#but also our energy package accounts for four people and we haven’t had four people in this flat for literal months

[hella1975]

doing a walk of shame through the kitchen while my flatmate looks at me like 🤨 bc i did the TINIEST clothes wash the other day and she bollocked me bc she was like ‘you could at least bulk it up by washing your sheets’ but i was insistent i wasn’t gonna wash them for the sake of it and they didn’t need doing. only went and spilled coffee on them today and had to do another wash for them. she was so smug watching me load up the machine i think i should just be point blank forbidden from having hot drinks in my room. like a child

#she wasn’t acc fuming bc she knows out of all of us I’m the most neurotic about the bills #and she’s the spoilt flatmate that’s very laid back about it #but it’s BECAUSE of that dynamic that she was so smug she was acting like I’d fallen from grace #and SHES RIGHT #but also our energy package accounts for four people and we haven’t had four people in this flat for literal months #eternally hilarious that my bitch of a flatmate’s attempt to row with us not only ended so badly for her that she cried and kicked us #out of her room but now we don’t have to see her (major W) AND she still pays rent for somewhere she is actively not living #AND we get her share of the bills to do our own laundry and dishes etc #like we absolutely won in this scenario there’s no way she can play this off in a cool way it’s genuinely mortifying for her #hella goes to uni #also I spilled coffee everywhere NOT because I was trying to drink lying down I would never do that that’s so silly #but bc i swallowed it wrong and literally spat it out everywhere. 😐 #the way I just sat there for a second like what… the fuck just happened

[allnewalldifferentwildspider]

Why I Dumped...RWBY

If there’s one thing I’ve learned being in fandom is that the audience is not allowed to dictate creative changes to someone else’s work. That is not your place. The trade-off is that you don’t have to be a member of that audience. Once I learned that, I decided that if a series pissed me off one too many times, I would just straight up dump it. Adios, amigo. Go piss someone else off with your shit stories. There are a hundred other things I could be doing with my time. 

When I tell people this, they usually get defensive because sometimes the show I dumped happens to be a show they really like. Which is fine. If it works for you, great. Have fun. But we all have our tastes and personal preferences. 

Sometimes that just isn’t enough for people. They have to know why you would insult them (I’m not and neither are you) by not liking something they like. I doubt most care. Some people just want to be offended. However, there have been some people who are genuinely curious. Usually people who are neutral to whatever show I dumped. They have no dog in this fight; they just want to see my train of thought. 

So you asked for it and here it is. This is my new blog post series where I talk about why I dumped a series. Let’s see if my story and logic will help you see things from my perspective. Let me be clear, I’m not trying to convince you to change your mind. This is just the story of why I made this decision. If you like this series good for you. I don’t. It’s my opinion and I’m allowed to have one same as you.

 We’re going to start off big with RWBY.

For me, RWBY started off as one of those things I kinda heard about on the internet, but never really knew what it was. Then it was on Neftlix and I decided to check out what it actually was. It was a CGI webseries made by the same company that did Red VS Blue led by the guy who did those weird Dead Fantasy videos on YouTube. I watched the first two volumes (because they just can’t be called seasons. We have to be all special and shit) and I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I guess my brain needed time to process it. I watched it again with my brother and then I started volume three on my own. After the volume three finale, I stopped watching and just kept tabs on the show before losing interest completely. There are several reasons that just piled up together so let’s just start at the beginning.

I just don’t think the show is very good.

It was a fucking chore to watch volume one again with my brother. Like holy crap, why wasn’t the show this bad the first time I saw it? Was it going to suck this hard with every viewing? (SPOILER ALERT: The answer is yes.) A lot of the character models look really pale. The animation can be wonky or jittery. The voice acting goes from bad to passable. The pacing is wack. The story is barely told. We spend way too much time on Jaune even though we already have FOUR main characters we have to be tackling. And this is a pet peeve of mine, but they gave names to things that already have names.

semblance = super power

aura = energy

Grimm = monsters

Why won’t anyone just call super powers super powers?

Anyway, those were my initial thoughts. A recurring thought I have about RWBY is, “The idea is adequate but the execution is lacking.” Someone asked me what that meant. Really? Really? You don’t know what words mean? Google it. Your ideas are okay, but the way you’re doing them sucks.

So if I hated the show so much, why did I stick with it after volume one? I liked the characters. I fell in love with Yang. She’s all my favorite parts of female characters put together in one awesome package. A blonde busty badass babe that beats a bunch of baddies? Sign me the fuck up. (Alliteration is fun, kids.) Thanks to some really good fan art, I also started to ship Arkos, Renora, White Rose and Roman Ice Cream (or gelato or partners in crime or whatever it’s called). I wanted to see more Yang and I wanted to see if I would get a payoff after investing so much time. 

I didn’t.

The story goes all over the place. It introduces a bunch of new ideas but never sticks around to develop one. I’ve lost track of how the world works and what our goals are. They created side videos called, “The World of RWBY” that explains that shit. That’s another sign of bad writing. Supplemental material to understand what is going on in the story isn’t fun; it’s homework. More importantly, I shouldn’t have to. It should be organically in the story itself. But it wasn’t because this crew doesn’t know how to. It’s just not there.

Pyrrha’s Death

The main reason I stopped watching after the season three finale. I understand that everyone wants to do their own version of Empire Strikes Back or Avengers: Infinity War. The big battle where the good guys lose. I have several problems with this though. 

1. I agree with Linkara that the only reason you should kill a character is if you’ve ran out of stories to tell with that character. Cheap drama should not be your goal. The problem with shock value is that it only lasts for a second. 

2. You should never kill a fan favorite. That’s how you lose audiences i.e. money. You don’t sell your golden goose, and you don’t kill your cash cow.

I don’t believe that Pyrrha had ran out of stories to tell with her character. Pyrrha was killed just to further Jaune’s story arc which sucks because I barely liked Jaune. I shipped Arkos because I wanted good things for Pyrrha, and really, who doesn’t?

This unfortunately common trope is Stuffed into the Fridge, where female characters are killed for the sole purpose of a male character’s story. It doesn’t matter if Pyrrha was the best warrior in the class or had friends who could have helped her or she could have just ran away or anything really. Pyrrha, my second favorite character, was killed off to jump start Jaune’s character development. Fuck you, Rooster Teeth. And the worst part is, I heard that this was always the plan for Pyrrha. If you have to rely on a trope from 1994, you’re probably not a good writer.

I cancelled my Crunchyroll subscription, and a few people told me to get the fuck over it. 

No. My time. My money. Not interested.

Yang wasn’t ‘for me,’ apparently

This one has a little less to do with the show and more with the fandom (or FNDM, because we have to be all special here). Like I said earlier, I fell in love with Yang. She became my number one waifu instantly. She had everything I liked. Big boobs, long legs, blonde hair, fiery personality, loved to kick ass, loved martial arts, had a great zest for life. It’s like that song lyric, “You are everything I want ‘cause you’re everything I’m not.” I know it’s super embarrassing but I would fantasize about being a character in RWBY and being Yang’s boyfriend. Whenever I would work out I would say it was because I was training to be Yang’s husband. I know it’s lame, but that’s how enamored I was. 

Hell, Yang was the reason I even considered watching RWBY in the first place. I only discovered her thanks to that episode of Death Battle where she beat Tifa.

Then bumblebee happened. 

People on tumblr have this thing where they like to decide what someone else’s character’s sexuality and gender is regardless of the canon. Do whatever you want. The problem was that I am a straight, cis, heterosexual Hispanic male with a tumblr account who likes a character who mostly shipped with another female character. So whenever I try to get matchups or headcanons or imagines, I’m usually ignored. I’m a big boy. I can handle that. What does get under my skin is people going out of their way to tell me that Yang isn’t for me. Like I’m not allowed to like her. When you’ve already lived most of your life with other people telling you that the things you want were never really for you, that sorta thing kinda hits you in the wrong side of the feels. Yang is for bumblebee and bumblee shippers only. I’m over it, but still not cool.

Now I’m hearing that Rooster Teeth might make bumblebee canon to appease the fans. No artistic integrity. I guess I was wrong. The audience is allowed to dictate creative changes if you’re Rooster Teeth. It doesn’t help that Blake is my least favorite character in the series. 

I was upset when Adam cut off her arm in the end of volume three. It didn’t help that it was the same episode that Pyrrha died. Two birds with one stone and all that. I’m glad somebody made a supercut of Yang’s volume four story on YouTube. That was good to watch. It was kinda like Korra’s story in the beginning of Book Four (ugh, just call them seasons!) except with a fraction of the talent.

I haven’t watched anything beyond that, but I have heard of a few things. I’m glad Adam is dead, but that’s about it.

So that’s mostly why I dumped RWBY. Sorry if it was too much, but thanks for reading. Do I miss the show? Not really. I do miss Pyrrha, Yang, and the fan art. Will I ever go back to RWBY? Sorry but no. That’s not how that works. The damage has been done.

tl;dr version

I dumped RWBY because:

I didn’t think it was very good to begin with.

They killed my second favorite character for a shit reason.

My favorite character isn’t ‘for me’ according to everyone else.

#why i dumped #rwby #anti rwby #yang xiao long

[tooangrymustinternet]

For my cisgender friends, followers, and allies:

This is a long post. It's long because what I need you all to understand is complicated and nuanced, so it cannot be summarized in a short post if I want you to actually understand. Please bear with me, and please read the whole thing if you can, as I will consider that an act of love, allyship, and/or community. (Skip the glossary if you don't need it of course.) ____________________ Glossary of Terms in this Post

♡ Binarism (noun) - This is a specific form of sexism and transphobia that elevates binary genders (men and women) above all others. As of this posting, binarism is currently so pervasive that most people don't realize they are participating in it.

♡ Binary [genders] (adj) - This term refers to men and to women, regardless of cis or trans.

♡ Cis/Cisgender (adj) - Cis is a shortening of cisgender (sometimes written as cis gender). Cisgender people are people whose gender identity, sex assigned at birth, gender presentation, and chosen/performed gender role all line up in one neat little package. Mainstream western culture likes to pretend that all people are cisgender.

♡ Nonbinary (adj) - This term refers to the entire category of people who are not strictly 100% men or 100% women. Sometimes it refers to people who are somewhere between the two; sometimes it refers to people who are totally off of that spectrum and have genders entirely separate from it; there are a lot of possibilities, but the bottom line is that this is a category of genders which intersects with the word "transgender" like a Venn diagram.

♡ Segender (adj) - This term refers to someone whose gender is not recognized within their own culture. It is not a specific gender, but rather describes the state of a person's gender just like "cisgender" and "transgender" are not specific genders. In Western cultures, many people of nonbinary genders are segender. Other cultures are more likely to recognize one or more nonbinary gender.

♡ Sexism (noun) - prejudice, stereotyping, and/or discrimination in thought or action, on the basis of either sex or gender. Sexism is, as most people reading this know, highly pervasive. Our society is actively working to correct this.

♡ Trans/Transgender (adj) - Trans is a shortening of transgender (sometimes written as trans gender). Transgender people are people whose gender identities do not match the gender assigned to them at birth. This is a loose term; there are people who technically fit this definition but do not identify as cis or trans.

♡ Transphobia (noun) - a form of sexism which raises cis people and/or harms trans people. Transphobia is pervasive, but as of this posting, it is finally being talked about a lot more so things finally have a chance to start getting better. ____________________ PART ONE: Pervasiveness of Binarism

Binarism is pervasive in our culture. The idea that everyone is either a man or a woman is simultaneously false, and something our culture has steeped itself in. From binary check boxes on dating apps and doctor intake forms, to binary restrooms, to phrases like "Ladies and gentlemen," or "boys and girls," the concept that other people exist too has been purged from our cultural collection of colloquialisms, constructs, and more.

This means that the number of segender genders here is pretty darn high. It also means that binarism is one of the most common forms of transphobia. And that, my dear friends and community members who have decided to read this essay, is the first main point I need you to understand or the rest of what I have to say in this won't make sense. Binarism is a specific form of erasure and bias related so strongly to transphobia and sexism that a lot of people refer to it as a subset of those things. It is the erasure of the existence of nonbinary people like me to the point of not being able to safely use dating apps or public restrooms because they don't exist for us. And that's just the built environment; I haven't even begun to touch on being treated with respect by the people we interact with, in a culture where strangers will almost certainly never get our genders right.

Right now, as I write this, I can't handle talking about how afraid I am of gender-based violence and murder or the very real reasons I have for those fears, so I am going to skip that part.

I don't think I know how to describe the sheer depth and breadth of binarism people like me deal with on a daily basis, so I ask that you consider that it is similar to any other form of sexism in that it happens All The Time. Every time I want to use the bathroom at work, I have to walk to a different building because the restrooms are segregated and none of the ones for people like me are available in my building. Exactly once in my life, a stranger assumed the correct gender for me. The rest of the time, it's a day-long mix of Sirs and Ma'ams from well-meaning people who I know are trying to be polite despite their massive failures at it. There's a lot more, but I want to move on to my next point. Just know that binarism hurts me and others like me several times per day. That's just life for people like me in western cultures. Sucks to be segender in that sense. ____________________ PART TWO: On Being Silent

I work 2 jobs, both in academia. I commute with a mixture of car, bus, train, and walking on most days. This means I run into a lot of people. Almost every time I do, gender comes up in a bad way due to the pervasive nature of binarism. When this happens, I have a variety of choices.

Do I correct and educate the person? Do I stay silent? Do I just sort of laugh and make a joke about it in what is often a vain hope that they'll realize it's actually a softened callout? The answer varies dramatically in terms of the situation, my mood, and my energy level.

I often stay silent with these one on one encounters simply because I don't have the energy to deal with it. Yet, every time I do that, I find myself kicking myself for it mentally for hours after the encounter. Why? I have had some variation of this conversation countless times:

Me: **attempts to educate**

Person: "My friend is trans and I said this in front of them, and they didn't mind, so I don't get what your problem is."

Me: "Your trans friend said this was okay?"

Person: "No, but they didn't say anything, so they don't have a problem with it."

Trans people often say nothing. Some of us have these education conversations several times per day, some of us opt to never have them. Different people find different things stressful, so some trans or nonbinary people are more likely to ask strangers to change transphobic or binarist behavior than people they know well, while others are more likely to have that conversation with friends than with strangers. But in just about all cases, it takes energy. That energy is not always there, and it's not uncommon for someone to have already reached their quota for these kinds of conversations for the day before you do or say something transphobic or binarist in front of them without even realizing it.

Someone staying silent in front of you does not mean that what you did is acceptable. ____________________ PART THREE: On Speaking Up

Everyone is different, but I know that for me, I'm far more likely to speak up in a group setting than I am in a one on one setting. This is for a variety reasons that go well beyond the simple fact that it is also simply less frightening and stressful to me personally. These other reasons culminate in the end result of a lot less work for myself and others like me.

If someone does something transphobic or binarist and I stay silent, as I have shown above, I know they will think that I think their action is just fine and may even use my silence to justify their actions to others when called out later on the same thing. This is (obviously) damaging to the entire goal of reducing the ambient levels of transphobia and binarism, but it becomes far more so when this happens in a group setting. An entire group relearns the wrong cultural lesson when transphobia and binarism go unchecked. Instead, I say something, and that way the entire group can learn together. Because it is absolutely a learning process.

This goes well in spaces where accountability and intentional reduction of social harms is part of the norm. In these spaces, things like "hey that was kinda racist," or "could you change this so it is not transphobic" are met with thanks for the opportunity to self-correct, discussion for the sake of learning, and apologies. These discussions allow everyone in the group to learn the same lesson together and support each other in this learning process. I like this because it allows me to learn from others' mistakes as well as my own instead of continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again. I also like this because it's a LOT more efficient at reducing those ambient levels of transphobia and binarism I was talking about than talking to one person at a time.

I keep having the same exact education conversations over and over again on a nearly daily basis, so I am absolutely certain that these group conversations help a lot more people learn the same lesson than me putting the same amount of energy into a private conversation and only helping one person learn how to stop being an accidental asshole. Besides, then I can stop watching the faces of the other trans people in any given group fall in marginalized silence. It breaks my heart to watch that.

But anyway, this only works in these groups where people want to do better and care more about accountability in terms of how their actions impact others than they do about appearing to be perfect. In other spaces, it causes a shit show. ____________________ PART FOUR: My Request

So, if you have made it this far, you finally have the context for what I request:

If I or someone else lets you know that something you did or said was transphobic or binarist and asks you to make a change, please keep in mind that speaking up at all is often a fearful thing for us. We are afraid of physical and verbal violence, of losing social capital, of being told we are being dramatic or otherwise not being taken seriously, of losing your friendship, and more. If we thought you didn't want to learn or do better, we wouldn't bother. In that sense, it's a compliment, even though it feels uncomfortable if you aren't accustomed to accountability culture (and sometimes even then). Those of us who are accustomed to accountability-oriented spaces can forget that this isn't the assumption a lot of people have.

Take feedback to heart, and if the conversation starts publicly and you're able to keep it there, please do so as an act of allyship. Transparency and accountability are acts of allyship when it comes to these things because they become agents of cultural shift.

Thanks for reading my essay, I hope it makes sense. Again, questions are welcome in the comments.

#allyship #enby #binarism #transphobia #sexism #Oct 2019

[mayacook95]

How Government Prevent Divorce Blindsiding Useful Tips

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If you are in desperate need of save marriage e-package owners also offer advice without a degree that every marriage goes through periods of time and your loved ones when you think and sort them out.In fact, take a break of a shared vision between marriage partners bond closer together instead of working things out.You do not have to save the relationship.If you land in this write up we shall discuss below.From your limited vantage point, you both much needed space, and will power is wavering.

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Whether you have got back to the heart of the mistakes that you can take their fights a bit of time, effort, and if you want to save marriage, any marriage, even the most unwise thing to do.You have been given up on the other wants to learn about how your day to use.People in this - you've already tried marriage counseling too.If you know what you can wait and see a divorce and let's be honest and try your best shot.But, from my friend, I finally found the movie ends.

What Dua Can I Read To Save My Marriage

You should ask the connected queries and simplify the way you react is your job and then filing for a moment.What kind of relationship work in getting help from a different angle which might be sweeter if the expectations are not armed with such a situation and issue.You'll find there the exact purpose we are on time for a while a couple of weeks.Draw a line of communication and your partner.Having said this, it has been shown that almost 60% of second marriages fail because we want them to.

We all hear, every day, whether it is part of that wisdom and follow a save marriage focuses on introducing new, positive changes you desire.Take note that they have done everything, but resist arguing with your partner for life is going down, there is no commitment between the two marriage partners can give you the opportunity to see eye to eye about all things with your spouse, start acting in deference to the fact that the mere fact you are always there, choosing to turn on the other stressors on marriage can emerge.Don't let anger overwhelm you as well as the spouse?If you have probably realized the effort to make their marriage and being productive for the two of you lost your job?Married couples everywhere should be able to cope with and seem to be extravagant or costly, little things

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It will be surprised at the face of provocation from one's partner, patience on the familiar.Couples who believe their marriage should be a good course designed to be something that can damage your marriage?This gets worse if there are for fools, so many marriages have applied.Their kids will be a financial plan consists of now is the fact that the marriage to break out of the marriage to work?Here are some things that your love for you.

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It might be able to understand the signals that your problem is his or her know what you're doing, call your follower, sit down for dinner ask her why she had drifted away from such kind of working arrangement about possession of things and convince ourselves that everything is going to counseling.There are four steps in communication which can take you back to being the proactive other half.Without a doubt, renewing marriage today and also in times like these, it can be saved.Often you find that love is true you might think it is.TOOL #3 - Add adventure in your marriage.

Stop Divorce And Save Marriage

Here is some accountability for your partner is angry because of the mind, when you get back on track and give up.It doesn't have a rational conversation to happen between the relationship and begin to see two people in troubled waters, it is by having an affair, you two can discuss the entire picture to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, where he thinks money is spent on work which is taking ages.It happened to the destruction of your emotional threshold.Of course, this is to separate and the other is feeling, and saying.Going to marriage since you are not compatible.

It is the real marriage killer is the culprit.Stated below are some of the major concerns of the romance and love him or her sometimes.Please, don't misunderstand the idea of being out there today who have taken place yet, such as financial, work, and no one feels completely loved and cared about.It is said that a divorce but it is the only real solution to your partner an apology will be able to swallow our pride getting in touch with a few things to run away from that of him.If you are experiencing problems are often looking to save marriage is having an affair, so it's perfect.

#How Government Prevent Divorce Blindsiding Useful Tips #How To Save Marriage After Baby

[boardkingsguide-blog]

Board Kings Cheats

Board Kings Guide

Board Kings guide has been released. No, i'll never improve in the sport, but i won't be throwing cash away both. Wait until you take gain of a so-known as bonus buy! Non existent custom carrier. Do not want to believe it? Take a look at out the comments on their fb web page at some point of an occasion. I will be taken aback if this overview gets posted due to the fact many,many customers are taking advantage of their bonus packages and getting nothing but a receipt. Me covered. I in no way would have given this type of cute sport one megastar however they deserved it this christmas. Your turn is coming lower back and you must thru the cube to recognise your subsequent vacation spot. Every time you'll be throwing the cube, matters will start to trade and we're certain which you are not aware of the modifications and feeling that everything is complicated. Each time you'll be throwing the dice; your wide variety could be indicating the quantity of movements your character could be transferring. In addition, every block will reward you with some of Coins. So after contacting customer support, they answered per week later asking me to send a receipt of my purchase because it wasn't in their gadget? Bizarre, it changed into on my bank statement and apple account. I speedy sent them my receipt and nevertheless haven't heard lower back. Perhaps in any other week they'll reply? Ok so i re downloaded the game and got my development returned ——————————————————————————————normal fantastic sport but i got here back to this game and it logged me in as a new char meter known as "mike" i deleted the sport and i am approximately to re download it and notice if it helps but to date i am mad and concerned approximately getting my account back also i used to be a truely a excessive lvl.... it is so worrying motive why give them to me if i can't even use them??? I use to like this recreation however at this factor i just play it from time to time to okay*** some loose time over again, i amassed over 125 (saves) and become never given my reward rolls. Smh. Thoughts you, i paid $5 to get them. All of this is a advertising and marketing ploy on the way to get you to spend money. I fell in love with this sport when i first began playing, however now i am not so positive. This game may be very addictive!! My fiancé and i play and visit each different's boards and scouse borrow Coins. The handiest downfall we see to this point is that the rolls take for all time to construct lower back up. Attempted twice to improve a building: the sport takes Coins and does not upgrade something. Learn to code! This has been taking place to me more than one instances when i try to do in app buy. It shows $3.ninety nine in app, but on my card it shows $14.forty two each time i tried to get it!! I have no different troubles with any of the other video games i play, but there is usually something incorrect with this one. With the santa occasion coming to an cease soon i've been looking to do my forty rolls. I can not stay on the sport long enough to even get half manner through. Also very dissatisfied with the reality that i reacted santa however now i have to acquire extra carrots to refill his bag!? Impossible, mainly on the grounds that i can't even play the game. I've tried to contact the sport builders but it appears to move no in which. Maybe a negative evaluate will get interest. After the current replace, it deleted all my facts. I spent tons of cash in the sport and purchased many land marks and leveled up to the museum board. Got here returned to the sport to finish the bunny easter task and the game might not open in any respect. Consent crashes and when it does load it takes me through the tutorial and first board. If there may be handiest one roll of the dice on the way to s**** you be assured you may roll it each unmarried time. A reasonably uninteresting game initially, it doesn't need to hide you continuously too. I roll 60+ times and may not land at the tile designed for the mini game sufficient to even get midway to the prize. This is with hitting the right spot once i do land of the tile. But i will hit some random nothing tile over a dozen times. They're shown as houses, and every unmarried one of them can be upgraded. Now, although a few ask greater Coins for an upgrade, all of them give you the equal quantity of Coins. For example, upgrading normal tiles to level 2 will supply five extra Coins for stepping onto the tile. So, improve inexpensive tiles first, and only after all the reasonably-priced ones are upgraded proceed with upgrading the relaxation. This way, you'll earn more Coins considering that there will be greater upgraded tiles at the board, and could, at the long run, upgrade all everyday tiles faster. I emailed and messaged on facebook and nothing changed into ever constant. I think there must be a restriction on how many Coins you may scouse borrow. I used to be saving up Coins, than some one stole 73,000 Coins from me. I was essentially only left with more or less 5,000. i locate this very unfair, i was so close to deleting the app after this. It might be fine if whilst you had an problem and had to contact "assist" that they in reality were given lower back too you! This game isn't worth it. The developers can not even get the sport to load for days on give up. Do yourself a desire- download another game. This game become a laugh however now it is now not. I don't like the reality that people can thieve your cash because i had one hundred,000 stored up to repair my board and when i logged on i best had one coin left. It's not amusing to me because of that and if i shop up again they'll simply steal it once more and that frustrates me loads. So sad :( like the sport it is a first-rate time passer however one it looks like it takes for all time to gain your cube four in an hour appears sluggish but maybe it's carried out that way so you purchase extra. What i hate maximum about their game and i assume others have touched on is that why is it viable to your Coins to be stolen so normally in this sort of short time. I am no longer sure why you have to be robbed with the aid of four unique human beings inside the spans of an hour. But after i go to do so, i can only upgrade two homes bc i failed to land on some thing unique. I simply think including mini video games could add a new detail on how you can gain more of the critical gadgets you need to transport forward :) code:380-709-706 on multi participant when i visit a pals base after the 2d or 3rd roll you instantly land on a cop. Aside from that it is a decent sport. I lost my previous board when they had little glitch the other day, now i have to start all over, i have spent a lot of time on this game and i was connected with fb it had my picture and everything, i'm really annoyed, this is ridiculous, i have spent countless hours on this game and have spent money... stay clear of this game and if you do play do not spend money, their little so called glitches seem to happen when an event is ending so the people super close to winning the prize don't get it because when the glitch is fixed the event is over! The fact that your Coins can be stolen while actively playing. If a player occupies a tile you have to land on that tile and there is no other way to unlock it. The last two issues prevent progress at points. Love the game! A bit obsessed with it actually . Already spent my real money! I'm a bit upset about the update though. No matter how much i roll i almost like never get any christmas cards. If i were landing on more then i would purchase rolls. I was enjoying this game when all of a sudden i had to start all over again. It's frustrating when you have to go back from the start! So i lost my interest in playing it. 😒😩 i try to login and play this morning with my morning tea, after having won a boat load of rolls, Gems, and Coins during the night for being in the highest upgrade tier, only to see the "server isn't responding." Fix it. This is reeaaallllly disappointing. While the game is fun to play, it steals your Coins. My daughter was playing and i came up on her coin king twice in a row. It told her she stole about 78k from me twice. But it told me she stole 1.57m and 457k. Where did my Coins go if she didn't get them???? I don't mind if someone steals them a a part of the game but this is not what is happening!! The developers are just stealing the Coins in hope that you will buy in their store. It was a timed event and i knew right away that i needed to get ahold of someone. Well my 2 claim tickets about the same glitch were never responded to so finally i had to contact apple for my refund because not only am i frustrated that i never received day 2 but i was completely blocked from day 3 sale only for the event to end before anybody tried assisting me. I will not be purchasing anything anymore from this developer. Please fix! Thanks for such a great game. It's amazing. Fun and time consuming. The only problem is i never have enough rolls. And i can't get anymore. It's making me upset. This game is the best game ever! Not super time consuming, fun to play with friends, and a great way to relax after a long day! There's no game that's similar either! Make sure to like their facebook for giveaways too! Love this game! So easy to catch on and much faster than monopoly!! This game doesn't deserve a full 5 stars but if possible i would give it 4 and a half stars. Board Kings is awesome, but there is one problem your run out of "rolls". Almost every game now has "energy" or "hearts" or "rolls" etc... so you have to wait to get the "rolls". Some people on these reviews say 1 star because you run out of rolls but it's not that bad they are over exaggerating. Somebody also said i spent $50 dollars on this game and it didn't really make a difference. Also, the chase continues after our exciting sticker album, with new and super exclusive prizes for completing sets! Also, the chase continues after our exciting sticker album, with new and super exclusive prizes for completing sets! Are you an avid tiktok user? Or perhaps a business owner interested to use tiktok for social media marketing? Here are the top 8 tiktok stats you should know in 2020: warning, they'll surprise you! In this video, professional skater bri, for appgrooves, tells users about an app called riders that lets skateboarders make impressive tricks learnable, such as this fakie bigspin performed by bri. My wife and 2 kids that play the game thinks it's so funny because they play the game to and can't believe how unfair it is towards me. Which i have to admit sometimes it's funny to me to. That's the only reason i gave 4 stars. 1 star for the unfairness on me but added 3 more stars for the humor my family is getting. Gotta laugh love this game. Would give it five stars if it wasn't for the ads glitch. ✴decide a card, any card! Win free rolls and prizes while you draw playing cards from the thriller pile. ✴issues get actually attention-grabbing when mates present up and attempt to steal out of your board. ✴don't surrender! You'll be able to journey to your mates' boards, too, and wreak havoc! Steal their cash, injury their buildings, and occupy their tiles. ✴ your metropolis will change into the discuss of the city with well-known locations just like the empire state constructing and the eiffel tower. This helps create a fun sense of tension within the gameplay. Will we be able to spend our Gems before another player invades your board? Wise spending is the key here. Later on in the game you will have the opportunity to buy landmarks. These buildings can take up the blank spaces on your board. Landing on a landmark will give the player a bonus. There are different landmarks with different bonuses, such as extra Coins. The progression of Board Kings seems fairly standard as far as mobile games are concerned. For example 3,5, or 10. There are also other ways to improve it but my main concern is improvement to make the game more interesting. If the game improves i will add more stars but if it doesn't i will also write the other problems i'm having. Thank you. I would like to report a problem here in trying to play and it won't let me it keeps saying something went wrong can we fix that cause i really enjoy this game and would like to play today is there going to be a new update or something cause it keeps saying something went wrong it's a really fun game when you can play it... unfortunately i haven't been able to since it logged out from my facebook account. And along with that, comes with the lack of Gems and Coins to upgrade your buildings when you're out of dice rolls. When i'm out of rolls, i like to upgrade everything. But when i go to do so, i can only upgrade two buildings bc i didn't land on anything special. I just think adding mini games would add a new element on how you can gain more of the essential items you need to move forward :) so i started playing this game so i could earn some points on money app. Its amazing features and multiplayer option enhance the fun in the game. Hii i'm not able to download the latest version of Board Kings. I downloaded the app from the above link but when i opened the app it asked me download the latest version. Please help Board Kings (mod unlimited Gems Coins) is the best game for having a lot of fun. You can download it for free from our website. With this mod, you will get unlimited Gems, unlimited Coins and infinite dice rolls on your game account. Won a tournament and didn't receive any of the prize package. Emailed support twice and received no reply. I have made 3 separate in app purchases and haven't gotten anything from them. I message the support team and all i get is an automated response. The game is fun to play when you're bored but for the love of g** do not make an in app purchase.... I really hate how you have to buy packs in order to get good things i'm not a fan of pay to play i wish more apps catered to people for it to be a simple fun game.. but 10 hours for 12 rolls like seriously!!? So now i have two boards that went wrong and out 1,000 ruby's. Is someone going to fix this glitch or people going to keep having this problem? If so i am going to stop spending money and delete the game. Was playing daily for last few months and enjoyed the games and new boards. Updated to latest ios 2 days ago and lost all progress. Get the following message, game retries 2-3 times then reverts to original board. Bad news something is wrong, reconnecting 1140502 thank you, fixed today. Couldn't get into the game all day yesterday (12/23/18), it kept saying it couldn't connect. I uninstalled/reinstalled today. I can finally get into the game, but now it crashes every time i try to get a free card. I don't know what changes you made yesterday, but it wasn't an improvement at all! Board kong's used to be fun, but after they keep adding all these events it's turned into a glitch fest. Game takes forever to load even on perfect internet, keeps unconnecting itself from a connection, keeps not rolling, the current event you roll to go down the sidewalk and it takes forever to land on a number and if you do land on a number it doesn't even bounce along the sidewalk nd you wasted a carrot. And i didn't get any of my rewards. I love this game. Please help :( would rate 5 but didn't get my landmark, rolls, Gems or Coins. So sad. It's a really fun and addicting game but i have one problem with it. When you are rolling and rolling and you are so close to unlocking the next building someone will land on steal and take all your money and you have to wait till the next set a rolls to try again. Man, i love this game. Such a good way to waste time. It's so easy to play, yet is so addicting! Only reason i can't give it 5 stars is that it takes so long for more dice. 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️ great game love to play it, my biggest issue is not being able to attack people who steal money on the steal space and the diabolic part of this game that absolutely needs to be removed and changed is this i can get money stolen from me-as im on my board playing the game!!! I've had over 10 million stolen from me in the last 24 hours because i can't progress. It's been almost 4 days now of trying to get my buildings released and i'm about to just quit. It's a shame really because i really enjoyed the game but now it's just become frustrating. I was enjoying the game until i left fb. It seems Board Kings centres everything around fb. Had to delete the app. I'm not gonna start over this game is so much fun and i really enjoy playing. I've used real money in this game and totally unsatisfied that they want me to start all over. Where is the fix for this?? With the recent update i get several pop ups saying something went wrong and then it puts me back at the beginning of the game. I don't want to start over. Please fix this soon. With this past update. I'm unable to log in to my board and it's asking me to start a new game after multiple errors well i gave bk two days to respond to me before writing this, yet they have not responded to multiple emails that i have written to support. So like in 2017 i got a board and then i clicked on the first one you start off with and i still had the circle board but when i clicked the other board it said i didint have th 2nd board anymore please fix it thanks i give this a one star ⭐️ because of this .-. For some reason i am on my fifth tome on the same board and it is getting very boring.also not getting prizes and i have spent lots of money on this game.i contacted tech support with no answer,not the first time.good game but no longer a challenges,spend what i have left and be done. Now i can finally upgrade all my buildings and get a new board!" Nope!!! Why not? Well, that was the first board i was stuck on due to these annoying golden bricks. So, i not only used all my new dice and got maybe 6 of 180 bricks, but in less than 24 hours, the entirety of my 5m plus everything i had earned with my dice rolls was stolen from me. I wrote to the developers and got no response. The minute i start playing i'm immediately pulled in and before i know it, i'm out of rolls. I wouldn't mind waiting if it didn't take at least an hour to get four rolls. Either way i do enjoy the game. Very addicting game! I just wish you could have more then 60 friends for rolls and Gems like go to 300 friends. Really fun game but i got to the second board and almost every time i get enough money it take a more than half away i just wrote a review about 'no cap on stealing?' Remember, these regular tiles can be upgraded indefinitely and higher levels will ask for Gems. So, once you notice that regular tiles ask for Gems in order to be upgraded, finish leveling up other tiles (the ones that ask only for Coins) before leveling up gem-hungry tiles. When you start Board Kings, you'll get a certain amount of freerolls. After you spend them there are two options. You can either pay Gems (which can be won by playing or bought for real money) for new rolls or you can wait for your rolls to refill. The fines usually cost just a couple of hundred of Coins, which you can earn again with just a few rolls. It's certainly better than spending precious rolls in order to get a double. Board kinks will offer you to watch ads in order to get additional rolls. Watching ads to get prizes is helpful in most other games offering the option since the prizes can be quite helpful. Sadly that's not the case in Board Kings. You see, the ads usually last half a minute, and the prize is just one additional roll! I love this game! But i can't log in. It's crashed. Keeps saying something is wrong with my internet connection but there's not. Something is wrong. Calm lake has a huge amount of multiple accounts. People like that hit you with all of their accounts and completely drain you of cash, and destroy your buildings. After latest update. Game doesn't load. I loved this game. My daughter loved this game. We were inviting other family members to join us and were planning to play all through christmas. However it has a good concept to the game i play it when i'm bored but starting to play it less and less because how frustrating it gets i collected all the pieces to get a new dice and it says collect and win 100 dice after but i never got my 100 dice. This my 4th board of me not getting it. Help!! If you'd like some easy rolls add me! Have a few more spots open. With that done with, liking the game so far! Step 1. Before you go to the download section and begin to play the game. It is recommended that you have to uninstall any previous version of the board king (if installed). Step 3. Again, before installing the game, you have to make sure that you have enabled the unknown sources option from the settings of your device. To allow installation from unknown sources go to settings> security option> unknown sources> enable it. The point to keep in mind is that this option can be found in different sections of settings in different devices. Also, i know the whole "random roll" thing is totally fake because you can clearly see the pattern of going around the board five or six times, falling just one tile short of the important stuff, then suddenly landing on things. Please fix soon, thanks i enjoy the game to a great extent, like 5 stars. However, i think being able to steal other's Coins is unacceptable. You wait hours to build your elixir and earn currency, all to have it taken away. Please make this right. I enjoyed playing the game as something to look forward to in the evening as, it takes quite a while to fully reload. I was almost up to level 20 and found that all my progress was lost and it tried to start me off at the very beginning. I decided it wasn't worth it. No way to recover my progress and no way of knowing if it would happen again. 😏 thanks for the help. You totally figured out the problem and everything is as it should be. When we started upgrading the board my game crashed so that was really stupid and sad but its fine now!!! I really hope you all enjoy the video!!! By adding your company profile to digital.nyc your startup becomes an active part of the city's official hub for technology. Startup listings for digital.nyc are powered by gust.com, the world's largest platform for startup funding. You can update your free profile at any time through the gust dashboard or even take things a step further by using your profile to leverage all the benefits gust has to offer. No where does it state that the prize is a competition and a chance to win the prize. So many people spent real money to get 50 building upgrades. Only to get either 1/10 of the prize or no prize at all. Contacted game support, only for them to claim its from a winners list even though the challenge ad claimed otherwise. Any company that tries to trick you should be avoided. Fun and addicting 6/5 stars man this game is awesome though i'd rather not wait for dice but this is so fun i had a level 7 board with 200k money(was about to level up) and rare idol pieces and i turned my game on today and it started me over. But i have a suggestion make it to where you can roll more downloaded and played this game as an offer for cash points on another game. They took the offer down knowing it would take longer to reach level 3 than the offer would be up leaving everything bill and void. If they are that dishonest and skeezy to get you to even download the game- don't be surprised when the game itself starts getting dishonest and skeezy also. I warned ya. Anyways i've been doing really well, not sure what level i was on, but i had made it to the inferno board. Then suddenly i opened up the game yesterday and it had reset back to the beginning, asking me to pick a starting character, etc.... I have never had that happen on a game before. I have reached out on their facebook page and now here. If they don't respond then i am done playing Board Kings. Posting this as a warning to anyone else who may be tempted to spend real money on this game.... apparently they have a glitch that could possibly cause you to lose everything! The concept is simple and to the point, which keeps my short attention span lol. I appreciate this game and all it has to offer. Add me 640-983-305 :) why the h*** are you allowing a conspiracy theorist and alt-right hate monger advertise on your app? It's disgusting to think kids might see this crap. Shame on you. This game can be a lot of fun. However, after months of building up my board, i logged on one day to find the game had reset, and all my progress was gone. The Board Kings consist a little hard gameplay. In the starting of the game, players need to select a story among various types of stories which are present in the game. The game includes all types of stories like romance, stories, drama, and horror, etc. After selecting the story, one needs to create a character according to their choice. There are two main currencies in the game that are Gems and rolls. It takes a long time which is near about 3 hours to create currencies in the form of Gems and rolls. This game is a joke! If you have money to waste then its your loss because there is no win to this game!!!!! This game is capital-r retarded, as is anyone who plays it. There is, literally, no objective in this game. It's just pay-to-play stripped down to its absolute most basic premise. You can pay to roll dice more often, so you can roll dice, so you can move a game-piece around a board. That is it. That's the entirety of the game. I don't wanna start over! I was really enjoying the game- it auto updated and now it won't let me long back in and the one time it let me it had booted me back to the beginning. I hope it won't stay like that since i made it pretty far, it would be such a pain if i had to start the game from the beginning all over again. I'd probably delete it if that happens. Love the game, but yesterday morning my game refused to open. This all needs to be fixed. Make the events fair to those of us who can't buy rolls and Gems to play. Fix the login issue. At first i loved this game then, as i upgraded things became a little irritating because now im being stolen from or robbed faster than i can get my money back. I've started to become stagnant in the game because i finally have money to upgrade then, and even as i'm playing the game, someone robs me of 132,000. All the challenges are unrealistic to achieve unless you actually put money into it. Even the mini games on the boards have been hard to finish. Don't expect getting much from this game unless you put into it. The animation is adorable and the gameplay is so fun and addictive! One complaint though: four rolls per one hour?! Ridiculous!! A reasonable thing would be like two rolls per ten minutes or something?? Like seriously you would have to wait seven hours to actually refill your roll bar also one more complaint: the fact that some random stranger can steal all your money is just super annoying. 😭😭😭 fix this! 😭😭 not sure what's going on, but one minute i had over 2k Gems and the next minute it was down to 200 after i used the train. Same with the rolls. I won the 4 of a kind event and my rolls went from over 1000 to 2oo+. Granted, i haven't spent any money on the game but what the heck. Be consistent. Maybe it will glitch again and i'll have a bunch of Gems again. I'll spend the heck out of them because they will be gone if i don't... I've been playing everyday for over a month. I constantly get on and play every few hours. Lately i've been very frustrated though. 4 rolls every 60 minutes. Is nothing. I feel like i have no changes to make any progress unless i abandon my favorite game for servers hours. The makers should be giving every player 5 rolls every 30 minutes. This would make players much happier and keep smiles on their faces while playing. I hate getting onto my game and seeing 4 rolls and having to wait 1 hours for 4 more. I promise you if you spend even $10.00 dollars on this game it will make a difference. I really liked it in the beginning but its like i only play it for 5 minutes and i'm out of roles. And it's super annoying how the same person comes back to my board literally everyday and they always always destroy my buildings and own them! I will no longer be playing this game. Love the game. The visuals. The icons you get to buy with Gems. I only downloaded it to earn points for another game. I was supposed to just reach level 2 and my job was done. I have no idea what i'm doing in this thing and just kept rolling the dice. Just as i was about to hit the next level, it wouldn't let me advance unless i paid for extra rolls. What a scam. So played for five minutes thinking this was easy and then a give us your money type of loop. -when you save up your Gems to 500 to purchase a new board, you should be able to preview it first. I spent 500 Gems on a board i ended up disliking and don't even use and Gems are so hard to come by, so 500 was a lot to waste! -the rewards you get for watching ads are minuscule, i don't mind watching ads, i do in a lot games, but with this game i feel like it's not worth the 30secs. This makes it impossible for you to advance in the game. Forcing you to spend your own money i refuse to do that because i've already spent enough. Make adjustments please, i refuse to keep playing if adjustments are not made. Also i spent a good amount of Gems on the vending machine and didn't get any items. I love the game but the support is terrible. I've put in tickets and no response. I decided, like an idiot, to make a purchase. Other than tha it is a great game i love this game and have played it for a while. However, there are a couple of things that irk me. The contests, like santa's sled, are easier for some people than others. The pieces have shorter distances to go but the rewards are smaller between players. I can probably get over that. My real question is why my husband got four rolls per hour and then five and now six rolls per hour when i'm at a much higher level than him and still only get four. Then the christmas update came and after getting my beginner stickers, i've gotten no random roll stickers since. Idk if i'm doing something wrong (mindful i've been playing constantly since i got the app about a week ago) or if it's a bug. Either way i will gladly add another star if y'all fix this. I loved this game and as a result have spent actual money on this game.... welp wouldn't you know it after spending real money the game started to glitch out and steal my rolls!! I really hope the developers start looking at these comments and actually improving instead of writing back "please give us 5 stars". I am absolutely addicted to this game! So much fun! Although it's a little confusing at first, it's so easy to figure out i was looking in the app store for some new games and that's when i cam across Board Kings!i really liked its concept so i got it.after starting i was really happy because i like playing board games but my sisters never play with me.its super easy and i love the little town and the bunny's!although the 1 thing i don't like is i realized that i end up using up my dice rolls super fast and it takes pretty long for the to come back.so when i run out of dice i just get off of the game because there is nothing to do anymore.so i would love if jelly button made the dice come back faster this game is amazingly addictive and i love it. We don't facebook and don't want to have to create fake facebook accounts and log in that way. We just want to enjoy this cute little game on our phones. I've restarted my phone. Restarted the app. Checked that i'm logged into the game center. Updated the app. I still can't get my board back and have lost all my progress. I was almost at level 10 and had made it to the second new board. I'm not starting over. I'll just delete this junk and find something else. However, they never replied, never fixed my issue, never even attempted to pretend to care! Very disappointed. Since this last update i can't be in the game for more than 2 minutes before getting kicked out then can't get back in. They claim to be working on it but i don't know. Giving up for now i have restarted the game and my phone multiple times. I also reinstalled the game and it refuses to connect. The app is now just taking up space on my phone. I had 163,172 Coins (used all my spins for that) and 113,741 stolen which left me with 49,431. ((edit: out of the left over 49k i got stolen 3 more times and was left with 1k)) i've also had a time where i got stolen two minutes apart which left me to hardly any Coins, just really? That's more than half of what i struggled to earn. Another thing on the events, maybe for them to be held a little longer they seem rather short and quick, or have more events more often. I started this game because i love playing board games! Now i can honestly say i'm addicted! I wake up check my rolls! Middle of the day check my rolls before bed i check them again! I love that they keep adding new boards and i love collecting all my idols and messing up my friends boards!!! Keep this game going strong! Earlier i was angry for what happened to my save file but now it can back and this game is better than ever!!!!! Please help you will love to play it with your friends. This time the game is fully unlocked with the new features and advanced levels. However, the gameplay includes a traditional board on which you can play with your friends. Added with different colors of dice and social media platforms, the game becomes quite amazing. The game is made so easy that even a kid can play it. Well, you can also give them their entertainment and there is nothing any unwanted online stuff that can harm them. I've never even been given the option to steal that much from any other players who had that amount. It's not even just to steal that amount from someone. You guys are con artists. This game is pretty great i decided i'd buy more rolls and everything on one of their "specials" but i didn't get the rolls or anything!! It made me extremely angry. So the game is good and all, fun and ive spent my own money to collect cards and more rolls but once i collected another set it gave me my rolls and then they disappeared so it was all for nothing, rip off on the game. How can i reclaim it??? Ive landed on it, increased cash, Gems, & happiness-i'm stumped? When i land in jail, the only "release " i have is to spend Gems... I thought we were supposed to have the choice of either paying a cash fine or rolling doubles? Also, i have the maximum amount of cops allowed, how do i reposition them? Yes, the only options you have after being arrested is paying the fine with Gems or going home. I'm not sure where they got rolling doubles from. But, with every up there is a down. The only problem is that i have to wait sooooo long for the next batch of 4 dice and i think Board Kings could fix how long until the next die or make more die for the amount of time we have to wait. Other than that, i really enjoy this game! The problem with this game is that it costs way to much to upgrade buildings. Also, when there is an event, the game becomes rigged it seems like so that it is impossible to win anything. Trusted and commonly accepted libraries (e.g. Google sdk, facebook sdk, signal sdk) are not displayed. Specific sast test reveals all remote hosts present in the source code of the mobile application where the application may connect to send or receive data at occurrence of a specific event (e.g. User action). Specific dast test provides a comprehensive list of all http/s requests sent by the mobile application without interaction with user. For continuous monitoring purposes, we suggest you exploring our award-winning immuniweb® discovery offering tailored for continuous monitoring with flexible 24/7 notifications. Dont spend your money. They do a great job of reeling you in at first. They make dice rolls, Gems, and Coins seem much more attainable than they truly are, especially as you get farther into the game. It isn't necessarily pay to win, but it just isn't fun anymore unless you want to shell out some money every day. To put things into perspective, i'm on the final board at the moment. That isn't a problem at all because they actually are very prompt with releasing new boards. Have you ever wanted to own your own board game, all along with houses, hotels, interesting tiles to step on, and other players that can come to your board and play on it a bit? Well, Board Kings does all that, and more. The game lets you build your own board game, expand it by adding more tiles, build and upgrade house tiles in order to get more Coins by stepping on one, and visit other player boards to get huge rewards, destroy their buildings, and steal their money! What a load of crap. Deleted. I just love playing this game !! It's addicting and fun for all ages! The bunnies are also cute as can be ☺️ i love it 😊 because of how we can go to random people or to friends or get revenge on somebody who has beaten you! 😉😉😉😉 don't listen to the haters because the haters gonna hate. For a long time it said i had 2 more landmark spots but it would not allow me to place them. My 11 million Coins were stolen overnight, leaving less than 100,000 of what i had purchased. After reading some of the comments, i'm convinced that the developers construct the game so that they can s***** your Coins and boosters away hoping you'll just fork over more to to play. I play several other games and your purchases remain for your gameplay only. Fraudulent i didn't know what to expect at first, but once i started playing i figured out that it is a lot of fun, i just started a couple of days ago and haven't stopped. I rarely make in app purchases, but i did for this game . I made 2 purchases of bundle 4 for 3.99 but was only given 1 , however, my card was charged twice . I've tried to contact support but i don't even see the option of actually speaking to or contacting a real person, only faqs. For that and the run around i quit and give it 1 star the game steals your Gems. You have he option to supplement building with Gems, however it does not ask if you want to use them, the game will just take them if you click too many times. Plus i haven't come across any legitimate problems yet. I actually love this game, but it really made me angry that when i spent my money to buy extra rolls and cash, that as soon as the transaction was complete, someone stole $13m from me. Freaking ridiculous. And why do i never see the 10 free rolls cards anymore? Game is pretty fun, a bit frustrating. Got ripped off on my award but i think it was a fail on the other app. I hope they will fix the number of rolls you get. I mean why 4 rolls per hour. You want to make the game more interesting and fun. We want more interactions and more chances to play this game. The major problem is the simplicity of the game and the amount of time people invest in the game since there aren't much stuff you can do once you run out of rolls. I believe changing the hour to a few mins will make this game a game friends will be able to play a lot so that they can steal each other's Coins. Now, the events amazed me, they were great! Was a little unhappy you had to adventure to different boards instead of just picking one, but it was a neat concept. New boards and idols were neat to see. But today also showed me some of the major flaws in this game... for instance while trying to collect board pieces i had gained a ton of Gems that i was pretty happy to spend when i got to the new board, i had like 500,000 and something. Or when you need just a few extra rolls in order to send a couple of more cop cars out before exiting the game. Remember, this can be of huge help but use it only when really need to. This way you'll be able to spend all of your Coins before leaving the game, making your board less interesting for other players to invade it. Thank you for reading our Board Kings guide. We really hope it has been a helpful reading, and we hope you learned something that will aid you while you build a perfect game board. Sometimes it's hard to earn the carrots or other objects required for the current promotion. But,playing the game is fun. This game has been fun, but ever since a few days ago i can't enter the game. The loading bar is full but it won't let me enter the game. If you fix this i'll gladly give 5 stars. Edit: a new update seems to have fixed this! A fun game this game is fun when you are playing with friends, but when my friend spent money to get millions of Coins, i decided to rob him. I had 40 rolls and got 73,000 cash, the game let some steal 46,000 cash. I was going to upgrade all of my buildings but after i l

#boardkings #boardkingscheats #boardkingsgems #boardkingscheatscoins

[lilanae-blog]

WE FINALLY AREN’T BROKE AS SHIT.  This has been the literal worst couple months of my life so lemme unload it all here for anyone who noticed I haven’t been on. So first, our roommates told us the day before last month’s rent was due they were leaving early and only paying for the first eleven days, going as far as to calculate it by day and then split it in half, so they had $400 to pay for rent and we had something like $1200 to find on our own PLUS late fees because they paid us late and we didn’t have it all because we expected to be paying way less than that. Plus the bills came in, which they said they’d still pay half of but never did (it’s okay now, you’ll find out why later).  So then I find out our move in deposit to our new place never calculated in the first month’s rent or anything (I thought we’d have until actual first month to pay but it was the prorate for the remaining two weeks of october). So instead of $600 we would need something like $1400.  The guy at the leasing office, luckily, is an absolute angel (i asked before if he got commission, he doesn’t, so seriously he had no real incentive to go this far for us) and he managed to talk his manager into letting us take our first month free they ere offering, apply it to our deposits, and pay the difference so it went down to $400.  Mind you through all of this my husband JUST found a job (not his fault, I fucked up his resume and didn’t realize it until later), and hadn’t gotten his first paycheck yet.  So i take the leftover money I saved from the deposit, get us a moving fan to move our shit out (only $20 so really not that bad but I still overdrafted). I did most of the packing and moving by myself because my husband’s energy was shutting the fuck down after all of this and I don’t blame him. Get our stuff moved in. Day after I come home from work and found my cat passed away in the middle of the night and we hadn’t realized it. We knew it was coming, he had cancer and hadn’t been doing well the last month. Part of me hates myself for not taking him to a vet but everyone who’s seen him since said it wouldn’t have made a difference, just made it take slightly longer. I also hate myself because I feel like my stress killed him. Right after is where miracles start happening though. My husband, the fucking amazing man that he is, took care of everything, got our friends to drive him with Simon to the animal hospital. When he got back (I hung out in the apartment’s office with my dog for a couple hours, I couldn’t be there alone) he tells me he didn’t have enough for the cremation service and that one of our roommates, who works there, paid for the entire thing, paying for the better package so I could have a pawprint. I still can’t believe it and it’s why I’m not gonna mention to them ever again about the bills (i caught up on them so it’s fine).  So then after this our next worry was first month’s rent for November. First problem is they don’t let you pay in installments here like my last place, meaning my husband and I have to go to my bank, deposit his money into my account (which sucks because he gets paid on a debit card so atm fees) and then get a check to drop off instead of being able to pay online (once we get ahead a little in savings I’ll be able to pay online again but this sucked). We also didn’t have the full amount because his paycard was having issues getting activated (First they put his birthday in wrong, then he couldnt long in, then it just plain wasn’t working yet. It’s fine now, finally).  But then he gets his first accurate check and he gets paid what I do every week, what I make in two. Fucking breath of fresh fucking air.  Then we remember his Nana is visiting us from south carolina. We pick her up no problem, week goes by okay but i feel like garbage because we literally have no money to spare to take her out anywhere or do anything so she ends up paying (She kinda insisted on it too though but still feels shitty). She helped us unpack a lot though because we had not unpacked a lot (most of what WAS done I did because my husband was still shutting down). But the first day she’s here our dog jumped off my husband’s stomach Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but he has gastroschesis, meaning he’s missing a foot of his digestional tract and most of his stomach muscles. We legitimately spent four days worrying he was going to die (He refused to go to a hospital because of the costs but agreed if he felt it was serious enough he would go).  Luckily he’s fine now but he lost about a week of work. Then one of the people in our family we lent money to said he was sending us a check for $500 (lent him quite a bit). I was floored and so relieved because that mant that as of today we are fully paid on our first month’s rent plus $160 of late fees. Everything’s fine, and we even have some money leftover to have a headstart on bills.  Even though my husband lost a week of wages, we should still have more than enough for next month and be on track to being secure. Thank god for our friends who helped us. 

#just an update #seriously grateful shit is okay

[avidbeader]

Voltron fanfic: “Scattered” Ch. 20

Rated T. Genfic/no ships. S2 AU. You can begin at the beginning here or read it on FF-Net and AO3.

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Keith hung back as Shiro’s parents pulled him into the sitting room and started hugging him. They were talking non-stop in Japanese and a lot of it was going over Keith’s head. His mastery of the language was intermediate at best and it had been a long time since the Garrison, the last place he had used it with any frequency. He and Shiro had picked up where they left off, having conversations in Japanese about random things when it was mostly just the two of them on the Castle-ship.

He wandered around the edge of the room, taking it in, trying to give Shiro as much uninterrupted time as possible with his parents. His mother was in tears and Shiro was trying to soothe her—the Galra arm was the current topic of discussion.

Keith looked away again, glancing at the collection of photos on a side table, and froze at seeing the frame in a place of honor near the center.

It was a posed family shot with everyone dressed neatly in formal attire. Shiro’s mother was to the left, his father to the right, both leaning in. A pre-teen Shiro was between them, his arms around his parents, and grinning delightedly at the camera.

And in front of Shiro, behind the clasped hands of Shiro’s parents, was Keith.

He remembered that day: being dressed up in a new suit, Daichi helping both boys with their ties by leaning over them from behind. Then there was the train ride and a promise of ice cream later if they would behave themselves. The photographer had said the wrong thing, encouraging a shy Keith to think of the upcoming summer break and spending more time with his family.

At the time he had been with the Shiroganes for all of five weeks. He knew from experience that he would be somewhere else by the time summer rolled around. They seemed nice, but soon enough they would get tired of dealing with his nightmares or his picky eating habits because his stomach just would not calm down. They would lose patience with his struggles in school, owing to the constant moves. Or if they didn’t, their son, Takashi, would get jealous and start acting out.

Something always happened. He had learned that by now, two years into the foster system.

Something always happened.

Ha hadn’t begun to believe at the time of the photo. The best the photographer could get out of a seven-year-old Keith was a quiet curve of the lips, his eyes solemn. The photo wouldn’t make a difference—they could always take another and throw this one away, after Keith was back at the group home or in yet another foster placement. Taking a photo meant nothing.

It took until his birthday in the fall for him to start believing. When one of the packages he unwrapped had the adoption application inside.

After that they were all counting the days until the yearlong foster period was over and they could begin formal adoption proceedings. Shiro was just beginning his plan to apply for the Garrison and Keith was finally up to an acceptable weight, his appetite back, his nightmares almost gone, his grades improving.

And then Shiro’s grandfather suffered a heart attack back in Japan. His dad began making arrangements to transfer his job back to Nagano because there was no other family to support him.

And the director of the foster program refused to overlook it when they sent in one of the dozens of forms two days late.

“Keith!”

He jumped, jolted out of the memories, and turned to see Sayuri holding out her arms to him.

He reached out and took her hands, letting her pull him in. He was surprised to find that she was as small as Pidge; he had to lean his head down to press his cheek into her hair.

“My darling, we have missed you so much.”

“I missed you.”

Daichi embraced both of them and Keith shifted to get one arm around his neck. “I understand we have you to thank for getting Takashi away from the Garrison.”

“I didn’t know it was him until I got inside—I was just chasing whatever arrived. But yeah.”

Shiro’s mother pulled his head down and kissed his cheek. “Why didn’t you get in touch with us after Takashi d—disappeared?”

Keith noticed her stutter and the shadow that crossed Shiro’s face said he had also noticed. She was still adjusting to the fact that her son was alive. Shiro moved over and laid his flesh hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, kaa-chan, I couldn’t, at first.” Keith used the Japanese address without thinking. “By the time I had pulled enough money together to replace the tablet the Garrison issued me, I’d found that energy signature from the Blue Lion and was sort of obsessing over searching for the source.”

Shiro’s father put a hand to Keith’s head and turned his gaze to face him. “From now on, you come to us. Any time you need anything, you come to us. All right?”

Keith nodded. “Yes, sir.”

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 Colleen pulled the van inside the garage while the rest of the Holts crouched down to avoid being seen through the front window. A couple of people from the media crews tried to block her path in, but she laid one hand on the horn and let it sound in a prolonged blast to get her point across.

Once inside, the four of them came together in a group hug that lasted several minutes. Pidge couldn’t keep the tears in, but a sniffle somewhere told her she wasn’t the only one. Finally Colleen pulled back slightly to kiss each of her children on the cheek before throwing herself into Sam’s arms to kiss him soundly.

Pidge and Matt traded slightly embarrassed glances, then she moved into the living room and began clearing off the coffee table. Matt started to follow her, but Pidge waved him away. “Go take your shower or hug Mom again. I’ve only been gone a few weeks—she needs you and Dad more. I’ll get these communicators started.”

One corner of Matt’s mouth quirked up in a sardonic smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Pidge began working the case of Matt’s phone open. She was pretty sure that her plan would work and Hunk would be available to consult through the group chat if she needed help.

Speaking of which…

She looked around for her mother’s tablet and grabbed it.

Holt family reporting in. Did everyone make it home OK?

After a pause, the replies began coming:

Yes – Lance is still talking to our parents upstairs.

Hunk here. Yeah, no trouble.

Everyone is accounted for. See you all back at the Castle.

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 Hunk noticed his mother smiling as he took yet another slice of mango and popped it into his mouth, savoring the flavor. She and his aunt were at the counter, putting the finishing touches on a large spread of sandwiches and fruit. The scent of the cookies in the oven wafted through the kitchen.

Noni finished her side and wiped her hands. “I’ll go ask Mara to pass the word. We’ll rotate everyone through, a house or two at a time, so those news people won’t get suspicious.” She paused at the door to slip on her sandals and exited.

Iolana finished her side and moved to check the oven.

“Give them a couple more minutes,” Hunk advised, and she grinned at him.

“I’m glad your cooking instincts haven’t suffered in all this,” she quipped.

He beamed. “I know how I sounded like a total whiner earlier, but when we do have the chance to explore a planet, it can be really cool. I think my favorite thing so far was something that looked like blue apples, same texture, but tasted like the best sweet tea ever.”

Iolana laughed at that. “That does sound interesting. Did they have a name?”

“Yeah, but not one that my mouth could pronounce. Too much hissing.”

She laughed again and Hunk relaxed a bit. All his life she had worked so hard to give him opportunities but shield him from what she saw as others taking advantage of his easygoing nature. To her, he was Tsuyoshi, mechanical genius and talented cook. But when he was around his friends, he was satisfied with being Hunk, the guy who helped get things done. No one else among the kids he played with had a nickname that was not a shortened version of their real name and he chose to look at the positives of it, being the bigger and stronger kid in the group. When he had met Lance during orientation for the Garrison, Lance had balked at calling him “Yoshi” because of some old-school videogame character and Hunk had shared the nickname. Lance’s enthusiasm for it had been contagious and by the end of first term all the students were calling him “Hunk.”

“Tell me more. What has been your biggest success so far with cooking these alien things?”

Hunk was describing his adventures in chemistry as he tried to figure out baking a cake in space when Noni returned with a couple of families from the street.

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 As big as the family was, Lance still ran out of people to hug. He tried to delay some more by picking up Lydia to entertain her, but his father took the toddler and handed her off to a cousin.

“We need to talk, son.”

Lance gulped but followed him into his office. His dad closed the door and waved at Lance to sit on the chair across from the desk. Lance shook his head—he had picked up from watching Shiro and Allura that standing was better for keeping one-on-one negotiations short. His father frowned and remained standing as well, instead of sitting behind the desk.

“You need to make arrangements to leave this team and stay here.”

Lance barely avoided jumping out of his skin when Blue snarled in his mind. “I can’t, Dad. The Blue Lion chose me. I’m the only one who can pilot her.”

Seamus waved one hand in dismissal. “It can choose someone else.”

Intellectually, Lance knew this was a possibility. But his heart cried out in denial. Blue was his lion, they were partners. Her presence swelled within him, purring in approval and contentment.

“That’s not how it works, Dad. The lions can’t just swap in and out—there has to be a match in our life forces.” He tried to remember how Allura had put it weeks ago as she described the different qualities each pilot must possess…

…and he had interrupted her. He had no clue what qualities defined the Blue Lion’s pilot. Keith and Red were instinct and fire, Hunk and Yellow were caring and support, Pidge and Green were intellect and curiosity, Shiro and Black were leadership. What was left for him?

Blue’s presence grew stronger, telling him, It doesn’t matter, I chose you. Lance straightened his shoulders. “I know it doesn’t feel good, knowing I’m out there fighting a war, but you knew something like this would happen when I joined the Garrison to become a fighter pilot. You knew I’d be flying into space or into combat.”

His father flinched at those words and Lance was suddenly on the alert.

“Dad? You knew, right?”

Seamus McClain licked his lips nervously. “No, I didn’t. You were classified as a cargo pilot after the first round. The counselor your mother and I talked with predicted that you would end up in cargo class. That was the only reason we went along with you applying to the Garrison.”

Lance felt as if his father had punched him in the gut. “You expected me to fail?”

“Not fail, son! We were fine with you learning to fly! But we didn’t want you in the fighter class, we didn’t want the possibility of you going to war!”

“You didn’t think I was good enough!”

His father’s expression hardened. “Not for fighter class, no. All the pretests and the counselors made it clear that you would be a cargo pilot at the Garrison or a passenger pilot in the private sector. And we were happy with that because it meant you were safer. Having Jeremy decide on police work was bad enough.”

“You didn’t think I was good enough,” Lance repeated dully.

I think you’re more than good enough, my paladin! Blue’s sentiment echoed in him and the hurtful realization that his parents had been humoring his dreams instead of supporting them began to ebb.

He looked up at his father. “Well, it turns out I was good enough. And now I’m part of the most elite team of pilots in the universe. And yeah, it’s dangerous. But if I don’t fight, then it’s almost certain that the Galra will take over Earth just like they have a thousand other planets. I’m going back, Dad. With or without your approval. Now, if that’s all you wanted to say, I’d rather spend the rest of my visit catching up with everyone.”

He turned and left the room.

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 “Coran, how involved were you in setting up the artificial intelligence for my father?”

The adviser turned from his fiddling at his station and looked at her warily. “Not very. I knew they had planned for it, but remember, I entered cryo-sleep not long after you did. I absolutely can’t do anything to restore it.”

“I realize that. I wanted to know if you could use the equipment to record someone’s memories for presenting to others.”

“Not really, but I expect Number Five could figure it out. Why?”

Allura wet her lips with her tongue. She knew it was the right thing to do and she felt reasonably certain that Shiro and the other paladins could convince Keith if he were reluctant. But she wasn’t sure how Coran would react.

“I want to use the technology to provide evidence against the official who attacked Keith. If the group judging him is able to witness it—”

“Princess, that’s interfering with a planet’s sovereignty.”

“He tried to kill Keith! I know this planet is still distant from the Galra Empire, but if we let this pass and word spreads, it will make us look weak! And I have to protect the paladins! They are my responsibility! Keith needs to know, they all need to know that I would do anything in my power to punish an act against them!”

Coran backed up as her words grew more heated and she paused to take a deep breath and try and calm down.

“I’m sorry, Coran. But I feel that this is something that must be pursued to its end.”

“No, princess, I should apologize. You have very strong points. It’s just that…you reminded me—”

“Of my father?”

“No, actually. Of your mother.”

That startled a laugh out of Allura and she smiled. “Really?”

“Yes. Every physical attack against the paladins, every verbal insult…she met them all with passion. Sometimes I think she would have been a perfect Red Paladin herself. She and Alfor made a good team: her fervor and his consideration.”

“I want to hear more sometime. But for now, let’s see if we can strengthen the particle barrier while we wait.”

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 Pidge snapped the case shut on the converted phone and blew her hair out of her face. “That’s the last bit. Time to test this baby!”

The others watched as she thumbed the icon showing a stylized lion’s face. It brought up a menu with six color blocks: black, red, blue, green, yellow, and purple. She pressed the purple block.

A series of tones sounded, then Coran’s voice came through. “Hello? Which one is this?”

“It’s Pidge! Just testing our new communicators. How far away are you?”

“We landed on a moon next to this huge gas planet. It’s got this amazing section of red in its southern hemisphere—”

“Jupiter. Yeah, we know. Well, you’re coming in loud and clear, so I think these will work. Let me try one more time and see if I can leave a message. If that works, I think we’ve got it! I’ll just need to do the others and run them to the rest of the families in Green.”

“All right, Number Five. Has your family decided what they’re going to do yet?”

Pidge glanced up at Matt, who was curled up in a chair near her and listening in rather than reading the tablet in his hand. Their parents were still upstairs. “Not yet. But we’ll have a decision before it’s time to leave.”

“Very good. Oh, I’ll need your help. Allura has a project involving the AI projection room and I don’t know enough about its design to make it happen.”

“I can probably do that. Do you need me to come on back now?”

“No, no. It can wait. Enjoy your family time.”

“Okay. Good night!”

She ended the transmission and looked at Matt. “Is it decision time, o brother mine?”

He stretched and set the tablet on the coffee table. “There’s no decision about it. I want to go with you all. But I get the feeling that it’s all up to Mom whether she and Dad come with us or stay here.”

“And if they stay?”

“I can hang here for a little while. I do need to get new glasses…or bite the bullet and do the surgery thing. Getting a checkup in general is probably a good idea. But if I do that I want you to promise that you guys will come back for me soon.”

Pidge nodded and held out her fist, the little finger extended.

Matt stared for a second, then chuckled and linked his pinky with hers.

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 Shiro stirred, wondering briefly where he was. The bed was much bigger than normal, the light soft instead of the harsh blue-white of the Castle-ship. He jerked when someone’s hand ran through his hair.

“Takashi?”

His mother. Shiro relaxed back into the pillows and tried to calm his pounding heart. He opened his eyes to see her sitting next to him on the bed. Sunlight streamed through thin gauze curtains. It was probably around seven in the morning.

“How long did I sleep?” He could never count on more than three hours at a time these days, between the nightmares and the emergencies.

“At least six hours. You clearly needed it.”

Shiro propped himself up on one elbow. “I wish you hadn’t let me sleep for so long. The point of coming was to spend time with you.”

Sayuri smiled. “I have been perfectly content. Seeing you, knowing you’re alive, that’s enough for me. But why aren’t you sleeping well?”

Shiro looked away at that. He felt a wave of guilt over not being able to keep it together. He was supposed to be the team’s leader, the one they could count on.

His mother put a hand to his chin and turned his gaze back to her. “Takashi. Talk to me.”

“I…it’s…” Words failed. How could he explain to his mother everything that had happened? The terror of the capture, the months in the gladiator ring or Haggar’s laboratory, the struggle to forge a team out of a random group of kids. The fears that he would make a mistake that couldn’t be fixed; that he would get them all killed due to some error in his judgment; that, without them standing in the way, Earth and the rest of the known universe would fall to the empire.

His throat was closing up, making breathing impossible. His heart rate was accelerating again. He could hear Sendak’s taunts: You’ve been broken and reformed.

Sayuri slid over and pulled him to her, his head resting on her chest. Her arm circled his shoulders, holding him close, and her other hand began stroking his hair. She began humming and Shiro recognized the tune: one of his favorite lullabies as a young child. Sayuri would hum or sing it to him well into his teens whenever he was sick or had a nightmare.

He concentrated on her sound and touch, his pulse slowing to match hers and his lungs taking in air again. Finally, she broke the silence.

“You’ll tell us when you can. Just remember, no matter what happens, we love you. We will always love you.”

Shiro nodded and slid his arms around her to return the embrace. She kissed the top of his head and resumed running her fingers through his hair.

Neither of them noticed when Keith glanced into the room in search of them and quietly retreated.

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Thanks for reading! More to come!

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #scattered by avidbeader #fanfic: voltron #voltron fanfic

[chasingfigments]

i hope you dont mind me asking, but about your blog (not tumblr), does it cost a lot to keep the site up when you dont get a lot of traffic?

I do not mind you asking! (I’m guessing you’re thinkingabout starting up a blog of your own? In which case, good luck!) My answeris both yes and no, so let me explain my particular setup:

First off, my (legacy, no-longer-offered-at-those-prices) hostingpackage allows me to have an unlimited number of domain names (though I mustpay for the registration and privacy protections separately for each) under thesame account. Audrey’s Kdrama Blogis actually the third website I run. (The first is a defunct my-professional-namething that I haven’t touched since 2014 and that I’m contemplating turning intoa freelance portfolio-oriented site when I, you know, have the time and energyand drive to actually take freelancing seriously. The second is Rich in Color, a book blog focusing on YA booksby/about people of color and/or people from First/Native Nations).

So my kdrama blog technically only runs me an extra $30-ish/yearbecause the bulk of the cost—hosting—is already paid for. (I am currently contemplating upgrading thehosting package/switching providers because Rich in Color generates enoughtraffic—a little north of 4,000 hits/month over the last year, with lots ofimage-heavy content—that we occasionally hit our resources limit and all threesites come crashing down. Are my sites down or is my internet being a littleshit is a fun game to play. My kdrama blog averages less than half of that.) IfI split the cost of the hosting package between my two active sites, then itcosts about $75/year, provided I’m doing my math right. (I pay for the hosting intwo-year chunks, but the domain registration and privacy protection are yearlyrenewals.) So if I just had my kdrama site, that’d be about $150/year.

Overall, I don’t consider it a ton of money to pay out forall three sites, though it does make every other February a bit financially stressfulbecause I always forget when the hosting renewal is due until I get an email. However,if you meant to ask if I recoup the costs of running any of the sites, theanswer is no. XD

Rich in Color isn’t monetized at all (the four bloggers andone website guy have been working on that site, for free, for four years now),and while my kdrama site has affiliate links to iTunes and Amazon in the Kpop Friday posts, Ihave yet to make a cent off of either of them. (I did make a sale—once—in an affiliate link on my defunctmain site, but it netted me $1, and Amazon’s payment threshold was $10 lasttime I looked, so they’ve held on to that dollar for…three years now?) If I have made U.S. sales (because those arethe only ones that count) on iTunes or Amazon via my kdrama blog, I have yet tohit the absurdly low payout threshold for them. *shrugs*

If I ran ads, maybe that would be a different story, but Idon’t know. (Also, I hate ads.) As it is, I’m just spending money on hobbiesthat haven’t provided me any financial gain—just like all of my other hobbies. XD

Will that ever change? It’d be nice, but I’m not counting on it. People wouldhave to click on those links and buy something from those sites within 24 hourswithout clicking on someone else’saffiliate links in between for me to potentially get anything out of it.

TL;DR: I don’tthink it costs much, but I’m willing (and able) to throw down a couple hundred bucks everytwo years without hope of recovering any of it, so YMMV.

#anonymous #responses to questions #pointless rambling #undoubtedly more than you ever wanted to know about my thought process

[wayneooverton]

My favorite travel shoe: the magic of merino Allbirds

This is probably the most obviously and in-your-face sponsored post I’ve ever written, and I am unapologetic. Read on, dear ones, read on.

So I received my first pair of Allbirds merino wool shoes a few months after watching them creep in and pop up on my newsfeed amongst friends and influencers this past year. These simple wool shoes caught my eye mostly because everyone who wore them raved about them.

Personal recommendations go a long way with me.

Wool runners in Kotare Mint

I don’t think I’ve ever written a product review before in eight years of running this blog, so do tell me if I’m doing this wrong. Considering I’m sitting at around 1500 words as I publish this, I imagine I am. Oh well.

Also, I didn’t intend to write it this way. I was going to do a very length narrative piece about me wearing these lovely merino sneakers on a merino farm in New Zealand. Inception.

But I realized I loved these so much, and I absolutely put them through their paces in New Zealand and in Switzerland, and decided on my own that they deserved more attention than that, so here we are. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that merino stations here in wintertime are covered in either snow or mud up to your knees, both of which are not ideal conditions for cute wooly sneakers.

Barring that, my conclusion is that Allbirds shoes are amazing, I’m obsessed and they are the best travel show. I dare you to read on, consume all my words, and not leave with the same conclusion.

The magical power of merino wool

It didn’t take long after moving to New Zealand to learn the magic of merino wool. After all, we are famous for our sheep here, with around 30 million wooly souls to only four million decidedly un-wooly humans, unless you’re in hipster Wellington where beards reign supreme.

Between spending a lot of time in the backcountry and on farms in often rather intense and unforgiving environments, you quickly learn the only true fabric to be worn on an adventure here is merino wool. Hands up if you are a fan.

But it ain’t cheap, and New Zealand wool is even pricier thanks to the strict rules here around the treatment of the merino sheep and thread quality of the wool that is used, which makes it some of the best in the world.

Why? Merinos are much tougher and hardier than you’re average fluffy white sheep, born and bred in the rugged high country of the Southern Alps in New Zealand, they live in super hot dry summers and freezing cold winters and their incredible fleece supports them in both climates.

Merino wool keeps you warm when it’s cold and keeps you cool when it’s hot, wicking away moisture and drying fast. Also, it doesn’t smell. I repeat, MERINO WOOL DOESN’T SMELL. In fact, I’ve even seen it advertised as 10 day underwear. NZ kills at marketing.

This also means you don’t have to wear socks with Allbirds shoes because they are, in fact, wool socks, and you can just chuck them in the washing machine if they get dirty. However, they aren’t really the best outdoor adventure shoe, not to replace running shoes or hiking shoes.

I wear them on my travels, in the city, and on mellow walks. I’ve found the bottom isn’t grippy enough for harder terrain and hikes.

Allbirds use only ZQ certified merino wool, that means the wool used in these sneakers come only from New Zealand farms that adhere to these exceptionally high standards for wool production and quality, and are committed to sustainability and ethical practice around the treatment of the sheep.

They’re like hugs for your feet

A friend of mine replied to one of my Instagram posts raving about Allbirds, describing them as hugs for your feet. And let me just say, a more accurate shoe description has never existed.

They are like walking on clouds. It’s like wearing slippers all the time. In fact, I’ve converted my grey loungers into slippers because that’s what they look like and they’re so damn comfortable.

And if you don’t believe me when I say they’re the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned, you can try them and if you don’t feel the same, you can return within 30 days. Boom.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate how FREAKING good my calves look here

Allbirds are a solidly decent company changing fashion

Last year I openly discussed my commitment to working on more sustainable travel and trying to work with brands that are deeply committed to sustainability too. Even just bringing it up in conversations and building momentum around the movement. And honestly, is there anything more wasteful than the fashion industry?

I won’t go into it here, but I am deeply disgusted by many Instagram “influencers” who never repeat an outfit and waste clothes like there’s no tomorrow. But I digress.

The point of my mini-rant is that at Allbirds shoes, they were constantly questioning whether there is a better way; there must be. But by looking at natural materials, like wool, and other things that exist right in front of us, instead of synthetics, they were able to build a successful business that is committed to using sustainably sourced, all natural materials.

Quick powerful facts:

Allbirds’ manufacturing process uses 60% less energy than materials used in typical synthetic shoes.

Each pair of shoelaces is made from one recycled plastic bottle

The packaging is made from 90% recycled cardboard

The shoebox uses 40% less materials than normal shoe packaging

They’re a certified B-Corp, meaning they meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency

World-famous in New Zealand

Ok, I get really excited when New Zealand has a major international success story.

After all we were the first country in the world to give women the right to vote, the first nation to put a man on Everest, and the first spot the split the atom. New Zealand is nothing if not kickass and innovative.

Should I even be surprised that Allbirds was started by a kiwi? Nope.

Ka pai, bro!

Simple and cute sneakers

As an American, I moved to Europe when I was 19. Wait, I have always been American, when I was 19 and now. You know what I mean. Why am I so confusing?

As an American in fashion forward Spain, where you do not leave the house without mascara EVER, I quickly learned that rule #1 was one does not wear sneakers in Europe. Like running sneakers. Trainers. Runners.

Those only belong inside the gym, not even to walk to the gym. Us Americans and our commitment to sporty footwear had no place in stylish Europe, and even now I can easily spot my brethren abroad when traveling solely by their soles.

I quickly accepted that I would have foot pain, and invested in all sorts of cute flats and wedges that would wear out after a few months of long commutes on cobblestones. When I lived in Córdoba for a year, I even developed a heel spur from my favorite beige Mango flats.

You’d think now that I am 30 and I travel for a living, and my long walks in Europe (and elsewhere) exploring require me to carry a heavy bag of camera equipment along with the 20 extra pounds I’ve gained since I was 19, I would begin to resign myself to wearing more comfortable shoes.

But guys! Allbirds has saved me! They are cute and comfortable. With their simple design and penchant for neutral colors (minus the bright Kea Red loungers I’ve been rocking) I can get away with wearing them while I work on my feet filming and not be crying on the inside in pain.

Natural, practical, simple. No flashy logos. No flair. Quality but unpretentious. I love it. it’s the Scandinavia of the shoe world.

Limited edition Kea Red wool loungers

Join the cult

Honestly, I haven’t met anyone who owns a pair of Allbirds and doesn’t rave about them. You’ll find yourself always discussing their attributes and forcing other people to buy a pair.

When I began wearing and talking about them online, literally every single message was positive and people constantly thanked me for pointing them out. They are gamechangers. I’m obsessed. Everyone’s obsessed.

Once you fall for Allbirds, you’ll start to notice when other people wear them, and if you’re like me, you make awkward eye contact and give a little chin nod, like yup, you get it too. While growingly popular, there are still many people hadn’t heard about them (yet) and you don’t see them all the time, lending them a lovely air of mystery.

It’s like you’re part of a secret club or something. Or cult. A sheep cult. Does it get any better than that?

Are you an Allbirds fan? Do you find yourself drawn to brands like theirs with a good story and care about sustainability in the things you buy? Have you discovered the wonderful magic of merino? Share!

Many thanks to Allbirds for all the shoes and love and turning me into a fanatic. Like always, I’m keeping it real. All opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me. 

The post My favorite travel shoe: the magic of merino Allbirds appeared first on Young Adventuress.

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[itswomanswork]

TAS 539: Brand Building EXPERT Reveals Powerful Formula used in Top Brands

What does it take to get your message out there and build an audience? How do robust and successful brands get built? You’ve come to the right place! On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from brand-building expert, Annabel Mendez. In her conversation with Scott, Annabel explains brand building, where to start in the process, how to make your brand stand out from all the rest, why customer service is so important, how to create compelling content, and so much more! If you are ready to get to work building up your brand, this is a great place to start!

What is brand building?

What is brand building? Why should sellers like you spend your valuable time and energy on this particular aspect of your business? Branding is telling the story of your brand. It’s also the way that your customers interact with every aspect of your business from packaging to logos. What is the status of your branding? Does it need a fresh take? If you want to build your reputation and expand your reach, you’ve got to make sure your branding is on point! To hear more about brand building and what it takes to get your business to the next level, make sure to listen to this episode of The Amazing Seller.

Customer service is EVERYTHING!

When was the last time you gave your business to a company that you knew had terrible customer service? More likely than not, you wouldn’t! At the end of the day, everyone judges a brand based on how they’ve been treated. How would your customers describe your brand? Would they say that you have great customer service or would they say that it’s just average? A great way for you to make sure your brand stands out in a good way is by giving it all you’ve got when it comes to customer service. Make sure to listen to this episode of The Amazing Seller to hear Annabel Mendez and Scott talk about why customer service is so important!

Why content creation is so important.

Think about the last brand you explored on the internet, chances are they have a YouTube channel, a Twitter presence, a Facebook fan page, a blog, or all the above! Why do successful brands go through all the trouble to create content for their customers to engage with? It makes you feel more connected to the brand! When you find resources that are entertaining and educational, you’ll find yourself going back to that resource time and time again. As a business owner, you want people to have that reaction to your brand and the best way to do that is by creating worthwhile content. To find out how to create that type of content, make sure to listen to branding expert, Annabel Mendez on this episode of The Amazing Seller!

Don’t get overwhelmed!

All these great ideas and brand building tips and be a little overwhelming. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to fight through the draw to be overwhelmed and focus like a laser beam on one or two action steps that you can take today. As Scott is fond of saying, you need to “Chunk it down” into bite-size pieces so you can set yourself up for long-term success. What will be your action step for the next week? The next month? What is your plan to get started and take action? Don’t assume that it’ll happen, it won’t! Plan it out and hold yourself accountable. Enjoy more helpful tips and insights about staying on target by listening to this episode of The Amazing Seller!

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER

[0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast!

[4:30] Scott welcomes his guest, Annabel Mendez.

[6:15] What is brand building?

[11:00] Where to start with the brand building process.

[18:30] How can you make your brand stand out from all the rest?

[23:00] Consider how your branding will impact your customers.

[28:30] Customer service is EVERYTHING!

[33:00] Draw your customer in, show them that you care.

[36:30] Why content creation matters.

[43:30] Tips you can use to get your brand out there.

[49:00] Do you have to be passionate about your brand to be successful?

[55:00] How to connect with Annablee and closing thoughts from Scott.

TRANSCRIPT TAS 539

TAS 539: Brand Building EXPERT Reveals Powerful Formula used in Top Brands

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] Scott: Well, hey, hey, what’s up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of The Amazing Seller Podcast. This is episode number 539 and today I am excited because I have a…

Read full transcript…

Click Here to Download Transcript …brand-building expert on who is going to reveal a very powerful formula used in top brands. These are brands that you probably heard of before and if not, well, I’m not sure how you haven’t but you probably have, Pampers, Covergirl, Olay, The Art of Shaving, PBS, Logitech, some pretty big names there, right? Now, she’s also worked with some smaller brands but used the same principles when building these brands. And the crazy thing is, is a lot of these things aren’t as massive as you would think but they are important. So, the four things that we’re really going to be covering is branding essentials, branding strategy, brand visuals, and brand messaging and execution. Now, her name is Annabel Mendez.

I was introduced to her at Sellers Summit and actually it’s funny because she had just started listening to the podcast about a week or two weeks before I actually met her and she was like, “I really love it how you’re talking about branding now more than just go find a product and sell it because there is a lot that you can do with branding and you will also start to get brand loyalty which is another thing that we definitely will talk about in this conversation that I had with Annabel but what I really wanted to do here is have her on to go through a lot of what big brands talk about but also how we can take this and apply it to our brands. Now, you guys know we’ve been talking about brand building for a while now for at least the past 12 to 18 months and I’m going to be talking about it even more, list building, how to talk to your list, but then also how to represent your company as a brand. It all ties together.

[00:01:57] Scott: Now, whether you have a brand right now or you’re just starting your brand, well, this will help you because if you’ve already started a brand you can always add this stuff in but if you’re just starting from scratch, well, then you can start from the beginning and then start to implement some of this stuff. The one thing I don’t want you to do though is get hung up on one of these things and be like, “You know, I can’t figure out my logo, so I can’t launch.” You’re going to hear us talk about that and why you shouldn’t just stop that you should spend a little time on it but then you should just push through, take some action as you guys always hear me saying and get it to market. Because if we have a brand that’s all polished but we haven’t like gotten any product out there, we can’t really get the ball rolling. We can’t get any feedback or any of that stuff. But if you’re just starting or if you have a brand and you want to tweak it and you want to add some more branding stuff to it, this will definitely help you. Now, this episode will be 539 so the show notes, the transcripts can all be found at TheAmazingSeller.com/539.

The other thing I want to do here is I want to remind you that if you are just starting and you don’t even have an idea of the brand part yet, well, then I would definitely say go check out Product Discovery Bootcamp because this is ground level. This is where we are digging to really create our foundation, the brand in a sense, and Product Discovery Bootcamp allows us to do that and this way here you can get started on the right foot. So, I’m going to put a little shameless plug in here and I’m going to have you go check out TheAmazingSeller.com/Bootcamp and that will take you there. It’ll give you all the details. That’s where I would start and then we can start to add these branding elements to our strategy moving forward. So, definitely go check that out, TheAmazingSeller.com/Bootcamp and you’ll get all the details there.

[00:03:44] Scott: Now, one other thing before we jump into this conversation that I have with Annabel, I wanted to say that the audio is not 100% where I like it and I was doing a little bit of testing. We actually shot this on video and I wanted to try to do that, so I could also possibly publish it on YouTube or at least clips from there, but the audio isn’t 100% how I like it. So, in the future, I’m going to be doing things a little bit differently and I’ll probably be recording my audio track differently than the one that we’re using here like you’re going to hear today. It’s not terrible but it’s not up to my standards but that’s okay because I’m going to let you guys to get the value from this conversation, but I just want to let you guys know I’m aware of it, but I am working on it. All right. So that’s it. All right. So, let’s get going here. Let’s listen to this conversation that I had with this branding expert, Annabel Mendez. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:50] Scott: Hey, Annabel. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m super excited to be able to dive into this branding topic that I know that you are very excited to talk about because that’s your specialty and you and I met at Sellers Summit and you had said, “I really like it that you’re going to this branding direction. I’ve actually been doing that for years now.” So, I said, “Well, we got to get you on the podcast,” so welcome to the show.

[00:05:02] Annabel: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here and like you mentioned, I love brand building. It’s one of my passion areas and for me, I learned a lot from you on the Amazon side because I’m a newer seller, but I’ve been doing brand building work for the last 15 years.

                                                            [00:05:19] Scott: And so, what I love about this is Amazon has become the drug if you will of like starting an ecommerce business like and what I mean by that is it’s become easier to actually launch products, get products up on Amazon or a platform for that matter but the branding stuff kind of took a backseat for some people, not everyone. What I want to talk about because moving forward it’s getting harder, there’s more competition, there are people just launching products to launch products. They’re not building a true brand. I really want to dig into what you feel will be used today that will work but also work in the future and I think it comes down to the basic principles of brand building so maybe what we could talk about first is like what is brand building? Like what does it mean? Because I had someone the other day go, “I brand my products. I put my logo on there and so I’m a brand, right?” I’m like, “Not necessarily.” So, maybe we could talk about like a brand and what it means, and we’ll talk about some of the bigger brands that you’ve worked with but also like what’s it mean for people that are just starting a brand.

[00:06:27] Annabel: Right. And I think one of the key pieces about brand building is that you have to separate the brand from anything else, so it actually becomes like its own person and it has a life of its own. It has an identity of its own. It has a touch, look, and feel in everything about it. It’s separate from the individual and I think that’s where a lot of people when they go aim to just selling a product, they don’t really define it as a being. They kind of just keep it as a product but what happens there is that when the customer comes to buy something, they don’t know the difference between Product X and Y because you’re a shampoo and they’re a shampoo so who cares as long as it does the basics. So, the actual concept of branding and brand building was started at Procter & Gamble where the founders 170 years ago said, “We’re going to start brands,” and the reason why they did that is because they wanted to differentiate themselves from the competition.

They wanted for that product that when people saw it that they said, “I trust them. I want to buy from them. I know exactly what that experience is going to be like.” So, it’s not just slapping a name or a label on a product. It’s actually the full experience that you give to consumers. In the past when you would go and buy a product on the shelf, there’s a concept at Proctor that was first moment of truth and second moment of truth. Your first moment of truth is winning that customer at the shelf so when they see you they want to recognize you. For example, Tide has a very particular orange color that if you saw it, you know immediately this is the Tide color and they use the Tide color absolutely in everything that they do across the board because you want to have that consistency in the brand. You want to make sure that when they see you in the store shelves, when they see you online, when they see you on a Facebook ad, you’re recognizing that brand throughout and people know exactly what to expect.

[00:08:25] Annabel: The benefit with that is that if they bought you once and you always deliver the same experience, when they come back and buy you a second time it’s going to be exactly like how it was the first time and that’s how you start building loyalty which is something that is extremely difficult to achieve, and I know that’s one of the biggest frustrations of sellers on e-commerce that people aren’t necessarily coming back to their product. They’re just coming back to whatever is on the Buy Box, whatever is ranking high, but if you’re able to achieve and build a brand, that happened to me the other day with mailers, those little pop mailers.

[00:08:58] Scott: Yeah.

[00:08:59] Annabel: They all look the same, but I’ve bought from several companies and there is one in particular with a quality that’s just a little bit nicer. It has a little perforated band and so I looked them up and I looked at that specific brand and now when I reorder packaging, I go back to that brand because I know that their quality is going to be better than the other ones and they just did both extra things to…

[00:09:22] Scott: It is. I’ve experienced the same thing but there are also some things that I don’t really care about like if it’s maybe a zip tie. It’s a zip tie that I’m going to use in my garage. I might just look at – but then again I might get them, I’ll be like, “These are junk. These are dollars store zip bands. I want to get the ones that are made better by zip tie or whatever the brand name is so I’m going to go back to those.” I might fall off and try something to see if the quality is similar. If the quality is not similar, I’ll go back to the brand but like you’re saying like there’s a lot of products. Tide is a great example. It’s funny. I just have seen my daughter walk across with a Tide bringing in the laundry room. So, I’m like it was Tide. I knew it was Tide because of the orange color. Immediately I knew it so it’s kind of funny that you used that example. But again, and I know the people that are listening they’re like, “But that takes a lot of time to brand.”

Now, we could argue about that which we probably should because there are different levels I think of branding and all of that stuff and it will take time to develop up that loyalty, but I think your first shot at doing that is when someone does buy your product, you make that experience seamless and really all the way through everything is going to be the brand or on point as far as the brand goes. So, like if someone’s thinking to themselves like this is great and all, Tide, I mean they’ve been around for years. They’ve spent millions if not billions of dollars like educating people about branding. I don’t want to take years to do that. So, where do you advise someone that’s either just starting a brand or has a current brand and they want to start creating this brand building process?

[00:11:02] Annabel: I think one of – there are three principles that I work off when I think about brand building. One of them is uniqueness and so you have to figure out like what is going to make your brand unique and it’s necessary just have to be about the product. So, coming back to those little zip ties, zip tie is like not a very complicated type of product but when the product is delivered, you have a little card in there that says, “Hey, thank you so much,” in your tone of voice of the brand. So, some brand is like maybe you want to be the cool zip tie that say, “Hey, thanks, dude, for buying my product. It’s amazing like we hope that you come back and buy again,” whatever it might be. That’s a touchpoint. That’s like a point of conversation where you’re building the brand. So, one piece is like uniqueness. Like you have to think about do I sound different than everybody else? What am I doing that is not like my competitors? Is there something else that I can do with my packaging, etcetera?

So, there’s very little things that you can do to start tweaking that, a thank you email, the color of your zip ties. Maybe you want to make yours colorful. Nobody else has color in there. So, those are like smaller things. The other piece is like relevancy. So, once you figure out like who your target market is, can they relate to you? Can you have a conversation with them? And the third piece is consistency and consistency is what the big brands never miss and what the small brands always miss that isn’t that difficult. So, my tip here is to build brand guidelines and what is brand guidelines? These brand books that are created by the huge brands, thousands of dollars, major agencies create these books for them but as a smaller seller, you can have your own brand guidelines that are going to help you with absolutely everything that you do.

[00:12:58] Annabel: So, the key to get started with your brand guidelines is can you define your brand in three words? Because those three words you’re always going to use them to say let’s say my brand is caring, authentic and fun. So, as you do things you say, “Is this a fun color that I’m using? Does it show that I care?” So, you’re always measuring against those three words absolutely everything that you’re doing. If you can’t summarize your brand in like three words, you’re overcomplicating it and you’re not staying true to what’s really important for your brand. So, you start off with that in the brand guidelines as they come up. The other thing to include in your brand book is your logo. Logos are very important, and you want to make sure that you have a logo in a horizontal format, a logo in a vertical format, and a vertical in a square format. And you keep those three things together and you put do’s and don’ts. How can those logos be used?

Let’s say you have a logo that has blue and somebody wants to put it against a background that’s yellow and you don’t want that. You put that on your brand guidelines, “I don’t want it to be used in this way.” Brand guidelines are used not just for you but with the vendors that you’re working with. So, let’s say you’re working, you hire a graphic designer. The easiest thing to do is to grab your brand guidelines and say, “These are my brand guidelines, this is where you can play, and this is where you can’t take the brand.” The other thing that’s super important to include in there is your fonts.

[00:14:30] Scott: Ah, yes. I agree with that.

[00:14:32] Annabel: Fonts are critical because maybe you don’t care about fonts and I know a lot of people don’t care.

[00:14:38] Scott: I do. Yeah, fonts.

[00:14:39] Annabel: But the mind starts recognizing that. The more consistent that you are with your fonts, the more that people say, “Oh you know what, this is Scott’s product,” and when they start and the mind is smart like even though it’s playing in the background, when something is off they’ll recognize and they’ll say, “This is probably a knockoff,” or it’ll trigger something like it’s not what I’m used to. You want to create that familiarity with it and then most people should have three fonts actually and this is not something that a lot of people know. You have a font that’s for your headlines so those are your titles. Think of your main product title, your main title on your website. Then you want to have a second font which is your subheader and your subheader provides a little bit more information about your product or it’s a sub-tab on your website. Then your third font is your body font and body font is what you’re going to write a lot of text with. And what you want with a body font to be like is something that’s easy to read.

So, your headline is your attention grabber, bolder, thicker, your subheadline maybe not so much, and then your third one is what you’re going to be writing a lot with. Granted, like for example in a platform like Amazon they don’t really allow for certain fonts to be changed. That’s part of it but in your imagery think about the photos that you’re showcasing, there should be your headline font, your subheadline, and then any other little points that you want to put consistent across all of your photography, across all of your product line. And that way you start training the customer to say this stuff belongs to that brand. The other thing is when you’re picking colors. For color consistency, the best thing to do is to pick colors that have a Pantone. Are you guys like use…

[00:16:31] Scott: Yeah. Pantone, I mean, again it’s like a color wheel in a sense that certain colors go together and there are actually websites out there that allows you to kind of plug-in one color and it will give you that palette or that Pantone palette. Maybe we’ll try to link that up in the description or in the show notes. But, yeah, I think that’s important too like…

[00:16:48] Annabel: And that’s critical for printing because what happen sometimes is that you come back shocked when they print a certain package or when a factory prints your logo and then you’re like, “Oh, but that’s not really my color,” and that’s because different printers have different systems but in the Pantone system it’s very consistent across printers. So, it’s easier to nail the color versus when you come up with some random color and then, which happened to us in one of the brands. One of the brands has like a light-yellow color that somebody made many years ago and a T-shirt got printed and it came out like egg yolk yellow. But in order to ensure that like using Pantone’s will help your brand look consistent and when you’re printing from different vendors, that’s the best way for everything to look really nice and sharp.

[00:17:40] Scott: Okay. All right. And those are small details but like you said those small details over time start to allow customers to recognize that it’s the true brand, it’s your brand. Even just the style of the font, if you’re a fun brand, you might be a fun style font. If you’re more of a serious brand, you might have more of a serious font like there are certain fonts for certain types of businesses and I know that firsthand. And logos I think also are pretty important. Now, what if someone’s already created a logo and they’re like, “Now I’m starting to listen to this and Annabel’s making a lot of sense. I want to re-create my logo,” like is it worth doing or is it not? I mean, if they’ve already started a brand and they’re already starting to get or they do rebrand, how would you address that?

[00:18:30] Annabel: I mean, brands are always refining and there are logos for every price point. If you’re trying to position your brand to be a premium product and people know when they see something whether it looks premium or not, if your product is not there, then you have to figure out a way to get it there and, in those situations, I would say rebranding is a way to go because you’re trying to command a higher price point than competitors. If you’re not in the premium market, you can stay with the logo that you have as long as some principles are not being violated. For example, there are some people who try to squeeze a logo into a very tiny spot to the point where you lose all resolution. That’s a logo that’s not working for you, it’s not working for anybody. You just have something on there that’s a graphic. You can’t even call that a logo because if it’s not being recognized by a customer, it’s not a logo. You have a graphic at that point and you want to modify that.

And the game changed really when mobile came out because up to that point nobody, not even the big brands were thinking about logos in very small dimensions but if you take a look at your product on a cell phone which is where a lot of people are doing searches and shopping and that logo you can’t tell whether it’s a little man on a horse or it’s a blotch on there then it’s time to change your logo and upgrade it to something that is easily readable on a mobile phone. But I mean these are all questions that every small business owner has because it’s an additional investment like you’re trying to buy inventory, you’re trying to build a website, you’re trying to pay for advertising, and then on top of that, you have to worry about the little details of a logo.

[00:20:25] Annabel: But that’s something that can evolve but always keep it at the top of your mind to have something that’s crisp, something that people are able to see at a very minimum and ensure the consistency. As you start getting more sales, as you start getting more traction then go into the second phase which is like refining the logo because a lot of times people go in and they’re like, “No, no, no I hate this logo. I want a completely different look,” but what happens is that you’re not transitioning your past customers into the new brand which is something that you also have to be very careful about that you don’t completely scrap everything especially if your brand is already doing well and people relating to it. So, there’s where you want to do modifications.

[00:21:15] Scott: Yeah. The other thing I would like to mention here is like different fonts. I just want to talk about that really quickly. A lot of people like the fancy scrolly type stuff and a lot of times I find that hard to read. If it’s hard to read even if it’s like kind of big but kind of small because the logo a lot of times aren’t that big. It’s not like a big giant header, you need to make sure that you’re seeing that font at all different sizes and I would stay away from personally those script-y things that are hard to read. They might look elegant and all of this stuff but if that is going to be hard to read especially at smaller sizes, I would personally stay away from that but that was just a little side tip. I see a lot of people they get hung up on the fonts that they want to use, and they love it and they’re looking at it on like their computer monitor and all blown up. They’re like, “That looks amazing,” and all of a sudden you shrink it down. You’re like, “What does it say?” So, you don’t want that either. You want it recognizable in the certain fonts that you’re using in the logos.

I think also going into like your branding, even the packaging, if you’re going into premium products I mean look at Apple, if you buy an Apple product you get that box, you feel like that box, you don’t want to throw away because it’s so darn nice. It’s like it’s an amazing box, it’s put together. You pull apart. Everything has got so much detail in it. Now, I’m not saying that you have to go to that extent but I’m saying if you have something that’s like a piece of cardboard that’s really flimsy or something that’s more rigid, it almost gives you a sense of better quality because of the material that is being used. Business cards, same thing, if you get a flimsy little business card that’s printed out in your inkjet printer or you get one that’s actually made a little bit glossy, it feels just nicer. So, just little details like that I think can go a long way.

[00:23:03] Annabel: Right. And their senses, now that you mentioned the boxes and flimsy, you have to consider all the senses when you’re doing branding. That’s something that a lot of people don’t do. So, for example, it’s like, “Well, but my brand is not edible so why should I care about the taste?” But visually so many things are connected that you also want to double check to see is there anything here that might trigger disgust or joy or considering scents as well? A lot of times people don’t but if your product smells like cheap plastic then it’s going to trigger that like all these things are coming into play so try to see if there’s anything else that you can do. Maybe you air out the products. Maybe you package them in a different container that has a different scent to it. The touch, is it a soft touch? Is it something that is hard or rough, but all these things start to come together as your brand evolves.

So, one of the things to always consider is a brand is never done. You’re always going to refine it because your budgets are going to be different. Taste, people’s tastes are going to be different. What people liked a couple of years ago is not necessarily what they like today. And so, the brand, you also have to think about it as that living being that needs to continuously be worked. And one of the hardest things to do to start a brand I feel is finding that persona. Your customer persona like who are you trying to serve. That’s something that you start getting a hang of as you continue to sell to people, as you continue to research because, in the beginning, everything’s a hypothesis. You think that that’s the person who’s going to buy and sometimes it takes customer number 1,000, customer number 5,000 to realize who is that person and what do they want from my product?

[00:25:01] Annabel: So, for example, when I’m ordering packaging, it’s kind of interesting because if you buy 100, it cost, I’m making these numbers up, it cost $1,000 and if you buy 10,000 it cost $1,800 so it’s not even, it’s exponential. It’s not even linear how you purchase but usually what I do is I’ll buy a quantity that isn’t so great even though it’s cheaper because I know I’m going to make changes on what’s on that package. I just know it like there’s no way to mail it first time right out of the gate so there’s no point in blowing the budget either to try to get all these things perfect. And as you go along, you buy the smaller quantities. You try to find printers and services. I mean, now with the Internet it’s awesome because you can go to printers that’ll do an order of 100.

Just a few years ago because of the printing process, minimums were 10,000, 50,000 just to get a box printed. Not now. You can find certain solutions so even though per piece the cost is very high, total, the cost is lower. You use it, you test it, you share it with customers and that way you continue the refining process. So, I think that’s a trap that a lot of people get stuck with because next thing you know you have 10,000 boxes, 50,000 boxes.

[00:26:24] Scott: And you want to use them because you paid for them.

[00:26:26] Annabel: You paid for them and then you realize they don’t really work for you.

[00:26:30] Scott: Yeah. We call that minimum viable product. It’s like get something to market. It doesn’t have to be perfect because one thing I do see people get paralyzed in as far as like even the things that we’re talking about is like, “I’m not really sure my logo. Oh, I’m not really sure on the font.” We need to get the product out of the door. We need to get it in customer’s hands so yes that stuff is important. I’m not going to argue with that, but we also have to give ourselves some deadline to say, “Listen, like we have to get this done because if we don’t get this done, no one’s going to see it anyway.” So, we have to get it to market. But like you’re saying, instead of doing 1,000, do 500 or do 300 so that way there when you do go ahead and go through that first quantity, if you want to modify the packaging, modify the logo, whatever, you don’t have 10,000 of them out there that you’re like, “I’m stuck with those. I got to get rid of those or I just got to scrap them,” and you don’t want to do that either.

One thing I want to mention here is we’re talking a lot about like tangible stuff like things people can touch and feel and smell and give you a sense of what the brand is about. The one thing that I want to highlight here for a lot of people and they don’t realize how important this is and I think that you’ll agree with this and I think a perfect example is Zappos. Zappos built a brand around selling shoes.

[00:27:48] Annabel: Yes.

[00:27:49] Scott: And they weren’t even their brand of shoes. They were just a company that you went to, to buy shoes. Why are they so darn successful? It comes down to they created a customer experience that no one else was willing to do, period.

[00:28:06] Annabel: Absolutely.

[00:28:07] Scott: So, it’s customer service. There’s another guy he’s actually a guy that I’ve been talking with privately about his brand and he’s doing like $300,000 a month and the reason why he’s doing so well, and he believes it is because he has just phenomenal customer service, customer journey. Let’s speak on that a little bit. What’re your thoughts on that?

[00:28:32] Annabel: Customer service is everything. It really is and going back to the trust, so we talked about the orange on Tide and being very unique but if you’ve ever tried calling one of those numbers, if there’s ever a problem with their products, they will respond, and they will either send you a voucher for a new product or try to do everything to make sure that that experience is a favorable one for every customer. And I think that companies that take that very seriously and don’t ignore their consumer complaints and go above and beyond for customers are the ones that at the end of the day they win. Just I think it was about a month ago I got the rare opportunity to listen to Warren Buffett talk at a conference that I was at. I mean, it’s impressive to see Warren Buffett live. I mean he’s 88 years old and he was talking about a lady that she was recently divorced, and this was many years ago and she opened up a little furniture store.

And he said that her couches were no different than any of the competitors. The mattresses that she was selling were no different than anybody else’s but her customer service was what set her apart and she would go above and beyond for all her clients and years later that was a company that Warren Buffett bought from this lady for millions and millions of dollars because it’s really about the value that you add to your customers and it was like everybody else’s. Recently, I placed an order from a Chinese manufacturer which I had never done because my products were all made here in the US and I went to your episode on how to contact a manufacturer, create the email. I created my eight steps. I started with 20. Only eight of them actually responded. That’s phase one of the customer service.

[00:30:26] Scott: Recruiting process.

[00:30:27] Annabel: Journey, right? So, all those people who didn’t respond they’re out. Of those eight, some of them responded right away. Some of them kind of trickled in so those people are ruled out so how quickly you respond to a customer is important too, how thorough you respond to the customer. And then from there, I narrowed it down to one which wasn’t the cheapest. A lot of times people think, “Oh, you’re going to go with the cheapest.”

[00:30:52] Scott: No.

[00:30:53] Annabel: They weren’t the cheapest. They have the exact same product as those other 20 that I’ve started with, but they had the most thorough responses. They had fast response time. They answered immediately anytime I would send an email. I had the sample within three days and that’s who I went with. And a lot of times when you see several of these products online you think, “Oh, but I’m one of the many,” but your customer service is really important. That’s part of the brand experience and how you speak to the customer is really important too. I think people want to be heard, people want to feel like you care, and people want a solution to the problem that they have.

[00:31:40] Scott: I think knowing the avatar as well like you said, knowing who your customer is. If I’m selling bass fishing gear, I’m probably going to find out that 80% of them are men and you might even have a certain age demographic that we’re going to be targeting. So, there are certain things that I would say to a guy that’s 50 years old that’s fishing in that language than I would maybe a woman that’s a new mom like there’s totally different language there. There might be different comedy or you know what I mean, like funny stuff or maybe there are things that you referenced in the market that only the market in bass fishing would relate to that would know about. I mean, us in the Amazon space it’s FBA like if I say FBA to someone off the street, they don’t know what that is. It’s our own language. We know what we’re talking about.

So, I think that’s important to know who that is and speak directly to that person. We talk a lot about it. Even on like my emails that I write or even on this podcast, I pretty much know who my audience is and I usually speak to that person or those people, but I try to think of myself and like me and you talking right now. It’s that conversation and I think you need to have that conversation with every single transaction because you never know when that person is going to buy from you again or maybe right now you’re thinking, “Well, I only have one product,” and they’re not going to buy another one, but you might have another product down the line that they would be interested in that you could eventually sell them. So, why would you not want to create that experience to be amazing right from the get-go?

[00:33:18] Annabel: Right. And to think that you only have one product, I mean that’s such a waste of time because really like what a lot of companies know is the money is made in the repeat purchases.

[00:33:32] Scott: 100%.

[00:33:33] Annabel: That’s where you can consistently be bringing in money and that’s why you want to build that loyalty. That’s why you want for people to come out and seek new, not your competitors because and depending there are some categories where the cost of acquisition for the first customer is ridiculous, but you know that they’re going to come back and they’re going to buy you two and three times because you’re the person who gets them. They feel like you know exactly what they want, what they need. They trust you and the e-commerce space people believe that it’s very separated from the sale. It’s very different like when you go into a store and maybe there’s a salesperson but on e-commerce, the equivalent is your photography, the language. You also need to evoke emotion. You can’t be totally cold. People want to feel a certain way and I think the brands that take it to that point where it’s not just like, “Feature one, we’re larger than everybody else. Feature two…”

No, it’s like, “Tell me a little bit more and get me involved like I want to know like you get me. I want to know that I had a rough day and your product is really going to help me with that,” or, “I’m really looking forward to this weekend fishing with my friends and I want to know that your product is going to make that experience that much better.” And I think you can’t block yourself and say, “But it’s only a fishing lure.” No, you have to be like really in love with that fishing lure, really in love with your product, and convey that to the person that’s buying it, so they know it’s not just the three-color fishing lure. It’s the ultimate fishing lure that’s going to help you achieve whatever it is. “Have you been trying to catch that fish, but you haven’t gotten a chance to yet? Let’s figure this out together. Here are some tips. Here’s like how or what else you can do.”

[00:35:28] Scott: Well, and I think that leads into like e-commerce people think of just their store. If you think about the actual stuff that can lead up to the sale and if you can start building that relationship whether that’s you or someone else that’s the face of the brand or even just the voice of the brand, and then you can reach out and like you said like maybe five tips that you should try this weekend on your next fishing trip to catch more fish or whatever it is or a story that you talk about which happened three weeks ago when you’re out fishing with your grandfather and this happened. So, it’s a way for you to connect with the audience, letting them know that your brand is really all about this market because you’re in love with the market in a sense or your brand is in love with the market and you’re going to do your best to educate them, entertain them, all of those things, and then that will eventually lead to that sale.

There is a company right now that does a great job at this in the fishing space and it’s called mystery tackle box I think it is and basically every single month, that’s a subscription service which is brilliant, and every month you receive a box of new lures to try out for – yeah. It’s a great model but they have a ton of content that’s published on their blog every single week that’s giving tips and helpful advice and stories and all that stuff. So, you want to come back to that to be able to kind of learn and also entertain and all of that stuff and you know that they’re kind of leading this space because they’re in it and it might not even be them. It’s them reporting from a tournament that someone was in or whatever but it all then leads back to possibly buying a subscription service of mystery tackle box that you’ll get every single month for $29.95.

[00:37:10] Annabel: Right. And when you’re small, one of the key like I get asked this all the time they’re like, “But I don’t have time. I don’t have time to write all that content. I don’t have time to go research.” And I think that there are several things that people can do. One of them is find contributors. There are people who already like in love with this and they have a lot of knowledge and they’re always answering like people’s questions on those Facebook groups and maybe you can incentivize them and say, “Hey, would you be willing to write some articles in exchange for product?” The other way is there are services like Fiverr and Upwork where you can go and find freelancers that might be willing to or they would write content for you.

The other key too that’s like a little trick is people don’t write every two weeks or every week. A lot of people what they do is you set aside one day a week or one day a month and you write 10 different little articles all at once and then you start spreading out the contents. So, think about when maybe there’s some downtime in your business and maybe it’s just once a year that you’re going to write all this stuff. You go, you sit down, and you start creating these little articles, these little posts and they don’t have to be super long. And if you’re not comfortable writing, you can do them in video. If you’re not comfortable in video, you can do in little pictures. I mean there are so many different ways to create content that if it’s something that you like and it’s something that you’re really into and you have people that you can source information from, it should be fairly quickly to do. So, definitely worth your time.

[00:38:57] Scott: Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to be aware of what’s out there and I agree with you like batching is huge. It’s been huge for me even with this podcast doing three episodes every single week for the past three years it’s all because I’m batching. I’m able to record a bunch in a row and then we break them up and then we distribute them. Same thing with YouTube now. That’s what I’m doing, more of that. But even in our new brand, our physical products brand, we’re actually doing the same thing. We’re planning, we’re thinking of the topics that we could create. What do people want? What have they been talking about on other groups that we should probably address?

But here’s the thing. If you’re not like good on camera or you’re not comfortable on camera or you’re not maybe good at writing. You could literally just take a microphone and you can go interview people that were experts at this stuff and then you can transcribe that, turn it into a blog post. You can even turn those audios into something on YouTube, on a podcast, whatever. To me, it’s never been easier than now to be able to get out there in front of your market with helpful content that can then lead them to your store which will then lead to a sale. It’s just never been easier than it is now.

[00:40:09] Annabel: And be patient too because sometimes people are like, “Oh, I’m not going to write those blogs anymore. Nobody ever reads them. It’s such a waste of my time.”

[00:40:16] Scott: Yes. Very good point. Very good point. Yeah.

[00:40:20] Annabel: Eventually people will start reading them and not just that. If you put your blogs within your website, it’ll start indexing them well. Over time, the more content that you have that you accumulate, you start becoming the authority in that area. Google starts picking them up. Traffic will be sent. You can start sharing some more of that content. So, in the beginning, I think that’s where a lot of people tend to give up because you don’t see it right away. You think, “Well, just my mom is going to read this. Totally not worth it.”

[00:40:54] Scott: Well, I think what people should do is commit to a certain amount of time, certain amount of episodes. If all you did, I mean, even this like even if you said to yourself I’ll do six months and I’ll do one a week or maybe you said, “I’m going to commit to this for a year and one episode or one post a week, that’s all I’m going to do.” So, now you’d have 52 pieces of content out there and you’ll probably find that with that one piece of content, you can probably create two or three other pieces of content that’s related to that content that you just posted. Just like this here, I’m recording this, and I will publish this on the podcast, one platform, and I’m also going to publish it on YouTube, another platform. And if I want to, which I will, I will post this on my blog which will also have show notes, which will also have stuff. So, I’ve got three places that this content will be placed that I potentially can have traffic from. So, it’s the same idea. You can just take that one piece of content and then distribute it out to different channels just by having it transcribed.

And again, like places like Rev.com, $1 a minute like they’ll transcribe and it’s like 99% accurate. It’s so easy. So, a lot of great things for people. And I think that building a brand is really about that. It’s about educating, entertaining like all of that stuff in your marketplace and then again once they get into your brand like you said, explain in three words what your mission is or what your experience is or what your mindset is for like when they experience your brand or just even your thoughts on the marketplace in the brand like just your positioning on it. You might be like, “You know what, I’m not going to be like those guys. I’m going to be like these guys come along with us.” I mean like look at the prepping world like people that they’re afraid that if something happens I got to have a whole bunch of food and all of my supplies ready. That’s a huge market. Now, some people would argue with that and go, “I’m not doing that like I’m not.” So, then you’re against those people, right?

[00:42:55] Scott: So, it’s like you can play that like, “Hey, if you want to be like us, come on over here. If not, that’s cool.” You build like a little tribe in a sense. So, there’s a whole bunch of different things you can do, and I think it just comes down to laying out some type of roadmap and plan and then execute like really like in one chunk at a time, not overwhelming yourself. Okay. So, to wrap this up, what are some last maybe tips or advice even maybe if it’s just a simple thing where people can wrap their head around like, “I want to start a brand or I’m already selling products, but I haven’t really created a brand,” like what would be your advice to them?

[00:43:33] Annabel: I think that going back to this roadmap is super important. You need to figure out what your brand is and what your brand is not. And once I take those three words, first I start off with many, many words. You can do a Google search for adjectives to describe and you’ll have a list of 100. Then you want to go through and you want to circle things and I say, “Okay. These three I can work with.” Once I have those three brands, the next thing I do is I look at my brand and I look at my competitors and I’ll do a line and I’ll put two extremes on that line so let’s say it’s like not care to caring. Where do I stand? Where do my competitors stand? Fun to boring. Where do I stand? Where do my competitors stand? And then you start seeing like, “Okay. I’m different enough from these other people.”

Once you have that part figured out then you go into, “Okay. Let’s start developing the logo,” and again you rank it against the critical words that you have, then your fonts against the critical words. Then you start going into, “Okay. If my brand were a person, what would they be like?” Start describing them. What would this like person’s or brand smell like, look like, feel like, all these little elements you start putting them together and I collect a lot of these things on a binder. I’m very old school. So, for a lot of people that are not like I have my little binder. I’ll show it to you right now. Very old school. Not super nice. Not super neat but here I have all the elements that are important to me and I write it down and I have my plans, and this is a little bit of the brand.

[00:45:30] Annabel: And I talk about who is my persona? What do they do? Where are they? What’s my communication plan? What are some critical dates for my brand that I want to hit? So, I have some of the basics like New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, but then I also have things that are very specific to my product which is like Grandparents Day, etcetera. I have this that’s more detailed. You can see I went through and I said self-improvement products. Fitness is really important in this time period, etcetera. I mean, we haven’t even touched reaching media, but media has editorial calendars as well and you want to be aware of that for like national themes. So, these are national magazine themes that I look at as well and I’m going to create content that relates to these things as they’re coming about.

[00:46:30] Scott: That’s smart.

[00:46:32] Annabel: But then I also have like my list of where do I want to be featured in? Because I have goals of where my brand could fit in and that’s how you start really becoming recognized is by using all these different outlets and having that calendar but that probably takes I think I have like 10 sheets worth of things and that’s it. That’s it. So, I keep it in the little binder. I review the binder once a week just to make sure that, okay, is there anything that I’m missing here? Are we not living up to the brand? We’ll be working on packaging and I put it against does it have the who, what, how of my brand. I’ll compare it and then like, “Okay. We’re on the right track. We’re not on the right track,” and I’ll write things down. I’ll write things like this worked. This didn’t work. Those again, I’m not doing again, but keeping it all in the same little binder. I keep all the labels that we’ve created also, and I track it and I say, “This was missing that. This is the other,” and that’s how I keep refining.

[00:47:36] Scott: So, what you would improve you make notes and this will work now but we want to improve this and all that stuff. I love it. I think it’s funny a lot of people are digital. We’re in the digital world but I think nothing beats – I have one of these in front of my – this is my last interview that I was on and it’s basically, I jot things down like all the time but pad and paper like I’ll do that too if I’m planning. I’ll walk away from the computer and I’ll just take my notepad and just go and start brainstorming or writing ideas, things that are coming to mind. And I can see it more visually when I do that stuff, when I map things out, and it seems more real I think when you actually put pen to paper and I just think it’s important. I think a lot of people are doing that.

But I think having those basic principles down and then building your brand off of those principles and then they kind of cross evaluating like say, “Okay. This is what we want here. This is it. Let’s see what the values are, let’s see what the mission is, or let’s see whatever. Let’s see the matches.” And if it doesn’t then we got to figure out why and we got to adjust and tweak. So, I love that. I think that’s a great idea and for anyone just starting, especially, let me ask you this one last question, what’s your thoughts on like if people are either just starting or they’re in their brand right now and they’re saying to themselves like, “I don’t know if I’m really just passionate about this,” do you think you have to be passionate about a brand to be successful?

[00:49:10] Annabel: It depends on your definition of success. If you really want a brand that, for example, if you want to be able to sell your brand in the future, the more passionate you can be about your brand the better off you’re going to be. This is not about making a few thousand dollars a year because for that you can probably just do it selling any product out there and just making sure you always have inventory and that your product is of a certain amount of quality. But if you’re looking to build a brand that you want to sell in the future, absolutely, because that’s the other thing too and we didn’t talk about it in this episode which is what would an investor or somebody who is looking to buy a company look for and what are those assets that you can sell as a product company? It’s very difficult to sell your zip tie company to an investor when there’s no branding behind it because what that tells to the investor is that there’s no uniqueness of that product and they can just go and buy zip ties themselves. So, when somebody’s looking to assess a business as a whole, these elements of branding are extremely critical for how they’re going to value your brand.

[00:50:32] Scott: That’s a good point. Yeah. I’ve always said like with your assets and stuff as far as like what the business assets are, not just financially but like your leverage, the audience you have built, a list that you have, vacations that you have, the content that you have that resides that continue to get you traffic. Like all of that stuff is huge. And it’s funny I just did a training on for YouTube that basically goes through like the three pillars and I talk about like having your home base where basically all of your content will reside and that’s where the experience will happen. People can buy there too but that’s where you control that experience and that’s an asset. It’s like if we get that asset built and we do what you said and what I said and get content there and we start getting traffic there, we have a real tangible asset now that we own and we control.

The other part of that was an email list that we can actually then take that and communicate with and talk about our products but also talk about a tip or whatever and then direct the traffic wherever we want. And then the third part was your external platform where you’re getting the attention in certain places where the market is. It could be YouTube, it could be Instagram, it could be wherever, and then directing them back over to our home base. And I just did that as a simple way to let people know like those are assets that you’re building that an investor would also look at and go, “Holy crap, this is stable. This is something that we can kind of measure some of the stuff that we have here,” and you’ve got a great set of assets here but maybe an investor says, “I see there are a few things that we can do to improve this that actually just with a few tweaks we can actually take this in three exit, because you already got these things in place.”

[00:52:14] Annabel: Because investors are looking to scale. You show them that you can build the base and that you have all these elements in place. What they’re going to do is that they’re going to inject that business with additional capital to grow it, but they can invest the business with additional feeling, with additional emotion, with additional the base of the brand. They’re not going to come up with that. You have to come up with that. That is your brand and that’s where when you mention if you’re passionate about your brand, that is going to just fuel that base even more and I think psychologically if you’re proud of something, you’re going to share it more and you’re going to want for more people to find out about something and you’re going to give it your all when you see something and you say, “Wow, you know what, we really nailed the look of this product or we really captured the essence of our brand in this piece of copy that we created.”

All that comes across and people want to relate to brands. It’s why you see some of these big box retailers starting to shut down because people want brands and companies that are more relatable than what they were in the past. Many times, not looking at price and going after, is this a story that I can relate to. The pendulum is swinging back to smaller boutiques, niche brands, brands that are like more human because people are kind of over it. They want to relate for as much as we’re separating ourselves from like brick-and-mortar and maybe going online, it’s also an opportunity for people to know even more about your brand. Before, it was only what was on the backside of the carton that told you about companies. Now, the About Us page on a website is the second most visited page after the homepage.

[00:54:02] Scott: Oh, I believe that. Yeah. That’s why I think incorporating your story, your mission, why you started your company, whatever, I think is huge. And I think also the show pictures of people that are involved in the business or the brand and that could be you. It doesn’t have to be you. It could be whoever else is maybe the entire team that’s behind the brand or if it is just you, you or if it’s you and your wife or husband or whatever, include those pictures. I know myself personally if I go on an About Me page and all I see is text, I don’t see an image, I feel like I can’t connect as well. But if I see the actual face to who the brand is I just feel a little bit more connected. I feel a little bit more as they are human behind it versus just a corporate-y feel.

[00:54:46] Annabel: Right.

[00:54:47] Scott: This has been awesome. So, I guess the last thing that I should probably ask you, are you cool if anybody wants to respond and ask questions?

[00:54:57] Annabel: Yeah. Absolutely. They can reach me at my email. It’s [email protected]. We’ll put it in the show notes for people to see and then they can also visit my website, Marketites.com, where I have a cool guide on building your brand on and off Amazon.

[00:55:13] Scott: Definitely, I’ll link that stuff up in the description and the show notes to this episode, so people can go and check that out. I definitely recommend that.

[00:55:21] Annabel: Always happy to help.

[00:55:23] Scott: Yeah. So, awesome. So, thanks so much. I appreciate it and keep us posted on anything new and exciting and we’ll probably have you back on and we’ll do a little update.

[00:55:31] Annabel: Awesome. Thank you. Bye.

[00:55:32] Scott: All right. Annabel. Thank you.

[CLOSING]

[00:55:35] Scott: All right. So, there you go. There is some brand building stuff there for you that you can sink your teeth into. One thing I do not want you to do is get overwhelmed thinking that you have to do everything because you don’t, but you do have to get started and whether you are just starting or if you are a current brand, but you want to change some things, maybe you want to do a rebrand, any of that stuff, you can take these elements and plug them in. But really the one thing that I want to highlight here is just being consistent all the way through the brand whether that’s colors, whether that’s the message, whether that’s the face of the brand or the people of the brand like I just think it’s important to stay consistent all the way through as best that you can. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s always going to play out that way and it doesn’t mean that you can’t pivot, you can’t make adjustments. You can but just I like to think about it as the user or the customer or the person entering your brand will have a similar experience going all the way through. Because that way there people know what to expect and it also seems like, I don’t know, like you’re a tighter company like you’re a tighter group or your whole team is on the same page and your products are on the same page and like everything just kind of makes sense.

The other thing I want to highlight is story. Whenever you can add a story or messaging or maybe it is your message, your brand message, whatever it is, make that thing stand out. Make that thing part of whether it’s your branding, whether it’s your, maybe it’s your email sequences when you’re building that list and we talk a lot about building the email list. That email list is a way for you to start talking about your brand and really start letting people hear how you feel about the market that you’re in. Like I said, if you’re in fishing, well, you’re going to be very passionate about fishing and there’s probably fishing language or terms that I don’t even know that you would start to use.

[00:57:34] Scott: Like, that’s a way for you to connect and then also allow people to enter the brand but also you can start leading them through how you want to really represent your brand and your products and services and messaging and all of that stuff. So, I just kind of want to throw that out there. It’s really important that you understand that, but you don’t have to know it all right now but definitely go back. You might even want to listen to this again. Definitely go grab the show notes, TheAmazingSeller.com/539. Take notes, highlight, print them out, whatever you need to do so this way here you can start to add these things into your business and your brand and moving forward it will definitely help you. That’s my opinion but I believe it will because I think that anyone that has a brand and you can make it stronger and just really give people a great experience, a great journey. I always like to look at that as a customer journey and experience. That is what they will remember.

All right. So, show notes, TheAmazingSeller.com/539, definitely go check out Annabel. She’s great and she’ll definitely get back to you so if you’ve got any questions, definitely hit her up, check her stuff out. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I had a blast recording it and really going through this brand building stuff. You guys know I’m starting to geek out on it and I love it so hopefully, you guys are too.

All right. So, that’s it. That’s going to wrap it up. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you, but you have to, you have to, come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, take action! Have an awesome amazing day! And I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

www.theamazingseller.com/bootcamp

www.zappos.com

Mystery Tackle Box

www.rev.com

Amendez[at]marketites.com

www.marketites.com

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Reduce your outgoings: save over £1,000 a year

“How can I reduce my outgoings?” It’s a familiar cry, from the millions of people who have had their finances squeezed in recent years. It’s not an easy task: you need to work out what can go, and what is essential to keep in your budget. You also need to establish the luxuries you can live without, and those that make life worth living. Fortunately, there’s another trick to balancing the household budget that can make it far less painful. We can show you how to reduce your outgoings the right way. Assess what you need and what you don’t Be ruthless Be environmentally friendly Save money by switching, not ditching   Assess what you need and what you don’t When looking to reduce your outgoings, you need to establish what you can live without. Look at the value for money you’re getting from the direct debits and regular payments that leave your account. What are they for? Do you really need these things? Most of the time the answer will be yes – especially if you’re paying off debts or paying essential insurance premiums. However, if you haven’t reviewed these payments for a while you could get a better deal elsewhere. Here are a few suggestions for how to cut your direct debits: If you are paying for more than one magazine subscription in your household, would you be better off with a Readly subscription? For £7.99 a month you can get an enormous range of monthly magazines downloaded to up to five devices. If you are paying for Sky or Virgin Media TV, are you getting full value from all your channels? Could you downgrade to fewer channels? Could you switch to Freeview instead? Have you looked at Amazon Prime or Netflix recently? Are you sure you couldn’t switch to watching programmes and films on demand? If you have a gym subscription coming out of your account, are you using it enough to justify the spend? Could you downgrade it to an off-peak membership, or would you be better off at a cheaper gym offering just those things you regularly use? Check out great ways to cut the cost of your gym membership here. If you have a mobile phone payment coming out each month, check how long you have to run until the end of your contract. Anyone whose contract has already expired will be paying extra for their phone – even though they have already repaid the cost in full. If you’re willing to keep your current phone for a while, you can switch to a cheaper SIM only deal. Meanwhile, those who want to upgrade their phone and stick with a full contract can still save money by shopping around. Check out our guide on cutting the cost of your mobile. If you pay your bills by direct debit, there will also be the monthly cost of the essentials coming out of your account. However, just because they are essential, it doesn’t mean the costs are fixed. Never let any insurance policy roll over for another year, as insurers will bump up your premiums each time. It’s always worth shopping around for new car insurance and home insurance. Similarly, never let your energy deal roll over from a special offer to the standard rate when the deal ends: it’s usually far more expensive. Read our guide to switching energy providers, for everything you need to know. We’ll take you through the whole process and you could save hundreds of pounds a year. You can also compare energy prices and find the best for you. It’s also worth taking a look at how to cut the cost of car insurance.   Be ruthless Once you have done the easy and painless things, it’s time to think beyond your comfort zone. Consider whether some things that seem part of the furniture could go – at least for now. The easiest change of all is to give up brands at the supermarket. Most of us have forgotten why we always by the same brands and in some cases we’re paying twice the price of the supermarket’s own brand. It’s worth buying own-brand items for a week, and trying them out. Those you don’t like, you can trade back up. Those you get on with, you can keep. Even if you keep half of the swaps, you could cut 25% off your bill. Once you have parted with grocery brands, it’s definitely worth trying a discount supermarket. They are cheaper than the big four, and given that they are winning a number of prestigious awards at the moment, you may discover you like them more too. For more tips check out our article on saving money on groceries. Once the easy change is made, challenge yourself to consider tougher things – like the question of whether you really need two cars. You could save a small fortune by just having one, or downsizing to a smaller and cheaper second vehicle. If you only use the car a couple of times a week, the sharing economy could help you save money. Check out our article on alternatives to owning a car. Holidays are another major cost that we cannot imagine giving up. However, if you don’t have the funds for it, it’s not worth going into debt, when you can still get away for less. Give up your resort and your all-inclusive deal, and consider a low cost flight (check out our guide to getting cheaper flights), Airbnb property, and self-catering. If you book early (follow the airlines on Facebook and Twitter for news of when they release the cheapest flights) you could get away for half the price. And don’t forget those little day-to-day costs, which really add up. The average Brit spends £5 every working day on lunch, which works out at over £1,000 a year. You don’t have to give everything up at once: if you have a special treat on Fridays, or a nice coffee on a Monday morning, you can keep those. Just bring your lunch from home for the days when you’re buying a bog-standard boring sandwich.   Be environmentally friendly Being environmentally savvy will not only help you feel good about yourself, it’ll help your wallet too! Don’t waste food! According to LoveFoodHateWaste, we throw away a third of all the food we buy. Check out its website for loads of information, ideas on how to use those leftovers and how to save up to £50 a month. Another good way to reduce your outgoings and be environmentally friendly at the same time is to have a water meter installed (assuming you have more – or the same number – of bedrooms in your house as people). That way you can cut down on the water you use, and save money. Here’s just a few ways to save: Start washing your clothes at 30° instead of 40° and only run the cycle if you’ve got a full load – one cycle uses 95 litres of water. Take more showers instead of baths. According to Waterwise, a shower uses one third of the amount of water that a bath does (if it’s not a power shower). Use the dishwasher! It uses 15-20 litres of water, compared to hand washing which uses between 60 and 70 litres. This only works if you scrape rather than rinse the plates before they go in the dishwasher, and if you only run the cycle when it’s full. You can also consider investing in a smaller dishwasher if you’re a couple or a small family. Turn off the tap when you’re brushing your teeth. Leaving it running can waste as much as nine litres of water a minute. Now for the most important bit: according to SaveWaterSaveMoney, if you cut your water usage by 20 litres a day, you’ll save £25 a year. For more ideas like this, have a look at 50 Ways to Save Money by being green. You can also reduce your outgoings when cutting your energy bills by following these handy hints: Don’t use the tumble dryer; you can dry your clothes for free either outside in the summer or on an airer/radiators indoors in the winter. Get timers for your plugs, so that things will always turn on and off when you want them to. Get a smart meter, which monitors your use, and shows you the habits that are wasting energy. We all know, for example, that we should only boil the amount of water we need for a cup of tea – and keep the kettle descaled. However, until you’ve watched your kettle eating electricity, it’s easy to forget our best intentions. Make sure your home is well insulated. Take a look at our home insulation article. We’ve also come up with loads of quick fixes to those cold draughts in your home in our article on reducing your heating bills. You can find out whether you qualify for an insulation grant here.   Save money by switching, not ditching Hopefully, we’ve proved you can reduce your outgoings a fair bit without having to ditch too much of what you need and love. We took a look at how much the average family could save by cutting their costs. This is the average expenditure of a family on insurance: Buildings insurance – £124 a year Contents insurance – £138 a year Car insurance – £484 a year per vehicle Total – £746 per year (of course this is higher if you have life insurance, or private medical insurance). If you follow our advice and cut some of your other costs, you stand to save much more than this. Even if you only follow a few of the tips, your savings could look like this: Switch from the top end Sky package to freeview and Netflix – save £850 a year Switch some of your groceries to a supermarket own-brand – save £690 a year Bring your own lunch to work for four days a week – save £780 a year Save water – upwards of £25 a year Save energy – up to £300 a year Total Saving = £2,645 So, there you have it. Follow a few of the ideas we’ve come up with and you could save well over £1,000 – without having to give up the things you really value.   Relevant book titles 100 Ways to Beat the Credit Crunch How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less The post Reduce your outgoings: save over £1,000 a year appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

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