Fashion Effects

If you want to become an entrepreneur, you may want to understand what it really takes to become one. There is no shortcut to success in any field. Many people made a lot of unsuccessful attempts before they gained success as entrepreneurs. So, these entrepreneurs have shared some rules that beginners should follow in order to achieve success. In this article, we are going to discuss 5 of the must-follow rules that you can follow to climb the ladder of success as a business owner.

1. Work smarter, not harder

If you think an entrepreneur is a professional who works day and night, you need to think again. Although hard work is the key to success, the reality is quite different. If you work every minute of the day, no one can guarantee that you will achieve the success you desire.

As a matter of fact, overworking can cause extreme fatigue. As a result, you will make mistakes that can cost you a lot of time and money. Apart from this, you cannot have all the skills required to take care of different aspects of your business. Therefore, you may want to work smarter, not harder. This is how a lot of people have made millions in the here and now.

2. Consult experts and hire professionals

Consulting experts is a great idea if you want to get effective guidelines to run your business affairs. For instance, you can consult Charles J Mosley Jr who is a self-driven goal-oriented entrepreneur. Also, he is the founder of Echelon Productions in Dallas, Texas. His insights can help you with your business matters.

If you are not good at something, you want to hire a professional that can take care of other assignments. This will give you plenty of time to focus on other aspects of your business that you can easily handle. Good entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of delegation.

Although it can be scary to add more employees and team members, you have the option to hire remote workers. They can work from their own offices and homes, and you don’t need to arrange special workplaces for them.

3. Get more done in a cost-effective fashion

Although hiring the services of freelancers may not be an ideal choice for an established business, it can be quite an affordable option for a startup. The reason is that most freelancers are from third world countries where the cost of living is quite low. Therefore, this approach can be quite cost-effective compared to in-house full-time employees.

4. Face your failures

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you may want to look for the right people for your business projects. However, this approach cannot guarantee success, which is why you have to be realistic. Sometimes, unforeseeable situations happen that ruin your momentum. In some cases, you have to suffer losses as well. The point is to avoid being afraid of failing. If you be patient and continue to struggle, you will achieve success.

5. Wake up early

You must wake up early every day and work hard until you see the results you want to see. You should keep moving even during difficult times. Life can be broader in your eyes if you understand the simple fact that the things you see around you are made by people who are just like you.

In short, you can follow these simple rules for success. They will help you keep moving and avoid making common mistakes that will slow you down. Hope this helps.

Starting an online business around your passion is basically an online sales job, you sell different products through different marketing methods like online advertising or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) To make a lot of money, the value of the product is very, very important.

How to start an online business around your passion?

And so it goes, while there are many products that you can sell online, there are only very few types of products that will make you money. Among professional Internet marketers, there is a consensus that so-called “evergreen” products are the best ones to market online. And what are “evergreen” products? They are products that will always sell because they fulfill basic needs and thus, are always in season.

These are products that fall under the following general categories: money, love, and health. People always want more money, more love, and better health. It doesn’t matter which part of the world they’re in, the needs are always the same. And so it goes, if you’re just starting out, make sure you’re promoting products that are “evergreen”.

With the right kind of product and some expertise in SEO or online advertising, you can have your first sale in less than a month.

Where can you find products to promote online? Two of the biggest product marketplaces are ClickBank and Markethealth. Obviously, with Markethealth, you will find health products for different health conditions like warts and hemorrhoids, although you can also find beauty products like eyelash growth serums and weight loss supplements.

On the other hand, ClickBank is the place where you can find information products like dating guides. You can also find finance-related products like Forex robots. You need to sign up with those ClickBank and Markethealth as an affiliate before you can start promoting.

Aside from the products mentioned above, you should also consider promoting niche dating sites. People are always searching for love online. Depending on a person’s taste, there are dating sites for bisexuals, bikers, military personnel, STD-infected people, etc. Simply do a search on Google for “dating sites affiliate program” and sign up as an affiliate.

Affiliate programs usually pay their affiliates through Paypal, however, there are those that pay only by check, like in the case of ClickBank.

In choosing a product, there are two things you need to consider: If there is an ongoing strong demand for the product and if the competition isn’t too bad. (Note: A product where there are no competitors means nobody’s making money from it.)

There are free and paid tools to research product demand and competition. Free tools include Google keyword search while paid tools include Market Samurai. If you’re just starting out, do not invest in paid tools just yet, rather hone basic marketing skills, like identifying why people buy.

You also need to hone your skills in whatever method you choose to market products on the Internet. While it doesn’t take a genius to do Internet Marketing, skills ARE required. Tools are useless in the hands of an inexperienced marketer.

Although the word Latent Semantic Indexing sounds a little complicated, it is quite a conceptual term which you might be already using in your keyword research and SEO.

However a conscious closer look at it will definitely give you fair idea of what is Latent Semantic Indexing.

When a user types a query into Google’s search box, this is known as ‘keyword’ and Google gives the user certain results based on the typed keyword.

Let’s take an Example-

When we type the word “aviator” in Google Search, before entering, you get a number of options below the search box, which are predicted by Google based on the keyword entered such as Aviator Watch, Aviator Bike, Aviator Sunglasses, Aviator Movie etc…
This shows that the person searching with the word aviator might be looking for ‘aviator sunglasses’ or ‘aviator movie’ which are 2 totally different things. You will not want your website to rank in the search engine result pages for ‘aviator movie’ if your website is selling sunglasses.

APPLE – A FRUIT OR PHONE?

In the search query “Apple,” ‘Apple’ might mean the ‘Fruit Apple’ or ‘Apple iPhone’. So, when the user types in a keyword, Google analyses the words entered after the keywords and understands the intent of the user to know what he is looking for.

After this, Google scrutinizes the websites having this keyword and understands the context for which it has been used and ranks the websites which will best answer the user’s question.

This context based search is called as Latent Semantic Indexing and optimizing your content using ‘Latent Semantic Keywords’ is known as ‘Latent Semantic Optimization’. Therefore, you should understand how the search engine thinks and devise your keyword strategy accordingly.

HOW DOES LSI MAKE YOUR CONTENT MORE SEO-FRIENDLY?

Latent Semantic Indexing provides context to your content.

Even though your content has rich and interesting information and the primary keywords, it will not be useful without using LSI-driven keywords as it will not be able to give Google a clear idea of what your content is about and your website might land on a SERP where it is not relevant.

So LSI keywords give a context or meaning to your content and helps Google understand it better. The search engine is constantly looking for ‘the user’s intent based on relationship between keywords’ and ‘your content’s context matching that intent’ such as ‘aviator sunglasses’, ‘ray ban aviator sunglasses’ could be LSI keywords for “aviator” in the context of sunglasses.

LSI helps you gain web traffic
Importantly, Search Engines cannot interpret the meaning behind a text easily like we human beings do. Latent Semantic Indexing keywords make Google’s work easier to understand your web page content and in turn you are ranked higher in the SERP’s and and therefore you are likely to get more traffic.

LSI driven content is also more specifically targeted to reach the intended audience and will land up in front of the right audience. It is beneficial for you as you will gain more traffic, users who will get exactly what they are looking for and search engines to easily understand and give accurate results.

LSI Keywords should be related to the Primary Keyword
Your LSI keywords must answer all the questions related to your primary keyword, that your user might be looking for. Let’s think in the context of movie Aviator. In this case, the user might be looking for “what the movie is about”, “buying DVD of the movie”, “star ratings, cast crew or reviews of the movie”. If your website is about movies, you must use LSI keywords related to above purposes to make your content visible to the user.

Ways to find LSI-Keywords
1. Google Autocomplete: When you type a word in the search engine box, Google gives some predictions or suggestions based on the most popular searches related to that word. This is a good way to look for LSI keywords
2. Google Related Searches: When you type a keyword and get results on SERP, at the bottom of the page Google shows some searches related to the keyword. These are also good examples of LSI keywords
3. LSI Graph: This is a special tool in which you can type a keyword and get a list of all related LSI keywords
4. Keyword Planner Tool: Google keyword planner tool through Google AdWords is also a good way to find all combinations of searches related to your term.
5. Various Tools: Some other tools like Ubersuggest, Keyword Research Database Tool are helpful in finding the LSI keywords.

An SEO-Tip: You can use these keywords in your Title Tag, Description Tag, Header Tag, URLs, Anchor tags and in your website/blog Content.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

• LSI is not the only one SEO strategy that makes your content SEO-friendly. There are many other factors which you will need to ensure such as Quality of content, Research and facts, and other SEO factors.
• Do not overstuff your content with LSI keywords and use only those keywords which are relevant to your topic. You can also use synonyms and word combinations. Re-read your content and remove any words that do not match.

FUTURE OF LSI

Every article needs to be judged as a whole which is not possible using a single keyword but a set of keywords and this is where LSI becomes meaningful. On the other hand, Google is constantly updating its algorithms.

Google’s latest HummingBird Algorithm also focuses on semantic analysis and semantic search wherein Google takes into consideration all the contextual keywords – LSI keywords that bind a piece of content together in terms of meaning. Therefore, it is definitely worth spending your efforts in looking for the right LSI driven keywords to develop rich engaging content and because content is the King in SEO, Google will surely reward you if your site matches the search criteria and if it loves your content.

At Ad2Brand, we offer a variety of services related to Digital Marketing, like Keyword Oriented & SEO Related Content, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing,Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Paid Media, Programmatic Advertising, Conversion Rate Optimization, Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Blog Creation..

Building ROI is the main goal when someone starts his business or spends money. Here we will focus more on Building ROI with SEO strategies- when discussing pain points with prospective clients – see a remarkable number of SEO strategies that are, at best, decoupled from business performance, and, at worst, totally unengaged with wider business performance.

Failing to employ a framework “See Think Do Care” (STDC) framework – or indeed, Google’s Micro-moment mobile variation, which explicitly uses the STDC framework for KPI measurement – is surely not planning for success in 2017.

So how can we, as marketers, do better for our clients? I have my own framework for mapping SEO strategy down to hard £ (or $) impact.

Start With The Growth: Kill brand!

Before thinking about attribution or STDC, let’s consider SEO fundamentals. If we include brand terms in our assessment of performance, we are looping in all sorts of other marketing activities which we should not be taking credit for. So: filter out brand.

How do we achieve that in practical terms? Google Search Console allows you to quickly and simply filter based on terms or partial terms, like a simple REGEX function. So, great! We can simply run exclusions based on the simplest version of our brand term, and we are done.

We only have 90 days data from Google right now. So, either we use a handy TARDIS to go back in time and collect the last year’s worth of data to do a year-on-year comparison to smooth out growth variation due to market seasonality… or, we accept we can’t run year-on-year with brand filtering until this time next year (or more precisely, in 360-90=270 days time). Of course, this is assuming we consistently export and stash Search Console data for our own analysis.

By the way, if you need a hand with that part, I’ve written about exporting Search Console data before.

Even with no TARDIS-delivered historic data, we can at least take the last 90 days percentage brand rate and remove an equivalent percentage from the organic traffic coming into our website as a starting point for the current generic performance delivery.

From there, we can measure the improvement in total click volume from generics over time and apportion that across ongoing organic traffic performance. This will essentially measure incremental improvement from our start date that is delivered by generic term performance improvement.

Step one, complete. We have objective measurement of overall improvement in organic performance excluding brand. That means any remaining performance improvement comes from activity you would expect to find in a solid SEO strategy: content adjustment, ranking improvement, SERP click-through rate improvement, etc.

Take it to the Awesome Revenue Part

Now that we have a moving objective view on organic performance, we can map back to revenue in our analytics package of choice. I’d like to assume all sites have well set up, fully tagged, e-commerce enabled (or revenue-attributed) event tracking in place. If that’s not the case, take an action and get on it!

Mapping to revenue should then be easy. Next, we should take into account any costs you are incurring with your agency. A simple ROAS – (Revenue – Cost) / Cost) – approach is to take our generic-only tracked uplift and compare it back to your agency cost at whatever rate you wish. Typically, it’s worth assessing this weekly or monthly. Higher frequencies are useful for higher spends.

More useful, however, is to move beyond ROAS to true ROI. To achieve that, you need to know your average profit margin for revenue sold. Doing this to the category level is usually enough to start focusing your keyphrase strategy in the right areas – where ROAS looks good, but low margins means ROI is negative.

So in simple terms, think of your ROI calculation as (Profit – Cost) / Cost, a subtle but important difference required to ensure you are driving profitable growth.

And Finally: Build in Attribution

At this stage, you are exporting web analytics data that is showing incremental organic improvement mapped to generic growth, and you are looking at reporting that maps from keyphrases to their revenue delivered with an ROI calculation on top to show if you are picking the right battles.

Now it’s time to improve our accuracy by removing our SEO silo and allowing ourselves to fit into the full, multi-channel, customer conversion path.

In simple terms, the aim now is to pick an attribution model that most closely matches your typical customer conversion path, and apply it. You can get a sense for that by looking at the MCF report in Google Analytics (or using API export and analysis in Adobe). You can tweak the session analysis period to reflect if your product typically enjoys a fast STDC process, or a multi-month STDC path.

A typical model that works well is a blend of time decay and position-based, which you can mock up as a custom model.

And of course, if you are on the Google stack, you can also take advantage of their newly announced free AI attribution analysis tool.

If you are serious about attribution accuracy, there are limitations to Google’s approach: It doesn’t easily ingest non-digital marketing data silos to reflect the true attribution picture, and of course Google Analytics (not to mention Omniture) are built on sessions rather than customers. So there is an approximation there.

Our businesses also differ in terms of interface with clients. If you do “business to business” transactions, the number of people you interact with on a daily basis may differ from someone whose business relies on interacting with consumers. Appointments may be more practical in some instances than others. You have to tailor-make how you manage access to your particular situation if you are to eliminate distractions. Having said that it is important to note that some people do not mind spending the whole day at the office entertaining friends, visitors, and casual acquaintances dropping into the office whenever they feel like it. Do not be that kind of person. It sets the wrong kind of example to junior staff and can harm one’s productivity because these people take up time that you do not have and besides you want to cultivate a professional environment.

The demands of the day are enough to fill the eight working hours available unless if you tend to stay back and play catch up. How do you stay competitive in the market if there is no separation between work and play? Anybody serious about success and achieving effective results will put boundaries that are clear so that there is no confusion. Entrepreneurs are more susceptible to this especially when the workplace is easily accessible. The fact that you are your own boss even puts more responsibility on you to maintain self-discipline and self – management. I have written a whole book called, “Achieve More through Self – Leadership. In it I walk you through the practicalities of how you can get better results through managing self.

Appointments are an important way of not only managing time but managing life. They help you become more structured and productive. Some people seem not to be able to honour their appointments. I once attended a job interview that was supposed to start at 10:30am. By 11:30am there had been no communication about what was happening or when the supposed job interview was going to take place. I decided at the point that this company was probably not good enough for me to join because if you don’t respect people’s time you probably do not respect them.

You may be saying appointments are just not for me yet you never rock up at the doctor, dentist, lawyer or hairstylist without an appointment. Why is that the case? Because you simply won’t see the dentist without an appointment. They have given you conditions acceptable to them. We tell the world around us how to treat us by what we allow.

Some people are always available when you want to see them. If you are always free to see people at short notice, you are probably not that organized. The one who owns a diary will manage the one who doesn’t own one. Why? Because the one without the diary is always available, even though he is very likely to forget important meetings, dates and engagements because of a lack of organization. I used to have a boss who kept a diary and whatever you promised to do in the line of work, he would write down, including the day and time you said he would have it by. You would of-course forget because you didn’t record it like he did and when the time to deliver comes, guess who would be found wanting. It was then that I decided that I do not commit to an action that I am not willing to write down because, what’s written gets done!

You may be saying, “what if my business feeds off the “walk-ins? The fact that your business relies on walk – in customers should not be an excuse for disorder. Sometimes those who drop in unannounced may indeed be potential customers, suppliers, cold-calling salespeople, and even worthwhile business contacts. There is nothing wrong if the call is beneficial to you and your business but I believe there must be a structure and way of doing things that follows certain pre-set principles. I remember seeing a poster in an office that said “if you don’t have anything to do please don’t do it here”. It’s humorous yes, but true. Appointments help to structure your day and helps you allocate time to what’s important. This means you can focus on your most important asset: the paying customer. There is nothing as bad as walking into a place wanting to do business and staff are inattentive because there is just a demand on their time. I am more understanding if the personnel are not busy entertaining social visits at work.

In conclusion, you know your business situation better than any of us. All we can do is make recommendations that will enable efficiency that leads to growth. Some of you may actually need a personal assistant who will put order in your office and focus on the things you are not willing to do that will enable to focus on the highly value things you ought to do such as running a business.

Do you think successful people are just plain lucky?

Successful people did not become successful because they were lucky.

They did not achieve success by accident. Being at the right place at the right time, meeting relevant people, reading the appropriate book, did not come about accidentally or by luck.

Luck is brought about by Labour Under Correct Knowledge.

Successful people prepared themselves. Instead of giving up on anything they started and wanted to achieve they got stronger by learning more.

Success is a methodical, orderly and deliberate process of deciding what you want to do with your life, what are the steps that you need to undertake to get you there, and lastly what you will do once you get there.

One of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect to success, is the ability to visualise your successful outcome and stay focused on it until you achieve it.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited.” – Albert Einstein

Successful people understood the potential power behind knowledge, yet they also understood that, for them to close the gap between where they are and where they wanted to be, they would have to piece together the enigma that is most often referred to as “life”.

They had to build a picture, a vision, of success in their mind, and then go about taking action on creating that envisioned life.

In much the same way, you have to be serious about your present and future, you need to have the knowledge that is required so you, too, may close the gap: you need to be and remain determined to devote yourself to taking massive action to build your business of succeeding in life.

You, too, will need to see the end, your dream and destiny that you desire in your mind’s eye. It is up to you to take the necessary and relevant action to make it all happen. It’s just like going to the doctor with a particular health problem.

The doctor may prescribe a medication for you to take four times a day, yet he cannot be there with you to ensure that you are taking the medication.

It comes back to deciding to be responsible for your life.

Have you noticed how it all stems from that one attitude? Being responsible for your own life.

Your success, your being responsible 100% for you to live your dream life starts here.

When you accept 100% responsibility for yourself and your current life situation, you will have the power to move towards those things you truly desire in life: which is success in all areas of your life.

This life-changing article is about possibilities and opportunities, knowledge and tools. It will help expose your unique course in life.

It will inspire, support and motivate you to excel, to do what successful people do, to have all that successful people have, and to become a shining example of a successful person.

Here, you’re not being told what you couldn’t do, instead you are being told to shoot for the stars. And above all, you are being shown how to shoot for those stars.

“A person is what he thinks about all day long.” – Emerson

Interesting thought, wouldn’t you think? So much so, it’s worth repeating: “A person is what he thinks about all day long.”

Success and happiness cannot happen if you possess the same old thoughts and beliefs.

If you do not change your mind, if you do not get rid of the unsupportive thoughts and beliefs, you will inevitably remain stuck in your old ways. Not much, if anything, will change.

Let’s give you a quick overview on how change comes about:

Your BEHAVIOUR, how you act (or perhaps do not act), controls your success or failure. Your ability to attain high levels of success is dependent upon your actions and behaviours. Your results are the outcome of your behaviour. Now let’s consider where your behaviours come from and what controls them?

Your FEELINGS command your behaviour. Every action that you take is first filtered through your feelings that reside in your subconscious mind. How you feel about something determines what you do and how well you do it. So where do your feelings come from?

Your ATTITUDES create and influence your feelings. Your attitude is your perspective from which you view life. Whatever attitude you have about anything will affect how you feel, which, in turn, affects how you act. Where do your attitudes come from?

Your BELIEFS create, control and influence your attitudes. What you believe about anything will determine your attitude about it, which will create your feelings, and then which will direct your behaviour and action. Belief patterns are so powerful that two people who are in the same situation could perceive things completely differently. It only requires us to believe what we see and how we see it. We all have thousands of beliefs – big and small. And where do your beliefs come from?

Your THOUGHTS create, control and influence your beliefs. Your thoughts are real and are immensely powerful. Everything you accept from the outside world and everything you feed yourself from within is a product of your thoughts. Everything starts as a thought.

So, it goes without saying you need to learn to control your thoughts. And when you do, you will automatically control your beliefs, your attitudes, your feelings and, consequently, your behaviour and actions.

The big secret to success:

Learn to control your thoughts and you will influence your behaviours and actions. It’s all a mind-set. That’s what we’ve been saying all along.

Success is predictable and is not achieved by accident.

Have the mind-set of the successful people and you will achieve success. Believe and it is yours!

“There is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.” – Joel Osteen

Science of success experts have concluded that the brain is a goal-setting organism.

That is fantastic news for us: for whatever goal we give to our subconscious mind, it will work for us day and night, 24/7, to achieve it for us; to make it a reality.

The principal breakthrough that scientists made was that we do not need to waste our precious time and effort trying to change old thoughts and behaviours: we just simply create new ones.

And the other discovery they made was that we can continue to create new thoughts, new memories, new behaviours, new skills, and learn new things for as long as we are alive on this earth.

Now, with the new discoveries in recent years, it has been scientifically proven that our capacity to achieve and succeed literally has no limits.

Our brain has the capacity to continually learn during our entire lifetime.

Our brain can form new thoughts, can have new memories, and can learn new things by the millions, no matter what your age is. By the millions.

That’s how many new things we can learn, that’s how many new skills we can learn, that’s how many new thoughts we can have, that’s how many new behaviours we can adopt.

This is encouraging because there is no limit on your capacity to achieve new things.

No limits whatsoever for the human brain to learn, memorise, develop, achieve and perform at higher levels than ever imagined. It makes no difference what your age is: you are capable of learning anything new that you want to learn.

That adds to what we spoke of earlier: no more excuses.

“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

Your brain has the capacity to achieve way beyond what was ever thought possible. So now is the time to break out of your limited thinking and start dreaming big and imagining unlimited possibilities.

Becoming successful is not impossible.

It is a choice you make through a decision. Every day, step-by-step, you may climb the mountain of success if you’ve decided to do so, if you’re committed to accomplish what the others think impossible.

Design your future now.

Prepare to receive what you desire.

Thanks to the phenomenal advances made in cognitive science and the development of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), personal change, personal transformation, has come a very long way.

In fact, personal growth is no longer a mystery.

NLP has brought to light that change, transformation and growth can be fast, reliable, and even fun. It has shown us that we do not need to spend thousands of hours slaving away to increase our creative-thinking abilities.

By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you can come up with to expedite your success.

It can allow you to achieve something you seek within days and months as opposed to years and decades. That’s the power of the progress science has made on how the brain works, and also how you can have your mind to be your best ally in achieving anything you want.

Learn to live as you like by no longer living as you dislike.

Are you ready to get on the road to success and fulfilment?

Bear in mind, much like everything else in life, success requires practice and massive, consistent action.

“Success doesn’t mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle.” – Edwin C Bliss

Do you feel as if you’ve outgrown your circle of friends? Perhaps you do not feel safe or understood any longer. There may be fewer and fewer things you can share with people in your habitual circle, and it leaves you feeling lonely or isolated. If so, you are not alone. Welcome to one of the core dynamics of continuous growth!

As we continue to evolve, many of us struggle with a sense of not quite fitting in with our traditional community or tribe: we may have expanded or changed beyond the borders of tribal norms, and no longer find the same sense of belonging there. Other members may have tightened the tribal rules to foster a sense of security. As a result, we may feel a sense of disconnection or alienation.

In truth, each one of us belongs to many tribes simultaneously: there is your original tribe – the family you were born into – and then there are all the communities of choice you have joined: your work tribe, your social circles, your faith-based community, your neighborhood, and more. These communities are not static; they are in continuous flux because they consist of individuals who are in continuous states of change. When there is a lot of change happening in either the individual or the community, a sense of dissonance results.

How are we to deal with this? First, it is important to recognize that tribal allegiances were historically forged for survival. They were adapted over the course of centuries to ensure the safety and survival of the group. Survival required that individuation be sacrificed for the trade-off of security.

In modern society, the tables are flipped. Whether we enjoy it or not, change is essential for survival at every level of being. The pace of change is driven by technological advances and happens with increasing rapidity: sociologists estimate that more change has taken place in society over the course of the past 100 years, than in the totality of the previous 6,000 years. Individual adaptation now is a requirement for survival, and the pace of individual change does not always match the pace at which our various tribal communities evolve. The resulting dissonance can cause intense friction and pain.

Dissonance also results from confusion between the concepts of ‘connection’ and ‘community.’ We tend to equate one with the other, when they really relate to different qualities. Connection relates to connectivity: the objective physical technology or media that enables us to build community, but which does not represent the quality of that community. Connectivity simply offers the opportunity to connect with others through internet, texting, phone calls, or any other social networking options.

Community is the result of building relationship through meaningful interaction over time. There is no shortcut; it is a process that develops when bonds of trust and intimacy are nurtured and honored.

And here lies a caveat: When we confuse connectivity with community, we depersonalize the sacred nature of true community and start relating to people as objects. Instead of developing intimacy over time, we collect friends on social network sites or try to buy people’s allegiance. Yet friending is simply an act of connecting; it does not create intimacy.

In fact, social experiments indicate that technologically dominated connectivity results in alienation and social collapse over time. In a groundbreaking social experiment conducted by Josh Harris, one of the founders of social networking on the internet, he found that the more people’s private lives were exposed by 24/7 technology, the more their sense of intimacy and relationship deteriorated until the community collapsed in violence and self-destructive behavior.

It is time to revisit our concepts of community so we can create tribes that offer a true sense of intimacy and belonging.

In his 1987 book, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, psychologist M. Scott Peck described several core characteristics of true community. Beyond the obvious components of inclusivity, commitment and participatory consensus, Peck pointed out the quality of embracing diversity through realism. When each member contributes their unique viewpoint from a place of humility and goodwill, the community benefits from a broader perspective in which to better grasp the full context of a situation. In other words, mutual tolerance helps members to embrace one another’s different viewpoints as an integral part of the whole, instead of imposing a forced compliance to groupthink or cohesion.

In an environment like this, members experience and express compassion and respect for one another. They allow others to share their vulnerability, to learn and grow, and to express who they truly are. When conflict arises, they learn to resolve it with wisdom and grace. Members listen to and respect each others’ gifts, accept each others’ limitations, celebrate their differences, and commit to find solutions together rather than to fight against each other. Indeed, the true spirit of community is the spirit of peace, love, wisdom and power. The source of this spirit may be seen as an outgrowth of the collective self or as the manifestation of a Higher Will.

Does this description of community sound spiritual to you? It is indeed, because Spirit is the common denominator among all of us, regardless of how separate we feel from others.

As human beings, we often experience a socio-economic sense of separation from others because of different opinions, beliefs, expectations, language, culture, or interests, since each one of us expresses these in a way uniquely different from anyone else. And still, we continue to differentiate! In this ongoing process, we continue to evolve or devolve in response to life. A community that felt like a good fit last year may no longer work today; the places where we felt embraced, now may suffocate us. Over the course of a lifetime, we can expect to outgrow and change allegiances to many of the tribal communities we once belonged to.

And yet, when we transcend the layers of physical appearance, mental beliefs and socio-economic conditioning, we find in the presence of Spirit a common denominator in everyone around us. Perhaps it is time to expand our tribal definitions to embrace a spiritual community that includes all of mankind as children of God.

Mother Teresa admonished her nuns to see Jesus in every leper they encountered, to find His presence as they looked into the eyes of the homeless. When we can look past the issues that divide us to find omnipresent Divinity in each other, we will uncover the foundations of true community.

Spiritual community transcends all socio-economic borders, beliefs and backgrounds. It is inclusive because it operates on voluntary self-responsibility and mutual compassion, and its doors are open to everyone.

Building this type of community takes time: time to listen, to hear, to respond and to participate. Take a few moments to read the description of spiritual community again. Then, make time in your life to foster that type of connection with people who matter to you. You are one of the architects of community in your life, and you can participate in building a tribe where you belong.

What would happen to you if your home life was more organized than it is right now? Can work-life balance be achieved? What are the tools at our disposal? Could scheduling appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize?

What is the challenge we face? I sometimes find that time spent at home can be the busiest time, especially in the times we live in. Imagine someone working from home, home-schooling children, and sometimes even doing a side hustle. Imagine also the full-time home-based entrepreneur. How do they manage to do all they need to do in a day?. We are living in a time when many entrepreneurs and even company employees have adopted work- at – home culture. This comes with its challenges as the lines become blurred between home and work. These blurred lines and constraints on the limited resource called time result in over-worked, under-rested, burnt-out individuals. Whilst good time management has been encouraged and indeed, embraced in the workplace, I believe more needs to be done in changing the mindset for the elusive work-life balance to be achieved.

What are the tools at our disposal? To manage time effectively at home, there are many interventions one can employ including setting goals for the day, prioritizing wisely, setting a time limit for every task, organizing oneself, and instituting the discipline of appointments. Yes, an appointment at home! We can spend time pontificating on the pros and cons of each intervention, however, I believe we need to focus on appointments and see how this can powerfully change the course of one’s day regardless of whether it’s a workday or weekend. Life is busy as it is without any intrusions. The question is how do you handle the one who announces that they are at the gate. These can be friends, neighbors, a salesman of some product you do not even need. I am not promoting regimentation here but rather a culture of filling your day with what’s important. Everything that we succeed at is because we carefully plan and execute it. I am a firm believer that you cannot manage time if you do not manage yourself thus I implore you to incorporate planning and appointments into your repertoire. I am not talking about something I do not do. I have to achieve many things in a day therefore I set appointments with my work, others, and myself.

Could scheduling appointments and keeping them on the home front help us save time and prioritize? Whereas we have established that it is a normal business practice to set appointments and keep them, we need to abandon the liberal open-door policy of allowing all and sundry to have access to us as and when they please on the home front. Please understand where I am coming from. We each have greatness within us but for us to achieve it we need to culture great habits. Employing the use of appointments at home and seeing only those people you had agreed to see removes non-essential encounters especially during the most productive hours. I know this will vary with culture, geographical region, or even level of affluence, whether you live in a low density or high-density residential area, but doesn’t negate the need to be organized and effective. Controlling access determines how organized you are and how well you will work and rest when the time for scheduled rest comes.

What do we need to do differently? We need to be disciplined and diligent, learn to say no, now is not a good time, let’s make an appointment for next week. What are the benefits of this approach? You are not always fire-fighting to meet deadlines, You are not always tired because you have not taken time out to rest. You have set aside enough time to spend with your loved ones or a loved one. If you are a busy person, I am sure you appreciate what I am saying. Whether it’s time to work uninterrupted, family time, or “me-time”, it takes some kind of order to enjoy it.

I am not saying that those that come unannounced are bad people. No, not at all, they probably are people you enjoy spending time with. Nevertheless, there must be prior communication so that you can attend to your visitor(s) when it is convenient for both you and them. It can be quite disrupting and a whole day can just pass by without achieving anything that you had planned to do.

As we grow older we begin to appreciate that rest and recovery need to be scheduled. The fact that I am relaxing doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to do. One therefore cannot assume that just because you are at home you are available. Maybe you have scheduled that time to rest. That is important. You need to make an appointment with yourself, spouses need to also set aside time for each other. Parents need to schedule a time to spend with their children. When you have some sort of order in your life you determine who sees you and who you see. It also means that your relationships will be healthy and that makes you a happier person.

In conclusion, I believe that the work-life balance can be achieved. There are many tools at our disposal just like it is in the workplace.I believe we could do more and be happier if we are disciplined enough to make only the commitments we can keep.I am certain that setting appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize.