One of the reasons, that made me want to work for this company was the vision of it's founders and benefactors, as I listened, I knew immediately I wanted to be part of this company, a company founded by love and the gift of healing.
As the days fell into weeks, I realized how little I still knew on the topic.Educating myself was paramount to sound somewhat convincing to our patients, at least having the basic lexicon of terminology. Many of our patients had years of experience on the subject, thankfully, were too happy to help. Our client care team members were a bank of information to draw on, everyone eager to share their knowledge. It was very humbling and exciting at the same time.
I researched and read on the different type of strains, terpenes, the process of decarboxylation, the different methods of using it, making butter, oils. It was overwhelming, to piece together the puzzle that left me wanting to learn more . indicas, sativas, hybrids and balanced strains it was all jargon to me, I can only say that seven months later, I barely scratched the surface.
This industry has grown exponentially in the past several years and will continue to grow as the demand increases and people looking to get away from prescription drugs and opiates.
The word empathy and compassion for those who are suffering brought me so much humility. The question changes from what can I sell you, to, "how can I be of service"? This line of work is very fulfilling, judge not what you don't understand but rather keep an open mind, mental illness, trauma, stress, whether it be mental or physical. I have witnessed through my own eyes the healing process with many individuals, the joy that was lost, now restored. We need the legalization, to give people options and the freedom to choose.
After reaching 1 billion websites in September of 2014, a milestone confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and that Internet Live Stats was the first to announce (see the tweet from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee) the number of websites in the world has subsequently declined, reverting back to a level below 1 billion.
Learn about the most common mistakes that new business owners make and how to avoid them.
by Beth Laurence, J.D.
1) Starting Your Business With a Large Loan
Many small business owners make the mistake of borrowing large amounts -- either from banks, credit card companies, home equity loans, or friends and family -- to start their businesses. Because these business owners start off owing so much money, they feel pressured to make a profit immediately -- and they may have to make high monthly payments on the loans. A wiser approach is to save a good amount of money and to rely mostly on those savings when you begin your business.2) Planning on Making a Profit Right Away
Most small businesses are not profitable within their first year or two. You should have a reliable source of income from something other than your new business to sustain yourself during your start-up period.
3) Spending Too Much Money at the Beginning
Many small businesses spend too much money "setting up shop," buying equipment and furniture, and investing in business cards and brochures. Plan to start on a shoestring. And remember, if you spend a lot of money, that's more money you can lose if the business fails. (For information on what to do if your business falls into debt, read Nolo's article4) Hiring Employees You Don't Need
Hiring employees subjects you to registration and record keeping requirements and can be very expensive. You'll have to pay unemployment taxes, withhold state and federal income taxes (as well as Medicare and Social Security taxes), pay for workers' compensation insurance, and comply with safety regulations to avoid injury to your workers. (To learn more about your obligations as an employer, read Nolo's article Hiring Your First Employee: 13 Things You Must Do.)You may face severe penalties -- and may even be found to be personally liable -- if you don't comply with all of these requirements. If you need help with your business, consider hiring an independent contractor or a worker from a temp agency rather than a permanent employee.
5)Renting Space You Don't Need
Renting space is usually not necessary when you're just starting out. Often times, you can work from home. Running your business from home can save you tax dollars too. (To learn more about tax savings for home businesses, read Nolo's article.Renting commercial space is expensive, and if you need to make modifications to the space, can be even more so. If your business doesn't work out or you can't afford to rent and have to move, you'll probably owe the landlord rent until your lease runs out. You will most likely be personally liable for these payments because most landlords require small business owners to sign personal guarantees, even if the business is officially an LLC or a corporation.
6) Not Developing a Business Plan
Even if you're not soliciting money from investors, business plans are useful. Come up with a financial forecast to see if your business can make money and will have money year-round. Among other things, consider:- what your initial financing needs are
- what challenges your business will face (in terms of competition and marketing), and
- how your business will survive and grow past the initial start-up period.
7) Not Knowing How to Collect Bills
One of biggest problems new small businesses face is collecting bills. You should be aware that some clients may not pay their invoices on time. So plan to spend some time collecting what is owed to you -- you might need to re-bill clients or to contact them personally when they are late in paying you. (For more advice on getting paid, read Nolo's article
8) Not Planning for Cash Flow Problems
There may be times when your business runs low on cash, either because business is slow or because your clients or customers are late in paying you. You should either apply for a credit line with a bank or develop some other emergency plan for how you are going to pay your bills when you don't have enough cash to do so.9) Not Planning to Protect Personal Assets
You don't want your business debts to endanger your personal assets, such as your home or your savings account. Some options for protecting your personal assets include purchasing liability insurance for your business, and structuring your business as a corporation or an LLC. (To learn how to protect your personal assets from business debt, read Nolo's article10) Choosing the Wrong Ownership Structure
Choosing an ownership structure is one of the most important decisions you'll make for your new business.Consider your specific needs. The following factors can help in making your decision:
- What are the potential risks and liabilities of your business? (For instance, building houses, making edible goods, fixing cars, and selling alcohol carry inherent risks.)
- How willing are you to spend the money it takes to set up and maintain the records for a separate business structure (such as an LLC or a corporation)?
- What are your expected profits or losses in the first couple of years? Unincorporated business structures let you deduct business losses from your other income, but corporations do not.
- What are your plans for seeking investors? Sophisticated investors often prefer the stock structure of a corporation.
Don’t miss this:When your content is optimized and shareable, it means your visitors get more engagement with their own shares.
Let’s be honest: no one has enough time to be on every social network. Okay, maybe some teenagers, but otherwise no one.
Not you, not me, not a single one of the Social Media Gurus and Internet Marketers on the planet can be on every social network, not even all the major networks.
By ‘on’ I don’t mean casually or occasionally using a network. Posting an Instagram of your Thanksgiving Dinner last year doesn’t make you ‘on’ Instagram. Going to Twitter only when your favorite celebrities are feuding to see their Tweets doesn’t make you ‘on’ Twitter. Scheduling brand posts from Hootsuite to a half dozen brand pages doesn’t make your company ‘on’ all half dozen of those networks.
Being on a network means something very profound, a deep sense of intimacy with the features, layout, and users of the network and a certain syntony with the social ecosystem. It means partaking in an online culture, in which network design and demographics interact to inform and enforcenorms, customs, taboos, and other signatures of group identity.
Social Media Culture
Facebook, for example, is primarily an online culture built around real world friendships, family, relationships, old college roommates, and other such real-world connections. Additionally, to some degree this also extends to the overlap between your social connections and theirs (i.e. people are more likely to meet someone through Facebook if they share a common “Friend”). It also hosts a rich diversity of groups, causes, online communities, and other such subcultures of the network.
Twitter, on the other hand, is primarily a culture of following: the majority of Tweets are created by a minority of Power Users, and this is even more true as it pertains to retweets. Beyond Power Users and their disproportionately large and passive followers, Twitter also supports diverse subcultures and communities, often finding each other through the use of hashtags which may or may not be trending at any given moment.
Pinterest, meanwhile, is a heavily visually-driven social network, and what constitutes a good Pinterest description is different from what constitutes a good link description on Facebook or a good tweet on Twitter.Content marketing through social media doesn’t work very well when it doesn’t appreciate and account for these unique differences and qualities of different networks and their users.
Think about that: by helping your visitors share great posts, you not only help your own content perform better, you also improve their social media experience. The domino effect then begins as this then enhances the experience of their connections and followers, and anyone those connections and followers reshare it to, and on and on down the line.
This is the essence of Network Effects: when some users of the network share great posts, which are seen and shared by others, who in turn are seen and shared by others. That process begins, in most cases, with great content that invites and encourages sharing, and the rules of what defines great content varies from network to network.
And when those visitors who shared your content to their networks are rewarded by Likes, Shares, Comments, Follows, and other forms of social engagement, it breeds an even deeper affection, even fandom, for your content.
Consider the example of Facebook Video vs. YouTube: as Facebook has made it harder and less attractive to share YouTube videos on their network, views of Facebook Videos, which benefit from 1st Class integration with the network itself and a default autoplay feature, have gone way up, as have reports of YouTube videos being pirated and uploaded to Facebook.
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I have attended many live podcast and webinars to learn some tips in making money on social media and websites. Some are very informative, if you're good with technology and SEO, you can take these tricks, and do it yourself, if not register for the class. It might be worth it in the end. I do try and challenge myself to learn how to do it. That can be consuming, but you''' save tons of money.. If you have zero knowledge on how to integrate codes, links and so on, further your knowledge on the subject., I have Wordpress and will look into their tutorials. One of the valuable tips I received from from a webinar guru is the: Affiliation programs.
There are many affiliate programs to choose from in making money online. Fairly easy installation for integrating the HTML source code on your posts.
Here is one of the easy ones. Do take your time, before you research too many at once. Until you find your groove and get comfortable that it becomes seamless. I was so zealous in subscribing to as many I could find. But once you get approved it could become overwhelming.
Click on the link below to get started. This one I started with. It took me a while to understand where to inset the HTML source code, but finally I got. it. So play around with that. Take the merchants that pay the merchants that pay the most, and those that reflect what you sell. Some will approve you and some won't find your content relevant to what you're wanting to advertise.
Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com.
"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased, constantly or it vanishes" `Peter Drucker
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/peterdruck154448.html?src=t_knowledgeKnowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/peterdruck154448.html?src=t_knowledgeKnowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/peterdruck154448.html?src=t_knowledg
There is truth to be said, to this quote. Today, with the constant change and fast moving pace of technology, we no longer have a choice to remain ignorant. Unless of course you have deep pockets in hiring full time staff, or pay huge monthly fees to have someone else do it for you.
I did look into some of these companies which specialize in search engine optimization, with a hefty price tag, I simply couldn't afford. Not really understanding what I was getting for my money, didn't give me the desire to opt in. Frankly, unless you know the terms and jargon in what you're getting, won't guarantee you to be on top of the first page landing of search engines. It's like, looking for a needle in a haystack, it won't happen miraculously. You have to be in control to make it happen.
I asked a friend of mine that does SEO implementation, to have a look at my website, and tell me what I was missing. He came back with his prognosis, and explained that Google changed the way it performed and had recently made changes to how it ranks websites. Bottom line, my website was no longer meeting the new criteria set for ranking on the first page of search engines. This explained why, my phone lo longer was ringing. I was so desperate to find a solution, I was no longer a viable company among the 50 million other sites, fighting for top ranking on the first landing page, I was losing huge amount of sales to the competition
It didn't matter if I had the best keywords or metta tags, in my browser, that wasn't enough anymore. Constant updating and adding fresh content to my website would have search engines pick up on the important stuff it based itself on. Please be aware, when I mention fresh, it can't be something that you copy and paste from another site Plagiarism is something search engines don't like, it will push further down the page. Mapping your site is crucial.
Getting back to why I am writing about this experience that recently happened to me, is buyer's beware. I had one of the better known online directory company call me a few months ago. The sales rep called me see if I was still at the same address and if the number was correct, yes, I replied. Then she started telling me about the directory service. I didn't know at the time if it met my budget, $50/monthly can take a toll on slower months. But insisted the importance of being listed, without realizing what I was doing, I agreed that, yes, it could benefit my company, I hung up and left it at that.
To my surprise, this week, I received a bill for that same company, which I totally forgot about. According to the bill, I was 2 months in arrears. I immediately called the company for an explanation, I told the customer service agent, that I never asked for this service to be implemented, and that my understanding was the sales rep, I spoke with, would follow up with a phone call and an email which never came. The customer service rep,tells me, my initial conversation was recorded, she put me on a brief hold while she went to listen what was being said. She came back to say, I had agreed to the service. After arguing with the rep for about 15 minutes, she transfers me to her superior, I repeated once again to explain that I never asked for this service, she was unflappable, she told me with her chirpy voice, that she would be more than happy to send me the recording, and low and behold, I received it in the next 5 minutes as promised. Weird, I'd like to point out, on never receiving the sales rep follow up email to what we discussed but within 5 minutes, I receive the recording.
I hang up, with no resolution to the matter but being forced to pay for something I don't recollect. I immediately start researching, the validity of a verbal recorded agreement. According to the information I found on a law website , a verbal agreement is legally binding. Damn!
At the end of the day small business owners wear many different hats and so much more diversified than before. In my case, I am in the distribution of spray tanning and lash products as well a trainer. In the midst of doing my everyday business, I became an accidental geek. Seriously, I have never worked so hard in my entire life than having to start reading and learning in how to, "Do it Yourself" Search Engine Optimization.
Last year, I felt so overwhelmed by the amount of advertising large companies did on every social media platforms, which catapulted a decline in sales in my business, because, I didn't have the expendable cash to spend on advertising dollars. It literally sent me in a downward spiral of anxiety and depression. After a year of feeling like I could no longer get out of bed, I took the matter into my own hands. I could no longer blame the economy, it was now in my hands, I took responsibility. And to understand and validate what I am saying, watch the movie, "The Big Short" and start digging for valuable knowledge.
