Analyzing data could be a symptom of fear

Posted on April 5, 2015 by admin

By Rhonda Campbell

Are you in the habit of analyzing data? I’m talking about really analyzing data. Do you think of all possible outcomes before you consider making a decision? Spreadsheets, databases, industry specific articles and targeted seminars are like friends. You spend hours poring over at least one of them.

Data analysis isn’t always good

You have to know that you’re heading in the right direction. It’s a smart move, to a degree. Yet, it’s easy to slip. Over analyze and you could set yourself up for frustration, procrastination, feeling stuck and eventually boredom.

Boredom that over analyzing data creates isn’t temporary. It lingers, crushing you with despair. It’s no fun. Regardless of how many facts you review, there’s always just one more point you want to consider before you take action.

It could be why you haven’t gone out on a single date in months, perhaps years. It could be why you keep working at a dead end job. It could be why you’re on your way to becoming among the billions of people who leave this earth with this top regret – the regret that you never pursued your dreams.

Analyzing data to prove you’re smart to be afraid

Analyzing data is a way to convince yourself that it is unsafe to change. Analyzing data is a way to make yourself believe that you’ll lose too much if you go after what you really want.


As with most fear, what you could be afraid of is an emotion. You could be afraid of feeling embarrassed, rejected or dumb. All of them tie back into the fear that you’re not loved.

To avoid (a definite fear goal – avoidance) feeling rejected (or unloved), you steer clear of the spotlight. You try to hide or make excuses for your successes, playing them down so others won’t feel threatened by your successes. “This ol’ dress. I got it on clearance,” you respond when someone compliments your fashion choice.

Face your deepest fear

Marianne Williamson said it well, sharing that, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

She continued, “You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Smart-dumb way to put dreams on hold

Let an opportunity or an idea pop up and you start analyzing data. You read 20 or more articles or books on dating someone with traits that you think your family and friends might reject (thereby indirectly rejecting you). After reading the articles and books, you still don’t ask the person out.

Out of the blue, someone tells you about a franchise opportunity (something you’ve dreamed about for years). You take the person’s contact information, but you never call. Or you call and ask them a series of questions . . . more material to analyze.

Five, seven, eight, 10 years pass and you still haven’t started a franchise. But, you know a lot about franchises. You’ve spent months analyzing them, the rewards, the challenges, the average money required to invest in a franchise and the potential losses.

Awareness pays off

If you’ve been paying attention to your life, you’re starting to see that over analyzing data could be a symptom of fear. Consider this. As Marianne Williamson said, what you’re afraid — terrified — of is your own greatness . . . your own greatness.

So, you spend time analyzing data, analyzing dreams, analyzing an article and analyzing handwriting. It’s a trick. You think that analyzing data equals taking action, making a decision that will propel you forward. It really is a trick.

Fact is that data analysis isn’t the type of action that leads to advantageous change, not if analyze is all you do. The next time you catch yourself over analyzing, make a decision. You don’t have to go as far as Jim Carrey went in the movie Yes Man, but say “Yes!” to a few love-rooted opportunities that appear in your life.


Forget trying to figure out how it will all turn out. You will probably never know unless you say “Yes!” and take action. Let your higher self take care of the details. Start small if you have to. Just get started, especially on the path to fulfilling your dreams. Because you’re an eternal, limitless being no misses you have can change the truth of what you are. So, take a love-rooted chance.

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Benefits of hiring temporary workers

Posted on March 28, 2015 by admin

By Eric Bradford

Organizations ranging in size from startups to major corporations are realizing the benefits of hiring temporary workers. Don’t think so? Check this out. Statista says that staffing agencies pull in about 250 billion euros a year. In the United States alone, employers spent nearly $110 billion hiring temporary workers in 2011.

6 major benefits of hiring temporary workers

These revenues include direct agency payroll costs and recruiting charges to find and attract skilled temporary contractors. For sure, it cost enough to reap the benefits of hiring temporary workers. But, in many instances it’s worth it. Following are reasons why.

  • Payroll taxes – Staffing agencies are responsible for withdrawing and submitting federal, state and local taxes on contractors or temporary workers.
  • Health benefits – Medical, dental and vision health benefits are the responsibility of staffing agencies. Depending on the size of your organization, this cost alone could save you thousands a year.
  • Paid time off – Vacation, personal and sick leave is the responsibility of staffing agencies. Although, as a courtesy, temporary workers tell you when they are planning to take a day off, staffing agencies record time off and compensate the workers.
  • Culture matches – Personality and culture must mesh if workers are to be satisfied at your organization. If you’ve been at your organization for several years, you might not be aware of the culture that’s embedded in your company. Yet, it’s there. When workers’ personalities don’t fit into your culture, conflicts and challenges rise. For this reason, this ranks among the top benefits of hiring temporary workers. Should temporary workers not fit your culture, you can sever the ties by picking up the telephone and calling the staffing agency and telling an agent that you want to end the working relationship with the temp.
  • Innovation – Because temporary workers fill in spots at a variety of organizations, these workers have insight into different management styles, culture, communication practices and project management procedures. Tap into this innovation by asking a few simple questions and benefits of hiring temporary workers for you could lead to enhanced innovation.
  • Recruiting pipeline – It wouldn’t be a surprise if your organization went to the same one to two staffing agencies to find temporary workers. As the numbers of temps you hire from a staffing agency, bringing the workers on as permanent employees increases, you develop a pipeline of talent.


Reduced payroll expenses are one of the major benefits of hiring temporary workers. The chance to test applicants’ skills is another benefit you could get. Additionally, as the owner of a startup or established business, benefits of hiring temporary workers allow you and your team to find out firsthand how well applicants fit into your organization’s culture.

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Email marketing is not dead

Posted on March 21, 2015 by admin

By Ericka Simpson
Email marketing is a must if you want to deepen customer relationships.Source Digit says that globally more than 182 billion emails were sent every day in 2014. Texting and social media aside, people still place a lot of value in email.

You could rely on social media to connect with prospects and current customers. But, think about this. Who owns your social media followers’ and friends’ contact information?

Social media can’t replace email marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram own those details. So, if Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram shutdown (a long, long stretch) or changed their rules (not as farfetched), how would you keep in touch with the hundreds or thousands of social media followers you’d already spent marketing dollars to get?


Build your own in-house email marketing database and you would have the information that you need to keep communicating with these valuable contacts. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get a lot out of social media. You can. You should.

While you’re posting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest messages, polls and images, offer your followers free white papers, tip sheets, coupons and free newsletter subscriptions. Include a link to a search engine optimized landing page. Ask responders for their name and email address.

Email marketing and social media marry

If your company warm calls prospects, request responders’ telephone numbers as well. Add responders’ contact details to your in-house contact list. As a tip, easy to use contact list development tools include Excel (or another spreadsheet application), Constant Contact, MailChimp, iContact, Benchmark and Pinpointe. Purch has a good review of the top 10 email marketing services.

Email marketing and distribution services save you time and effort. To update email marketing contact lists, simply add a short code to your website and let visitors subscribe themselves to your contact lists. Once a month or once a quarter, download the contacts into a database (i.e. Word, Excel) that you save on your business computer, again maintaining full ownership of the data.

Pay attention to when you send email marketing messages. Send emails, especially electronic newsletters, on Tuesday and Thursday and you could increase your number of opens. Your target audience can impact the best times to send emails significantly.

For example, if you’re emailing college students during the summer, early morning emails might go unnoticed. On the other hand, emailing C-Level executives before 8am could work. For emails with deadlines (i.e. sales with soon approaching end dates), get emails out three to five days in advance of the event.

Pay attention to email marketing results

Check out email marketing stats. Things to look for include open rates, social shares, clicks, un-subscribes and new subscribers. Add images to email to increase opens and reads. If you get in the habit of including valuable coupons and other deals in emails, not only might your email contact list grow, subscribers could start pinging you, asking when your next email is coming.

Should more people unsubscribe after you send emails or newsletters that have three or more ads in them, reduce your ads to one or two. See if fewer people unsubscribe. As with other business strategies, tweak and change your email marketing actions.


This means changing the dates and times when you send emails. It also means adding feature interviews, quotes, quizzes, downloadable apps and sales codes to emails and monitoring the results. Some marketers advise that you upload email contacts from your personal databases into social media accounts. It’s a great way to build social media connects. Just remember identify the types of relationships you have with these people. Your 65-year old Aunt Serena might not want to get an email about each high heeled shoe sale you’re boutique is running.

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Easy ways to lose stubborn pounds

Posted on March 19, 2015 by admin

By Eric Bradford

You can lose stubborn pounds.

Remember how easy it was to lose the first 10 to 15 pounds? An old photo, glance from a relative or friend you hadn’t seen in awhile or a joke made at your expense by your child (little angel) or grandchild sparked your urge to drop weight. Right away, you hit the gym, jogging on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a time.

Fast weight loss

Within days, you added stair stepping, cycling and weight lifting to your regimen. Four weeks later, you’d dropped 10 or more pounds. Snug jeans were now loose. But, you’ve got a long way to go. If you’re a 50ish or 60ish executive or solopreneur, you could have a pound to lose for each year of your age.


Don’t worry. It happens. . . . to a lot of people. For women, an increase in estrogen production during the middle years can cause weight gain, according to Dr. C. W. Randolph. The Berkeley Lab (their findings are interesting) studied runners and discovered that there’s damn near nothing adults can do to stop the weight gain process after they hit the middle years, except . . .

Run more. But, who wants to do that?

To lose stubborn pounds, accept the fact that what’s happening to you has happened to millions of people. You’re not a bad person. You’re a normal person.

Focus on your diet (as in what you eat every day, not how little you can eat). Increase the amount of protein you eat and drink. Eggs, skinless chicken breast, salmon, light tuna, peanut butter, nuts and tofu are good protein sources. Cottage cheese, steak, quinoa, soy milk and pumpkin seeds are other good sources of protein.

Steps to lose stubborn pounds

By adding more protein to your diet, you could build muscle. It’s muscle that aids in weight loss. Which is a reason why you could lose stubborn pounds by pumping iron.

Another action step you could take to lose stubborn pounds is to reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat. This means eating less bread (including sandwiches with lean meat), pasta, cakes, pies, candy bars, etc.

Because you need vitamins to keep your body healthy, try to eat three to four servings of vegetables each day. You might not think so, but getting a good night of sleep also helps you lose stubborn pounds. Scientists and nutritionists are discovering this more.

running to lose pounds

Photo by lululemon athletica

Other ways to lose stubborn pounds include taking it easy. Stress causes inflammation (achy joints), fatigue and irritability, to name a few. To lose stubborn pounds, also:

  • Eat a healthy breakfast/skip the bread (You’ve heard this how many times? Are you doing it?)
  • Get up from your desk every hour and walk 100 or more yards
  • Chew gum instead of snacking on junk
  • Drink fresh water
  • Go outside for a midday walk (this is also a great stress reliever)
  • Walk, jog, swim, bike ride, etc. in the evening (try to do so at least two hours before you head to bed)
  • Pack a healthy lunch and bring it to work with you
  • Choose fresh food over processed food (these means you’ll be using the stove more than the microwave)
  • Monitor or activity using a fitness tracker (i.e. Misfit, Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone)

Be patient with yourself. Love yourself. Your worth is not measured on a scale. You’re awesome right now, just as you are!  That’s not something to believe. It’s a fact!


Remember to lose stubborn pounds, you want to build muscle (protein is a muscle building friend). To stay limber, stretch, enjoy regular massages and bubble baths. Balance balls and stretch ropes are also good. Monitor your results and tweak your efforts, but don’t give up. So many have and you too can lose stubborn pounds.

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Quickly lower your overhead costs

Posted on March 14, 2015 by admin

By Ericka Simpson

Start a restaurant and you could shell out $400K to $500K or more on space leasing, construction, appliances, furniture and advertising. That’s for a small restaurant, the type of eatery that operates more like a fast food or carryout than a family sit down restaurant. Manufacturing businesses aren’t much less expensive to get off the ground.

Reducing the costs of business
Even if you start an at-home business, you’re going to incur costs. A crafts shop owner spends $1,500 a month to advertise her business on Facebook alone. Then, there are shipping costs.

Don’t let overhead costs stop you from developing a successful business. You could bargain with other entrepreneurs to cover expenses like copying, writing and information technology. For example, you could barter with a freelance writer to write your press releases at a reduced rate if you, in return, develop graphic designs (i.e. social media page logos, banner ads, t-shirt logos) for the freelance writer. Just make sure that the price value of both forms of labor are equal or as close to equal as possible.


As with any business agreement, draft a contract. Make sure that both you and the entrepreneur you barter with sign and date the agreement before any work related to the bartering agreement begins.

Other bartering possibilities involve information. If you’re a lecturer, you could barter with researchers who need speakers to help them advance their findings. Traveling to the same hotel or convention? See if the establishment uses products or services that you develop. If it does, schedule a meeting with a manager who has the authority to make buying decisions and ask about a steep hotel discount for you and your team members in exchange for bulk business or a product/service exchange.

More costs saving deals and business bargains

You may not be able to get exclusive deals as that could be encroaching on fair competition laws. However, by bartering with organizations or professionals that you regularly conduct business with, you could balance the amount of risks both organizations assume during the normal process of your operations.

Another step you could take to reduce your overhead costs, is to share talent. What do I mean by this? Let’s say you own a cafe and you know someone who owns an event planning company. Try asking the owner of the event planning company if you could use the services of the payroll specialist that she uses. You might be able to get the specialist at a reduced rate if you and the event planner offer the specialist a shared working space.

What does this do? It lowers the specialist’s travel costs, telephone expenses, etc. It also makes it easy for the specialist to land a new client (you!). Consider using this as leverage to bring the specialist on at a lower rate, keeping in mind that each specialist should adequately paid for her services.

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