#and i only spent half the time i did last run on this!! 78 hr personal best omgg <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[skrunksthatwunk]

AGGGHGJJZJJZJZHZGZJZMKKCJJXJXJ

(^^ just finished yakuza 0 for the second time)

[because-its-important]

what’s the most annoying question to ask a nun* in 1967?

tl;dr - In 1967, a very long survey was administered to nearly 140,000 American women in Catholic ministry. I wrote this script, which makes the survey data work-ready and satisfies a very silly initial inquiry: Which survey question did the sisters find most annoying?

* The study participants are never referred to as nuns, so I kind of suspect that not all sisters are nuns, but I couldn't find a definitive answer about this during a brief search. 'Nun' seemed like an efficient shorthand for purposes of an already long title, but if this is wrong please holler at me!

During my first week at Recurse I made a quick game using a new language and a new toolset. Making a game on my own had been a long-running item on my list of arbitrary-but-personally-meaningful goals, so being able to cross it off felt pretty good! 

Another such goal I’ve had for a while goes something like this: “Develop the skills to be able to find a compelling data set, ask some questions, and share the results.” As such, I spent last week familiarizing myself with Python 🐍, selecting a fun dataset, prepping it for analysis, and indulging my curiosity.

the process

On recommendation from Robert Schuessler, another Recurser in my batch, I read through the first ten chapters in Python Crash Course and did the data analysis project. This section takes you through comparing time series data using weather reports for two different locations, then through plotting country populations on a world map.

During data analysis study group, Robert suggested that we find a few datasets and write scripts to get them ready to work with as a sample starter-pack for the group. Jeremy Singer-Vines’ collection of esoteric datasets, Data Is Plural, came to mind immediately. I was super excited to finally have an excuse to pour through it and eagerly set about picking a real mixed bag of 6 different data sets.

One of those datasets was The Sister Survey, a huge, one-of-its-kind collection of data on the opinions of American Catholic sisters about religious life. When I read the first question, I was hooked. 

“It seems to me that all our concepts of God and His activity are to some degree historically and culturally conditioned, and therefore we must always be open to new ways of approaching Him.” 

I decided I wanted to start with this survey and spend enough time with it to answer at least one easy question. A quick skim of the Questions and Responses file showed that of the multiple choice answer options, a recurring one was: “The statement is so annoying to me that I cannot answer.” 

I thought this was a pretty funny option, especially given that participants were already tolerant enough to take such an enormous survey! How many questions can one answer before any question is too annoying to answer? 🤔 I decided it’d be fairly simple to find the most annoying question, so I started there. 

I discovered pretty quickly that while the survey responses are in a large yet blessedly simple csv, the file with the question and answers key is just a big ole plain text. My solution was to regex through every line in the txt file and build out a survey_key dict that holds the question text and another dict of the set of possible answers for each question. This works pretty well, though I’ve spotted at least one instance where the txt file is inconsistently formatted and therefore breaks answer retrieval.

Next, I ran over each question in the survey, counted how many responses include the phrase “so annoying” and selected the question with the highest count of matching responses.

the most annoying question

Turns out it’s this one! The survey asks participants to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the following statement:

“Christian virginity goes all the way along a road on which marriage stops half way.”

3702 sisters (3%) responded that they found the statement too annoying to answer. The most popular answer was No at 56% of respondents. 

I’m not really sure how to interpret this question! So far I have two running theories about the responses:

The survey participants were also confused and boy, being confused is annoying!

The sisters generally weren’t down for claiming superiority over other women on the basis of their marital-sexual status.

Both of these interpretations align suspiciously well with my own opinions on the matter, though, so, ymmv.

9x speed improvement in one lil refactor

The first time I ran a working version of the full script it took around 27 minutes. 

I didn’t (still don’t) have the experience to know if this is fast or slow for the size of the dataset, but I did figure that it was worth making at least one attempt to speed up. Half an hour is a long time to wait for a punchline!

As you can see in this commit, I originally had a function called unify that rewrote the answers in the survey from the floats which they'd initially been stored as, to plain text returned from the survey_key. I figured that it made sense to build a dataframe with the complete info, then perform my queries against that dataframe alone. 

However, the script was spending over 80% of its time in this function, which I knew from aggressively outputting the script’s progress and timing it. I also knew that I didn’t strictly need to be doing any answer rewriting at all. So, I spent a little while refactoring find_the_most_annoying_question to use a new function, get_answer_text, which returns the descriptive answer text when passed the answer key and its question. This shaved 9 lines (roughly 12%) off my entire script.

Upon running the script post-refactor, I knew right away that this approach was much, much faster - but I still wasn’t prepared when it finished after only 3 minutes! And since I knew between one and two of those minutes were spent downloading the initial csv alone, that meant I’d effectively neutralized the most egregious time hog in the script. 👍

I still don’t know exactly why this is so much more efficient. The best explanation I have right now is “welp, writing data must be much more expensive than comparing it!” Perhaps this Nand2Tetris course I’ll be starting this week will help me better articulate these sorts of things.

flourishes 💚💛💜

Working on a script that takes forever to run foments at least two desires:

to know what the script is doing Right Now

to spruce the place up a bit

I added an otherwise unnecessary index while running over all the questions in the survey so that I could use it to cycle through a small set of characters. Last week I wrote in my mini-RC blog, "Find out wtf modulo is good for." Well, well, well.

Here’s what my script looks like when it’s iterating over each question in the survey:

I justified my vanity with the (true!) fact that it is easier to work in a friendly-feeling environment.

Plus, this was good excuse to play with constructing emojis dynamically. I thought I’d find a rainbow of hearts with sequential unicode ids, but it turns out that ❤️ 💙 and 🖤 all have very different values. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the data set

One of the central joys of working with this dataset has been having cause to learn some history that I’d otherwise never be exposed to. Here’s a rundown of some interesting things I learned:

This dataset was only made accessible in October this year. The effort to digitize and publicly release The Sister Survey was spearheaded by Helen Hockx-Yu, Notre Dame’s Program Manager for Digital Product Access and Dissemination, and Charles Lamb, a senior archivist at Notre Dame. After attending one of her forums on digital preservation, Lamb approached Hockx-Yu with a dataset he thought “would generate enormous scholarly interest but was not publicly accessible.”

Previously, the data had been stored on “21 magnetic tapes dating from 1966 to 1990” (Ibid) and an enormous amount of work went into making it usable. This included both transferring the raw data from the tapes, but also deciphering it once it’d been translated into a digital form.

The timing of the original survey in 1967 was not arbitrary: it was a response to the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II). Vatican II was a Big Deal! Half a century later, it remains the most recent Catholic council of its magnitude. For example, before Vatican II, mass was delivered in Latin by a priest who faced away from his congregation and Catholics were forbidden from attending Protestant services or reading from a Protestant Bible. Vatican II decreed that mass should be more participatory and conducted in the vernacular, that women should be allowed into roles as “readers, lectors, and Eucharistic ministers,” and that the Jewish people should be considered as “brothers and sisters under the same God” (Ibid).

The survey’s author, Marie Augusta Neal, SND, dedicated her life of scholarship towards studying the “sources of values and attitudes towards change” (Ibid)  among religious figures. A primary criticism of the survey was that Neal’s questions were leading, and in particular, leading respondents towards greater political activation. ✊

As someone with next to zero conception of religious history, working with this dataset was a way to expand my knowledge in a few directons all at once. Pretty pumped to keep developing my working-with-data skills.

[shirlleycoyle]

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell

Jeffrey Johnson was on one continuous job search, more or less, for 12 years.

After the recession shuttered the textbook publisher where he was putting his bachelor’s degree in history to use, Johnson worked office temp jobs and delivered packages, on an Uber-like gig basis, for Amazon and a medical testing company around his native Baltimore. He went back to school for a masters in screenwriting and then a law degree. Throughout, he scrolled through sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter looking for better, more stable work—or just something to tide him over between semesters.

About two years ago, he started getting emails asking him to take online “assessments” for jobs after he applied. Some were tests of basic office skills, like spreadsheet use and typing. Others were for legal knowledge. Some were dippy personality tests. At first, Johnson was excited. “I thought it meant I’d gotten past a gatekeeper of some kind and was in the running,” he said.

Then the tests came quicker and more frequently. One in four jobs had an assessment attached, he estimates. He got emails prompting him to take an online test seconds after he submitted an application, a sure sign no human had reviewed his résumé. Some were repeats of tests he’d already taken.

He found them demeaning. “You’re kind of being a jackass by making me prove, repeatedly, that I can type when I have two writing-heavy advanced degrees,” Johnson said, “and you are not willing to even have someone at your firm look at my résumé to see that.”

Johnson also did phone interviews with an Alexa-like automated system. For one job, he was asked to make a one-sided video “interview” of himself answering a list of company-provided questions into a webcam for hiring managers to view at their convenience. Or maybe an algorithm would scan the video and give him a score based on vocal and facial cues, as more than 100 employers are now doing with software from companies like HireVue .

Until he started as a legal writer for FreeAdvice.com last month, Johnson, 36, said he was at potential employers’ whims. “I can’t imagine I’d move to the next round if I didn’t do what they said,” he told Motherboard.

Companies are increasingly using automated systems to select who gets ahead and who gets eliminated from pools of applicants. For jobseekers, this can mean a series of bizarre, time-consuming tasks demanded by companies who have not shown any meaningful consideration of them.

“Obviously, in our society time is money,” said Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University and author of The Quantified Worker. “So if you are asking [job applicants] to spend so much time on an application then you are transferring the labor your HR department would be doing to the applicant, so it becomes an ethical issue.”

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software has long been used by high-end firms searching for executives and HR managers at large corporations that receive thousands of applications. The systems are increasingly being adopted in various sectors of the labor market. ATS vendor iCIMS claims it revamped Footlocker’s process for hiring sales associates, and JazzHR brags that it helps a regional Pittsburgh construction company hire all its staff, including interns. (JazzHR and iCIMS both declined to comment for this story.)

Beating the Bots

Maneuvering around algorithmic gatekeepers to reach an actual person with a say in hiring has become a crucial skill, even if the tasks involved feel duplicitous and absurd. ATS software can also enable a company to discriminate, possibly unwittingly, based on bias-informed data and culling of certain psychological traits.

Lynne Williams, a Philadelphia-area career advisor, holds a seminar called “Beating the Applicant Tracking System.” Every time, she braces for a wave of anger from the audience. “I can feel their blood pressure rise when I tell them what they are doing wrong,” she said.

Their most important task, she tells crowds of jobseekers, is to parrot keywords from job descriptions. The most basic elimination function of most ATS software is searching résumés and cover letters for keywords. Many systems can’t—or don’t bother to—distinguish synonyms, like “manager” and “supervisor,” so she says to rewrite résumés with each application, mindlessly copying words from the job description. Countless online guides for “beating the bots” recommend the same.

People find this task frustrating and are indignant over its irrelevance to their fitness for the job, Williams said. Others fume about all the time spent carefully crafting applications that were probably never seen by a human.

Jack Wei, a director of product marketing for the job site SmartRecruiters, said that “the moment a candidate applies [for a posted job], a ‘smart profile’ scrapes résumé info into a digital portfolio by extracting keywords.” The employer then sees an automatically generated score, from 1 to 5, of their apparent fitness for the job. The platform distinguishes synonyms and word variances when making this score, but the employer can search using any narrow phrase or word they choose, Wei said.

According to data from the job site Glassdoor, 250 people apply to the average corporate job. Many ATS vendors sell their products on the suggestion that hiring managers are overwhelmed by applicants. When almost half of Americans work low-wage jobs, a good job of any kind will generate a long line of hopefuls, despite the official government unemployment rate being at a 10-year low of 3.5 percent.

ATS technology encourages applicants to find ways to cut in line, said Anjunwa. She has heard stories of people inserting common keywords in small white font on their PDF résumés, visible only to bots, to sneak into the next tier of candidates.

Applicants can also use services to help them beat the algorithms, like the website Jobscan, which will scramble words from a job listing into their customers’ résumés for $49.95 a month.

Such tricks don’t show relevant job skills, but perhaps vital job-hunting ones, Anjunwa said. “People see that only people who are savvy get jobs,” she said, “and the others get shut out.”

How Often Does the Following Statement Describe You at Work?

The next round of the screening process is often an assessment test. Such tests have been around for decades, but ATS software has made it easy to deliver them automatically to an applicant’s inbox.

Indeed, the world’s most visited job site, has been pushing assessments in recent TV advertising. The company offers employers online tests for basic aptitudes, like attention to detail and memorization and recall; job-specific skills, like bookkeeping and first aid; and more abstract competencies, like critical thinking and problem solving.

Most take about 30 minutes. They still piss off jobseekers.

“I've been finding a lot of online assessments that come with the job applications I file, wrote a poster on the jobs subreddit. Every time I see one of those, I immediately cringe. I HATE THEM.”

“They're usually very long … and most of the questions I just. Can't. Answer," they added. "For example, a question such as ‘I prefer to work in team rather than alone’ completely depends on the situation and the kind of job I’m doing.”

Indeed declined an interview but told Motherboard in a statement that “Indeed's free Assessment tool is not a burden to job seekers, it helps job seekers demonstrate their full capabilities to prospective employers,” and that the tests “help job seekers stand out based on their skills instead of their previous titles, employers, or their highest level of formal education.”

Smaller companies also provide assessments, for a fee. Atlanta-based Berke offers both aptitude and personality tests. Neil Morelli, PhD, an organizational psychologist and vice president of product and assessment, said some of the applicant outrage can “come from older assessments that last an hour or two and they can feel clinical.” He added, “These large battery assessments are being replaced by more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable assessments.”

Morelli admits “enjoyable” is relative in this context, but said a goal of his industry is to produce tests that feel game-like but still convey useful information about a candidate.

The Berke Marketing Free Personality Assessment is a 78-question sample test, where every question is the same: “How often does the following statement describe you at work?” Start it and then comes a flood of phrases and adjectives: “lively,” “disciplined,” “leader,” “angry,” “fearless,” “puts others at ease,” “soft hearted,” etc. The test-taker picks one of four options: “almost always,” “often,” “sometimes,” or “rarely.” Morelli said some of the terms in a test are virtual synonyms to suss out applicants trying to game it. Obviously, one would hesitate to tell a potential employer they are “often” “angry” at work and “rarely” “put others at ease,” even if true.

The assessment tests applicants on psychology’s “big five” personality traits of extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Some managers consider these traits for even minimum-wage work.

Why Robots Don’t Think Women Can Handle a Job at Amazon

In 2012, Kyle Behm took a break from university to deal with manic depressive disorder. He applied online for a low-wage job at a Kroger grocery store near Atlanta. A friend who worked there told Behm he didn’t get hired because of the results of a personality test. His father, an attorney, filed suit against Kroger and five other companies that tasked Behm with big-five personality tests for a low-paying job, alleging they illegally screened for mental illness. Sadly, Behm ended his life last year before the case was adjudicated.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits “employment tests that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities” unless necessary for the job.

Morelli said that Berke’s personality assessment is ADA compliant because it “does not meet the criteria for being a medical examination” and “is not invasive or used to infer mental health.” But asking a candidate if they are “fearless” or “comfortable with others” may produce results indicating a condition like depression or social anxiety disorder.

Some advanced ATS have “learned” bias by incorporating variables that favored people who are already advantaged. Amazon abandoned its development of an AI-based hiring process when the predictive models favored male candidates. The system was relying on résumés submitted to the company over ten years, and because of the prevalence of men in tech jobs, the system began to downgrade résumés that included all-women’s colleges or female-indicating phrases like “women’s chess club.”

The makers of more advanced applicant tracking systems are acutely aware of the bias problem, but are not certain of a solution.

Arya is a “recruiting platform” that uses predictive analytics to identify and classify job candidates. Madhu Modugu, the CEO and founder of its parent company, feels assessment tests are a poor indicator of job performance, and claims that Arya’s platform avoids placing a heavy time burden on applicants.

“[Arya] would look at my history and my past, what kind of organizations and what kind of cultures you are exposed to,” said Modugu. The system would then match the candidate against a composite profile of employees “who are the high performers in the culture of the company.” If a company can’t provide that information, Arya offers its own psycho-metric profile of who does well in the jobs that its customers are looking to fill.

The term “culture” can have some problematic connotations when applied to who is suited for a job. Modugu insists Arya measures the work culture of past employers compared to that of the prospective employer.

But he said he is aware of problems like the one that plagued Amazon: If the system is fed data that shows white males have been the “best” employees—because prejudice allowed them into those roles more easily—it will conclude that white males are the “best” candidates. “The AI has interpreted the data correctly,” said Modogu, “but it has generated biased results because the information is biased.”

The solution is not simple, he said. Developers need to work out systems that can better fight bias and HR managers need to take active steps to increase recruitment from non-traditional pools.

On top of issue of discrimination, the emphasis on data in recruiting can make people feel stuck in a role. Data points come from past experience, and neglect factors like ideas, ambition and understanding of an industry.

Nick Thorch once worked in Microsoft’s inside sales division, selling the company’s products to other large businesses. He wanted to transition to product management. After spending time fielding customer complaints about Windows Vista, he felt he had insight into how software should be developed. He applied for thousands of product manager jobs in Silicon Valley.

“The only time a recruiter was interested in me was for another inside sales position, even if my cover letter, résumé and career objective statement strongly supported a range of business roles,” Thorch said. “ATS mentality keeps people pigeonholed in their past, rather than what they feel inspired to do.”

SmartRecruiter’s Wei saidthat the effect of ATS on narrowing career pathways presents a “good question” for the industry.

“On a technological level alone, there is only so much alone you can do,” he said. Recruiters need to identify people who might be viable for a career change. “You lead with people and process first, but with technology alone you can’t have lasting change.”

Asking Some Hard Questions

When it debuted in 2013, HireVue’s AI analysis of video interviews seemed like an endgame for job application automation. A candidate answers questions to a silent webcam and uploads a video. A program then scans their facial features, word choices and vocal indicators to determine—through some murky, trademarked science—if they should advance to the next round. The Utah-based company once had $93 million in venture capital and more than 600 clients, including Goldman Sachs and Hilton.

Last year, artificial intelligence scientists called HireVue’s methods “pseudoscience” and “profoundly disturbing” in a Washington Post article, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging it violates jobseekers’ privacy through facial recognition.

Cornell’s Ajunwa said AI analysis of mannerisms presents some of the worst potential for discrimination in the labor market. The process would be a roadblock for people on the autism spectrum and for many from foreign countries, as acceptability would doubtlessly hinge on neurotypical, American mannerisms. “What if your culture says not smiling is respectful?” she asked. “There are many cultures where people do not laugh and smile like Americans do.”

HireVue did not respond to a request for comment. Its website no longer touts AI analysis of videos as a service. But it is one of several companies that gather self-made recordings from job applicants answering interview questions. The applicants upload them for a manager to, perhaps, view at their convenience in another new task in the automated application process. VidCruiter and Modern Hire, two other prominent video interview companies, also declined Motherboard’s requests for an interview.

“It’s just your typical interview questions like, ‘What’s a time when you failed at work?’” said Jeffrey Johnson. He recalls a herky-jerky system that would beep to prompt him to stop mid-answer.

He’s not sure if an AI or a person looked at his video. He submitted it on a Friday and was rejected for the job the next Sunday.

VidCruiter’s website describes the appeal of having a limitless library of candidate interviews, on tap. In a video, a “senior recruiter,” likely an actress, complains of “spending eight hours doing phone interviews” and “pulling [her] hair out” over the lousy candidates. She then describes “a system that will allow you to ask an unlimited number of candidates as many questions as you want.”

“I’m doing something else while the system is interviewing my candidates,” she says with a smile.

The message is clear: She’s offloaded much of her work to someone else.

Ajunwa said automated systems will probably continue to amass between jobs and jobseekers. “I think that’s the way it’s going to advance,” she said. “Companies have come to count on it.” She has called for mandated auditing of algorithmic systems to ensure against “bias in, bias out” preferences like the ones that affected Amazon.

Should job applicants rebel? Should they refuse to take online assessments or to upload video faux interviews or engage the next faceless gatekeeper?

She encourages candidates to take a principled stand if they are in a position to do so, if they are already employed or have good prospects. Everyone should monitor tests that “echo mental health” or show other signs of bias, she said. But she doesn’t know where exactly to draw the line to refuse to comply with the process.

“That’s a tough question,” she said, “because if you need the job, you need the job.”

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[businessthreesixfive-blog]

Inspirational Entrepreneur: Mila McManus, MD .

When Dr. Mila McManus became a medical physician, she assumed she would discover how to treat the many persistent conditions that had pestered her given that youth. Rather, by the end of her residency, she discovered herself on 12 prescription drugs and feeling worse than ever. When she found functional medicine, she discovered real assistance for herself and for her clients. Now, Mila runs The Woodlands Institute for Health & & Health, where she empowers her clients with education and functional, holistic therapy for improving their health. Her interview influences us to concentrate on our existing clients, clients, and database to help support our referral systems.

What inspired you to end up being a holistic business owner?

I was really sickly my entire life and thought I would find out how to treat my disorders (chronic allergies, eczema, constipation, tiredness, sleeping disorders, anxiety, anxiety, acne, PMS, headaches, brain fog and being obese, to name a few) by becoming a doctor. Young boy was I wrong. I only learned how to band-aid more signs with more prescription drugs. By the time I ended up residency, I was on at least 12 prescription medications and had actually never ever felt even worse, or weighed more, in my life! And when I remained in my first year of personal practice, I saw a troubling trend in the variety of clients presenting with comparable grievances and realized I had absolutely nothing to use however to prescribe medications to band-aid their ailments. This is when I discovered functional medicine, and my health and future were forever altered. It is definitely terrible how damaged our standard medical system is today. In all my years leading up to finding holistic medicine, not one time did any medical professional, instructor, or coworker suggest that fast food, Cheetos, and canned tuna might be the root of my issues.

Tell us about your organisation.

The Woodlands Institute for Health & & Health is a location of recovery and learning. I desire to make certain my clients are educated about their health, as well as nutrition and what it requires to accomplish and preserve optimal health. While we do provide bio-identical hormone treatment and supplements, we lean heavily on attention to gut health and every aspect of nutrition. My nutritional expert on staff and I are licensed SPACES practitioners. Our healthcare suppliers specialize in adrenal and thyroid dysfunction and deal with males, women, and children for practically every sign and condition one can picture. Among our most recent technologies is ONDAMED, a PEMF gadget that has been an extraordinary benefit to our patients.

How would you describe your present organisation model?

I have 2 PAs who deal with me and all of us see all patients. I see our new clients for initial visit the majority of the time. A brand-new client invests about 3 hours at our office for the preliminary assessment. Prior to the appointment, the patient completes a 17-page medical history questionnaire electronically which I evaluate prior to the appointment. Labs are bought, the level of which depends upon the program the individual selected and the symptoms she or he has. Patients are followed carefully by medical personnel throughout the first 6 weeks while they are going through a 4-week clean, learning how to eat healthfully, beginning a regimen of vitamins and supplements and, if relevant, bio-identical hormones. We likewise offer virtual consultations after the preliminary go to. We do not currently offer a subscription type of program, however it's being thought about. We do not contract with insurance business, as it's impossible to achieve what we require to do with, and for, our clients with our hands connected by insurance coverage agreements.

Can you share any methods you've discovered to be especially effective for growing your customer base?

Our best advertising is word of mouth, without a doubt. We've utilized simply about every technique you can think about for marketing, such as pay-per-click ads, facebook advertisements, facebook page with posts, website material, print ads, commercials, and so on. When we recognized that direct referrals were really driving our growth, we redirected some marketing funds towards more opportunities to enhance client service and experience with more chances to communicate with our database.

What are some of the most significant difficulties you have faced in running your business?

Where do I begin? Time management has been very challenging. I never ever recognized entering that I would invest half my time on the organisation side and half my time on client care. If I had actually known this ahead of time, I would have gotten an MBA to opt for my MD prior to opening a solo practice.

How have you get rid of those challenges?

It's a constant work in progress. I'm not the very best delegator, however improving at it. I have actually likewise learned to block my schedule far beforehand to have a day off here or there, and plan my conferences early so I can block my schedule prior to it's complete.

What were a few of the first mistakes you made that you would tell a brand-new holistic entrepreneur to avoid?

I have actually worked with people quickly for many years out of desperation. I've found out the tough way that it is crucial to completely talk to prospects, have them meet other employee, do thorough background checks, and screen them with personality tests. Hiring the incorrect individuals will cost a lot in the long run since of time spent dealing with drama in the workplace.

What has been the very best piece of suggestions you've received as an entrepreneur?

Being told to do what I want and what I think is right, and not fret about detractors informing me that it can't be done or that I would be ill-advised to leave my household medication practice and insurance contracts behind.

What is your early morning regimen?

I wake up very early, typically 4:30 am, make a cup of coffee, sometimes bullet evidence, and take a handful of turmeric capsules. I get positioned in my comfy chair with my laptop and lap desk, and get to work. This consists of reacting to many e-mails, checking out essential short articles, reviewing charts for the clients I'll be seeing for the day, dealing with monthly newsletter, and great deals of back and forth with my practice administrator about whatever from HR issues to marketing and financials. At 6:30, my other half and I choose our early morning walk/jog session. Upon our return, it's time to shower and dress for work. I listen to academic podcasts throughout this time, and take a 10-15 min break someplace in there to read. Then I head to work and typically show up 8:30 -9.

What is your preferred indulgence?

A number of squares of 78% dark chocolate with some blended nuts and fresh berries, and a glass of cabernet.

Most exotic thing you've ever eaten?

Oh boy, I want I had an amazing answer. Snake gourds!

Many remarkable place you've ever checked out?

I can select only one? The Greenbriar in West Virginia

Last book you read?

Why isn't my Brain Working? By Dr Kharrazian. Terrific book! I advise it to all of my clients.

If you might only have one type of food for the rest of your life, it would be ...

If health is unimportant, perhaps pork-- ribs, bacon, carnitas. If you're asking what type of food in the functional medication healthy world, then avocados.

What is your go-to breakfast?

2 poached eggs with sautéed spinach or baked asparagus. If you would like to know what I want I were consuming for breakfast every day, it would probably be a honey bun with bacon. hahaha

What do you love most about being a business owner?