American Business Brokers - January 2021

Let That Fresh Air Fuel You

4 Tips to Make Getting Outside Easier Hunkering down and waiting for the dark and chilly winter season to pass sounds pretty nice. But the reality is, if we deprive ourselves of time outside, we do ourselves a big disservice both mentally and physically. Staying indoors all day affects your energy and mood, which makes it hard to get anything done, so here are four easy tips to make it easier to get a little fresh air. 1. Make it a priority. Getting outside means making the conscious effort to do so. If you want to reap its benefits, you have to decide to make it a priority in your day-to-day schedule. If you make the act important to you, you have more motivation to actually do it. 2. Use mornings effectively. Waking up and getting the day started can be hard. But studies have shown that natural light helps decrease your melatonin production, which means you feel ready to face the day sooner. So, set yourself a second alarm to head outside and take a quick walk around the block just after waking. Don’t even wash your face or grab coffee. Just get out there. 3. Take your work outside. If you’re working from home, take some work outdoors. Phone and virtual meetings are a great outdoor option, especially if you’ll just be an active listener and aren’t required to do any work simultaneously. Attach a note to your

meeting reminders to get yourself set up outside five minutes before you start.

4. Create a schedule. It might feel strange to set reminders throughout the day to step outside, but you easily get wrapped up in activities and overlook breaks, and these reminders are exactly what you need. Start with 10-minute blocks three times a day. If you stick to them, soon you won’t need a schedule to get outside anymore. Winter weather may be cold, but even when you’re bundled up under a jacket and scarf, just 5–10 minutes outside can do wonders for your mood and energy for hours.

THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND HOW WORDS LOOK Why Fonts Matter in Your Marketing

If you write “I love you” with swooping, elegant calligraphy, and then again using letters cut from various magazine articles, they would probably evoke different emotions. One would make you seem loving and sympathetic. The other would make you look like a stalker begging for a restraining order. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point: How a word looks and the fonts we use to write messages can have just as much of a psychological impact as what the words actually say. The Psychology of How Words Look There are two main reasons why different fonts affect us psychologically. One is the picture superiority effect, the name given to the phenomenon of humans engaging more with visual content than written content. The second reason is that humans tend to anthropomorphize things that aren’t human, meaning we apply human characteristics to

animals, landscapes, buildings, and even logos. These two effects combined mean that you can use fonts to have a profound emotional impact on your customers in your marketing materials. What Your Fonts Say About Your Business Keeping these psychological effects in mind, you might be wondering: What do the fonts I use say about my business? Well, you can divide most fonts into roughly five categories:

4. Script — associated with creativity, friendliness, and femininity. A popular example of this font is Lobster . 5. Modern — associated with elegance, exclusivity, and intelligence. A popular example of this font is Didot . With these categories in mind, you can explore different font choices and find which one best suits your brand as well as your customers’ sensibilities. How your words look could be just as powerful a draw to your business as what those words say.

1. Serif — associated with authority,

tradition, and formality. A popular example of this font is Times New Roman . 2. Sans serif — associated with modernity, stability, and objectivity. A popular example of this font is Arial . 3. Slab serif — associated with power,

strength, and masculinity. A popular example of this font is Rockwell .

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