of data you can give them. (Because let’s face it, there’s a lot).

That’s why we teamed up with our friends at Simply Measured to bring you
How to Create a Monthly Social Media Report. In this ebook, you’ll learn everything you need to know to present and prove yourROI from your social media efforts.

More specifically, you will receive:

• The basic principles of structuring meaningful and concise social media reports to help you stay organized and report efficiently each month.
• Key features your reports should include to prove your social media efforts in an effective and engaging way to your boss and your team.
• Two sample frameworks to try out for monthly reports: one to impress your boss and one to impress your team.
• What common mistakes to avoid when creating a monthly report, like sugarcoating the facts or presenting too much data.
• Much more about presenting your social media results!

Click here to download How to Create a Monthly Social Media Report.

This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

One of the biggest benefits any potential jobseeker — or really anyone who hopes to advance their career — can have is a professional portfolio. Designers need to showcase their artwork. Writers should show off publications. Heck, even accountants can benefit.

Done right, a portfolio helps a potential job candidate to standout — to show rather than say he can do the work asked, which can make all the difference in landing an employer or client.

Let’s take a look at the best practices in creating a strong portfolio, along with some tools to help accomplish it.

How to Create the Perfect Online Portfolio

1) Curate Your Best Work 

A portfolio should not be a compendium of all the work you’ve ever completed throughout your career. It’s not a résumé. You’re not creating bulleted lists or saying you increased X by Y percent. Rather a quality portfolio should display your best work relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. This last part is key.

Let’s say you’re a designer who has dabbled in both web design and creating advertisements that appear in print magazines, but you’re trying to build your magazine clientele. It’s in your best interest to place only print designs in your portfolio even if your most well-received creation is digital. That’s because any credible print publication won’t care how well executed a design is if it doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of the skillset necessary to create ads that appeal to a publication’s readers.

Once you’ve narrowed your relevant portfolio pieces down, ask colleagues, advisors, and professionals you trust to provide honest criticisms of your work. 

Tools of the Trade: Dribbble

Billing itself as a “show and tell” for creatives, Dribble allows designers to post and receive criticism about their work. With such a large community to provide feedback, Dribble users can better understand how their work resonates with a wider audience. Well-received submissions warrant serious consideration for inclusion in your portfolio.

2) Build a User-Friendly Website

Most portfolio creators are content with placing their work on a single, blog-style page, where each new addition pushes a previous one down. Although this isn’t egregious if you only have one type of work to showcase, usually that work could — and should — be subdivided into numerous categories. Finding examples of one particular type of work shouldn’t be a challenge.

To give an example, a writer might choose to categorize his work by type of content produced. Let’s say he has created ebooks, blogs, articles, and ad copy. He shouldn’t lump all of these together under one category called “writing,” but rather create separate sections to house each separate content category. Additionally, these categories should be easy to find so creators should include an easy-to-use navigation bar or pull-down menu.

Tools of the Trade: Squarespace

Rather than build a website from scratch, Squarespace lets users easily create websites using any number of templates. This CMS platform gives users tools to build and organize a website so all their content can be easily found, eliminating some of the pesky navigation problems that can come from building a portfolio website from the ground up. 

3) Be Concise, Be On-Brand

When a recruiter or potential clients visits your online portfolio, there should be no confusion over what it is you offer. Your homepage should contain some combination of logo, a tagline, a list of the services provided, and a short, to-the-point (think 1-2 sentences) summary of your qualifications. Your “About Me” section should go into a little more depth about your professional experiences while remaining both personable and professional. Your “Contact Me” (a little more on this later) page should provide a clear, easy way to get in touch, whether that be through filling out a form or simply providing an email address or phone number. 

Obviously, the point of consistency is to clearly define and communicate everything a potential employer or client could want in the most concise and branded way possible. Remember, a portfolio is a platform to display your creativity, not something to get too creative (read: cute) with.

That being said though, there are some tools that can help make your portfolio both concise and a little creative.

Tools of the Trade: Vizualize.me

The average résumé is more than two pages and 1,000 words long. Even precisely worded experiences and accomplishments become tiresome to read, resulting in skimming. Vizualize.me takes your résumé or CV and instantly turns it into an easy-to-read infographic that visually conveys all the highlights of your career. It’s creative and an even better way to deliver concise, relevant content. 

And on that note …

4) Use Eye-Catching, Original Visuals

An aesthetically pleasing portfolio is expected if you’re a designer but may not be quite as obvious to someone who doesn’t specialize in a visual medium. Many would-be portfolio creators may assume that so long as they curated relevant work and wrote on-brand copy that a bland stock template is more than satisfactory. After all, a writer is getting hired on his or her ability to write, right?

The truth is appearances matter. And even if you’re not a designer, making little to no attempt to create an attractive website only screams uncommitted, at best, and unprofessional, at worst. Obviously, there are different standards of acceptable design depending upon the area of work, but every portfolio should have some element of thoughtful visual communication.

Tools of the trade: Canva

Featuring hundreds of free and heavily discounted images and easy-to-use photo editing and design tools, Canva lets those intimidated by software such as Photoshop create compelling visual elements for their portfolio. Best of all, using Canva’s catalog of photographs means that you’ll never run the risk of accidentally using a copyrighted image. 

5) Help Me Contact You

As briefly mentioned above, every portfolio needs to provide contact information. While you could get away with providing the basics such as a telephone number and email address, it’s better to employ some inbound strategies, such as offering a subscription sign-up, buttons to follow you on social media channels, and contact and lead capture forms. Being active in giving your potential customers a way to contact you — or for you to contact them — is a surefire way of increasing your chances of gaining business.

Tools of the trade: Leadin

Leadin is a free tool you can use with any CMS that helps website owners capture leads and contacts for future marketing follow-up and analyze how visitors are interacting with their website. By understanding what visitors are doing, portfolio creators can create more meaningfully interactions.

6) Stay in Touch

Just because you’ve completely finished your portfolio doesn’t mean you can sit back and wait for offers to roll in. To continue to drive interest and help with discoverability, you should produce some type of regular content (blog) unrelated to (but about) the work you’re showcasing. The most successful portfolios have creators that continue to blog both on their portfolio’s website and off.

Tools of the trade: Medium

Medium allows anyone with an idea to pen articles and build an audience, with the idea being that quality articles rise to the top. With the built-in readership that Medium has, writing something that resonates with your target audience can bring in thousands of views and help build your reputation.

7) Update Your Portfolio

Things change. You work on new projects. You advance your skills. You narrow down your specialties. As such, remember to keep your portfolio updated. We recommended that you reconsider what’s on your portfolio website after every new project. But, at the very least, update it once a year.

Tools of the trade: Google Calendar

Set a recurring reminder so that you never forget to revisit your portfolio. This way, your porfolio will always reflect your current skillset. 

This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this,subscribe to Sales.

Ever wish you could flip a switch to activate your motivation? Some days are just more of a struggle than others. We get it. We’ve been there. 

And while there’s no magic switch, there are quite a few things you can do to get yourself going — especially in the morning.

Willing to give it a try? Start your mornings off right and set yourself up for a productive day with these seven quick morning motivation exercises.

7 Morning Motivation Rituals

1) Get up early.

Research shows that early risers are more successful, more proactive, better planners, and better at anticipating problems. Not to mention that many uber-successful people also get to the office uber-early. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is out of bed by 5:45 a.m., GE CEO Jeff Immelt gets up at 5:30 a.m., Xerox CEO Ursula Burns at 5:15 a.m., and Apple CEO Tim Cook sets his alarm for as early as 3:45 a.m. to get a jump start on their days.

Yes, waking up early gives you more time to work, but there are other benefits as well. You’ll be able to eat a healthy breakfast (see #2), fit in a workout (#4), or even spend time doing an activity that’s not work-related (#7). The more time you give yourself in the mornings, the less you’ll have to rush and the more ready you’ll be to tackle the day.

Not an early riser? Not to worry — here are 19 tips for becoming more of a morning person.

2) Eat a good breakfast.

You are what you eat. According to research from the Health Enhancement Research Organization, people who have consistently healthy diets are 25% more likely to have high job performance and 20% more likely to be more productive. Plus, if you eat a lousy meal or no breakfast at all, you’ll be hungry all morning — and it’s difficult to concentrate when you’re not feeling at your best.

My colleague Lindsay Kolowich put together this infographic on the best foods to eat to keep you on your game. Eat eggs, bananas, yogurt, or blueberries for breakfast to start your day off right. 

3) Optimize your alarm.

Your surroundings have a huge effect on your mood, and while you can’t control the weather, whether you have enough hot water in the morning, or if there will be traffic (another reason to get up early!), you can control your alarm clock.

The right wake-up call can set the tone for your entire day, so get rid of the traditional grating beeps and replace your alarm with a song that fits the mood you’d like to wake up in. Classical music is hypothesized to increase your intelligence, pump-up songs like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” make you feel more powerful, and “feel-good” songs improve your mood by actually causing your brain to release more dopamine.

If you’re not sure where to start, my colleague Carly Stec has compiled six playlists for you, each of which corresponds with a specific mood and different productivity-boosting effect.

4) Work out.

It goes without saying that exercise is good for you. Exercise increases the production of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters that decrease the risk of depression and improve your mood and long-term memory, respectively. Exercising in the morning forces you to wake up earlier, gives you a totally natural mood-booster, and increases your energy.

And exercise has benefits beyond improving your mood. A 2006 study showed that regular physical exercise led to increases in willpower and self-regulatory behavior.

5) Start with “why.”

It’s hard to get excited about getting out of bed in the mornings when you’re not totally sold on what you’re getting up for. And even if you love everything about your job, the daily grind can make it hard to keep your eye on the prize all the time.

Boost your intrinsic motivation — behavior driven by the enjoyment of a task — to keep yourself going. Intrinsic motivation is a more powerful force than extrinsic motivation, which drives you to act because of incentives like money, recognition, or praise. Remind yourself why you got into sales — for example, you could tape a list to your bathroom mirror and reach for it at the start of each day, or write down one thing you’re excited about every night to read the next morning. The important thing is to be able to quickly remind yourself of what drives you to be great at your job.

6) Remind yourself of your wins.

It’s all well and good to know that you love sales because you believe in your product, but on days when you’ve dealt with rude prospects, been reprimanded by your boss, or lost a big deal you’ve been chasing for weeks, you’re going to need a more concrete reminder.

Greg Fung, a HubSpot sales rep, keeps a list of wins and losses in an Evernote document that he refers to when he’s having a bad day.

“Keep your list handy and add to it as new good and bad incidents come your way,” Fung says. “You’ll be surprised by how quickly the ‘rights’ outpace the ‘wrongs,” and you now have a great tool to lean on during tough times.”

To adapt this exercise for a boost of morning motivation, keep a “master list” of your biggest wins and keep it on your nightstand or somewhere easily accessible so you can refer to it on mornings when you just don’t want to go into the office.

7) Do something that makes you happy.

Breaking news: We do better at work when we’re happy in our personal lives.

Multiple studies have shown that happiness is closely correlated with job performance, and of course, happiness is closely tied to our personal health as well.

So set aside some time each morning to do something that makes you happy. Whether it’s reading a chapter from your favorite book, spending 30 minutes on a side project, or just eating a really, really good breakfast sandwich, if you dedicate time to improving your personal life, it’ll pay dividends in your career as well.

How do you motivate yourself? Let us know in the comments below.

This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this,subscribe to Sales.

Ever wish you could flip a switch to activate your motivation? Some days are just more of a struggle than others. We get it. We’ve been there. 

And while there’s no magic switch, there are quite a few things you can do to get yourself going — especially in the morning.

Willing to give it a try? Start your mornings off right and set yourself up for a productive day with these seven quick morning motivation exercises.

7 Morning Motivation Rituals

1) Get up early.

Research shows that early risers are more successful, more proactive, better planners, and better at anticipating problems. Not to mention that many uber-successful people also get to the office uber-early. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is out of bed by 5:45 a.m., GE CEO Jeff Immelt gets up at 5:30 a.m., Xerox CEO Ursula Burns at 5:15 a.m., and Apple CEO Tim Cook sets his alarm for as early as 3:45 a.m. to get a jump start on their days.

Yes, waking up early gives you more time to work, but there are other benefits as well. You’ll be able to eat a healthy breakfast (see #2), fit in a workout (#4), or even spend time doing an activity that’s not work-related (#7). The more time you give yourself in the mornings, the less you’ll have to rush and the more ready you’ll be to tackle the day.

Not an early riser? Not to worry — here are 19 tips for becoming more of a morning person.

2) Eat a good breakfast.

You are what you eat. According to research from the Health Enhancement Research Organization, people who have consistently healthy diets are 25% more likely to have high job performance and 20% more likely to be more productive. Plus, if you eat a lousy meal or no breakfast at all, you’ll be hungry all morning — and it’s difficult to concentrate when you’re not feeling at your best.

My colleague Lindsay Kolowich put together this infographic on the best foods to eat to keep you on your game. Eat eggs, bananas, yogurt, or blueberries for breakfast to start your day off right. 

3) Optimize your alarm.

Your surroundings have a huge effect on your mood, and while you can’t control the weather, whether you have enough hot water in the morning, or if there will be traffic (another reason to get up early!), you can control your alarm clock.

The right wake-up call can set the tone for your entire day, so get rid of the traditional grating beeps and replace your alarm with a song that fits the mood you’d like to wake up in. Classical music is hypothesized to increase your intelligence, pump-up songs like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” make you feel more powerful, and “feel-good” songs improve your mood by actually causing your brain to release more dopamine.

If you’re not sure where to start, my colleague Carly Stec has compiled six playlists for you, each of which corresponds with a specific mood and different productivity-boosting effect.

4) Work out.

It goes without saying that exercise is good for you. Exercise increases the production of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters that decrease the risk of depression and improve your mood and long-term memory, respectively. Exercising in the morning forces you to wake up earlier, gives you a totally natural mood-booster, and increases your energy.

And exercise has benefits beyond improving your mood. A 2006 study showed that regular physical exercise led to increases in willpower and self-regulatory behavior.

5) Start with “why.”

It’s hard to get excited about getting out of bed in the mornings when you’re not totally sold on what you’re getting up for. And even if you love everything about your job, the daily grind can make it hard to keep your eye on the prize all the time.

Boost your intrinsic motivation — behavior driven by the enjoyment of a task — to keep yourself going. Intrinsic motivation is a more powerful force than extrinsic motivation, which drives you to act because of incentives like money, recognition, or praise. Remind yourself why you got into sales — for example, you could tape a list to your bathroom mirror and reach for it at the start of each day, or write down one thing you’re excited about every night to read the next morning. The important thing is to be able to quickly remind yourself of what drives you to be great at your job.

6) Remind yourself of your wins.

It’s all well and good to know that you love sales because you believe in your product, but on days when you’ve dealt with rude prospects, been reprimanded by your boss, or lost a big deal you’ve been chasing for weeks, you’re going to need a more concrete reminder.

Greg Fung, a HubSpot sales rep, keeps a list of wins and losses in an Evernote document that he refers to when he’s having a bad day.

“Keep your list handy and add to it as new good and bad incidents come your way,” Fung says. “You’ll be surprised by how quickly the ‘rights’ outpace the ‘wrongs,” and you now have a great tool to lean on during tough times.”

To adapt this exercise for a boost of morning motivation, keep a “master list” of your biggest wins and keep it on your nightstand or somewhere easily accessible so you can refer to it on mornings when you just don’t want to go into the office.

7) Do something that makes you happy.

Breaking news: We do better at work when we’re happy in our personal lives.

Multiple studies have shown that happiness is closely correlated with job performance, and of course, happiness is closely tied to our personal health as well.

So set aside some time each morning to do something that makes you happy. Whether it’s reading a chapter from your favorite book, spending 30 minutes on a side project, or just eating a really, really good breakfast sandwich, if you dedicate time to improving your personal life, it’ll pay dividends in your career as well.

How do you motivate yourself? Let us know in the comments below.