Blogs

Below you’ll find a selection of blogs I wrote for Pulse Marketing and their clients.

From Farm to Table: The Journey of Italian Ingredients

Client: Angie’s Wholesale Groceries, Inc.

Where do you source authentically Italian ingredients?

One option is to charter a large jet and send an army of personal shoppers back to the Old Country to buy premium ingredients from old Italian farmers at little markets scattered throughout the countryside.

The downside of course is all the taxes and paperwork needed to get your food through customs. Then there’s also the cost of jet fuel, the salaries of all your shoppers, finding a way to refrigerate everything on the flight back… And what happens if some old mob boss decides that they want a cut of the profits?

Another option is to buy your ingredients fresh from Angie’s vendors, who use Old World traditions and recipes to offer you premium ingredients at a fraction of the price!

Meet Some of Our Vendors

Take Costa Pasta for example. Their pasta is made from 100% Enriched Durum Semolina sourced from Montana’s Golden Triangle — which offers the highest highest quality hard wheat flour known to man. Even Italy imports Montana wheat for pasta production! 

Costa’s golden pasta is slow-dried to prevent cracking, and each case is inspected by hand to ensure the absolute highest quality. Plus who can argue with domestic pricing?

Or what about BelGioioso, whose president Errico Auricchio brought Old World-style cheesemaking to the United States in 1979 when he set up shop in Wisconsin — America’s Dairyland? With him Auricchio brought two master cheesemakers, Mauro and Gianni, who continue to mentor new generations of BelGioioso cheesemakers to this very day. Together Errico, Mauro, and Gianni popularized cheeses previously unknown to Americans, like Mascarpone. But they didn’t stop there!  

BelGioioso also crafts their own signature cheeses, like Italico, which combines a soft, meltable texture with rich, earthy flavors. Or Artigiano, a uniquely nutty and savoringly sweet cheese made in small batches using home grown cultures.

There’s also Polly-O’s, whose founder Giuseppe Pollio began selling cheese out of his Long Island home in the 1890s. Since then Polly-O’s has become a household name, famous for their smooth, hand-stirred ricottas and creamy mozzarellas — which are made without any artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives.

Timeless Traditions + An American Work Ethic

To some people it might seem crazy going through all that effort for some cheese and noodles — sourcing pasta from only the highest quality flour, making small batch cheeses with homegrown cultures, steering clear of artificial colors and flavors. Except our foods are more than just noodles and cheeses! 

Like us, our vendors understand that every ingredient needs to work in perfect harmony to create delicious, handcrafted Italian dishes — just like mama used to make. That’s why they’re Angie’s vendors to begin with!

Just like BelGioioso and Polly-O, Angie's also has a rich history that stretches back to the Old Country! Our company was founded by Vito Spillone, an immigrant’s son who dreamed of making it big in America. For years Vito worked as a stone mason, building pizzerias all across Southern California. Eventually he used his connections in the pizzeria business to start the Cheese Company, which sold quality cheeses to local pizzerias. In 1977 Vito bought out his partners and renamed the business Angie’s Wholesale Groceries after his beloved mother Angelica.

In 1977 our original product list consisted mostly of cheese, pepperoni, sausage, pizza sauce, and pizza boxes. Now Angie’s sells everything from seafood to cleaning supplies. But we’re still the go-to vendor for traditional Italian ingredients! Our trusted vendors include top quality brands, like Costa Pasta, BelGioioso, Polly-O, Fontanini, Armanino, Barilla, and more!

To see more of what Angie’s has to offer, check out our product list here! 

Precision Metalworking: Techniques for Achieving High Accuracy

Client: Latest Metalworks

To you lasers and blasters may sound like things from a sci-fi novel, but for us they are essential pieces in our everyday toolkit for crafting large-scale metalworks with the utmost precision. In this article we discuss the mind blowing power of fiber lasers and water jets and offer you an insider look at how we incorporate them into our metalworking process. Let’s get started!

Set Lasers to Stun

For decades, lasers have captured the hearts and imagination of sci-fi fans worldwide with stunning on-screen displays of colorful ray beams being blasted from planet sized super ships. But Latest Metalworks’s lasers are nothing like the planet exploding technology of the dreaded Death Star, which reduced the planet Alderaan to a pile of rubber in one wild blast.

Our fiber lasers cut metal with pinpoint accuracy — boasting a tolerance of a mere thousandth of an inch! They produce clean cuts with small kerf and minimal slag, reducing the amount of wasted metal and the total cost of your project. From flat sheets to rounded tubes, angled metals, and more, fiber lasers cut intricate designs while creating less waste when compared to more traditional techniques, like shearing.

Fiber lasers are also highly versatile and can be used for a variety of cuts: including coping; mitering; and cutting holes and slots for bolts, screws and wiring.

*Not everyone speaks metalhead. If any of the jargon we’ve mentioned thus far has left you guessing, you’re in luck! A very helpful copywriter has included the following appendix to help you find your bearings: 

Slag – the byproduct of cutting and welding, slag consists of melted metal, flux, or other impurities that solidify on the surface of the workpiece.

Kerf – the width of material removed during a cutting process. When you cut metal, the tools you use remove a certain amount of extra material, creating a gap. This gap is the kerf.

Coping – cutting the end of a metal piece of metal so that it easily fits around another

Mitering – cutting the ends of metal pieces at an angle, usually 45 degrees, so that they can be joined together to form a corner. 

How Can Water Cut Metal? 

A 60,000 psi blast from a Latest Metalworks water jet will pass through a piece of steel like a hot knife through butter. Boasting 0.001 inch linear accuracy, these jets are 500 times more powerful than a blast from a fire hose and infinitely more precise. For reference, try to imagine the tip of your pen blasting 3 gallons of water per minute with so much force that your arm would be ripped from its socket, like the kick from some sort of military-grade super soaker bazooka tested in an underground bunker in New Mexico but never even considered for mass production. 

From steel to granite and foam to ceramics, our Omax Abrasive Waterjets offer a clean cut every time! This sophisticated waterjet features an abrasive grit, or garnet, which helps us get through stronger, thicker material faster without sacrificing edge quality. We can also operate without garnet for an even cleaner edge finish for lower-density materials like foams and plastics.

Conclusion

Our master craftsmen want to turn your vision into a reality. Through careful planning and precision tools, we’re able to craft mind-blowing metalworks which take the stuff of your dreams and mold them into real world works of art built from some of the hardest substances known to man. 

How Pergolas Can Transform Outdoor Living Spaces

Client: Bespoke Fence

How do you combine the coziness of your living room with fresh air and sunlight from your yard? 

Pergolas transport the comforts of an indoor environment to a more serene, natural setting. They provide style and shade for sunny afternoons, and add value to your property. Pergolas can be built in dozens of styles using all different materials to match your home or business.

Learn what a pergola is and why this design trend is exploding in popularity!

Reasons to Install a Pergola

In the popular imagination, pergolas are often depicted as fanciful gazebos with trellis walls covered in climbing vines set amidst a fantasy-esque garden landscape — like San Francisco’s Walter S. Johnson Park. In reality, pergolas can be built to match just about any design style. 

Pergolas for Homes

If pergola sounds to you like a type of crinkled pasta smothered in pesto, that’s because the word itself is Italian in origin and its use stretches all the way back to classical times. Its romantic, dreamy sound perfectly captures the delight of lounging in a lush garden beneath a shaded awning as you’re lulled to sleep by the sound of the wind rustling through the trees. Slowly, your worries melt away as you become entranced by the radiating warmth of stray sunbeams and the fuzzy, listless delights of afternoon day dreams.

They’re also great for parties! Pergolas add comfort and class to mixers and outdoor dining. Their bespoke design enhances any outdoor space — turning your guests green with envy — while its overhanging roof offers cool shade on hot summer days. 

Pergolas are ideal for gardens, patios, outdoor kitchens, and gardens. They are constructed using premium materials like wood, vinyl, and metal, and come in a variety of styles; including classical, modern, rustic, and minimalist.

Pergolas for Commercial Spaces

In addition to residential applications, pergolas are also popular among businesses — especially customer facing establishments, like hotels, restaurants, and malls. And increasingly they’re becoming a common fixture at office buildings across America. Pergolas can add Old World luxury to a stylish Mediterranean restaurant, or enhance an office park with shaded outdoor space. 

Where to Find the Best Pergolas

Bespoke Fence serves Chicago with custom-built pergola installation! Our design experts will work closely with you to create your dream space. Once we have a solid understanding of your goals, we’ll capture your vision in a 3D rendering that will serve as the master blueprint for our installation process. Then it’s time to get to work! 

Our team of skilled craftsmen will work tirelessly to complete your project in a timely manner with minimal disruptions to your daily life. Our non-invasive installation process ensures you don’t spend months living in a construction zone. Once we break ground, we’ll have your pergola assembled in a matter of days.

We also offer continued maintenance services to keep your pergola in tip top shape for years to come. 

Find the Perfect Pergola for Your Property.

Get a Quote Today!

The Psychology of Marketing: 8 Tools to Supercharge Your Content Marketing Strategy

Client: Pulse Marketing

If you’re not using psychology to appeal to your audience, marketing might feel like pushing a 200 pound boulder up the side of a mountain.

What’s Actually Wrong with Your Marketing (And How to Fix It)

Too often founders, executives, and amateur marketers fail to craft compelling messaging because of this one common mistake:

Poorly written copy (advertising speak for ad text) uses too much logic to appeal to readers. The vast majority of emails, social media posts, and ads are predicated on logos—otherwise known as appeal to reason. At a distance, this makes sense. We would like to believe that most, if not all, decisions are based on logic. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. 

Groundbreaking research from leading psychologists demonstrates that people aren’t nearly as rational as you might think, and that much of the decision-making process boils down to cognitive biases—which are essentially shortcuts hardwired into our brains. And while this may be disconcerting to some, the good news for marketers is that you can use these shortcuts to better connect with your audience than ever before! 

The number one mistake in creating compelling messaging is talking too much about yourself. Writing a million ads and social posts about why your company is the greatest thing since sliced bread is not an effective content strategy. It’s the marketing equivalent of going on a first date and spending the entire three hours only talking about yourself, and it’s the quickest way to lose followers and subscribers.

Instead, create messaging specifically tailored to your audience by using cognitive psychology to appeal to their wants and desires. Using basic psychological principles in your messaging—like scarcity bias, intentionality bias, and the curiosity gap—will empower you to create scroll-stopping content that people actually want to read. 

In this article we explore how cognitive biases can be used to create effective messaging and influence decision making. 

Cognitive Overload

WARNING: The content described below is a danger to your readers!

Before diving into biases, we should first point out how NOT to sell: 

When writing, we often feel the need to write more. We mistakenly believe that more words equals more work, and that all that extra work will somehow make your message more convincing. Yet studies show that writing fewer words actually improves email performance. 

In 2016, Boomerang found that emails containing between 50-125 words received higher response rates, with rates declining as messages grew longer. 

The easiest way to scare away quality leads is by overwhelming them with way too much information. Your sales email shouldn’t be a homework assignment. Long, difficult-to-read posts and emails are cognitively taxing and discourage readers from learning more. So instead of writing like Shakespeare, be like Hemingway and get to the damn point. (To understand why “damn” is such a powerful intensifier, skip ahead to the section titled “Breaking Taboos.)

When editing, try to spend less of your time adding words and more time figuring out what to delete. A punchy headline is crisp, compelling, and to the point. Too many words dilutes your message the same way that adding a million ingredients to a cocktail dilutes the taste of the top shelf whiskey you’re paying an entire hour’s wages for. 

There’s a saying among creatives: “you have to kill your darlings.” This sinister quote has been attributed to both the poet Allen Ginsberg and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner. Simply put, it means that while you may feel a certain attachment to your work (especially after you spend hours writing and rewriting the same paragraph over and over) if any piece of writing fails to help tell your story, DELETE!

Scarcity Bias

Scarcity bias, popularly known as FOMO or Fear of Missing Out, is a sales tactic as old as time. It’s the reason that Black Friday generated $10.8 billion in online sales in 2024, and it’s the reason Starbucks sells so many pumpkin spiced lattes each fall.

If you’ve ever clicked on an offer or purchased a product because it was a “limited edition” or “only available for a short time,” then you already have an idea of how this one works. The rarer or more difficult a product is to obtain, the more valuable it seems in our brains.

If a product is always priced at $25, you’re probably in no hurry to buy it, and if it’s easily available, you won’t rush to the store to get yours before it’s gone. But by creating limited time offers, you can trigger leads’ scarcity bias to make them more likely to take action.

Input Bias

Input bias is an idea coined by behavioral scientists which asserts that people believe the amount of time or effort put into something is an indicator of its quality. 

This is why so many companies are quick to point out how long they’ve been in business. You assume that because they’ve been in business for a long time, they’re somehow better—or that because a product was handcrafted over the course of days, rather than quickly produced on an assembly line, it’s somehow more valuable, even if those two products are of roughly the same quality. 

(You value this article because it was written by a person who put time and research into creating it, and it’s not the lazy result of an AI prompt.)

Companies like Burger King, KFC, and Heinz use input bias to make people value their products more. Burger King, for example, puts “Flame Grilled Since 1954” on all their stores to trigger input bias. 

Curiosity Gap

The curiosity gap is a cognitive bias that occurs when some information is withheld, instantly making readers more curious. 

First coined by neuroeconomist George Loewenstein, the curiosity gap shows that people will take action to close the gap between what they know and what they want to know. In marketing, this bias can be used to motivate leads to take a specific action, such as buying, trying, or clicking. 

It’s essential what drives people to click on headlines for clickbait articles titled “10 Celebrities Who…” or “This 5 Minute a Day Routine Could Save Your Skin From Aging.”

To get an idea of what the curiosity gap looks like in action, take a look at Tinder. This dating app uses the curiosity gap to convert 8% of its users into paying users. Tinder reels users in by showing them blurred images of people who have liked their profile and then prompting them to “upgrade to Tinder Gold to see who liked you.” 

Authority Bias

Authority is something that’s imprinted on us at a very young age. We’re taught how to recognize it and how to respect it. As a result, adults are more likely to listen to what an authority figure says and follow their instructions.

Social and psychological cues that make someone appear to be an authority figure—-such as clothing, background, or credentials—can also make a person seem more trustworthy and increase their influence. In a study from Stuart Sutherland’s book “Irrationality,” nurses complied with a request from someone claiming to be a doctor, despite the request going against rules and being twice the maximum dose. In the study, 95% of nurses complied with the request. 

The measurable power of authority (real or perceived) is why everyone on LinkedIn is always posting about “establishing authority through thought leadership.” People use shortcuts to make choices, not always evaluating options evenly and making snap decisions based on biases. That’s why on websites, awards and certifications serve as powerful indicators of authority and make you appear more trustworthy to visitors. (In this instance, you can talk about yourself).

Intentionality Bias

You would think that attitudes shape behaviors, but in reality behaviors are what shape attitudes. Humans have a tendency to make decisions based on emotion and then justify those decisions using logic. To avoid cognitive dissonance, we align our attitudes with our behaviors to make whatever action we took seem like it was the sort of thing we would have done.

Just look at Tesla. You would think that Tesla’s environmentally conscious drivers probably purchased their electric vehicle in a desire to reduce emissions. But as ad executive Rory Sutherland pointed out in an interview with the Nudge podcast, in reality most drivers chose to buy their Tesla because they thought it was a cool car and later rationalized the decision by zeroing in on its lower emissions. This doesn’t mean that those drivers are fake or full of hot air. In most cases, consumers genuinely adopted more environmentally conscious attitudes following their purchase.

If you want to sell more, stop relying solely on logical reasoning (logos) and start using more emotional appeal (pathos). Then, once you’ve already sold to them, use logos to sell more and get your customers so fired up about their purchase that they become return customers and brand advocates. 

Breaking Taboos

Studies show that using swear words can actually improve your marketing (up to a point). That’s because swear words, when used sparingly and not directed at people, serve as powerful intensifiers to emphasize your point.

In analyzing customer reviews, research shows that reviews that contain swear words get more upvotes than those that don’t. That’s because everyone understands that swearing is taboo, and breaking that taboo indicates just how strongly a reviewer feels a particular statement. 

Conversely, reviews that are filled with foul language detract from their underlying points, since readers assume that a reviewer who swears frequently does so out of habit, and not to make a point. 

Including swear words in ads can also be a source of humor, and is likely to catch the eye of someone scrolling a feed filled with the same type of boring corporate content everyone expects from companies. Big brands are intimately familiar with the power of using swear words. Just look at Booking.com. They partnered with a prestigious ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy, to create “You Booking Did It”—a commercial that has garnered over 300,000 views on YouTube through the use of humorously suggestive phrases like “You got it booking right” and “You booking did it.”

Perhaps one of the most successful examples of profanity-based wordplay is the The Kmart video “Ship My Pants”. The phrase, when uttered quickly, sounds almost indistinguishable to another four-letter word. The video quickly went viral and now has over 19 million views on YouTube and is still gathering hits.

While crude humor may not be appropriate for every brand, these successes show that you shouldn’t underestimate the power of surprise and entertainment when connecting with your audience. 

Habituation

Here’s another warning of what NOT to do: 

When creating ads, don’t get too comfortable. Trying to replicate past successes can yield limited results.

The psychological concept of habituation suggests that when something becomes ordinary or expected, it’s less effective in capturing people’s attention and getting them to take action. Hence why stuffy, corporate-sounding LinkedIn gets so few engagements—it’s exactly what people are expecting.

Good or bad, we get used to stuff we see on a near daily basis. Things like a good job, nice house, or a good relationship doesn’t actually affect our daily happiness as much as we hope. Similarly, we quickly adjust to bad or uncomfortable things, such as a smoky room or the smell of sulphur, if their presence is constant

So, when creating content, do your best to keep your audience on their toes and give them something they aren’t expecting. That’s not to say every piece of content needs to have shock value (they don’t), but it does mean you should put effort into brainstorming out-of-the-box ideas and always be testing new types of content. 

How to Get Professional Psychological Help (With Your Marketing)

These biases are just scratching the surface! For help crafting scroll-stopping content that cuts through the clutter and actually sells, turn to the experts at Pulse Marketing. We take time to get to know your business, industry, and audience to craft custom content that appeals to your audience. 

Learn more: https://pulsemarketingteam.com/about/

The Art of 3D Scanning, Modeling, & Design

Client: Latest Metalworks

The craftsmen at Latest Metalworks work tirelessly to cut, bend, weld, and shape raw elements into metal masterpieces. But before any design makes it to the factory floor, our engineers spend hours crafting prototypes and vetting them for any possible weaknesses. 

Latest Metalworks’ CAD department is made up of a team of hardworking structural engineers who use the latest technology in 3D modeling and scanning to craft full-proof designs. Our designers combine ceiling-shattering imagination with in-depth knowledge of physics and engineering. We can take a rudimentary sketch on a napkin or a short description of the fuzzy, out-of-the-box idea you had one Sunday afternoon and transform it into a production-ready 3D model in a matter of hours. 

In this blog, we walk you through the sophisticated technology we use to turn your dreams into a reality. Spoiler Alert: it includes lasers. 

Lasers for Learning?

Lasers are used for more than cutting out designs! They can also be used to examine products, models, and prototypes. At Latest Metalworks, 3D laser scanners are an essential part of the engineering process.

3D lasers can be used for quality control of geometries and surfaces, reverse engineering, fit and finish, and assembly applications. Our team uses a Hexagon 3D Laser Scanner for product development and quality control. This laser allows engineers to digitally capture shapes and surfaces using lasers precisely and with little effort (meaning fewer billable hours for clients). 

From 3D scanning for product development to first article inspection, the Hexagon 3D Laser Scanner does it all!

Solidifying Difficult-to-Capture Ideas

Our engineers use Solidworks to create precision prototypes. Solidworks 3D CAD is the premier software for 3D modeling. It allows our team to draft detailed 3D models so that the building process is as efficient and accurate as possible. From the first article to full production runs, our 3D models are used every step of the way to ensure a quality product that’s true to its original design.

Best of all, our imaginative engineers don’t need much to get started. Just a simple description of the design and application of your vision. And drawing or two doesn’t hurt.

You can submit your ideas here.

Our engineering department accepts most file types to get your project started, including PDF, DWG, DXF, SLDPRT, SLDASM, STEP, XT, JPG, and ZIP.

Conclusion

We’re a team of dreamers and doers with the imagination necessary to turn your wildest daydreams into functional designs and the grit needed to build those designs into meticulously crafted masterpieces then. 

Latest Metalworks exists to make our client’s dreams a reality. Our team is there to guide you through every step of the process, from conception to installation. And when you finally find yourself face to face with the house-sized bronze dragon with light-up eyes that you’ve been dreaming of since you were nine, we’ll be there with a pillow to keep your jaw from hitting the floor. 

To get your project started or request a quote, click here!

Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself

Client: Serena Mastin, author of Exposed: You Can’t Heal When You Hide

Almost every adult feels at least some inkling of desire to be the best version of themselves. In renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is the absolute pinnacle of happiness and achievement. Unfortunately, not everybody knows what the best version of themself looks like, or how to get there. 

In this article we provide powerful frameworks you can use to maximize growth and reach your full potential. 

Cognitive Restructuring

The first step to changing behaviors to enable growth is challenging the negative thoughts that lead to unwanted behaviors and a poor self-image. 

In behavioral therapy, the “A.B.C.D.E” disputing thinking pattern refers to a method for identifying and challenging negative thought patterns in which each letter represents a specific step in the process. 

A: Activating event

The activating event refers to the situation or trigger that initiates a negative thought pattern. To effectively challenge a thought which may lead you down a long and winding rabbit hole of self-defeating thoughts, it’s essential to recognize that the triggering event is only a circumstance. You give it meaning.

B: Beliefs

Beliefs are the thoughts and interpretations you have about the activating event, which are often distorted or unhelpful. These can include ideas of how something “should” have happened, rather than how it played out in reality. Actively challenging these beliefs will help to stop ruminating thoughts before they get a hold on you. 

C: Consequences 

In disputing thinking patterns, consequences are the emotions and behaviors that arise from your beliefs about the activating event.

D: Disputation

After experiencing the trigger, beliefs, and consequences of negative thought patterns, it’s time to break the cycle and stop these thoughts dead in their tracks. Challenge negative beliefs by questioning their logic and validity. By disputing irrational beliefs and then replacing them with rational ones, you can take control of the situation and reclaim your peace of mind.

E: Emotional response

Once negative beliefs are challenged, you can replace them with more rational and helpful thoughts, leading to a more positive emotional response. Remember, no one can make you feel emotions you don’t want to feel.

Understand the Things You Cannot Change

“There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.” — Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 

Q: What’s one thing that Stoic Philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and Alcoholics Anonymous all have in common?

A: All of these worldviews emphasize the importance of learning to accept the things you can’t control in order to find inner peace and happiness.  

Below is a list of five things that you cannot control and need to come to terms with to avoid getting stuck in the same endless cycles of rumination, frustration, and resentment.

1. Nothing is Permanent

Sooner or later, everything changes and everything comes to an end. This truth is simultaneously both terrifying and liberating. 

Nothing good lasts forever. Joy fades, experiences come to an end, and the people we love eventually perish. Such is life. But though joy may be fleeting, so too is suffering. Painful emotions are not permanent, no matter how intense they may feel. The pain you endure today will not be there forever.  

Life is not a fixed state. It’s a continuous journey of self-discovery. Only when one chapter finally ends can another begin. In order to live our best life, we must take solace in this fact and embrace the unknown. 

2. Things do not always go according to plan

Rigid thinking is one of the greatest roadblocks to self-actualization.

When it comes to setting goals, for example, we have a tendency to fixate so much on a single outcome that we put off our future happiness with promises that once we finally achieve our desired goal, we can finally feel fulfilled. But what happens if that day never comes? An unfulfilled goal can be crushing, if we stake our entire future happiness on a single outcome.  

While goal setting can be helpful, it’s not necessary to future success. In basketball, you don’t win games by staring at the scoreboard. You win games through discipline and preparation. Similarly, in life, it’s our behaviors and attitudes that enable future success, even if it’s in a way that’s unexpected. There’s more than one pathway to success, and narrowly focusing on a single outcome can actually limit your potential. That’s why you’re better off focusing on process, while remaining open to whatever the future has in store. 

3. Life is Not Always Fair 

Fair is the real f-word. Everybody likes to complain that life isn’t fair, and most of the time they’re right. But whether or not that’s not true, it doesn’t really matter. 

Wishful thinking won’t change anything. We can’t change the hand we’re dealt, but we can decide what to do with it. Rising above adversity is possible through hard work and determination. 

4. Pain Is a Part of Life

The actress Annette Funicello once said that “pain is a part of life, misery is an option.” Similarly, Buddha taught that all lives contain suffering, but liberation can be found through mindfulness and acceptance.

We often forget that pain exists for a reason. It’s something we’re biologically programmed to feel, and exists as a response to harmful situations. Experiencing it in fullness helps us avoid further harm and promotes self-preservation.

While there’s no point to needless suffering, pain is a powerful teacher. The challenges we face in life and how we deal with them shape who we become, and are key to the journey of self-realization. 

5. People Are Not Loving All the Time

Often, it’s our relationships with others which provide the most joy in life, and which also inflict the longest lasting pain. 

Unfortunately, relationships sour, people snap, and not everyone has your best intentions at heart. It’s easy to harbor a sense of betrayal after experiencing interpersonal conflict or enduring a problematic relationship, especially after things were going so well. Naturally, we romanticize the good times and, as a result, for some people it’s easy to blame themselves for why things went wrong. That’s why it’s important to remember that people are not loving and loyal all of the time. 

9 Strategies for Creating a Positive Self-Image

1. Intention 

We have the power to consciously choose attitudes and behaviors that will lead to future happiness. Accepting this responsibility is a crucial first step in establishing more positive thought patterns.

2. Accountability

Accepting personal responsibility for our own actions, thoughts, and feelings helps us to actively take control of lives, and not simply feel like the victims of fate. 

3. Identification (Self-Awareness) 

For millennia, the ancient Greek proverb, “Know Thyself” has been seen as a cornerstone of Western philosophy. By continually evaluating our own thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, we can unlock a deeper, more fundamental understanding of self. 

Self-awareness enables us to make better decisions, build stronger relationships, manage stress better, and ultimately live a more fulfilling life by identifying our strengths, weaknesses, and areas for personal growth.

4. Centrality

Find balance in life by identifying the thoughts, behaviors, and activities that fill you with hope and happiness. If possible, try to make these things the calm center of your existence which everything else revolves around.  

5. Recasting 

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. By reframing challenges as opportunities, you can transform a stressful moment or problem into something a source of positive energy.

6. Openness and Curiosity

The famed artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci once said that “learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.”

Life is a continuous journey of self-discovery. Part of a growth mindset is being open to new experiences. Staying open to possibilities means letting things emerge and unfold rather than forcing them to happen. Consider every moment, experience, or event from a place of observation and curiosity.

7. Gratitude

Practicing gratitude can lead to greater satisfaction from the life you already live. Take time to notice and appreciate the things we often take for granted.

8. Contribution

By sharing your wisdom and experience with a larger community, you can be part of something greater than yourself.  

9. Transparency

The Bible says that the truth shall set you free. Regardless of what you believe, it’s difficult to deny the inherent wisdom of those six, short words.

The truth gives us wings and elevates us high above the anxieties and unhappiness of our everyday lives.

Conclusion

Personal growth goes beyond the intention of wanting to do better. To become the best possible version of yourself, you need tools to propel yourself forward. For more advice on important life topics, like growth and relationships, check out our other blogs.

4 Ways to Supercharge Your Website

Client: Pulse Marketing

It’s the website you always dreamed of — a stunning display of dazzling graphic elements and snappy headlines that turn leads into paying customers. The only problem is the price tag. 

You might not have a million-dollar advertising budget to build a website to compete with billion-dollar corporations. But you can improve your existing site by prioritizing the user experience. In this blog, we share three ways to polish your site, improve SEO, and boost conversion rates.

User Experience and the Customer Journey

Visitors come to your website for a reason. Even if they’re just poking around, they’re on your site because something piqued their interest. Their attention is yours to lose. So it’s important when building your site that you prioritize the user experience. 

Your website wasn’t built to satisfy your ego and one-up your competitors like Wall Street executives trade business cards. 

Your website was built to make customers’ lives easier, educate them about your product, and help solve their problems (or at the very least entertain them).

Continue reading for actionable tips to improve your website’s user experience. They are by no means exhaustive but are a good starting point if you want to improve UI — which in turn will boost search engine results. (Keywords are useful, but load rates, as well as KPIs like dwell time, click-throughs, and bounce rates, are also essential to improving SEO.)

Readability

Good website copy communicates important information clearly and concisely while following brand guidelines. Great website copy tells a compelling story that captures readers’ interest while also educating them on your brand promise. And with over 1.1 billion other websites on the Internet competing for your reader’s attention, you can’t afford to be anything less than great!

Copywriting Dos

• Use facts and statistics to illustrate your points

• Maintain a conversational tone

• Use headlines, taglines, and salient bullet points to highlight key info

• Differentiate yourself by developing a signature brand voice

• Keep your writing focused and concise (your readers’ time is valuable)

• Use empathy when addressing customer pain points 

• Make use of style guides, customer personas, and brand guidelines

• Write with a point of view (don’t just try to sound bland and neutral)

Copywriting Don’ts

• Treat copywriting like writing a college essay

• Use SAT words, overly complex sentences, and too much of technical jargon

• Use filler words and unnecessary sentences (“don’t talk just to hear yourself speak”)

• Come off as corporate and stuffy (even conservative brands can use stylistic writing)

• Use ChatGPT to write your website for you (only you truly understand your brand)

Good copy needs to communicate information clearly and in a way that grabs your readers’ attention. One idea needs to move seamlessly to the next without making your readers stop to figure out what you’re saying. Every word, sentence, and paragraph needs to work together to tell a story. If any bit of copy distracts, confuses, or just sits there being limp and useless, CUT IT! 

In the creative fields, there’s a saying that might just be the best piece of storytelling advice you have ever heard. 

“You have to kill your darlings.” 

This seemingly sinister quote has been attributed to both the poet Allen Ginsberg and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner. Simply put, it means that while you may feel a certain attachment to your work (especially after you spend hours writing and rewriting the same paragraph over and over) if any piece of writing fails to help tell your story, CUT IT!

Bonus tip: Using specific questions as headlines and answering them with brief sentences and bulleted or numbered lists will help improve SEO rankings. They’re also a lot easier to read 🙂 

Visual Content 

Websites use mixed media to tell a story. Copy, layout, typography, colors, videos, and images all work together to communicate your brand. While not every element needs to be perfect to create a good website, completely missing the mark on one can seriously disrupt your user experience. 

The best copy in the world is powerless if your site looks like a 90s Word doc, and all the dev work money can buy won’t mean squat if you can’t articulate your brand promise and provide a clear call-to-action.

Building a quality website from scratch is itself an art form that would take twelve 1,000-page manuals, three-weekend seminars, and twenty credits worth of college coursework to explain. But it doesn’t take a genius to understand that using a clean layout with high-quality graphics and videos to support your copy will help turn leads into paying customers (or at the very least stay on your site longer, thereby improving your search rankings). 

Bonus tip: Inserting embedded videos into the source code on your site is a great way to reuse some of your best social content on your website. It will also help drive engagements on your social channels. This is especially useful for TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram 🙂 

Internal Linking

Buried across your site is loads of useful information that’s relevant to some visitors but not others. At least that’s how it should be (please don’t try to pack all the relevant info on your site on the homepage). Visitors will feel most satisfied — and will be most likely to take the action you want them to take — when they find the info that is most relevant to them. So it’s your job as the site architect to empower them to find that info as easily as possible. Don’t make your site a confusing horror movie-esque hedge maze filled with dead ends that visitors have to struggle to navigate through!

Internal links not only improve search engine results, they also improve the user experience by helping visitors easily navigate from page to page in search of the information they need. 

Just think of Wikipedia. Their linking strategy allows you to easily find the information you’re looking for, even if it’s not the info you thought you wanted (we’re also not sure how you made your way from an article about shin splints to the origin of the word yeti). 

Because Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with millions of web pages, your linking strategy obviously won’t look quite like there is, but it gives you an idea of what a seamless link-building strategy feels like from a visitor’s point of view. So instead of a million links per web page, try two to ten relevant ones.

Conversely, irrelevant and unnecessary links detract from the user experience and make your site even harder to navigate. This could seriously hurt dwell time, click-throughs, and bounce rates. 

Conclusion

In today’s digital world, your website is as good as gold (especially for D2C companies). It’s the heart of your brand and is likely your most valuable asset, no matter how much you actually spend on it. These tips on user experience are just scratching the surface of what goes into a great website. And if it all feels a bit overwhelming, that’s ok. You don’t need to go back to school and get a second degree just to have a great website. You could partner with a great marketing agency instead. 

Fractional marketing offers a scalable solution for sustainable growth. Unlike big ad agencies or in-house teams, fractional marketing helps you amplify your message without worrying about the price tag associated with a big marketing campaign or the headache of building an in-house team.

Meet Pulse

Pulse is a fractional marketing agency that gives you access to an entire team of graphic designers, writers, content creators, and digital marketing experts. We’ll help you tell your story in a way that captures the hearts of your audience to grow your following and your budget. Ready to get started? 

Dealing with Emotional Challenges — Mental Health Resources for Foster Families in Southern California

Client: Kamali’i Foster Agency

Imagine what it’d be like to leave everything you know behind and start over somewhere new. This might sound intimidating, scary, and maybe even exciting. Now imagine this happening to you as a child, and that in addition to moving to a new school or neighborhood, you’re also leaving your family. 

This is the reality that many foster kids face. In addition to starting over, they also have to deal with all the emotional baggage from the life they left behind—usually under tough circumstances and as the result of someone else’s decision. So much change and uncertainty at such a young age can lead to emotional challenges, like anxiety, difficulty studying, or sudden emotional outbursts. These issues can stymie a child’s development and create difficult situations at home.  To help foster kids navigate these complex emotions, Kamali’i Foster Agency offers free mental health services through our sister organization, Kamali’i Counseling Center.

Mental Health Services 

Kamali’i Counseling Center shares Kamali’i Foster Agency’s mission of empowering foster youth for future success through comprehensive care and support. Our mental health services aim to stabilize behaviors and preserve placement. The last thing we want is to create additional challenges for kids by having to move them from home to home.   

In addition to accepting referrals from Kamali’i Foster Agency, KCC also serves Riverside County’s Transitional Housing Program for non-minor dependents in extended foster care. We offer mental health services to foster youth ages 0 to 25 and their families.

Services include: 

• Individual Therapy — Clinicians work with foster youth on identified goals from intake assessment to help them better understand their feelings and behaviors and process trauma.

• Peer Support — Peer support specialists with lived experience (either as a former foster child or experience navigating the mental health system) provide mentorship.

• Parent Partner — Our parent partner is an individual with experience as both a resource parent and adoptive parent who acts as liaison between foster youth, clinicians, and resource families, as they aren’t limited by confidentiality in the same ways as clinicians.

• Referrals — For families who need it, clinicians can provide referrals for additional resources, like individualized education programs (IEPs) for foster youth whose mental health or developmental needs create academic hurdles.

• Family Therapy — Typically court-ordered or requested by foster youth, family therapy is most often administered to a foster youth and their biological family but can sometimes include resource parents.

Peer Support is a unique program that provides foster kids with a mentor who can relate to them in a way that clinicians can’t. Because peer support specialists have first-hand experience as a foster child or someone navigating the mental health system, they can understand foster youth undergoing mental health services on a deeper level. 

Parent partners are an important mental health resource. They will work with a child’s clinicians to ensure the best possible treatment, and any insights they learn about a child are shared with their treatment team. But unlike clinicians, partner parents are not bound by the same privacy laws and can more easily share information with a child’s resource family — making them a crucial go-between for resource parents and KCC clinicians. 

Family therapy is less common but helpful in certain circumstances. 

Referral Process 

Every child who comes to Kamali’i through the Child Protective Services system receives a mandatory mental health screening. 

To receive additional services for your foster child, you will need a referral from a social worker. This typically requires additional documentation beyond the referral form itself—-including MediCal eligibility, court-ordered permission to provide services, and consent to treat. All the paperwork required sometimes makes the referral process longer than ideal, but rest assured that KCC will work hard to make sure that your foster child receives the treatment they need.

After your referral is processed, an initial assessment involving interviews with both the foster child and resource parent will determine the treatment they receive and the timeline for treatment. However, treatment services can be adjusted throughout the treatment process based on your foster child’s changing needs.

One perk of receiving treatment through Kamali’i Counseling Center is that all our treatment options are community-based, meaning that you won’t be expected to commute to receive treatment for your child. Our clinicians will come to you!

How to Successfully Navigate KCC Mental Health Resources 

Just like other medical and mental services, KCC is sometimes limited by patient confidentiality laws. However, we also understand the importance of clearly communicating kids’ mental health needs with their resource family. That’s why we recommend that resource parents be direct as possible with clinicians regarding their needs and concerns.

We also recommend making use of your parent partner as an additional resource who can help advocate your concerns with your child’s treatment team.

Learn More 

In addition to mental health services, Kamali’i also provides support for both resource parents and foster youth. These include our resource parent support group, transitional housing options for former foster youth, and independent living classes!

For additional support and to learn how Kamali’i can help you, call us at (951) 674-9400. 

DIY Solutions — How to Handle Strange Noises from Your Air Conditioner

Client: Orange County Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning

Are you at your wit’s end? Is the constant racket coming from your A/C driving you crazy? 

You know — the banging, clanging, rattling, screeching noises that keep you awake at night and exhausted all the next day. The same noises that force you to play music or have the TV on all hours of the day so that you don’t have to listen to CLING CLING CLING CLING CLING.

You’re not losing your mind! But your air conditioner may be on the fritz. We’ve written this blog post to offer practical, DIY fixes for when your A/C starts acting up.

Identifying Noises

To find what’s wrong, we need to first be able to describe the noises your unit is making. Different sounds mean different problems.

Here’s what to listen for:

• Banging or Clanking

• Buzzing

• Squealing or Screeching

• Clicking

• Humming

• Rattling

These noises can be tricky to tell apart, but accurately identifying them is essential for diagnosing the problem. For instance, persistent buzzing might point to issues with the motor or fan blades, while continuous clicking likely means electrical problems.

What Do Air Conditioner Noises Mean?

Now that you know what to listen for, it’s time to finally take care of that endlessly irritating noise that’s costing you your sanity. 

But before diving into DIY solutions, keep these tips in mind:

• ALWAYS turn off the A/C unit before inspecting it.

• Check your filter first! A dirty filter is often a simple fix and can be the reason your A/C isn’t functioning properly.

• Listen closely. Identifying the noise and where it’s located is the first step to fixing the problem.

• If you’re not comfortable with repairs, don’t be afraid to call Orange County Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning!

Banging or Clanking

Possible Causes: Loose or broken parts, such as a connecting rod, piston pin, or crankshaft.

Solution: This often indicates a serious problem. Turn off the unit and call our expert technicians at Orange County Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning for inspection and repair.

Buzzing

Possible Causes: Loose parts, debris in the unit, or issues with the motor or fan blades.

Solution:

1. Turn off the unit and check for visible debris around the fan blades or motor. Carefully remove any obstructions.

2. Check for loose parts, tightening any loose screws or bolts.

3. If the noise persists, contact one of our expert technicians.

Squealing or Screeching

Possible Causes: Worn-out belts, misaligned blower motor, or insufficient lubrication in the motor.

Solution: Turn off the unit and inspect the belts for wear. If they’re worn, they need replacing. If you feel confident, lubricate the motor following the manufacturer’s instructions. If the noise still continues, schedule professional maintenance with Orange County Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning.

Clicking

Possible Causes: Electrical issues, such as a failing thermostat or a faulty control panel.

Solution: First, replace the thermostat batteries and ensure it’s set correctly. If that doesn’t work, check for loose or frayed wires, but DO NOT attempt to fix electrical issues yourself. Have one of our HVAC technicians inspect the electrical components instead.

Humming

Possible Causes: Problems with the fan motor, capacitor, or electrical components.

Solution: Ensure the fan blades are not obstructed and can spin freely. If the blades are clear, and the noise persists, call a professional to examine your A/C’s electrical components.

Rattling

Possible Causes: Loose screws, bolts, or panels, or debris trapped in the unit.

Solution: Turn off the unit and tighten any loose screws, bolts, or panels. Check for and remove any noticeable debris in or around the unit.

Conclusion

When in doubt, call a professional!

The expert technicians at Orange County Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning are standing by and ready to help you. We’ve been serving Greater LA for over sixty years, so you can be assured that we have the expertise and tools to fix your A/C!

To schedule a service call, contact (714) 400-2913.

Metalworking Through The Ages 

Client: Latest Metalworks

See How Metalworkers Transformed Civilization

Have you ever wondered why different eras of human history are named after different types of metals? Why did ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria's greatest achievements happen in the Bronze Age? And why did the rise of powerful empires like the Persians, Greeks, and Romans take place in the Iron Age? 

Many of humanity’s greatest technological leaps were enabled by advancements in metalworking!

Through centuries of trial and error, we’ve learned how to bend some of the strongest elements known to man to our will. This has allowed humankind to fly across vast oceans to faraway continents and even put a man on the moon—which wouldn’t have been possible without a way to transform titanium and aluminum into specific shapes with precise dimensions.

In this article, we explore the history of metalworking and its transformative role in the development of human civilization. 

The Beginnings of Metalworking — Out of The Stone Age, Into the Future

Human civilization began with a technological explosion that moved our ancient ancestors out of the Stone Age and into the Bronze Age. Early humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, using basic stone tools for hunting, cooking, and making art.   

Then everything changed with the start of the Agricultural Revolution! The advent of farming allowed for the development of permanent settlements. Soon, cities started popping up across Sumeria, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. The success of farming also led to surpluses of food, and a stable food supply meant that not everyone had to focus on farming! This led to specialization and the development of crafts like carpentry, masonry, pottery, and, most importantly, metalworking.

The Bronze Age Begins

Perhaps the biggest innovation in early metalworking was smelting copper and then alloying it with tin to create bronze. 

Early empires, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, expanded supercharged by their access to bronze tools for farming and warfare. Mastery of bronze work gave these civilizations a major technological advantage since bronze was harder and more durable than other widely used metals. As a result, bronze was widely used in warfare and crafted into spears, shields, swords, chariots, and armor. 

Today bronze is valued for its conductivity and resistance to corrosion, as well as its visual appeal. It is widely used in electronics, marine applications, and art.

Latest Metalworks is famous for our bronze sculptures, like this one we made for one of Michael Stutz’s projects: 

Fun Fact: Metalworking was so important in the ancient world that many classical cultures worshiped blacksmithing gods, like the Greek god Hephaestus or the Roman god Vulcan, from which we derive the word volcano since it was said that Vulcan forged weapons for the gods in fiery mountains below the Earth!

An Age of Iron and Steel

Eventually, bronze gave way to iron, and humanity entered a new era of technological advancement. Around 1200 BC, metalworkers found a way to smelt iron into carbon steel, which proved to be harder and lighter than bronze. Smelting iron had previously been impossible since it required metalworkers to first heat the iron to over 2,280 °F! However, the creation of better furnaces and specialized processes for the removal of impurities enabled Iron Age smiths to craft stronger, lighter tools using steel instead of bronze.

The need for steel is just as important to the modern world as it was to our ancient ancestors! America’s Wild West was defined by six shooter guns and sprawling railroads, both cast from steel. And without the ability to bend steel, White Star would have never been able to build the ill-fated Titanic — which at the time it launched was the single largest ship known to man! 

Today, steel is used for a variety of applications, like reinforcing buildings and bridges, and creating large scale art installations, like these towers that our metal workers custom built for a community in Rancho Cucamonga.  

Each tower was made using over 15,000 pounds of corten steel!

There’s also this sculpture, which now proudly sits in Wichita State’s Ulrich Museum of Art.  

Metalworking Technology 

For thousands of years, metalworking was the focus of craftsmen called smiths. They crafted everything from weapons to everyday household items using a handful of simple tools, including an anvil, tongs, and hammers. 

Early smiths used hearths called forges to heat metals. After heating the metal in their forge, the smith would then hammer it into shape. There were seven basic techniques to forging:

• Drawing down

• Shrinking 

• Bending

• Upsetting

• Swaging

• Punching

• Forge welding

In most of medieval Europe, metalworking was monopolized by professional organizations called guilds. These guilds set standards for craftsmanship and advocated for the interests of guild members.

Unlike their ancient predecessors, modern metalworkers have access to a host of high-powered machinery that allows for faster production and more precise builds. 

Innovative tools like lasers, water jets, machine presses, and electrodes have revolutionized metalworking. These developments have enabled the production of heavy machinery (like cars and space shuttles) and large-scale projects (like the metal beams that support skyscrapers).

Modern Metalworking 

Metalworkers from the ancient world leave behind a legacy of craftsmanship and innovation. 

Latest Metalworks is the latest chapter in a long and celebrated history that stretches back millennia to the very beginnings of human society. Our team works to preserve our ancestors' commitment to quality craftsmanship while using cutting-edge technology to improve the production process. 

Take a look at our homepage to view the best of what modern metalworking has to offer.  

Eco-Friendly Fencing

Client: Bespoke Fence

Do you want a sustainably sourced fence that looks great and will last for years to come? Of course, you do! 

Unfortunately, not all eco-friendly products are built to last. Bamboo fences, for example, do not stand up well against harsh Chicago winters, while softwoods, like spruce and pine, need to be chemically treated to prevent rot.

At Bespoke Fence, we believe that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice quality for sustainability. This is why we offer sustainably sourced fences made from red cedar wood. Bespoke’s eco-friendly cedar fences are built in-house using top-quality Western Red Cedar wood.

Why Red Cedar?

Red Cedar is prized for more than its rich, warm color and pleasant aroma. It is also incredibly durable, making it ideal for outdoor building projects! 

Western Red Cedars can live for over 1,000 years in the wild! Because of its natural fortitude, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest have used red cedar wood for centuries to build everything from canoes and totem poles to everyday items, like ropes, baskets, and clothing.

Today, Red Cedar is the go-to building material for outdoor landscaping! It is ideal for furniture, decks, and fences. That’s because Western Red Cedar is rich in natural oils, like thujaplicin. These oils protect the wood from moisture and insects, making it naturally resistant to rot while eliminating the need for harsh chemical treatments. Red cedar is also preferred for its low shrinkage.

Bespoke’s Cedar Fences

At Bespoke Fence, we offer Red Cedar fences in a variety of styles to fit your needs!

Privacy Cedar Fence

What happens in your backyard stays in your backyard with Bespoke’s Privacy Cedar Fence! This fence combines a more traditional look with tightly spaced wood to protect you from nosy neighbors' prying eyes. Our Privacy Cedar Fence pairs nicely with Georgian and Gothic Revival style architecture.

Horizontal Cedar Fence

Bespoke’s Horizontal Cedar Fence combines the security of our Privacy Cedar Fence with a more modern look. Its horizontal build perfectly compliments Mid-Century Modern and Minimalist architecture.

Shadow Box Cedar Fence

Our Shadow Box Cedar Fence features slats for increased airflow, so you and your guests can enjoy the outdoorsy scent of our Red Cedar as a spring breeze wafts its rich, earthy scents to you. This additional spacing also lets in more light than our privacy fences, making it ideal for crafting a cozy outdoor living space. 

Spaced Cedar Fence

Want even more spacing? Then our Spaced Cedar Fence is perfect for you! Its wide slats support a more open design concept.

Board On Batten

For farmhouse charm, look no further than Bespoke’s beautiful Board On Batten style cedar fence! Clients love this fence for its quaint, rustic appeal. Board On Batten is simple, chic, and highly functional. 

Custom Cedar Gates

If Bespoke’s beautiful cedar fences were a rich, earthy sundae, our custom cedar gates would be the cherry on top!

Disclaimer: We do not expect you to eat wood chips. This is only a metaphor.

Bespoke’s artisan woodcutters will work with you to design the perfect cedar gate for your dream yard. Whether you’re looking for something open and inviting to go with your new Shadow Box Cedar Fence or something modern and secure to compliment your Horizontal Cedar Fence, we have the solution!

Benefits of a Warm Shower (And Why Everyone Deserves a Working Water Heater)

Client: Pomona Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning

While it may be true that a cold shower can boost immunity and maybe even your metabolism, it doesn’t make getting ready for work any easier! The last thing you need in the morning is to waddle around your home in multiple layers of clothing like an Arctic explorer venturing across the tundra as you mentally prepare for your morning meetings. (At that temperature, who knows if you’ll have the patience to sit through your boss’s small talk).

Everybody’s always talking about the benefits of taking a cold shower. Still, warm showers also have their own list of amazing benefits, including inflammation relief, relaxation, and spontaneously bursting into song out of pure joy because you’re not freezing cold.

At Pomona Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, we believe you deserve to choose whether or not to douse yourself with freezing cold water in the morning, and not have it forced upon you by a rickety, old water heater.

The Real Problem with Cold Showers

Not only is a functional water heater essential for cooking, cleaning, and bathing, but the absence of hot water can seriously mess up your morning mojo. Your morning routine should be familiar and relaxing, something to get you mentally ready for your day, like a warm-up lap before the big sprint. It shouldn’t be the psychological equivalent of a drill sergeant crouched next to your cot shouting “GO, GO, GO,” along with some other choice words better left unmentioned here to get you out of bed. Unless you're the sort of individual who swallows raw egg yolks for breakfast and rubs dirt in your wounds, that’s kind of how an unexpectedly cold shower feels, like someone shouting at you to get up!

Unfortunately, not everybody gets to choose how hot their shower is. A number of circumstances might force someone to take a freezing cold shower despite their preference for something warmer and more relaxing.

For example, you might be tired of dancing around the bathroom with one hand in the shower as you pray that it warms up soon so you’re not late for your morning meeting again. Or you might have started your shower right in a warm cloud of steamy, soapy goodness only to receive a rude awakening when the water temp suddenly plummeted to near freezing! OR maybe you’ve become so accustomed to cold showers that you’ve started questioning whether hot water actually exists or if it’s just an urban legend, like Sasquatch or the Easter Bunny.

Start Your Day Right with a Nice, Hot Shower

Slow or ineffective water heating is typically the result of years of wear and tear and too few service visits. Calcification, faulty valves, leaks, broken dip tubes, and pilot light issues are just some of the reasons that your heater might not be up to snuff. Luckily, there's a solution! 

Pomona Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning repairs and replaces broken water heaters so you can enjoy a hot shower without the wait. Water heaters must be replaced every 8 to 12 years and maintained annually. Yearly maintenance activities include, but are not limited to descaling, inspecting the temperature, and checking the pressure relief valve.

Don’t simply push your broken water heater to the bottom of your growing list of home repairs (the fridge can wait, darn it)! Take back your morning routine with a hot, refreshing shower that won’t take centuries to warm up or suddenly turn cold, leaving you feeling like there’s an icy Nor'easter brewing in your bathroom. Regardless of whether or not your three-year-old decides to throw a tantrum if they don’t get Pop Tarts for breakfast, your dog has an accident on your brand new rug, or your boss texts you asking if you can be at your 9 o’clock meeting half an hour early, there’s one part of your morning you should be able to count on!

For refreshingly warm water to melt your worries away, call the pros at (909) 764-3214.

Everything You Need to Know About The FTC’s Click-to-Cancel Rule

Client: Pulse Marketing

If you subscribe to any marketing newsletters, you’ve probably heard of the FTC’s new rule.  “Click-to-Cancel” is coming, and it will likely disrupt a lot of subscription-based businesses. This rule could go into effect as early as March of 2025, so it’s important that you know exactly what is to keep your company compliant. In this blog, we detail everything you need to know about Click-to-Cancel and how it might affect your business. 

What is the Click-to-Cancel Rule?

Imagine a future where you could cancel an online subscription as easily as you unsubscribe from a mailing list. That future may become a reality sooner than you think. The FTC’s newly proposed Click-to-Cancel rule seeks to do exactly this, and it could go into effect as early as March 2025. And while this new rule may seem like a godsend to frustrated online consumers who have more unused subscriptions than they can count, it’s a potential nightmare for some online businesses.  

The Federal Trade Commission’s new Click-to-Cancel rule aims to make it easier than ever for consumers to cancel online subscriptions. It requires that companies offer a straightforward, online cancellation process that’s just as easy as signing up. (Unfortunately, that’s a lot easier said than done). This new rule seeks to curtail dodgy business practices, like negative option marketing, where a customer’s inaction is interpreted as acceptance of an offer. 

The FTC’s proposed Click-to-Cancel rule would require:

1. Clear Communication: Sellers must provide important information before obtaining a customer’s billing information and charging them. Important information must be truthful, clear, and easy to find. This prevents hidden fees or vague terms that can lead to misunderstandings.

2. Informed Consent: Sellers must prove that customers knew what they agreed to before they signed up. 

3. Easy Online Cancellation: There always has to be a way to cancel that’s as quick and easy as it was to sign up. This prevents consumers from having to call or navigate complicated processes to cancel a subscription.

4. Reminders for Renewals: Businesses must send clear reminders before a subscription is set to renew, allowing consumers to make informed decisions about whether to continue.

Failing to comply with FTC regulations could result in lawsuits and civil penalties.

To better understand the Federal Trade Commission’s Click-to-Cancel policy, we need to first look at how this rule relates to negative option marketing more generally.

What is Negative Option Marketing?

In 2024, the Commission received about 70 consumer complaints about negative options and recurring subscription practices per day, up from 42 per day in 2021.

The “Click-to-Cancel” rule is part of the FTC’s broader Negative Option Rule, which prevents customers from being tricked into paying for goods or services they didn’t intend to buy. Negative option marketing generally falls into four categories: 

1. Prenotification Plans: Seller first offers and then sends (and charges for) a product if the consumer takes no action to decline the offer. Examples: Book-of-the-month Clubs

2. Continuity Plans: Consumers agree in advance to receive period shipments of goods or provision of services until they cancel the agreement. Examples: Bottled Water Delivery Service

3. Automatic Renewals: A subscription is automatically renewed when it expires unless the customer cancels. Examples: Magazines, Streaming Services

4. Free Trial: Customer receives a product or service for free (or at a reduced price) for a trial period and then is charged a higher price unless they cancel or return it. Examples: Premium Subscriptions 

To combat negative option marketing, the FTC is working to establish a framework for transactions that require informed consent before customers can be charged. The Click-to-Cancel rule is a wide sweeping update to the Negative Option Rule that will help ensure that customers aren’t deceived by tricky business practices into signing up for unwanted products and services.

How the Click-to-Cancel Rule Will Affect Your Business

Unfortunately, this newest regulation will likely create additional hoops for online businesses to jump through. Even companies with the best intentions might get tripped up by the engineering work needed to stay compliant with all these new requirements. Because, let’s face it, building a website isn’t easy, and neither is building a marketing funnel. 

Your website configuration and marketing automation might create trapdoors for you to fall through. Oversights could result in customers stumbling upon an old web page or being accidentally sent an outdated email that leads them to sign up for a free trial or subscription service without understanding the full extent of your offer. One way to prevent this is to have your developer team spend months combing your website and CRM to weed out every outdated link and change any problematic verbiage. Another option is to partner with a fractional marketing company that focuses on creating marketing funnels that are compliant with the most up-to-date FTC regulations.

How to Stay Compliant 

Staying compliant can be tricky. Luckily, there are companies that specialize in this sort of thing. Pulse Marketing is a fractional marketing company that has been helping clients from across different industries build marketing funnels that meet all of the FTC’s meticulous regulatory standards. For over a decade, our team of developers, content writers, and graphic artists have crafted high-converting content without relying on negative option marketing.

At Pulse, we build, redesign, and provide support for website clients trying to navigate these tricky regulations. To learn more about how we can help your business, check out our online portfolio!

About Pulse Marketing

Over the last ten years, Pulse Marketing has helped over 230 businesses reach their marketing goals and has received over 60 advertising awards. Now, we want to help you!

Unlike big ad agencies, our team offers a flexible, scalable solution specially tailored to small and medium-sized businesses. We’ll work closely with your team to learn the ins and outs of your business and help you achieve your specific business goals. To learn more about our method, check out our Services Page.

Cultural Sensitivity in Foster Care: Embracing Diversity in Southern California’s Resource Families

Client: Kamali’i Foster Agency

Southern California’s foster children represent a diverse population and come from a variety of different backgrounds. The foster kids who enter your house may have different beliefs, customs, languages, and ways of expressing themselves. To create a supportive home environment where everyone feels that their identity is respected, we’ve created this blog—which includes helpful advice for embracing cultural differences and creating a space where kids feel accepted! 

Cultural Humility

Cultural humility is a lifelong process of self-reflection and learning about other cultures that aims to build understanding and respect for cultural differences.

Identity describes a person’s sense of self. Identity matters to almost everyone and is deeply connected to culture and self-worth. Many foster kids are at risk of losing their identities as the result of unexpected life changes, like being separated from their biological parents, moving to a new community, starting a new school, and living in a home where the culture and traditions may differ from what they’ve known. One way to combat cultural identity loss is by understanding and engaging with foster kid’s native and adopted cultures. (Native culture describes national, religious, and ethnic identities, while adopted cultures could be something like a child’s sexual orientation or particular subcultures they identify with, like fandoms).

Culture is an important part of identity and describes the values, beliefs, ways of communication, and practices shared by a group to create a sense of unity. Children need to feel connected with people, places and things they care about to have a grounded sense of self, and finding ways to connect kids with their culture of origin supports self-worth. At Kamali’i Foster Family Agency, we want foster kids to feel pride, belonging, and a connection, which is why we encourage resource parents to find ways to connect their kids with their culture of origin. This might mean observing coming-of-age rituals (like mitzvahs and quinceaneras) or something as simple as learning to make a child’s favorite food from their native culture. 

To create safe environments where kids feel respected, it’s important to be on guard against microaggressions. The way we treat people’s differences can negatively impact self-worth. ‘Isms’ (racism, classicism, imbalances of power) affect identity. For example, 25% of foster kids identify as LGBTQ, and LGBTQ males who report feeling rejected by families are 18% more likely to attempt suicide. 

Tips for Kids with Textured Hair

Culture can be expressed through an individual’s personal appearance. Clothes and hairstyles are important parts of self-expression. However, not every one’s hair is the same, and kids with especially textured hair may have differences in hair care and personal hygiene that, when left unchecked, can be a source of cultural conflict. 

Kids need to feel their best and also have a way to express their cultural heritage and natural beauty. Kids with curly and textured hair may have different needs, so we created this list of hair care tips that we learned from expert stylist and businesswoman stylist Angelica Taylor:

1. Textured hair only needs to be washed every 10-14 days. Overwashing can remove essential oils that help hair from becoming dry and frizzy.

2. Still condition regularly.

3. Don’t scrub textured hair because it goes against the curl pattern, creating friction and fuzz.

4. Only use a dime to quarter-sized squirt of shampoo and conditioner (this tip applies to everybody).

5. Even though you need to wash textured hair less, you still need to clean the scalp regularly. Oil buildup on the scalp can hurt hair growth and create an unpleasant smell. One way to clean the scalp is by spraying apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, and warm water and letting it sit to remove oil.

6. When using chemical relaxers, it’s best to get treatments done at a salon.

7. Relaxers change the pH level of your child’s hair, which could cause it to react negatively to chlorine, such as in pools.

8. If you’re spending a lot on your child’s hair, you should also be willing to spend a bit more on hair care.

9. Shampoos at major retailers are likely expired, making them less effective.

10. Everyone is different. You have to find what works for your child 🙂

Tips for braided hair care

Many African American kids like braids because it makes hair easier to manage. Some braids can last up to 12 weeks! Fox braids last really long and are extremely versatile. You do not need to condition braided hair, but still make sure to wash out the oil to prevent smell.

LGBT

Kids these days have more sexual and gender identities than ever, and the list seems to keep expanding. As a resource parent, it can feel like a lot to keep up with. No matter how your foster child self-identifies, the same virtues of humility, sympathy, openness, and understanding will help them navigate the coming out process and bring you even closer together. 

Everyone is probably familiar with the orientations lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transitioning. But what about the other letters that keep making their way in and out of the LGBT acronym.

• Queer can describe an identity that falls outside the categories of man or woman and is often used by nonbinary people who feel that existing identities are too limiting. This word, which has historically been used as a slur, has been largely reclaimed by the gay community but is still not universally accepted.

• Intersex indicates that this person has different chromosomes than the typical male/female combinations (XX or XY), or their internal and external sexual organs may differ from what’s traditionally considered male or female.

• Asexual describes a person who experiences little to no sexual attraction or experiences sexual attraction in a non-normative way.

There are still more sexual and gender orientations, often represented by the ‘+’ in ‘LGBTQ+’. (Even more than the colors in the rainbow—literally!) But this should cover most bases. However, if you encounter previously unknown orientations outside this subset that are being used to describe someone you care about, we encourage you to dive into the research and learn more. 

The degree to which LGBTQ+ youth feel supported and accepted by the people around them directly impacts their mental health. 42% of LGBT youth have considered suicide in the last year, they have a 120% higher risk of becoming homeless and are six more likely to experience depression, which is why your support is so important. Studies show that support from just one adult can decrease suicide ideation, plans, and attempts by nearly half. Similarly, according to the Trevor Project, transgender and nonbinary youth who have their pronoun choice respected by most people in their life attempt suicide at half the rate.

Here are some important things you should know about coming out:

• The average age of coming out keeps getting younger and younger.

• Coming out is a continual process and not a one and done conversation.

• The best thing you can do for someone coming out is to remind them they’re unconditionally loved.

Safety and support are key to creating a place where youth feel free to express themselves and live their best lives. Equally as important as coming out is to foster teens in the process of inviting them in. Inviting in is a parallel process that happens in tandem with coming out. This process can be viewed as a great honor as it takes a lot of trust to invite another person in. You’re not expected to have all the answers but rather to be supportive and open-minded. It’s ok just to be present and receptive. And don’t be afraid to ask questions! Be honest about not knowing, but also be aware that it’s not your foster child’s responsibility to hold your hand throughout this process. 

The ideal coming-out process might include the following statements/questions from a resource parent:

• Thank you for sharing this.

• How can I support you?

• Is there anything else you would like to share?

• Absolutely nothing has changed.

• I’m going to do my best to support you.

• I accept you the way you are.

As with all cultures, it’s important to be on guard against microaggressions. Microaggressions may not be intended to cause harm, but often do. These sorts of actions can cause LGBT who haven’t come out to internalize “this is not ok”.

If you know an LGBTQ+ youth who may be struggling, consider contacting a social worker.

Wrapping Up

For additional resources and to learn more about embracing differences, check out our resource page.

Everything You Need to Know About HVAC Heating Systems

Client: Pomona Valley Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning

When the California Board of Tourism talks about SoCal winters, they usually mention the 72°F and sunny afternoons while skipping over the part about 40°F winter nights and chilly residential homes that never seem to heat up. And while Midwestern tourists may not quite grasp the difference between tropical weather and a Mediterranean climate (to be fair, there are palm trees everywhere), those of us who are used to watching the temperature on the weather app plunge thirty degrees every evening sure do!

If you’re tired of sleeping in socks and sweats under a mile-high stack of blankets, it might be time to finally get your old heater repaired! In this blog, we break down how HVAC heaters work and what type is best for your home.

How HVAC Heaters Work

Let’s first examine how these systems operate to better understand the benefits of a fully functioning HVAC. 

HVACs are not a single unit, and neither are their heating components. HVACs are systems made up of multiple parts installed throughout your home that work together to regulate temperature. Your heater is just one of many parts. You also have a thermostat, filter, fan, humidifier, and possibly a whole system of ducts. 

Two of the most common types of HVAC heaters are furnaces and heat pumps. 

Furnaces

Most homes use furnaces to keep them warm. Furnaces can run on a variety of fuel sources, including oil, natural gas, and electricity. Fuel enters the furnace through a pipe and lights the burner. The burner generates heat. This heat passes through a heat exchanger, warming the air from your home’s ductwork. A blower fan then pushes the warm air through the ducts, distributing warm air throughout your home. This process repeats itself until your home is warmed, at which point the fuel switches off and the furnace stops producing heat.

Furnaces work most effectively when the temperature outside is really low (below 50°F), because they produce heat quickly.

Heat Pumps 

Heat pumps work year-round to regulate your home’s temperature and can switch automatically between heating and cooling. These systems are ideal for a variety of climates because they can easily provide both cool air and heat without the need for homeowner intervention.

In the summer months, heat pumps work to cool your home. Once the system registers a drop in temperature, a reversing valve in the outdoor unit turns on. This allows the heat pump to absorb heat energy from the outside air and transfer it into the home to warm it up. The reversing valve is never something that the homeowner needs to touch; the heat pump knows to switch functions on its own!

Heat pumps have the same parts as split-system air conditioners and work in the same way when they’re needed for cooling.

What Heating System is Best for Your Home?

Furnaces are best for cold weather when the nighttime temperature drops below 50°F. Heat pumps are typically more energy efficient and work well in just about any environment.

Heating System Installation and Repairs

At Pomona Plumbing, Heating & Air, we put the H back in HVAC with full-service repairs for heat pumps, furnaces, and more! Our certified technicians will have your HVAC blowing warm toasty air in no time, so you no longer have to worry about frozen digits and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. 

For a quote, call (909) 764-3214.

Historic Fences of Chicago

Client: Bespoke Fence

Preserving Architectural Heritage

Take a stroll down Hoyne Street through one of Chicago’s oldest neighborhoods, and you’ll see some of the most beautifully crafted wrought iron fences from here to Nova Scotia. They have posts that look like chess pieces painted black as night. Lily-shaped spikes are fixed to the tops of narrow poles (known as fleur-de-lis, but also called Romeo spikes because protective parents installed them to keep young lovers from trying to sneak into their daughters’ bedrooms late at night). Running between poles are carefully fashioned spirals that make the solid iron they’re crafted from seem fluid and full of movement. 

You don’t have to be a landscape architect to recognize the craftsmanship and history encased in these iron masterpieces. Whether you notice them or not, everyone who walks past these fences is filled with a sense of nostalgia for Old Chicago. They serve as visual representations of an age that has come and gone. Something extraordinary and unique that left its mark on the world and made people proud to call Chicago home.

Passersby hoped that by glimpsing these artifacts from Chicago’s history, they might get a taste of how it once was — when an exploding jazz scene made the whole city swing, and gangsters in pinstripe suits ran the streets. They are vestiges of Chicago’s Golden Age, which kicked off with the World’s Fair in 1893, heralding the arrival of the modern era, and ended with the stock market collapse of 1929. These fences are a powerful reminder of what makes the Windy City so unique. 

Hall of Fame Fencemakers 

Adorning the gates of Chicago’s most famed fences are small shields indicating the steel companies that crafted them. These include W.T. Barbee Fence Works, Cincinnati Iron Fence Co., and The Stewart Iron Works. At Bespoke Fence, we continue to draw inspiration from these master metal workers as we work to create custom fences for Chicago homes.

What Happened to Classic Chicago Fences?

The greatest challenge to preserving these historic landmarks is the nemesis of all ironworks — rust. Iron is particularly susceptible to rust compared to other metals, which is why so many of these once-great fences have sunken into a state of decay. 

Following the Stock Market collapse in the late 1920s and then the boom of mass-produced consumer goods in the 1950s, traditional iron Chicago fences fell out of style. They weren’t as affordable as the newly popular and lighter-weight aluminum fencing, which, unlike iron, doesn’t rust. And the elaborate style of the old neighborhoods’ more traditional fences simply didn’t match the style of more modern homes. 

However, Chicago iron wrought fences persist in a newer, more modern form. Stripped of their more extravagant qualities and made with longer-lasting materials, the look of old Chicago still persists with aluminum fences. 

Old Chicago Style Fences for Modern Homes

Celebrate your Chicagoland land heritage by installing a Chicago Aluminum Fence from Bespoke Fence!

Durable, affordable, and quintessentially Chicago — Bespoke’s aluminum fences capture the essence of Old Chicago without the over-the-top baroque style, which, though it might work for historic homes, clashes with modern designs. Because Bespoke’s fences are made with aluminum instead of iron, they won’t rust, are lighter and easier to install, and are infinitely more affordable. 

Bespoke’s Chicago Aluminum Fence balances Midwestern tradition with modern design. And nothing looks better next to a Bears sign!

The Art of Metal Sculpture: Combining Craftsmanship and Creativity

Client: Latest Metalworks

Metalworking is as much of an art as anything ever attempted by Da Vinci or Michelangelo! In this article, we pay tribute to the fine art of metalworking and share some of the amazing metalworks that have inspired us to push the limits of what’s possible.

The Art of Metalworking

Other artists start with an empty canvas or blank sheet of paper. They use pens and brushes to bring their ideas to life. Slowly, little strokes and scribbles coalesce into shapes and figures. 

We begin with raw metals extracted from the heart of the Earth. Our engineers use lasers and press brakes to apply searing heat and unimaginable pressure. Little by little, we reshape the elements to fit our own designs. 

They add shadows and textures to create depth.

We use welding torches to combine several designs into a single masterpiece.

They create images that leap off the page.

We build structures that will wow visitors for millennia to come…

Let’s see Banksy try that!

Considerations of the Craft

Metalworking requires an eye for design and a flare for style, as well as a detailed understanding of physical engineering. And it’s certainly not for the faint of heart! The sophisticated (and potentially dangerous) tools we use to craft our designs command our full attention and respect.

At Latest Metalworks, we create jaw-dropping masterpieces that will last multiple lifetimes. Our designs are built to be safe and practical while completely blowing people’s minds. (Just check out ). Our creations involve extraordinary coordination among artisans, all working together to create art that transcends themselves and their individual specialties. 

To honor the art of metalworking, we would like to share some inspirations from throughout the ages—from the far-off Bronze Age to the present day!

Metalworks from Across the Ages

The golden Mask of Agamemnon captures the face of an ancient king thought to have led the Achaeans in Homer’s legendary retelling of the Trojan War (which may or may not have actually happened). Its features bring us face-to-face with the stuff of legends. 

Part of what makes this mask so impressive is that it was created using simple tools: heating a single gold sheet, hammering against a wooden face mold, and carving details later with a sharp tool. But this creation is not nearly as impressive as the death mask of another ancient king.

The Mask of Tutankhamun is the most celebrated piece of ancient art! Rediscovered in 1925, it’s fashioned from two layers of high-karat gold weighing more than 22 lbs and inlaid with a variety of precious gems, including lapis lazuli, quartz, obsidian, carnelian, amazonite, turquoise, and faience! 

The craftsmanship and ingenuity that went into creating these two beautiful masks without any of the high-tech tools we use today inspire our team to greater levels of craftsmanship. 

Regarding modern, large-scale metalworks, few pieces compare to The Chicago Picasso and Cloud Gate (a.k.a. “The Bean”) — both centrally located in downtown Chicago.

The Chicago Picasso — crafted by legendary artist Pablo Picasso — expanded the idea of public art as potentially more than just commemorative installations, such as statues and memorials. The Chicago Picasso represents art for art’s sake. Its mesmerizing metal curves and bizarre angles encourage the mind to explore our physical world's strange and often overlooked intricacies.

Equally mind-blowing as anything attempted by Picasso is the Cloud Gate by British artist Anish Kapoor. Better known as the Chicago Bean, this vast installation stands over 33 feet high and 66 feet wide. The Bean is made up of 168 stainless steel plates precisely welded together and highly polished to hide any visible seams. The sculpture's surface reflects the city's skyline. Its reflective underbelly warps and multiplies visitors' images as they snap endless selfies. 

These two mesmerizing sculptures not only redefine what’s possible, but they also bring joy to everyone who lays eyes upon them. This has inspired us to test the boundaries of our imagination as we work long hours in sometimes uncomfortable conditions to craft art that will thrill spectators for years to come.

The Latest from Latest Metalworks

If you enjoyed seeing art that fuels our imagination, you’ll love seeing the pieces it’s inspired us to create!

Make sure to follow Latest Metalworks on Instagram to check out our latest and greatest creations. 

Metal Finishing Techniques: A Guide to Enhancing Your Projects

Client: Latest Metalworks

After working around the clock fabricating, welding, and lasering (turning our white work shirts brown and black with grease and grime) you finally have it — a 40 foot tall, larger-than-life metal sculpture. So, now what?

Now that we’ve done the hard part, here comes the other hard part. After designing and building your dream art installation, the skilled craftsmen at Latest Metalworks get to work putting the finishing touches on your pièce de résistance. Which means a lot more dirty work! Pretty soon, our formerly white work shirts will be solid black with rainbow polka dots from polish, powder coating, and paint. (Why do we keep buying white?)

Depending on the desired pattern, color, and texture, our master metalworkers use a variety of techniques and processes to make your finished project absolutely breathtaking. These include heating, powder coating, electroplating, hot-dipping, electro-galvanizing, sanding, brushing, polishing, and painting. And if that sounds like a lot, that’s because IT IS.

Below we offer a comprehensive breakdown of what each process is and how it helps transform your metal sculpture into ageless art.

Heat Treatments 

Heat treatments affect the hardness and durability of the final product. Some materials and applications demand that the metal be hard, while others benefit from it being more ductile.

Annealing softens metal to improve ductility and relieve internal stresses by heating it to a specific temperature and then cooling it slowly. Annealing is used for metals that have become too hard and brittle after processes like cold working or welding. The slow cooling rate allows the new structure to form uniformly, while cooling too quickly might result in residual stresses and hardening.

Similarly, tempering reduces brittleness in quenched metal by reheating to a lower temperature and then cooling. Quenching, on the other hand, increases hardness by rapidly cooling the heated metal in water or oil. While case hardening balances the best of both worlds, as it hardens the surface layer of the metal while keeping the core softer and more ductile.

Powder Coating 

Powder coating gives your piece the finish and texture you want — whether that’s matte, gloss, solid, metallic, clear, or colored. A powder coat finish protects the metal against corrosion, chemicals, and weathering.

Dry powder is applied using an electrostatic gun. The coated metal is then heated in an oven to melt and cure the powder, forming a smooth and uniform finish.

Hot-Dipping and Electro-Galvanizing

Hot-dipping involves submerging metal in molten zinc. When cooled, the result is a thick, durable zinc layer to protect the metal from corrosion.

Electro-galvanizing involves immersing metal in a zinc solution and passing an electric current through it, causing zinc ions to deposit on the surface. This process also creates a zinc layer, but one that’s much thinner and more uniform when compared to the thicker layer that results from hot-dipping metal in molten zinc.

Polishing

Polishing involves using abrasive materials to grind the metal, removing any rough spots or imperfections, then applying polish using a buffing wheel. The result is a smooth, mirror-like surface.

Just think of a fresh off the lot Mercedes or the Chicago Bean to appreciate the majestic appearance of freshly polished metal. It’s the type of surface that makes you think, “Hey good looking,” when you walk by your own reflection. 

Sanding and Brushing 

Fine grit sand paper and wire brushes are used to give metal a raw, rugged look. 

Make Your Project POP!

For coatings, treatments, and rugged appearances, you know who to call. From start to finish, the pros at Latest Metalworks will help you achieve your vision for your metal masterpiece.

We offer a wide variety of highly technical secondary operations for every look imaginable. Smooth, glossy, colored, reflective, rugged, or raw — we have what you need.