During Memorial Day Weekend, not only do we honor our American Service Men and Women as a nation, we celebrate with our friends and family with a good old fashion BBQ. Grilling can be potentially hazardous to you and your property if you are not careful. Here’s some great points on grilling safety.
Food Safety
Keep cooked and uncooked food separate. If you’re grilling with a marinade, split the sauce into two bowls; one to be used on the raw food and the other to be added onto the cooked food.
It’s not safe to eat food just because it looks cooked. Using an internal meat thermometer is the best way to determine if your meat is safe to eat.
If it’s a hot day, be aware of how long you’re leaving your dishes out in the sun, particularly ones that will go bad if not refrigerated.
Grill Placement
Never use your grill indoors, in a garage, or under anything that could catch fire.
Place your grill at least ten feet away from your home, or any other structures or buildings.
Make sure your grill is not located near any deck rails, siding, or low hanging tree branches that could catch on fire.
Keep a spray bottle and fire extinguisher nearby at all times.
Charcoal Grill Safety
Make sure you use your grill in an open space. Charcoal grills burn off dangerous carbon monoxide gas that builds up in closed areas.
Never use any flammable or combustible liquid to start the fire. These starter fluids could cause an uncontrollable flash fire; add more charcoal or use kindling instead.
After grilling, allow charcoals to cool completely, soak them in water, and then store or dispose them in a metal container so they don’t reignite.
Gas Grill Safety
Before using your grill, check your hoses for cracks, blockages, or gas leaks. To check for a gas leak, open the gas supply valve fully, apply a soap and water mix onto the hose, and look for bubbles. If you see bubbles, there’s gas leaking out of your hose. Turn the gas off immediately and call a professional to fix the leak.
Never store propane cylinders, or other spare gas containers, near the grill or indoors. These containers can be explosive in fires. Even if you store your grill indoors for the winter, remove the gas container and store it outside.
Never start your grill with the lid closed.
Maintenance and Personal Safety
Check your grill frequently for cleanliness. Make sure no animals or bugs have crawled inside.
Don’t allow fat and grease to buildup. A hot grill can ignite fat and grease and start a fire.
When grilling, use long grilling tools to keep your hands as far away from the heat and flames as possible. Wear fire resistant mitts, and don’t wear long sleeves or baggy clothes that could catch on fire.
BBQ Grilling Safety Tips from BenTrust
Using this checklist will help ensure you, your home, and your grill are safe. These simple steps may be able to prevent you from having to deal with a home fire started by your grill. As an added security measure, review your homeowner’s insurance coverage. Verify that your policy has an adequate amount of coverage to replace your home and belongings if a fire were to occur.
If you are not sure what your policy covers, we can help you understand it. Let us go over your current rates and see how we can get you better coverage. Call us today at 305-444-8350 or visit our website at http://www.bentrust.com.
Did you know that 1 in 3 older Americans falls every year? Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal injuries for people aged 65+. Falls can result in hip fractures, broken bones, and head injuries. And even falls without a major injury can cause an older adult to become fearful or depressed, making it difficult for them to stay active.
If you have an aging parent, grandparent, or neighbor in your life, helping them reduce their risk of falling is a great way to help them stay healthy and independent as long as possible. The good news about falls is that most of them can be prevented. The key is to know where to look. Here are some common factors that can lead to a fall:
Balance and gait
As we age, most of us lose some coordination, flexibility, and balance—primarily through inactivity, making it easier to fall.
Vision
In the aging eye, less light reaches the retina—making contrasting edges, tripping hazards, and obstacles harder to see. New research suggests hearing loss also can contribute to the risk of falling.
Medications
Some prescriptions and over-the-counter medications can cause dizziness, dehydration, or interactions with each other that can lead to a fall.
Environment
Most seniors have lived in their homes for a long time and have never thought about simple modifications that might keep it safer as they age.
Chronic conditions
More than 90% of older adults have at least one chronic condition like diabetes, stroke, or arthritis. Often, these increase the risk of falling because they result in lost function, inactivity, depression, pain, or multiple medications.
National Older Americans Month
Here are 6 easy steps you can take to help your older loved one reduce their risk of a fall:
1. Enlist their support in taking simple steps to stay safe.
Ask your older loved ones if they’re concerned about falling. Many older adults recognize that falling is a risk, but they believe it won’t happen to them or they won’t get hurt—even if they’ve already fallen in the past. If they’re concerned about falling, dizziness, or balance, suggest that they discuss it with their health care provider who can assess their personal risk and suggest programs or services that could help.
2. Discuss their current health conditions.
Find out if your older loved one is experiencing any problems with managing their own health. Are they having trouble remembering to take their medications—or are they experiencing side effects? Is it getting more difficult for them to do things they used to do easily? Are hearing and vision changes becoming problematic?
Also make sure they’re taking advantage of all the preventive benefits now offered under Medicare, such as the Annual Wellness visit. Encourage them to speak openly with their health care provider about all of their concerns.
3. Ask about their last eye checkup.
If your older loved one wears glasses, make sure they have a current prescription and they’re using the glasses as advised by their eye doctor. Remember that using tint-changing lenses can be hazardous when going from bright sun into darkened buildings and homes. A simple strategy is to change glasses upon entry or stop until the lenses adjust. Bifocals also can be problematic on stairs, so it’s important to be cautious. For those already struggling with low vision, consult with a low-vision specialist for ways to make the most of their eyesight.
4. Notice if they’re holding onto walls, furniture, or someone else when walking or if they appear to have difficulty walking or arising from a chair. These are all signs that it might be time to see a physical therapist. A trained physical therapist can help your older loved one improve their balance, strength, and gait through exercise. They might also suggest a cane or walker—and provide guidance on how to use these aids. Make sure to follow their advice. Poorly fit aids actually can increase the risk of falling.
5. Talk about their medications.
If your older loved one is having a hard time keeping track of medicines or is experiencing side effects, encourage them to discuss their concerns with their doctor and pharmacist. Suggest that they have their medications reviewed each time they get a new prescription.
6. Do a walk-through safety assessment of their home. There are many simple and inexpensive ways to make a home safer. For professional assistance, consult an Occupational Therapist. Here are some examples:
Lighting: Increase lighting throughout the house, especially at the top and bottom of stairs. Ensure that lighting is readily available when getting up in the middle of the night.
Stairs: Make sure there are two secure rails on all stairs.
Bathrooms: Install grab bars in the tub/shower and near the toilet. Make sure they’re installed where your older loved one would actually use them. For even greater safety, consider using a shower chair and hand-held shower.
For more ideas on how to make the home safer, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offers a home assessment checklist in multiple languages.
NCOA, the Administration on Aging, and the CDC also promote a variety of community-based programs, like A Matter of Balance, Stepping On, and Tai Chi, that can help older adults learn how to reduce their risk of falling. Contact your Area Agency on Aging to find out what’s available in your area.
It was Take Your Child to Work Day at BenTrust and our amazing staff members brought their kids to work. It was a great day in the office as kids learned about the insurance industry and how their mom or dad provides the best customer service at BenTrust Insurance.
On “Take Your Child to Work Day” at BenTrust they get creative with coloring.
These girls came to work with their parents at BenTrust for Take Your Child To Work Day.
Some got a feel for what the insurance business is like at BenTrust.
We should not teach children the sciences but give them a taste for them. (Jean Jacques Rosseau)
BenTrust insurance provides the best service for you, your business and your family coverage. Call us today to find out more (305)444-8350 or visit our web site at http://www.bentrust.com
Bentrust Financial
701 Waterford Way
Suite 300
Miami, Florida 33126
Quick Quiz
What did one of the world’s richest men, John Paul Getty, have installed for guests?
Why Not Pass Me On?
If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter and found its information useful, please pass it to another business owner or a co-worker. Send them this link: www.bentrustinsurance.wordpress.com
Worth Reading
5 Ways to Bring Creativity Back to Your Culture By Marc Barros
Entrepreneurs often handicap themselves by building organizations that limit the kind of creative thinking they need to be successful. Marc Barros offers ways to infuse creativity into your company’s culture. Above all, he says, spontaneously offer opinions and suggestions, even criticism. You’ll push the team’s limits, and that’s what a creative culture is all about.
6 Social Media Tips That Will Improve Your Marketing
By Belle Beth Cooper
Cooper’s social media tips will make a difference. One shows that starting a tweet with a user name will significantly limit its recipients. For those of us who were asleep in Social Media 101, here are all the tips in one place: Schedule your tweets strategically, monitor mentions of your username, and watch out for Facebook rule changes.
Computers may be able to do some cognitive jobs, but certain human skills are still rewarded. Brooks explains that it’s the emotive traits that we now find useful now, including the ability to know instinctively what people will find interesting and memorable. He says, “A computer can calculate a zillion options, but (only) a human can provide an overall sense of direction and a conceptual frame.”
LINKS YOU CAN USE This Month: Gathering Customer Information
It may seem like an insurmountable challenge, but gathering customer information is made easier for solopreneurs and smaller businesses through business intelligence tools and innovative marketing approaches.
Here are some to give you a start:
Hoovers.com
Business intelligence begins with good old-fashioned sales leads that deliver hard-to-mine, target-demographic data that is particularly vital for business-to-business entrepreneurs. Request a free trial.
Social Media Monitoring
Intelligence gathering can also be data-mined from social media.CRM Software Comparisons
Manage customer profiles and filter new data through a customer relationship management (CRM) solution suited to your needs.
Cultural Anthropology
The “cultural anthropology” approach steps away from polls, surveys and cold calls in favor of real conversations.
Wisdom Quotes on…Motivation
Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.
Mario Andretti
Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
Lou Holtz
A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.
Pat Riley
Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.
Les Brown
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Once something is a passion, the motivation is there.
Michael Schumacher
INSURANCE How to Minimize Your Company’s Insurance Premiums Commercial property owners know that insurance is worth it, despite its cost. However, there are ways to keep insurance costs low, depending on business type and possible discounts. To manage this in a savvy way, here are a few ways to minimize the potential for losses:
Hire and train quality employees: Employee theft is a leading cause of loss for most retailers. Dead bolts and alarms won’t stop it, but screening potential employees thoroughly may help minimize losses. Also, train your employees and ensure they have appropriate safety gear and a healthy, safe work environment.
Thoroughly inspect grounds and buildings daily, and identify and correct new hazards immediately. Insurers may deny claims if they believe losses occurred because of unaddressed, ongoing hazards. Always be on the look out for possible hazards such as leaky pipes and unsecured hazardous materials, as well as compromised security measures such as broken locks, and anything that poses a risk of injury to employees or customers.
Add security features. Monitored alarm systems with video are preferable, but adding any security measures to reduce or avoid theft usually results in an insurance discount. Install dead bolts at every entrance and on additional buildings or storage. Attach tracking or alarm tags to easily stolen or high-value items, and consider keeping them in locked, break-resistant display cases.
For more loss-prevention ideas and discounts, contact your insurance agent to help you minimize your risks and your insurance premiums.
ENTREPRENEURS Are We There Yet? Startups Take up the Challenge
How To Minimize Your Company’s Insurance Premiums
Richard Branson, the irrepressible founder of the Virgin Group, has named 2014 The Year of the Entrepreneur. “Technology is helping every business, large and small, to move forward,” says Branson. “Now, entrepreneurs can build companies at a fraction of the cost in the past.”
Entrepreneurs do face some new hurdles; on TNW (The Next Web) Paul Jozefak, co-founder of Liquid Labs, writes that “one of the biggest threats will be the difficulty first-timers may have in gaining attention from investors.”
However, he also agrees startup costs are dropping: “Considering the general picture for 2014, the good news for the tech sector is that the cost of building startups is likely to continue to drop.”
The economy has been cooperative so far. Maite Baron, head of The Corporate Escape, notes in her blog that: “Recovery is happening far faster than many thought possible, and that’s an economic wave you need to be riding.”
There are encouraging signs everywhere, according to writer Elaine Pofeldt, who sums it up nicely in an article for Forbes entitled, “Why Now is a Great Time to be an Entrepreneur.” She writes, “This year will be the best one to run a business that we’ve seen in a long time. It’s also a very good time to start one.”
Has it worked so far? In some areas. In a recent article, Forbes contributor Geri Stengel lists 11 reasons why 2014 is a breakout year for female entrepreneurs, particularly in the technology field. Stengel believes women now have the money, the skills and the temperament: “Women have become the power-users of technologies, such as the Internet, mobile, and social media,” she points out.
It falls to entrepreneurs everywhere to fulfill Branson’s prophecy.
MARKETING Smartphone Users Are Changing the Face of Marketing
In 2014, an estimated 1 billion smartphones will ship globally, with 85 percent of users favoring mobile over Web. These facts, sourced from Gartner and Compuware respectively, define the modern consumer who relies on a smartphone.
The good news, according to an InMobi survey, is that smartphone users are now quite comfortable with ads on their phones. And advertisers are taking full advantage of this fact; mobile marketing now affords them the opportunity to reach us directly where we’re at, 24/7, on our smartphones.
Email advertising is getting a boost, too: a U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report from Movable Ink revealed that 65 percent of all U.S. email alone is accessed on mobile devices (16% of that on smartphones). Says Venture Beat’s J. O’Dell, “email open rates for commercial email have surged since email-reading began shifting toward mobile devices.”
Consider the following:
Mobile drives 23 percent of paid-search clicks, according to the Search Agency.
It makes up 15 percent of the e-commerce pie, adds eMarketer.
And 70 percent of mobile searches lead to conversion, with particular rewards for location-based marketing efforts among small businesses, points out iAcquire.
Lastly, 52 percent of consumers use smartphones while shopping – researching products online before buying: A factoid from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
You, too, can benefit from this new marketplace. It doesn’t make sense not to.
INSURANCE 3 Misconceptions That May Threaten Your Business
You know what they say about assumptions – never make them, particularly if you’re a business owner, and particularly when it comes to insurance.
Too many business owners mistakenly believe commercial insurance policies provide blanket coverage for just about everything. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and there are a few things you definitely shouldn’t assume about commercial insurance coverage.
Here are three of the biggest misconceptions you need to be aware of:
Misconception 1: Damage from floods is covered.
Similar to homeowners insurance policies, commercial property insurance policies do not cover flood damage at all…ever. Coverage has to be purchased through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
Too many business owners found this out the hard way during Hurricane Katrina; they assumed their destroyed businesses would be covered under commercial property insurance coverage. In fact, they weren’t and aren’t, and the result was that many businesses never re-opened after Katrina.
Misconception 2: Commercial auto insurance covers any vehicle you drive.
Unfortunately, if you’re driving a rented car or one borrowed from an employee and have an accident, your commercial policy would not pay for any damages – not for the car you were driving nor for another person’s property damage or bodily injury expenses. Note that it doesn’t matter why you were driving the vehicle.
Since commercial auto insurance won’t cover losses arising from accidents you’re involved in when driving a vehicle you don’t own, hired vehicles also won’t be covered. If you rent a car to make a long business trip and have an accident, and have not opted for insurance through the rental car company, you may have been driving uninsured.
If you frequently rent cars or other vehicles for business purposes, add an endorsement for hired or non-owned cars.
Misconception 3: You’re covered worldwide.
So you’re off to Europe on business. Whether or not your commercial insurance policy is folded up in your carry-on bag, you aren’t automatically covered for any losses relating to your business that occur while you’re in Europe. Many people believe they’re covered worldwide under commercial insurance, because they know that in most cases, your homeowners insurance follows you worldwide; if your valuables are stolen while you are away from home, your homeowners insurance would cover your losses.
Typically, commercial policies only extend coverage through all of the U.S., U.S. territories and Canada. Have no fear, though; you can usually get a worldwide coverage endorsement added to most commercial insurance policies. It will mean paying a little more in premiums, but you’ll undoubtedly enjoy your business in the City of Lights or the home of Buckingham Palace more, knowing that you’re covered should you incur any losses.
In summary:
It likely won’t be the favorite part of your job, but understanding your commercial insurance policy and its coverage is essential for business owners. Without it, you stand to lose everything, including your business. You know what your business needs, so talk to your insurance agent about your options and find the protection that best suits you. Get in touch with me for more information and how I can be of service malvarez@bentrust.com
This newsletter and any information contained herein are intended for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, financial or medical advice. The publisher takes great efforts to ensure the accuracy of information contained in this newsletter. However, we will not be responsible at any time for any errors or omissions or any damages, howsoever caused, that result from its use. Seek competent professional advice and/or legal counsel with respect to any matter discussed or published in this newsletter.
Its Throwback Thursday (#TBT) and our folks at BenTrust pulled this out of the insurance history archives:
Marine Insurance Throwback Thursday from BenTrust.
According to Wikipedia –
In the late 1680s, Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house on Tower Street in London. It soon became a popular haunt for ship owners, merchants, and ships’ captains, and thereby a reliable source of the latest shipping news.
It became the meeting place for parties in the shipping industry wishing to insure cargoes and ships, and those willing to underwrite such ventures. These informal beginnings led to the establishment of the insurance market Lloyd’s of London and several related shipping and insurance businesses. In 1774, long after Lloyd’s death in 1713, the participating members of the insurance arrangement formed a committee and moved to the Royal Exchange on Cornhill as the Society of Lloyd’s.
BenTrust can help you find the best boat and marine insurance policy whether for business or recreation. Call us today 305-444-8350.
In 2014, an estimated 1 billion smartphones will ship globally, with 85 percent of users favoring mobile over Web. These facts, sourced from Gartner and Compuware respectively, define the modern consumer who relies on a smartphone.
BenTrust Insurance Blog 