Models Style Guides

Sports leagues and teams have strong existing structures with brands. As such, the decisions by the league management works towards promoting both the league brand and the individual teams. Sports consumers value the professional spectator sports sector as they are the primary reason stakeholders in business have interests in investing, gain income for the league as well as the teams through indirect or direct consumption behaviors. Therefore, it is the league’s best interest to help the teams generate consumption and maximize their revenues, ensuring the league and individual team’s long-term viability
Relationship of teams and the league
Sports brand research indicates that professional teams and leagues have different but complementary brand characteristics. From the consumer point of view, leagues and teams have unique benefits and attributes representing the core set of mental association attached to a brand. Every brand attachment is conceptually distinct. However, the league plays the role of a master brand, creating a formal relationship where the teams play as a set of sub-brands. The symbiotic relationship from this structure is a new concept of sports brand structure, where both team and league-wide specific marketing activities influence the game attendance and merchandise sales as well as media consumption. The relationship is intuitive. However, the researchers are yet to investigate the influence of the league brand and its essential ties as well as impacts on consumer behavior towards individual teams.
Different league structures
The differences arising from different ownerships significantly influence the fundamental relationship between teams and leagues. At times, the league acts as franchise providing the framework where teams compete and work as franchises providing the core product generating income. This formal relationship is on a franchise basis or license contract, where the knowledge and resources are provided to ensure the maintenance of the required standards and quality. The other structure is where the leagues function in a single entity structure, and the league owns the players and while the teams are the investors. A good example is a major league ultimate in the United States. The other structure, the owners of the teams are the leagues’ shareholders with franchise contracts. The national basketball league in the USA is a good example. The fourth structure is like the English premier league, where leagues function as a governing body that offers teams membership to compete for a period using relegation and promotion system.
Regardless of the ownership system, leagues officiate tournament where teams compete, oversee strategic management, govern all the parties involved and manage the marketing such as promotion and change of rule. As such, professional sports teams cannot operate without the coordination provided by the leagues. Moreover, teams can utilize the brand building knowledge of league organization and use the league brand to avail their precise information on the team quality to consumers. Therefore, leagues avail team with a platform for branding and develop a customer base
Sponsorship
Research has consistently indicated that investing in sponsorship has positive impacts on brand image, brand awareness, brand royalty as well as the organizations financial performance. Therefore such support requires maintenance and nurturing to ensure the achievement of the objectives. Therefore, it’s necessary to understand the prediction of sponsoring dissolution to monitor any indicators of such ending to the benefit of both parties in the partnership
Factors affecting sponsorship
There are factors that can cause sponsorship dissolution, such as farm-related factors, the influence of economy and property related factors. These factors can negatively or positively influence the duration of the sponsorship.
Economic conditions
In the context of marketing models such as sponsorship, the economic conditions of sponsor home country dictate the nature of support, hence the evidence of the impacts of the financial condition affecting the decision related to the investment. Therefore, a diverse economic situation in the sponsor mother country can affect the sponsorship duration negatively
Property associated factors
Property associated factors such as attractiveness of event locations can influence the sponsorship duration. Usually, the sponsor creates market awareness through sponsoring. Therefore the expectation is such that the consumer base of the next host country indicates the market potential will affect the sponsorship duration positively. The risk of doing business in a state with a lower variable people purchasing power will discourage any investor. Hence, the total number of consumers and their potential purchasing power together with the risk of operating a business in a particular country, may influence in the perception of the brand investors as far as the attractiveness of the market is concerned, and can eventually have a potential impact to determine the duration of the sponsorship
The market influence
The market influence of the host country can impact the duration of the sponsorship. When a country or a region host mega-events, the image and the pride shine, and the local coverage and sales increases due to coverage and awareness by the short-term interest of the big event. However, for the sponsorship to be long-term and sustainable, the market uptake has to persist after the event, otherwise, the support might not be viable. Firm-related factors such as leadership stability influence the duration of the partnership. Many farms have planned succession plans where CEO change plans are years in advance. As such, they can implement long-term organization strategies even when leadership changes occur. However, leadership change is not always predictable, and they can influence the present operations and policy. For instance, unforeseen events like death, company financial struggle or board members dissatisfaction. Change in top leadership can impact the company’s commitment towards long-term partnerships and affects the duration of the sponsorship negatively

Have you ever wanted to work from home and earn money online? If so, then you are hardly alone. A lot of people would love to find a way to start a cheap online business, but few people ever actually follow through and see their dreams fulfilled. Why is that? Well, there are two reasons.
1. Most people assume that any online business is going to be extremely complicated and hard to set up and run. This is incorrect, in fact, it can actually be an easy to do job.
2. The other reason is that people are so intimidated and feel that an online business is too difficult to start so they never learn about the different types of businesses that they can start.
So, what are your options when it comes to finding a way to work from home and earn money online? Affiliate Marketing What is affiliate marketing? Well, affiliate marketing is probably the most exciting and potentially lucrative online business opportunity that is out there. Affiliate marketing offers a number of advantages that make it a favorite type of business for anyone that wants to work from home. First, it’s inexpensive to start, all you really need is to buy a domain name, pay for web hosting, then hire someone to design your website, or do it yourself if you feel capable.
How does affiliate marketing work? The simplest explanation is that you promote the products of another company, then when a sale is made you earn a commission. For example, if you happen to know a lot about camping then you could start a website about camping. You post too it frequently and ensure that the content you provide is both search engine optimized, and also interesting and provides value to visitors to your site. Your ultimate goal here is to set yourself up as an expert to the people that visit your site. You want them to trust you and to value your opinion. Over time you should be able to attract an audience, this is when the money should start coming in. How do you turn regular visitors to your website into income? You do it by using your position as an expert in your niche to influence their buying habits. You recommend products, provide links to a company that sells these products, then you collect your commission. Because the entire world is potential customers the earning potential you have when you work as an affiliate marketer is virtually limitless.
Want A Cheap Online Business That’s Easy And Fun To Run? If you are looking for an easy online business to start up they don’t get much easier than blogging. What is a blog? A blog is a personal website where you can express your opinions, write about various subjects, and do just about anything else you want. Blogging is great because, in addition to being easy to do, you can also get into it without spending a penny. Many big companies like Google are more than happy to give you a free blog, then you can get things started. If you are serious about blogging as a way to earn money online then you should probably spend the money and purchase your own domain name. This gives you total creative control, which is important when you are running an online business. The last thing you want is to start a blog, have it become massively successful, then having the site that gave you your free blog shut you down.
While writing posts about things that interest you is simple enough, you may be wondering how this can earn you money. It earns you money through advertising revenue. Much like a television show with a big audience, companies are willing to pay to use your platform to advertise their goods and services. If you have a successful blog you can actually make quite a bit of money through advertising revenue.
You Can Work From Home And Make Money With An Online Business. Many people that end up with extremely successful online businesses first start out treating it like a part time job. Then, over time, as their revenue increases, they begin to slowly transition until it becomes their full-time career. Will this happen to you? Maybe, maybe not, but you won’t know unless you try.

Many people are still questioning how to promote their website so that they can get good traffic. Moreover, interestingly, each has its own requirements for the number of unique visits, for example, some believe that 40 visitors a day is progress, others need at least 200, and the third and 1000 seem small. However, few of them think that the more attention you have got to visitors today, the more they will come to you tomorrow. In any case, below I gave some tips on how to keep visitors on your useful site.

First of all, imagine yourself in the visitor’s place. If this is difficult for you, ask your friend (friend) to visit the website and watch every movement and question. Does he like being here? Is it easy for him to find the information he needs? Will he ever return to your website without your request? Carrying out such tests and eliminating defects (in terms of visitors) you will achieve more success than uselessly occupying top positions in the search engine.

And now about how, after all, are people interested in visiting your website? Here are a few tips (they are a bit off-track, as you might expect):

1. Quality content.

Random visitors on the site, as a rule, not much. Most often you come to those who are purposefully looking for a product, service or information on an issue of interest. The content of your site should reflect the requirements of the visitor. Therefore, it’s better to write content for them than to search for the mythical optimal keyword density.

If you offer a service or a product, the description should be made clear so that in a short period of time you can assess the solidity of the firm, its competence in the matter of interest, the quality of the product, guarantees and so on. Content should keep the visitor’s attention and encourage you to contact the company.

Content is the king, as Google employees say.

And they are right. Even if you have an entertaining website or blog, nothing can attract the attention of the user (design, number of external links or presence of keywords in the title), as content, interesting or useful.

2. Competent navigation.

The visitor has come to a page of your site, usually this is the main page. Most often, when visitors are interested, they want to look through more pages, finding additional interesting (or useful) information (content). In the case where navigation on the site is very simple, they happily “leaf through” your site, already intuitively understanding (or remembering) where what sections are located.

Who knows the social network In contact with, he certainly noticed how quickly you can move from section to section, from one friend to another and so on, no longer hesitating about where to click and where to find the information you need. Remember another site, for example, many people use mail from Yandex or Google Mail. Navigation and mail management is thought out, practically, to the smallest detail. The great success of these postal workers is in the convenience of their use (usability). What prevents you from thinking through the navigation on the site in such a way that you yourself can work with it quickly and pleasantly?

Inconvenient navigation on the site repels and if it, moreover, is not supported by quality content, then do not expect that visitors will long stay on your site or recommend it to someone of their friends.

3. Usability.

In this case, I mean the totality of those parameters that allow using the resource as efficiently as possible. For example, the presence of a large number of banners on the site, pop-ups or oddballs interferes with the interaction of the user with the resource. The same goes for unreadable text, color solutions, convenience of placing blocks and so on. About usability written many articles, they can be found, for example, in Google, be sure to read.

If you provide services, then the visitor should not be distracted from what is offered on the site. You want to detain a client, not lose it?! Therefore, do everything in your power to ensure greater usability of the site, which begins with the design development and ends with the speed of loading the pages.

Remember the sites that you visit most often. Remembered? And now think about why you come back to them again and again? What can you identify from them useful and implement in your project? These three “whales” will help you guaranteed for 1-3 months to significantly increase attendance without the use of a special SEO Expert.

You have surely heard it many times and you probably know that SEO is short for search engine optimization. However, do you really know what it is and how it can help your internet business? What it really means can be broken down into two different issues. You will have two different ways that you can use this to get traffic to your site from monthly SEO packages. SEO is when you optimize your website using keywords that the search engines will pick up on. The keywords are what tell the search engine what the webpage is about. You also need to do search engine optimization by doing some optimizing off your website. In other words, you need to start building links back to your site that will help you get your site natural web directories rankings.

So, how can you use SEO two different ways to get monthly SEO packages? Here is what you need to know about search engine optimization that will help you get traffic from search engines that you don’t have to pay for. This is where you use keywords in your website content that the search engines will pick up on. It will take time for you to get listed in the natural results but just keep putting fresh content on your site using your chosen keywords.

The more unique and fresh your content is, the faster your website will be listed. However, you don’t want to overdo it. Put new content on your website once or twice a week or even once every two weeks. You don’t want to try and rush SEO because if you do then you will quickly find that you can’t. So, take your time and make sure that you do as much SEO on your website as you can. The second way that you can use SEO for your business online is to get inbound links from other websites. Search engines think of a site as being important when it has a lot of links pointing back to it from other people’s websites. So, you want to make sure that you get as many links pointing back to your site as you can. In this way you can get the most from this search engine optimization method.

By the time you have found monthly SEO packages to do your marketing campaign and you may be ready to sign the contract. Make sure you read it carefully, being fully sure that it is what you want. Taking the extra half an hour to look at all of the fine print may just save a headache in the future. It’s time to go home from work, and at the end of the day you should feel good about being on the way to the top of the search results.

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.