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When you work hard to earn a living and support your family, you want to be sure they remain financially protected. Adequate life insurance coverage allows you to safeguard them against future uncertainties such as untimely deaths, critical illnesses, injuries, and the financial instability that can come with owning your own business. The insurance market today is full of innovative insurance products that enable you to do so.

But what happens if your life insurance coverage is not adequate? It can be as damaging to your financial health as having no insurance at all. If you are worried about your coverage being inadequate, using a life insurance calculator can work in your favor. These are readily available on most insurance providers’ websites. You can also find a life insurance calculator on third-party providers’ websites.

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Finding adequate coverage with an insurance calculator is vital. This is because the amount will be payable to your dependents in the unfortunate case of your death. The death benefit, in this case, should be sufficient to cover their regular and significant expenses. If it falls short during a crisis, it may lead to severe financial distress for your loved ones.

Other than that, an insurance calculator can be useful for today’s policy buyers in various other aspects. Let’s discuss some of these reasons in detail.

1. A Life Insurance Calculator Helps in Estimating Suitable Coverage

A life insurance calculator requires basic personal information of the policy buyer to estimate the suitable coverage amount and premium rates. This information generally includes age, gender, income range, smoking habits, occupation, and so on. Once you fill in the correct details, the insurance calculator will display the ideal coverage amount for your financial profile.

This helps policy buyers to arrive at a range that is affordable and compatible with their requirements. It can serve as a reference point for individuals who find it challenging to project their financial needs for the future. You can adjust the premium payment frequency as monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly to check how it affects your budget.

You can also recalculate by adding riders or by changing the sum assured, the policy period or the premium payment period and viewing the varying results. The life insurance calculator can help policy buyers make confident purchases based on detailed calculations of their financial situation.

2. It Provides a Better Perspective on Your Finances

When you assess the coverage amount using a life insurance calculator, you gain a clearer perspective on your current and future finances. This gives you a glimpse of insurance expenses for the policy period. This is usually prolonged, since life insurance coverage is essentially a long-term product.

This allows you to plan your investments efficiently for the particular time span. You can manage your income better if you are aware of fixed expenses for the coming years. Planning significant expenses such as buying a home or a car or funding your child’s higher education will be more comfortable once you have established a foundation of financial protection. 

3. A Life Insurance Calculator Facilitates Comparison of Insurance Plans

One of the most significant advantages for modern policy buyers in the digital age is the convenience of comparing insurance plans. Most information you need is available online in just a few simple clicks. A life insurance calculator is a tool that can facilitate easy comparison of insurance plans.

For most policy buyers, the price of insurance plans is among their top-most considerations. You want the best possible benefits at affordable rates to protect your loved ones against emergencies. Using the life insurance calculators of different insurers helps you to understand what differences in insurance price, coverage scope, and benefits offered by each one.

When you compare and buy insurance, you are assured that the plan is aligned with your needs and financial profile. Moreover, you can do so at your own time. This gives you more control over the purchase process. This may be an advantage for policy buyers who wish to buy insurance on their terms without the influence of an advisor or an insurance agent.

4. You’ll Get Hassle-Free Research

The convenience of life insurance purchase today is evident. This is because more people are investing their money toward financial security in 2020. Previously, individuals were hesitant to buy life insurance, perhaps because of the lack of transparency and information. Online life insurance coverage calculators are changing that perception.

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Since financial decisions like this affect a person’s future heavily, the need for well-informed investments is understandable. Tools like the life insurance calculator have simplified the process for policy buyers considerably. Thus, the research to find appropriate life cover is now hassle-free and convenient.

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Preparing for a secure and stable future is on every breadwinner’s mind as the financial responsibilities begin to pile up with time. It is crucial to have a systematic approach toward managing your money so that you can fulfill these goals. Additionally, the right life insurance coverage will enable you to establish a sound support system for your loved ones.

Featured image by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Are you using events to close more accounts for your freelance business or small company? If not, then you’re missing out on tons of opportunities to engage your audiences better. You could be generating more leads. You’re even missing chances to convert website visitors into customers.  

Whether you want to launch your new products and services, share valuable content, or showcase your expertise, running an online event is one of the best ways to amplify these efforts.

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Read on to learn several tried and tested ways that freelancers and small to medium businesses (SMBs) can use events to generate more sales.

1. Leverage Webinars and Online Demos to Showcase Expertise

Running online events is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate your expertise. However, it’s important to avoid making it entirely about your business. So don’t turn it into a long-form sales pitch. If you do, you run the risk of turning people off your brand. 

Ensure you deliver value for your intended audience. Address their pain points while establishing your brand as a subject matter expert.

For instance, let’s say you’re a freelancer with expertise in using a complex customer relationship management (CRM) solution. In this case, you can run webinars to help new users get a running start with the software.

Plan your content by building or refining your buyer personas. You can use HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool to drill down on your target audiences. Use this process to gain clarity about their goals, interests, demographics, needs, and more.

Outlining and refining your buyer personas can give you a better idea of your target audience’s pain points. This will help you tailor your content to address their challenges.

This helps you provide the right content to the right audiences. It allows you to showcase your expertise while delivering value through your webinars and online demos.

Also, plan highly relevant events that both captivate your audiences and highlight your message and brand. This will help you provide content that resonates with them.

2. Use Events to Generate Leads

When used correctly, events can bring you massive inbound and outbound marketing returns. They can help you generate leads and, in turn, boost sales. After all, events provide excellent opportunities to gather audiences who are naturally interested in a specific topic. Also, you can actively engage your audience to entice them to act on your offer (or offers).

However, the tricky part of using events to generate leads is effective management. This includes creating the invitations, registration, and doing follow-ups. Often, the entire process is tedious and time-consuming. This makes the business management app vcita an excellent solution for freelancers and SMBs.

Full-on event management platforms can be overkill for freelancers and SMBs who do not use events as a core product but instead use them as part of the marketing mix. But vcita offers just the right solution. It comes with built-in CRM and email and SMS marketing engines. Additionally, it provides robust features to set up, promote, and run your event.

Integrate Directly with Zoom

The app lets you create events integrated directly with Zoom. To do this, from your account interface navigate to the Settings tab, then My Services.

From the My Services page, click the New service button. Then select Group event from the dropdown.

You should see the window to enter your event’s details. You’ll type in the event name, the maximum number of attendees, location, duration, schedule, fee, and other information.

Schedule on Your Calendar

Schedule the event on your calendar by going to the Calendar view tab under Calendar and setting the event date.

Now, your potential attendees can start signing up. To do that, they can visit your customer portal and its integrated self-service appointment booking engine. Your event will appear there as an option. You can also use the app’s settings to disable this option and use a dedicated landing page for signups instead.

Convert as many registrants to your event as possible by promoting it using the invitation link. Also, share it on your social media pages and other channels. 

If you’re using a third-party streaming platform such as YouTube or Facebook for a live event, you can add the URL to your event’s location details. This will show in the invitation your registrants see once they sign up.

vcita can also handle promoting your event using email and SMS. Use the app’s customizable event promotion template to match your company branding and display your preferred announcement message.

Other vcita event features include:

• A registrant intake form that automatically saves the information to your client list.
• Payment collection upon client booking.
• Automatic registration confirmation and reminder notifications delivery through email and SMS that you can easily configure.
• Functions that let you communicate directly with and send documents and messages to registrants.
• Follow-up actions such as collecting pending payments and sending brochures and other event materials.

3. Optimize Events to Strengthen Client Relationships

Events provide perfect opportunities to engage your prospective clients, add them to your pipeline, and even help turn them into promoters of your event and brand. Make the most of your events by using them to interact and converse with your current and prospective clients.

For instance, you can run Facebook or Instagram Live events to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about your services. Or you can use events to share your experience as a freelancer.

Whether you’re a freelancer or running an SMB, it makes sense to tailor the content of these occasions to interact with your target audiences directly. This helps you nurture and build trust for stronger client relationships.

4. Maximize These Opportunities to Gain Marketing Insights

Events such as webinars let you capture, collect, and analyze a treasure trove of your attendees’ engagement data.

With virtual events, you can track attendees who opt in. You can also monitor actions such as the content they’ve downloaded, sessions attended, questions asked, poll responses, meetings booked, and more. Besides helping you improve your future events, all these insights also aid you in creating a more comprehensive picture of your clients’ pain points and preferences.

Easy-to-use tools such as Google Data Studio let you connect your data sources such as Google Analytics and Google Sheets in a few clicks.

The tool lets you build dashboards and reports from your data source seamlessly. It offers robust editing tools and themes. This allows you to collate, compare, analyze, and visualize your marketing and event data.

A reliable analytics tool lets you extract valuable insights from your event, marketing, and sales data. These insights will help you make better decisions and drive more business.

Use the insights to improve your client list development, content strategy, lead generation, sales and marketing priorities, and service (or product) development.

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Run Events and Get More Business

Cut through a highly competitive market by adding events to your marketing mix and use them to support your marketing initiatives.

When used properly, events help grow your business for the short and long term by letting you increase revenue through low-cost appointments (at scale).

Events can also help you generate leads, keep your sales pipeline full, and provide excellent opportunities to engage with and entice your attendees to act on your upsell and other offers.

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As an entrepreneur or as a business person, you know how essential assets are to the success of your venture. Whether the industry you’re operating in is technology, education, health, or wellness, asset protection is vital.

It’s inevitable that when you’re operating a business, you’re naturally prone to risks. From loans, lawsuit threats, or even natural disasters, your business will never be excluded from negative eventualities no matter what strategies you employ. Having said that, it’s crucial to protect your assets using the best strategies right from day one. 

How Do You Protect Your Assets?

Being able to determine how to effectively protect your assets will depend on several factors, including your industry and business model, among others.

The first step is to start thinking about asset protection before a risk occurs. Once a claim or a lawsuit has happened, it’ll be too late. So, ask yourself what risks are likely to face your business. Then, take the necessary measures to protect your assets. Also, you must regularly update your asset protection strategies whenever a major change occurs in your business or assets.

Furthermore, if there are gaps in your business history, this can make you liable, and you might lose your assets in the future. Thus, you better invest money now to protect your assets rather than losing everything in the future. 

While all these are necessary for the success of your business, here are key strategies to keeping your assets protected against risks, allowing your business to move forward smoothly:

1. Set Up a Corporation or a Limited Liability Company

If you’re operating your business under the sole proprietor plans, making it a corporation or a limited liability company is a brilliant idea of reducing asset risks. A limited liability company is designed to help you avoid becoming personally liable for debts incurred by your business. In doing so, you’ll be protecting your personal assets against any threat of losing them to your business’s creditors.

2. Use Contracts and Follow the Correct Procedures

Your goal should be to avoid any fraud or loophole in your contracts and procedures to protect your business assets. Always ensure your assets are protected by official contracts and agreements, and keep everything above board. This is where working with licensed experts becomes of utmost importance as they can advise you in case complex procedures are to be followed. Some of these experts are legal tax advisors and asset protection specialists.

You may check out resources like Mile High Estate Planning to learn more about asset protection.

3. Have a Business Succession Plan in Place

Most businesses not only lose assets from lawsuits, but also lose due to a lack of a proper business succession plan. So, start thinking about what might happen to your business if something happens and you’re unable to run your business.

It would be best if you have a succession plan in place to protect your assets. No one likes to think of that day when they can no longer manage their business. However, some things are just inevitable, and an untoward incident could make you unable to show up for work. So, make sure that the people you expect to step in know the roles they’re expected to assume and are aware of the whereabouts of your assets.

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4. Store Important Information in Digital Form

One of the most effective ways of protecting your business assets is to keep accurate records. You should be able to produce these records in case of a lawsuit. To be useful, those records must be secure. Storing detailed asset information digitally will ensure you can access them whenever necessary.

5. Protect Your Intellectual Properties

While you may think that intellectual property doesn’t need protection, it’s, still, one of your business assets and, thus, should be protected.

Intellectual property refers to any symbol, name, invention, artistic project, or any other item you’ve created. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are all examples of intellectual properties that need protection. Protecting your intellectual properties ensures that other people won’t be able to steal and use them.

6. Umbrella Insurance

Too often, most people neglect insurance. They assume that risks won’t occur. When an asset is compromised, insurance can reduce the risk of loss. You can use many insurance policies to protect your assets, but umbrella insurance outshines all of them. 

Umbrella insurance is an effective way to protect your assets. It’s a cost-effective method of obtaining extra liability coverage. It keeps hold of all your assets in case your other insurance policies aren’t able to cover them. However, umbrella insurance won’t cover any loss arising from your careless, criminal, negligent, and fraudulent actions.  

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7. Hire a Lawyer

Another tip that can help protect your assets is to hire a lawyer. Even before you open your business, you should have a lawyer to help you iron out legal challenges you might face in the future. Discussing with your business lawyer can help answer some questions, such as whether to set up your business as a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a limited liability company. They’ll also help you understand the pros and cons of each classification in relation to asset protection. 

For instance, most people tend to set up a sole trader business. One challenge with this type of business is that you might be vulnerable to legal lawsuits. Remember that any legal lawsuit against your business can cause you to lose your personal assets. On the other hand, a limited liability company offers protection of your personal assets should a legal lawsuit be raised against your business.

Takeaway

Operating a business isn’t easy and isn’t without risk. Remember, success isn’t always guaranteed. That’s why protecting your assets is a must as it safeguards them from creditor threats, lawsuits, natural disasters, and many other dangers.

It’s of the essence to seek professional advice on how you can best secure both your personal and business assets. With your assets protected, you can live a stress-free life, knowing that what you only need now is to focus on the growth and the expansion of your business. 

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Every modern business, whether a startup or a major corporation, needs to ensure it has a strong online footprint. In other words, you should be making sure your customers can find your business online.

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The digital age is firmly upon us. Online commerce is a driving force in every market. Consumers enjoy the benefit of convenient online browsing and secure shopping, and they appreciate the fact that the internet has broadened the scope of just about every market.

Take a moment to think about where your customers can find your business online. Of course, you have to have a website. It doesn’t need to be complex. A simple few pages outlining who you are and what your business is about will suffice.

Additionally, you should have a presence on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are all useful tools for smaller businesses looking to grow and gather custom. Focus on the social media platforms where your customers like to hang out to ensure that more of them can find your business online.

You also need to make sure to present your business in the best possible light on all these channels. Therefore, monitor and respond to comments. Encourage reviews. And keep your content up-to-date so that Google is your friend. The latter point cannot be stressed too strongly. If you have a low ranking on Google you are losing business.

But there is another aspect of your internet presence that you should also consider carefully: Can your customers find your business online in local searches?

Can Your Customers Find Your Business Online with Local Searches?

Why are local searches so important? Quite simply, this is because most of the searches for businesses of all kinds are carried out on handheld devices such as smartphones. Furthermore, most of these searches are are done while customers are on the move and hoping to find a local list of businesses online.

Consider how this works from the customer’s perspective. You’re in a certain town and remember you need a particular product. Maybe it’s some tools for your car. Because you know you want to find a specific type of business online, you pull out your smartphone and type “tool suppliers near me” in the search bar for your phone’s internet browser. Or maybe you type “tool suppliers near me” or “tool shops in <name of town>” or something similar. You get the idea. Your search engine will bring up entries in that area, with details of addresses, store hours, phone numbers, and maps.

This also works when you access an online directory of local businesses. So if you want to make it easy for your customers to find you online, make sure to list your business in a local directory. Your brand will get noticed more readily by customers in your area.

Basically, consumers want convenience, and a local search result is certainly convenient. What’s more, if your business is the one that appears near the top with a map and an address, you are far more likely to get the business than another business further down with less detail. A local directory provides great visibility on the internet, and it will help your business build and grow.

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Keep Your Content Fresh and Relevant

If yours is a small business, it is extremely important to have relevant, quality content that links back to your website. Moreover, you should strive to link also with authority sites in your site’s content. This will give your business more credence. If you have a blog, for example, make sure to post clean, fresh content regularly. What’s more, keep that content relevant to your business as well as to your industry in general.

Be sure to track and respond to comments on your social media pages. Also, start and monitor discussions and answer inquiries right away. Not only should your customers be able to find you online, but they also want to know you’ll respond to them in a timely manner.

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A Final Word

We hope this article helps you understand the importance of making it easy for your customers to find your business online. Moreover, we have tried to stress the importance of local searches in attracting more customers and growing your business.

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Start with a thorough review of the situation right now. Check your Facebook page, your blog, and your Twitter feed. Can you improve or refresh those platforms? What’s more, give your website an upgrade to look the part and bring more traffic to your pages. Focus on making it easy for your customers to find you online, and your business will soon be growing strong.

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While mental health is important, employees’ financial situation is equally as important not only for their wellbeing but also for the prosperity of your company. Having poor mental health and financial wellbeing can have a serious impact on the productivity of employees. 

An Affective Events Theory (AET) explains how job performance depends on the feelings and emotions in the workplace.

If you are worried that your workers might be feeling worried or losing sleep because of financial matters, here is what you should consider for your business not to get affected. 

Why Employees’ Financial Wellbeing Matters

Many people are losing sleep or feel constantly anxious about their financial disruptions. They need to think about paying the bills, covering all costs, saving, or planning for retirement. 

Some employees are constantly deep in debt, others try to find the best short-term loans to get one more loan and not to overpay. The main reason for being in that endless cycle is a lack of financial literacy. 

The responsibility for financial matters recently shifted from the state and recruiters to the employees themselves. However, workers seem to lack financial education and aren’t sure how to make smart financial decisions. 

If your employees aren’t informed about their financial choices or unconfident in their actions, your business can be affected as well. 

A whopping 80% of American employees spend between 12 and 20 hours a month dealing with financial concerns at work. 

If you want your company to expand and bring even more profit, you need to think about the financial wellbeing of your employees. Helping them obtain the necessary education to boost their financial literacy is significant and should become your top strategy.

Many businesses concentrate on other perks and benefits while believing financial education is not important. Yet, allowing your workers to improve their knowledge in the financial sphere and get rid of certain concerns or issues can lead to better performance and higher productivity.

You should keep in mind that the age of your workers also matters. 

A recent graduate might be focusing on repaying a student loan and climbing the career ladder. A middle-aged worker is usually struggling with supporting the family and paying down the mortgage. An older person might be worried about retirement savings. Depending on the age of your employees, the way you try to help them should vary. 

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The Side Effects of Financial Stress at Work

According to the American Institute of Stress, only four in 10 employees who report stress to the boss get some kind of help. Typically, a recruiter would offer a stress-management class (22%) or refer to a mental health professional (26%). 

What if employers started caring more about the financial and mental well-being of their workers? It will definitely benefit their businesses in general and help each worker be more focused and organized.

“For so many employees, financial stress is the number one cause of their permanent stress, ” says Robert Stewart, HR administrator at the Brigham Young University of Idaho. “If a worker has difficulties paying bills or has a mountain of debt that needs to be repaid, he or she will look at how an employer takes care of them. If they are not treated the right way and their finances don’t improve, they may quit.”

Some recruiters aren’t aware of such issues in their workplace. However, just because you are unaware of it or employees hardly report such problems to you doesn’t mean they don’t exist. 

Financial stress is real and it can affect the worker’s health. Specialists admit that permanent stress over money matters can lead to anxiety, migraines, sleep deprivation, and even depression. 

As a result, such health issues of your workers will inevitably have a bad effect on their performance as many workers suffer from absenteeism and are less self-organized. 

While having health insurance and retirement savings is essential for the wellbeing of your employees, getting them a decent financial education is just as important. 

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Ways to Improve the Financial Wellbeing of Your Employees

Many businesses often neglect these issues because of privacy. 

Employees can feel intimidated to talk about financial problems and few people will honestly tell you they are nearly bankrupt when you ask them how they are doing. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late and your business starts to suffer. Here are some of the best ways you can help your staff become more financially literate.

1. Craft the Right Program for Each Employee

One tip won’t solve the financial matters of every employee in your company. Each person has individual needs or disruptions. You can make anonymous polls to find out the truth about the financial situation of each worker separately. This is a great way to gather information since many people are embarrassed to discuss such matters in person. 

Apart from health insurance or regular 401(k) some employees have specific concerns and financial needs.

2. Invite an Expert

Have you notice you can’t cope with all your workers yourself because each of them has a specific issue or a certain financial problem? Invite a financial wellness specialist or even a separate company that specializes in handling such matters. It is a great long-term investment in the financial education and overall well-being of your workers and thus your company. 

As a result, every employee will get attention and talk about private financial disruptions or ask for professional advice on how to manage personal finances better. There are many consultants and financial coaches available these days. They can share expertise and educate your employees on various finance-related topics.

3. Concentrate On Overall Stability and Wellness

It’s rare that financial stress comes unaccompanied. It is often combined with other types of stress and anxiety. As a result, every aspect of an employee’s life suffers and there is no work-life balance. 

As a recruiter and a business owner, it’s your duty to improve the wellness and stability of all your workers. It’s a perfect time to improve the situation and make sure every employee knows how to manage finances, how to get out of debt, and how to take care of all aspects of their lives.

If you find time and resources to create a comfortable working environment for your staff, the employees’ productivity and motivation will increase.

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Final Thoughts

In conclusion, if you decide to help your workers manage personal finances and boost financial literacy, you will make a long-term investment in your own company and workforce. There are obvious benefits and positive effects. Benefits not only for the personal lives of your staff but also for the development of your venture. 

This way you can protect your company from potential losses and issues caused by stress and improve the corporate brand.