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Travel

Dave Highbloom Offers Must-See U.S. East Coast Adventures

America was built for road trips. Ever since the beat generation’s rambles across American highways, the road trip has been an American rite of passage. Dave Highbloom, an entrepreneur, traveler, and photographer, says there is nothing more liberating than packing up the car and hitting the open road, whether solo or with some trusted travel companions. Road trips are among the best ways to experience any country, as they put the traveler in touch with different landscapes, road-side eateries, and unique towns and cities along the way.

Man in Black Shirt Standing on Brown Rock Formation Near Body of Water

America has a seemingly endless list of “must-experience” road trips, and the Eastern seaboard sits near the top. If you have the time, you might as well go big and drive north along nearly the entirety of the American east coast. Start in Key West, Florida, the southernmost point in the United States, and drive north along the coast all the way to Bar Harbor in Maine. This 2,000 mile journey will take you through some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes and exciting places, not to mention an impressive variety of culinary delights – especially seafood. The route includes major cities from like Philadelphia and New York, the nation’s capital, Washington DC, and smaller cultural gems like and St. Augustine, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia. After thousands of miles of fascinating cities, beautiful beaches, and majestic mountains, your journey will end at one of the world’s best locations for lobster.

Silhouette of Bird on Body of Water during Sunset

If you are a lover of nature, Highbloom points out the many national parks along the east coast to make for a memorable road trip. On route from Florida to Maine, you can visit the Everglades, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, the Catskills, Green Mountains National Forest, the White Mountains National Forest, and Acadia National Park. Dave also emphasizes that some lesser-known natural gems on this route are just as worth visiting as their more widely known counterparts. Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, between Key West and Miami, contains one of the last living coral reefs on the east coast of the US, as well as a chance to dive for buried treasure and enjoy some of the best key lime pie around. A bit further into your trip, Billie Swamp Safari on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation offers the opportunity to explore the Everglades in airboats and safely interact with alligators up close. Kiawah, just south of Charleston, is a golf-focused family resort that offers fantastic beaches and excellent bicycling paths. The Delaware Water Gap, on the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, is a great spot for river rafting, and is accessible enough for the whole family to safely enjoy the fun. And in Vermont’s Queechee Gorge, Dave recommends going for a hot air balloon trip – a slow-paced but exciting way to experience an impressive natural wonder.

This road trip will put you in some of the quaintest, most relaxing bed & breakfast accommodations and the most beautiful camping sites in the country. Highbloom points out that the National Park Service has deemed Maine’s Acadia National Park the “Crown Jewel of the North Atlantic Coast,” with 158 miles of hiking trails and seven peaks that rise higher than 1,000 feet. What better destination to dream about throughout your road trip?

Business Tips

Tips for Running a Religious Medical Practice

Dealing with a health crisis can be an extremely thing to face. It can be stressful and scary to be unsure of the future. Your health is so important, and you want to come out on the other side of your diagnosis feeling your best. During a rough illness, many people will turn to religion to find solace. Having that faith in a higher power can help you get through even the most difficult of times. For this reason, religion and medicine can often go hand in hand. If you are someone who is passionate about both areas, you may even consider opening a religious medical practice.

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While science and religion don’t always go hand in hand, this can be a great opportunity to merge the two worlds. Find a way to provide that extra level of hope through your faith and practiced medical hands. Running a religious medical practice is all about finding the balance and providing quality care. Ultimately, religion encourages people to spread love and kindness to everyone you meet. Take advantage of an opportunity to do just that with your medical practice. Here are just a few overall tips for running a religious medical practice in a compassionate and effective way.

Do all the same things any medical practice would do.

Providing medical care is a serious business. You need years of training, top-rate staff, the latest technologies, and the knowledge to run everything effectively. Don’t get so caught up in the religious aspect of your practice that you forget about the medical care. Providing great care should be your first priority.

You’ll also need to take all the legal precautions and follow the official rules of running a medical facility. Have someone on staff who fully understands how insurance works and knows what kinds of coverage you’ll take at your practice. You’ll also need liability insurance for your own staff, whether they are OB-GYNs or surgeons, the same as at all hospitals and medical facilities. Research the OB GYN malpractice insurance cost and others so you will know what to expect to pay for malpractice insurance premiums. Even though you are always striving to do good with your medical practice, sometimes things can go wrong due to unforeseen circumstances, especially during childbirth. Be sure to cover your practice so you can continue doing good work even after a few gynecology cases go awry.

Look into the best ways to incorporate your religious beliefs.

Running a religious medical practice is going to look different for each venue. Consider how you want to incorporate your religious beliefs into your practice. Maybe, for you, that looks like a chapel onsite with church candles, plenty of natural light, and a quiet space for prayer. Decorate the space like a sanctuary to help people feel secure and at peace.

You also may prefer to show your religious background with your actions. On intake forms, you can ask about the health of someone’s spirit and mind as well as their body. Or just work in a way that you show and spread love to every patient. You don’t always have to shout your religion by decorating your home office in the manner of a church, with candles and hymnals everywhere, or wearing a cross around your neck. Showing you care about your patients and everyone who walks through the door will go a long way to combining your roles as religious leader and health care provider.

Hire staff who are on the same page as you.

If you plan on making religion a central piece of your medical practice, you need to be sure you have a staff that is on the same page. During interviews, ask how general surgeons, obstetricians, and nurses would feel about working in a more religious environment. You want to be sure your team is all driven by the same guiding principles, especially if you are making them a central part of your practice.

Home & Life

How To Get Rid of Ants In Your Home

There are all sorts of creatures that can infest your home. To be fair, ants aren’t one of the worst. However, ants in your home and in your food source are downright annoying. In fact, some kinds of ants can even ruin the structure of your home.

The key is knowing the right tips to deal with them and keep them out for good. If you currently have ants in your home, then take a look at some of the best tips for getting rid of them.

Find Their Trails

The first step to getting rid of an ant infestation is finding the trails. Anytime that you see a trail of ants, these are what are known as worker ants. They are moving food from and to their nest. Any ants that you see wandering around your home will inevitably and back up at their nest.

The idea is that once you find the trail, you can hopefully convince the worker ants to bring back poison to their colony. However, this can be tricky since their nests are often deeply burrowed in places that are difficult to get to.

Use Bait

A lot of people think it’s as simple as spraying pesticides to get rid of ants. However, this is only a temporary solution since more ants will arrive in no time. Instead, place ant bait throughout your house that is mixed in with poison. Usually, these are sweet foods that are toxic to ants but do little to no damage to animals or humans.

Be Patient

You’re not going to get rid of your ant problem in a matter of hours. It may take as many as several days for the worker ants to take the poison back to the nest. In some cases, it may even take weeks if your colony is considerably large. In some cases, the colony may even have several Queens. If this is the case, you’re looking at some time to wait.

Use Pesticides Sparingly

If you do find a nest, then you may choose to soak the nest down with an insecticide spray. Make sure Tim that you choose one which is suitable for the occasion. Not any old insecticide spray will do the trick. You could wind up hurting yourself or someone else by carelessly applying spray.

Call An Exterminator

When all else fails, it may be time to call on a professional to help. A professional exterminator has the know-how and experience to get to the root of the problem better than doing it yourself. A lot of people avoid calling an exterminator since they want to save money. However, it’s one of the fastest ways to get rid of the problem for good.

Business Tips

David Koonar: Exclusive Interview [2021 Edition]

David Koonar is a Canadian professional photographer. In the past years, David has managed to amass a fantastic following for himself, and he has worked with some of the most top-notch Canadian brands.

David Koonar prides himself on the quality of the work that he does. While he most certainly is exquisitely professional, he always talks about constant learning of the craft.

Today, we brought in David, and he had some insightful things to tell us about his journey, lessons learned, and how to build a professional career in photography.

What are the Types of Photography?

In a broad sense, there are more than thirty types of photography. We have portrait photography, wedding photography, fashion photography, still life photography, editorial photography, product photography, and more.

As a photographer, you should have professional expertise in at least three types of photography, and you should aim at having beyond-general knowledge of all photography types.

So, You Are Saying A Photographer Must Have Broad Knowledge? How about People Who Prefer to Specialize?

Specialization is essential; however, knowledge about a photography type can help expertise on a different kind of photography. My point is, do not box yourself.

It’s good to experiment sometimes, even if you focus on, say, wedding or product photography alone. As you grow, you will settle into the type of photography you love the most.

Sometimes, it will be just one; other times, you can love as much as three; however, do not limit yourself. You can create beauty in one type just as you can in another photography form.

How Do You Get Clients?

When you have spent many years in the game as I have, clients come easy. There are times I have to reject clients’ requests.

I give excellent results and ask for, well, quite luxurious payments; however, I have clients who are willing to pay beyond my asking price. Yes, it is significant that things have become so big right now; however, circumstances are not the same today as they were years ago.

If you are starting, focus on building your photography and editing skills. Also, focus on improving your portfolio.

Enhancing your portfolio may mean offering free shots to people. Go to courthouses and look for people who will be getting married; find friends who have one event or the other; make friends with many models and focus on shooting and editing.

It’s quite hard to land your first photography client when you’re just starting to build your portfolio. It is a lot of work, but after just three months, you will have the skill and work ethic to take on more projects. Remember that growth is essential in photography.

What are the Secrets Successful Photographers Have that Unsuccessful Ones Do Not?

There isn’t a particular secret, but there are many things professional photographers do that set them aside from unsuccessful photographers. Before I make a list, you must understand that the number of years you have under your belt as a photographer does not make you a professional.

A newbie who has dedicated two years of his life to learning his craft may be a better photographer than a ten-year experienced photographer.

Can You List Some of the Attributes Successful Photographers Have in Common?

Yes, I can:

  • Hard work
  • Passion
  • Dedication
  • A willingness to continually learn new things
  • Great portfolio
  • Solid online presence
  • A willingness to invest in great gadgets.

Blog

4 Best Things to See In Turks and Caicos Islands

Turks and Caicos is a stunning archipelago of 40 coral islands in the Atlantic Ocean, South East of the Bahamas.

This incredible vacation destination sees upwards of a million visitors every year and with good reason. If a visit to Turks and Caicos features prominently on your bucket list, you can rest assured this will not be a disappointing trip.

After checking yourself into one of the luxury vacation rentals in Turks and Caicos Islands, here is a list of things you must see while there.

1. Night Marine Life

If you love marine life, T&C will take the experience to a whole new level with its night marine life dives.

If you are lucky, you might meet Jojo, the legendary dolphin. For an even more exhilarating experience, sign up on a night dive.

These are typically scheduled three to four days after a full moon. At these times, the island’s glowing worms take to the water in what can only be termed as a spectacularly peculiar light show.

When the males finish mating, they burst into phosphorescent colours in the water. To see is to believe.

2. Conch Bar Caves

Conch bar caves are located in a village in middle Caicos. The conch bar is basically a park that protects 15mi/24k of underground caverns. This makes this the largest cave system in the Caribbean.

Once inside, you get to see an intricate pattern of lagoons, stalagmites and stalactites.

Underground lakes are hidden in the cave system. The site also contains Village Hill and ponds. There is also specialized cave flora and fauna, isopods and crustaceans.

Bats have made a home in the caves as well. These are, however, known to be harmless.

3. Spend a Day at Chalk Sound National Park

Chalk sound sits on the South West of Providenciales. The national park features shallow, bright turquoise water punctuated by small rocky islands.

Being a protected area, powered water boats are banned. Visitors can, however, see the island from the road on the South end. Paddleboarding and kayaking are however allowed.

This aside, you can see iguanas. If you are lucky enough, you might see them foraging on prickly pear cactuses, fruits and plants.

Barracudas, stingrays and bonefish are also easy to sight here.

4. Potcake Place

For animal lovers, Potcake place will be a great place to spend a day out on the island.

This is an island animal rescue place that allows visitors to play and adopt local puppies. This is something you can plan for when you have a full or half day to spend.

Eat. Learn. Explore

With all the activities and sights to enjoy on the island, be sure to bring your sense of adventure along.

it will be just what the doctor ordered.

Blog

The 4 Best Ways to Integrate a New Kitten In House

If you are a cat person, bringing a new cat home is always an exciting time. Aside from your joy, there is also some level of anxiety. Will your new feline friend fit in and be comfortable, or will it have a long adjustment period?

Naturally, you prefer that it fits right in and is as happy to be home as you are to have it there.

While it’s not always a straightforward process, there are things you can do to hasten the integration process. Here are some expert tips to help the process along.

1. Place Their Utilities Conspicuously

Place water and food in separate bowls at one end of the cat’s safe room or space. Shy cats are known to go 24 to 48 hours without eating as they get used to the new environment.

If they go longer than this, try something irresistible. Tuna and salmon are a good place to start. If this does not work, you might want to see a vet.

Aside from nourishment, you need a good cat waste disposal system. Find an easy, open, no-frills litter box and place it in an easily accessible spot as well. Your kitten might experience some diarrhea. This is normal in the first few days and is often resulting from stress.

2. Create a Safe Room

Cats, just like people, get some anxiety in new environments. It helps your cat have a safe room they can retreat to whenever they need to feel safe.

This is especially useful in the first few days or weeks as your cat tries to become familiar with the sounds and scents of your home. There is no set size requirement for the safe room. It just needs to have a roof, a door, and be accessible to your kitten.

This can also be a cozy enclosed area of your house if you can’t spare an entire room.

3. Get a New Post

If you had cats previously, you need to get a new scratching post for your new kitten. A one-meter tall post should be adequate.

For cats, scratching is a comforting natural behavior, and it helps your kitten to do this.

This post must be new. The last thing you want is to stress out your kitten with scents of other cats at a time when it’s trying to acclimate to new surroundings.

4. Spend Time with It

The more time you spend with your new kitten, the more familiar you will be to it, and the sooner it will feel comfortable around you.

When you are at work, you can leave a worn t-shirt in its safe room/space so that it gets used to your scent.

Easy Does It

While it’s understandable that you want to see progress quickly, this does not always happen. Your new kitten will get used to you and your home with time and patience and will begin happily prancing from one corner to the other.

Marketing

4 Steps To Creating A Good Digital Marketing Campaign

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, making it difficult for marketers to decide on the best way you distinguish their business when planning digital marketing campaigns. What channels will work the best? Should the tone be funny or serious? Should it be a video or a carousel post?

The questions are nearly endless, but the answers can often be simple—only if you know where to look. While how you should approach a digital marketing plan will vary based on your business goals, there are a few things that to bear in mind that will help keep you on the path to success.

If you are involved in planning a digital marketing campaign, here are four steps that will keep you on track.

1. Define Your Goals

Many of you might wonder why this glaringly obvious advice makes the first step. The reason is that, though many marketers define their goals at the very beginning, there are a few others who are eager to jump into the campaign that they forget the planning part.

When defining your goals, you will have to consider various choices. For instance, will you measure your success based on your conversion rate? Or, are you aiming for a higher spot in the search results rankings? You might even be pursuing both goals. The exact goals you pursue will help you measure your success in reaching them.

Your goals will depend primarily on your business objectives. Only you will know what it is that you want to achieve for your business in the long run. Nevertheless, the following goals are worth considering, even if they are not your campaign’s primary focus.

  • Brand Awareness – One of the simplest ways to measure brand awareness is by leveraging Google Trends to see how many people are searching for your business.
  • Social Media Followers – Another simple but very telling metric for determining the current interest in your business is your follower base on social media channels. However, it is sometimes not worth tracking the number of followers you have as many users don’t unfollow a page they lose interest in.
  • SEO – Various factors affect your business’s SEO score—backlinks, keywords, etc. Improving your SEO score is typically a part of most digital marketing campaigns, and it is a clear indicator of how well your campaign is performing.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Before running a digital marketing campaign, you should know precisely who you are trying to market and sell your products/ services to. It will help you use your resources more efficiently and get the best results.

Regardless of your budget, understanding the demographics you are trying to reach will help you create your marketing materials to appeal to them. This is more efficient than simply throwing everything you have at the wall to see what sticks.

Begin by figuring out who your current customers are. Even if your current customer demographics aren’t precisely the same as the demographic you want to reach with your marketing, it will likely give you an idea of the audience you must target. While trying to reach new audiences and expanding your reach with your latest marketing campaign, you should also plan not to alienate your existing customers.

3. Be Realistic About Your Budget

Another crucial step when planning an excellent digital marketing campaign is setting a realistic budget. Your budget will often be the primary restriction you face with what you can do with your campaign. It will also impact how you use and allocate your resources.

But, the good news is that digital marketing is far cheaper than traditional marketing. Hence, the same resources you use in conventional marketing will go further when you use them in the digital space.

4. Tap Into Social Media

The most powerful marketing platform in the world, the success or failure of your digital marketing campaign, will partly depend on how well you utilize social media. Alongside serving as a very important marketing platform, social media can also support your digital marketing campaign in various aspects. For instance, SEO and social media marketing go hand in hand. Websites like SBR that have outstanding organic traffic efficiently leverage social media to get valuable insights and data that help them further improve their SEO score.

Always make sure your brand message is consistent across all your marketing components. It will ensure the greatest synergy between all the channels. If you use utilize social media to the fullest, they will provide you with valuable insights and data you would otherwise have to pay for.

Final Thoughts

An efficient digital marketing strategy is a vital part of every business’s success. Though digital marketing tends to be cheaper than traditional marketing, it is also a powerful tool. The only caveat is that you should take a thoughtful approach to digital marketing when planning a campaign.

 

Business Tips

3 Tips For Setting Up Temporary Business Space Outdoors

With COVID-19 still raging in many parts of the world, businesses have had to get creative in order to keep their doors open while also complying with the rules and regulations set up in their state or city. Because of this, many indoor businesses have had to take their work outdoors.

To help you in making this adjustment for your business, here are three tips for setting up temporary business space outdoors.

Allow For Social Distance

If you’re a business that’s lucky enough to have outdoor space available to you, you’ll need to come up with a way to create the space you need to run your company while also allowing for social distance with your employees as well as your clients or customers.

When setting up your outdoor space, Rochester Regional Health recommends that you think about all areas where people will be so that you can maintain at least six feet of distance between them and people not of their party as they move through your space. This should include not only sitting at tables or waiting in lines to purchase items, but also as they walk around or enter your space. To keep enough space, try to place things as far apart from other items as you possibly can or give guests directions about the safest ways to move through your outdoor space while staying away from others.

Keep The Music Low

To try to make your outdoor business setup feel a little less rustic, you might have considered putting music in the space. But while this can help to set the mood, it can also open people up to potential hazards.

According to ABC7NY.com, when the music is too loud in an outdoor business space, people will speak up to be heard by those they’re with. However, this louder speaking could mean that there’s a greater likelihood that more of the virus could be getting expelled by anyone positive for COVID. To avoid this, it’s best to keep music low as a way to encourage people to keep their voices low as well.

Install More Barriers

As a way to keep people safe while in your outdoor business space while also potentially making better use of the space you have, you may want to consider installing barriers that keep people and their germs contained in specific areas.

Adam Rogers, a contributor to Wired.com, shares that many restaurants have put up plexiglass between tables in their outdoor seating areas. By doing this, you’ll be able to put tables a little closer together while still helping people maintain their social distance.

If you’re needing to move your business outside in order to keep your company functioning, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you set up this space.

 

Home & Life

Peter Dvorak – Top TV Shows To Watch During Lockdown

If you are facing another lockdown then this is the perfect time to really get involved with a binge marathon with some of the best TV shows around. We have more at our fingertips than we have ever had and that is precisely why you should be looking to chill out on the sofa and enter into a good old fashioned marathon. My roomie Peter Dvorak and I have devoured a great number of these TV shows over the last 6 months and today I wanted to discuss some of my favorites.

Blacklist

Blacklist is a touch formulaic but that really doesn’t take anything away from some of the acting in this show, and some of the script writing too. The show follows an international criminal who is wanted by the FBI. He turns himself in, yet he does so only to utilize the FBI to knock names of the list of people who wronged him, why would they do that? Because they too are big criminals and the FBI get a series of wins from each one captured.

Suits

A law firm which only hires lawyers who studied at Harvard find themselves in a jam when one of their lawyers hires someone who did not go to the university, in fact he hasn’t even passed the bar. The young man however is absolutely brilliant and he has a photographic memory which helps him to take care of all of these cases. The show runs over 8 seasons and still isn’t done, plenty of stuff to get yourself stuck into.

Black Mirror

I was a little late to the Black Mirror party but I have to say that this s one of the greatest TV shows, at least sci-fi shows, that I think I have ever seen. Each episode is its own story and the show explores the threats and challenges to humanity as a result of tech. Created by Charlie Brooker, each episode is absolutely mind blowing and will leave you desperate to see the next one in the list. This is certainly a must watch TV show.

Game of Thrones

Believe it or not, there are still many people who have yet to watch Game of Thrones and if that is you then this lockdown serves as the perfect reason to get involved in this outstanding, EMMY award winning TV series. To give a simple brief is quite difficult but essentially what this epic show does is chart the battle for the Iron Throne, the king of king and queen of queens. Throughout the tale we see all manner of treachery, violence, lust, joy and the slow realization that this show couldn’t care less about your feelings or your favorite characters.

These are the shows which I would start with if I were you, the perfect way to spend your lockdown with the most entertainment possible, give them a try and please don’t hesitate to let us know what you thought, or which shows you think that we should be tuning in to.

 

Blog

James Haidak – How to Create a Great Playlist

Playlists are the perfect way for you to create a soundtrack to a certain feeling or mood, and they are something which everyone should look to do. Not only this but great playlists can actually introduce you to new music. A lot of the new artists which I learn about come from playlists which have been made by James Haidak, a really well respected DJ who I discovered a couple of years ago.

If you are making a playlist for yourself then it has to be something which you are going to want to listen to again and again, and here is how to get the balance right.

Themed

The very best playlists are those which have a theme running through them, which are based on a certain emotion or a certain event. To this end it makes the most sense to try and keep the genre in the playlist quite similar. A great playlist doesn’t flit between rap and rock, jazz and bluegrass, they can, but the best ones stay within a certain genre.

Ebb and Flow

If you are creating a heavy rock playlist for example, then you have to make sure that there is a real ebb and flow abut it. What this means is that not every song should be a stomping assault on the sense, these sound far better when they are complemented by a more epic, slow moving, biblical rock song. The point is that no matter what playlist you are creating, you need to build it up and slow it down as it moves through the track listing.

Length

I always try to focus a playlist to be more or less the same length as a double album, no more than 25/30 songs. The reason why I think this is best is that if it is 50 or 60 songs long, then it feels ore like a collection of songs than a dedicated collection. Now if you are making a playlist for a wedding or for to play in a coffee shop throughout the day then you can make something which is more sizable, but if this is just a playlist which has been created as an ode to a person, emotion or genre, then it makes much more sense to clock in around the 25/30 song mark.

No Bad Songs

A playlist should be something which is continuously changing and that is because there are some songs which sound great once but then after a couple of listens they lose their ability to thrill. A playlist should never feature a song which you want to skip and so when you identify a song like that, you should really be looking to take it off the playlist and adding something which is able to stand the test of time and still sound great after multiple listens.

These are the general rules which I like to follow when it comes to creating an awesome playlist.