6 Steps to Business Growth through Community Connections

Community involvement is crucial for small business owners to network and meet new clients. Before you even start your business, your community connections are a valuable resource for discovering which goods or services your community is lacking.

I was able to break into the shade structure industry 11 years ago from a background in political consulting because I realized that businesses offering high-end, aesthetically pleasing shade structures were practically nonexistent in my community despite a high demand. From personal experience and my interactions with neighbors, clients and community members, I knew that sun safety was a pertinent issue in Miami but noticed that many public areas and outdoor businesses were not adequately shaded.

My business, ShadeFLA, was founded with the goal of filling my community’s need. Below, I offer some tips on how understanding your community can help you grow your business.
1)Know your community. Every community is different depending on location, climate, and demographics. Involvement in neighborhood or homeowner organizations, school PTA groups, local business councils and other groups allows you to meet people and find out what they are looking to improve in their neighborhoods or their own lives.

2)Know your community’s needs. As you get to know your community, you will discover its unique needs and perhaps notice where they are not being met. In the early 2000s, I found that although many tourists and residents were attracted to Miami for its sunny weather, unbearable heat and sudden storms often put a damper on outdoor living. Playgrounds, outdoor restaurants, pool decks, and schools needed shade and rain protection. In a community where tourism is a cornerstone of the local economy, the lack of shade struck me as a lost opportunity. Connections with with local business owners, parents, and community leaders gave me insight into what my community was lacking.

 3)Offer a high quality product or service. Identifying an unmet need in your community gives you a powerful competitive edge in the market. You want to offer such a high quality product that no one will be tempted to start a competing business that can “do it better.” Further, you want your clients to be so excited about your product or service that they eagerly recommend you their friends and associates. I sourced my first products from Australia, which is in industry leader in tension shade sails. By distributing a product that already had a proven track record of quality, I was able to impress clients from the very beginning.

4)Stay exclusive. Once others see how successful your business idea is, they may try to emulate you and steal away business. One way you can avoid this is by becoming the exclusive regional dealer of a particular product. My company is the exclusive U.S. retailer of the Sun Square retractable sail, in addition to selling other shade products. Offering an exclusive product has allowed my company to stand out from the competition for over a decade.

5)Follow trends. Perhaps you are already meeting your community’s needs, have the exclusive rights to a product or service, and your sales are increasing rapidly - great! But communities change, and so do their needs or the way that they seek to fill those needs. I am constantly on the lookout for new products and services that I think would appeal to my current and potential clients. In 2011, I began offering a retractable roof system with both sun and rain protection, a particularly good fit for hotels and restaurants that need to cover a large outdoor space. As this product becomes more and more popular, I have been able to continue to expand my business.

6)Use referrals and community connections to reach new clients. This is common sense to any small business owner, but it bears repeating! Every social or community gathering is an opportunity to network and share what your business is doing.

From startup to expansion, community involvement will allow you to get the information and make the connections you need to grow your small business.

Former CIA Chief Smacks Down Donald Trump In Clinton Endorsement

Michael Morell says Trump’s a self-aggrandizing agent of Vladimir Putin who’s guilty of “routine carelessness with the facts"


Michael Morell says he found Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful and inquisitive” when she was secretary of state.
 
Michael Morell ripped Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his lack of experience and relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as he endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a New York Times op-ed Friday.
Morell held leadership roles at the CIA for over three years, serving as the agency’s acting director on two occasions during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. He lauded Clinton in the opinion piece for being “prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument” during their shared time in the Situation Room.
Trump, on the other hand, exudes traits that “suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief,” Morell wrote.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.
The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump’s character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

 Putin preyed on Trump’s “vulnerabilities,” currying the businessman’s favor simply by complimenting him, Morell said. Trump’s adoration of Putin, a leader with a reckless and dangerous track record, makes him “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” Morell added. He also hit Trump for his proposed ban on Muslims, saying it directly contradicts American values and undermines security.
“My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now,” Morell said in the op-ed. “Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.”
Morell said that he isn’t a registered Democrat or Republican and that this is the first time he has come out in favor of a candidate.
“Between now and [Election Day], I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president,” he wrote.
Read the op-ed here.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.

Kim Kardashian Hasn’t Had The Best Luck With Pets

Kim Kardashian and dog Dolce pose with sister Kendall Jenner and dog Bella during a photo shoot on Jul. 7, 2009, in Los Angeles, CA.
 
Despite once landing the cover of K9 magazine with a frightened-looking chihuahua, Kimberly Noel Kardashian isn’t really an animal person.
The 35-year-old reality star opened up about her furry feelings (or lack thereof) in a post on her app called “Our Family Pets.”
“My fam has had SO many pets over the years, from dogs to rabbits and even a peacock named Peter Pan, LOL,” Kardashian wrote. “The funniest thing is, I’m not the biggest animal person; sure, I love cute fluffy kittens but I don’t die to constantly have a pet.”


K9
Will someone please rescue that dog? 
 On her app, Kim brings up one of her pets that did die ― a little chihuahua named Dolce, who was “tragically killed by a coyote in the neighborhood.”
Fans might remember another of Kim’s pets ― a kitten named Mercy, gifted to her from Kanye ― who died of a cancer-like virus at just four months old.


KKW
Pets old and new. 
Instead of dwelling on death, Kardashian also reminisced about a few of her family’s pets, including Khloe’s former peacock, Peter Pan.
“I didn’t even know you could have a peacock for a pet, LOL!” Kim wrote. “He still lives at her old house with its new owners.”
We’re not quite sure how Kim handled hanging out with Peter the peacock, but as we can predict based on past experiences with exotic animals ― probably not well.




These days, Kim says she doesn’t have any pets other than a few fish. But if it’s up to North, the family is going to get a dog really soon. We can’t wait to see which Kanye song they name the pup.

Pope Francis Refuses To Associate Islam With Violence

According to German, Nazi-era thinker Carl Schmitt, the function of the Catholic church and the papacy is to slow down the arrival of the Antichrist and the end of days. On his visit to Poland from July 27 to 31, Pope Francis made it clear that he is trying to keep a third World War from emerging — in the shape of a war between religions. Among his remarks, he said that the characterization of Islam as violent is misguided. 

Despite repeated attempts to get the pope to create an armed church — by those who do not dare to demand a response to the terrorist phenomenon from politicians — Francis is not alone in rejecting the military-theology option.

Paradoxically, the few churchmen and the even fewer columnists who attempt to blackmail the church with the idea of an armed papacy are the same ones who chastise Francis for not following in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II.

But it’s clear that Francis’s refusal to enter the church and the gospel in a “clash of civilizations 2.0” follows in the path set by John Paul II. (The current cultural and religious war is considerably different from the clash of civilizations predicted roughly 20 years ago by the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington.
 It’s also clear that he’s carrying out the church’s commitment to peace. It was almost a century ago, on August 1, 1917, when Pope Benedict XV described war as “useless massacre.”



“Anyone who asks Pope Francis to issue a theological sanction on Islam, in the form of a declaration of a war of religions, is making a desperate attempt to simplify the landscape we’re all facing.



Francis is a profoundly anti-ideological pope who has learned a great deal from the clash between the church and political ideologies. He has experienced the full complexity and paradoxes inherent to life as a Catholic in a democratic, pluralistic society.

In 1989, John Paul II was celebrated as the undisputed victor of the battle between ideologies; for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it was far more difficult to extricate himself from the historical and theological conflict between church and state in Argentina.

The battle is even harder for Francis as the bishop of Rome. He faces neo-liberal secularists who are enamored by the idea of a war between religions, narcissists who see in the assassins of Rouen what they believe to be the true version of Islam, and whom they want the church to fight in their stead.

But the pope is also dealing with those who are expecting him to condemn Islam at large. They expect him to make a theological judgment on the basis of such crazy factions who do not comply with any of the doctrinal, spiritual, social or political expressions of global Islam.

There are currently many issues and questions surrounding the geopolitical and cultural stance of Catholicism, including: The return of nationalism and the risks facing democracy in the West; the issue of the domination of a technocratic paradigm that brings about social inequality, the biopolitical question (which certainly hasn’t disappeared from the horizon — just ask any Western countries in which euthanasia has become an increasingly common practice); and the issue of global terrorism, which has marked our lives over the past 15,  and for which no short term solutions can be seen.



“With his words, Francis keeps the church, and the entire Western world, safe from the abyss that would open up in the event of a theological retaliation on global Islam.



Overall, redefinition of ideological and religious alignments can be seen clearly in the United States, where the white nationalism of Donald Trump’s Republican party has momentarily overshadowed — but has not entirely eliminated — the pro-life and pro-choice issues surrounding abortion, marking a major shift compared to the last 40 years of U.S. politics.

Anyone who asks Pope Francis to issue a theological sanction on Islam, in the form of a declaration of a war of religions, is making a desperate attempt to simplify the landscape we’re all facing. They are under the mistaken impression that the issue is purely theological, or better yet, heresy-ological. It is as if a theological condemnation of Islam would be enough to resolve the massive, complex puzzle of issues that the whole world is grappling with today.

The genius of Catholicism, and the Roman papacy in particular, is the ability to scrutinize the “signs of the time,” to avoid the temptation to take shortcuts. The papal magisterium witnessed this with the 1963 Pacem in Terris encyclical, the spiritual testament of John XXIII, and with the inter-religious encounters in Assisi organized by John Paul II (as a way to combat skepticism and opposition coming in from almost all sides) in 1986, 15 years before the events of September 11, 2001.

On his way back from Poland, Pope Francis said that it is wrong to equate violence and terrorism with Islam. With his words, Francis keeps the church, and the entire Western world, safe from the abyss that would open up in the event of a theological retaliation on global Islam — which remains to be the primary victim of terrorism worldwide.

This post first appeared on HuffPost Italy. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.

Donald Trump Just Had Another Very Bad Polling Day

Two new surveys show him with less than 40 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton.


One poll released Thursday shows Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with a 15-point lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Fresh off of a post-convention bounce, Hillary Clinton is continuing to grow her lead over Donald Trump, according to new national polling released Thursday evening.
Clinton leads Trump by 9 points, 47 percent to 38 percent, in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. While both candidates remain unpopular, the survey finds, Clinton’s image has improved “modestly.” A majority of voters say they have more trust in her to handle a crisis and to deal with foreign policy.
A McClatchy-Marist poll gives Clinton an even wider 15-point lead against Trump, 48 percent to 33 percent. The survey finds Trump ceding ground among traditionally GOP demographics, losing men to Clinton by 8 points and holding just a 2-point edge among white voters.
Among other groups, he fares far more poorly. The NBC/WSJ and McClatchy-Marist surveys give Trump just 1 percent and 2 percent of the vote, respectively, among African-American voters.
“This is coming off the Democratic convention, where a bounce [for Clinton] is expected,” Marist polling director Lee Miringoff told McClatchy about Trump’s prospects. “What you don’t want is to have the worst week of your campaign.”
At the state level, new polling in traditional battlegrounds also showed Clinton with a significant edge over Trump. New surveys released Thursday gave her a 15-point lead in New Hampshire, a 9-point lead in Michigan, an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania and a 6-point lead in Florida.
The results suggest that Trump’s problems have worsened since the end of the parties’ back-to-back conventions, thanks to a brutal news cycle dominated by party infighting and Trump’s ongoing feud with the family of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq.
HuffPost Pollster’s model, which aggregates publicly available polling, gives Clinton a lead of 7.5 percentage points over Trump nationally. The model also includes several recent polls with less overwhelming leads for Clinton, including online Ipsos/Reuters and UPI/CVoter tracking polls, which show her up by 4 and 6 points respectively.
In a three-way race with Gary Johnson, Clinton leads Trump 44 percent to 36 percent, according to the HuffPost Pollster model, with Johnson taking 8 percent. The surveys suggest that third-party candidates such as Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are drawing support from both major-party candidates.
Those national margins are substantially wider than
Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney during any point in 2012, and, if they hold, would denote a historic win for Clinton.
But with months to go, there’s still ample time for the possibility of a narrower race, especially if Trump can manage to win over some of the Republican voters not yet in his camp.
“Do I think Trump is a damaged candidate running a terrible campaign? Absolutely. Do I think that he has zero chance to win and has effectively lost the race in August? No,” Amy Walter wrote Wednesday in the Cook Political Report. “[S]he has more options to get to 270 than he does. She is clearly the favorite. But, this race is not over.”
The NBC/WSJ poll surveyed 800 registered voters between July 31 and Aug. 3, while the McClatchy-Marist poll surveyed 983 registered voters between Aug. 1-3. Both used live interviewers to reach landlines and cell phones.