8 Best Copywriting Courses To Add More Zeros To Your Income 18&63,h=A>>12&63,n=A>>6&63,o=63&A,u[l++]=i.charAt(a)+i.charAt(h)+i.charAt(n)+i.charAt(o);while(d 
]]> {{{ ( data.maybeFilterHTML() === ‘true’ ) ? _.escape( data.label ) : data.label }}} ]]>
Continue reading here
Author: Jeff Cassman
Freepik Review – What Makes Freepik Great and Where Freepik Falls Short
Are you searching for the perfect image or illustration to add to your project? Perhaps you want to utilize leading design trends like AI-generated images or 3D visual content? If you want access to these assets, plus icons, videos, vectors, and more, Freepik offers all of this under one roof—and for cheap. Browse its library of millions of visual assets and find the perfect compliment to your website, branding, social media, or anything else. Freepik is your one-stop shop.
Who Freepik Is For
Freepik is a great resource for anyone looking to spice up their projects with eye-catching visuals. The massive library of free and paid illustrations, logos, icons, photos, videos, and more makes it useful for everyone from web developers and bloggers to small business owners, marketing teams, and students.
You’ll find a treasure trove of fonts, templates, graphics, and other assets to enhance websites, branded projects, presentations, and digital content. The quality and variety on offer saves people time and money, instead of creating custom assets from scratch or hiring a professional designer to do it. That’s great for DIY-minded website owners and business owners.
Bloggers, in particular, will appreciate having easy access to visuals that can increase reader engagement. Enhancing your posts with imagery and videos can get readers to stay on your blog for longer and digest more of the information you’re offering them.
For marketers and social media managers, Freepik provides the images, graphics, and videos to create more compelling ads and social campaigns. Tap into Freepik’s library to find the perfect visuals that will capture your audience’s attention, connect with them, and convert them into…
Choose How You Show Up Before You Show Up
Choose How You Show Up Before You Show Up
Strength sees opportunities. Weakness sees threats. You see the world the way you see yourself.
Self-perception shapes the way you show up.
How do you show up when your inner accuser is loud?
- Filled with self-doubt that causes second-guessing.
- Fearful of making mistakes.
- Worried about being judged.
- Obsessively analyzing your words.
- Avoiding topics that need exploration.
- Feeling inadequate or jealous.
- Defensive when receiving tough feedback.
How do you show up when you feel confident in yourself?
- Prepared to turn outward instead of focusing on yourself.
- Open to listen without defensiveness.
- Comfortable with others.
- Willing to address tough topics with a forward-facing orientation.
- Aware and respectful of boundaries both for ourselves and others.
- Trusting competent people to perform.
- Leaning into your strengths.
- Attractive to others (I’m not talking about physical beauty).
- Able to infuse confidence in others.
- Positive instead of fearful.
Choose how you show up:
Spend 1 minute visualizing how you want to show up before your next meeting.
- How does your best self begin the meeting?
- How do you look? Think about body language and facial expression.
- What do you do when someone tries to hijack the meeting?
- What is your orientation toward people? Toward planning? Toward decision-making?
- How do you feel about yourself when you’re interacting with people?
- How does your best self move the agenda forward?
- How do you see yourself ending the meeting?
Be specific. Think actions, words, facial expressions and vocal tone.
1-day challenge:
Practice a best-self-visualization in the morning and before significant encounters. At the end of the day record your observations on a piece of paper (Writing is thinking). If it’s useful, do it for 5 days.
How does the way we think about ourselves seep into behaviors and attitudes?
Still curious:
The Power of Showing Up – Choose How You Show Up or Someone Else Will
How to Show Up Like a Leader Today
Act Like a Leader Before You Are One (hbr.org)
Like this:
Like Loading…
This Close Relationship Reduces Dementia Risk By 42%
Approaching 1 million people were included in the research.
Marriage can reduce the risk of developing dementia by 42 percent, research finds.
The conclusions come from 15 studies published over many years involving over 800,000 people in three continents.
The results showed that compared with married people, lifelong singletons were 42 percent more likely to develop dementia.
People who were widowed had a 20 percent increased chance of developing dementia.
Divorce, though, was not linked to an increased risk of dementia.
More recent studies included in the review suggest the benefit from being married is reducing, although it is not clear why.
The protective effect of marriage could be down to couples helping each other live healthier lives.
They may exercise more, eat a healthier diet and get more social stimulation.
The study’s authors conclude:
“Being married is associated with reduced risk of dementia than widowed and lifelong single people, who are also underdiagnosed in routine clinical practice.
Dementia prevention in unmarried people should focus on education and physical health and should consider the possible effect of social engagement as a modifiable risk factor.”
The study was published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (Sommerlad et al., 2018).
7 Organic Marketing Strategies to Scale Faster in 2023
Want to grow your business faster?…without paying crazy amounts on paid advertising?
Organic marketing is the answer. (Keep reading for my secrets).
My name is Connor Gillivan. I’ve been an Entrepreneur for 12+ years scaling multiple businesses to 6, 7, and 8 figures w/ an exit in 2019. Today, I run marketing for my portfolio of 4 businesses.
The majority of my success in business has been through organic marketing.
In this article, I’ll share my top 7 organic marketing strategies.
- SEO
- Partnerships
- Podcast interviews
- Social media
- Content marketing
- CRO
- Email marketing
By the end, you’ll have a headful of ideas to execute for growing your business.
Let’s dive into it!
My 7 Organic Marketing Strategies
In this section, I’ll define the 7 organic marketing strategies that I mentioned and give examples of each so that you can fully understand how they can help grow your business.
1. SEO
SEO is the act of creating content on your website (pages & blog articles) that rank for specific keywords your ideal customer is searching for on Google and other search engines.
For example, let’s say that you run an eCommerce business selling baby clothes. Your baby clothes are organic, custom-made, sourced from the US, and fashionable.
With SEO, you’d want to rank for keywords like:
- “Organic baby clothing”
- “Baby clothes made in the US”
- “Fashionable baby clothing”
By investing in SEO, you can optimize your website, pages, and content with the goal of ranking on the 1st page of search results.
This will drive traffic to your website where you can convert users into email subscribers and customers.
2. Partnerships
Partnerships is a marketing strategy where you team up with other companies in your industry where you’re not competing with one another, but you’re targeting the same ideal customer profile (ICP).
For example, one of my companies is AccountsBalance, a monthly bookkeeping service for agencies, service providers, & SAAS companies.
We have a Partner Program where we partner with 100s of other digital service providers, softwares, tools, and influencers.
To start, we add each other to our Partner pages (exchanging backlinks), we feature each other in our newsletters (brand awareness & lead generation), then we find other ways to send leads both ways on a quarterly basis.
Relationship building turns into brand awareness, visitors to your website, referrals, leads, & customers.
3. Podcast Interviews
Most people know podcasts for listening to them, but there’s another side to it that is extremely beneficial for organic marketing.
When I say “podcast interviews”, I’m referring to the marketing practice of getting interviewed on podcasts within your industry where you can share your expertise, establish yourself as a thought leader, and attract new customers to your business.
For example, my business…
How Does Google Voice Work: The Complete Guide
Traditional phone systems are expensive. But cloud-based phone solutions offer a cheaper alternative for business and personal use alike.
Enter Google Voice—an affordable way to make and receive phone calls from any device.
Say goodbye to expensive business phone plans. Google Voice makes it easy to add new users and locations without a hefty phone bill.
Top Rated VOIP Phone Services for High Quality Phone Communication
If you want to have high quality and consistent phone communication, you’ll need a VoIP phone service. Here’s the best options.
- Nextiva – Best overall (For a limited time get 25% off when you sign up!)
- Ooma – Easiest to set up for smaller businesses
- RingCentral – Best no-hardware solution for businesses of any size
- Phone.com – Most affordable VoIP system for simple needs
- Grasshopper – Best for using your personal device for business
- Vonage – Best VoIP service for specific needs
- 8×8 – Best for international calling
- GoTo Connect (formerly Jive) – Best bang for your buck
- 1-VoIP – Best for switching VoIP providers to save money
- Mitel – Most scalable VoIP phone solution
You can read our full reviews of each VoIP phone service here.
- Starting at $11.95 per month
- Affordable to upgrade
- Unlimited calls
- Free local & toll-free number
What is Google Voice?
Google Voice is a cloud telephone service that works with smartphones and web browsers. The phone service comes with a…
Everyone Wants 5 Things – Leadership Freak
Everyone Wants 5 Things
At the core, everyone wants 5 things. The only difference is how we describe and pursue what we want.
Everyone wants 5 things:
1. Everyone wants to feel good about their life.
You might feel good about your life because you feel superior. You’re prettier, thinner, smarter, or more successful.
You might feel good about your life for noble reasons. You care about people, or you show up to serve.
Even Stoics, who believe the good life is about logic, feel good about the logical life.
2. Everyone wants to enjoy their work.
I know you want to enjoy work when you’re frustrated that you hate work. One reason you change jobs is the desire to enjoy work.
3. Everyone wants to matter.
You didn’t get up this morning thinking, “I hope I don’t matter.” One reason people contemplate suicide is they feel they don’t matter.
4. Everyone wants fulfilling relationships.
When you feel joy, you want someone to share it with. When you feel angry, you want to tell someone who understands.
You want people to know your name and understand what matters to you.
5. Everyone wants to achieve something.
Gamers want to win. Managers want results. Parents want to raise happy kids. Even Buddhists want to eliminate craving.
Application:
Leaders succeed when they help people get what they want.
“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Zig Ziglar
Everyone prioritizes the above list in personal ways. Achievement means more to some than others, for example. But everyone wants 5 things.
What would you add to the above list of Everyone wants 5 things?
How might life change if you worked to help others get what they want?
Still curious:
3 Ways to Do What Matters Today
7 Relationship Building Rules for Results-Driven Leaders
The PERMA Model: Your Scientific Theory of Happiness
Like this:
Like Loading…
The Vitamin Linked To Weight Loss
The vitamin deficiency linked to increased belly fat.
Higher levels of vitamin D are linked to reduced belly fat, research shows.
The conclusions come from a study including thousands of people.
The researchers measured people’s total body fat and abdominal (belly) fat, along with their vitamin D levels.
The results showed that for both men and women vitamin D deficiency was linked to increased belly fat.
However, for women, low vitamin D levels were linked to both increased belly fat and increased total body fat.
For men, though, low vitamin D levels were linked to more belly fat and more liver fat.
More than half of people around the world may be deficient in vitamin D.
Dr Rachida Rafiq, the study’s first author, said:
“Although we did not measure vitamin D deficiency in our study, the strong relationship between increasing amounts of abdominal fat and lower levels of vitamin D suggests that individuals with larger waistlines are at a greater risk of developing deficiency, and should consider having their vitamin D levels checked.”
It is not yet known if low vitamin D levels are causing more fat to be stored or are a result of it.
Dr Rafiq explained:
“Due to the observational nature of this study, we cannot draw a conclusion on the direction or cause of the association between obesity and vitamin D levels.
However, this strong association may point to a possible role for vitamin D in abdominal fat storage and function.”
Vitamin D deficiency has also been linked to cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and a higher chance of getting colds.
Foods that are rich in vitamin D include oily fish and eggs, but most people get their vitamin D from the action of sunlight on the skin.
That is why levels are typically lower in the body through the winter months in more Northern climes.
The study was published in the journal Clinical Nutrition (Rafiq et al., 2018).
How to Do an LLC Name Search in 5 Simple Steps
Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for LegalZoom and do an LLC name search today.
Forming an LLC is exciting.
But you can’t get past the first step of the formation process without choosing a name.
If you select a name that’s already taken or otherwise ineligible, you’ll lose out on the non-refundable application fees and have to start over from the beginning.
This scenario is easily avoidable if you run an LLC name search before filling out any business formation paperwork.
Top LLC Services to Do an LLC Name Search
If you want to do an LLC name search, you’ll need an LLC service. Here’s the best options.
You can read our full reviews of each LLC service here.
5 Steps to Do an LLC Name Search
Follow the step-by-step guide below on how to do an LLC name search.
- Brainstorm names for your LLC
- Verify the name’s availability
- See if the name is being used elsewhere
- Reserve the name
- Register your LLC name
The Easy Parts of Doing an LLC Name Search
Coming up with a name for your LLC is fairly easy. Many of you probably have at least a few different ideas in mind.
But many entrepreneurs get hung up when it comes to verifying the name’s availability. There are tons of businesses out there, so there’s a chance someone else is already using the name you thought of.
Instead of manually sorting through different databases on your own, you can just use an entity name check service to handle…
6 Steps in Building a New Culture
6 Steps in Building a New Culture
20 copies available!!
Leave a comment on this guest post by Jay B Barney to become eligible for one of 20 complimentary copies of his new book, “The Secret of Culture Change: How to Build Authentic Stories That Transform Your Organization.”
Deadline for eligibility is 08/13/2023. International winners will receive electronic version.
To implement new strategies, you often have to build a new culture. In order to build a new culture, you need to replace the current stories your employees share about what your company values, with new stories that exemplify the new cultural values required to implement your new strategy.
But, how do you replace these old stories? By building new stories. You build these stories by engaging in actions that contradict your firm’s current culture but exemplify the values of a new culture.
Six things to remember while you build new stories:
- First—they must be true to your personal values. Your employees can smell your hypocrisy from miles away, and won’t enroll in your culture-change process if it is not authentic.
- Second—you have to star in the stories you build. Your commitment to culture change is enhanced when you engage in actions that build culture-changing stories.
- Third—the stories you build have to break with the past and provide a path to the future. You are not single-handedly building a new culture. You are building stories that invite your employees to co-create this new culture with you.
- Fourth—your stories must appeal to your employees’ heads—is there a good business case for culture change?—and to their hearts—their emotions and highest aspirations.
- Fifth—your stories need to be theatrical, so your employees will remember them.
- Sixth—you need to build a “story cascade” in your firm, where employees throughout your organization are empowered to build their own culture-changing stories.
When you engage in actions that exemplify new cultural values that build stories with these six attributes, you can change your organizational culture in a way that will help you implement your new strategy.
What’s your takeaway from Jay’s post?
Jay B. Barney is one of the top three most cited scholars in the field of strategic management, who has published over 125 articles and book chapters, along with seven books. He is a full-time professor at Eccles School of Management at the University of Utah. He has co-authored The Secret of Culture Change: How to Build Authentic Stories That Transform Your Organization (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, August 2023)…