Archive for May, 2008

10 Tips to Care for Your Antique Ceramics

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

By Martin Swinton To care for your antique ceramics you need a gentle touch and theyll last you a long time. This month well give you some useful tips to help you care for them. 1. When you are cleaning delicate ceramics, remember to use a soft-bristled brush to wash antique ceramics in warm soapy water. 2. Rinse with warm, clear water. 3. Dont rub ceramics dry; let them dry naturally. 4. Avoid abrasive products and bleach. 5. Avoid soaking antique ceramics. If there are any repairs, extended soaking could loosen them. 6. Avoid plate hangers. They do great damage to antique ceramics because over time the pressure from the hanger will cause cracks. 7. Display ceramics on sturdy plate stands or plate rails. 8. Avoid hanging antique ceramics such as cups, pots or vases by their handles or other weak areas. 9. Dont attempt repairs. It is tricky work and youll never be able to match the paint colours exactly on your own. Bring a damaged ceramic to a qualified ceramics restorer. Repairing a bad restoration disaster will cost you more than fixing it right the first time. 10. Avoid serving food on restored ceramics; the chemicals used in the restoration could be hazardous. Martin Swinton owns Take-A-Boo Emporium, an antique shop located in Toronto, Canada. He does furniture restoration, caning and rushing repairs, custom reproductions, upholstery, teaches courses on antiques and does appraisals for estates and community events. He can be reached at 416-785-4555 or by visiting http://www.takeaboo.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Martin_Swinton http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Tips-to-Care-for-Your-Antique-Ceramics&id=62715 how do personal loans work instant online payday loans quick payday loan kansas and federal taxes taken out of paycheck

The 7 Habits of Highly-Effective Trade Shows

Monday, May 26th, 2008

By Mat Kelly Steven R. Covey has helped millions of people in their business and professional lives with his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The Seven Habits, first written 17 years ago, has proven to be an effective guide for personal and professional development. And these principles, when applied to your trade show experience, can dramatically improve your experience at the event and your results. Treating your portable trade show display like your portable office is the key to maximizing your effectiveness at each and every event. The purpose of a trade show is connecting with people, and portable trade show displays enable you to create a space for educating prospects about what your company has to offer and qualifying leads to pitch them for a sale or follow up with them later. Heres how to apply Coveys 7 Habits. Habit 1: Be Proactive Planning is the key to maximizing your trade show experience. Weeks preceding the show, you should exercise your marketing muscles. Let your existing customers and prospects know you will be in attendance. If you have a new product on the horizon, this may be an opportunity to generate some buzz by talking about an unveiling or first-time demonstration at the show. Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind What type of ROI are you shooting for? Do you want to inform prospects about your industry and how your product will help them, or will your prospect likely be familiar with your industry already? What are your leads and sales goals for the event? What is your follow-up strategy, and how soon will you be following up with your prospects? Habit 3: Put First Things First Before you even get to the show, how is the morale of your sales team who will be face-to-face with prospects? Your sales team is a reflection of the company if they arent enthused about the show, youre wasting their time and the companys money by sending them. If you sense that your trade show staff is dreading the event, try something spontaneous to get them hyped about the company and your products. Ideas as simple as attending a sporting event, a concert or a day at the amusement park on the companys dime could boost morale. And when its time for the show to begin, what is your plan of action to best utilize everyones strengths? How will you most efficiently distribute use of their time? Habit 4: Think Win/Win Its a very, very old marketing principle that is too often overlooked. Very fundamental to any marketing effort is finding a win/win balance where the customer gets what they need and you get what you need. Because time is of the essence at a trade show, you must figure out how to get the customer to stop at your portable trade show display, quickly qualify them, and assess: whether or not they are your target market, whether they are immediately ready to buy or need more information before they buy or, if they are not a prospect now, could they be one in the future? Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood What is the customers need? How can you fulfill that need/solve their problem? Clearly, if the customer has stopped at your portable trade show display, they are interested in your product. But the first step in qualifying is figuring out what need attracted them to your portable trade show display. Phrases such as What brings you by here today, or What may I do to help you? are good ice breakers to ease the conversation from generalities and politely get to the point. Habit 6: Synergize Principles of Creative Communication The saying goes, You were given two ears and one mouth, and this was done for a reason. Listen more than you speak and you will learn a lot more about what the customer is telling you. Listen to their words, translate their body language. When you think youve figured it out, feed the information back to the customer in their own words and language. From there, use qualifying questions to build mutual trust and understanding to overcome any objections. Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw Now this is where it gets personal. A day or a few at a trade show requires peak performance and lots of energy it can be quite grueling if youre not prepared. What are you doing to make sure youre able to give your best before the trade show, and recharge after? In addition, a post-mortem after the show is a great way to identify mistakes, holes in planning and preparation and efficiency drains not to browbeat you and your team so you can feel sorry for yourselves, but so you can brainstorm and discuss a better strategy for next time. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People turned the tide of the American mindset about work and life empowering professionals everywhere to expect more of themselves at work and at home. The principles of this extraordinary work have been duplicated all over the world. Apply them not only to your prospects experience in your portable trade show displays, but at every level of your marketing strategy, and you will leap ahead of the competition and create the potential to dramatically improve the results at your next trade show event. Mat Kelly is the president of ExhibitDEAL, the Original Exhibit Wholesaler specializing in portable trade show displays and accessories. The company has options to fit every budget, and accessories to enhance your portable trade show exhibit space. For info, visit: http://www.exhibitdeal.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mat_Kelly http://EzineArticles.com/?The-7-Habits-of-Highly-Effective-Trade-Shows&id=439254 payday a finance simulation goodhart-wilcox instructions for the parker brothers game payday fast personal loans next day how to take a personal bank loan

Love is Not a Fantasy

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

By Christopher Walker If you hold in your mind a fantasy of meeting a partner who will keep your private life calm, and not disturb your peace, then better you buy a cat or a dog, especially one that doesnt scratch or bite. However, if you are looking for love and sacred relationship, then you better be ready for challenge and confrontation. The purpose of relationship is not pleasure. The purpose of relationship is love (support and challenge) There are many people who become obsessed with peace and therefore, stay single. They are locked away from love, because love is not peace. Love is support and challenge, just as nature intended. Nature is always adjusting herself, supporting the forest, challenging the forest. The cycle is always going on like this, over and over and over. So if you meet someone who only wants peace, you can love them, but you know they can never love you back. They are stuck in half love, unable to turn up for intimacy. The illusion of love comes from injuries from the past that create false expectations of the future. We caused the end of all our past relationships deliberately and consciously. When they ended, we wanted them to end, even if we played victim. Our ego beat us. Our ego can say get rid of that so and so, because they are challenging me The ego, our self esteem, only wants half love. Agree with me or I leave. But if seeking a peaceful relationship is a persons priority, then they cant show up. They might even accuse people of emotional abuse in order to quell the challenges to their comfort zone. People will only be half welcome in their life. Only bring the good bits home. This is delusion. It keeps so many people single and not necessarily all those people want to be single. The ego fights off sacred love. It simply wants to be right. (safe) Chris Walker http://www.innerwealth.com Chris Walker online. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Walker http://EzineArticles.com/?Love-is-Not-a-Fantasy&id=327033 payday loan funding can i use a pension plan as colateral for a personal loan bad credit loan company cash advance payday

Off The Shelf Software for Making Business Lists

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

By Lance Winslow Available to all small businesses are business lists, which come on CD ROMs. This off the shelf business list software can help you in your small business. You can see what is in your marketing area and target those business customers which could be potential clients. You can also use it to make a list of all those companies which might be competitors of your. Any small business can have at their disposal on CD ROM incredible lists of industries. Here are some of the CD ROM programs we recommend that you buy and use to create customized lists: Select-A-Phone Deluxe Business Power Finder Business Phone Disk Business American Yellow Pages 16 Million Business Listings You can search by city, area code, zip code and SIC code (Standard Industry Code). These lists can be customized by the different types of businesses within your small businesses trading area. By cross referencing data, you will end up with the name of each company, their physical address with respect to the world, their street address, telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, number of employees, names of key executives, etc. Then all this data will be hidden behind a small flag on a map of their companys exact location. When the flag is clicked on, the data will appear in a box. If the company is a fortune 500 company, you can then get a complete stockholders report with ten year graphs and charts of revenues/losses, balance sheets, subsidiaries, home offices and a complete list of executives. All this information is on another CD ROM called Multimedia Business 500 produced by ESX Interactive; you can also have graphics and chart data available on any company that is publicly traded. Probably more data than you will ever need to know; but it helps to know about the company when we make a personal sales call. It impresses executives. Of course, thats not hard. Almost anything innovative impresses these people because they live in a very structured environment and are trained not to think, only to respond and act according to set guidelines and procedures. It will really blow them away if you decide to tell them how we found out all that information. Knowledge is power; information is priceless. Have it all on CD ROM; think about it “Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance in the Online Think Tank and solve the problems of the World; www.WorldThinkTank.net/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow http://EzineArticles.com/?Off-The-Shelf-Software-for-Making-Business-Lists&id=37700 sl 0 keywords cash advance payday loans online chances loan bad credit credit union list of hard money lenders no credit check buy camcorder

Marketing Your Non-Profit

Friday, May 9th, 2008

By Tarsha Polk Recently Ive been receiving a lot of calls from non-profit entrepreneurs looking for help with promoting their programs and services to the community. So I thought it would be helpful to write an article on marketing a non-profit. For a non-profit, marketing requires not only meeting the needs of the clients you serve; but the donors needs as well. When it comes to marketing programs to the community, most non-profit organizations wont pull out their check books and hire a marketing firm, they will try some grassroots marketing efforts that leave a positive effect on the community. Grassroots marketing uses inexpensive techniques and doesn’t focus on selling the organizations mission; instead, it focuses on building strong and lasting relationships with community members who will support its mission and work along side of them. Start-up non-profits rarely consider marketing because they may not charge clients for their services to make a profit. Regardless of your funding sources, you still need to market your organization. Sit down with your board, staff, and volunteers to brainstorm on creative low-cost ways to market the organization. Be sure you have a clear understanding of who you are targeting and the services provided by similar organizations. Establish 3 to 5 marketing goals you would like to accomplish and think about how you want others to view your organization. Marketing involves a wide range of activities to make sure that you’re continuing to meet the needs of your clients and getting value in return. Here are a few tactics you can use that wont break the bank and works well for non-profits. Evangelical Marketing This doesnt have anything to do with religion. It does, however, involve finding ways to educate, influence, and inspire your supporters to spread the word about your organization. Viral Marketing Individuals pass along your message via word-of-mouth or e-mail. An example would be an email marketing campaign. Guerrilla Marketing - Unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources. An example of this is when people hold signs near busy intersections. Events An event sponsored by a company or individual to create awareness and raise funds for your programs. PR - Communicating with the public to influence their attitudes or opinions. Larger, more established organizations may have a budget to hire a marketing person for the organization because they understand the need to satisfy donors and clients. Marketing can help an organization gain the exposure it needs to attract clients, solicit donations, and obtain grants. So, if you are a non-profit entrepreneur and have not considered marketing as a part of growing the organization, its time to get on board! Tarsha Polk, The Marketing Lady is a small business marketing consultant and business coach. She can be reached at http://www.themarketinglady.com. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tarsha_Polk http://EzineArticles.com/?Marketing-Your-Non-Profit&id=399296 instant military payday loans instant decision loan online colorado employee paycheck rights payday advance no telechek

Weight Loss Program: Do Your Expectations Sabotage Your Success?

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

By Marsha J. Hudnall When women talk about their biggest obstacles to successful weight and health management, we often hear about hurdles like not enough time or knowledge to prepare healthy meals. Or frequent social occasions that involve food. Or hectic schedules, or stress in their lives, or transitions theyre currently going through. The list goes on. But if youre like many of us, its really none of these. Instead, our biggest obstacle is unrealistic expectations. All the menu planning, exercising, and positive behavior change in the world will not help the woman who has set goals that are impossible to achieve. Unfortunately, too many of us are that woman driven, all-or-nothing, compulsive perfectionists. Because of feelings of insecurity or inferiority, we idealize our standards of success and try to mold ourselves into perfect people. The irony is that the worse we feel about ourselves, the more perfectionistic we become and thus set ourselves up for failure. Its easy to understand intellectually that healthy eating, physical activity and a balanced lifestyle are key to getting and staying fit. The hard part is doing it– dealing emotionally with the slow, ordinary, day-to-day process called moderation. Unrealistic expectations dont blend well with everyday life. As such, everyday life becomes a failure; each failure undermines confidence in our ability to succeed and creates feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. After a while, its easy to stop trying. Often, we identify family and friends as saboteurs to our efforts to take care of ourselves. Were angry when we realize that, rightly so. But how often do we fail to identify the biggest saboteur of all: ourselves. We set the unrealistic expectations that cause failure. On the other hand, realistic expectations promote success. Success builds confidence. Confidence creates a feeling of self-efficacy that we can do it. That makes it easier to maintain a high level of commitment and to accept that changing behaviors takes time and is a less than perfect process. Resolve to start supporting yourself by being moderate. Learn to live, breathe, dream moderation because moderation helps you keep your life in balance which ultimately leads to success. Know that change is a back-and-forth process that is only perfect in its erratic course. Look at mistakes as learning opportunities. Be kind and gentle to yourself. 2004 Green Mountain at Fox Run, Ludlow, Vermont. Marsha J. Hudnall, MS, RD, CD is director of health communications and senior nutritionist at Green Mountain at Fox Run, an all-womens weight loss program. For over 32 years, Green Mountain at Fox Run has developed and refined a life-changing Weight Loss Spa through lifestyle change, exclusively for women. To learn more about Green Mountain at Fox Run, visit us at: http://www.fitwoman.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marsha_J._Hudnall http://EzineArticles.com/?Weight-Loss-Program:-Do-Your-Expectations-Sabotage-Your-Success?&id=6454 no credit check computers boat no credit check austin texas commercial property loan no money down nigeria money lenders