08.03.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:00 am by admin
To Honor and Build Trust in Your Relationship
By Otto Collins
“One Way To Honor and Build Trust in Your Relationship and
Each Other”
There are things in every relationship that are sacred. One of these
things that we think is most sacred is the trust that can be
developed if both people in the relationship honor that thoughts
and feelings, whether they are of a positive nature or negative,
will be shared first with each other.
Here’s an example from our own lives to show you what we mean…
Both of us, in our previous relationships, felt the need to talk to
friends and not always our spouses about what was really on our
minds. We often chose to tell our inner most secrets and frustrations
to our friends and omit this information when we talked with our
spouses.
Although this wasn’t the primary reason both of these relationships
ended in divorce, we think that it was one way that trust was eroded
and not built in those relationships.
When we got together in our relationship, we figured out that if we
hoped to have a relationship built on trust and deep connection that
this type of intimate sharing with others was a pattern of behavior
that had to stop.
If there was conflict, disagreement or challenges that came up, we
agreed that we would talk to each other instead of venting our frustrations
with a friend or co-worker. This was our sacred agreement with each
other.
We just love Bruce Springsteen’s song, “If I should fall behind”
because it says exactly how we have chosen to be in a relationship
with each other. In the song he says, “Let’s make our steps clear
so the other can see.”
To us, this means telling the other person what we are thinking as
soon as we have sorted it out ourselves. We don’t feel like we have
to hide or sugar-coat our truth about a situation or unload on a friend
how we are truly feeling without first telling each other.
This doesn’t mean we never talk to friends and other family members
about our thoughts or what’s happening in our lives. Quite the
contrary.
What we are saying is that we have agreed to tell each other first,
things that are personal and feelings that come up about the other
person.
If you find that you have been complaining to other people about your
partner or someone close to you and you are not telling your partner
how you are feeling, stop.
By talking to others first about your issues instead of the person
involved, you will continue to erode the safety and trust in your relationship.
By talking to others about your issues instead of the person your conflict
is with, you could be playing the role of the victim or martyr.
Believe it or not, you may actually be enjoying the sympathy and
attention from other people that you are getting from complaining
about the situation with your partner.
If you want to build trust and create a close, connected
relationship, we’ve found that this kind of behavior has to stop.
Choosing to let your partner know where you stand and what is
going on inside you is not only a way to build trust but also a way
to deepen your connection as well…
For more information about building trust in your relationships, go to
http://www.collinspartners.com/relationships/honor.htm
Susie and Otto Collins
P.O. Box 1614
Chillicothe, Ohio 45601
(740) 772-2279
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Posted in Business at 12:00 am by admin
Part 2 of 5 On The Home Business Set-Up Guide
By Alvin Narsey
Part 2 of 5 On The Home Business Set-Up Guide
Dear Reader,
These articles will provide a step by step guide on how to start and run a home based business based on my experiences and other home business owners. This is part 2 in a series of 5 articles. They are written in a basic format and where possible main points are summarised in an attempt to be understood by all. I have tried to minimise the technical jargon as much as possible.
So lets jump right in and see what we need to know about starting and running a home based business.
Regards,
Alvin
http://www.parttimeincome.org
I publish Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people like YOU! If you’re looking for the best rated home business opportunities, latest time saving tools and helpful support from a friend in the business, come by and a grab a F-R-E-E subscription today at: http://www.parttimeincome.org
Legal Structures
The legal structure of your business is very important as it is a function of liabilities and tax deduction. The most common structures are:
§ Sole trader
§ Partnership
§ Company
§ Trust
Sole Trader
When you are a sole trader you are personally responsible and liable for the business and its activities. Commonly you may start out as a sole trader, and as you expand, you will need to seek out partners or investors. Your accountant is the best person to advise you if this is the best structure for your business.
Partnership
This arrangement is where you and your partner are liable for anything related to your business. It is a very good idea to get a solicitor to write up a partnership agreement to avoid disputes down the track.
Company
This is a legal entity liable for the debts it incurs and paying tax on income. Your accountant can help you set a company up, or you can buy one off the shelf, which may be more cost effective.
Trust
Depending on your personal circumstances, and the country you live in, trusts can be useful in business and estate planning. They can be quite complex, and again, your accountant is the best person to speak too.
Registering Your Business Name
You can operate a business under your own name or register a business name. Registration of a business name allows you to operate under that name.
Select a name for your business that describes to your customer what you do. A descriptive name promotes and advertises your business more effectively.
Licences And Permits
Depending on your municipality, you may need licences and permits. Do the right thing and check with your local council. Doing the right things now will save you a lot of unnecessary leg work later.
Insurance
Often overlooked, insurance is an important part of your risk management plan. There are two types of insurance: general insurance for loss/damage of assets and risk insurance which is your personal insurance cover.
Ensure your business insurance is separate to your personal insurance.
To establish the type and amount of insurance you need for your home based business, check with an insurance broker.
Managing Risk
You must have a risk management strategy for your business. Your SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis from article one, will show what could expose your business to loss and what actions to take to reduce that loss.
Marketing
As a home business entrepreneur, you must understand what your customers want and give it to them. You must strive to have a service or product that meets and excels your customers needs and expectations. This is what makes them come back to buy from you, and this is how you grow your profit. Try and think like your customers and you will find they want:
§ Satisfaction
§ Value for money
§ Performance
§ Reliability
§ Presentation
Don’t confuse marketing with selling. In a home based business, marketing is much much more and involves all aspects of the business- pricing, advertising, customer service to sales.
Marketing Mix
Communication with your customers is essential and develops the framework for your marketing strategy. You must tell your customers these important bits of information
§ Product- describe it in full detail, its special features and of course how it will benefit the customer
§ Price – explain your pricing strategy, don’t forget to consider your costs, discounts you will offer, payment policies
§ Promotion – choose the most effective for your type of business. If you don’t know, think about what you would prefer if you were the customer. Eg: telemarketing, flyers, e-mail campaigns
§ Place – what place will your product be so customers can find it and contact you. How will you deliver the product to your customers? You may need to consider getting a website.
Your Business Image
Even though you are running a home based business, make sure your office is comfortable and professional in appearance. Your website also needs to project the same kind of professionalism
Location
Your home based business needs its own dedicated area. Very often the living and working areas muddle into one, not allowing you to distinguish which is for work and for play. Keeping these separate is essential for running a home business. You must ensure that all family members understand this too.
A telephone is essential in your home office as it will be the first point of contact with your clients. Installing a second phone line separate from the personal line is essential along with a cell phone, answering machine and a pager. Talk to your telecommunications company, very often they have some great packages suited to small businesses.
Furniture And Equipment
Choose furniture that is comfortable and professional. This helps distinguish this area from the rest of the household.
Your office needs equipment and here are a few to get you kick started:
§ Computer
§ Chair(S)
§ Desk
§ Fax machine
§ Filing cabinet
§ Mobile phone
§ Telephone
§ Heating/cooling
§ Lighting
I hope this article has set you on the path to create your own home based business and empower you to reach your financial destiny.
In the next article, I will cover some of the ins and outs of operating a small business from home.
I Am Making As Much Money Part Time From My Home Business As I Was Working Full Time In My 9-5 Job. Want To Hear My Story?
http://www.parttimeincome.org
I publish Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people like YOU! If you’re looking for the best rated home business opportunities, latest time saving tools and helpful support from a friend in the business, come by and a grab a F-R-E-E subscription today at: http://www.parttimeincome.org
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Posted in RSS at 12:00 am by admin
What Are RSS Feeds
By S. Housley
RSS Feeds.
RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.
Benefit to the Webmaster:
As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.
RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.
RSS allows webmasters to:
1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.
2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.
3.) Automate content delivery.
The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.
Benefit to Web Surfers:
The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.
RSS allows for users to:
1.) Easily locate information.
2.) Read condensced information or ’soundbytes’ with clearly marked and dated topic material.
3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.
4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.
RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.
I highly recommend FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com by BradSoft as a newsreader. FeedDemon is extremely easy to use and allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics. FeedDemon allows users to quickly scan, sort and scroll through headline and article summaries, while viewing the actual content in a split screen web browser.
Finding Topic Specific Relevant Feeds
In order to find feeds that provide niche information users can search Feedster. Feedster http://www.feedster.com is a rapidly growing news search engine that indexes information contained within RSS feeds. Searches for topic specific feeds can be conducted and feeds can be retrieved for syndication.
Benefit to Content Developer
While the benefits to users and webmasters are clear the distribution opportunities made available to content developers should not be overlooked. Information contained in the RSS feed can be easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach.
RSS allows for content developers to:
1.) Increase exposure in niche markets.
2.) Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.
3.) Disseminate relevant information.
4.) Define themselves as an industry expert.
5.) Automate content delivery.
RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.
The distribution potential, while albeit difficult to measure, is still attractive to all parties making the likelihood that RSS popularity will only continue to grow.
RSS Feeds to Try
Feeds exist for almost any topic consider trying these feeds out by entering the url in your feed reader:
Small Business Feed – small business tips and news
http://www.small-business-software.net/blog-feed.xml
Software Marketing Blog Summary – software marketing and online news
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml
SMS, Wireless Messaging Related News. – news related to telecom, wireless industry and NotePage’s software
http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml
Free Content Articles – collection of free content articles, updates when new article is released.
http://www.small-business-software.net/article-feed.xml
Software Marketing News – news related to software conferences, awards, software development and marketing
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/feed.xml
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net
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Posted in Dating at 12:00 am by admin
Online Dating 101 – Online Dating Basics
By Kevin Koger
Online Dating 101
by Kevin Koger
Feeling like there’s something that’s just not quite there yet in how you’re going about this whole online dating thing? Don’t feel bad, chances are you’re one of the many people who’re still pretty new to this gig. Heck, internet dating has only been around for about eight years, so obviously no one out there can claim to have all the answers.
But hey, seeing that we’ve been perfecting the art of matching people up online all eight of those years, we’d like to share a little of what we’ve learned about how to make the best of your online experience. Who knows, one of these pointers might be just what you’ve been missing in perfecting your own online dating adventures.
Therefore, without further ramblings, here are the:
TOP 10 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL ONLINE DATING
SAY CHEESE!
Look your best and submit a great photo of yourself for your profile photo. A good picture really is worth a thousand words, and research shows that you are nearly 10 times more likely to be noticed if you post a photo to your profile.
And, the same stats hold true when you contact someone you’ve noticed on the site. If you don’t have a photo, don’t be surprised if the responses aren’t too quick in coming back.
Now, don’t get mad a start making accusations about all the shallow people out there. While it may be true that some people place too much emphasis on physical appearances, the bottom line is it does make a difference when two people are meeting and making initial evaluations of their interest in each other. And, it’s also a trust thing. It is always going to be much easier to interact with a face than with a blank box.
FRESH IS GOOD
Change your profile picture and greeting occasionally, add photos to your photo album, and login regularly—this will not only get you noticed, but it will help others get a more varied and up-to-date idea of what constitutes the real you.
When something interesting happens in your life, tell us about it in your profile greeting. This is a great way to let your online friends in on what it might be like to actually spend time with you. That’s the main goal of online dating isn’t it, to find people you’d finally like to meet and spend time with face-to-face? Anyways, it’s always more fun to hear about a crazy experience you’ve just had than to read the same old descriptions of you and your cat that have been on your profile for months now.
As for photo albums, this is the icing on the cake. Not only do these photos round out and confirm the physical picture your friends are forming of you, but they also go a long way in helping others really see what makes you “you.” The head and shoulders shot of you in your profile photo is nice and all, but when they see you hanging 10, running with your Chihuahua, or shoving a big fat piece of cheesecake in your mouth … now they’re getting to know you.
I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ME
Have fun describing yourself without making excuses about why you’re on the site or who convinced you to finally go online. Tell us what makes you unique.
Believe it or not, being an online dater no longer places you on the fringes of society or even in the minority. Online dating has grown up and moved into the mainstream, and so you can now happily assume that the face-saving qualifiers of past times online are now obsolete. And, more importantly, just realize that they don’t help your cause when meeting others online.
One more thing … try to be original. Yes, I’m sure you really do like the outdoors and want to meet someone who looks good in a tux and in jeans, but so does everyone else! Tell us some things about yourself that wouldn’t necessarily come out in an elevator conversation with your tax accountant. For example, what are you passionate about? What would you do if no longer had to work for a living? What’s your favorite flavor of gelato? Do you secretly wish everyday was sampling day at the grocery store? … now it’ getting interesting!
HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
Don’t be fooled thinking telling fibs will impress that special someone enough to get relationship started… it will turn them off! Be your best self.
When you really stop and think about it, what do you think your new friend’s reaction is going to be if when you meet for the first time it’s obvious you’re not the person they thought they were going to be meeting? “Oh .. hi. I see that you’ve been dishonest with me from the get-go here, but hey, I’m still thinking we’ve got a great shot at having an open, trusting relationship for the long-term” Obviously not.
They’re going to be hurt, and disappointed. And, your relationship is unlikely to get past the wave goodbye as your friend gets back in their car to go home.
IT’S NICE TO BE NICE
Okay, so you get a little grouchy once in a while—don’t we all? However, people like nice people. Please be considerate and polite … it will make this whole online thing so much more enjoyable for all of us!
There’s an interesting social phenomenon researchers have discovered in online interactions. They’ve found people often change their standards of politeness and diplomacy when a conversation is happening online, versus face-to-face.
Don’t believe it? You might be surprised if you were to go back and look at some of the things you’ve said. Look at some messages you’ve sent, and then consider saying the exact same words in a face-to-face or a telephone conversation. Sound a little rough? Don’t feel too bad, it happens to the best of us, just try to keep this in mind the next time you’re typing out an email or instant message.
One more thing—please don’t ignore people. A quick “thanks, but no thanks” note is so much better than no reply at all. In fact, next time you’re replying to a message on the site, check out the new “Thanks but No Thanks” template. It’s a quick way to nicely let someone know you’re not interested in corresponding.
YOU CAN PICK YOUR FRIENDS …
Invite your friends along! Create Activity Groups, go on group dates, try Express Dating, enjoy travel events, and just enjoy the net together. After all, instant messaging alone isn’t enough to build solid relationships.
Group dating and group events simply make a lot of sense for online dating. Not only does it make those first dates less stressful, it often makes them more fun, and it definitely makes first meetings a much safer proposition.
Have you ever tried Activity Groups? They’re a great way to meet people with common interests in a safe, fun group setting. You can join a group that’s already been created, or you can create your own and invite all your friends to join … and their friends … and their friends … you get the point.
BREAK OUTA THAT SHELL
Don’t be afraid to make the first contact. Online dating makes it easy for all you shy ones out there to break the ice, because you get to do all the initial getting to know each other from the comfort and safety of your own computer.
To start, just send a Flirt or a quick email message saying Hi—and do it often! You might be surprised how many of our great members suffer from lack of attention from their online peers. Not only might you find someone with whom you’re very interested in maintaining contact, but you’ll probably be making someone’s day.
EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS
If your first internet efforts haven’t turned up “the perfect one,” don’t despair. Hundreds of new people sign up every day on the site, so just come back to see Who’s New. You may also want to consider expanding your searches—don’t be too intent on sticking to your itemized checklist for eternal mates.
You might also want to try some different searches from time to time. Because there are about a million different things you might find attractive in another person, it’s nice to mix up the criteria you’re searching on once in a while. For example, you can search by their Occupation, any Keyword or combination of keywords you can think
of, and many others.
UH OH … THIS MIGHT ACTUALLY BE FUN!
Don’t be afraid to have some fun along your path to relationship happiness! Enjoy getting to know people and understand that many happy relationships and even marriages start with a good ol’ friendship. And, don’t rush it!
You’ve heard animals can sense fear? Well, we humans can be pretty perceptive as well (except for that one guy who just can’t take a hint). So, don’t think others can’t sense when you’re frustrated, dejected, conceited, holier than thou, fed up, etc. etc. Put a smile on, and enjoy the ride, because even if the first few people you meet aren’t Mr./Mrs. Right, it doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun in good
conversations with them.
You may also need to be a little bit patient as you head off into the brave new world of online dating. Not all marriages are “love at first site,” and even if yours is, it may take a lot of looking before you “site” that special someone. And so, once again … enjoy the ride!
USE YOUR NOODLE
Ya know, that gray matter between your ears? That’s your noodle. Use it! Be smart, be cautious, and follow our safety guidelines, your instincts, and the spirit in all your dating activity.
Done right, online dating is a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to meet some wonderful people … just ask the thousand-plus people we’ve had submit success stories to us in the past few years! So, enjoy it, and follow these ten tips, and hopefully we’ll be getting a success story from you sometime soon.
Visit www.metromingle.com today to meet local singles in your area in a clean and wholesome environment.
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