One of the greatest lessons we as business professionals can learn or at least reaffirm during tough economic times is frugality.  When the economy is in a downward trend, it is imperative to analyze your budget line by line and make sure every dollar earned is spent wisely.   This can often involve looking into areas of your budget that in years past, may not have received enough scrutiny.

For example, if you are a company that solely uses a credit card swiping machine to process all credit transactions whether the person is standing in front of you or over the phone, then you aren't taking advantage of what a virtual terminal can do for your bottom line.  By taking advantage of the latest breakthroughs in payment processing technologies, you will simply save your company money as well as streamline your office's day to day operations.

If you take payments over the phone, fax, or internet and then have an employee(s) walk over to a card swipe terminal to process the transaction, not only are you getting charged the highest fees and downgrades in the industry, you are also wasting a good percentage of your employee(s) work day.  A virtual terminal eliminates all of that for your business.  Imagine, your employees being able to process payment transactions from their desk/computer...imagine all your employees being able to log in from their desk/computer to the same virtual terminal and process transactions without having to get up and wait in line....imagine as an Owner or CFO being able to login in from anywhere and watch your money process in real time....imagine custom reporting features that eliminate the need for multiple locations to have to fax or email in their daily reports....imagine having mobile payment processing options from a laptop, blackberry, or Iphone that are sent directly to the same virtual terminal....imagine being able to do all of the above without having to purchase any hardware or software...

If any part if this interests you, please give me a call or send me an email.  I am lucky enough to be in the position to offer all these cost saving features to you for zero upfront costs.  Let me help you, help your business.

Darin

It can happen to the best of us. Despite careful planning, there is a last minute phone call, one last email that must be sent, unexpected traffic ... you are late for a meeting. So how do you handle it?

To begin with, keep in mind that no one is interested in excuses, not even your mother. Keep them to yourself.

If you are meeting with one other person, offer a sincere apology and move on with the purpose of your meeting.

     With the paradigm shift in the economy from materializm and unrestrained capitalizm
to the unknown, our feelings are ever more important. Many of us go through our daily lives with two things in mind: making more money ...and getting home...just to get up, make more money and go home.  With uncertainty under our wings these days we are ever more introspective and more feeling. Tempers flair, deppression sets in as the world seems to shift around us. We feel like we are geting sea sick and yet we are walking on the ground. Just what is it the effects us this way as those days of 9-5 and home with family and kids seem ever farther from our reach.       As an intuitive and interior designer I want to point out that these uncertainties are a good thing. As a child we enter into this reality with a fairly clean slate. I say that "fairly clean slate" because science has evolved to recognize (quantum physics) that reality is based on resonance. Vibration in simpler terms. So those vibrations that occurred around you in the womb do have an effect. So once born there is a reference pre established. As an adolesent one learns and adapt  through example and self referencing for survival. As an adult one supposedly is armed through experience and education to move forward and accomplish whatever in life and they strick out indepenantly... But when one as an adult realizes that, that which they understood is moving in a new direction without experience they feel vulnerable. There is no earthly parent protecting them as when they were a  child. So what happens? They go back to the womb experience:
   They intuit , they look to and from within for that which they do not find outside themslves. It is here that they seek a commonality. A serenity within themselves. It is from that space that they find the commonality within all mankind. It is from this identity that they step forward to rebirth themselves with new and renewed perspective. It is from here that they see the comonalities , hopes wishes and desires in all mankind. It is from this place that they bridge the past to the future.
   So just where is your home?  Is it in the struggle of 9-5? Or is it in your earthly home?
Or is it really, really within yourself?
   As an intuitive and interior designer, It is my job to bring all those aspects together,
a place where you can be in your innocence, you feel safe as that child, you can enjoy the vitality of exploration and security of adolesence, you can deal with life as and adult, but in the end you can express who you really are..deep inside.  You are the joyous expression of a magificant co-creation with all that is...and i can help you see that and truely be ..at home.

Rude behavior. Unfortunately, we don't have to look far to find it. It can be the person who insists on holding those around him hostage to his cell phone conversation, the individual who texts through-out a class or meeting, or that lovely specimen who takes out her unrelated-to-the-situation frustration on the clerk behind the counter.

Responding in kind is exactly how you don't want to handle the situation. When someone does something that stands out for its inappropriateness, let it stand alone. Let the culprit muddle through in all his glory. Often times, when you attempt to retaliate or "teach the person a lesson" your behavior ends up drawing more attention and negative reaction than the original rudeness.

Usually one form of rude behavior is more than enough for any situation.

Remember ... Taking the high road is not always our immediate reaction to rudeness but in the long run, it is the best response. As mom always said "two wrongs don't make a right" ... especially when it comes to presenting yourself in a professional manner.

Although we offer a comprehensive nutritional program for weight and health management, we really offer hope!

For example, today I downloaded a program for my iphone to calculate calories out of curiosity. It also offered a way to track my daily intake and burn. Now our website offers that as well, but I thought, on the go, well, what the heck. So I entered my weight, height, age, etc.

There are two words I use a lot:  courtesy and respect.

I believe the interactions we have with others, whether they are a brief, one-time exchange or continuous, long-term relationships, are greatly impacted by the manner in which we treat others. There is no financial cost to using these forms of conduct but they have a powerful effect, not only in how you make others feel but in how you are perceived.

There is another word that I believe very strongly in, and that is dignity.

Dignity is the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect. To me, it also reflects composure and poise. I think of dignity in terms of oneself more than other people, as in, always maintain your dignity. Dignity goes hand in hand with presenting a polished presence. We can find ourselves in all sorts of awkward or uncomfortable situations; how we react to them is what is going to be noticed -- and judged -- by those around us.

Remember ... The only person you have control over is yourself. Sometimes not saying anything, smiling politely, or excusing yourself from the situation is the best remedy. No matter how much you may wish to indulge yourself by firing off that comment, stepping in where you shouldn't or simply not letting go when it is past time to do so, remembering my three words will do you much better.

Courtesy          Respect          Dignity

In keeping with the winds of change I’ve found myself on an incredible adventure in the past few months. Amazing opportunities cropping up both in the world of Chinese Medicine and healing, but also in the life I’ve been living day to day. Chinese Medicine aside for a moment, I came to Portland in search of answers and a lot of those answers are beginning to trickle in one drop at a time, not from professors and doctors, but from the encounters I have every day. Let me explain what that actually means.

I came to a new city, quite literally as far across the country as it could possibly be from everything and everyone I’ve ever known. The intention was simply to continue learning about myself, learning about my passion (and profession) and how all of it relates to the world and the people in it. I am seeing more and more everyday why I am here, both in the sense of being in Portland and in the field of Chinese Medicine. Through the open arms, kind words and generosity of strangers and acquaintances (that have quickly become much more) I’m understanding what it means to be a part of a community, and really, what it means to be human. Maybe I skipped ahead a few thoughts there, but I mean that I am understanding how much community, support and acceptance can impact a person. I have always been blessed with a very comfortable and loving support network of friends and family so that I’ve never really felt like I had nowhere to turn if I needed someone. It is a very easy thing to take for granted that everyone else has that kind of love in their lives, and I feel like now that I’ve experienced the absence of that comfort and the sincere need for strangers kindness at a very primal level I have begun to see human connections quite differently.

As many of you know owning your own business is an amazing experience of ups and downs, where at times you're the CEO, other times you are the bookkeeper, the salesperson, or even the janitor. While owning your own business can be the "bees knees" (When else can I say that) it can also be very difficult at times. For instance losing a big client can really hurt any business. 

So, why is it... that when I lost my first client today, it was a positive uplifting experience ?