To all the dads and grandfathers out there, I want to wish you a Happy Father’s Day! I hope everyone has a great day today and be safe!

When your child goes off to college, he or she is all alone. If that thought fills you with dread, you’re definitely a parent. Fortunately, you can assuage your fears if you follow a few steps.

Calm Down

Image via Flickr by Louis Law

The first thing you need to do is calm down if you find yourself getting anxious. As the day when your child takes the early step into adulthood that is college looms before you, there may be temptation to over think everything. You may even feel tempted to ground your child just to keep them home a little bit longer. You must fight these urges and accept that while things won’t be perfect, they will be okay.

Remember How You Were at That Age

One of the worst things a parent of a teenager can do is to forget what it’s like to be that age. There’s a lot of pressure as a person goes from being a child to being an adult, and the process is a slow one. Many teens will test both their personal limits and their parents’ patience. But were you so much better behaved and responsible at that age? Chances are, other than technology you weren’t much different. Somehow you survived and prospered in spite of yourself.

Help Your Child Learn to Study Well

Studying is a skill that has to be self-motivated in college. If your child isn’t very studious, at least give him or her the tools in case this trait develops later on. Whatever you do, do not allow yourself to become a crutch that your child can endlessly lean on. Your child needs to learn how to handle his or her own academic career, not to mention the future once school is finished for good. Good study and research skills are worth a great deal to most anyone’s future career.

Ensure Your Child Gets the Best Scores Possible

Tests like the SAT and ACT are no joke. They can mean the difference between not getting into a desired school and getting into the school’s honors program. So ACT prep, such as that offered by Huntington ACT test preparation, can be a significant boon to your child’s academic future. Do not allow your child to be discouraged if his or her initial scores are less than stellar. Everyone occasionally does poorly, and only the last time one takes these tests really matters.

Instruct Your Child on Reasonable Etiquette

Treating people well is a trait that far too many people go off into the world not possessing. When you observe how your child acts towards others, be aware that you will not always be there to advocate for their actions. In the real world and in college, how your child treats other people will decide much of their ultimate fate. Do your best to provide a solid example, and make sure you consistently lay down the law for your child starting at an early age.

There is a lot you can do to help your child be successful in college. Keep your mind clear and do all you can to impart the crucial skills, and everything should be fine.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of White Cloud for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

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Check out my White Cloud video:

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Technology is a great way to help any business work well, and the best time to get to the top is when you are first starting out. With innovation, you can explore a niche or a method that no one else has ever tried before. The following are a few ways you can take your startup to the next level.

Use Crowdsourcing Better

Image via Flickr by dperdue

The nature of crowdsourcing is a fairly new one in its current application, but its roots are as old as the classical auction. You get a group of people together who can all benefit from an offering, and together the most efficient way to solve the problem at hand tends to develop as a result of competition. In an auction this means raising the most money, but in a crowdsourcing environment this usually results in the best-tailored solution.

Now you can make the process better somehow. Traditional bidding sites like Elance and Odesk have allowed workers from around the world to gather around job offerings, but how can the process be expanded and made better? If you can solve that riddle, you can create a very successful crowdsourcing business.

Make the Process Faster

A funny thing happened when a person broke the four-minute mile. Within a year, more than a dozen other people had broken it. There is always a speed that everyone assumes is the best one possible, but there is often nothing magical about this speed at all. Any way you can make a given process faster and keep it providing what it needs to provide can be endlessly helpful to a lot of people, both in their businesses and in their personal lives. Finding a faster way to accomplish any worthwhile goal, particularly if it helps other businesses to be more profitable and efficient, is a great way to make your startup stand out.

Help Human Life in a New Way

As philanthropist Lindsay Rosenwald has previously done, combining kindness and biotechnology may be a great way for your startup to shine. When you help human life, such as by extending the lifespan or finding a successful treatment to a dreaded illness, you are providing a useful service that people will pay for. The greatest thing about this is that once your company is turning a profit, you can turn your attentions to helping those who can’t afford to pay for your services. This way you can be both kind to others and profitable for yourself and your shareholders.

Connect Businesses That Don’t See Their Connection

As the old saying goes, everything connects to everything. In a lot of cases, people don’t necessarily see this connection. If you can see a connection between two businesses that neither of them sees, and this connection can produce a tangible benefit to both companies, you have the potential for something truly amazing. Use your vision, and your startup can become a great facilitator.

There are many ways your startup business can innovate, and they all essentially boil down to helping others. If you can create something that helps someone in a new way, this is the kind of innovation that will take you far.