Insurance Medical

Just what is website conversion marketing and how can it help you? Put simply, it uses analytics (the process of using statistics, computer programming and operations research to measure performance) to improve customer experience and ultimately to increase sales. It helps visitors navigate your site and find what they are looking for easily. In real-time it can determine if a visitor is confused or ready to leave your site. Through the use of messages, chat opportunities or redirection, it attempts to convert your visitor into a customer.

The conversion rate is defined as the number of goal achievements divided by the number of visits. A goal achievement could be the sale of a product or service, a membership registration, a newsletter subscription, a download, etc. Whatever your particular goal.

Website conversion marketing makes it easy for your visitors to get around your site, showcases your products, services and information in an effective way and, in return, you learn your customers’ preferences, what they would like to see and how you can improve customer satisfaction. Unlike other search engine optimization strategies, it does not focus on increasing traffic; it improves your success by helping you convert existing traffic into customers. By using a conversion marketing platform, internet marketers have been able to increase their conversion rate by double-digit.

Some of the methods used to increase conversion rates are:

Improve website design, usability, and navigation.
Give visitors an opportunity to write a review of their experience on your site.
Introduce similar or compatible items to encourage repeat customers.
Improving your visitor’s satisfaction while on your site and as a customer will go a long way in generating sales and repeat customers. Make it easy for visitors to contact you, have a clear return policy, offer various payment options and keep your customer informed regarding shipping and expected delivery time.

If you are not a web designer or technologically savvy, you may want to use a company or expert to optimize your site for conversion marketing. There are many companies available and many are well recommended. Do your research to ensure maximum return on your investment.

There is a lot to know about conversion marketing. This article is just a summary of the process. To be comprehensive would require more space than is available here. However, I hope this introduction will inspire you to delve deeper and apply the basics to your business. You will not be disappointed.

You may want to measure how good your website is working and its real valuation. There are various website valuation tools which help website owners or potential buyers as they are much easier to calculate value because you know how much visitors you get to your website and how much money you make from it so you can do some calculation to come up with price.

1. MCJ Online

This is one of the best tools out there because it returns much more information than just website worth. You can see number of backlinks, how many pages are indexed by major search engines, how many times your website is mentioned on social networks and how much visitors these website get. This is great tool which will help you to research your competitors if you are dealing with search engine optimization and internet marketing in general. This is a paid website valuation tool.

2. WebsiteStatsChecker

Whenever one gets his/her website’s price info, then he/she is very keen to know the procedure by which that price is calculated. The bad thing is that most of the tools don’t tell you the procedure by which they calculated the price. Don’t worry now as Websitestatschecker is not like the crowd. The highly accurate price is calculated of your website and the factors considered while valuating are also shown.

3. Webutation

This website ranks well because it works fast, has a nice design and gives accurate information. Its feature is the social buzz which shows information from social networks so you can see what other people have to say about this website. Developers have done a great job to optimize this website and it loads very fast on any web browser. It is free as well as paid.

4. FreeWebsiteReport

It is one of the best tools out there that gives detailed summary about your website. Summary includes information about hosting, estimated traffic, valuation, daily income and domain registration date. It’s nice to see all this information within few short sentences. Website stores historic valuation so you can see how much it has changed since you last checked it. This is something not many other website valuation tools can offer.

5. SiteWorthTraffic.com

SiteWorthTraffic is a free service designed to estimate value, daily page views, daily visitors and daily revenue of a website. Quickly calculate the website worth and worldwide ranking of any website. The usage of this service does not require any registration and is completely free for everyone.

Who can say that SEO is an easy and fast task to perform? No one. No one can say that it is really easy-to-do. But there are some things that can make it easier for you. Here they are:

1. Links are Still important
There are a lot of articles and blog posts available online telling people that link building is dead. But no matter what they say, it’s not! It has just considerably changed. No doubt, the way we link-build significantly differ from the way we used to take advantage of before. However, as long as people still use search engines to find any information they need, link building is in-demand. For at least partially, since article marketing, guest posting and directory listings were replaced with contests, content marketing and blogging on your own website.

2. Link Quantity
Please, remember that we don’t have to know that concrete number that will move you up. Actually we are professionals at doing that and we know that link quality is much more important than link quantity.

3. High-Quality Content Always Matters
Generate your own content. Everyone knows the statement “content is king”. That is absolutely true. The more high-quality content you produce, the more successful your link-building campaign may be. People should want to read it, share it and link to it. However, don’t forget that creating good content for blogs can take hours, days and even weeks.

4. Find Your Starting Point
Getting links strongly depends on the keyword, the industry, the website and a hub of other important factors. A link building strategy is elaborated especially for the case, so you are usually getting started from zero. Today, most of the professional link building specialists have some go-to sources that can help them to determine their starting point.

5. There Is no Variant for “Just Asking For A Link”
Asking for a link is asking a stranger for money. You have to earn the link. Sometimes, the efforts can include just producing really good content. More often a 2-way reciprocal relationship is required before any link surfaces.

6. It Will Take More Than You Expect
Just like we have no idea how many links you need, we don’t know when link’s value would take effect. However, as a rule, it always takes a little bit longer than you expect. Link building process is quite slow. And search engines are slow in indexing and valuing all of those links as well. So have patience!

7. Rankings Drop If You Stop Building Links
Link building presents a continual and constant process. Search engines refresh listings and algorithms constantly, so you have to keep your content and links always relevant. So work hard and be attentive to details and your link building strategy is going to succeed.

Businesses should outsource their SEO jobs to focus more on their business for surviving in today’s competitive world. SEO, meaning search engine optimization, is the technique of making a website, blog or video to be ranked higher in results shown by various search engines.

The idea is to ensure that your website attracts more than average number of visitors. Coming in the good books of search engines faster than your competitors is vital for any business to be successful. That’s where the role of an SEO specialist comes into play. Experienced SEO professionals can help improving the online presence of businesses.

Services provided by SEO professionals

Acquiring SEO skills is not everybody’s cup of tea. That is the reason that makes it worthwhile for businesses to outsource their SEO jobs to a professional company providing SEO services. SEO services include:

Wide-ranging research for keywords

Copywriting, keeping in mind SEO techniques

Promotions through emails and PPC

E-commerce

Link building

Article submission

Content writing for blogs

Press releases

Optimizing website for marketing through social media

Local SEO

SEO campaigns dome efficiently

SEO providers know how to coordinate the above facets in line with the requirements of the client in a gainful manner. Professional companies offering SEO services employ skilled, goal oriented and experienced people, specializing on different aspects of search engine optimization and capable of undertaking projects in a planned manner.

The job of SEO professionals is becoming more and more challenging due advancement of algorithm by search engines, particularly the bigger ones like Bing and Google. Penguin, the most modern and now notorious algorithm revision from Google, has caused a number of renowned web pages, providing varied and helpful information from various fields lose much of their visibility on search engines.

Strategic SEO Techniques

Competent SEO companies are prepared to meet the challenges posed by unexpected changes as a result of modernization carried by search engines. Traffic to website is most likely to get reduced if its ranking becomes low. SEO specialists work hard to avoid this situation as reduced visibility of website can adversely affect any business. Providers of SEO services mix together various proven techniques that keep the website unaffected by sudden surprises from Google.

Focused SEO Solutions

Providers of SEO services can ensure that consumers visiting a website are prompted to perform the call to action, meaning fill in a given form, sign up a newsletter or buy the offered products or services. Generally, an analysis is carried for all visitors exiting the site without placing any order for any product or service.

The target for most providers of SEO service providers is to reduce the bounce rate of website. This is mostly taken care of by offering visitors an easy to understand content, security symbols for shopping cart and options for social sharing.

Viral marketing focuses on creating a viral content which is appealing and tactically positioned in many social media channels. It facilitates a brand to get popular quite fast and presents a product or service to targeted audience.

Wrapping up

Outsourcing your SEO jobs to skilled and reliable professionals gives you the assurance that your SEO requirements are taken care of by competent people, while allowing you to focus on other aspects of business and thus save your resources.

When it comes to ranking, you want to rank for the highly relevant keywords that are used in your niche. The problem is that when you do that your competition surely includes some major brands that have huge SEO budgets.

SEO is highly competitive and the truth is that you will not be able to compete with the big brands. However, you can take advantage of how important Local SEO is for Google right now. This is exactly where geo targeting steps in to give you a huge helping hand.

Targeting Location-Specific Keywords

The point here is that you want to get around the really tough keyword competition. You can to this in search engines by taking the approach of targeting the location-specific keywords.

What does this actually mean?

To put it as simple as possible, instead of targeting a keyword like “buy shoes”, you target a more specific, longer, location-specific keyword like “buy shoes in New York City”. Instead of “car repairs New York”, you go deeper, like “car repairs Brooklyn”.

The main idea here is to narrow it down as much as possible. You can even go as targeted as narrowing down some of the keywords you use to street level. However, you should try to cover as much of your area of service as possible.

Why Target Such Specific Keywords?

Using geo targeting SEO offers some benefits that simply cannot be ignored for SEO specialists and business owners. Some of those that have to be mentioned are:

Lower Competition – While it is practically impossible for smaller businesses to rank for the highly competitive search terms like “protein supplements” or “bakery”, it is much easier to rank for the location-specific keywords since the competition is naturally much smaller.
Lower Price – You have to spend money on your SEO campaigns so when you go for the very competitive terms, the campaign quickly becomes really pricey. With geo targeting, you pay a lot less.
Less Time – In order to rank on the first page of Google for competitive keywords, you can even have to wait a year, or more. With geo targeting campaigns, the time needed is a lot less.
How To Use Geo Targeting In SEO
First thing first. Geo targeting in SEO is both simple and complicated. There are some strategies that you can use and that are pretty obvious. This includes:

Creating Suitable Landing Pages
Geo targeting keywords can be used for both paid advertisements and organic searches. However, in order to take full advantage of this opportunity, you need location-specific landing pages.
Try to build one for every single location where you offer services. Then, when you use local SEO ranking strategies, you can point your links towards the appropriate resource.

Using Targeted Top Level Domains
This is a tactic that you can definitely use if you plan to launch a website to service local markets. However, it is also something that you can consider if arranging proper redirects is not a problem for you.
TLDs (top level domains) are those domains with extensions that are location-specific, like.co.UK, or.com.au. This has much more weight than what many expect when referring to the country-specific Google search engines used by the user.

When referring to the less obvious SEO strategies you can use for a geo-targeting campaign, we could mention a couple of examples:

Registering In Local-Based Business Directories
For local SEO in general, the business directories that target a specific region are much more valuable than the larger ones that have a global coverage. This is especially the case when you can focus on the location-specific landing pages that we mentioned below.
Bartering With Local Businesses
The link that you get from a business that services the same area as yours is very valuable with location-specific campaigns. This is especially the case in the event that they already have a good local coverage on search engines. Aim for different barters that you can set up and always opt for something that is beneficial for both parties.
Conclusions

Nowadays, you have to use geo targeting SEO. It is as simple as that. When you hire an SEO agency to do work on your site, you have to avoid all those that do not talk about the importance of local SEO and that do not mention geo targeting to help you rank exactly where you service customers.

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.