7 Reasons Why Kitesurfing Is An Underrated Hobby December 3, 2019December 3, 2019 Thinking about taking up a sporty hobby? I challenge you to bypass football. Skip over basketball. And for goodness sake, stay away from the lure of the discounted gym membership. There is no more rewarding, enjoyable, exhilarating hobby than kitesurfing. And, in my humble opinion, it’s incredibly underrated. If you’ve never tried kitesurfing before, it’s a little bit like this: You get on a board on the water. The wind powers the kite, which you’re hopefully holding onto, and takes you across the water at pretty impressive speeds. It’s a bit like surfing, wakeboarding and paragliding all merged into one. The size of your kite usually depends on the wind strength, and the size of you, the rider. It gives you an incredible adrenaline rush Adrenaline rushes themselves are underrated. There’s no better feeling than the high you can achieve from riding a death-defying rollercoaster or skydiving from a plane – but why take such extreme measures to get your adrenaline hit when you could just kitesurf? Flying along the water at such a speed is only ever going to get your heart pumping and the right sorts of hormones flowing around your body, leaving you feeling amazing once the experience is over. It tones your body Who wants to spend hours pumping weights and squatting in front of a mirror at the gym to tone their body? The best toning exercises are the ones that you don’t even realise are taking effect – until you wake up the next morning to be met with a whole host of aches and pains you’ve never felt before! Kitesurfing really challenges your balance, which requires a lot of lower body and core strength. Your arms also take quite a bit of strain from keeping a good grip on your tube. Over time, if you keep kitesurfing up as a hobby, you should notice that your whole body is looking a lot more toned. It’s affordable Starting up a new hobby is a big commitment, even more so if you know you’re going have to fork out for equipment and gear before you’ve even decided whether you like it or not. The good thing about kite surfing is that most of the equipment you can just hire out or share with your kitesurfing buddies, so the cost is never going to be as big as, say, if you were to take up a winter sport, like skiing. If you do want your own gear, there’s plenty of great condition second-hand stuff to be found online. It improves your concentration and co-ordination Are you admittedly a bit of a clumsy person? If you are, take up kitesurfing for guaranteed improvement to your co-ordination skills! The act of balancing on a board is one of the most hard-to-grasp aspects of kitesurfing, and it’s through mastering your balancing skills that you will improve both your concentration and co-ordination. Having to make constant decisions on the water will improve your reflexes, too – which can actually help you to stay safe in day-to-day life. It helps you de-stress All exercise is great for improving your mental health overall and helping you to de-stress, but there’s something about the kitesurfing environment that really produces a calming feeling on the surfer. The rush of the wind in your hair, the smells of the environment around you, and the serenity of your surroundings are three factors that make kitesurfing a really effective hobby for clearing your head of any worries or anxieties. It gives you the opportunity to make friends No matter how many people you already have in your friendship circle, there’s always room for more. The kitesurfing community is full of laid-back, friendly faces who are always interested in a post-session chat over a bite to eat. While you might not go into kitesurfing with the sole purpose of making friends, it’s a guarantee that you’ll make a bunch of them whether you were planning to or not. It’s way easier than you might think One of the reasons why so many people are put off kitesurfing, and all water sports in general, for that matter, is that they think it must be too hard. This isn’t true. While it does require a bit of skill, kitesurfing is pretty easy to master, and it only takes a few sessions for you to find your feet (no pun intended) and move from beginner level to intermediate. You might also find that you’re naturally talented in the sport – which you’re not going to know unless you give it a go! It’s not tied to one location Going to the same gym, or even playing football on the same field, can get a bit tiresome after a while. Kitesurfing is so much more exciting because you’re not limited to one location – and, in fact, you can kitesurf in some of the most beautiful destinations in the world. Once you’re confident in your new hobby, it can take you to meetups and events, or even just solo visits, to places like Brazil, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica and Colombia. The sky’s the limit, literally! Anywhere there’s wind, you can kitesurf, which leaves your options pretty open. Where Can I Get Started? If you’re more than convinced to give kitesurfing a go, but don’t live close enough to a beach, don’t be disheartened. Kitesurfing can be done on any body of water, including lakes and flat lagoons. You’ll get more of a rush from surfing over choppier seas, but the experience is pretty awesome no matter what. Try looking for local kitesurfing clubs at a practical distance away from your home, and get in touch to see if they offer any taster or beginner sessions. You may find that your session is discounted and the equipment provided is free, so you won’t have to worry about the expenses of a sport that you might not enjoy… although I can absolutely guarantee to you right now that you will more than enjoy kitesurfing. You’ll be hooked.
New Year’s Resolutions for Your Business in 2020 December 1, 2019December 3, 2019 It’s that time of the year once more: your workload has increased from barely manageable to hectic now the Christmas period’s coming up again, and somewhere along the way, you’ve got to try and consider your business goals for the next year. Near-impossible, right? Maybe you need a little help in your goal planning. Obviously, your own personal goals are specific to you and your business itself, but if you’re looking to grow and develop as a business in general, it’s worth thinking about the winning formula for all-encompassing business success. No matter what your niche may be, there are certain things you should be focusing on if you want to see a real improvement in your sales come the end 2020. Ready to put pen to paper and get list-writing? Take a look at these 7 new year’s resolutions to put in place for your business in 2020: Manage your finances more effectively It takes a very lucky (and most likely #talented) person to genuinely enjoy the financial side of business. Managing your finances is nothing short of a nightmare, but there are ways that you can lift the weight from your back, even just a little. For a start, if you’re seeing huge dips and increases in your cashflow, which is pretty normal for an emerging business, prepare for this in advance. You want to create enough capital to feel confident in your business’ growth, while minimising stress where you can. Invest in SEO… ASAP It goes without saying that for a modern business, SEO is one of the most important investments you can make. If you’re not focusing on SEO in the slightest, you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity to reach out to an entirely new audience that simply hasn’t found you yet. An SEO expert can help you with everything from improving your searchability on search engines like Google and Bing, to facilitating your PPC, creating content for your site, link building, and managing your social media accounts, all of which drive a bigger audience to your website and ultimately helps you make more money in the long run. Don’t try and do your own SEO if you haven’t got the skills to do so. It just won’t be a valuable use of your time. Grow your team Whatever stage of business growth you’re at, it can be all too easy to get overly comfortable with the team you’re currently working with. Which, in short, can lead to stinted growth. Every extra team member you bring in will help you to multiply your sales, your marketing… and eventually, your profits. Don’t be afraid to invest in an additional helping hand or two. Network, network, network When business gets busy, the first thing to go out the window is networking. If you’re largely of the opinion that networking is a waste of time, ask yourself this: am I giving it the attention it deserves? Networking is what you make of it. If you don’t put your very all into your business meetups, you probably won’t get anything out of them. Selling yourself to strangers over a glass of wine takes skill, dedication, people skills, and an awful lot of hard work – but do it properly and you’ll more than reap the benefits. Make time for rest Going into the new year, it’s tempting to want to up the ante and rush into 2020 hell-for-leather with everything you’ve got. Newsflash: this is probably going to drain you by mid-January. And suffering a personal burnout has the potential to massively impact on your business’ success. Making time for rest is essential if you want to see your business make any sort of effective long-term growth. If you give yourself adequate downtime, when you are focusing on the important elements behind your business, you’ll be far more productive in your actions. Get social There’s no avoiding social media nowadays, so even if you sort of hate it on a personal level (and there’s no shame in admitting that), it’s unfortunately not an option to ignore it from a business perspective. Social media offers the fastest and most immediate communication directly from you to your customers, giving you a chance to network, boost your organic visibility, increase traffic to your website, and send your brand across the internet. If it’s too daunting to consider all forms of social media for now, go for the one that will work for your business the most. If words are your thing, go for Twitter. If you’re more visual, give Instagram a try. Know your worth When you’re an emerging business still fairly new to your industry, it can be all too tempting to undervalue yourself. Which leads to under-charging. Which is a great way for your clients to also undervalue the work that you do. Admitting that you’re good enough to be charging the same prices as your competition – maybe even more – is a scary thing to do. We all have self-doubts. You might not feel like you’re there yet, but guess what? You probably are. If you don’t believe in yourself and your product, your clients are going to find it harder to, too.