Have you been looking for the perfect custom accessory or clothing item to express yourself through your wardrobe? If so, you’ve probably run into a few problems.

Out of all the companies offering such services, many of them simply slap a vinyl sticker on a cup, use a cheap dye to put blurry letters all over an itchy beanie, or heat press a shirt so poorly that the design falls off the first time you wash it.

That’s not every company, though. There are plenty of ways to get high-quality custom items to add to your fashion repertoire. You just have to know how to vet the half-baked options from the top-of-the-line products.

We’re here to show you how to do that. Let’s get started.

1: Price

Like most things, if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a fair deal and enjoy custom items on a budget. It just means you need to be realistic when looking at deals.

Is a company offering a fully customized t-shirt with a custom image and a 25-character phrase for $5? There’s a good chance the shirt itself is the cheapest thing available, and the decal materials and methods used are completely unreliable. You get what you pay for, and in this case, you pay for useless junk.

This doesn’t mean you should look for the most expensive store out there, though. Plenty of high-quality shops offer great discounts on their products, and they usually have a whole host of budget-friendly options like $15 t-shirts with limited customization options, or mugs and bottles that make awesome gifts for cheap.

2: Reviews

If you want to verify the quality of a company’s product, there’s no better way than to look for online reviews. Previous customers are your best friend when you’re trying a new company or service. You can get an idea of how good the products are, how much the staff cares, and whether or not the company is a scam in general.

Just be careful not to put too much emphasis on online reviews. Unverified purchases aren’t very trustworthy, and overly negative reviews often hide key details that led to such a horrible experience. With that being said, don’t be afraid to turn away from a company with tons of negative reviews or reviews that warn you of red flags while providing evidence of the issue.

3: Order Small at First

You just found a company you’ve never heard of, and you’ve never seen any of their products in person. Don’t order $400 worth of products right off the bat. If you’re not impressed with the company’s offerings, you’ll have a lot of stuff to return, and if you order from a shady company, you might just be out a ton of money with no opportunity to get a refund.

Start small when you’re dealing with a new company. In this case, order a mug or water bottle first. Spend less than what you’d spend on a couple of cups of coffee. This will make it easy to make a return if necessary, and if you end up ordering from a scam site, you’ll just have to skip your morning coffee for a few days to make up for the loss.

Buy from the Best

Of course, you can take out the guesswork by simply buying from the best company in the personalized apparel industry: Expressiffy. Expressiffy offers a huge variety of categories to choose from, tons of base products, and the ability to fully customize anything you order. Check out Expressiffy, today!

Life is more hectic than ever, right now. Work hours are longer, and there always seems to be a new obligation getting in the way of your free time; let alone your time in the kitchen.

With so little time to cook, no-cook meals are becoming the go-to way to eat for many. What do they have to offer, though? Why are they so popular besides the obvious lack of cooking time?

Well, check out these benefits of no-cook meals.

1: Time

Obviously, removing the cooking part from your dinner prep reduces how long you spend in the kitchen dramatically. In a world that keeps speeding up, saving precious time is more important than ever before.

That’s an easy one, though. There are plenty of other benefits.

2: Ease of Preparation

Even if you go all out with your presentation, no-cook meals are extremely easy to make. They typically only consist of cutting up a few ingredients, opening a can or two, and mixing everything.

Even beginners will find that the vast majority of no-cook meals can be made in just a few minutes with the most basic kitchen tools. This leaves plenty of room for you to get fancy with your presentation to drop the jaws of any guests you have eating with you.

3: Health Benefits

This doesn’t go for every no-cook meal. After all, dumping a can of tuna into a mountain of mayo and mixing it up doesn’t miraculously lower the calorie count and fat content. However, most no-cook meals are heavily vegetable and fruit-based. A delicious cucumber salad, a homemade hearty salsa with low-sodium tortilla chips, or cream cheese stuffed peppers with “everything” seasoning are fairly healthy options if proper portion sizes and high-quality ingredients are used, and full-blown plant-based options such as fresh fruit salads are irrefutably good for you.

Even when fatty ingredients such as cream cheese or light amounts of mayo are added, no-cook meals are usually far healthier than butter-drenched veggies and oil-soaked red meats.

4: Costs

Since no-cook meals typically rely on low-cost veggies and fruits for most of their ingredients, and they rarely require anything that could be considered expensive, they’re highly cost-effective.

Think about it. You can buy a ton of vegetables, peppers, and fruits for under $10, and even the most common add-ons are only a couple of bucks each. Each of those ingredients will produce multiple high-quality meals. Now, compare that to a single pork steak dinner where the meat alone can take up that much of your budget. You probably don’t want to eat no-cook meals every day of the week, but tossing them occasionally will help lower your grocery bill considerably.

5: Nutrition

When you cook food, you lose some of the nutrition it provides. Even boiling some broccoli drastically lowers its nutritional value. No-cook foods allow you to preserve those valuable nutrients, and your body gets everything each ingredient has to offer. That’s not to say that cooked meals won’t provide you with nutrients, but raw options provide more.

Try the Best No-Cook Recipes at Flavorful Home

If you’re looking to add no-cook meals to your meal planning routine every once in a while, or you just need something you can toss together in minutes, take a look at Flavorful Home’s no-cook recipes. They’re simple, use less than seven ingredients, and taste absolutely amazing.

For entrepreneurs hoping to attract investor funding for their startup, a powerful pitch deck is a must-have. You may have the most exciting product or the best service in your industry, but if your pitch doesn’t adequately describe what you do, how you are different, and what your future looks like, you may still fall flat when it comes to attracting investors. Don’t start with background information.

“After you have the potential investor interested, there’s time enough to talk about your qualifications, the history of your startup, or whatever else they may want to know,” stated Ferrari Energy CEO, Adam Ferrari.

In this article, Ferrari Energy, a family-owned private oil and gas company, shares seven tools that can help you create a winning pitch deck. Each of the tools discussed below has its respective strengths and weaknesses. Choose the one that works best for you and your team.

Google Slides is a good choice for Google Docs and Google Sheets users. It may lack fancy features, but it is easy to use, and if you’re experienced with it, it could be preferable to learning a new program.

PowerPoint is the most commonly used presentation application. We’ve all heard the term “death by PowerPoint,” but that’s more a reflection on the user’s capabilities than it is on the program’s abilities. It’s full-featured, and if you know how to use it, you can do just about anything related to presentations with PowerPoint.

Keynote from Apple is an excellent choice for iOS, iPad, and iPhone users. For the same reasons Google Slides is a good choice for Google aficionados, Keynote works well for Apple devotees. It’s not fancy, but it works well.

Adobe Illustrator is probably overkill for most pitch decks, but if your business revolves around graphics and image creation, this is an excellent way to show off your proficiency. Your imagination is the limit for graphics and illustrations, but it takes some practice to learn to use it fully.

Canva, like Illustrator, is suitable for graphic intensive presentations. If you want to tell your story with pictures, Canva is a great choice.

Pitch Deck is explicitly designed for making a business pitch. They offer some pre-built templates that may be useful for presenting your ideas.

Prezi is well suited for creating a memorable presentation with some pizzazz. For example, you can include a video of yourself talking to your audience or other multimedia features.

Whatever tool you use, design your presentation to grab and hold your audience’s attention right out of the gate. You only have a limited time to get your ideas across, so don’t fill that time with information that won’t help an investor make a favorable decision.

Also, remember that if you’re making your pitch in person, they may ask you to leave a copy of your presentation behind so they can review it further. That’s a good thing, so make sure you come prepared to leave them a digital copy that will run on all operating systems without special software.

About Ferrari Energy

Ferrari Energy is a family-owned private oil and gas company focused on mineral and leasehold acquisitions. Founded in Denver, CO, with a focus on educating landowners, Ferrari Energy has consistently served the needs of the landowner community in the basins in which it works. Its operation covers several areas throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and ND. Ferrari Energy has provided oil and gas leases to over 850 homeowners and held multiple lease-signing events to accommodate the residents of Broomfield, Colorado.

A Financial Advisor and a Financial Broker have distinct roles in the financial industry. One is inherently different from the other. It pays to know what sets them apart and how their job descriptions differ to enable you to choose the right one for your financial goals. Fortunately, we’ve broken it down for you. So read and be enlightened!

DEFINING THE TERMS

What Does a Financial Advisor Do?

A financial advisor provides adequate financial guidance to individuals, businesses and organizations to help them make smart financial decisions and build wealth. Advisors typically boast a professional financial certification that qualifies their distinct roles. For instance, to qualify as a financial advisor in the UK, you must hold an ideal qualification recognized by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

They also double as investment advisors, offering tools that guarantee long-term financial security. They assist clients to help them maintain and manage their investments and cover primary financial areas like taxes, contracts, balance sheets, insurance and budgeting. Financial advisors assess the suitability and feasibility of potential investments for their clients so they can make a sound decision. And in some cases, they can buy stocks and bonds for their clients, provided they have the authority and license to do so.

What Does a Financial Broker Do?

Financial brokers like advisors help clients make sound financial decisions, but this is limited to securing investments and loans. They are market experts that are in tune with the dynamic changes that rule the stock market and various financial fields like property, loans and bonds. Brokers have different job designations that serve to help individuals and organizations secure financial products for wealth management and creation. Financial brokers also assess and evaluate financial information provided by their clients, keep sensitive information confidential, and document all proof of financial transactions made by or on behalf of their clients.

What Sets Them Apart?

The primary difference between financial advisors and financial brokers is the fiduciary standard. A fiduciary means the financial entity always must act in the best interest of their clients. While financial advisors are obligated to obey the fiduciary law, financial brokers aren’t obligated to do so. Financial brokers have the free reign to be fiduciary or not (though the best ones act as fiduciaries)

As Fiduciaries, financial advisors are highly expected to dedicate more care and effort to their clients’ financial proceedings. As such, they are trusted to make decisions on your behalf without prior permission. For example, a financial advisor can make trades on your account without informing you, but a broker has to get your authorization before negotiating deals in your name.

Also, fiduciaries aren’t entitled to commissions, they operate under the fee-only criteria, which means they are paid a flat or hourly fee. They also make their keep from a percentage of assets under their care (which is usually 1% or 2%  of the total assets being managed).

Note that, the UK doesn’t hold its advisors and investors to high fiduciary standards as the related laws aren’t clearly defined.

Which Makes More Sense?

It all depends on the services you are looking for and how much you are willing to pay. If you want to buy or sell stocks, bonds or lend money, a financial broker is best suited to serve your needs. But if you want guidance on how to make the most use of your assets, you should seek a financial advisor. However, bear in mind that advisors come with a steep price tag as they offer a broad range of services — thus, they may be out of bounds for up and coming investors.

Web development is a never-ending process of innovation. With new technologies, languages, and methodologies being created every day, the landscape is always in flux. But in spite of this ever-changing environment, there are some fundamentals that will never change.

A web developer must know how to use the right language for the job at hand. They need to be fluent in all programming methods and have an understanding of how these relate to each other when working on projects with teams or collaborating remotely with others who may not share their methodology.

So, how does one even begin navigating these waters with any degree of efficacy? By speaking the basic languages.

The Many Languages Of Web Development

There are a great many sites offering incredibly useful examples of good web development. The common thread with these sites is often the fluency of the programming languages used by web developers. It is important to understand these languages and their roles in the industry.

Some of the more dominant ones are: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python.

A basic understanding of all of these will be beneficial for web developers working on projects with teams or remotely as they can better communicate with other members who may not share the same methodology. This type of communication ensures that everyone involved has a clear idea about how the project should look when it’s finished which saves time and prevents miscommunication issues between team members.

HTML

HTML is considered one of the core languages that is necessary for any web developer to understand. It’s basically just a language used to create websites, and it has been around since 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee created what many believe was the very first website in history on this technology platform.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it is also another core language that many web developers use to make websites. In contrast with HTML, CSS does not create a website itself, but instead acts as the dressmaker who customises an already-made site by adding colours or styles to its appearance.

JavaScript

Everyone has heard of JavaScript in one form or another. It is a language that can be used to create dynamic web content, and it is based on C++. Its use has become very popular in the past decade or so with its large number of new implementations that have allowed programmers to do more interesting things than ever before like creating online games, chat bots for websites, mobile apps among other exciting innovative technologies.

JavaScript is used to create interactive web pages. It can be written directly in the HTML of a page or with separate .js files that are linked with other components through their tags.

Python

Python is another scripting language that is used on the web. It was created in 1991 and has a large following, especially among developers who are looking for clean code with fewer bugs than other languages have because it focuses more on readability rather than speed of execution as many traditional programming languages do.

Through all of these languages, web developers are able to write, code, and improve all manners of our digital lives. There are many languages to learn, but, no one ever said being a developer was easy.

Whether you’re a small business in the realm of transportation, logistics or any business that involves the use of fleets, chances are you have a litany of programs that espouse to facilitate a certain aspect of the business perfectly. There are quite a few noble programs out there that will cover a certain aspect of the business with a level of professionalism and scale, but there are far too few that encapsulate the whole experience effectively.

While large scale businesses may not have an issue with this, in no small part due to the increasing levels of comfort they have from larger budgets and a bigger workforce with directed roles – smaller businesses often struggle with keeping up with the various incremental programs and services. Too often we see small businesses folding up due to overwhelming work demands and juggling too many aspects behind closed doors.

Encompassed Software Solutions

Smaller businesses do have a few hopes to hang their hats on. With a little research and finding a trustworthy software that fits the bill can be a little time consuming on the front-end, but immeasurably beneficial in the long run.

For those who are operating any sized fleet in the country, there are all-encompassing applications and services that are taking off in a big way, especially for smaller-scaled businesses who want the caveats of a large-scale enterprise without the extra costs associated.

Businesses like autocavo seek to fill the gaps that are often found in the small-medium sized businesses. Through their revolutionary approach and integrated GPS technology, they have made the management and delegation of fleets in any industry, a breeze. Through the collation of all aspects of a fleet business into a singular program, smaller businesses have found themselves on a more even ground when competing with larger scale conglomerates and being all the more organized as a result.

The Scale of It All

One of the principal factors in an encompassing program like Autocavo is the scale. This is what truly separates the gamechangers from the enthusiasts. As small-medium sized companies continue to build their portfolios in different industries, the demands are equally unique and have to be approached with a sense of adaptation and scale to be feasible as an option.

Luckily, thanks to the breakthroughs in technology, the notion of scale is now easier to grasp and integrate than ever before. With companies like Autocavo being able to scale their services to the very small, to a multitude of components in any given fleet.

Through this, smaller businesses don’t have the consistent worry of having to adjust their approach based on a rise or fall in business demand, instead, being able to focus on the business itself and let the service do what it does best.

While technology is on a consistent path of growth and change, smaller businesses now have a fighting chance in assuring their pathway is not hindered by multiple programs and approaches that require more attention than is necessary.

Want to keep your home secure without looking like a prison? Plantation Shutters are the perfect shading tool that not only allows you to control the light but also keep the home looking comfortable and aesthetically appealing. It is one of the oldest but effective shading systems used all the way back from Ancient Greece to its wide commercial use today which is for good reason. It is long lasting, comfortable, adaptable, easy maintenance and is of high quality, making it the ideal choice in comparison to blinds and curtains. Let’s take a closer look at all the wonderful qualities plantation shutters add to a home.

Long Lasting

You will never have to worry about replacing your shutters in an instant. In comparison to blinds or curtains, it does not have the ability to fade or easily damage, meaning these shading structures have a long shelf life. No need for replacements or multiple installations! This will save you money of having to repurchase curtains or blinds for your home every once in a while, with a system that will last a lifetime. As the blades can be interchangeable you won’t have to worry about changing the mountings, giving it an easy set up and replacement process.

Easy Maintenance

One quick swipe and dust and that is all you need to upkeep a plantation shutter. Blinds and curtains require a more indepth cleaning and maintenance, taking time to restore. In this way you won’t have to worry about washing or cleaning the blinds, allowing you to use your time for more important things. Because of this, they are highly durable and long lasting meaning you won’t have to keep spending money just to maintain the quality of these shades. You’ll never have to feel shady about the quality of your shading system with plantation shutters installed into your home.

Variety

There are a range of choices to choose from when it comes to installing a plantation shutter. Ranging from materials such as aluminium, wood, PVC and many more, you can find the perfect texture to suit your home decor. There are a range of colours and styles to choose from to surely find an option that aligns with your personal preference. A shutter doesn’t just have to be practical but it can also add charm and zest into your home, attracting anyone who visits your abode. With this amount of options to choose from, you can make the home of your dreams by having a plantation shutter to top off the look.

Security

Keeping your home from any onlookers or intruders is especially important to keep your safety and your belongings from being destroyed or stolen. Plantation shutters literally shut out any noise or visual distractions outside, keeping your privacy a priority. They also are highly robust and have the capability of preventing anyone from the outside coming into the home. This is important to make sure that no one comes inside to steal or harm anyone, keeping all people in the house safe from danger.

There has always been a steady focus for workplaces to ensure that best health practices are maintained in the workplace for employees and employers alike. While there have been various initiatives to promote a physical health that is noticeably healthy or adaptive, there is still much to be said for the mental health and psychological health of workers.

Oftentimes there is a tendency to overlook the prevalence and importance of mental health in the workplace. The Psychological Safety Coaches have made it their mission to contribute and align more workplaces with a focus and attention towards psychological health and safety which can negatively impact all facets of a corporation if left untended.

The Principles Of Psychological Safety

Psychological safety relates to the beliefs surrounding workplace relations, of having a healthy mental health attitude in the workplace that denotes eradication of embarrassment in coming forward with ideas, concerns, or questions. While also encompassing notions of team morale, approachability and a healthy workplace culture.

Psychological safety is often overlooked in workplaces by leaders, resulting in a lessened drive and motivation to work cohesively and effectively, while also taking a toll on the individual workers as well as the cohort as a whole. Through psychological health practices, workplaces have found a marked increase in team morale and work efficacy overall.

The Utility Of Approaching It Holistically

The holistic approach method utilised by psychological safety coaches is based on the notion of getting to the root of an issue through multi-pronged and considered approaches.

While maintaining a healthy physical form is important, the increasing levels of anxiety and depression being brought on through the pandemic and subsequent fracturing of workplaces has taken a toll on the overall mental health of people.

There is always good reason to approach the mental health of a workplace with a sense of intent and importance, covering aspects of a workplace that can have a negative impact on the psychological safety of workers in general.

A Healthier Workplace

While workplaces of the future are looking like they’ll be different to any that we’ve known before, there is still necessity to remain vigilant and on top of workplace mental health practices. Studies have shown the connection of psychological safety and positive mental health with a more consistent and effective workplace.

Even if remote offices are here to stay in some form, the necessity of team cohesion and positive morale is still vital for the survival of successful businesses. A robust team of cohesive and effective workers is a foundational principle of modern workplaces. Through the hiring of a mental health professional to implement protocols that will increase psychological safety – workplaces will carry on through the changing landscape and come out the other side stronger.