Month: November 2022

What To Say To Someone Who Is Scared

Fear and anxiety are emotions that can trap you, but facing them can help, explains a clinical psychologist.

Phobias and anxieties, such as social anxiety, are best dealt with by facing them.

It is not easy, but if done step-by-step most people can learn to deal with anxieties and fears — even overcome them.

Dr Suma Chand, a clinical psychologist who helps people with phobias, says:

“The most reassuring thing I can say to anyone about fear is this: All emotions change.

You will never stay in a panicky state for the rest of your life.

Persevere, and the fear will dissolve.”

Fear and anxiety are emotions that can trap you, says Dr Chand:

“The more you feed it, the stronger it grows.

Fear traps people.

Fear puts you in a box.

Your world gets smaller and smaller.

After a while, you’re avoiding the discomfort of the fear itself, rather than the thing you fear.

When you avoid the things you fear you feel safe and comfortable and you don’t want to do anything that will shake this safe cocoon of comfort.

However you pay a heavy price – your freedom to live your life like the way you really want to live.”

One of Dr Chand’s patients had exactly this experience:

“I saw an elderly lady who had a fall and broke her hip.

It was very traumatic for her.

After she recovered, she didn’t want this experience to repeat itself.

She became very cautious and avoided walking anywhere where there was a possibility for falling.

Although the fear had initially translated into rational attempts to exercise caution it turned into avoidance as she went overboard with being cautious.

The avoidance made her feel safe but caused her fear to grow.

She stopped going to the store, the mall and to yoga, all of which she had enjoyed.

Her social interactions became restricted as she began to stay home more, and avoided her favorite activities, because she was overly fearful about falling.

She began to feel low and hopeless as she saw her isolated, limited existence stretch ahead of her.

While the treatment is to face the fear, it is done in a manner that does not overwhelm the patient.

The graded approach made this patient feel less overwhelmed and also more willing to face her fear.

Once she began to attain success in facing her fear and recognized that what she feared was not happening, it was like a switch was turned on, and she went faster.

Soon, she was fine and back to her old activities again.”

Dr Chand describes when to address fears:

“The time to address a fear is when you find that it is causing you a lot of distress and it is affecting your life in a significantly negative way.

For example, many people fear snakes, which of course can be dangerous.

But they are not preoccupied with this fear and they don’t find that it is impairing their lives very much.

On the other hand, some people fear cats, which are unlikely to cause much harm.

They may find themselves regularly panicked by visits to friends’ homes if they have cats and so begin avoiding…

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How to Cure “Lonely Marketer Syndrome”

If you feel lonely as a digital marketer, you are not alone.

According to an ongoing survey conducted by CareerExplorer, marketing managers rate their career happiness at 3.1 out of 5 stars, which puts them at the bottom 40% of careers.

Why would a job that involves the most entertaining and fun aspects of business, that being growth, change, and interaction between business and customer, lead to such an unsatisfactory rating?

Further, how could a job that is perfectly suited for remote working still rate so low?

Why Marketers Are Unhappy

There are lots of reasons why someone could be unhappy with their job, but for now, let’s focus on the five core factors that generated a 3.1 star rating for marketing management. We’ll expand it a bit to accommodate soloprenuers/consultants and marketing agency owners as well:

  • Compensation & Revenue
  • Meaningfulness
  • Personality Fit
  • Work Environment
  • Skill Utilization

Marketing Compensation & Revenue

Marketing Managers aren’t happy with their salary, even though they rate very high according to CareerExplorer’s survey. With an average of $135,000, marketing managers are the highest among similar careers like management consultants, investment fund managers, online merchants, operation managers, advertising managers, human resource managers, and project managers.

On the marketing business side, marketing agency revenue has continued to increase as well. According to Statista, digital advertising agency revenue grew from $5.69 billion in 2012 to $30.6 billion in 2022, an increase of 437% over 20 years (22% average annual increase).

Even so, they’re not happy!

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Meaningfulness

Do marketing managers find their work meaningful? Most of them don’t according to the survey. They ranked meaningfulness at 2.7 out of 5 stars.

Personality Fit

How about the personality fit of people who are marketing managers? According to the survey, marketing managers rank fit as 3.8 out of 5 stars. Not bad considering! Still not great.

Work Environment

What about the work environment of marketing managers? That’s not bad as well, with a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars. Even so, it could be better.

Skill Utilization

Finally, let’s talk about skill utilization. Do marketing managers feel that they’re using their skills to an adequate degree? They have skill utilization a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Again, not bad but not great either.

Overall, marketing professionals are missing on a lot of the key factors that lead to job and life satisfaction. Could there be a root cause for the disconnection?

Why the Marketing Profession is Awesome

We now have some insights into why the marketing profession may not be ideal, now let’s examine why it’s a really, really good job…

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QuickBooks Payroll Review – What Makes QuickBooks Payroll Great and Where QuickBooks Payroll Falls Short

QuickBooks Payroll is a byproduct of Intuit and is the number one payroll service provider on the market today. QuickBooks Payroll is the perfect solution for small teams or solopreneurs that want a valuable payroll service without unnecessary costs. 

With additional features like time tracking and tax penalty protection, QuickBooks Payroll allows you to create a flexible work environment for your employees, ensuring you won’t have to spend excess fees to get to that point. 

Quickbooks brand logo.Quickbooks brand logo.

QuickBooks Payroll Compared

QuickBooks Payroll did make it onto our top list for being the best payroll service for small teams and solopreneurs. However, the best online payroll service for most people is Gusto because of its ability to provide excellent features for dispersed workforces. Sign up for Gusto today, with pricing plans starting at just $46 per month. 

Want to read more about the top best online payroll services? We reviewed dozens of options and narrowed it down to the top five. If you want to scope out all of your options, see all of our top picks here.

  • Gusto — Best for dispersed workforces
  • Paychex — Best for experienced payroll teams
  • OnPay — Best for simplifying all things payroll
  • QuickBooks Payroll — Best for solopreneurs and small teams
  • ADP — Best for never outgrowing your payroll provider

About QuickBooks Payroll

QuickBooks Payroll is an affordable service for small teams because of its features. You don’t have to worry about paying for functionality you will never use. QuickBooks Payroll aims to provide a hassle-free payroll service by automating your entire payment process. 

With that said, QuickBooks Payroll offers products and services…

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Beards Are Attractive – If Facial Hair Is Correct Length

Beards and facial hair can be attractive — it depends what you want from a relationship.

Women judge fully bearded men to be a better bet for long-term relationships, one study finds.

This might be because it makes men look more ‘formidable’.

Certainly, beards make men look older and more aggressive.

Beards are also often judged to make men look like they have higher social status.

However, for short-term relationships, women judge stubble to be most attractive, the research found.

Are beards really attractive?

However, whether or not beards are attractive to women is a big area of controversy in beard-related psychological research.

Some studies find that bearded men are more attractive to women than the clean-shaven, others not (e.g. Reed & Blunk, 1990; Muscarella & Cunningham, 1996).

The most recent research goes against both beards and being clean-shaven and is starting to show the benefits of stubble.

But do women prefer light stubble or heavy stubble?

The jury is still out, with one study suggesting light stubble (Neave & Shields, 2008) and another heavy stubble (Dixson & Brooks, 2013).

Facial hair study details

The study showed pictures of men with different levels of facial hair to over 8,000 women.

Men’s faces were also ‘masculinised’ and ‘feminised’ by computer manipulation to see what effect this would have.

Here is an example of the feminised male faces along with different beard growths:

Here are the masculinised faces with different beard lengths:

The results showed that the more faces were masculinised or feminised, the less attractive they were.

Stubble is attractive

Stubble was most attractive to women in a short-term context and full beards most attractive when considering a long-term relationship.

The study’s authors explain:

“…beards may be more attractive to women when considering long-term than short-term relationships as they indicate a male’s ability to successfully compete socially with other males for resources.

Interestingly, a longitudinal analysis of men’s facial hair fashions in London from 1871 to 1972 revealed that beards became more common when the marriage market was more male-biased and the degree of intrasexual competition to attract mates was augmented.”

Beards and facial hair not universally attractive

Remember that all these are ‘average’ findings across thousands of people.

There are, obviously, both beard-lovers and beard-haters out there.

The study is the latest in a long and illustrious line of important beard-related research.

Not all studies agree on whether beards are more attractive, although stubble does seem to be emerging as a strong favourite, especially for shorter term relationships.

The study was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (Dixson et al., 2016).

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9 Ways to Create a Strong Social Media Brand

You can create an online brand that represents your values and abilities by sharing content and information online. Even if you only infrequently use social media, anything you post, share, or respond to contributes to this public narrative. 

Nowadays, your online behavior is equally as significant as your offline behavior. It takes effort to develop your personal brand on social media, but if you do it well, you might get your next job or make some valuable contacts. 

The following sections will help you understand what it takes to build that online presence and succeed long-term in this challenging digital world. So without further ado, let’s start.

Update Your Social Media Accounts

Start by selecting the social media accounts you want to concentrate on, and delete any older accounts you don’t use anymore. Ensure your information is accurate and create concise profiles with a narrative of your background story and a strong social media profile picture.

Each social media channel has unique characteristics so take some time to find your voice in the platform and communicate your message to your audience.

For example, here are two different approaches from the same brand on Linked and Instagram. 

As we can see, Linkedin has a more professional approach and tone of voice, while the same brand uses a more energetic and playful tagline (“Made for cool, calm and protected”) for their Instagram account.

​Identify Your Area of Expertise

Everyone is an expert at something, whether producing and sharing quality content or having a comprehensive understanding of a specific niche.

Is it time for you to try a few more things? Consider the content you’ve produced that has received the most engagement from your audience. Is it possible to recreate this with other content or to repurpose anything to re-engage? 

Your followers will begin to view you as a leader in your chosen field the more distinctive and interesting content you produce on it. 

Here is the example of Moosend, an email marketing service provider which shares content on email marketing.

Another great example of capitalizing on a specific niche comes from Red Bull which shares content on action activities and has become an industry leader.

Regularly Share Content

In the early days of social media, you could generate greater engagement by posting more frequently. Today, however, excessive posting causes exhaustion and irritation. You want to communicate with your audience, but don’t come out as needy by sharing too much. 

For personal brands, posting three to four times a week is ideal. It is preferable to concentrating on two or three preferable channels and making an effort to be active there. You’ll have days when you don’t post, and…

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Thanksgiving Reflection 2022 – Leadership Freak

Thanksgiving Reflection 2022

I woke up to the smell of stuffing being made. I don’t know if you say ‘dressing’ or ‘stuffing’. It’s all delicious to me. My wife started preparing ‘the bird’ before I got up. After I got up, I bumbled around offering help. She just wants me out of the way. I’ll explain my real jobs in a minute.

Around 11:30 I decided to take the chill off, so I wandered down to my rambling office to start a fire in our Vermont Casting stove. I reclined in the Lazy Boy and read portions of the “Essays of E.B. White,” while I tended the fire. Thankfully fires don’t need much tending. Burning wood smells like home.

I call my office rambling because it’s four-times larger than it needs to be. Beyond typical office stuff, it has a stove and a Lazy Boy. I set up office in what used to be our living room. We built a new living room. We needed an addition when the kids were little, but we couldn’t afford it until they left home. My wife enjoys the new kitchen. I enjoy the food she cooks in it.

It’s 12:30 and the smell of turkey has replaced the smell of stuffing. Both smells feel peaceful. The kids and grandkids will arrive soon and perfectly disturb the peace. The popper will pop on the bird. Hours of labor will be gobbled down in no time at all.

The wife of my youth just walked in wide-eyed and gave me two thumbs up. She didn’t speak a word. Just thumbs up. I knew the popper popped. The bird is done. I grabbed the potholders and set him on the counter. Job-one done. I sampled the crusty stuffing. It smells like Thanksgiving. Now it tastes like Thanksgiving.

It means so much because we’ve done it so often. Around 2:30 job-two will be done when I take out the garbage.

We had bone turkey for our first Thanksgiving

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Square Payroll Review – What Makes Square Payroll Great and Where Square Payroll Falls Short

Square has been a leader in digital payment services for years, helping online and brick-and-mortar businesses collect payments, access funds, and create rewarding loyalty programs. 

Square Payroll provides convenient payroll and tax services, adding to Square’s all-in-one merchant-focused solution. Small businesses, especially, can benefit from using a payroll service like Square Payroll to pay their teams, deduct taxes, review sales, and more. 

Learn how Square Payroll can ease payroll management for your team.

Square brand logo.Square brand logo.

Square Payroll Compared

Square Payroll did not make our top list of online payroll services. Our top pick, Gusto, is an excellent alternative to Square Payroll for most businesses, including new companies without a dedicated payroll team. Try Gusto free for 30 days.

  • Gusto — Best for dispersed workforces
  • Paychex — Best for experienced payroll teams
  • OnPay — Best for simplifying all things payroll
  • QuickBooksPayroll — Best for solopreneurs and small teams
  • ADP — Best for never outgrowing your payroll provider

Read more about the best online payroll services.

About Square Payroll

Although Square Payroll didn’t make our top list for online payroll services, it still offers plenty for small businesses. The company helps small business owners without payroll experience pay employees and contractors, track paid time off, and withhold multistate taxes.

Square Payroll also combines other key employee management services, like time tracking, invoicing, workers’ compensation, and benefits package management. Business owners can choose between contractor-only plans or plans covering payments for contractors and employees.

Square Payroll Health and Stability

Although Square was founded back in 2009, Square Payroll is a more recent offering from the digital commerce…

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The Personality Trait Linked To Low IQ Scores

One trait is linked to a worse score in intelligence tests.

People with unstable emotions tend to get lower scores on IQ tests, studies find.

This may, though, be down to nervousness while taking the test.

In fact, people who are neurotic may have higher IQs than the standard test reveals.

Neuroticism, one of the five major personality traits, encompasses unstable emotions, anxiety, self-consciousness and irritability.

People who are higher in neuroticism may also sleep poorly, the study’s authors explain:

“High scorers tend to be sensitive, emotional, worrying, moody, frequently depressed, often sleep badly and may suffer from various psychosomatic disorders.

Low scorers tend to be secure, hardy and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions.”

The conclusions come from two studies, the first of which was conducted on 646 Dutch twins.

The results showed that people higher in neuroticism got lower scores on an IQ test.

The link is down to genetics, the researchers concluded.

However, a second study gave IQ tests to 213 people and split them into two groups depending on how anxious they were.

The results of this study showed that the more nervous people were, the lower their IQ scores.

By statistically removing the effects of anxiety, though, the researchers were able to show that highly neurotic people are just as intelligent.

The authors conclude:

“Neurotics become more anxious under testing conditions, and this anxiety affects their performance on the IQ tests.

It is therefore proposed that Neuroticism is not related to intelligence per se, but to intelligence test performance, which has been proposed in the past (Eysenck, 1971).

This suggestion implies that IQ tests may underestimate the true intelligence of Neurotic individuals.”

The studies were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Bartels et al., 2012; Moutafi et al., 2006).

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5 Digital Marketing Options for Your Business

Now that online marketing is the dominant way to advertise one’s business, it’s important to learn about digital marketing channels. All businesses should consider using the internet to promote their business. Here is how you can decide what digital marketing channels are best for your business.

Awareness

Before you research digital marketing channels, you need to be aware of the ins and outs of your brand. This means understanding how your businesses relate to certain means of advertising styles. Depending on the type of business, certain types of digital marketing channels may not make sense to use. Here are 5 digital marketing options that you can consider using in your business.

1. Social Media Marketing

Practically every business can benefit from social media marketing. Realistically, more people pay attention to social media advertisements than other means of marketing. This is because many advertisements on these platforms are promoted in a style to mimic normal content.

This then tricks one’s mind into interacting with the post/content source more often. Some common social media websites include: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.

Whether it be videos, pictures, and other content, it’s important to regularly post on social media to capitalize on this type of digital marketing channel. 

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2. Websites

Building a nicely constructed website for business operations is one of the most necessary parts of advertising. Websites are the center of information that people use to gain information on your company. Your website allows you to generate traffic from all sorts of places online.

Social media, SEO, direct traffic, and email marketing can all be used to direct customers to your website. When you have a website, consumers can be better informed and confident in your brand. “Ensure that you list all relevant resources on the website.

This will satisfy those looking into supporting your brand,” informs Dee Stephenson, marketing blogger at Write My X and 1day2write.

3. Email Marketing

This type of digital marketing channel can be redundant, but is quite effective. While getting a boring old email won’t excite anyone, businesses can still utilize email marketing. Emails are the perfect way to create channels online.

Essentially, email marketing allows you to direct a customer to a plethora of channels. These other channels include social media, deal adverts, a website homepage and more. There are endless possibilities when it comes to email marketing. You can also get someone in your company to send out personalized messages to clients or customers to gain loyalty.

Emailing marketing is a wonderful way to push out advertisements and connect with consumers.

4. SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a…

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Oasis PEO Review – What Makes Oasis PEO Great and Where Oasis PEO Falls Short

Outsourcing payroll or using multiple software to manage human resources isn’t always enough to efficiently handle all your administrative tasks. That’s where PEO (professional employer organization) service providers come in. In the past few years, outsourcing several managerial and administrative functions to trusted PEOs has become quite common.

Oasis PEO is one of the many excellent PEO service providers available in the market today. It has a service-focused approach and provides various services like risk management, payroll, technology benefits, employee solutions, and much more.

Paychex brand logoPaychex brand logo

Oasis PEO Compared

Oasis PEO made our top list for several reasons. While it’s a great option, the best PEO service provider for most readers is Resourcing Edge because it provides customized solutions to clients. Moreover, it offers advanced technology and a single point of contact. Find out how you can empower your business with a free consultation with Resourcing Edge.

  • Resourcing Edge — Best fully customized PEO services
  • Paychex Oasis — Best industry-specific PEO solutions for startups
  • Amplify PEO — Best HR technology suite with PEO services
  • Insperity — Best support for small businesses with simple health plan needs
  • Paychex — Best for outsourcing payroll and tax compliance
  • ADP TotalSource — Best 401(k) plans for midsize organizations
  • Justworks — Best for businesses hiring at scale
  • PapayaGlobal — Best global PEO company
  • VensureHR — Best for businesses with less than 50 employees
  • TriNet — Best health benefit options for SMBs

You can read the in-depth analysis of these platforms here. 

About Oasis PEO

Oasis PEO offers a range of professional employee organization services…

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