Has Covid Been A Silent Factor Of Divorce?

Have Divorces Been On The Rise Since Covid Started?

United States divorce rates have been increasing in the past few years. There are many factors that could contribute to this increase, such as financial instability or changes in social norms. However, there is a possibility that Covid might also be playing a role in the increase of divorces.

For one, the stress of the pandemic could be taking its toll on marriages. With people stuck in their homes, and so much worry and uncertainty in the air, it’s no wonder that some relationships may be starting to unravel.

Anecdotal Evidence For Covid Divorces

There is anecdotal evidence that suggests that Covid may be causing stress and tension within marriages. Hackensack, NJ Divorce Attorney, Rita Jerejian suggests that "Perhaps the biggest issue facing marriages in the face of covid-19 is the fear of the future and what covid-19 may bring." For example, some couples have a partner who lost a job and they are having difficulties making ends meet. Many couples have also been forced to spend a lot of time together in close quarters, which can lead to disagreements. In addition, so many people are now working remotely from home. 

This can lead to more tension in a marriage, as both partners are now struggling to balance work and home life with not much wiggle room for "me time". Let us not forget that there are also people who are unemployed or have lost their income because of Covid and they may be more likely to file for divorce as well.

No Concrete Evidence Yet

So far, there is no concrete evidence that Covid is responsible for the increase in divorces. However, the topic is worth exploring further. Divorce attorneys and therapists may keep a close eye on the role Covid plays in divorce rates since they are on the front lines of helping families navigate through the most difficult time. Researchers should study this issue in more depth. If it turns out that Covid is indeed causing more divorces, then steps need to be taken to address the problem.

Divorce Is Hard On Everyone Involved

Stephen Caplan, an Orlando divorce lawyer, believes that the increase in Florida divorces is due to a combination of factors. "The stress of Covid has definitely played a role in some marriages falling apart," he said. "But I also think that there may be other factors at work here, such as financial insecurity and the fact that so many people are now working from home."

Get Professional Help

Divorce is a difficult process for everyone involved, and it can be especially traumatic for children. And remember, if you are considering filing for divorce, please seek professional help. There are many resources available to help you through this difficult time. You don't have to go through it alone.

Thank you for reading! I hope this article provides some useful information. Please feel free to share it with your friends and family. 

Sources:

• NY Times
• CNN
• Psychology Today
• Orlando Family Law & Divorce
• Rita Jerejian Divorce & Family Law, LLC

Divorce Resources To Follow on an upcoming Blog, stay tuned.

You Did The Work But Lost The Contract! Now What? Solopreneur Must Have And A Personal Rant!

It's been a short while since my last post and of course it was inspired by this Freelancer, Soloprenuer and Small Business life that teaches you lessons on a daily basis.  Today I will share just one tip to varying degrees as well as rant on a bit about my recent experience.

I have often posted on how Freelancers can be undervalued and the truth is that no matter what niche or specialty I happen to be working with or in, I continue to grow as a result of  my experiences.  One topic that I can't recall covering in this blog is "Contracts".  Perhaps I did and you can simply gloss over this post, if I haven't or you have not read any previous posts, you'll want to stay-tuned and read this one.

Contracts Are A Must Have

So let us get right to it. Whether you are a Freelance Web Designer or Music Producer, Virtual Services Provider or any other provider, having a contract between yourself and your client is an absolute must. Whether it is enforceable is completely up to your jurisdiction  however, it can only help you. The fact is that many of us have begun or continued to work for a client whom has either not made a deposit or has not fulfilled their payment obligations, it's just a given when you're running a small business or a one-woman (one-man) show and it's bound to have happened or to eventually happen. Save yourself the trouble of unpaid work and grab yourself a contract at the door.  Some clients may tend to get offended at the request for a contract however, if my experience serves me correctly, those are specifically the clients that are likely not to pay or fulfill payment terms. At the worst, this will help you weed out the serious paying client versus those that are shopping around.

A Friend Of  A Friend? Yes, A Contract Is Still Absolutely Necessary!

I have had the misfortune of falling into this gap at least twice and in fact, I just recently discovered that I have completed hours of free work, only to find that the client went ahead and contracted elsewhere to have the work completed.  I completed over 30 hours of work on a website, of which the only hold-up, was that the client needed to give me additional information and now I have nothing to show for it. After several emails and commitments to provide me with some of the most basic items needed in order to complete the site and tie it all together, I didn't so much as get an email back. Needless to say, this client now has an unfinished website, albeit a website nonetheless that was created by another provider. Meanwhile, I am stuck with hours of unpaid work and a domain that I purchased in order to host the website template on as I had never even gotten the login information for the client's hosting account (not very bright on my part).  

I was astonished as I had only been told that the client was pulling the balance of pictures and funds together and after a while had passed, I just assumed that the client ran on hard times and needed to gather themselves. Whatever the real story is, the fact of the matter is that I did a ton of work for which payment was and is still unaccounted for. Of course, this work will end up on my write-off pile because, lets face it, I don't have the time or energy to even bother questioning this client as communication wasn't ideal from the onset. If I am being honest, I had to laugh because had the client and I not had a mutual friend in-common, I would definitely not have been in this situation.  

To add insult to injury I am a female as was the client and I remember thinking "so much for girl power". We are here to build each other up, regardless of gender but it's truly the "wrong end of the stick" when women in business do not respect each other's gifts and talents. Without the mutual friend, under normal circumstances I would have had a signed contract and a deposit. The lesson learned with this client is that I will ensure that all clients, whether referrals from a friend or not, will have to sign a contract for my services. No matter how nice they are or how much I actually like the person and their work, I can't afford to do free work, nobody can and no one should be expected to. It's a matter of principle, class and professionalism and it's our jobs as Solopreneur's to enforce that which will ultimately benefit us in a positive way.

Moving On, Where Can You Find Contracts?

You can find Contract Making software quickly and easily online, there is no excuse in this day and age not to be able to locate this information online. Google is a hell of a business partner and you can literally find anything online or at least the instructions to anything online.  Here are three links for Contract Making software online:

FreelancersUnion I am a member and LOVE their resources page

LegalContract (great for Independent Contractors)

TidyForms (They have multiple types, I would use "Service Contracts" and edit.

What To Do When You've Lost The Contract

If you're experiencing the same situation that I just found myself and did not have a contract, I would suggest contacting the client and exhausting every avenue of communication. Call them, send a fax, send an email and send a letter. If all of that fails, contact a local attorney.  Depending on the amount owed, you might not want to expend additional finances or resources to hire a lawyer so play it by ear. In most cases a lawyer will charge you a few bucks to send a collection letter on your behalf. If that still doesn't work, head to small claims court. There are many ways to communicate non-payment to a client. In the story that I shared above, I will not be taking any action however, it will re-enforce my absolute desire to apply Contract terms to every preceding client and rest assured that future non-paying clients (if I am so unfortunate) will receive all of the above.

There You Have It

There you have it, my personal story along with a tid-bit or two on the necessity for a Contract and where to easily find one. Let's make sure that we put these to good use and end 2016 with a bang. Let us not be taken advantage of whether purposeful or by circumstance. At the end of the day, non-paying clients are a dime a dozen and are plentiful, by enforcing our own contracts we will have a higher success rate and be able to at least attempt to hold parties accountable. A lot of our business as Soloprenuers and Freelancers or Small Businesses comes from word of mouth however, that doesn't mean that ever referral is a solid candidate to do business with and or for. Contracts to the moon and back.

Til Next Time,

Casey

How to Embed a Google Form onto your Website

Form Hack

Whether you're using Wordpress, Shopify or any other platform to host your website, chances are that you will either need to pay a programmer to install a form or find one plugin or another to do the job.  Here's the thing, you can create and embed a form on your site for free! That's right FREE!

Why would you pay a monthly fee for a plugin? an App? or pay a web developer to do something that you can achieve quite easily? If you have a few bucks to spend and aren't tech-savvy or are just not interested in taking the time out to create and install your form, that's okay too, this blog is for the DIY folks that have the extra time to spend and want to learn something new.

First Things First, Create Your Form!

Make sure that you actually have a Google Account and are logged into Google Drive. Then simply click on "new" and scroll down to Google Forms,

Create and Embed Your Google Form

Now you will want to create and then embed your form on your website.

Easy and Painless

Be sure to turn on your notifications for the form by clicking on "Responses" and then going to the Response Settings by clicking on the three dots at the top right-hand corner. That will give you the option to receive responses via email. The email responses will go directly to the email address that your Google Account is associated with.

See you next time--

Casey

Four free and low-cost tools for Start Ups that you need now!

Deciding to launch a product or service can be a costly endeavor; these days you need to pre-launch before you actually launch, and in order to be successful you need to launch on multiple platforms and keep that momentum going each day to stay relevant. So let's talk about some free and low cost tools that Start-ups, Small Businesses and Solopreneurs can use to get a kick-start and light that fire under your entrepreneurial belly.

Social Media Marketing

I've covered this topic at various points but Social Media is the single most important platform needed to propel and sustain your business name, popularity and image. So what's my recommendation?

Hootsuite: This platform offers a free trial and costs just $14.99 for a basic account that's still a powerful Social Media Management experience. It's easy to learn, market and post all from their simple dashboard.  The basic subscription, while limited in comparison to the paid subscription, will do just fine for a start-up.

Cool Features 

• You can pre-schedule messages across all platforms or opt to schedule your posts individually.
• Auto-Scheduler or Manual Scheduling: to use the Hootsuite recommended scheduling times, you can simply click on "auto".
• Bulk Post uploading via an excel doc (or google excel).
• Bulk Post downloading to help you keep track of repetitive content or reuse successful content.
• Suggestion option: allows you to create posts and schedule posts via their suggestion module.
• Chrome Hootlet extension: brows articles, websites and content online that you can easily share by clicking on the hootlet extension.

Email Marketing

Email marketing, while often overlooked is one of the greatest tools to help you build your consumer base and contact list, engage with customers, send newsletters and so much more. There are various Email Marketing platforms available however, let me show you an option that you can easily use to get started at zero cost. Before setting up your Email Marketing account, make sure that you have something beneficial to offer your audience. Be sure to start using and implementing your business blog, this is a wonderful tool that you can use when initiating Email Marketing. You'll want to include product or service launch dates, special offers, free tools, trial services, etc., you get the point. The more personalized your business blog, the better, consumers want to be able to relate to you on a personal basis. Do that and you can arguably create consumer brand ambassadors. Be sure to put some thought in those headings as they will be the first thing a recipient will see and based on how interesting that subject line is, your emails may or may not get the attention that you seek.

MailChimp: This platforms offers a free subscription option that is extremely functional for a Start-up or Solopreneur. As you immerse yourself in launching your business and cultivating your product or service; it's possible that during the first year or two, you're subscriber-ship or contact-list will number under 2000. That's perfect for the Forever Free subscription option that MailChimp offers. You'll have the capacity of sending 12,000 emails per month completely and absolutely free. This is not a trial that expires and you don't need a credit card to register, how awesome is that? 

Cool Features

•  MailChimp’s built-in signup forms are very easy to customize and share with your audience. You can also create forms as well as collect subscribers on popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress. 
• Free Templates: Pick any free template or use their drag-and-drop email designer to create professional newsletters that match your brand. MailChimp’s responsive email templates make your newsletters look great on mobile devices, too.
• Full Free reporting and data: this will come in handy and let you know what emails are getting opened and shared and which are not. This will help you streamline what your audience is looking for and wants more of.

Accounting, Billing and Invoicing

Let's be honest, you're not launching a Start-up in order to provide free products or services and as is often the case for Solopreneurs and Small Business that are Service oriented, it can be hard to collect what's owed and keep track of payables and receivables. Let's not start leaking funds from all joints, it's important to be prepared with an organized system at the inception of your launch. If you've already launched, there's no time like the present to get organized and ensure speedy payments for your services. After some research, I found a free platform that I believe will be useful for you to keep track of monies owed and payments made. Let's get to it then!!

Tradeshift: TS is a cloud  based invoicing and payment platform. The software is completely free, you can get setup in just minutes and send invoices online at any time. 

• Free Cloud-Based E-invoicing
• Professional Invoice Templates
• Apps that work with Paypal, Quickbooks & Others
• Access from Mobile and Tablet
• E-commerce integration
• Document uploading
• Notifications to help you stay up-to-date
• Customizable Company Profiles
• Get History Reports of Your Documents
• Send Free Quotes, POs and Credit Notes
• List Your Product and Services
• International Business Directories

Project Management

It's so easy to get overwhelmed with your many projects and every little intricacy that goes into running a business and offering products or services. It's safe to say that you need a Project Management process in place to stay on top of all of your obligations, contractors and clients. Before you get that foreboding feeling and the anxiety that goes along with building a successful business, let's nip that in the bud right now and get you the information that you need to create and manage a Project Management process for your business.

Podio: Podio is a cloud based online Project Management platform that offers a completely free registration with tons of apps and add-ons to help you manage your projects all for up to 5 users. If your team requires the use for over 5 users, there is a Basic plan available at $9.00 per month. Whether you're a web designer, yoga instructor, contractor or run any other service oriented business, Podio will allow you to manage projects, team members, tasks and so much more. You can create a workspace and then projects, thereafter create the tasks that are necessary to complete each project. You can assign the project to yourself or a team member and the same structure works for tasks. With file storage, password folders and deadlines, it will be easy to meet your clients needs according to your contractual obligations, all while staying on top of every single detail. What's more, every morning  you'll get an email with your daily activities and more.

Cool Features

• Workflows:  The workflows feature enables you to add if-this-then-that logic to Podio apps. 
• Webforms: Have structured information sent directly to your apps by embedding a Podio webform on your website or by using a Podio hosted form. 
• Podio Share: Share single app items with anyone, even if they’re not on Podio yet. 
• Workspaces: connect groups of people, with the Podio apps they use together to organize their work.
• Activity Streams: Social activity streams reduce time-consuming cc-email threads, increase transparency and boost knowledge sharing. Every workspace in Podio includes an activity stream – displaying the latest activity from the apps in the workspace and status posts from the members of the workspace.
• Podio tasks: enable you to break down work into simple to-dos.
• Recurring tasks: For those routine to-dos, for example to create a weekly presentation – recurring tasks will help you make sure it always gets done on time.
• File Sharing: You can share files anywhere in Podio: as part of status posts, chat messages, attached to tasks or attached to anything you manage with your Podio apps. This adds business context to all of your files – making them part of the bigger picture and not scattered in folders on desktops or separate file sharing services.
• File storage integrations: Podio integrates with all major file sharing services. For example, designers can manage their projects with Podio and attach hi-res files from Dropbox. Services include: Google Drive, Dropbox, ShareFile, Box, HighTail, and OneDrive.
• Podio integrates with all major file sharing services – Google Drive, Dropbox, ShareFile, Box, HighTail, and OneDrive.

and much more

Four Important Components

These four components are important and absolutely vital to launching, running, maintaining and managing your business. Whether you're a Solo-Entrepreneur, Small Business or Start-up, it is essential that you organize and set these processes up as early as humanly possible in order to be successful in the long run. Don't put these components off, dig your heels in and get started today.

Best of luck on all of your endeavors-

Casey Marte

What you need to know about Google and Mobile Responsive Web Design

The Mobile Revolution Is Here

Yes, the Mobile Revolution is here; in fact it has been here for a short while now, but it's only now that we're hearing about Google's preference for Mobile Friendly Websites. Now is the time to update our websites and make sure that they are responsive on all platforms, i.e. Mobile, Tablet and PC.

I recently completed a website for a shoe importer and she was insistent that it be a Responsive Design. It didn't matter that she barely had her business' launch strategy sorted out, she was in uncharted waters. What she did know, was that it was vital for her site to be responsive. She's a graphic designer and therefore probably more attuned to what the best solution for her was. I followed her lead and created a Responsive website on Shopify.

Whether or not she sells a million shoes is neither here not there, the important thing however, is that she will get preference for those consumers using keywords in her purview and that they will have a better experience shopping on her site via their mobile phones. Eventually, she just might end up selling a million shoes. If a consumer has to readjust their view sideways or shrink or expand their mobile view of a website, it becomes tedious enough that they won't be on that site for very long. Consumers want what they want, when they want it, and they don't need to waste their time on your site, when they can easily find the same merchandise on a mobile friendly site. You stand to lose consumers in high fashion very quickly.

Google's Best Practices recommends a Mobile Responsive Design. It's always best to stay on Google's radar, keep up with their updates, changes and policies. They put a lot of work into their back end and keeping up with these changes and modifications can only help you. Whatever makes it easier for them to analyze, crawl and report, is what will make all the difference in your website's trending and ranking. You want Google to see you,  you want them to find you and if they change the scope of how their algorithm will do that, you need to follow suit if you want to stay competitive and be ahead of the game.

I know, it's a lot to keep up with and it's a lot to absorb, remember and implement, but that time is now. I am personally migrating any websites that I own over to mobile responsive designs. If you don't want to spend thousands of dollars on AdWords and PPC, you will do the same. Of course AdWords and PPC is a necessity depending on your industry and competition however, it doesn't hurt to naturally rank and benefit from organic traffic onto your site.

You can either start from scratch with a new responsive template, or copy your site onto a responsive template. For tips, advice or assistance, feel free to shoot me an email.

Those are my two cents for today-

Casey