Author: anwaryusef

Anwar Y. Dunbar is a Regulatory Scientist. Being a naturally curious person, he is also a student of all things. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Michigan and his Bachelor’s Degree in General Biology from Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU). Prior to starting the Big Words Blog Site, Anwar published and contributed to numerous research articles in competitive scientific journals reporting on his research from graduate school and postdoctoral years. After falling in love with writing, he contributed to the now defunct Examiner.com, and the Edvocate where he regularly wrote about: Education-related stories/topics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Financial Literacy; as well as conducted interviews with notable individuals such as actor and author Hill Harper. Having many influences, one of his most notable heroes is author, intellectual and speaker, Malcolm Gladwell, author of books including Outliers and David and Goliath. Anwar has his hands in many, many activities. In addition to writing, Anwar actively mentors youth, works to spread awareness of STEM careers, serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the David M. Brown Arlington Planetarium, serves as Treasurer for the JCSU Washington, DC Alumni Chapter, and is active in the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church. He also tutors in the subjects of biology, chemistry and physics. Along with his multi-talented older brother Amahl Dunbar (designer of the Big Words logos, inventor and a plethora of other things), Anwar is a “Fanboy” and really enjoys Science-Fiction and Superhero movies including but not restricted to Captain America Civil War, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Prometheus. He is a proud native of Buffalo, NY.

Important considerations when buying a Condominium Unit revisited part one

I’m republishing my series regarding considerations for buying condominium units. I originally published it in March of 2015 on the Examiner. I’d lived in my condominium community for six years, and within that time there were quite a few surprises which I wanted to warn first-time home buyers about.

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Some of my earlier pieces discussed my experiences with Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU). Recently at the Alfred Street Baptist Church our class went over module number nine which dealt with real estate and mortgages. In the module, Ramsey and one of his teachers, Chris Hogan discussed several dos and don’ts regarding mortgages and purchasing homes. Some of their key points were:

• Don’t rush into owning if you’re not ready as it can have long-term ramifications if not properly prepared for;
• Make sure you have enough money saved up for the down payment and for maintenance;
• Make sure the mortgage payment doesn’t exceed 25% of your monthly income and;
• Don’t agree to adjustable rate mortgages, interest only mortgages, or 3% or less down mortgages.

Watching the video was humbling for me as my own path to ownership involved some of the very things they said not to do, such as agreeing to a 3% down mortgage – something I did out of ignorance. Just briefly, agreeing to something like a 3% down mortgage is bad because the buyer is ‘over-leveraging’, and it usually creates two loans to payback. This will be discussed in greater detail in a separate piece.

My first home purchase was a condominium unit. It was purchased in 2009, just as the damage and after effects of the Great Recession started settling. It was also just in time to benefit from the $8,500 “Obama Tax Credit”. My unit was particularly close to Washington, DC’s metro system (WMATA) which appealed to me since my car was on its last leg. Being so close to the metro, the unit fell in line with the “Location, Location, Location” rule about real estate.

After getting approved for the financing, and closing on the unit, it seemed to be victory. I jumped from being a renter to an owner and good times seemed to be on the horizon. While the purchase of my condominium unit seemed to be a ‘slam dunk’, and all my years of schooling seemed to be paying off, a great deal of heartache and hardship were on the way.

Neither of my parents were familiar with condominium units. They both owned duplexes in Upstate New York (~2000 square feet total for each house) with front and back yards, and garages. Both their homes were ironically valued less than my condominium unit (~950 square feet). Both of their homes had two separate units under one mortgage, something you can’t find in the Washington, DC area, probably due to local laws and ordinances.

Just briefly a condominium is a building or complex of buildings containing several individually owned apartments units. When you buy a condominium unit, you’re not just buying your unit, you’re also buying into a community with a “Homeowner’s Association”, a “Board of Directors”, and more importantly, common financial interests, costs and destinies. The board is charged with maintaining the complex and taking care of repairs to common areas (walls out), while the unit owners are responsible for the maintenance of their own units (walls in).

This short series on condominium units will discuss:

• Why it’s important to ask the right questions when purchasing a condominium unit;
• As a unit owner, why it’s important to plan to keep extra money parked one’s savings and on hand for emergencies;
• What happens when condominium associations don’t plan for routine maintenance and how that catches up with unit owners in the long run and;
• What happens when the board of directors and unit owners are split on issues concerning their condominium community.

As will be described in part two of this article, there are unique issues to buying into condominium communities. Specifically, the importance of doing one’s due diligence and what condominium communities do when money needs to be raised within the community for emergencies and special projects will be discussed.

Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post. You might also enjoy:

• Are you getting your Matching Contribution? A discussion on saving for retirement
• A look at the Law of Compounding Interest and why you should care
• Your Net Worth, your Gross Salary, and what they mean
• Is there power in budgeting your money?
• I still don’t have a car in 2018: A story about playing financial chess
• We should’ve bought Facebook and Bitcoin stock: An investing story

If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and or leave comments. To receive all of the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site, or add the link to my RSS feed to your feedreader. Please visit my YouTube channel entitled, Big Discussions76. Lastly follow me on Twitter at @BWArePowerful, on the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and on Instagram at @anwaryusef76. While my main areas of focus are Education, STEM, and Financial Literacy, there other blogs/sites I endorse which found on that particular page of my site.

An Introduction To Business Continuity

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Something to consider when starting a business is the continuing of your operations. Even if you don’t think about it at the beginning, you will want to eventually. The following contributed post is entitled, An Introduction To Business Continuity.

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Pixabay / CC0 Licence

Business continuity is a subject that few business owners consider. In many ways, this reluctance is understandable; entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic people, who always look for, anticipate, and then plan for the best case scenario – so focusing on business continuity goes against their instincts.

However, as an entrepreneur, one of your foremost concerns should be that your business is always able to continue to operate. In fact, it could be argued that business continuity is perhaps the most essential concern.

Why is business continuity so important?

To put it simply: if your business cannot operate, then you don’t have a business. While it is vital to spend time strategizing to improve your company’s SEO performance, capture the attention of new customers, design your office layout effectively, and all of the similar ways that business owners seek to improve their business, these efforts can only bear fruit if the company can fully operate.

Due to the above, it is helpful to see a focus on continuity as the underlying structure of your business. With good continuity, you can think about the future, seek to improve performance and strive for success – because you can always be confident that the company can be relied on to survive.

How should you begin focusing on business continuity?

Business continuity is a wide-ranging concept, and considerations as to how you can keep your business operational should apply company-wide. However, there are two particular areas that should be focused on first: your companies’ IT and network and your premises. Both of these are essential to your business being able to stay afloat; most businesses rely on their IT systems for everything, from managing finances to customer communications; while your physical premises hold your stock, are where you meet with clients, and – in some cases – a retail space. If you can protect these two areas, then you can be assured of excellent continuity.

How can you ensure continuity in these areas?

● When it comes to your business’ IT, network, and data, planning and backups are crucial. It is best to contract a professional service for this purpose; you can learn more about the benefits of doing so, research companies, and then choose a provider who specializes in ensuring continuity in the most important areas.
● Protecting your premises encompasses many different considerations, but perhaps the most important is building maintenance. With proper maintenance, you can be confident that your business’ property can survive rain, shine, and everything in between. In addition, it’s also advisable to look for a good commercial property insurance policy that covers the costs of everything that might be lost in scenarios such as fire and flooding.

How can you address continuity in other areas of your business?

With the most important aspects covered, you can move to examine other aspects of your business in terms of continuity. By and large, the simplest way to do this is to examine an area of your company and ask “what can I do if…?”, for example:

● What can I do if… one of our suppliers goes out of business?
● What can I do if… one of our clients goes into liquidation and cannot pay invoices owed?
● What could I do if… multiple employees were to fall ill at the same time?
● What could I do if… the company receives an unexpected tax bill?

There are no answers to these questions that fit all businesses; most are subjective, depending on your cash flow and other resources. However, by asking these questions – all of which genuinely could happen, and would be hugely detrimental to your business – you can begin to formulate a way to prevent these problems, or how they could be overcome if prevention is not possible.

In conclusion

With a focus on business continuity, you can protect your business against the worst case scenarios, and ensure that your company is able to thrive for many years to come.

The Top Cyberthreats That Could bring Down Your Business In 2019

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. No matter what type of business you are running, a key consideration is cybersecurity as there are a lot of elements at work that are looking to infiltrate and take down everyone’s operations. It’s important to be aware of these threats. The following contributed post is entitled, The Top Cyberthreats That Could bring Down Your Business In 2019.

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Cyber threats are continually evolving. In the past, companies had to worry about things like DDoS attacking and phishing, but in 2019, things are changing again, and there are new threats on the horizon. Businesses need to be careful. Not only can interruptions to their IT infrastructure cause issues operationally, but the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly unfriendly. Companies that admit data breaches risk significant fines and years of sunken profitability.

Check out the top cyberthreat of 2019 that could bring down your company.

AI-Based Attacks

DoD – Defense.gov

With artificial intelligence becoming open source and widespread, it won’t be long before hackers start using it to infiltrate companies and trick them into handing over data. AI-based attacks could automatically sweep company communications and create new emails that appear to be legitimate but which aren’t.

Cyptomining Malware

Cryptocurrencies require a lot of processing power to “mine.” Miners need to use hundreds of processors to crunch the data in the hope of discovering a new and valuable coin. The temptation, however, is to get somebody else to do it for them.

This is where crypto malware comes in. Crypto malware gets installed on another person’s machine without them knowing, and then starts performing calculations that benefit the miner. It’s not a direct attack in the traditional sense of the word, but it can undermine a business’s compute capacity as well as cost it more in terms of energy. The mining means that the companies processors are active, diverting them from other business-relevant tasks.

Botnet Attacks

InrsITe points out that companies need to do more to protect their data. But without adequate protection, it’s likely that many will fall prey to the predations of hackers. More than 70 percent of companies operating today will see a botnet attack that involves machine learning or artificial intelligence. Not all will be affected (because many will be protected by good software), but many will suffer and lose profitability as a result.

State-Sponsored Attacks

With the business world becoming so important, we often forget about the role of the state – a human organization which seems more redundant every year. States still hold all the weapons and still jostle for power. It’s likely that 2019 will see public institutions attacking private companies associated with particular rival governments. Granted, this probably won’t affect the average small business, but it may be an issue at larger firms.

Password Logging

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The majority of businesses still rely on single-factor password authentication to grant colleagues access to their networks and data. In short, all most companies do to protect themselves is require that when an employee gets to the office, they log in with their name and passcode.

Unfortunately, this form of security is hopelessly outdated in 2019. It’s often easy for hackers to install keyloggers on work machines remotely and then wait until the employee taps in their password. Once they have it, nothing is stopping them from accessing all the company’s data.

Two-factor authentication gets around this. With two-factor, the hacker must prove that they are an employee via a second method (such as tapping in a code that comes through to their phone).

Small Changes Towards A Big Business

Two key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. As you grow your business, it’s important to know what changes you can make along the way to boost your performance. Sometimes small changes can make a big difference. The following contributed post is entitled, Small Changes Towards A Big Business.

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Sometimes it’s the subtle things in life that make the biggest difference for us. You don’t have to be someone who is always shouting about, making crazy big business moves, and actually regretting them. Because the thing about these big business moves that you could make, is that they carry a hell of a lot of risk. So you could have all of these big plans, and expect them to turn out a certain way, and you could invest a ton of money into the idea… for it to only backfire in your face. But the small changes that you can make are such a low risk and low investment move, that it really won’t do you much harm by trying them. After all, you should always be looking for the next best thing for your business, and that means making little changes along the way, adjusting and adapting to the situations around you. You have to be able to adapt to survive with your business, and the vision or dream that you had in the beginning will most likely not be what the outcome is! So if you know you need to make a few little changes, hopefully this article will inspire you to make a few of them! Keep on reading to find out more!

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Small Changes Inside The Office

So the office is most likely where you’re going to spend all of your time, and we just know that the majority of you will have an online based business in some way, and the time you spend in the office can be so consuming. So much so, that you’ll probably have the long standing joke that you might as well move into the office. Well all of the time you’re spending there could be made so much more simple, you just have to look for the solutions that you might have been missing out on. One example we have, is with the phone systems you’ve got. The phone will no doubt ring a million times a day, and having a complicated system to manage this through is only going to make things more difficult. But changing your phones and systems is no doubt something you’ve never thought of before. A small business phone system is going to be so much better with technology like VoIP, which is renowned for making communications so much easier. It’s little solutions like this that your business is missing out on, and you never know, this one might actually get you away from the office. A VoIP system would allow you to connect your calls and messages from work to your mobile phone, meaning that even if you feel like you can’t let your business go, you can at least take it out of the office with you!

Small Changes Outside The Office

You shouldn’t always be thinking about what’s going on in the office, you have to be able to pull yourself away from it, and think about the changes you can make on the outside, that will greatly improve the inside. One thing we recommend you taking a look at, because we know you won’t have made any chances since starting up your business, is your brand and your website. The two link really closely together, because you can’t have a good website without a good brand, and you can’t have a good website without having the brand to back. So in terms of your brand, you only want to think about the small changes you need to make. So it could just be touching up your logo, making better use of colours. When you first designed it, it might have been done in a rush or without much consideration at all, meaning a sub par quality was created. But simply sprucing up your logo can make a big difference to your brand, with it looking so much more professional. The same goes for your website. It might just be that you need to touch a few things up, make the layout a little better, and iron out any bugs that might be giving your website a bad reputation! There will be plenty of web developers out there who would be able to go through the whole process with you, making sure that you have the best possible outcome!

Small Changes To Your Marketing

Marketing is something you’ve either grasped by now, or it’s something that you’re just totally winging and hoping that it goes right. If you’re the latter, then there definitely are a few changes that you can make to improve your marketing and how you’re making use of it. So if you only really stick to the easy marketing techniques, it’s time to get a little bit creative, and really make changes to your marketing. One technique you can use, which many chose not to for reasons unknown, is billboard marketing. It’s literally plastering your business for the eye to see, and if you get a good location, many eyes are going to see this one. But that’s just it, you really do have to have a good location, even if it means paying slightly more for it! Another technique you should try, which although it’s not as fast acting, it’s still incredibly good, is SEO. This aims to improve your ranking within search engines, through techniques such as link building. It might be one of the more costly marketing options, but it’s subtle improvements like this that you really need to be making!

Small Changes To Your Finances

The way that you use your business finances is so important, and if you’re not using them at all, then you really are missing out. All you need to think about, is things like investments, and you’ll be in the right track. As soon as you’re making enough money, this is what you should be doing. Although you’ll always be bringing money in, you want to make sure that you’re building on it, and putting it in the right places so it isn’t just sitting in the bank. There are so many investment options for you to choose from, just check out articles like this and you’ll see!

How To Feel Comfortable In Your Business Competence

Two of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When you first start out in any business endeavour, it’s natural not feel uncomfortable. Eventually though you want to get to a point where you are comfortable. There are several keys to doing so. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Feel Cmfortable In Your Business Competence.

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You’d be surprised to find this out, but yes, even the most experienced business moguls have their off days. A successful is not some mountain that you climb and achieve, but a fire you must continually kindle. Of course, the fuel for your fire will vary. It might take you much more kindling to stay operational. It might be harder to find. But what matters is you keep that emblem lit.

Feeling comfortable in your business life is important if you’re to make the important decisions you need to. After all, if you’re worried about your daily progress routinely, you cannot think clearly. So this means that yes, you need to practice self-care, but more than that, you need to understand your direction and clearly set out a means for yourself that makes plenty of sense. Feeling comfortable in your business competence isn’t always the easiest, but it can be achieved, and the more hills you climb, the more prepared you’ll be for the next one. We’d like to offer some of the following advice:

Keep Learning & Reading

If you’re starting to feel like an impostor, that means you have time to. Sometimes, your imposter syndrome is not all that unwarranted. Of course, this sounds like an odd thing to suggest. Impostor syndrome isn’t quite understood, but surely simply disregarding it and committing to the same job you always have achieved well is the answer? Well, it depends on your role. Perhaps you’re not using your business time as effectively as you could. Perhaps you’re struggling to stay up to speed when those under you are trying to help you with your questions. Maybe you’re continually in the dark when it comes to the small matters you need to understand.

This can often be the case when a manager has their own worries to deal with, so they forget to check in with the experience of those lower in the hierarchy. Sure, deferring responsibility is essential, but you also need to be in the loop. To that extent, learning and reading, keeping up with memos, asking important questions and also training staff to summarize well can help you feel as though you’re fully ‘in the know,’ and not operating with a blind spot. Once all this is being completed and you still feel impostor syndrome, you should realize this feeling is not worthwhile, and it will actually begin to dissipate. For the most part, this feeling can help spur you to further action, so long as you keep learning and reading around your subject.

Please, Keep On Top Of Your Books

Even if you are not directly responsible for your business management and spending planning, you need to keep on top of your books. Even if you’re having a bad year, you need to keep on top of your books. Even if you have only one employee’s payroll to take care of, you need to keep on top of your books. Failure to do any of this can unfortunately cause you undue harm, and not only that, but one mistake can snowball to another. Before you know it, large amounts of your budget have been misplaced, miscalculated, or worst – willingly misdirected. Accountancy competence is business competence, and even the owner of the smallest and most humble business will need to understand that.

To that extent, using accounting software is essential, and can be a lifesaver. This is especially true for those who may not have a level of accountancy competence, and wish to conduct the best job with their books they can – especially when tax season comes around. Not only that, but even those with advanced accounting competency might find features here that they cannot simply achieve on their own. The ability to fill out accountancy calculations with an easy set of utilities, the ability to keep track of your financial documents (this can be a challenge on its own,) and the ability to generate VAT with a single click can be a lifesaver for even those who have been running a firm for some time. You may be heavily surprised.

Measure Your Successes, Learn From Your Losses

Every single business you hear of, every business you have researched, every single business you can even imagine will have had its problems. Even a business given everything from the start, such as expert branding, a hefty non-reciprocal investment package, and world-class business advice will experience an issue it needs to work through from time to time. You simply cannot run a business without running into stumbling blocks.

In our career-led and corporate-friendly culture, we often think that business is some kind of ‘right’ and ‘natural progression’ in order to keep society together. But we often forget that even the businesses that have been around since you were a baby must justify their existence day after day. It is never a ‘given’ that they will continue operation, nor is it ordained by some higher power. And believe us, the higher you go, the more people around you are willing to take that spot, waiting, hoping for, and sometimes even trying to orchestrate a business slip up.

If you fail to learn from your mistakes, you will repeat them. If this is true for the history of humankind, it’s likely true for your business. However, the opposite side of the token is also true. If you cannot learn from your successes, you may struggle to repeat them, or once again find the winning formula. We often focus on the negative to prevent an issue like that from ever happening again, and that’s because we are all wired to be troubleshooters. When things are going good, we learn not to upset that status quo. But the same approach cannot last forever. This means that learning how your success was built, what constituent blocks elevated your performance, and how you might use that to strike original gold again can be just as valuable as reflecting and lamenting over your mistakes.

With these tips, you’re sure to feel comfortable in your business competence.

Your Company’s Pipework Systems

A key focus of my blog is Technology. Pipes are important parts of the infrastructure needed to sustain our everyday lives. Understanding how these systems work is critical in multiple areas. The following contributed post is entitled, Your Company’s Pipework Systems.

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Plastic pipework has become extremely popular because of the wealth of benefits it offers. Not only is it extremely cost-effective, but it does the job well too! Plastic pipes are durable, long lasting, easy to install, and they do not corrode or rust. This is why they are used in so many different types of applications today. So, let’s dig a little bit deeper. What are the major applications for plastic pipework systems?

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Drinking Water Systems

First and foremost we have drinking water systems. Plastic pipework has proved to be the ideal choice in these instances because it can provide individuals with safe and clean water. This is because plastic does not rust and it is resistant to chemicals and corrosion. However, if you need water pump repairs, you should get them done as soon as possible to avoid any contamination and further issues.

Agriculture Systems

Plastic has also proved to be the number one choice for agriculture systems. It is used for everything from pesticide spraying systems, to water supplies, to flow line irrigation. The long life span and resistance to corrosion makes it the perfect option.

Chemical Transport Systems

Again, because plastic is resistant to corrosion and chemicals, it has become the ideal choice for transporting chemicals. This includes everything from alkalis, to acids, to edible oils, to milk, to corrosive chemicals. If these were to be transported via a metal pipe they would damage the material.

Gas / Compressed Air Systems

When it comes to gas / compressed air systems, plastic is another popular choice. Why is this so? There are several different reasons. This includes better crack propagation, better impact, and leak-proof joints.

Effluent & Waste Water Systems

Last but not least, when it comes to effluent & wastewater systems you again have the resistance to corrosion and chemicals to thank. This allows the pipework system to effectively transport anything from radioactive waste, to both treated and untreated chemicals, to corrosive chemicals effluents.

So there you have it, the top five major applications for plastic pipework systems. When you consider the diversity of the five different applications mentioned, you observe how plastic pipework systems are extremely flexible and well-suited to an array of different situations.

Many people would agree that when it comes to choosing pipework systems no decision is more crucial than the one you make in relation to drinking water systems, so we are going to zone in on this further. When you consider the fact that individuals are going to consume the water that travels through the system you see why it is imperative that you choose with extreme care at your business. There are many different options you have at your disposal. However, most experts will advise that you opt for HDPE pipes. HDPE stands for high-density polyethylene and it is one of the most commonly used plastics in the country. This article will delve deeper into the qualities that make it such a good option in relation to drinking water systems.

There are many benefits associated with HDPE systems. They are cost-effective, strong, boast a long life cycle, easy to install and offer energy savings. However, when it comes to providing clean and safe water, it is the non-toxicity, corrosion resistance and chemical resistance of the material that really prove to be beneficial. If you want to be one hundred percent certain that the water you provide is safe, this is the option to go for. If you were to choose a metal pipework system, for example, there are many possibilities you need to take into consideration. Firstly, there is every chance that the water will have a metallic taste to it. In addition to this, metal is susceptible to rust and corrosion. This can get into the water and have a negative effect.

Usually, when you opt for a system offering such high levels of quality, you expect to pay high prices. However, this is not the case when it comes to HDPE pipes. You will be surprised to learn about the substantial cost savings you can make if you go down this route. Firstly, plastic doesn’t cost as much to produce as other materials. Moreover, you also need to consider the total life cycle of the pipes to see how much money you are really going to save. Because HDPE is a material that is strong, resilient, resistant to corrosion and rust, it boasts an extremely long life span. This means that you do not have to spend the money on replacements and repairs as you would with other materials. If that wasn’t enough, plastic is lightweight and easy to install, thus costs are minimized in this area as well.

In fact, the ease of installation with HDPE pipes is something that is worthy of further elaboration. There are many characteristics associated with this type of pipework that makes it one of the best for installation. Firstly, you have the flexible and lightweight qualities of HDPE pipes, this makes them easy to handle. The fantastic fusion welding possibilities allow for a leak-tight installation. In addition to this, you also have the possibility for alternative installations, on-site extrusion and the capability to reline the existing pipelines. With such flexibility and ease, it is not hard to see why so many people prefer HDPE pipes. There are barely any limitations.

To summarise, there is certainly no better type of pipework for drinking water systems than HDPE. This material is corrosion resistant, chemical resistant and non-toxic and therefore the result is clean and safe drinking water. Couple that with all of the other added benefits, such as cost efficiency and ease of installation, and it is not hard to see why this type of plastic is a clear winner.

How Advanced Are Online Threats Becoming

A key of my blog is Technology. With our world becoming increasingly more digital, there are also an increasing number of online threats. With so much business being conducted online, having solid cybersecurity is a must. The following contributed post is entitled, How Advanced Are Online Threats Becoming.

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Being hacked when you’re online is something we all worry about, in the back of our minds. We don’t like leaving our credit details on retail websites, if we can help it, and we all regularly check to make sure our firewalls are turned on. It’s a habit we become accustomed to, the more and more we use our computers to connect to the world wide web, and it’s something we should all clue ourselves up on.

And that’s because cyber threats are becoming more and more common, and there’s a lot of scammers out there who know just how to disguise themselves to earn your trust. They can even use the numbers in your phone to pose as someone you know nowadays.

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There’s Gaps in the Connection

A lot of websites use third party companies these days, to make sure they keep costs down in their own businesses by not running their own IT support desks or their own retail portal. They use another company’s previously established support network or paywall, and that can lead to a hink in your secure browsing. After all, the more people involved in any searches you tap in, or any purchases you make, the more chances there are of your information getting out.

Websites who have to redirect you to reach certain pages, or websites who don’t allow you to use secure payment methods such as Paypal or Worldpay, are very likely data sink targets. Hackers will keep an eye out for websites that need further connections to enable their profits, and exploit these connections to get to you. They can change them out to make sure you connect to them instead, or it might just be a flimsy line that could allow a few worms in. You never know who’s on the other side of the screen, after all.

AI Could Be a Way In

The Siris and Alexas of the world have a lot to answer for. They can be one of the most helpful appliances you own, but they can also be targets for people looking to access your secrets. And it’s not just malicious outside threats that can access you and your family’s most private data: it could be the companies themselves as well.

So if you do have an artificial intelligence system in your home, they need to be connected to the wifi to work. And there’s a good chance you have quite a few recordings on them you would never want anyone outside of your own four walls to hear. And it’s these stored recordings, which have to be removed manually, that both hackers and shady executives alike could be after. It’s a misuse of the trust the consumer places in the company – you bring this kind of tech into your home to make life more convenient, and these are the results we’re seeing.

That was a quick look into the world of online threats, so make sure you’re always up to date on what could be out there.

The Benefits of an Office Relocation

Two key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When you’re a business owner, there may come a time where it will make sense to move your business. There are several reasons for making this type of move. The following contributed post is entitled, The Benefits of an Office Relocation.

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If you’re thinking about a relocation for your business office, then it can be a pretty exhilarating time. Relocating offices happen for many reasons, and it could mean moving your office to a different city, or perhaps even different countries. But the reason that it can be an exciting time is that it means that your business is growing and improving. Plus, when you relocate offices, it can be just the thing that can help you to create more innovative ways of working. You can set things up as you want then, have better organisation, as well as helping to create a sustainable, eco-friendly, and more productive office space. So it could be just what you need to help the business to continue to grow. Here are some of the reasons that it can help your business.

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Boost Productivity

If your office is getting too small for the number of people that you have working for you, then it is obvious why you will need to move spaces. When an office space is congested and overcrowded, then it means that your team will be unable to complete all of their tasks efficiently, a it can mean things don’t run smoothly when things are overcrowded. Creating a fresh and new environment to work in, that is designed for the growing number of staff that you have, will help to boost morale as well as boosting the productivity of your employees; they can work more efficiently and effectively in a space that works for them.

Flexible Working

If your business does not offer flexible working for people already, then an office move, whether you use a commercial moving company or not, could be a way to help implement flexible working for your team. It can be a good time to create things like quiet zones for teams to have focus activities or use as breakout areas to relax. I can be a good thing to have open spaces for collaborative working too. When you have an office relocation then it gives you the chance to plan the new space around the team’s choices and styles of working, which gives them some flexibility.

Grow Your Business

A new space that uses best practices methods of working will give your employees to work more effectively, as well as more productively. That is going to help to improve the profitability of your company without question. Having a new office looks more impressive for prospective employees too, so it can be a good way to attract talent to your business that will help them to grow.

Lower Costs

For many businesses relocating can be a good way to save money. Could using some best practice design methods help you to downsize to a space with a smaller space, which will mean paying less rent? There are going to be costs associated with moving to a new space, but if you think of this with the bigger picture in mind, it can be an investment rather than an expense, and other costs can end up being lower if you’re in a newer space.

How To Open Up More Opportunities For Business

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When owning a business, it’s important to always thinking about where your profit streams are going to come from. This requires a certain degree of foresight and planning. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Open Up More Opportunities For Business.

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Opportunities come along for every business at some point but the best ones to come along, don’t just always fall in your lap. Here’s how to open up more opportunities for business.

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Pay Attention To The Industry

Within any industry, a business should be focused and pay particular attention to what’s going on around them. If there are competitors, what are they doing? It’s useful to monitor competition in order to find what’s working for them and what isn’t. Having an ear to the ground can prove useful to stay in the know of what’s trending and what isn’t when it comes to the market. So doing some market research will certainly benefit the company both now and going forward as it grows and becomes more successful.

Give The Business More Exposure

If a business isn’t putting themselves out there to be seen then it’s going to be limiting itself by how many opportunities will come from being spotted. There are plenty of ways that a company can get exposure. For example, social media is a great tool in building brand awareness and for growing a customer base on a global scale. Attending networking and conferences within the field is also super beneficial in meeting those who may be able to benefit the business. Being online can open plenty of doors for a business from online CFD trading for WTI crude oil to partnering with other companies on products and services.

Be Constant With Goal Setting

Goal setting is important to any business, whether they’ve just started out or been going for years. Setting regular goals keeps the company as a whole moving forward instead of going stale. It helps motivate staff as they’ll know what they need to achieve and when. A business needs to have a direction, so it should be setting goals constantly. A mixture of small and bigger ones can compliment each other, and it’s only with these goals that a company will improve and grow.

Believe In The Work

A strong company will believe in the work that they do, and that should be the case for every staff member that works for the organisation. They need to believe that what they’re doing is going to lead to something great and that it will have a great impact, whatever that intention may be. So keeping this idea strong within the company is key, and it’s something that should always be revisited. Having confidence in the ideas and results that come from what the business provides, will help open up more opportunities down the line.

Visualise The Opportunities Everywhere

There should always be the mindset that there are opportunities everywhere. Whether it’s a casual coffee meeting with a client or brainstorming in a meeting. By having this vision and attitude, opportunities will crop up.

Success is something that is earned, and unless a business gets lucky, it needs to be chased so don’t let all of this potential that’s out there, go to waste!

Mother’s Day 2019: Thankful For My Upbringing

A Quick Plug

Hello. Thank you for clicking on this link and I hope you enjoy this essay. Writing a book was the genesis of me blogging and becoming a video content creator. I am close to publishing part one of my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Please consider visiting the page to learn more about the project and see promotional content I’ve created surrounding the project. And now on to our feature presentation.

Concise Storytelling

The original version of this piece looked much different then this published version. After much consideration, I cut it down. I realized that as a storyteller/writer sometimes less is more and more is less.

With a million and one things on my plate right now, I wondered if I’d have time to craft something for Mother’s Day 2019. After creating pieces in 2017 and 2018, I’ve decided to continue the ritual. If you’re a man and thinking about marrying someone and paying for it yourself, you should read my 2017 piece. It may save your life and sanity. The 2018 piece is a tribute to my maternal and paternal grandmothers. In this 2019 piece, I’m going to reflect on the home my mother created for me and my brother early in our lives.

Every Home Was Different

In the process of discussing my upbringing and some of the tools I had to develop after leaving my home ecosystem, I may have sounded unappreciative of my parents which was an unintended effect. Regardless of how ungrateful I may have sounded of my upbringing as a child, I’m actually VERY thankful for it. As I got older, went away to college and started dating, I slowly realized that everyone’s home wasn’t like mine. I can discuss numerous examples, but I’m just going to highlight a few.

I’d say that Mom masterfully walked the line between “grace and legality” as Dave Ramsey said in one of his Financial Peace University modules. She established discipline and a behavioral standard that lasted all the way through adulthood for both my brother and me. I picked up on this early in the company of my best friend, who either didn’t have as tight a ‘leash’ on him at home, or he just rebelled against it. I hope reflecting on this doesn’t get me in trouble with him. In a way I admired his rebelling at the time, but it had consequences.

We Were Well Fed

Mom always made sure we were well fed and that we ate together. The first time I realized that all homes weren’t like ours was when we spent the night over one of her close friends’ home who also had boys around our age. After a night of playing around and doing what boys do, I woke up the next morning expecting our typical ‘royal’ Saturday morning breakfast. At our house, breakfasts usually consisted of homemade pancakes or waffles, a meat, and scrambled eggs. Instead we had only had cereal that morning. It was better than nothing, but it was different than our home.

Yes, the pancakes were homemade and they were good. Sometimes we had French Toast instead. On Sundays before church we had donuts from “Tops Friendly Markets” instead of the pancakes. Mom also made those breakfasts for us on Wednesdays before we went to school and before she went to work. We had cereal the other four days, hot cereal during the long Buffalo winters.

Non-Race-Related Privileges

“You all had privileges growing up that I didn’t have.” A cousin told me this at a family gathering within the last year. I’m going to keep returning to this revelation because in my community, there’s a fixation on ’white privilege’, but there are in fact ‘privileges’ that black families have over other black families, many of which are driven by the personal choices of the parents.

The cousin who told me this is black, and I agree with her assessment. Yes, my mother was college educated and hers wasn’t, but let’s strip it down even further. As kids, this particular cousin annoyed the hell out of me in terms of her behavior, and she always wanted to come over to our house and stay a while. It wasn’t until I got older that I understood the depth of her situation, and that her coming over was good for her.

I’ll just say that our house was safe and there was a lot of love there from my mother and grandmother. There was no cursing (except when my Uncle Po-Dee came to town), violence, no abuse of any kind, and there were no illegal drugs being used or sold. In general, there was a certain level of peace normalcy there. Without going into detail, my cousin’s house was the exact opposite of ours which is why she always wanted to come spend time with us.

The point I’m trying to make is that my mother made conscious choices to create a safe and love-filled home environment for us. Had I been born to a different mother, my nurturing at home could’ve easily been very, very different. Check out my YouTube video on the concepts ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ if you don’t understand the interplay between these two concepts and how they impact who we become later in life.

Love and Positive Affirmation

I could expound further on some of these things, but I’m going to shift the discussion to the concepts of love and positive affirmation. How important is it for parents to tell their children that they love them? How important is it for parents to tell their children that they’re proud of them? They’re very important. Some kids never hear these two essential words from their parents.

They’re critical as hearing them impacts our socialization and also the adults we go on to become. As I transitioned into adulthood, I discovered that not every one of my peers received positive affirmation at home, and in most instances, it impacted their abilities to give it to others. In my home, we heard these words all the time.

Why would the parents not give their kids positive affirmation? Well maybe those parents didn’t get it themselves. Maybe those parents received it, didn’t appreciate it and didn’t pass it on. In some instances, maybe they endured some life circumstance that beat it out of them so they couldn’t pass it on. As we get older, we do start to see that our parents are people themselves with their own experiences, flaws, shortcomings and vulnerabilities. They have their own scars and have made their own mistakes.

Winning Life’s Lottery and Filling Gaps

In terms of our upbringing and home, yes, I think both my brother and me did win the ‘lottery’ of sorts in terms of growing where we grew up and growing how we grew up. My Aunt Adele told me several times when I got old enough to understand things that my brother and myself were ‘sheltered’. When she came to town to visit us, she was frequently amused by how my mother seemed to ‘baby’ us in the mornings as we headed off to school.

As a pre-teen and a teen, yes, I did intuitively see that the other kids knew about more mature things than we did early on. Many of them were more ‘street smart’ and there were pieces socially that needed filling when I left our house to go to college. The lack of some of this ‘Consequential Knowledge’ definitely manifested in the dating arena, and that’s all I’ll say. According the great Dr. Thomas Sowell, Consequential Knowledge is knowledge for which there are consequences if you don’t have it.

As a man being raised mostly by a single mother, many of these gaps have taken years to fill, and for some it’s an ongoing process. A part of my personal message now is that single mothers can’t do everything. Many have their hands full just paying the bills and keeping food on the table. They might not be able to come to every basketball game for example. They might support you playing and may make sure you’re nourished enough to go to school and to participate in your sport of interest, but to succeed at the craft, you’ll likely have to find the expertise you need elsewhere, and you might not find it at all. I’m working on a book project on that right now.

My Most Loving Child

“Of my eight children, your mother is my most loving child Anwar.” My grandmother told me this frequently when we talked, and it might be the thing I remember her saying the most. Not taking anything away from my two aunts and five uncles, but I think myself and my brother did win the lottery in this case because we grew up with a lot – not necessarily all the material items that my best friend and other peers had, but a lot of things you can’t buy with money. And those are the most valuable things in life.

I’m more careful these days about discussing the tools I did and didn’t get in my home ecosystem. If I do venture into those waters, I’m sure to do it with an understanding mind as it’s never to demonize anyone. For ourselves and for our community at large, some discussions with my contemporaries and peers need to be had, and interestingly many of us black ‘Generation X-ers’ have common experiences.

We’ve realized that there was some consequential knowledge that we somehow arrived at adulthood without knowing. Wealth-building and relationships are examples, and we’ve still had to line up with everyone else and run life’s ‘marathon’. Our parents, like all parents, could only teach us what they knew, and it’s up to us to make up as much ground as we can in the race using the tools we have.

Closing Thoughts

I’m going to close by saying that I’m thankful and grateful for everything my mother did for us. Everyone’s home is not the same. At the end of day, it’s about being grateful and content about what you do have. What are you grateful for that your mother did for you? Happy Mother’s Day 2019.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at bwllcnl@gmail.com . Best Regards.