Tag Archives: work-life balance

Ep 238 – Praxis CEO, Isaac Morehouse on How to Make Working With Friends Successful

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-4 Hello Success in Business Podcast listeners! Welcome to Episode 238.

Today Tom Ryan has invited onto our show an incredible entrepreneur, Isaac Morehouse for part 5 of our 5 part interview. Isaac has created a business named Praxis that provides intelligent and talented individuals with apprenticeship positions at startup companies. Praxis is an alternative to a traditional university experience, which is a welcome option for many who are daunted by expensive tuition and an ever-growing, post-graduation unemployment outlook.

Tom and Isaac discuss how to manage a startup with partners, friends and family and they share tips for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Isaac works with a brother and close friend. Tom asks him how to manage that balance of those to realms of the relationship.

Isaac explains that you want to work with people who you actually like and would hang out with. Especially with a startup. Of course, he was wary of blending a friendship with a coworker relationship, but he came to learn that it was worth the risk. But that’s just his style. He tried to keep the boundaries blurry. He works from home sometimes and his life is very fluid. He’s cautious when he needs to be.

Tom Ryan makes sure to sit down with every new hire to set a good precedent of the friendly yet professional relationship, especially with new hires that are already friends. The friendship or familial relationship needs to come first and that means that if things are getting too tense, the working relationship needs to stop. Isaac Morehouse agrees. He would do whatever it took to keep a friendship secure. Similarly he would do whatever the business needed, even to the tune of stepping down as CEO. If he knew the company would do better with someone else as CEO he wouldn’t shy away from that.

When it comes to work/life balance Tom and Isaac both have experience balancing parenthood and working from home. Isaac takes a midday walk each day and he feels a little guilty stepping away from his desk sometimes, but it is really part of a healthy work day. It’s part of his creative process.

With so many demands on our time Isaac and Tom share one last golden piece of advice and that is to give your best energy to the people for whom you want to be a hero. Thanks for tuning in today. Have a great day!

Learn more about Praxis by clicking here.

To listen to Isaac Morehouse’s Podcast visit IsaacMorehouse.com

Tweet Tom at: @TomRyanAVL

Do you have a question about your business? Tom would love to help you:

Leave a voicemail: (801) 228-0663

E-mail your questions: SuccessInBusinessPodcast@gmail.com

Like this podcast on Facebook

Follow this podcast on Twitter: @TomRyanSIBP

Get every episode free: Subscribe in iTunes

Ep 237 – Praxis CEO, Isaac Morehouse on Selling to Your Very First Customer and How to Maintain Company Culture During Rapid Growth

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-4 Hello Success in Business Podcast listeners! Welcome to Episode 237. We are here for you every Monday to teach you about success in business and today is no different.

Today Tom Ryan has invited onto our show an incredible entrepreneur, Isaac Morehouse. Isaac has created a business named Praxis that provides intelligent and talented individuals with apprenticeship positions at startup companies. Praxis is an alternative to a traditional university experience, which is a welcome option for many who are daunted by expensive tuition and an ever-growing, post-graduation unemployment outlook.

Tom starts off by talking about finding alignment and selling with integrity. The best salespeople identify value for value and create that really strong partnership. There is a certain perception around sales, unfortunately, but sales is a transference of feeling.

With a startup at first, your company culture is just you and 4 other people, but then you have be work to create, or rather, strive to maintain that actual culture for your company.

Isaac shares how he got his very first customer by using real emotion and personal experience. As the business started to grow, they were happy to have new questions to face. For example, how to you scale? For him, building a functional sales funnel is harder than building a brand new product. But, he is sill building new systems and he has learned to find people who loves the parts he doesn’t love and that can be a real shot in the arm to any startup.

The truth is employers want to hire people with initiative and practical experience and in many fields a typical Bachelors degree simply does not mean that graduates are prepared for the workplace. Isaac has been able to see past our present expectations of a normal education and has partnered with many great startups to provide paid apprenticeships to students and give them a concentrated, powerhouse of an education!

Learn more about Praxis by clicking here.

To listen to Isaac Morehouse’s Podcast visit IsaacMorehouse.com

Tweet Tom at: @TomRyanAVL

Do you have a question about your business? Tom would love to help you:

Leave a voicemail: (801) 228-0663

E-mail your questions: SuccessInBusinessPodcast@gmail.com

Like this podcast on Facebook

Follow this podcast on Twitter: @TomRyanSIBP

Get every episode free: Subscribe in iTunes

Ep 236 – Praxis CEO, Isaac Morehouse on Career Exploration

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-4 Hello Success in Business Podcast listeners! Welcome to Episode 236. We are here for you every Monday to teach you about success in business and today is no different.

Today Tom Ryan has invited onto our show an incredible entrepreneur, Isaac Morehouse. Isaac has created a business named Praxis that provides intelligent and talented individuals with apprenticeship positions at startup companies. Praxis is an alternative to a traditional university experience, which is a welcome option for many who are daunted by expensive tuition and an ever-growing, post-graduation unemployment outlook.

When Isaac talks to parents about their children doing a Praxis apprenticeship he still picks up on the reluctance of that generation to miss out on college, even though they know full well that graduates aren’t getting hired. He reminds them that it’s not about pro-college or anti-college; it’s about pro-your child succeeding.

He compares it to a pick-up truck. In some cases pick-up trucks are a good investment and in some cases they aren’t. It depends on your situation. If you are planning to become a doctor or a lawyer, then you are still going to need credentials and licenses and college, frankly. But, if you are looking into marketing, sales or programing and you can do the work, then Praxis can get you there.

People are more likely to be interested in design and marketing than they are to interested in sales. Not many people say that they want to go into sales. Yet, many jobs in marketing look a lot like number crunching all day.

Growing up, kids think that their career choices are pretty much astronaut, fire fighter, business person. So many people end up in sales! And even if they wouldn’t officially consider themselves a salesperson, they are better at what they do because of their background in sales.

The truth is employers want to hire people with initiative and practical experience and in many fields a typical Bachelors degree simply does not mean that graduates are prepared for the workplace. Isaac has been able to see past our present expectations of a normal education and has partnered with many great startups to provide paid apprenticeships to students and give them a concentrated, powerhouse of an education!

Learn more about Praxis by clicking here.

To listen to Isaac Morehouse’s Podcast visit IsaacMorehouse.com

Tweet Tom at: @TomRyanAVL

Do you have a question about your business? Tom would love to help you:

Leave a voicemail: (801) 228-0663

E-mail your questions: SuccessInBusinessPodcast@gmail.com

Like this podcast on Facebook

Follow this podcast on Twitter: @TomRyanSIBP

Get every episode free: Subscribe in iTunes

Ep 234 – Praxis CEO, Isaac Morehouse on Apprenticeship: Going From Student to Startup in Nine Months

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-4 Hello Success in Business Podcast listeners! Today we are bringing you episode 234. We are here for you every Monday to teach you about success in business and today is no different.

Today Tom Ryan has invited onto our show an incredible entrepreneur, Isaac Morehouse. Isaac has created a business named Praxis that provides students with apprenticeship positions at startup companies. Praxis is an alternative to a traditional university experience, which is a welcome option for many who are daunted by expensive tuition and an ever-growing, post-graduation unemployment outlook.

The philosophy that has guided Isaac through his career is wanting to help people come alive and be free from whatever is holding them back, whether that is internal or external.

For a decade he focused on career mentorship and then he became very successful doing fundraising. As often happens for entrepreneurs, he became anxious to try something new. Isaac started to develop his new idea which as bridging the connectivity gap. He noticed there were lots of unemployed people with a degree and significant debt, and there were also lots of companies who want to hire but can’t find good talent.

Students sit in class for years and just hoping that what they learn will be what some company is looking for. He thought, “Why not do an apprenticeship?” He wanted to help students develop their personal brand.

It seemed crazy to try to turn his idea into a business at that time. He was accustomed to making a comfortable living at that time, so it was a lifestyle change and a sacrifice to engage in a startup at that point. But, he was passionate about his idea to help people go from student to startup in 9 months.

Aside from solving the connectivity gap, he noticed other problems with a traditional college degree. There are some missing skills that needed to be taught in order for graduates be prepared to enter the workplace.

At Praxis they teach skills, sure, but they also teach students to think, “How can I create value at this company?” They de-school their apprentices from a permission-seeking-mindset or a rule-following-mindset to a value-creating-mindset.

In the computer programing world, for example, the degree doesn’t matter very much. The startup-mindset way of hiring is the way the world is going. Think of yourself as a business: “me-inc.” See yourself as your own product and be in the startup context to see what that means so you don’t get stuck thinking that you just work a job.

The truth is that employers want to hire people with initiative and practical experience and in many fields a typical Bachelors degree simply does not mean that graduates are prepared for the workplace. Isaac has been able to see past our present expectations of a normal education and has partnered with many great startups to provide paid apprenticeships to students and give them a concentrated, powerhouse of an education!

Learn more about Praxis by clicking here.

To listen to Isaac Morehouse’s Podcast visit IsaacMorehouse.com

Tweet Tom at: @TomRyanAVL

Do you have a question about your business? Tom would love to help you:

Leave a voicemail: (801) 228-0663

E-mail your questions: SuccessInBusinessPodcast@gmail.com

Like this podcast on Facebook

Follow this podcast on Twitter: @TomRyanSIBP

Get every episode free: Subscribe in iTunes

Ep. 166 – How a Business Partnership is Like a Marriage: An Interview with Grava Bike Co., Part 4

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Grava Bikes, straight from the paint booth.

Grava Bikes, straight from the paint booth.

In a marriage, one of the thorniest issues tends to be managing money. As Grava Bike Co. co-founders Jeff Welch and Shawn Moore explain, a business partnership is kind of like a marriage where the only thing to think about and talk about is money. Handled poorly, a business partnership can easily turn into a stressful and tense situation. Not surprisingly, both Jeff and Shawn believe strong communication to be key to a long-lasting business partnership.

In today’s episode of the Success in Business podcast, host and business coach Tom Ryan continues his conversation with Jeff and Shawn. As always, Tom is joined by co-host and producer Jason Pyles. Continue reading →

Ep. 102 – Accomplishing Your Optimal Work-Life Balance, Part 2

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SIB-Blog-2What are your real priorities in both your work life and your personal one? It’s an important question for every business owner and entrepreneur, and it’s not always an easy one to answer. Priorities can shift quickly, and if you want to see optimal results, you have to keep track of them.

Back in episode 96, host Tom Ryan explained some simple ways to identify your biggest work and personal priorities. In part two, he digs into a few common-sense techniques for keeping the biggest priorities at the top of the list. As always, Tom is joined by co-host and producer Jason Pyles. Continue reading →

Ep. 096 – Accomplishing Your Optimal Work-Life Balance, Part 1

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SIB-Blog-1We’ve frequently talked about work/life balance on the show, but what does it really mean? How do you know what that optimal balance is? For that matter, how do you even what your overall capacity for work is? Instead of focusing on the high-level overview of work/life balance, in this episode we roll up our sleeves and get to work looking for some tangible information.

Host Tom Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, a business coach and a Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur in Residence. He’s joined by producer Jason Pyles. Continue reading →

Ep. 077 – The Work-Life Balance and Seven Signs of Vibrating, Part 2

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SIB-Blog-2Are you really constantly overworked as you build your new business? Are you truly too overwhelmed to make time for your personal life? Or are you simply obsessing over the tiny details, “vibrating” in place rather than generating forward momentum?

In today’s episode, host and business coach Tom Ryan wraps up his “Seven Signs of Vibrating” list. If you answer “I’m busy … but it beats the alternative” when someone asks how you’re doing, you need to listen to this podcast. Continue reading →

Ep. 076 – The Work-Life Balance and Seven Signs of Vibrating, Part 1

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SIB-Blog-1Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is one of the biggest problems for entrepreneurs. The more dedicated you are to the business, the harder it can be to have a rich life outside of the office. When you’re that busy, can be hard to find time for the personal stuff.

Or maybe not. Are you really that busy with meaningful, business-related tasks? Or are you just “vibrating” in place, seeming busy and active, but actually accomplishing very little? Host Tom Ryan and co-host Jason Pyles explore this idea and more on today’s show. Continue reading →