When we think of a holiday, one of the first thoughts that comes into our heads is reclining by a poolside in the villa we’ve booked for a week, hardly leaving except to find something tasty to eat. It’s a dream of manny people to do just that, but it can get a bit boring, and there’s a good chance you’ll come back home thinking about all the great sights, sounds, and smells you missed.
So if you’re someone who loves to get their sweat on, or you want to be the kind of person who can never be stopped in such a hectic lifestyle, why not use your holiday time to get started? It’s a great way to kick start a workout hobby, seeing as there’s plenty of exotic and interesting activities to try out when you’re abroad!
Think of all the perfect holiday snaps you could take around here! (Image)
Get Out On and Under the Water
If you’re headed to a coastal area, or one that’s known for its vast rivers and lakes, now’s the time to head near the water’s edge and really enjoy what nature has to offer there. Sure, a lake in Norway might not be the best place to strip off and dive into, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hire a boat to sail your way down the giant fjords!
You’ve headed out to a hot country, with plenty of beaches to walk down and sand to get on your towel, but how about fully getting into the swing of things and jumping into the ocean? As long as it’s a safe place to do so, or you’ve got a guide with you that’ll show you how to swim with the dolphins, bring your full face snorkel mask out with you and have the holiday experience of a lifetime. Not every country has a coral reef, and it’s an unfortunate truth that they might not be around forever!
Get On Your Bike
If you’ve headed off to a country that has quite a lot of hills to hike up and mountainous regions to work your way through, why not hire a mountain bike and get peddling? The trees look a lot better when you’re zooming your way down a forest path, and if you come across any errant animals, you’ll be able to get away much faster!
Get Trekking!
It’s something most of us are able to do, seeing as we have working legs, so putting them to good use surrounded by picturesque scenery and plenty of fresh air is always going to be a great idea. There are all kinds of treks across the world, and you can find plenty of famous trails to work your way down. You never know the history you’ll come across!
Holidays are a time you should never waste, so make sure you’re putting your energy to good use and having an absolute blast. Work your way in and out of mountains and volcanoes; you can do that!
We all need a little help in our lives every now and then. And that is even more so the case when you are an entrepreneur and spend your whole career trying to set up and build businesses. Most entrepreneurs have a lot of responsibility riding on their shoulders, and they also have very packed calendars. As a result, it can be all too easy to get stressed out and let the mounting pressure get to us. For this reason, it’s always necessary to know where you can go to whenever you need help and support. Thankfully, there are plenty of sources of support you can turn to whenever you need help with your workload or just some general business advice. Here are some of the best.
Use Your Network
Possibly the best place to go when you need support has to be your professional network. You will no doubt know a lot of fellow entrepreneurs and business professionals who will all have a different set of skills and experience to you. That means that they might be able to help you out when you find yourself in an uncommon situation – it could be very common for them and they might know exactly what you need to do! If you don’t have such a large network right now, it could be really useful to spend some time meeting new people and expanding it.
Hire Niche Support Contractors
If you don’t already hire a few contractors who can help you out in various situations, then it’s time to start looking for some. One such firm you might want to use as a contractor is one that offers managed IT services for businesses so that you don’t have to worry about a disruption to your operations if you ever experience tech or IT problems. It’s also a good idea to find a freelance accountant who can take care of all your accounting and bookkeeping. That way, you don’t have to worry about any errors cropping up in your accounts.
Lean On Your Managers
Your managers will be highly experienced and also very knowledgeable. After all, that’s why you would have hired them in the first place, right!? Well, these are some other great people who you can turn to for support. In fact, you might want to go to them before you go to anyone else as they will know your company inside out and might have some of their own ideas of how things can improve.
Find A Mentor
It’s also a good idea to find a mentor. This should be someone who is a fellow entrepreneur in the same industry or sector as you, and who has a few more years of experience in business than you do. They will be someone who you can turn to whenever you need any questions answered or just need some advice from someone who knows what you will be going through.
Hopefully, all of these sources of support will help you take your business even further!
Running a business is, honestly, not too hard once you’re set up. It’s all about maintaining order, pitching new ideas and occasionally trying something out of your comfort zone that can help improve your company.
That’s really the only secret to running a thriving business. You need to be consistent, you need to balance everything and you need to occasionally take a risk if you want to grow. However, one aspect of business that few entrepreneurs put an emphasis on is communication.
In this article, we’ll be discussing what it means to focus on better communication, how businesses can benefit from it, and also give you some practical advice to try for your own company.
Most businesses suffer from a lack of communication. This means that they’re often slow to respond to customer feedback, it takes them a long time to adapt to trends, and it can also mean that they suffer because they can’t keep up with other companies. A lack of communication can also make inter-business discussions difficult, meaning that good ideas can be pushed aside for trivial issues if the workflow isn’t optimized.
Better communication refers to optimizing these processes. This can be achieved by using a unified communications platform and it can also help to teach your employees how to communicate ideas more effectively throughout the business. It’s both a technological and workflow issue that can, thankfully, easily be solved.
Benefiting from better communication
One of the biggest benefits of improving your communication is being able to listen to customer feedback. It means being able to take their ideas on board, their criticism and even their complaints so that you can refine your product and services to fit their needs.
Improving communications within the business also gives you some enticing benefits. For instance, making communications within your company smoother and more streamlined means that ideas can be transferred quickly, optimizations can be implemented faster and you’ll learn to adapt as a team. This means ideas are more likely to grow and your staff can be better informed about decisions in the workplace, ultimately leading to more transparency.
Practical ideas to improve communication
Here are some practical ideas to help you improve communications in your business.
Set up social media accounts and assign someone to be a dedicated community manager that relays the thoughts and concerns of your audience.
Respond to your audience on social media, reply to emails and listen to their criticism and complaints instead of ignoring it (or blindly following it!).
Hold regular, but short, meetings to relay ideas, goals and progress towards goals.
Make information more accessible. Focus on improving transparency instead of withholding information that can affect your employees.
Strengthen your networks by being more social. You don’t need to attend parties and meetings every day, but it helps to attend trade shows and accept interview requests from media outlets.
As you can see, communication plays an incredibly important part in your business and it’s crucial that you focus on it as one of the pillars of your company.
As a road user, you’re always careful to conduct yourself with the same safety and courtesy that you’d expect from other road users. The trouble is that modern living seems Hell bent on forcing us to break the rules. It seems like we’re in an increasingly massive hurry and yet always seem to be running late. With our attention pulled in so many directions even something as simple and intuitive as driving with due care and attention can seem like a tall order. We live in an era of electronic distraction where a never-ending stream of data screams at us from a number of handheld devices. From news headlines to sports updates, movie reviews and the ubiquity of our social media feeds, our digital devices bring (literally) a world of information to our fingertips.
All that data can be intoxicating. It can compromise our judgment, impede our decision making and cause us to be needlessly cavalier and take avoidable risks in ways that can endanger ourselves and others. The parallel with drunk driving speaks for itself. And just as you can get help with a lawsuit when injured by a drunk driver, so too should you be able to seek justice against a driver who is driving under the influence of electronic distraction. Which is why last year the EDUI (Driving Under The Influence Of Electronics) law.
Washington Pilots The EDUI Law
Last July the law was brought into effect to curb the increasingly common incidents on the road caused by distracted drivers. While most states have pretty comprehensive legislation in place to protect road users from drunk drivers, the uneven legislation when it comes to driving while distracted by electronic devices necessitated the law which empowered police to pull over drivers seen holding or using an electronic device. Drivers caught doing so would face an on the spot fine of $136 which would rise to $234 if the offense was repeated.
One Year Later
So, one year later what’s changed? This article from the Kirkland Reporter demonstrates that like any addiction, letting go of our electronic devices can be a tough habit to klick. Distracted driving in the area is still responsible for more collisions than driving under the influence of alcohol and police officers admit to being frustrated that they find themselves giving out multiple fines to the same people. Nonetheless, distracted driving incidents seem to be taking a downward turn.
What You Can Do
But while legislation can lead us in the right direction, we must all take individual responsibility for one another’s safety on the road. This means ensuring that we only use our devices when stationary (using them to contact emergency services is still allowed). The good news is that with more and more vehicles using safer infotainment systems to access digital device functions in a car safe way, the future is looking bright for drivers. Cell phone manufacturers are getting in on the act, too. Newer versions of iOS, for example, will limit function if they detect a velocity that indicates that the user is driving.
However, more than half of surveyed drivers indicated that they would stop using their cell phone or other device if told to do so by a passenger. Even when we’re not at the wheel, we should encourage others to do the right thing!
It feels pretty damn good to be the boss. You’re the leader of your own business, you can hire and fire employees as you wish as long it’s pertaining to proper employment law, you can take your business in whichever direction you want, be able to work however many hours you want and so much more. You are in full control of your professional life. It’s a liberating feeling to know this but it’s hard to keep a hold onto. There are more factors that are trying to put a halt to your success than just related to business and finance. The modern workspace is sometimes like a minefield, where people are trying to not overstep their marks, and yet not be too sensitive that productive work cannot take place. Being the boss doesn’t mean you’re impervious to these issues also, because employees are not powerless in the least. They have just as many rights as you do, so knowing when a boundary may be being blurred is actually crucial to saving your own skin.
As the boss, you get to say what goes on in the office. Being respectful of the different backgrounds you have in the professional environment is vital to creating a cohesive workforce that stands shoulder to shoulder proudly. However, there is such a thing is being too tolerant about certain issues that may be sensitive to other people. Religion really doesn’t have any legitimate place in the office, yet sometimes we allow people to get away with it because we don’t want to seem insulting. But treating everyone equally is of the utmost importance. A general rule of thumb is to ask all employees to keep their faith, away from work, practice it in their own time, and don’t bring it into the office. If they want to wear a necklace of their religious symbol, ask them to tuck it into their shirt. Praying at work should not be allowed as it momentarily stops work, foists more work onto someone else, and can stir up tensions. You’re responsible for keeping it neutral and therefore everyone will be happy.
Being too friendly
Colleagues can get so used to each other, that they forget that they’re at a place of work sometimes. If an employee is beginning to become a little too friendly, remember to take a note of it, when it happened and what. Touchy-feely actions should not be tolerated as it can often turn on a dime and make things much worse for you as the boss. Being accused of making a sexual advance on an employee is a serious matter, and only a Sex Crimes Lawyer will clear your name. An employee might lie and blow something way out of proportion in an attempt to either get a large cash settlement from you or simply to ruin your reputation. The lawyer deals with false accusations, sexual harassment, rape and groping to name a few. They will use witness statements to build a case, look at your prior history and gather all the evidence to clear your name.
Being the boss has many perks, but you’re not untouchable. Always keep your distance from employees that are making love interest advances, and be responsible for creating a neutral playing field when it comes to the sensitive topic of faith.
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