United EVENTures
Here are some of our best pictures for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy your long weekend!
Here’s a small sampling of what is going on this weekend:
Friday, September 2 to Sunday, September 4 – The 45th Annual Delaware Valley Blue grass Festival – Find out more here!
Monday, September 5th – Bubba Gump Shrimp Festival – Head on down to the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City for all the shrimp you can eat! Find out more here!
Thursday, September 1st and Friday, September 2 – Zoo-Flix After Dark at Van Saun – Take the kids over to Van Saun Park in Bergen County tonight or tomorrow night to watch some movies under the stars. Thursday is We Bought a Zoo and Friday is Jurassic World! Get directions here!
Saturday September 3rd from 11AM-9PM – Rock 4 Special Kids Summer Fest – 11 am to 9 pm – Benefit concert for our exceptional kids. Join us at the Sussex Elks Lodge for a day of music, food, fun, shopping, family, and friends, all for a great cause! Find out more here!
We recently had a brainstorming session and this was the result, but there is one problem – our brainstorming session ended before we had a name for this event. So we are turning to you for help!
The Event:
In this charity driven team building exercise, groups will be broken up into smaller teams with the goal of building a segment of a race track which remote controlled cars will navigate as the final challenge. Each segment must match up to the other parts of the course, forcing teams to not only make their section challenging, but adding an element of collaboration amongst the competing teams. Teams will be using items that they will be donating after the event to build their race course. If you choose to work with a food pantry, then teams will use canned and boxed goods as their obstacles. Everything, even down to the remote control cars will be donated at the end of this event. Once the teams have completed their section of the course, they will then challenge their co-workers to a race through the course using remote controlled cars. This fun and engaging activity blends teamwork, competition and giving back to the local community – all while making your team bond stronger.
The Name: ?
Leave your suggestions below….
The ball costs 5 cents. If a bat and a ball together cost $1.10 and the bat is $1 more than the ball, then $1.05 plus $0.05 is $1.10. I was reading the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, where Daniel Kahneman explains that there are two systems to the brain. There is the fast thinking side of the brain, which relies on past experiences to give you the quick responses, like what is 1 plus 1 – you don’t have to use energy to get an answer. Then there is the slow side of the brain, which needs to work its way through a problem. The downside of the slow side of the brain is that it uses energy and wants to rely on the fast side of the brain. So it will default to reason if we do not sit down and force ourselves to think though a seemingly simple problem. Take our bat and ball question for example – this question is designed to see how lazy your brain is. A brain that heavily relies on the fast thinking side of the brain, will say 10 cents… $1.10 minus the dollar for the bat is 10 cents; however, the fact checking, slow thinking side of the brain, if given the chance to think it through, will stop us in our tracks and say “Wait a second, a dollar more than 10 cents is $1.10 but then we need to add those numbers together since we are buying BOTH the bat and the ball, which would total $1.20 and not the $1.10 total we were given.
It’s a good read…
Here is a trivia question that we often use in our Adventure Quests! You will want to check back later for the answer and explanation…
A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Need a Catchy Subject Line for Your Email? 10 Cool Ideas You Can Use
I was on Reddit the other day when this post caught my eye. How many times do you send an email to then call then person and say “Did you get my email?” Well here comes help! Take a look at this article to get the subject lines that will not only catch the recipient’s attention but also give them an incentive to open that email.
http://blog.bizzy.io/need-a-catchy-subject-line-for-email-10-cool-ideas-you-can-use/
The 5 Second Test
You have 5 seconds to capture a visitor to your website. Does your website stand up to the challenge?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/4y36hy/your_site_has_5_seconds_to_capture_a_visitors/
How to Grow Your Business Through Social Media
I was reading some articles the other day and came across this thread. It is a list of all the free tools out there to help you manage your social media outlets. Take a look, there are some really good comments in here..
6 Ways to Integrate Social Media and Influencer Marketing
Ok, I’ll admit it, I went a little heavy with social media this week, but here is another great article about social media and different ways to leverage your marketing outlets.
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/6-ways-integrate-social-media-and-influencer-marketing
It’s that time of the week again, work week is winding down and we are all getting restless thinking of our weekend adventures. Here are a couple that I found while scouring the internet, if you know of some others, leave a comment below!
Thursday, August 25th – The last day of Hot Halloween at Jenkinson’s. Head on down to the boardwalk to enjoy some Halloween games, activities and some trick or treating a few months early.
Thursday, August 25th 5PM -8PM – Head on over to Hoboken for their Spaghetti Dinner Block Party! Find out more!
Friday, August 26th to Sunday the 28th at the Wildwoods Convention Center is the 2016 Sports Card, Toy, Comic and Collectibles Show. “Featuring over 125 tables of the hottest collectibles on the planet! Sports cards – old and new – sets, autographed memorobilia, posters, supplies, toys, coins, beanie babies, comics, jerseys, videos and much more!” Find out more!
Saturday, August 27th from noon to 9:30PM – Long Branch Jazz and Blues Festival. There will be music, crafts, kids activities and a lot of sun on the beach. Find out more!
August 27th and 28th – “WINE DOWN SUMMER AT RIVERWINDS COMMUNITY CENTER ON AUGUST 27 & 28, 2016 IN WEST DEPTFORD, NJ. Featuring the best of the Garden States wineries, fabulous live bands, unique artisan crafters and delicious food. Bring your family and friends to this end of summer bash.” Find out more!
Sunday, August 28th at noon – “The 2016 Grapestomping Festival offers guests free admission! Come out and celebrate the end of Summer with featured vendors and crafters from all over South Jersey! Stomp grapes for just $5! Enjoy delicious snacks and meals prepared by our head chef and drinks from our cash bars! You don’t want to miss out on the end of summer celebration!” Find out more!
I was going through a bunch of questions on the internet the other day, starting to ramp up the interview process for our Fall Intern Program (which, by the way, you can apply for on our Careers page) when I came across this question: “What is your finish line?” In other words, what does success look like to you? As the pace of life tends to pick up, we are more focused on making it through each day rather than defining and heading towards our finish line. So, I asked Will, “What is your finish line?”….
Success can be determined by many different factors. First and foremost a desired end result must be set. If we are talking about a successful business I would refer back to a book I just read called “Profit First” by Mike Michalowicz. Where he was asked that same questions as a entrepreneur but in a couple different ways….”How big is your business? How much money does your business gross? How many employees do you have?” But the real questions is “How HEALTHY is your business” You could have a 5 million dollar gross revenue business but have a 4.9 million dollar operations/payroll expense therefore only have a $100,000 dollar business, which to me is not a successful business. Yes, you have a $100,000 net profit but that means if you have one bad month in sales you are on the verge of going bankrupt.
So getting back to that initial question about what does success look like….To me, as a new business owner, successful is determined by a happy work/life balance. If you can run your business without it running you and it effecting your personal life, that is success. I started United EVENTures with the idea that “if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.” Not sure who came up with the quote but it’s something I live by every day.
I have two questions for everyone reading this article. First, have you ever tried anything new for 30 days? And if not, what would you try new for 30 days?
I like to give it a try from time to time. I’ve done the one where you take a picture everyday on your way to work or take a picture of your work station. I have also tried to challenge myself with giving a stranger a compliment everyday for 30 days. This one falls along the idea of my post from yesterday and the app Happify. By complimenting a stranger everyday, I took myself outside my comfort zone but also was focusing on the positives of all the people around me to make it easy to talk to these strangers and even more so, compliment them.
So, let’s get a discussion going and what have you tried for 30 days? Did it go as you expected or did it change your life in some small (or large) way?
Challenge Accepted!
I then was asked a series of questions – presumably to gauge how Happy I am (or with some people – am not). Am I in a serious relationship – How many kids do I have – do I work – Is my life boring.
Now I am hooked but I have to sign up.
Once you are in, you choose a track. I’m not sure how to take this, but my suggested track is “Cope Better with Stress”. I’m now on my way to changing my mindset to make myself happier! The first game that comes up for me is a hot air balloon game where words appear on the hot air balloons and I have to click the positive words. This makes me take a step back and ask myself, do I normally focus on positive or negative words in life?
The next thing I do is check in on my weekly accomplishments. “You’re always obsessing about what you didn’t get done, but what about what you did pull off?”, Happify asks me. I then have a chance to list what I am grateful for from this past week.
Overall, with a variety of different tools, Happify challenges me to put the emphasis on the correct syllable` or syllable. It reminds me of a tool I took away from the book Mind Gym by Gary Mack. He tells his readers that the mind does not understand the word “NOT” and to prove this, he uses the following example: “Do NOT think of a pink elephant.”
I like the challenge that Happify has set for me and I think it is a great tool for the workplace to make sure that both you and your employees are putting the focus where the focus needs to be.
