Getting Ready to Quit

* Set a date for quitting. If possible, have a friend quit smoking with you.

* Notice when and why you smoke. Try to find the things in your daily life that you often do while smoking (such as drinking your morning cup of coffee or driving a car).

* Change your smoking routines: Keep your cigarettes in a different place. Smoke with your other hand. Don't do anything else when smoking. Think about how you feel when you smoke.

* Smoke only in certain places, such as outdoors.

* When you want a cigarette, wait a few minutes. Try to think of something to do instead of smoking; you might chew gum or drink a glass of water.

* Buy one pack of cigarettes at a time. Switch to a brand of cigarettes you don't like.

On the Day You Quit

* Get rid of all your cigarettes. Put away your ashtrays.

* Change your morning routine. When you eat breakfast, don't sit in the same place at the kitchen table. Stay busy.

* When you get the urge to smoke, do something else instead.

* Carry other things to put in your mouth, such as gum, hard candy, or a toothpick.

* Reward yourself at the end of the day for not smoking. See a movie or go out and enjoy your favorite meal.

Staying Quit

* Don't worry if you are sleepier or more short-tempered than usual; these feelings will pass.

* Try to exercise-take walks or ride a bike.

* Consider the positive things about quitting, such as how much you like yourself as a non-smoker, health benefits for you and your family, and the example you set for others around you. A positive attitude will help you through the tough times.

* When you feel tense, try to keep busy, think about ways to solve the problem, tell yourself that smoking won't make it any better, and go do something else.

* Eat regular meals. Feeling hungry is sometimes mistaken for the desire to smoke.

* Start a money jar with the money you save by not buying cigarettes.

* Let others know that you have quit smoking-most people will support you. Many of your smoking friends may want to know how you quit. It's good to talk to others about your quitting.

* If you slip and smoke, don't be discouraged. Many former smokers tried to stop several times before they finally succeeded. Quit again.

If you need more help, see your doctor.

He or she may prescribe nicotine gum or a nicotine patch to help you break your addiction to cigarettes.

Office life can have its ups and downs, but having to endure a jerk can make it miserable. Office jerks take on many forms, and thus require creative strategies for dealing with them.

Handling Six Common Types

The Loud Phone-Talker. "Obviously the first step is to pull them aside quietly and ask them to lower their voice when using the phone," says Julie Jansen, a career coach, consultant, and trainer. "If this doesn't stop them, you could dish out the same treatment and stand near their cube on your cell phone and talk loudly. Or you can hold up a sign that says, 'Please turn volume down.'"

The Hang-Arounder. When confronting the co-worker who chronically lingers to chat when you are trying to make a deadline -- a subtle jerk, but a jerk nonetheless -- try standing up when they enter your office or cube. "The unspoken message of your body language will clearly tell him or her to keep it brief and head for the door," says Ken Lloyd, author of "Jerks at Work: How to Deal With People Problems and Problem People."

The Idea Stealer. There is a strong possibility that this jerk can't distinguish between a good idea and a bad one. "Somewhere along the way, slip in a really bad idea and let the jerk steal that," Lloyd says. However, beware that this might only encourage the jerk to become worse.

The Meeting Monopolizer. Get creative. "Try eliminating the chairs and making it a standup meeting," Lloyd suggests. The monopolizer will likely get thrown off and won't have time to settle into the usual routine of unproductive dominance.

The Bully. Remember, you're not in high school anymore. "Hold your ground and refuse to be bullied," says Steve Piazzale, a career and life coach who runs BayAreaCareerCoach.com. "They'll usually back off over time."

The Boss. Sometimes dealing with a jerk should not be your problem, particularly if you have a manager who is a jerk. In this case you might take a look around the company and notice several jerks. "This may be part of the company culture," Piazzale says. "In which case get out!"

More General Coping Strategies

Passive. Avoidance is the most obvious solution if you don't want a confrontation with any type of office jerk. "You can go to your boss and ask him to intervene," says Jansen. Or, if things are really unbearable, you could ask to be relocated to another part of the office.

Active. Avoidance can backfire if the jerk continues the annoying behavior. Try talking to the person. "Difficult people don't always know they're being difficult," Jansen says. "People generally don't have a very high level of self-awareness, so specific and constructive feedback is important."

If you must confront a jerk, it is wise to take the high road. Career coach Piazzale says, "Try to understand where the behavior is coming from, and tailor your response to that."

URL:http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/tools/ept/careerArticlesPost.html?post=127

1. Press Tab will hide tool bar and palette, Shift+Tab will hide only palette.

2. Hold Shift + click the top blue bar for toolbar and palette will move them to the nearest edge.

3. Double click the top blue bar, on any palette window, to minimize it.

4. Double click the gray background will bring up open file option, Hold Shift+double click will open up the browser.

5. Sick of the default gray background around your image? Select paint bucket, hold shift and click on the gray background, it will change to whatever color you have in your foreground color box.

6. In Photoshop, all "Cancel" buttons in a window can be changed to a "Reset" button by holding Alt.

7. Caps lock will switch your cursor for accuracy.

8. Press F button, it will switch between 3 different screen modes and give you more working area.

9. To draw a straight line, click then move to the end point and hold shift + click.

10. Hold Ctrl will temporary make any tool into move tool until you release Ctrl.

11. Ctrl + Alt and click drag the image, it will make a duplication of the current image over lay on top.

12. Hold Space bar, it will make any tool into "Hand Tool" until you release Space bar.

13. While in Zoom Tool, Ctrl+space = zoom in, alt+space = zoom out.

14. Hold Ctrl and press "+" or "-" it will change the % for image in navigator window.

15. When Using eyedropper tool to capture foreground color, hold Alt and click, it will instantly capture the color for background.

16. With Measure Tool, draw a line then hold Alt and draw another line from the end of the first line, it will measure the angle.

17. Ctrl+Alt+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z will go back and forth in the history.

18. Alt+Backspace and Ctrl+Backspace will fill in the whole screen with foreground color or background color, Shift+backspace will bring up option window, Alt+Shift+Backspace and Ctrl+Shift+Backspace, will fill the image with foreground or background color but will leave the alpha transparent area alone.

19. When free transforming with Ctrl+T, hold Alt to keep the original image and then to transform a duplicated layer of it. Ctrl+Shift+T to repeat whatever you did in the last transform.

20. To make sure your Crop is on the edge of the image, hold Ctrl while cropping.

21. Ctrl+J will duplicate the current layer.

22. Ctrl+Shift+E will merge all visible layers to one layer, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E will make a copy of the original and merge all visible layers.

23. While using Marquee Tools, hold Alt it will make the starting point as a center of the selection.

24. Ctrl + D to deselect, Ctrl+Shift+D to reselect what you deselected.

25. While selecting with Marquee tool, pressing the space bar can allow you to move the selection.

26. Hold Shift and press "+" or "-" it will switch between the layer mode:

N = Normal
I = Dissolve
M = Multiply
S = Screen
O = Overlay
F = Soft Light
H = Hard Light
D = Color Dodge
B = Color Burn
K = Darken
G = Lighten
E = Difference
X = Exclusion
U = Hue
T = Saturation
C = Color
Y = Luminosity
Q = Behind 1
L = Threshold 2
R = Clear 3
W = Shadow 4
V = Midtones 4
Z = Highlights 4


***The shortcut works even for following situation:

***Alpha turned off, Indexed Mode, Line tool, Bucket Tools, Dodge and Burn Tools

27. While using Brush or any other tools, change the opacity by typing the number.

*** type one number for % of it's ten times [4=40%]

***type two number for exact % [press 7 then 2 will get 72%]

28. Hold Alt while clicking on the eye icon beside the layer, it will hide all other layers.

29. Hold Alt while clicking the pen icon beside the layer, it will unchain this layer from all layers.

30. Select a layer, hold Alt and click the top edge of another layer, it will group them.

31. Hold Alt and click the button "Create a new layer", it will create a new adjustment layer.

32. Select a layer and hold Alt, then click on the garbage can button. It will instantly delete the layer, marquee where you want alpha and Ctrl+click the "Create new channel" button, it will create an alpha only on the area you marquee.

33. File> Automate > Contact Sheet: this can create a small thumbnail for every file, this can save you some time from searching.

34. When Move Tool is selected, toolbox on top can be useful from time to time, these are "Auto select layer" and "Show bounding box".

35. While Move Tool is selected, hold Shift (Alt+Shift+Right click) and allow whether or not to make a current layer chain with your upper layer.

36. With grid on, click the top left corner of the grid and drag to anywhere on the image to set the pivot, double clicking on the icon again reset the pivot.

37. After, draw a path on the image with pen tool, Ctrl+shift+H can hide/show it.

38. Control Navigator with keyboard sometimes can be more time efficient than mouse.

***

Home = move to top left corner
End = move to right bottom corner
PageUp = move up one page
PageDown = move down one page
Ctrl+PageUp = move left one page
Ctrl+PageDown = move right one page
Shift+PageUp = move up 10 pixel
Shift+PageDown = move down 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageUp = move left 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageDown = move right 10 pixel


39. Ctrl+Tab allows you to switch between different image files you are working on.


40. F12 = Revert to how the file was the last time you saved it.


41. Shortcuts for Channel: RGB, CMYK, indexed color...

***

Ctrl+"~" = RGB
Ctrl+1 = red
Ctrl+2 = green
Ctrl+3 = blue
Ctrl+4 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+"~" = CMYK
Ctrl+1 = light green
Ctrl+2 = pink red
Ctrl+3 = yellow
Ctrl+4 = black
Ctrl+5 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+1 = Indexed
Ctrl+2 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path

42. hold Ctrl then you can draw a red box in the Navigator thumbnail for viewing.

43. Hold Alt and click on any of the history steps, that step will be copied and become the most recent one.

44. Alt drag a step from a serial action can copy it to another action.

45. Alt-click the flare preview thumb, and you can fill in numerical co-ordinates for lens flare.

46. Holding Shift + Alt while transforming an object will do it proportionally, from the center.

47. If you have the move tool selected and you want something duplicated just hold the alt key and move the image, holding the Shift + Alt while doing this, it will move it along one axis.

48. If you want to straighten an image that is crooked (maybe from scanning), click on the eyedropper tool or hit the I key 3 times to get the ruler. Click on the left side of the straight edge, then the right side of the straight (but crooked) edge. The choose Image> Rotate Canvas> Arbitrary, Photoshop will give you the degrees of rotation you just click ok.

49. If you create something in Illustrator, copy and paste it in Photoshop, it will ask you if you want this to be a pixel, path, or shape layer.

50. If you have a mask on a layer and you want to place a image in there and keep the mask. Simply open the image, say copy, and then Ctrl click on the layer to select the mask and use Shift + Ctrl + V to paste it into the mask which will also put it on a new layer as well.

51. To center an image, Ctrl + A , Ctrl + X, Ctrl + V, I think it also puts that image on a new layer.

52. Ctrl+E will merge the highlighted layer down to the next

53. When you have a brush selected, using [ or ] will scroll up or down that brush list.

54. Double clicking the zoom tool will make the image 100%, double clicking the hand tool will fit the image to your screen resolution.
55. Typing Content:

Ctrl + H will hide the highlight on your selected type.

If you click once while your type is selected on the font list, you can use your arrows to scroll up and down and see the fonts change on the fly!

Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 10
Ctrl + Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 100
Ctrl + Alt + Up or Down arrows will change your leading in increments of 10 pts
Shift + Ctrl with < or > will change your font size in increments of 2 pts

56. Ctrl + Alt + T to make a copy of the layer in which you want to transform.

57. Ctrl + Alt + Right arrow. duplicates the layer you are on.

58. Change the active layer : Alt + [ or ].

59. Move the active layer up and down : Ctrl + [ or ].

60. Link 2 layers: with move tool click in the first layer hold Shift and click in the second one.

61. Ctrl+[plus key] will let you zoom in on an image anytime while Ctrl+[minus key] zooms out. Ctrl+Alt+[plus key] will zoom in AND RESIZE the window to fit the image size... same for Ctrl+Alt+[minus key] as well.

62. When using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, click backspace to undo a lasso step.

63. Pressing X will switch the selected foreground and background colors.

64. Pressing D will reset the foreground and backgrounds colors to black and white.

65. If your image has multiple layers, create a Marquee selection and press Ctrl+Shift+Cit won't work if you selected a hidden layer) will copy the image into memory as if they were flattened! Paste it on a new document to see the result.

66. Ctrl+Alt+Z will do multiple undo, versus just one.

67. Ctrl+click a layer thumbnail to select the layer transparency

68. To see what your layer mask looks like (and edit it), Alt+click its thumbnail in the layers palette

69. Press and hold Ctrl+Alt and click the Help bar with your mouse, drag it down and highlight "About Photoshop" and let go of the left mouse button for a different About Photoshop splash/screen.

70. When using Polygon lasso tool hold Shift to make a perfect line, it goes every 30 degrees

71.Photoshop CS2: Group many layers by clicking the layers you want to group by clicking it while holding the Shift key down, and then press Ctrl+G to group them into a folder for means of better organization.

72. Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new layer with a dialog box; Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N gets you a new layer without the hassle.

73. Back to brush, [ and ] will increase/decrease your brush size, Shift + [ or ] will soften or harden your brush edge.

74. Still in [ and ], Ctrl + [ or ] will move your currently selected layer up and down the hierarchy and Shift + [ or ] will select upper layer or lower layer.

75. Stamp Tool (s) is used to copy an area of image (defined by alt+clicking and area) and paint it somewhere else (cloning). It also works when you have multiple images open at the same time. Alt click an area of any opened file image and paint it anywhere else.

76. After you created a text you can click on font type tab and tap "down" key over and over to scroll through the font list and see the changes in (relatively) real time. A feature that I am tired of waiting to happen in illustrator.

77. Still in text mode, a trick from Microsoft word to apply hi-light to your text hit Ctrl+Shift+ < or > to resize your text, to your preferred font size. Pressing Ctrl key while you are typing also gives you a free transform box temporarily and will go if you release it. Resizing text also works by pressing Ctrl+T (on selected layer, not when you are typing). It still retains as an editable text layer after.

78. And remember, pressing enter when you type will take you to a new line just like typing a letter but pressing Ctrl+Enter or Enter on numeric key will finish what you type.

79. You can drag a layer on to any other opened images in Photoshop and it will copy it as a layer (better than copy and paste image). Holding down Shift while moving it will snap the image right on the center of the other opened image

80. If you are working with sets....

Click on the set, in the blending mode it shows pass through by default... if you have an adjustment layer within a set and you want that adjustment layer to effect those layers underneath it within the set only, set the blending mode of the set to "normal" instead.

CODE


Mentioned before with more explanation:

- Pressed F to switch to 3 different viewing mode... when I first try it I said "wtf? what it's for?" Well, if you are sick of painting your image on the corners just to find yourself resizing your current image window, with F you can pan way outside your image. Happy corner painting!!


- Create a new file, 500x500 px, create a new layer, get a standard brush and paint a dot on the top center of your image (like the number 12 position on a clock). Press Ctrl+Alt+T, it will duplicate your original layer and free transform the new one. Move the pivot point (the circle with little dot in it found when you are free transforming something) to the center of your image, rotate your image 30 degrees to the right and hit OK to confirm the transform

now.........


Be excited..........


Hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T 10 times and see what happens!

81. When using the "move tool" you can select any layer by holding down the CTL key(CMD on a Mac) and clicking on the part of the layer on the canvas with your mouse. This way you won't have to go to the Layers palette every time and you don't have to keep checking on or off the auto select options for the move tool.

82. You can link up layers without going into the layers palette, by selecting the layer (how I just mentioned above) and holding down CTL + Shift(CMD + SHIT on a Mac) for each additional layer you want to link up. You can unlink them by clicking on the layer again.

83. You can delete more than one layer at a time.......by linking up all the layer you want to delete, and holding down CTL(CMD on a Mac) while you click on the garbage icon to delete the layer.

84. When using the type tool you can ok it by pressing CTL + Enter(CMD + Enter on a Mac) instead of clicking on the check mark on the options.

85. If you have more than one type layer, and want to make any of the following changes color/font/size/alignment/initializing to all of the type layers at the same time.....All you have to do is link up the type layer, hold down the Shift key and in the options for the type tool make your change i.e. color, size, etc.

86. You can use your number pad to change opacity for a layer.... I.e. type 5 and the opacity will be 50; type 55 and the opacity will be 55. You can use the number pad for any tool that uses opacity...like the airbrush tool, stamp tool, brush, gradient, etc.

87. Pressing Tab key will hide the Tools palette and any other palette that you have on the stage. Pressing "F" will change between Full Screen modes. Using these two tips you can view your work Full Screen without any palettes.(You can press CTL+Alt+0 to fit your work to the screen, or you can press CTL+0 to zoom to 100%)

88. Pressing the "+" and "-" keys while holding down CTL+Alt will resize the whole document window, not just the work area.

89. You can delete a layer by holding down the "Alt" key and pressing "L" twice......actually now with Photoshop 7 you got to press "L" three times. It's not actually a keyboard shortcut, but it's a quick way to do it....don't know if it works on a MAC.

90. Pan documents with the space bar.

91. Ctrl+click a layer (in layers palette) to select it's transparency.

92. Ctrl+Alt+click between 2 layers in the palette to group them.

93. Alt + click in “add layer mask” button to add a black layer mask (instead of a white one).

94. When you select something, pressing Ctrl+J will copy the selected area and add another layer with the copied area - opposing copying the layer, making a new layer, and pasting it.

95. To glue the palettes together (all palettes combined into one strip), you just drag & drop a palette onto the end of another palette (watch the rectangle that indicates where the palette will get attached to).

96. Hold down Alt while Burning to Dodge instead, and vice versa.

97. Ctrl-click a layer to select an objects; alternatively, you may select more than one object/s in more than 1 layer by holding Shift while using the method just mentioned (Ctrl-click). To deselect, just press Ctrl+D.

98. If you have a mini scroll on your mouse, you may use that to zoom in (scroll up) or zoom out (scroll down).

99. Need to locate a layer quick? Use the Move Tool (V) and right click on the area the object lays. There should now be a “cursor-menu” with all the layers that is in that particular area. Now take a good guess and see which one of them fits the shoe; select a layer and Ctrl-Click the layer in the Layer Palette - see if the selection traces the object you desired to edit/find. Useful for those messy people (i.e. me!).

100. Need to get rid of a background quick? Assuming you at least know how to crop around an object, do so. Now press Ctrl+I or Shift+Ctrl+I for Inverse Selection. Press Ctrl+X to %@#!* that part out, and you should be left with the object!

101. Want to save the time from loading All your Photoshop brushes, when your Photoshop accidentally forgets to load them up (happens to me sometimes)? Select the brush tool, and click the little arrow pointing right (located at the top toolbar), next to the Master Diameter tick. Go down to Preset Manager and now there should be a menu of all the brushes currently loaded. Click on the first brush (top left) and scroll down to the bottom. Now hold Shift and click the last brush (bottom right). This should highlight all the brushes. See the “Save Set” to the right in the menu? Click that and name your brush set whatever you want, for this matter I just name it All (so I remember that this brush set contains all the brushes I currently have loaded, and is located near the top when loading the brushes up).

Growing a business requires continuous attention, careful planning and a willingness to take calculated risks. No matter how successful, a business left by its self will go to pot. In the last decade, the cost and risks associated with doing business have risen dramatically, but also opportunities. Drawing from the experiences with small and medium enterprises of its members, the Manila-based Association of Development Finance Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) proposes:

1) Give priority to new product or service development. Always seek ways to improve what you have to offer and develop means to reinvigorate your own products or services before someone else does.

2) Find new applications for existing products or services. Be sure to establish a communication means between your company and your product/service users to determine how they really use your products. Offering a financial incentive to surface new applications helps too!

3) Remember the easiest sale of them all. You have already spent the money to acquire your customers and build a relationship with them, why not ask what else we can make or provide for them?

4) Know where to get all the answers. All the answers about how your company is doing, where it should go and what it should stop doing, reside within your own customer base.

5) Buy rather than build. Take a gook look at your targeted industry. There usually is a resource limited company that offers viable products and services that relate to yours. Consider buying them versus investing the same money in organic growth alternative.

6) Think out of boundaries. If you just focus on one market, someday you will find your company can no longer effectively compete because someone else beat you to others.

7) Go eCommerce. Establish an effective means, via the Internet for your customers to educate and update themselves, solve their own problems and order your products with a few clicks of the computer mouse.

8) Know when to say “No” and “Stop”. Making or doing something that no longer makes financial sense needs to be dealt with decisively, no matter the, “we have always made those, we have always sold those, or we have always done it that way” commentary.

9) Measure and publish everything. Business practices can only be improved upon if they are written, measured, tracked and periodically audited for effectiveness. All results justify being shared with all employees, good or bad. Always celebrate success publicly, criticize poor performance privately.

10) There is always a price to pay for business growth. There is no clear roadmap on how to best grow your company, each company has its own growth challenges.

Certain businesses put the chances of success in your favor. Other businesses stack the chances of success against you. Here is a list of seven things that you should consider when starting your own company.

1. Will the company be able to maintain high profit margins? Low profit margins are dangerous to your company’s survival. If you only have a tenuous 2% net profit margin and prices rise a few percent, you are in trouble. Higher profit margins allow room for error and changing cost structures. When you think of low profit margins, imagine a guy standing at the edge of Niagara Falls with a little tin cup. He is trying to reach into the torrent of water to pull out a little drink. It is dangerous to place yourself under tons and tons of water to get a little cup full. Similarly, who cares if your business generates millions of dollars in revenue, but only can earn $10,000? It is what you keep that matters.

2. Good Revenue per sale. This is often missed by many. It is difficult to succeed if you are selling a one-dollar product. To make a million dollars means you must sell one million of your product. That’s a lot of sales. If you are selling a $1,000 product then to make a million dollars you only need a thousand sales. Guess which level of sales is an easier to process and fulfill for a smaller company?

3. A proprietary product. Or, at least, a tremendously growing area where all the companies in the field can’t keep up with demand. A proprietary product is one which your company exclusively controls. This means another company can’t just begin producing and selling your product. Patents and copyrights are two ways to secure a proprietary product.

4. Something that you love to do. It is difficult to do something well if you don’t feel passionate about it. Choose to build a business in a field that you love, and you will find yourself enjoying it. This will help lead to success. Never just enter a business because the financial numbers seem to indicate a great business. To really make money demands growing a business, and this will take years. Be sure it’s something you want to do. Something related to a life-long hobby or interest is ideal.

5. Will the business have good cash flow? It is possible for a business to be generating excellent sales and profits, and yet be losing cash. You need cash to pay bills. A cash strapped business is a business that will struggle to grow. Do a cash flow projection for your start-up business.

6. What are the growth prospects for your business? What will be required for you to grow the company? Many entrepreneurs start a business and are happy when they see it making money. They are often not as happy when they realize that profits have plateaued. Think about how you will grow. If you start a restaurant, for example, your profits will certainly level off. You will only have so many customers eating at your restaurant in any given year. To grow would require adding a second restaurant. But you cannot run two restaurants as you do one restaurant. You can be on top of everything at one location, but you must be away at least part of the time when you have two restaurants. And what if you had ten? As you grow you will need to learn to delegate. You will need multiple locations. Compare this to a mail-order business. It can be run from one location. Yet, sales are essentially potentially unlimited with only small structural changes to the business. Doing more of the same thing in the same way is easier than changing the way you operate.

A thriving one- or two-person service business with no inventory, rent or employees can seem like an easy way to make money at first, but when the phone starts ringing off the hook and customers keep coming back for more, homebased business owners who fail to plan often fall victim to their own success. Either they burn out trying to juggle everything themselves or they spend so much time and money hiring people to help them that their profits go down the drain.

Fortunately, there are some ways to take your homebased business to new heights without sacrificing your business’s profitability or losing your peace of mind.

Follow these 10 steps to grow your homebased business into the personal and professional success it was meant to be:

1. Focus on a single product or service, and then market it, sell it, promote it—do everything you can to increase sales of that one product or service. While it’s tempting to swing for the fences and try to be all things to all people, it’s often less risky and more profitable to pick a product or two that you can execute really well and just try to get on base.

2. Expand your product line to offer complementary products or services. Once you’ve hit on a product or service that customers really like, don’t miss the opportunity to bring out related items to diversify your product line. Not only does that give your customers a wider selection, but it also makes your products more appealing to retailers who typically like to stock a line of products as opposed to a single item.

3. Find ways to increase sales to your existing customers. It’s a lot cheaper than finding new ones. Even if you can’t expand your product line, you can boost revenues by selling more of your existing product or service to the clients you already have. One easy way to do this is through volume discounts. Especially if your products cost little to produce, offering your customers the chance to buy, say, two T-shirts for the price of one lets you ring up additional sales without sacrificing much profit. Another common practice is to reward loyal customers by giving them a punch card that entitles them to a free product or service for every 10 items they buy. This technique is common at hair salons, car washes and arts-and-crafts stores, but homebased businesses can use it, too.

4. Hire someone to help you out—an employee, a freelancer, an intern, an independent contractor, even your kids. Not only does this free up cash flow by adjusting your expenses to the level of work you bring in, but it also enables you to cultivate a large network of talented people you probably couldn’t afford to hire full time.

5. Create a Web site to advertise your company or sell products online. Thanks to the Internet, it’s no longer necessary to open a store to reach retail customers. For marketers of specialty products like rare books, collectibles and gourmet foods, a Web-based boutique lets you reach millions of shoppers around the world without paying for rent, utilities or garbage collection.

6. Join forces with another business to promote your company. Partnering with a company in a related industry is one of the cheapest and easiest forms of marketing that you can employ. If you make spa products, for example, you may be able to convince a local health club to carry them in its store by offering a discount to its members. Likewise, you can send a free, one-day health club pass to anybody who buys your lotions and scrubs.

7. Target other markets. If you sell to teens, start marketing to college students. If you sell to working moms, maybe your product will work for stay-at-home moms with a few modifications. Another strategy is to take a retail-oriented product or service and sell it wholesale. For example, a homebased catering business that specializes in cakes, pies and other tasty desserts can contact local bakeries to sell its goods on a wholesale basis. While the price you get from the bakeries will be lower (because the bakeries need to mark it up to their customers to make a profit), you’ll sell more products and generate consistent cash flow that you can bank on.

8. Find new and different ways to market your business through e-mail newsletters or by doing guest-speaking gigs or by teaching a class. Marketing your homebased business doesn’t need to involve spending big money on newspaper ads, Yellow Pages listings, or TV or radio spots. Grassroots marketing techniques cost far less and are often much more effective. Most chambers of commerce and community groups are more than happy to provide a forum to a local business owner who’s willing to share his expertise at no charge. Sending out a weekly newsletter is also a great way to get your name out in front of new and potential clients. Thanks to the Internet, you can send out your newsletter via e-mail using online templates and automated delivery systems

9. Expand to another location. That could mean renting “virtual” office space in a business center or by sharing office space with another growing business.

1. All company policies and activities should be directed toward satisfying customer needs.
2. Profitable sales volume is more important than maximum sales volume.

The Price you Pay for Success

1. Make a list of all of the things you did today/this week/this month to help your organization, and file them away.
2. Send a thank-you note
3. Work on your writing skills
4. Design some classy business cards for yourself
5. Send a quick contact email
6. Suggest a solution to a persistent workplace problem
7. Pick up the phone and make a call
8. Work on your language skills
9. Make yourself more presentable
10. Polish your resume
11. Read something on topics you plan to be facing in the future in your career
12. Prepare some comments in advance for your next meeting
13. Work on your public speaking skills
14. Clean your work area
15. Figure out where you want to be in five years - and create a plan for getting there

source: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/page/3/

This is one good Idea to have a fun weekend with your family... and still save money.

A Frugal Saturday: Twelve Ways We Saved Money Yesterday

Quite often, Saturday is my worst day of the week for spending money. My wife and my son and I almost always wind up doing something that costs money. Yet, I recognize that the parts of the weekend that I’ll remember on Monday are the parts where we merely spent time together, not the parts where we spent money on stuff we didn’t really need.

As part of our attempt at an ultra-frugal May, we decided to just spend this Saturday around the house - with all of the house-hunting excitement, we thought it would be a fun way to unwind. Here are twelve things we did that we probably would not have done on a normal Saturday that saved us money.

We had banana pancakes for breakfast. We had three overripe bananas, so we just mashed them up with a fork, mixed them with two cups of flower, two teaspoons of baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt, an egg, and a cup and a half of milk. We just mixed it all together and suddenly we had pancake batter out of just the stuff we had sitting around the house. Banana pancakes are delicious.

My wife and I each pulled out three CDs we hadn’t heard in a while and played them in a small CD/clock in the kitchen. It cost only a penny or two of electricity and my wife got to hear me sing along badly with The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” while my son danced.

We wrapped graduation gifts in the comics pages from the Sunday paper and old New Yorker covers. They looked bright, visually interesting, and kitschy, and the cost was less than a penny’s worth of tape.

We had homemade soup and sandwiches for lunch. The sandwiches were merely some leftover grated cheese from a meal earlier this week between two pieces of bread and cooked on a grate over wood. The soup was just chicken boullion with some leftover pieces of chicken in it and a few chopped-up vegetables. Cost: minimal. Taste: great.

We deep-cleaned things. Mostly, just things that we skip over because we often don’t have the time. Lots of window-spraying and such with our homemade cleaning supplies.

While our son napped, we went through every house that we looked at and made a final ranking of all of them. This was actually really fun, because we were largely on the same page with everything. We have one house that we love and one that we really really like and everything else falls in behind. Basically, this was good conversation.

We walked to the park and back. This burnt multiple hours, as our son wanted to swing on the swings and go down the slide and laugh and play and all that good stuff. Lifting him up to the top of the slide (he can’t quite handle the ladder yet) over and over again was a good workout, too - lifting a twenty five pound toddler from the ground to well over your head every fifteen seconds for most of an hour can be exhausting.

We had fresh asparagus, homemade poor man quesadillas, and grapes for dinner. The asparagus was out of a friend’s garden, picked only a day or so ago. The poor man’s quesadillas was just using the remaining cheese and putting it between two flour tortillas then grilling them. The grapes were easy, too. Another really cheap and rather quick homemade meal, but that was because we were all worn out.

All of us wrote letters to people. I wrote a letter to an old friend, as did my wife; our son went crazy with crayons on a sheet of paper writing a letter to his grandparents.

My wife and I had a very romantic evening after our son went to sleep. Hey, that’s a free activity!

We spent an hour reading together. My wife and I just cuddled up near each other under a down comforter and read. I finished off a book; she got part of the way through one.

We never turned on the television once. It didn’t come on all day, even after our son went to bed.

The entire day was incredibly fun and it cost almost nothing at all. Who needs to spend a lot of cash to have an enjoyable, happy, memorable Saturday?

• 4 Forgotten Cave
• 4 Secluded Steppe
• 9 Plains
• 8 Mountain
• 2 Temple of the False God

• 3 Eternal Dragon
• 3 Exalted Angel

• 3 Astral Slide
• 4 Lightning Rift
• 4 Spark Spray
• 2 Starstorm
• 3 Wrath of God
• 2 Akroma's Vengeance
• 4 Damping Matrix
• 3 Renewed Faith
• 2 Slice and Dice

Sa piling ba niya'y ikaw ay
May lungkot na nararamdaman
Damdamin mo ba'y di maintindihan
At sa tuwing ako ang
Nasa iyong isipan
May nakita ka ba na ibang kasiyahan

Nandito lang ako
Naghihintay sa'yo na mapansin ang aking damdamin
Na para lang sa'yo

Dahil ikaw ang sigaw ng puso ko
Ikaw ang nasa isip ko
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo
Na ikaw ang tanging pangarap ng buhay
Pag-ibig ko sa iyo'y ibibigay
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo, ooh
Na mahal kita

Sa piling ba niya'y ikaw ay
May sakit na nararamdaman
Damdamin mo ba'y sinasaktan
At sa tuwing ako ang
Nasa iyong panaginip
Na tayong dalawa'y masayang magkapiling

Nandito lang ako
Naghihintay sa'yo na mapansin ang aking damdamin
Na para lang sa'yo

Dahil ikaw ang sigaw ng puso ko
Ikaw ang nasa isip ko
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo
Na ikaw ang tanging pangarap ng buhay
Pag-ibig ko sa iyo'y ibibigay
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo, ooh
Na mahal kita

Sana ay pagbigyan ang nadaramang ito
Sana'y masabi mo na mahal mo rin ako

Dahil ikaw ang sigaw ng puso ko
Ikaw ang nasa isip ko
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo
Na ikaw ang tanging pangarap ng buhay
Pag-ibig ko sa iyo'y ibibigay
Ang nais ko ay malaman mo, ooh
Na mahal kita
(Ikaw ang sigaw ng puso)
Na mahal kita
(Ikaw ang nasa isip ko)
Na mahal kita
(Ikaw ang sigaw ng puso)
Na mahal kita
(Ikaw ang nasa isip ko)