A discussion on fertilizer for home gardening plants seems like a dated topic. Yet the importance is utmost as per the interest of growers and gardeners. For all the gardeners, the knowledge of using fertilizers and ways to apply them is crucial. For attaining the vigorous plant growth, you must know about the hardiness of plant zones. In order to grow the plants, we are continuing the brief discussion on why, how and what multivitamins should be applied on the plants.

All ideal fertilizer for garden plants carry three chief elements named as Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium.

Nitren is important for promoting the leaf development and growth. It helps iogn the development of chlorophyll. Basically, it helps in converting sunlight into food.
Phosphorous is very important for the growth of stems, roots, blossoms and fruits.
Potassium is another important element helping your plants in digestion and making of food.

Why do they need Fertilizers?

Often, we may wonder that, all the important nutrients are available in soil and air, so fertilizers are important? Fertilizers act as a mediator as some plants cannot get complete access of soil nutrients. So, the choice of nutrients also depends on the type of soil, the plant is growing into. Some modern farming techniques, traffic and construction can disturb the soil’s nutrient chemistry leading towards limited nutrient base. For such reasons, the gardeners must use fertilizers to help plants reach to their full nutrient capacity.

Some Homemade Options:

1. Seawood:

This fertilizer type has the long-held lineage of 1000+ years. It is considered as all-embracing organic option. However, it carries mannitol which can increase the plant’s ability to absorb more nutrients. You can use fresh or dried seawood in this regard.

2. Fish Emulsion:

Fish emulsion works like a homemade option which is obtained from fish-waste. The results with this have been truly great. However, it works very gradually. Also, the smell can bother you a little more.

3. Aquarium Water:

The aquarium water while cleaning the tank also works as a great source of fish waste for plants. It is easy and anytime available option.

4. Coffee Grounds:

Used coffee grounds are a good source of two percent of nitrogen. It can also provide some phosphorous and potash. Let them dry and scatter lightly over your plants.

5. Egg Shells:

Egg shells can be the most ideal and practical fertilizer option. They carry calcium which makes an important element in cell growth. You can simply crush in grinder and sprinkle over the soil.

With the right strategy, a marketer can easily enjoy the amazing benefits of content marketing. Some of these benefits are more traffic, a better reputation, and continuous growth in both traffic and reputation in the long run with only a little increase in the budget. With entrepreneurship, costing and keeping the marketing budget within the limit is really important.

Though content-marketing is very popular due to its cost-efficiency, it is not free nor cheap. Investing heavily in an internal employee or respectable external firms is necessary to produce excellent work and execute a high-quality strategy. And always keep in mind that in marketing, an effective brand design is necessary too so keep your audience hooked.

Fortunately, a marketer can still cut costs without having to sacrifice the campaign quality with the help of some money-saving tricks. Below are the strategies found to be incredibly useful by many marketers.

1. Reusing old content.
For some, this is not a good idea. But honestly, it will only be bad if the old content is reused in the wrong way. If for example, a marketer has a successful ‘evergreen topic’ blog post which he posted two years ago. Since the content of this blog stays fresh and can attract lots of traffic, it wouldn’t hurt if he will revisit and re-post such article.

Evidently, reposting the same article say every month will not give him new results. His possible option is waiting for a year or two before reposting, he could even get away with a full republication.

If in case he decides to repost a blog of his with an evergreen content but without waiting for it to turn one-year-old, he can do so by changing the headline, reorganizing the internal sections, or editing the body content to give the article a new “look.” He just needs to ensure that the URL where it was initially published is the same or else, he might lose the SEO equity that the article has already built up.

2. Re-envisioning content in new mediums
A marketer can convert his successful article to different mediums such as infographics or video highlights. He can also use certain snippets of his article and share it on social media as a tweet or a Facebook post. Reimagining new ways to republish an old but effective blog will definitely help in cutting content-marketing costs.

3. Don’t stop at content publication, move forward with content promotion.
Content marketing starts with idea brainstorming and content creation, editing, and publication. But successful marketers do not stop and think that their job is done after publishing their articles, they go beyond that and promote their content.

Eric Siu, an Entrepreneur contributor and Single Grain CEO, mentioned that a marketer should spend 20% of his time in creating content and 80% on promoting content. One can start by showcasing his work across his social media channels and move along by sending paid ads to it, conducting influencer marketing, submitting it to StumbleUpon or Reddit, and building internal links to it

Back many years ago, I met a fellow franchisor, he’d built a nice company with 250 franchisees which operated Kiosks in shopping malls – you know those carts in malls that sell various wares. What he did was make each Kiosk its own business, at first as “independent contractors” but later as Franchisees due to the Franchise Law rules. Each franchisee had to sign a two-year franchise agreement with non-automatic renewal, where the Franchisor could merely take over the business, location, as he already had the lease-space agreement with the malls, including the corporations that owned many malls around the country.

After two years, he stopped renewing franchise agreements, took control of all those little businesses, and then sold the whole thing and retired a very wealthy man. Unfortunately, many of the independent contractors, turned into Franchisees were forced out after building up their businesses and providing a substantial amount of goodwill. The franchisor’s concept was built by the blood, sweat and tears of all those individuals, who did make decent money in the meantime, but were then basically terminated when their franchise agreement term ended.

Recently, there is an interesting company in the “Handy Man” sector which has a franchise agreement that states it may unilaterally buy back the franchisee’s business at any time after 2-years of operating. In the Franchisor’s option to purchase there is a mathematical formula for valuation of the Franchisee’s business that negate the value of any “goodwill” and allows the Franchisee to choose if he will see at “Fair Market Value” of assets (used equipment, office furniture) or twice the earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization (EBITA).

Why would a Franchise Buyer buy a franchise like that? I suppose there might be a few situations where it makes sense for instance, the Franchisee just needs a couple of years of income and believes they can build up a good “book” of business, and if it starts to go South, the Franchisor may buy him/her out and they can move on, less risk? But what if the Franchisor chooses not to buy and the business fails? What if the business succeeds wildly and the Franchisee is forced to sell-out a thriving and growing business?

If you think about it, it is a brilliant strategy for a Franchisor, have others build your business, take all the risks, and if they succeed, you terminate their franchise agreement instead of renewal, and if they fail, you simply let them fail, then sell that territory to a new franchisee, until one succeeds and then you just keep winning and building on the backs of others. As a franchisee buyer it may be wise to recognize such strategies and be weary of them, unless it serves your temporary purpose of a short term business and solid temporary cash flow based on your abilities and the Franchisor’s model. Think on this.

How does your team perform? How do you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is poor and 10 excellent? Is it massively successful constantly delivering way past all expectations? Is it full of positively minded people working together to achieve challenging business goals? Is it autonomous, responding effectively to challenges and opportunities large and small?

If the answer to these questions is “yes”, congratulations, you can score a 10 and don’t need to read any more of this article. In fact, as you are likely to have plenty of time for high yield activities, give me a call to discuss how your team got there.

Sadly, this isn’t the case for most of us. Your team may not be a “10” but I doubt if it’s a “1” either. Hopefully you are somewhere on the path and have the right attitudes, values and approach develop your team into a “10”.

Empowerment is a key ingredient to the high performing team. If your team feels undervalued, lacking in authority and capability, frightened to make the slightest mistake it’s unlikely to be hitting the high notes. Perhaps there are some individuals that show real potential but others are negative and unproductive?

Are you creating the right conditions for success? Does the team have a clear understanding of what is required of them? Have you a vision of what success looks like? Are the goals you have set, or been set, shared and meaningful to all team members? Reward and fear motivation is common in business today. A common example is rewarding success with a bag of money and punishing failure with the sack. The trouble is we get used to this, we need more and more money to get the same level of motivation and become resilient to threats of the sack.

Internal motivation is far more lasting and effective. It needs more work, it needs you to really understand your people and what drives them. If you know this and use personal, meaningful goals your team will self-motivate. If you have linked their personal, meaningful goals to team and company goals you are well on the way to a successful team.

The whole team is raring to go, but have they the capability to execute? Are team members allowed to make decisions? Have you delegated effectively packaging the task with the necessary authority and resources? Effective delegation is important to team success and team growth. It is a wonderful growth tool for teams and individuals. It does, however need certain attitudes and process to succeed.

Flexibility is a good starting point. The way you do a task may not be the way a team member does. They can be innovative and bring unexpectedly good results given the opportunity. It’s worth letting people test out new ideas. Sometimes different is really good, just think of Amazon and Facebook.

How self-confident are you? Enough to release authority and responsibility to team members? Enough to heap praise publicly when they bring success? Lack of self-confidence and micromanagement are the enemy of productivity. Conquer them and you will become an indispensable profit and productivity generator both for yourself and your company.

Focus on results don’t strive for perfection. Perfect is no friend of productivity. Set standards that are right for the job and always be mindful of the Pareto principle. 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of activities. This means a lot of the work delegated will contribute relatively little to overall performance. It’s intelligent to accept less than perfect in relatively unimportant areas.

Taking credit for the work of others, not really listening to their ideas or working solo crush team morale and productivity. Some people believe effective leaders must always be in total control. They see this as the way “good bosses” should behave. Many bosses do behave this way but I question if they are good. It’s most certainly not the way a good leader behaves so, if that’s what you want to be I suggest you avoid this behaviour entirely.

Delegation develops employees into effective team members. Risk is inherent but you can balance it against the likely reward in terms of personal and team growth and overall performance. It’s also possible to limit risk by adopting a multi-level delegation process.

Tiffany is a bright, driven girl with her foot on the first rung of the marketing ladder. She is doing a great job creating very successful direct mail campaigns. She is eager for something new and looks like a good candidate for development. You have just the task and would like to delegate it to her. It’s running an event which will be a challenge for her but offers a great development opportunity.

A good first step is to her for an opinion. You might say “I’m thinking of doing things differently and wondered who you think might be able to handle this task, perhaps even you? This gives her the opportunity to express opinions but not feel forced to accept the task.

If Tiffany accepts, consider this approach. The first time the opportunity to run an event comes along you run it, let her watch you do it and ask questions. The second time let Tiffany do it with you assisting and helping out where needed. The third time she runs the event, but this time without your support unless absolutely needed, reporting at regular intervals. Subsequent times she always runs events unaided and only reports in exceptional circumstances.

One seemingly small point is very important for Tiffany’s confidence and status in the team. If she performs well, make the praise loud, long and public. If she needs coaching make it supportive, private and non-judgemental.

I hope this is useful to you and help you build your own high performance team.