#and now having to do my research project basically 100% by myself because my advisor ‘‘can’t’’ advise me

[strohller27]

.

[essie-essex]

anybody here remember night blogging??

You know thinking back on how I would do things differently, I would probably have gone to another school for college. I had assumed that you were required to write a thesis at every school to graduate, and at my school we had I.S. (Independent Study), which was kind of a final 100 page paper + project that we had to do our senior year, in addition to taking classes. But my school offered me the most money, and everyone I talked to said that it was a good school. I remember my English teacher being surprised that I got in. I wasn’t the best student, but during my senior year I started to be more engaged and pay attention in class. I think part of it was that my family (me and my mom lol) hosted a Japanese exchange student that year. She stayed for 10 months and I loved having someone at the house to do things with, and I think having her around really helped me out a lot with feeling less lonely. So, my grades improved (with the exception of math, I actually did a lot worse in math than usual despite studying every night for hours because my teacher was horrible, but that’s another story...) and for the most part I did a lot better academically. Also, I started running, lost weight, and felt generally better about myself (I thought that finally after all those years of depression, things were finally getting better, and I was stronger, and blah blah blah).

When I was accepted by a university, I was so excited, especially since my advisor told me I wouldn’t get into college (because of that awful math class--like honestly that year would have been so much better if I had had any of the other math teachers who could actually teach, and I came to my advisor meeting thinking that I was doing so much better with my grades than usual, like I literally had A’s in everything except for math, in which I had an F, and I thought she would ask me about what was happening in math and offer help, like seriously who sees a bunch of A’s and one F and thinks “this student clearly isn’t applying herself” and not “clearly this student needs some help with this one subject,” but no she said “I just don’t know what to do with you. At this rate, you’re not going to get into college.” And I just remember being so upset especially since I went in there without any emotional armor like I would have put up if I actually had really bad grades and was expecting to hear about it, but right that’s another story, so anyway... )

My problems started after I got back from Japan. Before that, while I did still have my moments of depression, especially when dealing with my boyfriend who had his own share of mood problems which tended to be a bit more high key than mine, it was a lot better than it was in high school. I loved my major, I had friends who actually appreciated my presence, and, for the first time in my life, I felt hopeful about the future. I remember when I was taking the bus back to my city after visiting my boyfriend and one of my friends, and I realized that for the first time I just felt like a normal person. I didn’t feel like some weird defective mistake that clearly didn’t belong in this world.

Then I went to Japan. And I fucking loved it, which is why I was so sad to leave. I’m usually a really quiet person, and in order to be outgoing I have to completely turn off my filter, which, I realize, can make me sort of obnoxious. It worked for me at first. I made several friends in different groups so I could have different options and be able to go out with friends more often.

My school only allowed us to study abroad for one semester. So, I had 4 months to do everything I wanted to do there. Like I’m not an energetic person at all, but basically I told myself “I’ll sleep when I’m back in the US, but right now I’m in fucking Japan and I need to do everything.” But basically everyone else was staying for the entire school year, so they weren’t in a rush to do and see things like I was. My no filter self helped me make friends, so I would have different groups to go out and do things with (like I changed my personality so much that when I told one of my dorm mates that I liked to play videogames, she said that I didn’t “seem like the type” who would do that. Like she was genuinely surprised.) Public transportation and the safety of Japan made it easier for me to be more independent than I was in the US. My college was in a small town, so while I was more independent there than at home (where if I so much as opened the front door, my mom would come rushing downstairs wondering where I was going/what I was doing/why was I going outside) I was still basically confined to one or two streets in the area. In Japan, I could just get on the train and go. Plus when you’re a foreigner you sometimes get random people talking to you on the streets and can even meet new people since you stand out. I went out to clubs at least once every weekend, and sometimes even twice (the advantage of having more than one group of friends). I didn’t sleep too much and always wanted to be out doing things since I just didn’t have a lot of time. I met guys, went out on dates and everything, had cultural experiences, and I mostly just didn’t care about any danger because I was in Japan and I basically had no plan after that and had done the one thing I really wanted to do (which was travel to Japan). The attitude was also brought on by me not giving much of shit about my studies because I was so angry and disappointed for not getting a placement in a program in which basically everyone who applied would get accepted. It was especially annoying because it allowed me to get experience in participant-observation while volunteering at a place that interested me, but most people who did the program were just doing it for fun, like there were a lot of various sciencey majors plus at least one math major, and I was just really disappointed. Luckily this attitude I adopted didn’t affect my grades too much, since most of the classes were pretty easy.

So, getting back to the point of all of this, I realize that the real problem was my shitty attitude, and I should have made the most out of my four months and then come back to “the real world,” as my mother put it, and be the same person I was before. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. I have never been popular before, and having so many people not see my weird defective self was so exhilarating to me. For once I wasn’t the weird quiet girl. For once I could be independent. But then I was back to the small college town, and I wanted to go out and do things, I wanted to go to parties on the weekends. But my friends would mostly stay in and watch movies on the weekends. Like we went to the occasional party or did the usual hang out together and drink thing, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t be the same person I had been for the previous four months, and I didn’t take it well.

I had never had the kind of depression where I had brain fog. While I was still depressed in middle and high school, I could still do things like read books or write song lyrics. But brain fog made it impossible for me to get anything done. Like I could read a page and not know anything about what I read. I’d be stuck reading the same sentences over and over. When I hung out with my friends, I could muster up some energy, since I would cling to anything that brought me even a bit of joy, but mostly I just did nothing. I had this tiny room at the back of the house (we were a volunteer house and went to the local animal shelter every week) and I never even unpacked my clothes. Everything was in bags or boxes or in a clothing pile somewhere. I would have dreams of being back in Japan and wake up so disappointed. It was especially upsetting to think about all the people I knew in Japan, since they still were there. I tried checking in on people to see how they were doing, but--as is usual--they didn’t miss me nearly as much as I missed them. And I felt the same way about my friends at college too. I was back to just being tolerated instead of wanted. I always let them have their way and yielded to their decisions and just tried to keep my group of friends but I think a good number of them stopped liking me.

ANYWAY, getting to the point. I got on meds over the summer and felt kind of better. I didn’t having nearly as much brain fog. I was ready to do my IS and graduate, and then things went downhill again. My friends used to automatically include me in things, but now I always had to check in with them to see if they were doing anything. I started my IS, joined a local Pagan group to do my research, and started reading books to use as sources. My IS advisor was my favorite professor, but when I told her that I was having trouble doing everything because of my depression, she said “but you took care of that, right?” Like the meds I was on were supposed to fix everything. I just straight up never went back to her office. I stopped going to classes. I purposely avoided meal times and went to get food at times when most people were in classes. I stopped everything.

I feel like if I had gone to a different school, I might have been able to power through the year and finish my classes. Maybe. Or maybe not. I don’t know. This school truly felt like it was the best option though. They offered me the most money, and I was able to visit and write an essay while I was there to get an even better scholarship. I remember when I was offered a merit scholarship for the first time (for one of the schools I didn’t choose to go to) and I called my dad and told him they were offering me some money. He just thought it would be a few hundred dollars maybe, but when I told him $11,000 he was so surprised and was speechless. Like there was just silence for a few seconds for him to process it. The school I went to offered me $14,000 a year, and the scholarship I applied for and went there to write the essay for, brought the amount up to $18,000 (Sadly, this didn’t even cover half of the yearly tuition). It seemed like the best choice, even if they didn’t offer Japanese, I figured I could still learn on my own, and I didn’t realize that their IS program was so unique. If I had gone to any of the other schools, especially one of the bigger ones, I wonder if I would have made more friends. There would have been much more to do there. And all I would have to do was take classes and not be horribly stressed out by IS. Even if I was depressed toward the end of it, all I had to do was pass. Like even though I got good grades for the first two years, I would just need to pass the classes in the last two years to graduate. I got really off topic here I know. This is mostly just a stream of consciousness thing to get my thoughts out. And putting it here has probably stopped me from going into the kind of depressive rant that I usually go into when I write about my life.

Anyways, I’m not editing this or anything. I meant to write this while letting the Sims 4 load since it takes a while with the 938347283333 mods I have, but I forgot to actually start it, whoops!

tl;dr started writing this post meaning to talk about my college and senior IS, ended up having one of those sitcom clip episodes but in writing.

Also fuck my senior year high school math teacher, holy shit she was horrible at teaching

[supernoondles]

2019

The last day of 2019 was also the day I fainted for the first time--a fitting metaphor for the year.

2019 was overall very emotionally taxing. This year was emotionally defined by falling intensely, deeply in love with someone (who is a very private person so I will try to be vague to respect that) and being in a lot of pain because of situations mostly outside of our control. There were a lot of intensely joyous moments, and a lot of intensely sad ones. Throughout it all I wish I had communicated better. I also made some bad decisions with another person I really loved and cared about that resulted in us growing apart. Do I think I grew from the experiences? For sure. Do I wish I could have come upon these realizations through a different course of action? Also yes. Am I fully healed from the experiences? Not really, but I've been getting better.

2019 was also very bad in terms of research. It was the 2nd year of my PhD. After I submitted my rotation project I basically felt stuck in the swamp of my advisors rejecting new project ideas for like literally half a year. This, combined with my high emotional volatility (partially due to starting birth control), made me really sad, unmotivated, and susceptible to self-blame. I definitely had high expectations for myself and became frustrated at my lack of progress and felt a lot of pressure from myself to get my shit together. I also felt incredibly bad after most advisor meetings and not supported by one of them to the point where I had to have a conversation with him about the lack of support (which was very scary)! Things started picking up, though, near the end of the year. I published a paper in collaboration with a former post-doc/now professor elsewhere whom I learned a lot from, and started finally building out another system. I also started mentoring an undergrad who at some point told me I helped him feel like he had something important to say and belong at Stanford for the first time and those words meant a lot to me. I think I'm continuing to refine what I value as research contributions and increasingly think about what it means to build systems that aren't used outside of the lab to satisfy the annual conference publishing cycle. I'm also starting to feel the pressure of doing work that follows a narrative rather than random projects that interest me.

Oh, I guess in terms of "program requirements," I did finish taking required classes, passed qualifying exams, and got a master's degree. But honestly those weren't hard at all nor do I think are externally valued in the larger research community, so I don't really celebrate them as accomplishments beyond surface level.

In 2019 I saw two different therapists. The first one was awful, I think directly influenced some of my bad decisions, and also didn't respect my gender identity??? The second one is a lot better and I'm grateful to see her, even if 90% of our sessions are just talking about my relationship (romantic/advisor) issues, which is something I want to move away from in the future. But I also feel incredibly privileged when relationship issues are the primary stressors in my life--I am grateful I feel equipped to handle other crap, like deadlines, and don't have to worry about my own health.

Those were the main things that have colored this year. We'll now move into the section of this post where I go through my photos to jog my memory of other events.

New years started a tradition of getting dim sum with Jasper, Matthew, and Michelle dear to my heart. My high school friend was also visiting and we all attended a really awesome new year's eve party. I was also going on a lot of dates and having a lot of good sex, which made me really happy, and at the same time crying all the time at work. In February I received probably the best gift anyone has ever given me and saw Panic! at the Disco, which I said in an end of the year group meeting was a good memory of my year (it was, to relive my scene days!). In March I roadtripped both to Marin (which I had never to been before, despite all my years in the bay) and LA for Wondercon; it was nice to both see high school friends and go on a trip with the boo. In April I went on a hike with my office which was probably the start of us all becoming closer (we are the social office in the wing now, which I take pride in! Also we draw a lot of Pokemon which warms my heart). In May I went to CHI in Glasgow and then to Paris afterward, and the entire experience was very weird and bad and also too many flights were canceled and/or missed and I vowed to not return to Europe for a while, but man do I love the noodles at Trois Fois plus de Piment. In June we hosted a double apartment party with my downstairs neighbors (side note: I am really appreciative of the place I live in, for the community, convenience, and large-ass space and will be really sad to be kicked out fall 2020) and I started a friendship important to me. I cat-sat for my advisor (the one who doesn't make me feel bad) twice. I went to Redwood State Park with my family and hosted a summer solstice celebration. Over the summer a friend I met in Paris back in 2017 moved in with me. I had a much needed escape from the bay to Seattle where I was reminded how abundant the world can be. I also went to Tahoe to celebrate my parents' anniversary, and really liked stumbling upon a smaller lake with a cheap boat rental. Then I became FOMO about the highly competitive Bay Area camping and did a last minute walk-in at Redwood Basin in Santa Cruz, which made me realize that I don't actually love camping (but was nice nonetheless). I ate an expensive meal at Commonwealth before they closed. For my birthday we made a friendship quilt and I served my favorite dish of cumin lamb but it was also 90 degrees in my apartment (I felt really bad and bought two fans afterwards). I started buying many cartoon frog plush after being gifted a $3.99 on sale Safeway frog (called Baby!). I went on Tinder dates (one of which was at a quaker yard sale marketed as Harvest Festival where I got a 1970s Kermit puppet for like $2) that largely went nowhere. My high school friend visited and we were both sad about break ups. I did Inktober before I went to New Orleans for a conference on Bourbon St where everything felt like it was coated in a sticky film of alcohol. I almost missed my flight home because I fell asleep in a sculpture garden but I had the most amazing Uber driver who snaked his way through traffic (oh and the flight was delayed by like 3 hours). I went to kind of embarrassing haunted houses and pumpkin patches over Halloween, but also had the most incredible bowl of ramen at Mensho. My whole office dressed up as Zootopia characters which warmed my furry heart. I spent like $120 on a Pokemon shirt. I started playing Arkham Horror and rekindled another friendship important to me. In November went on a road trip to Big Sur because again, I had to escape it all. For Christmas Eve dinner I roasted a duck for the first time (which was delicious). Shortly after I waited in line for 2 hours for a rollercoaster at Great America, which taught me the value of buying a fast pass because at this point in my life that money is worth it, and then waited 2 hours in line at the DMV to get a RealID (I had made an appointment, which was the fast pass).

Okay, now we move to the hobby section!

I got really into sewing in 2019, having received a sewing machine last Christmas. I made a Judy Hopps (which I wore to CrunchyRoll Expo) and Korok cosplay (Fanime), several unsuccessful garments, a crab bean bag, a dice bag, a fanny pack, and put hearts nipples on a jumpsuit.

Shows! I think I went to way fewer shows this year. The ones I can remember are Elephant Gym, Thom Yorke the night before I had an 8am flight, Carly Rae Jepsen over pride weekend (also, she is my #1 artist of the year, which makes a lot of sense given my emotional space), Mitski at Stern Grove, Capitol Hill Bloc Party (which was super lame, except for Lizzo, where I cried), and the National (which was a fucking surreal experience as they played on Stanford's campus, I was the only one within earshot of myself who knew the words to Crybaby Geeks, and then the white catalog moms came up to me after to thank me for singing the song).

I also started playing my own music! I started playing viola again for the first time in 7 years (lol) in both pop-up concerts with the Awesome Orchestra (one in Golden Gate Park, one at the Exploratorium) and a string quartet through my school. Sometimes I am filled with joy and delight. Other times interpersonal tensions run high and also I am very bad at being in tune. It's life.

Media! I really liked Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 and Beastars. I feel like those were the only notable anime I watched this year? I saw the Farewell three times--first in Seattle where I sobbed for like 1 hour after the movie, the second time with my parents, and the third where Awkwafina was present for a Q&A. I thought Parasite was incredible and Promare was OK. I have spent an unfortunately large amount of my time playing Pokemon Masters. I finally beat BOTW and completed my Pokedex in Shield like 2 weeks after getting the game.

Resolutions! In my draft of my 2018 end of year post (which I never polished and posted, sorry), I said my resolutions were 1. come out to my parents 2. draw enough to table at an anime con 3. be disciplined about paper reading and have a doc. I did none of these things!!! However, for 1, I feel like I am well equipped to have this conversation but am waiting for my sibling to do it first out of respect. 2 was just bad. I barely drew this year except for gifts. 3 was okay--I did have a large doc in the beginning of the year when I was looking for ideas, but as time went on I abandoned it (I also stopped reading papers, which I don't think you're supposed to do as a grad student...)

My resolutions this year are phrased as intentions (-(c) Matthew). They span several categories. Relationships: I want to open myself to and actively seek experiences of love, because I miss that. That being said, I will only date someone if 1. they have their life together 2. they love themselves and 3. they challenge me to grow. (I do think you can experience love without dating; the thing I'm after is love in an expansive sense.) Work: I want to do enough work so I don't feel guilty about not doing enough work, and also not berate myself for taking a long time to do things. Hobbies: I want to sew at least one thing a month. Chinese: I want to improve my Chinese, especially pronunciation.

Having written this 20 days into 2020, it's not been so bad so far. But I was also really happy in the beginning of 2019. Here's to no global maxima, a monotonically increasing year!

[archaestudykat]

I don't know if anyone has had a more idiotic, convoluted thesis project than me. So I have postponed my graduation for over a year now, each semester. I'm just an idiot or something, because every semester I legitimately felt I would pull my shit together and graduate within 3 months. When April rolled around, I still had 5 chapters to write and expected I would be done in May. Each of my thesis chapters are roughly 40 pages, and I even had to basically fully rewrite some of my early chapters which set me back months.

My original thesis topic would have had me travelling to Peru and working on a Nat Geo funded project, but then covid hit. I had to find another topic and chose to apply a new method to a data set that I'm analyzing post hoc.

My advisor had been struggling for awhile with some **really bad** stuff going on in his personal life. I won't share because its his business, but I legitimately wonder if he is cursed or something. He had a absolutely shit year. Understandably, he wasn't available for me for much of it. Like we have talked probably less than 15x since covid began. I'm basically on my own. Switching advisors wasn't really an option because I'm using his data set for my research and I'm in too deep.

Since January I've had this back injury and now I'm doing 2 hours of physical therapy 3x a week. I just pulled myself out of a BAD depressive slump. Writing has NOT been going well... but I'm actually back to making progress and trying to be disciplined in writing daily.

After discussing it with my boyfriend, I've decided to extend graduation again, but this time until December. I'm honestly not sure I even need all that time, realistically, but it'll be the same price as just going over the summer, and give me 2x the time to work. It just seems smart. Especially with half of my committee travelling abroad the next few months for field work.

My mother did not take it well (as usual) and said a lot of shitty things about me taking to long to finish my masters when it should have taken 2 years, how I'm stressing *her* out, my loans (which are 100% under my name btw). I'm mostly frustrated with her because she said I can't listen to my boyfriend's advice because he dropped out of our undergrad archaeology program. My boyfriend is amazingly supportive and genuinely just a wonderful person, so.... it pissed me off. I'm avoiding speaking to her for awhile.

I just wanted to rant but I guess if anyone reads this, I'd like them to take away from it that it doesn't matter how long school takes. It doesn't matter if you drop out. Doing something you are happy with is important. I might not be graduating when I thought I would, nothing may have gone as planned, but when I turn this thesis in its going to be the best one I can write. I'm going to be proud of it and have worked really hard to accomplish something, and thats all that matters.

[careerbitespod]

Bonus Episode Transcript: My Story with Host, Rachael Barksdale

Rachael Barksdale: We are just about halfway through the first season of Career Bites, and I have learned so much from all our guests so far. And I think that in my haste to share these amazing stories with you all, I forgot to share my own story - the story behind this podcast. I’m not a career coach or counselor. But my first-hand experience with the ups and downs of navigating the career world is the inspiration behind this project, and I’d like to share a little of my journey with all of you.

I started out with a love of science as a kid. I mean, ever since I was little. My dad was a doctor and my brothers and I, we’d just read tons and tons of books on dinosaurs and science, and we’d have these really nerdy conversations at the dinner table about all kinds of things. In school, I was lucky enough to have a really good public-school education but I had science teachers who were particularly excited about what they were teaching. Especially my high school biology teacher, I had him for introductory biology but also for AP Biology as a senior. And pretty much since then I was thinking “you know what? I’m going to go to college to major in genetics and I’m going to be that person that cures cancer or ends world hunger by creating genetically-modified crops that are going to be drought tolerant and can grow anywhere”. I had all these really big research dreams. So I decided to go to Brigham Young University which is in Provo, Utah. They have a Genetics and Biotechnology program. Granted, it’s a church school - so I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - and that was a big factor in my decision to go. But at the same time, I - I did some other research as well and BYU is known for having a lot of undergraduate research opportunities. And again, my big thing was “I want to do research”. So that’s perfect! I can get my hands wet early, that’s - that’s really what I wanted. So my sophomore year I took what’s called the mentored lab techniques class. I became the TA for that class after the semester was over: I did well enough and the current TA was moving on to greener pastures, so I became the TA. And that then allowed me to become a research assistant for a semester for the same professor who I was TA-ing for. And I quickly came to realize that I absolutely loathe doing research. I thought that my reticence to do some of those techniques and sort of that imposter syndrome that I was feeling when I was in the lab was just me, and that time and experience would mitigate that, but I came to realize that actually going through the scientific method and slogging through some of those day-to-day things that go along with research - I couldn’t stand it. And it wasn’t until I actually did it that I realized that. So at this point I am now pretty much done with my degree. I’m starting my senior year, I’m asking myself “well what do I do now?” Right? I have this degree that, unless I get my masters and my PhD, is completely useless. So, again, at the time I was a teacher’s assistant for the mentored lab techniques class. And while I didn’t really enjoy the technical side of it, you know, having to do some of the behind-the-scenes prep work, I absolutely loved working with the students. And I went to an advisor for the education department - the science education department specifically - and talked to her about my options as far as teaching. Right? Those who can’t do, teach. Why not those who don’t want to do or hate what they do, teach? I enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program to get my teaching license. It was a non-degree-seeking program. Essentially it allowed me to get through all of my education classes and do my student teaching as a way to get the licensure for the state without having to get a degree from the school. And so I have a bachelor's degree in Genetics and Biotechnology - I just finished it up - got my teaching license and then soon after moved to the state of Washington so that my husband could do his graduate school. So I get into my first year as a teacher - it was fantastic, I couldn’t have asked for a better school. It was really time consuming - when I was getting my post-baccalaureate classes out of the way, I had a teacher who told me, told our classes over and over again that “nothing will ever prepare you for your first year of teaching”. And I found that to be true. As much as I felt prepared after student teaching, being by yourself in a classroom in charge of 100, 150 students, especially young’uns like middle school kids, it’s nerve wracking and you spend a lot of time outside of class doing extra work to make sure that you’re prepared every day. But I felt like I was supported. And when the end of the year came around - so some context, I was essentially a long-term substitute - so the school had another position for a science teacher open up. So I applied for the job, I got an interview, and I was interviewing against a different...not student teacher, but sort of interim teacher like myself who was also in the life sciences department at that school. And it turns out that I did not get the job, the other teacher got the job. And I was crushed. I thought that I was doing well at the school, I kind of felt like “this - this was it”, you know, I was - I found a great place to work. I felt like a little bit of a failure. But it all worked out. I ended up getting a position at Rogers High School in Spokane, Washington. So I basically started all over again when I got to Rogers High School. It was my second year teaching, but it felt like my first year: I was in a new school, I was in a new district, I was in a new tier of the K-12 system - high school. So again, a lot of work, a lot of extra time. I was super burned out. I had done essentially two first-years of teaching in a row. And then, my husband gets a job in North Carolina, so I move again. New school, new district, fortunately still biology, high school, but now I was teaching AP Biology as well - which was a huge dream of mine. So it was a lot, again, three years in a row, completely burned out. And so I’m starting to look for other jobs and I’m wondering “what the heck do I do?” Unfortunately - and if you listened to the first episode of this podcast Tia goes into this and explains it - essentially you’re pigeonholed as a teacher on a resume, on paper. Employers see “teacher” on a resume and they kind of just think about “you work with kids” and then whatever preconceptions go along with that. Or they just think you can only educate, you don’t have any other soft skills that would make you at all desirable for a different type of job. And as much as I love teaching - it wasn’t so much the burnout - I loved teaching and I still do. I think working with students and seeing that lightbulb go off and being able to communicate what you love in such a way that other people learn to love it too, it means a lot. And it’s so fulfilling. But I wanted more opportunities. As a teacher, there’s not a whole lot of what we call traditional career advancement. And so, then enter my masters degree. I decided to get my Masters in Instructional Technology. I think my goal was to make myself look better on paper, being able to illustrate that yes, I have these education skills, I have these classroom skills, but I also can do something with that beyond being in a classroom, beyond children. And that helped me to land my gig at Carolina Distance Learning where I’m a Distance Learning Specialist. So you can kind of see how that all ties together with my Masters in Instructional Technology, online learning and then this whole idea of distance learning. But I’m a little bit in limbo. Part of that involves the fact that because I have moved again out of state, so I’m not in North Carolina anymore I am now in Idaho, so my degree’s up in the air as well. I don’t know what finishing my degree will look like, or what the timeline is going to be. I don’t also know what - how being a mom is going to fit into all of this. About a year ago I had my son Ashton, and I’d like to have more children but, again, I also want to have this career - I want to have it all. How - how do we do that? And - and - that’s a whole other story, I would love to get more into career and motherhood but...Thinking back on my career, then, in hindsight there’s a lot of good things that came out of my winding career path. And I don’t think I would have changed it for anything. So in hindsight, for example, my major: you might think “oh well, you know, you - you probably could have gotten a different degree. What if you have just gone into getting your Bachelor of Science in Biology Education and gone straight to that?” which would have been a lot easier. But in hindsight, I met my husband through the Genetics and Biotechnology degree program. He also got his degree in Genetics and Biotechnology. And then another reason why my major came in handy was I learned from my mentor teacher at my first teaching gig that the reason why he fought so hard for me to get the position that summer when they were interviewing candidates - even though I was brand new and there were other candidates that had a few more years of teaching under their belt - he fought for me because I had a, not a teaching degree, but I had an industry specific degree. I had a degree in genetics and I happened to have a teaching license. I was not a teacher first, I was a scientist first, in his mind. And so that was the reason why I got the job, I learned afterwards. So, we don’t really know where life is going to take us, and we don’t know maybe why the path that we take is so winding, but there’s - there’s always things - good things - that can come out of it. Another example is, I took that job to be a TA for the mentored lab techniques class essentially as a way to get a better job. I was currently working for special events at the university so I would do things like scan tickets and stand by the gates at the stadium during football games and basketball games. I was that poor, poor person wearing the really big, puffy orange coat that said “events” on the back. I wanted a more sophisticated job as a college student and so I took the TA job. And that ended up leading me to fall in love with teaching. It...if you had asked me if I wanted to become a teacher in high school, I would have laughed. I was deathly afraid of public speaking, let alone standing in front of a room of a finite number of people and explaining something, and coming up with activities, and trying to manage unruly behavior in a classroom...I - I even had a horrible experience tutoring in high school. I...was not a very good person, in that moment, and, sort of, ruined this relationship I had with someone I was tutoring for Spanish. And that kind of still haunts me to this day, but it just goes to show that I had no inclination to teach, when I was younger, but by the time I reached college I had had enough of these, arguably, you know, serendipitous, events collide to lead me to become a teacher. And that’s kind of where this podcast came from. It’s - I’m realizing now it’s been several years in the making. There’s definitely a part of me that wishes that I’d had something like this five ago when I was starting to question where to go after teaching. Or even in high school: if I had known what other job opportunities were out there, or what other jobs were like, there’s a good chance I might have reconsidered becoming a scientist, I just didn’t have a lot of exposure to anything else. And I think that’s it, I think we’re a product of what we’re exposed to. And unless we’re actively seeking out other things to expose ourselves to, we’re not going to find those things. We’re not going to be able to open our minds to what else is out there. I’d like for this project of mine to become a way to give students and people seeking potential career changes, or just looking for some career advice, just a - a glimpse, a snapshot, a - a sample, of what it’s like to be in other careers, what it takes. I want to provide as much exposure as I can. I want to share the life lessons that myself, my friends, my colleagues, have gone through so that maybe they don’t have to go through those same experiences themselves, or at least they have a little bit of a leg up on those experiences when they come around. 

So I’d love to hear from you guys. What careers do you want me to highlight? What questions do you have about careers? What questions do you have about education? Not that I have the answers to those questions, but I want to be able to find the guests that do. Thank you for listening. If you have a question or comment, please reach out to me on Instagram or Facebook @careerbitespod. Subscribe to and rate Career Bites on your favorite listening platform. And join us next Monday as we sample another career with an everyday professional.

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Nick Bare of Bare Performance Nutrition, a brand that makes sports nutrition supplementsSome stats:Product: sports nutrition supplementsRevenue/mo: $500,000Started: January 2012Location: Austin, TXFounders: 1Employees: 5Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Nick Bare and I own Bare Performance Nutrition. We are a sports nutrition and health supplement company based out of central Texas, just about 20 minutes north of Austin.Other than being an entrepreneur, I also create social media content for hundreds of thousands of people, spent 4 years in the US Army as an active duty Infantry Officer and am a soon to be published author of my book titled, 25 Hours A Day. I started my company in 2012 making around $15,000 in the first year of business and today we are on track to do $6 Million in revenue for the year.I built the brand while working as an active duty Soldier, sleeping very little and working very much. Bare Performance Nutrition has always specialized in sports performance (pre-workout, pump enhancers, whey protein, BCAAs) but is now adding to the line of health supplements (greens superfoods, red superfoods, multi-vitamin, joint support) due to the increased demand and popularity from the current customers. The flight is our flagship product (pre-workout) which launched the brand in 2012 and has been one of our fastest moving products to date.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDLNE0ysjMWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?In 2012 I was a junior in college studying Nutrition at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I was also in the ROTC program there so I knew that upon graduating college I would be commissioning into the US Army as an officer.My friends and I were your typical broke college students and we loved weight training. Because we couldn’t continue to buy our own pre-workout supplements due to personal funds, or lack thereof, we decided to all go in together and purchase bulk ingredients to make our own pre-workout supplements.We purchased caffeine, beta-alanine, citrulline malate, tyrosine, etc. We would mix them up in my dorm room, throw them back and hit the gym every day. We didn’t know how to flavor them properly and didn’t have the correct scales to measure anything less than a gram so who knows how much caffeine we were consuming! My friends loved it and I would even have kids from other dorms stopping by to try my “homemade” pre-workout. As this became a huge interest to me I decided to pursue it further but knew that if I wanted to create a business I would have to work with an FDA regulated manufacturing facility.After returning from a 30-day training exercise at Fort Lewis, WA I decided to go all-in and work to launch Bare Performance Nutrition. Sports performance and especially dietary supplements had always been a massive passion and interest to me. At the time, the military associated bank, USAA, was offering a loan of up to $25,000 for ROTC cadets about to graduate. Many of these college students and friends of mine took out this loan to buy new cars, take vacations, get engaged and married, but I decided that this would be my funding to launch my company.I worked with a US-based manufacturer to formulate, produce and test my first two products, which were Flight (pre-workout) and Intra-Flight (BCAAs). Other than my burning desire and passion for sports performance, I had absolutely zero experience building, operating or scaling a brand. To this day I will always remember telling my dad about the plan to launch Bare Performance Nutrition and how successful it was going to be in the first year of business. I vividly remember him saying, “if it were that easy then everyone would do it” - and he was right.imageTake us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.I found my first contact manufacturer online through some deep google researching. Over the years we have worked with a few different manufacturers until we found the perfect ones. Today, we work with two contract manufacturers (one is in Texas and the other is in California).In the beginning, when we were just getting started and moving very little volume, there was never a relationship established between myself and the manufacturers. We were a small fish in a large pond. Today we talk with our manufacturers on a daily basis, and usually multiple times a day.I personally formulated our first two products that entered the market. I worked with the contract manufacturer lab team and R&D department to bring it to life, but the majority of the input came from my research. Even though I was studying Nutrition in college, we never covered sports performance and especially dietary supplement research, so I would spend hours in the evening researching ingredients and their effectiveness. I initially put together a formula, sent it over to the manufacturer to price and received the quote - over $30 per bottle! At the price point, I would have to sell this pre-workout for it would be shunned in the market! Over the next couple of weeks, I went back and forth with the manufacturer to create the best product possible at the most reasonable price too. We removed some ingredients and added others, changing the dosage of some and ended up getting our price point to exactly where it needed to be. It ended up taking about 12 weeks to approve a formula, finalize the flavoring profile and put everything into production (which was another 12 weeks).After locking in the product with the manufacturer it was time to set up my logistics/ warehousing space - AKA my bedroom. At the time I was living in a small college apartment, on Philadelphia Street at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with 5 other guys. My room itself was about 100 square feet at the most. I set up a packing station, filled the room with boxes and packing supplies, and prepared for the big launch. Because I didn’t have enough room for all the inventory in my apartment I had to store some of it at my parent's house, which was 3 hours away! Prepared? Probably not, but I was like a kid on Christmas morning ready to go!That first launch, while was extremely exciting, didn’t play out as I quite imagined. The loan that I took out just about only covered the cost of the inventory, so I had no money left over for label design, graphic work, marketing agencies or business advisors. I became the swiss army pocket knife for Bare Performance Nutrition.I had a friend design our labels in exchange for some free pre-workout (once it launched), another buddy designed our website and I dieted down for a photo shoot to create some marketing material for the product launch. Even the photographer was a friend who helped for free.The Evolution Of Our Labels:imageOur first products and labelsimageOur second round of labelsimageThe third round of labelsimageOur current labels (after our rebrand)imageSome of our first marketing material pieces and the result of the photoshoot I dieted down for in 2012.Describe the process of launching the business.I thought my launch strategy was going to kill it. I linked up with some fairly successful fitness YouTubers and negotiated some free products for a shout out/review on their social media platforms.In 2012, the fitness industry wasn’t nearly as saturated as it is now and large fitness YouTube channels weren’t one in a dozen. I sent the YouTubers their product a few weeks before launch, gave them enough time to test it out and then waited for their reviews. About half of the YouTubers talked about the product and the other half I never heard from, but it wasn’t necessarily the hype I was expecting.Launch day was here. I had the website built, marketing material and information displayed, and ready to make it live! I pressed “GO” and ...nothing….A few sales trickled in from friends and family over the next couple of days but not the buzz I was expecting. I thought that at least a few thousand people that heard about it from the YouTube mentions would stop by the site, all of my friends and family would have supported my new project and at the very least I would sell out of half the inventory - I was wrong. I quickly learned that this was going to be harder than I ever imagined and launching a successful business wasn’t this fairy tale dream.Year 1 = $15,000 in revenue.I continued to work on building the brand over the next 12 months or so in my free time but I was also preparing to enter the US Army. In May of 2013, I was commissioned as an Infantry Officer and was shipped to Fort Benning, GA to complete the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Ranger School, and Airborne School. After spending a year in Georgia I was sent to Fort Hood, TX for my first duty assignment.When I arrived in Texas in early 2014 I decided to start my own social media platforms. Initially, I started by sharing workout and nutrition advice on YouTube but over time I started adding some military topics and behind the scenes of building Bare Performance Nutrition. The intent, in the beginning, was not to drive sales to BPN but I knew I had to create an online community around my personal brand and eventually the company. I quickly realized the power of providing value to the online fitness space, creating that online community I was looking for and eventually the time to sell would come. This wasn’t necessarily a strategic plan but after a few years of very little sales, I was willing to try something new. Getting comfortable talking to a camera, editing the footage and turning it into a story was definitely not one of my strengths (in the beginning) as you can see by one of my first videos here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjOaiSqJBScYear 3 was doing about $20,000 in revenue.After being in business for 4 years and in the Army for 2, my unit was sent to South Korea for a 9-month rotation. At this point, my YouTube channel was sitting at around 30,000 subscribers and we were generating between $2,000 and $3,000 a month in revenue. I decided when I arrived in South Korea that I was going to spend every waking moment, that wasn’t spent doing my Army job, building my business. My duties and responsibilities as an Infantry Platoon Leader always came first, but when I was in my barracks off work - I was building my brand. I listened to podcasts, read books, taught myself videography and photography, social media marketing and even how to code our website.After 9 months in South Korea, I was able to grow my YouTube channel to over 100,000 subscribers, generate over $10,000 a month in revenue and build out a new website for Bare Performance Nutrition. We finally hit the six-figure mark as a business and the following year hit seven-figures.As my social media platforms grew, so did Bare Performance Nutrition’s revenue. With more exposure to my story, the brand and my work ethic, we had people from all across the world showing up to our site, purchasing products and supporting our vision. This is when I finally realized that there had to be a strategic plan that grew the social media platforms and ultimately our business.In the first year of producing YouTube content, I was able to grow my channel to 20,000 subscribers. I had no clue what I was doing but just kept throwing darts at a dartboard hoping one would stick - and one did. In the fall of 2016, I uploaded a YouTube video while stationed in South Korea called, “The Day In The Life Of An Infantry Platoon Leader” and it took off. It grew my channel about 50,000 subscribers in a month and the video reached over 1,000,000 people. I then realized that there was a recipe for creating good YouTube content.For starters, there has to be some type of value that is offered in your videos and content. In my case, it’s educating people in fitness and nutrition to improve their health and help them reach their fitness goals. I also share my life and how hard we’ve worked to build our company over the past 7 years. There are education, motivation, and personality behind the video series. We add comedy, humor, and context to what we are talking about through story-telling and real-life experiences. As the creator, you have to find out what problem it is you are trying to solve in your online community and add your own personal touch behind it.YouTube Video (Day In The Life Of An Infantry Platoon Leader)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogKnDZziBIYouTube Video (Field Training In Korea)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEer_dMLeMkimageLeft: Me with my platoon Non-Commissioned Officers in South Korea. Right: My brother, Preston, packing orders in our first warehouse in Round Rock, TXSince launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?As a brand, we have always focused on the consumer, the community and driving engagement through education, motivation, and storytelling.We leveraged our social media following to create interactive, relatable and valuable content over the years. After starting a YouTube channel in 2014 I realized the power it had to create a community. Bare Performance Nutrition is not a product - it is a brand. A brand has a voice, a vision, values, and a story.I came to realize while building Bare Performance Nutrition, that one of our competitive advantages was transparency. We took the consumer and audience behind the scenes of everything. We documented the process of moving into new warehouses, products being created at our manufacturing facilities, packing and shipping orders all over the world and handling customer service 24/7.Here are some examples of how we’ve done that:How We Make Our Supplementshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwWodbDx4zEMaking changes to our old warehousehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ch6VSFCSDg&tCurrent Warehouse Tourhttps://www.instagram.com/p/B2zo7ImgCf-/Up until 2017, we had grown Bare Performance Nutrition 100% organically with no paid advertising. We were able to generate 7-figures with zero facebook ads, email marketing or planned campaigns. All of the team's efforts to grow the brand and drive sales were focused on social media. We launched 2 YouTube videos a week, stayed active on Instagram and Snapchat and posted regularly on Facebook.After 2017, I decided to take a more deliberate and proactive approach to scale the brand, and it paid off. We focused efforts on paid Facebook ads (both prospecting and remarketing), started placing emphasis on building our email list and began utilizing social media influencers to share the Bare Performance Nutrition brand with their followers.In 2017, with a planned execution of facebook/Instagram ads, email marketing, and organic social media posting (with paid influencers as well) we were able to generate over $120,000 in 24 hours on a 20% site-wide sale - our biggest up until that point. We spent a total of $10,000 in ad-spend leading up to and on the day of that sale which generated $120,000.To this day - I am a very strong believer in the way we have built our brand and will continue to build the brand. Like I said earlier, we are not a product. You will not find us on a late-night infomercial selling a product for 3 easy payments of $9.99. We are a brand. Our focus is on the consumer and how we can help them. We use social media content (that is generated daily) to educate, motivate and inspire our audience to take action on their lives and push past physical and mental barriers they place on themselves. Our job is to help people reach their goals.After we create content that is valuable, informative and useful we will then place it into a marketing sequence. We run Facebook/Instagram ads split between prospecting and remarketing, send out 2-3 emails to our email list each week and work with an outsourced SEO company to optimize our content and back-end network.There isn’t a day that goes by where we don’t receive an email, DM, phone call or social media comment that says, “I can’t believe how fast you guys shipped out my order!”. That is our goal and our mission. Create the best products on the market, educate and inspire our audience and take care of our customers as quickly and correctly as possible.Our Black Friday Instagram Promotional Videohttps://www.instagram.com/p/BqapD38nPi7/An Instagram promotion we did for our whey protein producthttps://www.instagram.com/p/BvhUTixAsDP/An Instagram video we did to show customers how much we care about fast shippinghttps://www.instagram.com/p/BqFsvE_FNII/How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Our current headquarters is located just north of Austin, TX in a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse. My brother, Preston, moved down to Texas in 2016 to help grow the business while I was still stationed in South Korea and today he leads operations and purchasing for Bare Performance Nutrition. We have two full-time employees packing, shipping and receiving every day.On an average day, we will send out between 200-250 orders. Big sales or new product releases usually result in about 3,500-5,000 orders (over 48 hours).imageimageimageOur revenue is about 80% direct to consumer, 15% amazon and 5% wholesale accounts. We pride ourselves on not being a huge discount brand and only run two sales each year - Black Friday and 4th of July (each being 20% off site-wide). We use the Shopify Plus platform and our current analytics are listed below:Monthly Average Visitors: 110,000Average Order Value: $84.00Customer Return Rate: 60%Conversion Rate: 4.92%Email Subscribers: 73,000YouTube Subscribers: 292,000BPN Instagram Followers: 62.8KNick’s Instagram Followers: 151KBare Performance Nutrition’s focus for the next 12 months is very heavy. We are positioning the brand to scale. As mentioned earlier, we have a full line of performance supplements but are now breaking into the health and wellness category even more. Right now we have a reds superfood supplement, multi-vitamin, joint health product and nutrition bars in production. We are also working on a sleep aid and collagen powder supplement for future release and launch. We recently released phase 1 of our app (available for iPhone and Android) and will be launching phase 2 in the middle of 2020, which will be a customized training platform run by our newest employee joining the team this spring.For the past three years, we have doubled revenue year-over-year. We expect to do the same moving into 2020 with annual revenue to reach over $10 million. Our long term goals are aligned with the company's vision and mission. We have recently hired a full-time videographer/photographer which will allow the team to create more content, for more platforms and reach/educate/inspire even more people. The focus behind the majority of our content right now is to provide the education, resources, and motivation to facilitate changes to improve our customer's lives.While doubling revenue year-over-year seems very bold moving forward into the future - it is always the goal. However, a projection is just a wish without a plan of action. With a whole new line of supplements (health line - called the Strong series) added to Bare Performance Nutrition line-up, we have the opportunity to generate more revenue from our current customers and to also reach a new market. In the next week, we are also launching our first nutrition bar called the Field Bar, which has been a work in progress over the last 12 months. The team has outlined a plan to align content through podcasts, Youtube videos, and collaborations, influencer marketing and my new future book launch, 25 Hours A Day, to drive more traffic and sales to our website.imageOur Book titled, 25 Hours A Day, launching early 2020. 25 Hours A Day is about my story of building Bare Performance Nutrition while serving as an Active Duty Infantry Officer, stationed in South Korea. Lessons I’ve learned in the military, stories from Ranger School and the power to “GO ONE MORE”.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Over the past 7 years of scaling Bare Performance Nutrition I have learned endless amounts of lessons, made countless mistakes and wasted tons of money, but all for a good purpose. Learning through experience has been the most rewarding and beneficial aspect of being a growing entrepreneur. Looking back to our first year in business I realize I did just about everything wrong. I think my biggest mistake is that I didn’t personally have a vision for the company. Yes, I wanted to obviously grow it as large and as fast as possible, but I somehow missed the valuable lesson of supply and demand. I had the supply. I had a couple of hundred bottles of pre-workout and amino acids but I had zero demand. I was trying to sell to everyone and everything, with no target market, no niche branding, and no voice. Nothing made us stand out.A few years after our initial launch in 2012 I completely rebranded the company. This meant new labels, new logos, a new website and a fresh new look to Bare Performance Nutrition. I attacked this rebranding opportunity to give a voice and vision for the company. Not only for my personal vision, but also for everyone who came across BPN, bought from BPN and worked for BPN. This rebrand, new look, and new target resulted in a 750% increase in revenue in just one year!If you haven’t picked up on it by now I love building Bare Performance Nutrition to help people reach their goals, improve their lives and grow a massive community. As stated before, we are a BRAND and not just a PRODUCT. We pride ourselves in the content we create via YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Podcasts. With that being said, all of the content we have created also amplifies our paid advertising efforts. Whether we are running Facebook and Instagram ads (prospecting/remarketing) or sending out email campaigns, we have endless content online to back it up and support our brand. Social proof is a powerful tool and helps provide the context of where we are heading next! The vision of Bare Performance Nutrition is now clear as day and I can firmly say that it is understood through the consumer, the team and anyone else who comes across our social media platforms. We are here to be the best supplement company ever by educating, motivating and building a family through BPN.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2AD_i0uhTo&t=512sWhat platform/tools do you use for your business?There are a million and one third party apps and solutions out there to help run your business, but many of them don’t deliver! We have tested what feels like hundreds of them, but are now set in a schedule with a few that really do drive results.Shopify - As I’ve stated earlier, we do use Shopify Plus. I can’t say enough great things about this platform and everything that it offers. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to create an online eCommerce store.Email Marketing - We started using FAM (Fully Automated Marketing) for our email marketing a few months ago and have seen some pretty great results! We were not harnessing the power of email marketing to our full potential over the past couple of years but FAM has helped us re-engage that audience. We recently ran a 60-day contest on social media that offered a FREE home gym giveaway ($5,000 value). Through the efforts of organic social media and paid advertising ($5,000 ad spend), we grew our email list by 25,000 and Instagram followers by 20,000!Yotpo - We use Yotpo (powerhouse plan) to ask for and receive reviews on our products. This has been a great source of verified social proof and helps increase conversions for not only returning but more importantly new customers! We are now approaching 10,000 verified reviews on our site with the majority of them being 5 out of 5-star ratings.Shogun Page Builder - Shopify’s page templates are fairly generic and hard to customize without some complex coding. We have found a third-party app called Shogun Page Builder to really help transform our product pages resulting in greater conversions!Product Page Example on this link.Final Cut Pro - We produce A LOT of video content each week. Final Cut Pro (for apple) is great and easy to use tool for video editing and producing.Photoshop/Lightroom - In addition to video editing, we produce about 10x as many photos and graphics as we do videos for social media. Photoshop and Lightroom (adobe products) are great tools to create banners, graphics, ads and to clean up photos in post-production.imageWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Google is a powerful tool. Every question you have, every example you need and every problem you are experiencing has answers online. It’s how I learned everything. I vividly remember sitting in my barracks room while stationed in South Korea spending 4-5 hours a night learning how to build a business. The result was transforming a $15,000 brand into multiple 6-figure brands in less than 9 months. It’s 2019 - there is no excuse for not being smart enough, for not having the resources and for not having the knowledge.Much of my influence has been driven by life experiences and putting myself out there - something I recommend to everyone. With that being said, I’ll leave part of my upcoming book below as context:Conventional wisdom tells you to live as if you have fewer hours in a day. They say to cram everything in as if you only had 23 hours in which to get it done. This never made sense to me. It gave you less actual time and often results in rushing to failure.I’ll never forget the moment I learned to stop rushing toward failure. I was a student in the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, working with some Captains from the hard-core 75th Ranger Regiment.I asked one of them for advice on how to be the best leader possible when I arrived at my platoon at Fort Hood, Texas. He pointed to another Captain across the room.“You see that guy right there? When the shit hits the fan, when chaos strikes, that guy stays as cool as the other side of the pillow. He doesn’t rush to failure but takes the time to assess the situation, develop a plan quickly, and executes it on demand. That is the guy you want to be.”I realized that the goal isn’t to rush but to slow things down as much as possible, even time itself. We all have 24 hours in a day, but it’s how you choose to live those 24 hours that makes the difference. When I started my business, I sacrificed sleep in order to find extra time. The bottom line, I was in control of the day. I controlled my time, and in the end, I controlled what it was I was about to create.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?I’ll give 2 pieces of advice to entrepreneurs who want to get started and believe it is their passion because your business must be that - 100% passion. Your business is a living, breathing model of yourself as the owner.First - you MUST go all in. There is no dabbling as an entrepreneur in the beginning. You may find exceptions to the rule or experienced entrepreneurs who have systems in place to delegate brand building, but in the beginning, you MUST go all in. It wasn’t until I dedicated every waking moment to building Bare Performance Nutrition, spending every ounce of energy and focus after working a full-time job, that I saw results and growth. Going all-in also doesn’t come with a timeline. You may see results in 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years but if you have a vision and a solid brand/product then it is working through the wins and learning from the losses that direct you to where you want and need to be.Second - many don’t take action due to paralysis by analysis. This was something I never feared or had a problem with. It is probably why I started Bare Performance Nutrition from the start, took out a loan as a broke college student, had zero experience or knowledge on how to build a brand or held any skills required to make it work. I ran off pure passion from the beginning but was never stopped by over-analyzing every step along the way. It is something I see and hear from new entrepreneurs every day. They question every move they think about making, they wait for the perfect time and in the end, they never end up moving forward at all. Why? Their ability to over-analyze everything keeps them in the same place - stagnant. Don’t be this person. Mitigate risk, weigh your options and make educated decisions but don’t be paralyzed by analysis.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?At the moment we are looking to bring someone in house to take over all paid advertising. A highly motivated individual who wants to be part of a fast-paced team and has the skills required to run Facebook/Instagram ads, google ads and optimize our content through SEO.I personally do not like hiring remote employees. We have done a great job at building an amazing culture at Bare Performance Nutrition and much of that comes down to the entire team seeing and believing in the vision. Being a team player and bringing positive energy to work is a requirement to be part of the Bare Performance Nutrition staff.Where can we go to learn more?WebsiteFacebookInstragramFounder’s InstagramPodcastFounder’s YoutubeIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[whatevernevermind]

SEO: 5 Killer Ways to 2019

When you are tired of listening to the term SEO (search motor optimization) maybe you ought concentrate on SMO. Most SEOs use third-party tools to figure out exactly what people are looking for, just how users are looking for items, and use that to boost their content. SEOs have understood user research intent to fall broadly in to the following categories and presently there is an excellent post upon Moz about this. The phrase "SEO" can also refer to "Search Engine Optimizer". To get more exposure within visual searches, make sure that will likes, shares and comments upon social media posts all possess SEO relevance. Because there was a great deal of positive reviews and Now i'm along the way of learning local SEO and local company lead generation online. The firm offers excellent SEO packages that will help rank the clients' web site within top three pages associated with search engine pages. Google's always tweaking its search algorithms, so there is no guarantee that SEO techniques that worked in the past will keep doing work in the future. The particular growth of Google's featured little, voice search, Local SEO, plus PPC gives better lead in order to diverting traffic to your web site as compared to the natural listing.

On the similar note, great SEO content material needs keywords but if a person overdo it, Google and human being visitors will hate it. Seeking to keep a healthy keyword thickness of 1-2% is recommended. SEO is usually optimizing digital documents for individuals who use search engines. Search engines has stated publicly they think brands” are good for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, as people trust them plus want to see them offered in search results. Even as we appear ahead to SEO in 2018, discover our predictions for exactly what we think will be 1 of Google's biggest years however for search. Meta explanation plays a major role within search engine rank of your post so composing an SEO friendly meta explanation is essential for ranking element. SEO isn't very just about building search engine-friendly websites. When you're working on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you need to be conscious of the existing factors that will influence your ranking. We might like to increase visibility, all of us want it to look in Research Engine Results Page (SERP), All of us should go with these alleged SEO techniques. Using his special connections in the business entire world, he helps ecommerce brands develop their audience through influencers, inbound links, on-page search optimization and specialized SEO -- all rank their brands higher on Google. Regardless of whether we are talking site rate, personalized SEO, or even Google's RankBrain, we are still speaking about delivering the best probable experience to the user. In the year 2018, the particular SEO marketers will change their own game and will definitely change their focus beyond the position and revenue issues. 1 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may target different kinds associated with search, including image search, video clip search, academic search, 2 information search, and industry-specific vertical lookup engines. From my perspective SEO people are going to have the harder time ranking this season than last based on almost all the changes that are happening. I do find though that will Content is still king plus putting lots of articles out that will hit your target market's fairly sweet spot will be the way to proceed. Together with the ever-changing research engine algorithms goes the ever-evolving search engine optimization (SEO) exercise. The use of tone of voice search technology is the cause why voice search SEO will certainly be so popular in 2018. By perfect I not just mean SEO-wise but also content-wise like this article, so you keep people in your site and also generate business from this. Send me a topic via email and I'll write something for you personally. Once you are into SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, Google Zero rank or amount one spot is basically the particular favorite location for everyone. As SEO guidelines evolve, the very unlikely ranking hack is usually emerging. SEO helps to develop a great image for the website simply by creating blogs, adding to brand-new material and new site hyperlinks towards the website to create it remain active on various search platforms. Most people in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (myself included) divide keywords in to three main categories: head, entire body and the (long) tail. A very essential SEO trend to know within 2018 is the mobile-first list. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends regarding 2018 needs to be regarded as. Being a good experienced SEO content writer, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION copywriter, copy writer, technical writer, reactive content writer, blog writer, Superb special interest in digital advertising. That means this increases user experience which boosts SEO and rankings. Carrying out technical SEO regarding local search engines is actually a similar process. In Local SEO, citations are referred to as mentions” of your local business on other websites and web pages. That getting said, if you want in order to transform your search ranking, and stay relevant and competitive in your own industry, then you have in order to stay abreast of the present SEO trends and techniques. SEOs will need in order to collaborate closely with designers plus developers to prioritize technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and usability search engine positioning factors to gain a competing edge. This SEO offpage technique involves submission of content and websites on high quality webpages to get authoritative backlinks. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may generate a sufficient come back on investment However, search motors are not taken care of organic research traffic, their algorithms change, plus there are no guarantees associated with continued referrals. The increase in Voice Searcher will need hard work simply by SEO experts. Therefore, it would become a good ploy to make use of effective SEO processes to increase your own website traffic FAST. We've gone heavy on off-page SEO techniques revolving around content material. SEO trends that a person could use in 2018 in order to rank your page on the internet are usually brand loyalty. The best possible presence originates from SEO marketing techniques geared toward mobile searches. So it can time for you to gray the lights, cue the spectacular movie trailer voice and acquire ready, as next year within SEO is looking pretty highly advanced. This shows how slow local businesses have been around the web in updating to SEO and web technological updates. SEO is important because may make your website relevant in order to your keywords throughout the research engine ranking process and will certainly lead to improved search motor ranking. Many spamming web sites have the tendency to make use of such Black Hat SEO procedures. From targeting the proper keywords using Google Keyword Advisor to sharing valuable information- content material marketing was and will often be one of the most essential SEO trends for a lengthy time to come. Whilst classical techniques will continue in order to be effective, the SEO developments and tactics mentioned on this particular page can significantly change the particular way we perform search motor optimization. Content advertising is maturing and trying out there infographics and video marketing may just add value for your own SEO techniques. ⭐ One of the best strategies adopted by businesses nowadays is an SEO focused content material strategy. John - we have around one, 000 video podcast episodes, plus currently kicking off a improve in our site specifically to enhance our SEO (we've decided is actually easier to rebuild than in order to try to fix our frankenstein monster).

Updates searching algorithms and within people's searching patterns and the particular mobile over desktop preferences are usually changing the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. The answer to this question is in order to create a YouTube channel plus make video content using video clip SEO strategies. It's also a great idea to start your strategy to SEO with On-Page given that you have much more handle of your own website's problems, so you'll be able in order to eventually begin a successful linkbuilding campaign on a website that will is well-structured and provides important information to its users. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect examine budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages -- will have a more harmful impact on sites moving ahead. For us SEOs it hasn't been within getting traffic to our websites with regard to several years and, for Search engines, it's not profitable. She provides some awesome tips on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for voice search, including thinking of how people ask questions plus understanding local queries and objective. Additionally, when it comes to Nearby SEO, long-tail keywords become also more important. Regional SEO will play a excellent role in mobile searches is usually all about content. That's why optimizing your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique for voice search nowadays is of vital importance. To rest guaranteed that the right SEO Business has been selected, the prior projects must be looked from. See the search positions of the projects on the particular top search engines. Adapting to tone of voice search in your SEO technique calls for careful attention in order to the keywords you try in order to rank for. In other words, content and hyperlinks will still be the developing blocks of SEO in 2018. From the above-mentioned information, crafting link-worthy content seemed in order to be the winning choice, since chosen by 35. 2% associated with the 100+ participants as properly as the close runner-up choice came out to become : guest blogging on sites along with high Domain Authority for creating reliable backlinks gaining 30. 8%. Outreaching top influencers of the particular niche to write content material and insert links in this; bagged the support of twenty one. 3% of the SEO experts, whereas the option of damaged backlink although being highly efficient in white-hat SEO practices obtained the selection rate of twelve. 7% of the total sharers in the survey. LSI keywords, normally known as latent semantic indexing keywords, are necessary for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. Already, 76% online marketers use Social Media to help and boost SEO, cites a good article published at In 2017, marketers will do everything feasible to make their Facebook articles or tweets rank higher upon the SERPs. The particular following 2018 SEO trends are regarding to peak - or already are. The panel of nearby SEO and marketing experts will be here to help feed a person some nuggets of wisdom plus well your confidence in the particular arena, in addition to expand your present understanding of Local Search's functioning parts. As a companion towards the particular table, Search Engine Land's Manual To SEO explains the position factors much more depth, within a tutorial providing tips upon implementing them. As Google performs more formula updates to keep up along with user behavior, we'll start in order to see major shifts in exactly how we do SEO. SEO, or search motor optimization, ย are the methods plus or strategies used to position a website and content increased in search engines for example Search engines, Bing, and Yahoo, to outcome in more organic traffic. There are usually many guides out there upon the web which can become found quite easy using Search engines as being a search tool to discover them, which will explain just how you can SEO your web site yourself "DIY". But more than time, SEOs have identified several of the factors they think about when ranking a page. Another post of curiosity might be this one: nine Ways to Use Heatmaps in order to Improve Your SEO” Ways shown include to determine the perfect length of your articles plus its structure, to improve inner links, and to boost conversion rates. It's a complicated and frequently expensive process but, as along with social listening, the goal is definitely for SEO experts, business experts, and entrepreneurs to be capable to map how websites web page link to one another and extrapolate larger SEO trends and development opportunities. User encounter signals are a major SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor once your articles reaches the very first web page of Google. Within short, content and links will certainly still be the foundation associated with SEO in 2018. To get more detailed details on the use of key phrases in your website visit SEOcious exactly where you will discover many various other important factors involved in obtaining your website in the best 10 listings on Google. In general, SEO has been created like a method of enhancing websites' search engine ranking outcomes. It will end up being difficult part for almost any SEO man to implement the necessary actions in getting on search outcomes trough voice. We are going to already seeing content strategies changeover away from keyword-stuffing, and I would be prepared to see lots of SEOs going through their content in order to reevaluate just how much worth it actually holds for the particular user. Google's algorithm keeps a track associated with pages and sites that fulfill the user so this wants to be a primary problem for SEOs going forwards. Don't forget to write us in the comments section if you like our article on SEO trends in 2018 or have any questions regarding them. Google blogs have an massive advantage over any other SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog because, not only may they go directly to the original source, in most practical ways, these people ARE the source. Off-page SEO services assist customers to boost their visitors, increase brand awareness, helps a person to reach the target target audience and maximise your(ROI). Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the act of customization your brand's on the internet and offline to get high quality backlinks that help to position high on Google as well as other Research Engine's. These types of SEO Trends of 2018 are usually ruling the digital world. Key phrase density is really a main thing in SEO optimization, nonetheless, to increase the density a person cannot ruin the quality associated with the content. In 2018, your SEO success won't rely on how well you improve your site for Google. Movie marketing, infographics, link building had been among the most talked SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends for quite a whilst now, however if you have got limited yourself with only these may not earn you advantages that are to be provided by other effective methods that will you might not have recognized. Search engines nearly makes possible for breaking the code of its web page ranking algorithm, continually updated in order to accommodate a thousand different problems, which will be the problem for SEO professionals this 12 months and in the coming many years.

Meta description is not really a direct SEO ranking aspect but it helps in rank indirectly. Let's get digging into exactly what SEO trends are forecasted in order to dominate next year, and just how you are able to proceed about implementing them into your own business strategy. Is voice lookup the next big thing” within SEO? Rather than old-school SEO stuffing, which had all of us setting up the same word more than and over, Google now needs to see related keywords. SEO can gain importance above all otherwise as it helps you generate quality traffic, get visibility, enhance your brand and lend your own business the credibility it needs to succeed. Instead of disavowing each link under a DA thirty on the weekly basis such as some SEOs will tell a person do to, you need in order to embrace these links that are usually not made from us. Furthermore, understand that Google understands plus knows that these links make-up a healthy profile. Perhaps one of the most essential factors of SEO, local back links and citations have been- plus will increasingly become- a primary signal to Google, Bing, Askjeeve, and others about the meaning to your business‘ website.

All of us make reference to them since ranking factors, plus they are usually the focus of an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy. Be conscious that this is actually the particular only possible way to actually lose rankings, because if within desktop search we have noticeable articles and pages that were removed within our mobile version, whenever mobile-first deploys, it will drop that SEO visibility. Prior to going cloud, LTP was currently one of the most well-known keyword research tools in the particular SEO field. Finally, Amazon will dominate e-commerce concerns SEO 2019 Slide in 2018 via Alexa tone of voice, touch, and other innovative interfaces, leaving many e-commerce SEOs to concentrate in on the content-side associated with their marketing. The huge array of search engine marketing (SEO) techniques are typically organized under two umbrellas: black head wear and white hat. Making it relevant to all those search queries and optimizing the particular blogs to align with all those search algorithms would be the big win in stay forward of the SEO game within 2018.

Starting from what exactly is usually voice search and why will be it so important for your own online business, in this guideline we will share with a person 10ย actionable tips on how in order to optimize your content for tone of voice search and various SEO strategies that can specifically provide you with this particular. Within 2018, SEO is content plus content is SEO, content is usually digital and digital is content material. As with any kind of industry, it is our obligation to stay aware of any kind of emerging SEO trends so that will we can incorporate them straight into our strategies and be certain we are providing our customers with creative, industry-leading strategies plus business advice. For this reason, in general, the rule associated with thumb here is that, within order to win SEO”, a person want to rank #1 intended for all of your keywords. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION stands for Seo. ” This particular is a significant process associated with generating traffic from the free of charge, organic, editorial and natural research results on search engines. This enables you to react quickly within case of unwanted new inbound links, and therefore avoid common SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques like negative SEO episodes. SpyFu is the paid tool that uses eleven years of historical data in order to assist you find your competitors' most profitable keywords and the particular keywords they've employed for SEO plus ads. Hence, a person would not like to disregard the importance of content marketing within your SEO strategy 2018. While that theory is usually sound (when focused on a single page, when the intent will be to deliver utility content in order to a Google user) using older school SEO techniques on specifically a large site spread out there across many pages seems in order to amplify site quality problems, right after recent algorithm changes, and therefore this type of optimisation with out keeping an eye on general site quality is self-defeating within the long run. 1. I don't believe Google uses the content within the comments as an on-page SEO signal. These days, most people states, SEO is dead, but We believe, SEO may be the pillar associated with any online business and not really gonaa die. SEO shouldn't impact upon the time it takes in order to create good content. If you really want to improve local SEO and enhance your business's credibility, it has to be an on-going process. Primary on the more personalized user experience since the driving factor behind SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy should make for a good interesting and exciting year within SEO. SEO providers help in all growth trip to reach the goal over time and gather more traffic in order to the site with quality content composed and displayed on the web site. One easy way, but mainly overlooked off-page SEO technique in developing local links is creating market profiles. This way, as an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist, you could associated along with necessary changes and adjustments regarding your tactics so that a person could preserve your present rating through not just Jagger, nevertheless for future updates as nicely. Here are Top five SEO trends and techniques regarding 2018 to boost search motor ranking that you must maintain in mind. Google is definitely constantly rolling out updates in order to its search engine algorithm… plus while the basics of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION will never change, you need to make use of updated tactics to get your own website ranking higher in the particular search results. However, before we get to our main event, I must note that after our 2017 edition of SEO trends launched last year on Search Engine Journal, we heard a couple of complaints about just how long it was. Utilized by more than 3 mil websites, Yoast SEO is the particular only SEO plugin that a person will ever need to create your content appear on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Mobile SEO, within my opinion, will dominate SEO styles in 2018. While the core SEO methods won't change too much, the particular way we do keyword study and form our strategies may. Keywords would be the base of SEO. Then upon your post and pages the particular Yoast SEO plugin now offers a section to type within your meta keywords as noticed in the example below.

[bykhanyisile]

The Vision

I’m often asked about the projects I’m working on and just the thought of where to begin overwhelms me. I’ve accepted that I’ve taken on a lot and that my time is running out.

I have been willing and eager to take on all the ideas that come to me or my community, as long as they are sustainable, meaning they can exist without me. I think that’s why my programs have delayed a bit. I’m focusing a lot on capacity building and sharing responsibilities making sure things are “we” rather than “I”.

Here is a list of all my prospective projects:

Community projects

Backyard Gardens

This is basically an initiative with an agriculture extension officer and some community members to teach caretakers of orphan and vulnerable children the skills to create and maintain their own gardens. With this, we’re aiming to tackle malnutrition, hunger, food security and hopefully provide families with the skills to gain some income off the vegetables and fruits they grow.

A Career Fair

After completing the backyard garden I want to apply for another grant to do a career fair. I’m really excited about this because I have a lot of ideas to ensure attendees get the most out of this fair.

NCP Structures

My last community project is to build the kitchen and latrine structures at the NCP. (An NCP is like a daycare for the orphan and vulnerable children). They already started but ran out of money. The caretakers cook outside and I don’t even know where they use the bathroom. I tried to go the whole sustainable route with this by trying to mobilize community leaders to donate but things weren’t progressing. I told my counterpart once they provide me with a quota for the structures we can begin to raise money locally and abroad.

In School

Upon my arrival to school, I administered a survey to teachers to determine what they saw as areas of improvements, hoping to provide me with a starting point for my projects.

An Alternative To Corporal Punishment Training

In schools teachers, rely on corporal punishment to discipline the students but it has now been prohibited by the Ministry of Education. However, teachers were never taught any other disciplinary strategies and they too noticed that corporal punishment is not effective. So, I started a committee and we hope to conduct research to find the most effective strategies to then implement in the school. I’m also really excited about this, if done correctly it can provide a more holistic approach to learning and discipline. This is really difficult because it’s changing mindsets and that doesn’t occur overnight. The committee is reading an article regarding corporal punishment and classroom strategies and once they found what works best we hope to do a mandatory training for all teachers. I have to say I’m fortunate to have a head teacher that supports my initiatives 100%. He’s with everything I’ve proposed to him and it makes me feel like he trust my vision.

GLOW & BRO

GLOW and BRO are empowerment clubs. Girls leading our world for the ladies and Boys reaching out for the gents. I’ve been trying to establish these clubs since I got here. I have two counterparts for each club and they are amazing and passionate individuals. We’ve held our first meeting for both but with school breaks, my trainings and now the strike, scheduling has been difficult. These clubs are intended to be safe spaces for youth to learn about life skills, sexual reproductive health, build their self-esteem, gain support and build bonds. The students are really eager to join the club, especially the boys. I just want this club to persist long after I’m gone.

A Music Club

We definitely need a new name but the idea for this club came about randomly after one of the students and I started sharing our appreciation for music. I asked the boy to identify a small committee and have simply been providing them with support to make the club happen. Basically, how the club would work is every month they’ll select a topic (pre-approved by their teacher advisor) and as a club create a piece whether song or poem that promotes a positive message and then perform it during morning assembly. The topics we’ve discussed so far are HIV/AIDS, peer pressure, drugs, and examination pressure, things that students can relate to but that won’t disappoint the head teacher (principal). We hope students can use music as an outlet for the challenges they encounter.

Books for Africa

This is a fundraiser volunteers and I have been doing to get our schools and libraries a 1,000 books.

Library Development

This breaks down into several sections. I’m basically trying to work with the librarian to build a curriculum for her classes. We want to increase the usage of the library. We’ve implemented vocabulary and english games in hopes of making english learning fun.

Students are designing their own vocabulary book. I noticed during our games students learn new words and don’t write things down, they don’t even bring their notebooks. So I hope by allowing them to design their own vocabulary booklets they’ll safeguard their books and want to use them.

I’ve been typing the name of every textbook and a list of its contents, hoping to provide both students and teachers with an easy way to find what they’re looking for. People sometimes overlook the information already at their fingertips and this resource form aims to bridge that gap.

Hooked on Books Competition

This is a competition to see who can read the most books by the end of the school term. We hoped by providing them with a prize they’ll scurry and sign up but the thought of presenting their summary to their class has deterred them. And, that’s not something we’re going to compromise. Public speaking is every student's nightmare, they laugh at each other for trying and it’s frustrating to see because it really deters them from doing things that will help them improve. Now, we’re working on recruitment strategies; students just need a little shove in the right direction to help them surpass the limitations their fears create.

Overall, these are my goals and I’ve forbidden myself from taking on any more projects. I really want to contribute to my post and help them meet our numbers. To be honest, I felt a little bad being that most of my projects are ongoing and in the implementation stage, I didn’t meet the reporting goal I set for myself. Next reporting period I hope am hoping to have completed all these projects.

Ngiyabonga // Thank you

[she-willnotfall]

A Few Quick Tips to Help You Find the Best SEO Company

In our entire world SEO needs no introduction. Carrying away technical SEO for local research engines is really a comparable process. These elements may involve websites content technique and its user relevance, SEO marketing, length of time since on the internet presence was established and more. A good starting point whenever using keywords for SEO is definitely to identify existing pages that will can use some optimization. You can review your page's SEO health, evaluate SEO metrics for a quantity of pages, and analyze each external and internal links upon any given web page. But, I'm quite certain that by the end associated with 2020, voice search will end up being very common, and you will have a lot of talks going on in the particular SEO world on how in order to optimize the content for the tone of voice search, similar how it's right now about mobile. But there is definitely another significant SEO trend through the rise of voice queries. The brandname is powerful for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION even though it may not really be a specific ranking aspect. On the similar note, great SEO articles needs keywords but if a person overdo it, Google and human being visitors will hate it. Looking to keep a healthy keyword denseness of 1-2% is recommended. SEO will be optimizing digital documents for individuals who use search engines. Search engines has stated publicly they think brands” are good for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, as people trust them plus want to see them offered in search results. Once we appear ahead to SEO in 2018, discover our predictions for exactly what we think will be a single of Google's biggest years however for search. Meta explanation plays a major role within search engine rank of your post so composing an SEO friendly meta explanation is essential for ranking aspect. SEO isn't very just about building search engine-friendly websites. When you're working on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you need to be conscious of the existing factors that will influence your ranking. We might like to increase visibility, all of us want it to look in Research Engine Results Page (SERP), We all should go with these alleged SEO techniques. Using his exclusive connections in the business planet, he helps ecommerce brands develop their audience through influencers, inbound links, on-page search optimization and specialized SEO -- all rank their brands higher on Google. Whether or not we are talking site rate, personalized SEO, or even Google's RankBrain, we are still speaking about delivering the best feasible experience to the user. In the year 2018, the particular SEO marketers will change their own game and will definitely change their focus beyond the position and revenue issues. 1 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may target different kinds associated with search, including image search, video clip search, academic search, 2 information search, and industry-specific vertical lookup engines. From my perspective SEO people are going to have the harder time ranking this season than last based on most the changes that are taking place. I do find though that will Content is still king plus putting lots of articles out that will hit your target market's lovely spot will be the way to proceed. Combined with the ever-changing research engine algorithms goes the ever-evolving search engine optimization (SEO) exercise. The use of tone of voice search technology is the cause why voice search SEO can be so popular in 2018. By perfect I not just mean SEO-wise but also content-wise like this article, so you keep people on your own site and also generate business from this. Send me a topic via email and I'll write something to suit your needs. Once you are into SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, Google Zero rank or quantity one spot is basically the particular favorite location for everyone. As SEO guidelines evolve, the very unlikely ranking hack is definitely emerging. SEO helps to produce a great image for the website simply by creating blogs, adding to fresh material and new site hyperlinks towards the website to create it remain active on various search platforms. Most people in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (myself included) divide keywords straight into three main categories: head, entire body and the (long) tail. Now you should to finish off this off-page SEO techniques guide. In the success story associated with a website, both design plus search engine optimization (SEO) have fun with an important role as their particular work is vital for the successful online presence. Since the onset associated with Google's Knowledge Graph SEO's about the globe are typically in a madness marking up their websites along with semantic markup. As it is definitely still the beginning of 2018, it will be exciting in order to find out these and various other SEO trends emerge as the particular year progresses. This is just going to be popular therefore an SEO prediction for 2018 is that websites that normally are not reachable by voice searches may lose some of their ranks. What SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION does in a nutshell is definitely convert all your web or even forum pages into a great deal more user friendly links, which usually in turn can then end up being indexed by search engines significantly easier and faster. The end result is that without proper keyword research, you simply cannot nail local on-page SEO - or any type of SEO as an example. This SEO offpage technique involves submission of content and websites on high quality webpages to get authoritative backlinks. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may generate a sufficient come back on investment However, search motors are not purchased organic lookup traffic, their algorithms change, plus there are no guarantees associated with continued referrals. The increase in Voice Searcher will need hard work simply by SEO experts. Therefore, it would become a good ploy to make use of effective SEO ways to increase your own website traffic FAST. We've gone heavy on off-page SEO techniques revolving around articles. SEO trends that a person could use in 2018 in order to rank your page on the internet are usually brand loyalty. The best possible presence originates from SEO marketing methods geared toward mobile searches. So really time for you to gray the lights, cue the spectacular movie trailer voice and get ready, as next year within SEO is looking pretty highly advanced. This shows how slow local businesses have been around the web in updating to SEO and web technological updates. SEO is important because can make your website relevant in order to your keywords throughout the research engine ranking process and will certainly lead to improved search motor ranking. Many spamming sites have the tendency to make use of such Black Hat SEO methods. From targeting the proper keywords using Google Keyword Advisor to sharing valuable information- content material marketing was and will regularly be one of the most essential SEO trends for a lengthy time to come. Whilst classical techniques will continue in order to be effective, the SEO tendencies and tactics mentioned on this particular page can significantly change the particular way we perform search motor optimization. Content advertising is maturing and trying away infographics and video marketing may just add value for your own SEO techniques. ⭐ One of the best strategies adopted by businesses nowadays is an SEO focused content material strategy. John - we have around one, 000 video podcast episodes, plus currently kicking off a repair of our own site specifically to enhance our SEO (we've decided it can easier to rebuild than in order to try to fix our frankenstein monster). Excellent rule in my SEO agency which usually i instill in all our clients which is ‘if a person want your business top associated with Google, it must DESERVE in order to rank top of Google'. At the same time, the growth of voice search and virtual assistants can become an ideal basis for your development of artificial intelligence systems as well as the promotion of those SEO strategies that take into account current trends. Within the below-mentioned publish, I did drop my key phrase SEO” in the beginning alone. Alexatmedia is an marketing agency with 5 years' encounter In E-Marketing Field, We are usually using that technology to improve any kind of business plus help the business owners in order to be in the first of them Competitors, Alexatmedia with the professional team had all the particular secrets to do this, using Interpersonal Media and search engine marketing (seo), web designs, web growth, mobile app designs, mail marketing”, Alexatmedia leading your business in order to the top. Intended for this post, we decided in order to include some top digital advertising blogs that aren't hard-core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. She provides some awesome tips on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for voice search, including thinking of how people ask questions plus understanding local queries and purpose. In addition, when it comes to Nearby SEO, long-tail keywords become actually more important. Nearby SEO will play a excellent role in mobile searches is definitely all about content. That's why optimizing your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique for voice search nowadays is of vital importance. To rest guaranteed that the right SEO Organization has been selected, the prior projects must be looked in. See the ranks of the projects on the particular top search engines. Adapting to tone of voice search in your SEO technique calls for careful attention in order to the keywords you try in order to rank for. In a nutshell, content and hyperlinks will still be the creating blocks of SEO in 2018. From the above-mentioned information, crafting link-worthy content seemed in order to be the winning choice, since chosen by 35. 2% associated with the 100+ participants as nicely as the close runner-up choice came out to become : guest blogging on sites along with high Domain Authority for constructing reliable backlinks gaining 30. 8%. Outreaching top influencers of the particular niche to write articles and insert links in this; bagged the support of twenty one. 3% of the SEO specialists, whereas the option of damaged backlink although being highly efficient in white-hat SEO practices obtained the selection rate of twelve. 7% of the total sharers in the survey. LSI keywords, in any other case known as latent semantic indexing keywords, are necessary for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. Already, 76% entrepreneurs use Social Media to help and boost SEO, cites a good article published at In 2017, marketers will do everything probable to make their Facebook articles or tweets rank higher upon the SERPs. The particular following 2018 SEO trends are regarding to peak - or already are. The panel of regional SEO and marketing experts is definitely here to help feed a person some nuggets of wisdom plus well your confidence in the particular arena, along with expand your present understanding of Local Search's functioning parts. As a companion towards the particular table, Search Engine Land's Guideline To SEO explains the rank factors much more depth, within a tutorial providing tips upon implementing them. As Google performs more formula updates to keep up along with user behavior, we'll start in order to see major shifts in just how we do SEO. SEO, or search motor optimization, ย are the methods plus or strategies used to position a website and content increased in search engines like Search engines, Bing, and Yahoo, to outcome in more organic traffic. There are usually many guides out there upon the web which can end up being found quite easy using Search engines being a search tool to discover them, which will explain just how you can SEO your web site yourself "DIY". But more than time, SEOs have identified several of the factors they think about when ranking a page. Another post of attention might be this one: nine Ways to Use Heatmaps in order to Improve Your SEO” Ways outlined include to determine the perfect length of your articles plus its structure, to improve inner links, and to boost sales. It's a complicated and usually expensive process but, as along with social listening, the goal is usually for SEO experts, business experts, and entrepreneurs to be capable to map how websites web page link to one another and extrapolate larger SEO trends and development opportunities. User encounter signals are a major SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor once your articles reaches the very first web page of Google. Within short, content and links may still be the foundation associated with SEO in 2018. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is known as the steps you get to make sure you are usually ranked highly in the lookup engines like google when somebody searches for a related term, such as "how to quit my dog from barking". Hopefully this article has assisted inform you of all the particular things you need to understand about the upcoming SEO styles for 2018! These are a few associated with the SEO trends which may yield greater results in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. In reaction, she lists multiple SEO common myths related to content and attempts to clear them up in order to ensure that people can advantage from the best of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION without needing to deal along with the dregs. Clearly, there are a quantity of new SEO trends relocating to the forefront in 2018. SEO at the end associated with the day will always depend on content and links. Thus, SEO strategy can try to create a back link profile to avoid spamming within 2018 and yes, backlink may remain an important key in order to making your company rank upon top in search ranking. Off-page SEO services assist customers to boost their visitors, increase brand awareness, helps a person to reach the target market and maximise your(ROI). Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the act of enhancing your brand's on the internet and offline to get high quality backlinks that help to position high on Google along with other Research Engine's. These types of SEO Trends of 2018 are usually ruling the digital world. Key word density is really a main thing in SEO optimization, nonetheless, to increase the density a person cannot ruin the quality associated with the content. In 2018, your SEO success won't rely on how well you boost your site for Google. Movie marketing, infographics, link building had been among the most talked SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends for quite a whilst now, however if you possess limited yourself with only all those may not earn you advantages that are to be provided by other effective methods that will you might not have recognized. Search engines nearly makes possible for breaking the code of its web page ranking algorithm, continually updated in order to accommodate a thousand different problems, which will be the problem for SEO professionals this 12 months and in the coming yrs. Meta description is not really a direct SEO ranking element but it helps in positioning indirectly. Let's get digging into exactly what SEO trends are forecasted in order to dominate next year, and just how you are able to move about implementing them into your own business strategy. Is voice lookup the next big thing” within SEO? Rather than old-school SEO stuffing, which had all of us investing in the same word more than and over, Google now needs to see related keywords. SEO can gain importance above all otherwise as it helps you generate quality traffic, get visibility, enhance your brand and lend your own business the credibility it needs to succeed. Instead of disavowing every single link under a DA thirty on the weekly basis such as some SEOs will tell a person do to, you need in order to embrace these links that are usually not made from us. Furthermore, understand that Google understands plus knows that these links constitute a healthy profile. Probably one of the most essential factors of SEO, local back links and citations have been- plus will increasingly become- a primary signal to Google, Bing, Google, and others about the importance to your business‘ website. We all make reference to them because ranking factors, plus they are usually the focus of an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy. Be conscious that this is actually the particular only possible way to actually lose rankings, because if within desktop search we have noticeable articles and pages that were removed within our mobile version, whenever mobile-first deploys, it will reduce that SEO visibility. Just before going cloud, LTP was currently one of the most well-known keyword research tools in the particular SEO field. Finally, Amazon will dominate e-commerce questions SEO 2019 Slide in 2018 via Alexa tone of voice, touch, and other innovative interfaces, leaving many e-commerce SEOs to target in on the content-side associated with their marketing. The huge array of search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques are typically organized under two umbrellas: black head wear and white hat. Making it relevant to these search queries and optimizing the particular blogs to align with individuals search algorithms would be the big win in stay forward of the SEO game within 2018. Starting from what exactly is definitely voice search and why will be it so important for your own online business, in this guidebook we will share with a person 10ย actionable tips on how in order to optimize your content for tone of voice search and various SEO strategies that can specifically assist this particular. Within 2018, SEO is content plus content is SEO, content is definitely digital and digital is articles. As with any kind of industry, it is our obligation to stay aware of any kind of emerging SEO trends so that will we can incorporate them in to our strategies and be certain we are providing our customers with creative, industry-leading strategies plus business advice. For this reason, in general, the rule associated with thumb here is that, within order to win SEO”, a person want to rank #1 regarding all of your keywords. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION stands for Seo. ” This particular is a significant process associated with generating traffic from the free of charge, organic, editorial and natural lookup results on search engines. RankBrain is more associated with a ranking signal than a good SEO masterpiece, nevertheless, it will have some effects on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and can be especially helpful if users don't know totally what they're looking for, or even simply can't find the correct words to use. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION - Seo: the process associated with making your site better intended for search engines. Google announced last yr that RankBrain had become their own 3rd most important ranking element, and our SEO predictions recommend it will grow in significance for 2018. Creating and promoting linkable possessions is an excellent way in order to increase your SEO through the obtain of backlinks. You can get SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION results by executing Pillar #1 and Pillar #2 well, yet backlinks are fuel on the particular fire. This way, a person and your SEO can guarantee that your site is made to be search engine-friendly in the bottom up. However, a great SEO can also help enhance an existing site. That's why SEOs are usually starting to aspect in the objective behind each search query plus optimize the content and consumer experience accordingly. As Bing's Duane Forrester said, all SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Ranking signals revolve around articles of some kind” highlighting the particular impact good content has upon your web site. Coming up with refreshing and unique ideas day within day out is incredibly difficult, however necessary to keep your own site not only relevant plus engaging for the audience, yet optimized for search engines such as google. Soon after this article focused around a major on-page SEO factors that will impact the search ecosystem was published by Google, a debate about prominent Offpage SEO trends that can disrupt the world of SEO in 2018 sparked in the industry. Nonetheless, auditing your competitors SEO gives you new ideas on how you can grow your local business, improve its SEO, target new keywords, and beat your competition in the process of doing so. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION involves communicating aboutness” in the specific context to both human being users and technology. Google Lookup Console is, slowly but certainly, getting better Google's getting the much more aggressive about producing rank tracking more difficult (some rank tracking folks I'm helpful with told me that Q4 2017 was particularly gut-punching), plus the SEO software field will be way, way more densely loaded with competitors than ever just before. In this post, all of us would be talking about On-Page SEO and some of the very effective ways of boosting your ratings on Search Engines. Some Webmasters will pay lots of money to a so-called professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert to have their Internet sites on top within the search positions. Meta keywords would end up being the least priority in positioning factors in SEO. The SEO Trends associated with 2018 are turning in order to impact approach on various other professions related to Digital Marketing. These types of advanced SEO techniques might not really be the easiest to carry out - they actually require even more effort than basic keyword study and link building - yet they are incredibly effective.

[corneliussteinbeck]

GGS Spotlight: Julie Barnum

Name: Julie Barnum Age: 24 Location: Fort Collins, CO

How did you find out about Girls Gone Strong? I was looking up some fitness-related question one day, and came upon the GGS website. I saw a place to subscribe for emails, which I did. I honestly forgot about it save for the occasional article until after a trip back home over Memorial Day. I remember feeling so out of control with my eating and feeling terrible because after about two years of super consistent working out in undergrad, anxiety that skyrocketed after graduation had stopped me from really getting anywhere with working out in graduate school. That’s about when I got an email from GGS about the Strongest You Coaching program, and it was like someone had read my mind and was sending me solution to my problems.

What does being a Girl Gone Strong mean to you? It means feeling confident and more sure of myself again. It means learning compassion and forgiveness towards myself when things don’t go as planned, with working out, with life, whatever. It means finding a group in which I can confide, and even to discover others who struggle after being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder to push through it to be able to work out and live life under new conditions.

Being a Girl Gone Strong means finding the inner badass within once more, and realizing I’ve had the strength all along inside of me to get past whatever challenges I’m facing as I grow up and learn how to “adult.”

(HA, still figuring that out daily)

What do you do? I am a graduate student at Colorado State University in the Department of Atmospheric Science. My work is related to weather radar and numerical modeling. There’s this weather model people at NASA Goddard are developing that basically simulates the same kinds of things a real radar can do. The idea is that we’ll be able to implement that in real-time and predict what types of precipitation will be where in a storm as it develops (think hail, heavy rain, stuff that the public cares about). There are some other facets to my research, but I’ll save you the long explanation. If you’re curious, hit me up for more information.

What else do you do? A bit of anything and everything. I run. I lift. I rock climb and boulder. I do yoga. I dance around like a fool when no one’s watching. I forecast weather situations for back where I’m from in Missouri and here in Colorado. I snowshoe. I ski, when time and money permit. I hike, both lower and high altitude (I’ve made it up three 14-ers in Colorado: Bierstadt, Grays, and Torreys). Note, 14-ers are mountains with a height between 14,000 and 15,000 feet. I’m also really into travelling when I can. I did a year abroad between high school and undergrad in southern France. I try to speak French whenever I can, because if you don’t use it, you lose it. When the weather is looking right, and my advisor is okay with me taking time off research, I storm chase (don’t know many other jobs where you can just go on a whim and do this). I’ve participated in two different meteorological field campaigns (PECAN and C3LOUD-EX) chasing specific storm types to collect data. I’m kind of a jack of all trades.

How did you get introduced to strength training, and how long have you been training? I remember doing a little bit of lifting for summertime P.E. classes in high school. Then I essentially didn’t touch weights again until my Junior year in undergrad. That mainly arose because I started dating my current significant other, who lifts religiously. It started out as something we could do together, and then when he moved for graduate school it turned into a more personal activity because I enjoyed the progress I was seeing.

It was a bit weird to work out alone at first, but it became liberating to not be afraid to enter “bro-central” all on my own.

Favorite Lift: This is hard to narrow down to one. But, for lifting iron, it’d probably be deadlifts. All the deadlifts. As for body weight lifts….push-ups, as well as what is quickly becoming one of my favorites: chin-ups and pull-ups. My confidence in lifting and in my ability to do what I put my mind to has grown exponentially from where it was pre-GSS and Strongest You, so I know I’ll get there. It’ll just take a bit, which is something I’ve come to terms with during Strongest You. Some things take a bit, and that’s okay and expected. Plus, it’s so much more rewarding when you finally get something you’ve been working at for soooooooo long.

Top 3 things you must have with you at the gym or in your gym bag: Phone (my source of music), headphones, water bottle.

Do you prefer to train alone or with others? Why? If I’m lifting/doing HIIT/cardio at the gym, I’m almost exclusively alone. I get into this very cathartic zone. Training is where I work on myself and on pushing my boundaries (physically and mentally, since working out can still sometimes bring up unpleasant anxious feelings). So to be with someone else when I’m doing that feels almost like a violation to my true “me” time. Occasionally I’ll lift with my boyfriend and friends. Incidentally, one of my Strongest Your workouts totally crushed three different guys… that felt super satisfying, not gonna lie. However, I do work out with others when it comes to other activities. Most of my working out with others is in the form of weekly rock climbing and bouldering sessions or hiking. Those are pretty much the only two things I do with others, because I find those activities more fun that way.

Best compliment you’ve received lately: Work-related, I was told by people working with me on research related to my Master’s project at NASA Goddard that they really liked some plots I had put together for a presentation; they said that the plots were of conference presentation/poster quality, which was a huge compliment. Workout-related, I have had someone at the gym comment on how good my deadlift form was. That felt awesome because I’ve been so neurotic about good form. On my Instagram I had a friend comment on a pull-up video “#welcometothegunshow! #badassery #woah”, which I though both hilarious and super nice at the same time.

Most recent compliment you gave someone else: I think the most recent compliment I gave was to someone’s deadlift PR. I told her that it looked awesome, and that I was super happy to see her actively setting her shoulders back, engaging them in the exercise. I try to throw out a few compliments a day to different women. I realized a bit ago that I tend to look at other women, particularly those who work out, as competition. If they do well, then I get jealous. I thought about it after a mindset assignment we did in Strongest You, and realized that that wasn’t the right way to go about it. I’m more at peace with myself now; I know I’m working hard on what I want to improve, and I’m doing me, as close to 100 percent as I can, every day That’s good enough for me. So now instead of letting myself turn to jealousy, I try to pour out support and encouragement instead.

I know that it makes me feel good when people cheer me on, so I try to be a cheerleader to others as well.

Favorite way to treat yourself: Sometimes, it’s a cookie. A really, deliciously, warm, soft cookie. I have a sort of obsession with delicious desserts. Sometimes I buy them, but I think it’s more fun to look up a recipe and make something tailored to my tastes. However, other times I like to not make food the focus of a reward. In those cases, I treat myself to a nice haircut, or a book I’ve been thinking about getting, a piece of clothing I’ve been desiring but have told myself I didn’t really “need” (except boots…everyone needs a ton of pairs of amazingly cute boots). Sometimes, I reward myself with exercise. I dance around the house, I go on a hike with friends, I rock climb when maybe my to-do list is still a bit long, but I’ve gotten a lot done. Gotta stay sane, you know?

Favorite quote: ”Let go of what was, surrender to what is, have faith in what will be”. That’s gotten me through a lot of darker moments.

Three words that best describe you: Driven. Outgoing. Unabashed.

Favorite book: Depends on my mood, but two books that have really stuck with me throughout time are Pride and Prejudice and 1984. A dichotomy of book tastes if I’ve ever seen one.

What inspires and motivates you? At the core, my desire to live life, and not just exist. This became especially prevalent the summer after graduating undergrad and suddenly having all this anxiety, and a few panic attacks and bad insomnia, hit. It left me feeling pretty broken and scared to do much of anything. About a year of that and I really decided to start saying screw it to that. I was still, and sometimes still am, stuck on how I used to feel better, and what if I had only done this differently, would it all be better, what if what if what if. What if I stopped “what if-ing” and created a new normal? That was really liberating for me. From then on, I decided to purposefully engage in activities that at times scare the living shit out of me. Then I know I’m truly doing something that’s going to make me grow and be stronger than I was before. Every opportunity to do that is a terrifying, but welcomed challenge. That’s how I got back into the gym, that’s how I’ve been able to be in crowded public places at night again, that’s how I got myself to summit three 14-ers in Colorado and that’s how I’m slowly regaining a sense of what it is to be me.

As for motivation for life or working out, I love watching inspirational YouTube videos (Prince Ea is great) or scrolling through Instagram. I follow a lot of other strong, powerful ladies (in more ways than just physical). To see other people pushing themselves and achieving, as well as pushing through hard times and failures, is so motivating to me. Other than that, I can’t not listen to music when working out/working on a project. At the moment, I’m on a Strange Music, Inc. kick. What can I say, I’m from Missouri.

Describe a typical day in your life, from waking up to bedtime: My typical weekday: Either I wake up and gym, then try to read some introspective-type book (can I get some heck yeah’s for Mark Manson’s the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F?) while eating breakfast, or I read then go to work (going to the gym after work in that case). Lately, when I’m done with all of that I come home and read up on training and anatomy. Other than weather, I’m very passionate about helping others be a better, healthier version of themselves. Somehow after defending my thesis, I want that to be worked into my life. After this, I eat dinner, generally while talking to the boyfriend and our roommate. Sometimes after work I’ll watch an episode of a favorite pastime show (anyone else still Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans? Yeah?). Sometimes instead of T.V. or hanging out with the others, I do a little yoga or meditation before bed. Every day I try to make it a little different. Keeps life interesting in the smaller moments.

When did you join Strongest You Coaching? Why did you decide to join and what helped you make the decision to join? I joined in 2016 for the group starting at the beginning of June with Jen Comas as our trainer. I think I’ve mentioned this already, but, I basically was feeling pretty unhappy with where I was physically, mentally, and emotionally after the first year of graduate school. I saw the email for Strongest You after a trip home, and thought, this is it. This is what I need to get back on track. For about two hours or so after the email, I read up on the program and agonized over the money. However, I realized that being a bit poorer than usual during graduate school, and becoming happier with myself as a person, was a way better alternative than having a bit more money and being unhappy.

What has been your biggest challenge in the Strongest You Coaching program? Myself. Mainly, anxiety, or other weird bodily-function fears, usually rooted in maybe a bit of something legit, but mostly me over-examining everything. I’ve been working very hard on letting that go. Jen and the other women in the group have been quite helpful in throwing encouragement and understanding my way whenever I have a rough day and divulge that information to them. I think my other biggest issues is trying to stick to mostly single-ingredient carbs. I mean…come on. Burritos on the daily would be my dream, but not necessarily the dreams of my digestive system. Sadness abounds.

What has been your biggest success in the Strongest You Coaching program? To me personally, making working through my various fears a conscious effort in some way, every day. I think I’ve come a long way from where I started in June. That, and hitting a 175-pound deadlift. Holllllaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

What do you like best about the Strongest You Coaching community? The inclusivity and willingness of many of the women in it to be 100 percent upfront and real about their successes, their failures, and their struggles. I’ve never met such an authentic group of women, and it’s so awesome. It made me feel more open to letting people in on my own successes and struggles.

What was your “BIG” goal that you wanted to achieve by the end of Strongest You Coaching? My final goal was to let the other women in the group and Jen know how much this process has meant to me. There have been ups and downs, but I’m a better person having known them all. Additionally, I plan to continue following all of the healthy eating habits, and mindset shifts we worked on during Strongest You. I am still working towards my Resolution Revolution goal for 2017 of a 200-pound deadlift and squat. That, and figuring out effective programming now on my own to get myself there. Jen has been giving us a lot of advice, and I creep pretty hard on other GSS women’s workouts (no shame). Between all that, I’m sure I’ll succeed in that goal.

What is the habit you’re currently working on most? If you mean dietary-wise, single-ingredient carbs. Gosh, I love burritos so much. As for a lifestyle habit? I think getting more daily movement in has been a challenge that I’m trying hard to work on. Also, I’m working on slowing down a bit. Breathing more throughout the day, taking more moments to just sit and be present. It’s so easy for me to let my brain go into overdrive, but it’s not beneficial to me to do that. It’s a hard habit to break, but I’m working on it.

How has Strongest You Coaching changed your life? I’ve touched on this a bit throughout my responses. The most obvious way it has helped me is in the consistency with which I work out now. That, however, stemmed from the fact that I’ve become much more confident in myself and am willing to push myself harder than I would’ve before. That’s really been instrumental in all my physical and emotional success. That could not have happened without Strongest You and the women in the group.

What would you tell a woman who’s nervous about joining Strongest You Coaching? If it’s the money, I get it. I’m a graduate student on a graduate student salary. It wasn’t always easy, but the benefits I’ve reaped from doing the program far outweigh any extra adventures I turned down because of money. If it’s because you’re nervous about what it entails, I’ll tell you the big secret —

Strongest You is all about learning to trust yourself.

It’s about learning to trust yourself in eating healthfully without being told exactly what to eat and when (because handing out meal plans is not how GGS rolls). It’s about having training that you are capable of doing, but which will still make you work for your gains, and it’s about thinking about how you think about fitness, others, and yourself. It’s a lot more introspection work than might be apparent. It’s much more than what you’ll find if you just get a few training sessions with a personal trainer at a gym. It’s worth every bit of anxiety I had before starting. You’ll be a better person for having gone through the program, I guarantee it. Let it be known though, it’s very much so a program that you get out of it what you put into it. So be prepared to go all in. Don’t hold back, it’ll only slow your progress and rob you of interactions that could seriously be eye-opening and crucial to your success!

Click to Register Learn more about Strongest You Coaching

The post GGS Spotlight: Julie Barnum appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

from Blogger http://corneliussteinbeck.blogspot.com/2017/05/ggs-spotlight-julie-barnum.html