Bargain Travel Agency

My friend Delia is the owner of a small private school. This spring her school is experiencing the crunch of reduced enrollment for next September and all staff have been asked to take a six percent salary decrease. One staff member, much to Delia’s horror, outright refused and resigned her teaching position at the school. Delia pleaded with her, telling her how valuable a teacher she was, how parents had come to count on her expertise, and essentially how the school couldn’t operate without her. The next day she had reconsidered resigning her teaching position, saying that it was because of what Delia had said regarding how valuable she was to the school.

Delia was flabbergasted! She thought that she had pampered her staff throughout the school year, giving them manicures, their birthday off, flowers or wine regularly, and dinners out. Did this staff member not see all of these treats as being rewards for her contribution to the success of the school? Guess not!

We take in and store information using the following three main representational systems:

Visual - seeing

Auditory - hearing
Kinesthetic - feeling/touching/moving

We receive our information from the outside world in primarily pictures, sounds and feelings. We tend to have a dominant preference; we either prefer to receive our information from the world in one of three ways:

1. Visually, either externally or internally in our ‘minds eye’ as an image

2. From something we hear, either externally or from our inner voice

3. Kinesthetically, from touch or feelings

Even though we experience the world using all three representational systems, we generally favor one, use another as a secondary preference, and the third usually trails far behind.

To quote Paul Newman, in the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”. This failure to communicate has been created by crossing ‘representational systems’. The teacher in question receives her information in an auditory manner. Delia, on the other hand, receives her information visually, or ’show me,’ ‘give me things,’ ‘let me see you do something’. Delia has been ’showing’ her staff how valuable they are, where this staff member needed to ‘hear’ it.

When you can figure out other people’s representational systems or what sense they prefer to use when taking in information, you can communicate on their wavelength and enter their model of the world. The result is - presto, fewer communication mix-ups and instant rapport.

Lesley Cordero is President of Cordero Consulting offering personal growth solutions in the form of workshops, keynote presentations, and Internet information resources. Subscribe to her free ezine “Deep Linking” at http://www.LesleyCordero.com and receive FREE the Special Report: Deep Linking - Articles on Change & Transformation. Are You Ready … To See Things Differently?® is her new e-book.

More than $117 billion passed hands from Internet shoppers to Internet vendors in 2004, according to the statistical research firm comScore. That’s billion, with a B. Compared to the year before, the figure represents a whopping 24 percent increase in sales. Compared to the early 1990s, when the Web was a questionable commercial venture, today’s $117 billion is proof-positive that the Web is the full-fledged money-making machine. It seems to be a big enough pie that any merchant with a Web site can cut out his heaping slice.

Not so fast. As any merchant who’s tried to take a bite out of the Internet will tell you, turning a profit online is not as simple as throwing a few pages together. Professional Web sites cost big bucks for design, consultation, and upkeep. Either you have to hire a full-time editor or technician to manage your Web store, or you need to pay three-digit hourly rates to contract Web professionals. Then you have to face fees for Web hosting, broadband access, and IT maintenance.

Even after you expend all of this capital and launch your Web site, you’re still not guaranteed anything. Your site will only be one among millions, if not billions. Yes, that’s billions with a B again. The Internet, after all, is like a clear sky on a dark night. How can you expect a customer to pick your star out from among all of the others that shimmer for their attention?

On the Web you’ll quickly learn that attracting your clientele-and building your Internet-based business-is just as tough as it was when you first started your brick-and-mortar shop. It takes smart investing, creative marketing, a little luck, and a lot more know-how.

What’s great about the business side of the Web, however, is that your old-fashioned know-how translates quite well on the Web. A great example is the timeless merchant adage: “Location, location, location.” This saying holds true on the Web, too. You can place your store’s site in a spot on the Web where no one will discover you, or you could position it on a “busy corner” on the Internet.

One such spot are online classified sites. These sites provide similar services as you would get from a newspaper classified. Sellers can place ads online that describe a particular product for sale. Buyers browse these ads and contact sellers when they’re interested. Online classifieds, though, are far more dynamic. They allow a merchant to display dozens, if not hundreds, of their goods with pictures and descriptions. And believe it or not, some online classified sites allow you to do this for free. Yes, that’s free with an F.

The benefits don’t stop there. As a merchant on a classified site, you can enjoy:

• A store that never closes. Your goods are for sale 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The Internet never turns off.

• A mall of online shoppers. Think of a classified site as a virtual shopping mall, with your grouping of ads under your own virtual storefront. By having a storefront, this allows you to have your own web page and listings, under the umbrella of the classified site.

• A chain reaction of shopping. “Real” shoppers go to a mall to visit one store, but often they end up browsing through all of the stores in the mall. The same is true of virtual shoppers. Even when they visit a classified site looking for one particular thing, they’re likely to “spill over” to your storefront out of curiosity. At the very least, it leads to advertising for your store; at best, business.

• An advantage over pure Web merchants. Your classified site will pit you against wily online vendors who only sell their wares on the Web. This is where your brick-and-mortar business comes in handy. It’s proven that shoppers seem to trust online merchants that have a real address and a real store somewhere.

• A solution to the intricacies of the Internet. Many classified sites can help with setting up your ads and with designing your storefront, providing you with instant IT IQ. For your buyers, the sites offer the security that Web shoppers demand to protect them from identify theft and fraud.

As mentioned before, many classified sites charge absolutely nothing for all of these benefits. The listings, the shopping traffic, the sense of business community, the advertising-you receive all of these perks for free. Oh, and don’t forget your piece of the $117 billion dollar pie.

Donald Lee is the public relationship manager for Buysellcommunity.com. Buysellcommunity provides free classified listing services for individuals and businesses to market their products and services online. For global and localized classifieds, please visit

http://www.buysellcommunity.com - Free Buy & Sell Classifieds

Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and
Nothing But the Truth www.leadingonedge.com/truth

At the offices of one of my clients there was a fellow who I’ll
call “Moe.” Moe was your typical pontificator. At any time we
saw Moe he was standing outside of someone’s cubicle or sitting
on someone’s office, coffee cup in hand, waxing poetic about the
latest dumb decision management made, the idiots that run his
division, or last night’s baseball game. Moe had an opinion on
everything and was very free about letting you know every detail
of his opinion. There was no such thing as a five-minute
conversation with Moe. Unless you excused yourself for whatever
reason you were there for at least fifteen minutes listening to
his philosophy. The problem was that Moe was friends with the
person managing our contract so we had to put up with him. Moe
was particularly problematic during meetings. He diverted
agendas, disrupted meeting topics, and wasted tremendous amounts
of time. Despite all this, Moe was a long-time company employee
and understood his job well. But he was still a big pain in the
hindquarters. It’s likely that that you’ve worked with a person
like Moe. You can do your best to avoid him, but there he is,
ready to give you an earful about something. So how do you
handle the Moes of the world during meetings? How do you keep
things on track? How do you avoid frustrating everyone else in
the meeting when the pontificator revs up his engine? The first
thing you can do about the pontificator at your meeting is to
take a good hard look at whether the pontificator absolutely
needs to be at the meeting. Will the pontificator contribute
valuable content and perspective that will add value to the
meeting? If not avoid having the pontificator at the meeting in
the first place. If the pontificator needs to be there, try to
talk with him beforehand and solicit his help in keeping the
meeting moving forward. Spend a few minutes reviewing the agenda
and get him oriented to the meeting topic. If he has opinions or
viewpoints that he wants to air, get him to do it with you
beforehand and try to incorporate some of his viewpoint into the
topic. If he sees that he has been heard and if some of his
thinking is baked into your agenda, the pontificator is more
likely to be a good soldier and not hijack your meeting. If
you’ve taken this step and the pontificator still feels the need
to take control of your meeting, your next mission is to
preserve the purpose of the meeting, keep things focused on the
agenda, and avoid wasting any of the other attendee’s time. It
is vitally important that you monitor what your pontificator is
saying and keep them focused on the agenda item. If he continues
to drift off topic onto his own agenda item ask to have the item
taken offline. If it continues then it is completely within
bounds to cut the person off and bring things back to your
agenda. Whatever you do, don’t lose control of the agenda. Your
credibility is at stake with other meeting attendees; losing
control of the agenda means a loss of credibility, which you’ll
now need to work to regain. Pontificators don’t have to spell
doom and gloom to your meetings. If you can ensure that they
truly need to be involved in the meeting, get them on your side,
and control them when they veer off path, you can still get
things done when they are involved.

Writing a safety manual is a tough job and most larger corporations outsource such jobs or they have someone on staff with the proper credentials in risk management. Imagine writing the safety manuals for NASA? I had the opportunity to be in the unique position of being able to imagine just such a thing when writing our company safety manuals. It takes lots of studying and review of case law to do it properly. Each industry is somewhat different and hopefully you know your industry and company well enough to give it a shot.

Below is an outline, which you can use to assist you in writing your company safety manual, it is written for my company in the car wash business so it will need a little modification for your use. First I recommend that you print this article and even if you do not think of safety as rocket science, for this exercise pretend that it is. It is that serious. Safety is paramount in any company and a few preventative policies firmly in place can prevent death or injury and prevent expensive lawsuits, which could bankrupt your company.

First I recommend that you print out this outline and then modify it so that it fits your business or industry. Then put pen to legal pad and write up to five paragraphs for each item number and letter. Once completed this will be your rough draft. Give this to your secretary to type up and triple space. Then bring this up in your next team meeting and get some additional insight from a couple star employees. Safety is everyone’s business, as the saying goes. After a few revisions you are ready to turn this into a manual. Before completing this project take this plan and discuss it with a safety specialist in your industry for pointers and possible wording, you may also find sample safety plans which you can borrow key phrases. Finally run the entire thing by an attorney specializing in OSHA Safety. Yes I know, you hate lawyers, however in this case you need them to prevent being hosed by other lawyers in the future. I sincerely hope this outline below helps you in your safety manual writing endeavors. You can thank me later, right now you have work to do.

SAFETY

I. OVERVIEW

A. Insurance

B. Driving

C. Slip And Fall

D. Parking

II. EQUIPMENT

A. Vacuum

1. Jewelry

2. Ashtrays

3. Toys

4. Money

5. Electrocution

B. Steam Cleaner

1. Fire

2. High Pressure

3. Explosion Gas/Diesel

C. Chemicals

1. Window Cleaner

2. Wax

3. Tire Dressing

4. Silicon

5. Carpet Shampoo

6. Etc.

D. Goggles

E. Boots

F. Levi’s

G. Rain Gear

H. Catching A Cold

1. Vitamins

2. Exercise

I. Car Fires

J. Earthquakes

K. Disaster Relief

L. CPR Classes

M. Car Phones

N. Accident Witness

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Do you ever make New Year resolutions only to see them broken in a few days or months? Have you stopped making resolutions because you never seem able to keep them? Here are five simple steps to help you make and keep your resolutions.

Step 1: Write them down

Committing your resolutions to paper is a very powerful way to help you keep them. Putting them on paper is in itself almost a commitment to keep to them. It also helps you to clarify your thoughts. By putting resolutions down on paper, you turn them from vague thoughts into potential actions. It is always easier to work toward something that is written down rather than a thought that is kept in your head and is subject to change at a whim. Once written down, you can display your resolutions anywhere you wish, on a wall, in your diary, on your screensaver, anywhere that you can refer to and use as a reminder.

Step 2: Tell someone else.

Telling someone else your resolutions can help you to keep to them. The other person can help, prompt and support you. Be careful who you tell though, do not tell someone who is likely to tease or ridicule you, make sure it is someone you can trust. By telling someone else, you are sharing your resolution with them, this has the added edge in that they can help you measure your progress or success. Should you slip from your resolution, they can help you get back on track. If you start to fail, they will be there to prompt you back again.

Step 3: Break them down into manageable steps.

Too many people set their resolutions in grand terms that they know they are not likely to achieve. The key to setting resolutions, as in goal setting, is to make them manageable. So if you do have a grand resolution, break it down into smaller parts and give yourself a timescale for each part. Then you can strive to achieve each part at a time, thereby maximizing your chance of success.

Step 4: Make them measurable.

Don’t be vague! Be specific about your resolutions. Make sure the outcome is something that is tangible, something that you or others can see. Make sure you have some way of recognizing or knowing when you have achieved your outcome.

Step 5: Reward yourself.

Go on, treat yourself. Give yourself a reward at each and every step along the way to achieving your final outcome. Do make sure, though, that the rewards are no greater than the outcome itself! Perhaps make the final reward something that you can share with any friend(s) to whom you told your resolution at the outset.

Douglas Woods is a fully qualified life coach. You can find more about his work on his website at http://www.dougwoods.com.