Have you ever gotten into a funk? You’re chugging along doing your day to day and then one day you get a case of the blahs. Each day compounds the feeling. Your motivation gets lower and lower. Mid day naps go from sounding cool to sounding astounding. We all go through this.

If you haven’t been reading my blog, I’ve been on a serial entrepreneurial journey as of late. I’ve started three new companies with my wife and a gaggle of other business partners. During the early stages, there was a lot of paperwork, discussion, debating and negotiating. Then there was this lull. During that lull, I could tell that everyone was kind of fading into a funk. The funk was the result of waiting for paperwork or equipment or arranging meetings with partners. Lots of the tedious startup stuff. The funk wasn’t bad in and of itself, but I realized that within a week everyone was going to have to kick back into high gear if we were to meet our deadlines. If everyone was in a funk, how long would it take to de-funk?

I was worried.

For a moment I contemplated giving everyone a Braveheart style pep talk. Freeeeeeeeeedom! But stuff like that has as much a chance of crashing and burning. So I came up with a devious plan. I was going to incentive my team in a way they’d never expect.

I pitched an idea to my wife and business partner that made her go from “blah” one day to “ka-pow” the next. I even pulled this move on my other business partner Dino Dogan who perked back up like a beautiful winged unicorn.

So what did I do? How did I motivate them? You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

These are my 300 words for the day. I am Ralph M. Rivera.

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