4 Things Parents Should Teach Their Kids That Most Schools Won't

A simple lemonade stand can teach so many great lessons to kids!

With public and private schools providing such comprehensive curriculums, it can be easy to fall under the impression that you can send your kid to school and never have to teach them anything at home. However, taking a hands-off approach to your child's education could result in them lacking certain fundamental knowledge that they'll need when they get older. With that said, here are four subjects you should teach your kid at home to make sure they're ready to be successful and secure in life:

1. Home Improvement and Building

While many schools will teach home economic classes, there's really no set framework for teaching kids how to do simple home improvement tasks around the house. You may want to consider constructing a shed or workshop on your property to give your kids a designated space to tinker with tools and building projects. You could accomplish this easily with the steel building kits from Armstrong Steel, which simplify the process of assembling durable and versatile buildings of all sizes.

2. Financial Management and Credit

Let's face it, most schools are severely lacking in their curriculum related to financial management and credit building. This information is usually learned at the bank or at home when the student reaches an age where they're able to utilize their credit for the first time. Unfortunately, many young adults are blind-sided by an abundance of responsibility after being approved for their first credit card. Teaching your kids financial management at a young age will give them an economic head start that most other children are not equipped with at public or private schools. 

3. Emergency Survival Techniques

While you can enroll your kids in the local boy scouts or girl scouts to teach them basic wilderness skills, this information is not usually taught at a conventional school. Take your little ones on a camping trip and show them basic survival techniques like how to start a fire, astrological navigation, finding food, purifying water, and building basic shelter. You'd think that such fundamental concepts would be taught at a young age, yet there are many adults who still don't know how to do these things.

4. Entrepreneurship

While making money is clearly the most important adult duty, there's surprisingly little focus on building wealth in the conventional school system. Students are not taught about founding startups, gathering funding from investors, obtaining business loans, or any other basic concepts that are required to successfully launch a business. Teach your children these topics at home, and they'll be well-prepared to obtain financial freedom later in life.

Prepare Your Kids for the Real World at a Young Age

In today's world, most kids are severely sheltered and undereducated about topics that actually matter in everyday life. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of high schoolers and college students are awakened to a harsh reality when they have to learn a bunch of adult life management skills that should arguably be taught in schools. 


Of course, once you get into university courses and degree programs, you can learn anything in the world, but in many ways the average high school graduate is still grossly under-equipped to deal with the challenges of being a young adult. Make an effort to teach your kids some of the topics mentioned above and they'll be much better off for it.

7 Steps To Freelance Writing Success

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Are you thinking of becoming a freelance writer? Have you always wanted to write and be your own boss? Maybe you’re a complete newbie to the world of freelance writing, and you’re terrified to get started? If that’s the case, don’t panic – that’s natural. When something is new to you, and it seems lucrative and exciting and completely out of your reach, you’re often going to be intimidated – that’s just how life goes. Because to you, it’s the ultimate. It’s something that you’d love to do – it’s the dream. And so your glorify it in your mind. It suddenly becomes something so special and precious, that you’re afraid to go anywhere near it. But that’s just because you’ve made it seem so unapproachable in your mind. So now, you need to change that.

Freelance writing has a bad wrap. Years ago, writers were seen as struggling artists. And sure, you can be a struggling freelancer – but if you’re struggling, that’s a decision that you’ve chosen to make. Because in this day and age, the opportunities for success are greater than ever. If you’re ambitious, passionate, and you’re excited to give writing a real go, you can make it work for you, let’s take a look at how. Here are seven steps to help you find freelance writing success.

1. Decide What You’re Going To Do

So first of all, you’re going to want to decide how you’re going to approach this. So think about the kind of writing you want to do and what sort of niches you want to cover. You may even want to get yourself organized with your laptop, software programs, an enterprise document management system to help you get started. That way, you’re getting off on the right foot with everything you need to get set up.

2. Set Up Your Own Website

However, it’s not just your laptop, documents, and templates that you need – you also need a website! This sounds more complicated than it actually is. You can get a simple domain and hosting program for a low cost, and then use a Wordpress template to create a fun site!

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3. Get Some Experience

And now that you feel all set up and ready to go, what you need to do here, is to get some experience. Because if you have never written before, then you have nothing for your portfolio – and this may stop you from landing work. It’s a catch 22, but there are ways that you can get your first clips. Sometimes, you’ll have to work for free or send out samples you’ve written for yourself. But it’s so exciting when you do get those first clips.

4. Brand Yourself

At this stage, if you want to look as professional as possible, then you may find that you need to brand yourself as best as you can. This means seeing yourself as a brand or business, not just as a person. You can also use your web design, logo, and tone of voice to create a brand around your writing too.

5. Send Out Pitches

As a freelancer, you absolutely need to make sure that you’re able to send out as many pitches as you can to get the work that you want. Because when it comes to landing the work you want, you just won’t get it unless you’re banging down doors. Sure, you’ll sometimes get the odd piece, but you need to think about sending out a ton of ideas all of the time, in the hope that you’ll get some back. Say you get 5% of the things you send out, then you’ll need to send more and more. For this, think about where you’re going to pitch. Make sure that you know the publication and that you’ve cleverly thought of a suitable article that the editors might love!

6. Market Yourself

But that’s not all, because you’ll want to make sure that you’re marketing what you’re doing too. Choose social media platforms that you like and that you know you can target the right audience with. Also look to start an email newsletter as early as possible, as this can be a great way of building a client base.

7. Aim For Consistent Growth

Finally, if you want this to become a long-term success, then you’ll want to think about how you can grow as consistently as possible. And that’s the key – consistency. If you only work on things sporadically, it’s going to take you a little longer to grow and find success. For this, you’ll find that have a schedule is going to keep you on track. As long as you’re showing up and doing the work, then you’ll find that you start to get the growth and success that you’re looking for.

6 Important Considerations before Replacing Your Roof

Are you thinking about repairing or replacing your roof? This can be a really stressful experience because of the investment of both time and money. These, of course, depend on the amount of repairs needed. This is why you need to assess the extent of damages to both the inside and outside of your roof.

The following considerations can really affect the costs of repair or installation of new roofs:

1.     The Type of Roof

Naturally, the type of roof over your home will influence its costs of repair. Rooves can be either low or high pitched, sloped or flat, tiled or shingled. All of these materials have varying costs, and some may require more material and labor than others.

2.     The Scope of Repairs

Another factor that greatly influences the cost of repairs is the size of the intended area. This is why the pricing will be determined on the square footage of roof repairs. In simple terms, shingles are sold in terms of squares and a square is also a 10 ft area. If, for example, your intended area for repairs is less than 10 ft, you will still be charged for a square.

3.     The Number of Layers

Estimating costs for removing roofs depends on the amount of time it will take. These costs will consist of dump charges (charges to dispose of the material – which usually depends on the cumulative weight of materials) and the cost of labor. The heavier the material of your roof will be, the longer it will take to replace your old roof.

4.     Exiting Water Damages

Water damages can easily get hidden under roof shingles, and will only be found upon inspection. Roofers usually have to remove the shingles to check the decking underneath, and this might incur extra costs.

This step, however, should never be skipped because leaks can bring about total roof replacement in the future.

5.     Skylights and Chimneys

Some unique elements on your rooftops like skylights and chimneys will definitely increase costs of roofing jobs. This is why, while you’re assessing your shingles you should check for leaks in these areas as well. If roofers do find leaks, they will have to add flashing around these areas – which will, ofcourse, cost a little extra.

6.     Permits for Roofing Repairs

In some cases, your roofer may even have to get permits for your roofing repairs. The flat rate of working in your area will also be the price of this permit and may be based on your home’s value or size. If this is the case, then the costs of repair will definitely be affected. These costs, however, vary from city to city and may especially be of consequence if you live in a coastal town.

Now that you have learned about some important considerations before going forward with roofing repairs, you should also learn how to inspect your home for roof damage. Follow the link to learn about the most telltale signs of roof damage.

Why The Food Business Is So Hard To Break Into

If you are a bit of a whizz in the kitchen and you love nothing more than settling down in front of the TV to watch Masterchef, you might be tempted to give up your steady wage, excellent career prospects and office banter for the allure of setting up your own restaurant. The food business is a fickle creature and what is in one moment is out of fashion the next. To make it in the food industry you have to be tenacious, have supreme business acumen, and of course, be an extremely talented cook.

Food businesses take on many forms, from the corporate sandwich makers to the wedding caterers, and the street food stall owners to the restaurateurs. The camp that you find yourself falling into can be a tricky one to discover. You might love the idea of pitching up your fully converted catering horsebox to the masses with your Caribbean offerings, but you might equally be swayed by the formality and rigidness of a little bistro. Discovering the best way to sell your grub to the masses can be hard to work out. However, hopefully, by reading this article you will be a little clearer on the sorts of food business outlets you can aspire to and the pitfalls that you should be avoiding.

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Food Festivals

If you are just starting out in the food business, it's a sound idea to make your set up as flexible as possible. You could choose to purchase an outdoor gazebo, some camping stoves, and some tables to set up your mobile eatery at a range of street food events across the country. As you are dealing with food, you need to ensure that your business is fulfilling its legislative requirements. You need to ensure that you have had an environmental health officer at your premises to check out your kitchen area. Your paperwork needs to stringent, as do your temperature checks, hygiene standards, and public liability insurances. This all needs to be in place before you can even begin to think about trading.

Street food events are a great way to sell your food to the masses. Little tasty morsels showing off a sample of your menu will be devoured by foodies who have chosen to come to a specific street eats event. Think about the sort of cuisine that you want to rustle up. You could jump on the vegetarian bandwagon. Perhaps you are obsessed with food from your heritage whether this is food from Trinidad, bangers and mash Cockney style, or all American grits. Consider how best to serve up your food, and consider your eco-credentials.

Being a street food vendor, you will need to price your dishes appropriately. Too low, and you will find that your turnover needs to be too great to make any sort of decent profit. Too high, and you stand a chance of selling very little, especially if the food being served up around you is flying out of the gazebos for less money. Consider the ingredients that you have used and work out how much it costs to cook each dish. Then try an eighty percent markup. If this equates to the retail price you were considering then you are onto a winner.

A pitfall you need to avoid is using too costly ingredients. Buying at retail establishments like supermarkets is not wise as you will be paying over the odds. Go for bulk buying at cash and carry type retailers to get more bang for your buck. While you might want to serve up a red snapper ceviche or a lobster thermidor, the markup will be too high, you won't be able to sell many units, and your profit margins will sink.

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Restaurants

If you want to launch yourself head first into the restaurant trade, then you need to consider the sort of establishment you want for your gastronomic delights. Does your food lend itself to fine dining? Or is a less formal eatery more your bag? The answer to this question will dictate your target market. If you want to open up for the busy lunchtime window, then young professionals on a break in the middle of a city center might be your ideal target market. Price your grub accordingly, make it easy and quick to get out to the diners, and ensure your premises gets plenty of foot fall.

The old adage of a smaller menu means a classier eatery is true. There is an ethos of exclusivity to these places and they often charge more because of their allure to the foodie. As you are only just starting out, keep your menu succinct and ensure that you know the recipes like the back of your hand. People want quality not quantity so fulfill this wish.

If you are looking to hire staff whether these are waiting staff or kitchen help, ensure that you check out https://getsling.com/blog/restaurant-interview-questions/ for some sample interview

questions that you can ask any potential candidates to be sure of their skills. Poor front of house can lead to slow service and mixed up orders. This, in turn, leads to negative reviews online. This can be the death knell for your business as restaurants and eateries rely on the reputation that they can build online. It's vital that you avoid this pitfall and hire the right people.

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Catering

If you’re considering going down the catering route, you need to work out the sort of events you wish to provide food for. Weddings can be highly lucrative when working out the price per head for a buffet or sit down three course meal. Corporate events can also charge higher prices than your average dinner party. Because they are willing to pay more, they expect a certain caliber of food so you must make sure that you’re up to scratch.

Tweak your menu and practice in your kitchen as much as possible. Hone your sauces, your jus, and your side dishes. Make sure that you are bringing something a little different to the table. People catering weddings are sick of the standard three course meal with prawn cocktail starter steak main, and chocolate dessert. Fusion food is all the rage, new taste sensations are being sought after, and you need to provide this to your clientele. You can specialize in a cuisine but you also need to be willing to try new techniques and understand what your diners want. This is why you must conduct thorough market research before you begin trading.

Get Visible

You can have the most fantastic eatery known to humankind, but if no one knows about it, then what’s the point? Get online, get an SEO bod on board like the ones listed at https://themefuse.com/best-seo-experts-you-should-follow/ if you need, and set up a barnstorming website to attract clientele. By hiring an SEO guru, you can be sure of appearing on the first page of Google. With an online presence, your food will get a global audience. With any luck, they will see your website, notice your social media links and start following you.

Social media is the perfect free way to publicize your restaurant or catering outlet. Use Instagram as a tool to display perfectly filtered image of your grub. Show people eating and enjoying your food. And post snippets of exceptionally glowing testimonials to enhance your reputation. Keep the content fresh, regular and relevant. People can be seduced by awesome images, so utilize the hashtag and show your gastronomic delights to the masses.

The food business is hard to break into with restaurants going out of business on a weekly basis because overheads are too much, premises rents are too high, or business acumen wasn’t up to scratch. Ensure that you don't fall into this trap by working out what it is you want to achieve in the food industry and using this guide to help you.

Ensure You're Always Prepared For That Meeting

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Does anyone ever actually ‘enjoy’ the process of meetings? It can often feel like a lion's den, no matter where on the hierarchy you are. Making the effort to be assertive and have your voice heard while also listening to everyone else is a valuable skill in balance, and sometimes, your colleagues do not possess that. Of course, meetings aren’t as horrific as they’re made out to be.

A simple weekly roundup can be enlightening, or a celebratory meeting can be satisfying to experience. But sometimes, you need to defend your corner, or you need to put forward a game plan you think is truly going to make the difference. To that extent, you need to be prepared. Much like a police officer questioning a suspect and placing every small element of evidence on the table, when it comes to the important meetings, you can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.

Thankfully, this is achievable. With a good amount of preparation and no small amount of self-belief, you can ace each and every meeting you attend. Let us consider how:

Have The Right Documents on Hand

It’s important to have the right documents on hand before you present anything at a meeting. This is because if you’re not careful, you can be referring to matters that you might understand, but that others aren’t quite aware of. From department to department awareness might differ, and other colleagues may not have put in the same time to a subject as you have. Even if you don’t need them, having backup materials can be important, either printed in a folder with handouts or on a tablet you can bring in. The ability to edit PDF files can also be useful here, as you can customize certain documents to their most prescient points for clarity.

Be Punctual

Being on time for the meeting, ideally even five minutes before, can help you remain in the loop. Not only that, but part of a meeting is about visibility and attentiveness. If you know you have a big meeting in the morning, perhaps set off thirty minutes beforehand to get to the office on time, instead of dealing with an unfortunate amount of traffic that forces you to arrive ten minutes late and miss some pressing introductory points. It might sound obvious, but remaining punctual can certainly be a big deal here.

Ask Questions

It’s not enough to simply accept everything being said. If you feel you do not understand you may ask for further clarification later. Or it might be you wish to challenge someone’s summary with your own ideal. If you phrase this in a manner that seems non-confrontational but inquisitive your colleagues will often be more than happy to further clarify, or potentially elaborate more on the point. So long as you don’t do this for every single point brought up you will be seen as contributing to the meeting (providing it’s within your role to,) and can generally help a higher standard of conversation flow.

With this advice, you’ll always be prepared for that meeting.