Who’s Your Pick? 68 Challenges That Keep Our Readers Up Nights.

In addition to being one of the great geeky days of the year, it’s the most wonderful time of the year as tournament season begins.

While I’m morally opposed to 68 teams instead of 64, it does mean Coach Weber’s Kansas State team gets in, and we love him, so we abide.

Moreover, it gives us the opportunity to share 68 answers from our recent annual reader survey to the question, “What keeps you up at night?”

We’re going to answer every one of these questions in the weeks and months to come. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll ask someone qualified and interesting to help us out.

Here, in no particular order, are 68 things that keep our readers up nights. See if you spot yours. See how many resonate with you. The answers are coming!

1. How not to procrastinate
2. How to lose all the gimmicks. Scarcity, freebies, discounts, “you must by today or the offer goes away.” All of that crap makes me run the other way as a consumer and I don’t want to use those things to attract customers to my business. I don’t believe it attracts a lifelong customer anyway.
3. How to balance the social media in our lives. We have to deal with it as business owners, but find it often very negative and time consuming.
4. How to focus on customers not data.
5. How I can take naps without anyone knowing?
6. Giving myself permission to ask for help.
7. How to coach some members of our staff to be motivated, focused and take ownership of their job.
8. Balancing time management at work versus family time
9. How to get higher paid speaking gigs
10. How to write better radio ads
11. Nobody expects as much of me as I do of myself, how do I take that pressure off myself?
12. Giving confidence to businesses that their advertising will work IF they commit long term.
13. Balance (there is such a thing right?) and prioritization.
14. How to quit my addiction to Redbull. Or diet soda. Or other unhealthy drinks.
15. How much should I charge for my service?
16. I am purchasing an existing business and worry about losing existing customers/revenue and/or existing employees.
17. Work culture, remote employees, employee engagement, and communication.
18. How to best tell your company/organization’s story.
19. Coping with the negativity right now.
20. What makes marketing successful and why?
21. How do I nail down our organizations values with our employees?
22. How should social media be used in today’s media landscape?
23. How to create a unique point of view to stand apart in a crowded marketplace.
24. Personal goal-setting.
25. The future of radio.
26. How do you illustrate the benefits of efficiency to a team member?
27. How to be a great leader and not a BOSS.
28. How to move upper management in the direction of employee ownership and buy in.
29. How to transition out of the radio business without losing my identity as a human being.
30. Why people choose to NOT be thankful for work, life, and others.
31. Anger/despair/trying to lose weight.
32. Unlearning all the useless rhetoric I learned as a newbie artist entrepreneur and trying to find my way back to my gut instincts and authenticity.
33. Staying positive and encouraged about the future.
34. How to focus in my business.
35. The disproportion between my desire to retire and the size of my nest egg.
36. Developing a way for my clients to share their values and life stories with their children and family which in the long run is more valuable than the real estate and other assets they leave through estate planning.
37. Keeping “caught up.”
38. Getting new hires up to speed.
39. We have been flexible with staff to a fault. Now they are taking advantage of our willingness to be flexible.
40. The economy.
41. Engaging readers via my own blog.
42. Hiring amazing talent on a shoe string budget.
43. Getting business owners with cold feet to commit to long term advertising.
44. The growing demand for my business.
45. The future of my profession.
46. Managing my conflicting priorities
47. Inner office politics and power struggle at work.
48. Organizing my time and priorities while staying on-task due to “distractions” which are actually important and work-related.
49. Developing and implementing a plan for creating relevant content.
50. Aging and being positive about it.
51. Seeing blessed people whine about minutia (myself included).
52. Figuring out how to think and act strategically.
53. My lack of energy to get it ALL done.
54. Breaking out of the whirlwind of daily fires to focus on the most important future-oriented activity.
55. Focusing on my professional career path and where I am headed.
56. Trying to get everything done, or prioritize so that I can get the most important things done (and being OK with not getting the non-important things done).
57. Growth.
58. Getting back to my normal, energetic self after a year-long health challenge that has effected many things.
59. How can I show a team member it’s better to be efficient every day and that each step needs to be considered based on its impact to customer service and efficiency?
60. Branding our business.
61. Member engagement.
62. How to help managers be the best they can be.
63. How to convince myself that I can be successful and I need to stop pleasing everyone else before myself.
64. Learning a new job and adapting to a new work environment.
65. Our business direction in 2017.
66. How to leave work feeling satisfied and proud of with whom and where I work.
67. Breathing.
68. Finding talented people that want to work.