Need to Incease Your Clients?

"How do I increase the number of clients in my business?" is a question many businesses are currently asking.  It is no secret that in today's economy every business needs to increase the number of clients they service in order to stay afloat.  Traditional marketing and advertising are not the only tools to use.  If your business is to survive, you'll need to increase your clients by using as many creative techniques as possible.  Although there is no single answer, try these three tips for increasing your clients to see if you can get the ball rolling in your direction.  I can't take credit for these three terrific tips.  They were reproduced from the following source: RUNNING A BUSINESS AUGUST 18, 2010, 10:54 A.M. ET 1.  Community Service David Chewey, president of Garden Associates Landscape Architecture Inc. in Somerville, N.J., spends about $5, 000 each year to beautify the median of a double lane road through his State's Adopt-A-Highway program.  Because there is often a lot of traffic, the commuters have plenty of time to admire the 75-feet stretch of landscaped median and read the sign with his firm's name.  Mr. Chewey started tracking how new clients heard about him and estimates that the highway program generates $400, 000 in new sales each year. 2.  Crazy Hours Mr. Flusser, a Columbia University Student was known as the kid who could fix computers, but was never paid for his skills. When his roommate's father a Wall Street Lawyer, needed help recovering files from a virus-ridden computer that were needed for trial in the morning, he pulled an all-nighter to finish the job. He was compensated $200.00. This prompted him to start Artistech, a computer repair firm that services clients at all hours. Because of it's success Mr. Flusser hasn't had time to return to school. 3.  Customized Gifts Two years ago, interior Designer Leslie Hart-Davidson in Okemos, Michigan heard through a handyman that a family with a 12 year old daughter wanted to remodel their home.  But, solicitation letters, referrals from the handyman and visits to the homeowners office proved futile.  So, Ms. Hart-Davidson sent a gift basket filled with items that she thought the young daughter would like, such as her school's mascot and ballet slippers - along with a note explaining how she could renovate the tween's bedroom.  Ms. Hart-Davidson was soon commissioned to complete a $50, 000 year long renovation at the residence. Think about how you can use these 3 tips for increasing your clients in your own business.  You might be surprised at the positive results you'll get.  For more great ideas and gift suggestions visit us at http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com where "we think outside the basket." Baskets by Consuela    "we think outside the basket" Phone: 678.499.2765 Fax: 1-610-885-7584 Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com Website: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Blogs: http://Basketsbyconsuela.wordpress.com & http://basketwrapup.blogspot.com/

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous

National Peach Month and Cupcakes Too

Although we are nearly at the end of August, I wanted to pay homage to National Peach Month because I love this fruit.  Especially, when they are sweet and ripe.  Last summer as a matter of fact, I tried my hand at making homemade ice cream.  Guess which flavor I chose?  You guessed it, Peach.  Truly delicious. . .as a matter of fact, one of my cousins, Melo of Big Willie Wax, New Jersey,  was here in Georgia on a visit, so he too can attest to the fact of how "sweet it was."  I hadn't tasted peach ice cream that good since Waters' Drug Store in the neighborhood where I grew up in New Jersey.  I spent many a summer day waiting in line there for a large single or double scoop on my favorite sugar cone.  Yum, yum....  Here's something I discovered about how National Peach Month got started. Origin of this Holiday? Proclamation 4947 -- National Peach Month, 1982 In recognition of the role peaches play in our food supply and our economy, the Congress by Joint Resolution approved March 16, 1982 (96 Stat. 12), has requested the President to designate July 1982 as ``National Peach Month.'' Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, proclaim July "National Peach Month'' and call upon the people of the United States to incorporate this nutritious fruit into their diets, and call upon interested groups to celebrate this month with appropriate programs and activities. Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:05 a.m., June 16, 1982 Since my latest passion is cupcakes, I found this recipe for Peach Cupcakes.  Be sure to leave me your comments so we can discuss the results from my first batch that I'll bake.  Always "thinking outside the basket" for you. Mini Vanilla-Almond Peach Cupcakes Who says desserts are off limits! These mini-delights are filled with sweet peach surprises, topped with a delicious peach-puree frosting, and finished off with sprinkles of diced peaches and mint leaves. Watch Jackie Newgent on PPN TV as she shows just how easy it is to make these sweet treats. Click Here.        Ingredients     2   cups flour   2   teaspoons baking powder   3/4   teaspoon salt   1/4   cup unsalted butter, softened   1   cup + 2 tablespoons sugar   2   eggs, at room temperature   1   teaspoon vanilla extract   1/2   teaspoon almond extract   1/2   cup low-fat milk   1   fresh California peach, pitted and diced               Frosting   1   fresh California peach, divided   1 1/2   tablespoons unsalted butter, softened   1 1/2   cups powdered sugar, divided   1/2   teaspoon vanilla extract       Tiny mint leaves (optional garnish)           Preparation Prep time: 30 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes total To prepare cupcakes, preheat oven to 300°F and line 36 mini muffin tins with paper wrappers; set aside. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Beat butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes or until smooth. Gradually add sugar and beat for 2 minutes more or until fluffy. Add eggs and extracts, beating well after each addition. Stir in half the dry ingredients, then half the milk; repeat and mix until well combined. Stir in diced peaches and spoon batter into prepared muffin tins (they will be very full). Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in tins for 10 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on a wire rack before frosting. To prepare frosting, peel and mash or puree half the peach. Beat butter and 3/4 cup powdered sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Blend in 1 1/2 tablespoons peach puree and extract, beating for 2 minutes or until smooth and creamy. Gradually add remaining sugar, adding more peach puree if a thinner consistency is desired. Spread equal amounts over each cupcake. Dice remaining peach half and sprinkle over cupcakes. Garnish with mint leaves, if desired. Makes 36 mini cupcakes Nutritional analysis per cupcake: Calories: 80; Fat: 2g; Saturated Fat: 1g; Trans Fat: 0g, Cholesterol: 15mg; Sodium: 85mg; Carbohydrates: 16g; Fiber: 0g; Sugars: 10g; Protein: 1g; Vitamin A: 2%; Vitamin C: 0%; Calcium: 2%; Iron: 2% _______________________________________________ Here's to National Peach Month and cupcakes too! For more peachy keen ideas visit us online at http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com or try one of our luscious Peach Blossom Spa gift baskets to cool and relax you on a hot summer day. Baskets by Consuela    "we think outside the basket" Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com Website: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Blogs: http://Basketsbyconsuela.wordpress.com & http://basketwrapup.blogspot.com/

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous

Cupcake Trail

I've developed a new fascination watching the program "Cupcake War." Bakers attempt to outdo their competition in creating the ultimate tasting cupcake and then designing a display to showcase one thousand cupcakes for an event. The winner gets the opportunity to have their cupcakes eaten by celebrities, charitable organizations and major event organizers. The ultimate in moving their businesses to the next level.

This past weekend, a friend and I went searching for a delicious cupcake to sample. We started with a local bakery. After encountering a less than enthusiastic reception from the owner, we decided to leave without sampling any of her selections. Because the local area didn't offer any other choices we proceeded to drive outside our local district. We asked shop owners and residents in surrounding communities where they would recommend we go to find a "good cupcake." The next bakery we found met our satisfaction. The service was good and so were the cupcakes we tasted. In fact, they were a dollar less than the first bakery's.

Eager to see if we could top what we had just done, we continued the search. We took a break at a little tea shop. As we talked with the owner she informed us that there was a small cupcake shop within walking distance. Since we were so close it made perfect sense for us to make our way there before the shop closed at 5:00 p.m. It was well worth the trip. The red velvet cupcake was moist and the icing had the right balance of sweetness.

Cupcakes are the latest trend. They're an excellent choice for entertaining, gifting or enjoying individually. I've decided to begin a cupcake adventure of my own. Stop by soon and I promise to give you the names of the best cupcake places I find on my cupcake trail.

10 Tips to Simplify Your Life

Baskets by Consuela:  Simplify We all need ways to simplify our lives.  Start clearing some of the clutter with these 10 organizing tips.  Enjoy, Consuela   10 Organizing Tips To Reduce Electronic Clutter By: marilynbohnclose; Author: marilynbohn I worked with a client a few weeks ago and we set up a filing system in her home office.  Then we organized every other room in her home.  She called me to say she felt free because of all the organizing we had done. She could now find everything and by putting things away where they belonged she didn’t have to donate large chunks of time to find things she needed. She carried it one step further by organizing her electronic mail. Technology organizing is something we often neglect. She had an email account she didn’t use very often and dreaded ever going to it as she knew it was cluttered with out of date information and things she just didn’t want to deal with. But because she had been so successful in reducing clutter in other parts of her home she tackled the problem. She got her inbox cleared out and because of this she received a 40% off coupon to a local bookstore which she never would have found if she had not de-cluttered. Here are 10 organizing tips on how to reduce electronic clutter. When computers first came out they were to save us time but do you find you they now use more of your time than you have to spare? 1. Set a timer when you surf the web or read your emails if you get sucked into hours at the computer “against your will”. When the timer rings close down and walk away. Set up a routine of doing this and you will find more time in your day to do other things. 2. When receiving junk mail or spam immediately delete it without taking your time to read it. You don’t even need to open it. 3. Ask your friends not to send you spam. If you can’t ask them never ever return it to them or respond and they will hopefully stop sending you junk. Mark spam as spam if your email allows you to do so. This will stop that certain type of spam coming into your email in box. 4. Set up a different email address for store offers you want to receive. These won’t clog your personal email in box. Remember to look at it every week or two. Delete the offers you aren’t going to use. Before signing up ask if they sale their lists, if they do, don’t sign up with them. 5. Make electronic folders for any information you are keeping. This will keep your in box free for incoming mail. If it is something you need to take action on in the next few days mark it with a star or a flag so you know it is something you need to take care of soon. 6. Make a folder for receipts. Scan receipts and when you need them they will be easily accessible. Make a financial folder. When you pay bills on line and your financial institution notifies you the bill has been paid put the notification in the folder. It is accessible to refer back to as needed. 7. Passwords are very important to your security. I don’t recommend keeping them in a word document on your computer for your own protection. I do recommend keeping them in a notebook and put this in a secure place in your filing system (not under the tab “passwords”) or hidden on a bookshelf. There are electronic password protectors that remember your passwords. I use roboform.com. This company came highly recommended to me from an electronic consultant to several large companies in the Seattle area. I have used it for several years with no problems. There are others on the web also that can be purchased. 8. Make folders for information you retrieve on the internet. A web site can be electronically bookmarked in the browser or the information copied and pasted into a Word document, and then moved to a folder. Make folders for information you do bookmark in your browser to make it more accessible and to save you time. 9. There are many social bookmarks to make it easy for you to retrieve information when away from your personal computer. Delicious.com is one of them. And you can share what you have bookmarked with others and can see what they are interested in that may be of help to you. 10. Online to do lists can assist you in planning your daily and weekly tasks. Many are free and you can manage your tasks from anywhere and any computer. www. rememberthemilk.com is one site. www.memotome.com will remind you of whatever date you have told it to remind you of. And if you have Office Outlook it can also do all of these tasks for you. Electronics can work for us or against us. These organizing tips eliminate electronic clutter are meant to help you take control of your computer and take back your life. Marilyn’s Bio: Marilyn is a professional organizer who works with women and seniors in clearing clutter and providing organizing tips. Clearing clutter helps those she works with to have less stress in their lives and feel more joy in living. Marilyn invites you to visit her website http://www.marilynbohn.com where you can find organizing solutions. You will find fun stories and free organizing tips in her blogs, articles and videos. March 2, 2009 · 73 Views · By: marilynbohncloseAuthor: marilynbohn Name: Site: About: See Authors Posts (26) · Posted in Education, Family, Home Improvement, Motivational, Self Improvement, Women Issues  Baskets by Consuela Email: basketsbyconsuela@yahoo.com Website: www.basketsbyconsuela.com

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous

Fourth of July Fireworks

The country is about to celebrate another birthday and so am I.  Although, mine comes first, July 2nd.  Maybe that's why I'm so independent.  Having a birthday close to Independence Day has always given me the opportunity to celebrate for more than a day.  In fact, I don't stop celebrating until after the Fourth of July.  I just read this article about a new wave in the greeting cards industry.   Over the years, I received many, most of which I have saved.  Call me sentimental but that's what I do.  I've even kept the ones my daughter handmade for me when she was a little girl.  Whether you think this new phenomenon is a good idea or not, keep sending those cards on holidays and special occasions.  I think most people enjoy receiving and keeping these small treasures of recognition. Happy Birthday USA let the fireworks begin! Talking greeting cards are so yesterday By Richard Mullins Media General News Service Published: June 28, 2010 There's a new reason to get a little bit weepy looking through the greeting card aisles. It's not the heart-warming poems on a Mother's Day card, or tearful "atta-boys" for a first-born's graduation. There's a new breed of multimedia electronic cards coming on the market that more closely resemble something you'd buy in a BestBuy store than at Hallmark. Cards with recordable karaoke soundtracks. Cards with augmented reality links online. Cards with animated color LCD screens that display snappy vignettes from "Star Wars" about fatherhood – for Father's Day. Cards with a sticker price of $10 to $30 and a do-not-recycle-with-the-newspaper warning on the back. A mere "Thinking of You" card with a kitten-in-a-basket photo, these are not. Perhaps it's our HDTV-loaded culture that judges everything in dots-per-inch and megabits-per-second. Or perhaps this is an inevitable overture by cardmakers to the snap-and-post phone/camera/Facebook nation. But multimedia greeting cards are selling fast, and they're well on the way to becoming standard, and expected. "The more elaborate the electronics, the more people want them," said Tim Carlin, owner of Sara's Hallmark in south Tampa, Fla. Case in point: He first wondered about stocking audio cards the size of a clipboard that play "Bad to the Bone" with booming bass. Price: $9.99. "But they sell out fast as we can stock them." On one level, these cards represent the state of the art in an escalating arms race between rival superpowers of the greeting card industry: Hallmark and American Greetings. With each passing holiday, these arch-enemies introduce new cards with more electronic features to one-up the other. Last Christmas season, American Greetings launched a card with an LCD screen and USB cord the giver plugs into a PC to upload personal photos – blurring the line between a greeting card and a digital picture frame. Meanwhile, the retail industry remains tenaciously bleak, putting a pinch on card companies that operate stores in shopping centers and strip malls. So card companies are looking for thicker profits from each card sold, and investors who desire ever-more profit are closely watching for a payoff from electronic cards. Multimedia cards also let a card company tap into the brand recognition of celebrities, shows and movies. Why not a "Twilight"-themed card for Halloween that stands out against a landscape of mere pumpkin-print paper cards? Why not a Lance Armstrong-themed video for congratulations greetings? "What we've done is expand the world of communications," said Shelly Lulow, creative director in the writing studio of American Greetings. "As people become more technologically savvy, they can communicate more than ever. And we're finding technology is an important part of what we do as a business." Like it or not, these cards also come with an unexpected obligation for the recipient. And they may well become something of a squatter on the mantle piece. For one, there's the cost. Etiquette author Jay Remer notes he used to spend 60 cents on a card when he was a kid. "Now, when you go look at birthday cards, they can cost $5 apiece," Remer said. "And you may not even get that person a $5 gift card for somewhere." When he thinks of exchanging a card, it's merely a way to connect with someone, or acknowledge a milestone – a sign of friendship or love. If he receives a card from someone close, he may keep it indefinitely. But as for electronic cards, "This has all gotten way out of hand," he said, and it blurs the meaning of "gift." The elaborate production, cost and effort the giver invests into a multimedia card can pressure recipients to keep the card much longer than a generic birthday card. "Here's your gift," he said, "I want you to listen to this message every week, forever. That's not a gift. That's a job." These cards also bring up another quandary.  How long must recipients wait to throw out a card that Grandma loaded with a slide show of photos of the cousins' last Christmas? What about a Father's Day video card, like one from Hallmark for $30, that takes AA batteries. Even arbitrary one-week or one-year rules for birthday cards don't seem to apply for a disposing of a silicon message. "We just haven't come up with any rules yet as a culture on this particular subject," said Lizzy Post, direct descendant of etiquette icon Emily Post and author at the Emily Post Institute. Post said she's only received about 10 paper greeting cards that were meaningful enough to keep permanently. Will we all have shoe boxes full of cards with little LCD screens, she wonders? Electronics like that can't go in the paper recycling bin, and it seems a bit strange for card companies to tout their recycled paper cards while selling electronics, too, she said. "Personally, I'd rather just e-mail something to a friend," she said. "I don't want to be sent some-thing in the mail and then have to bring it to an electronics store for recycling." If the message sent through multimedia is heartfelt, and happily received, then that's all for the good, she said. But as for recycling electronics, "That's just a pain." Readers, I'd like to hear from you.  Tell me what you think about this movement in the greeting card industry.  Baskets by Consuela   "we think outside the basket" Phone: 678.499.2765 Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com Website: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Blogs: http://Basketsbyconsuela.wordpress.com & http://basketwrapup.blogspot.com/

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous

Double Leisure Time

These tea pillows are an awesome way to compliment your tea break any time of the day or night.  Get cozy and sip your favorite cup of tea.  Tuck one of these pillows behind your head, sit back, now close your eyes and breathe in the wonderful scents as you relax.  What a perfect way to double your leisure time. Leaves of Leisure Tea Pillows by Gina Wu are stuffed with real tea leaves. Available in rose, lavender, green tea or jasmine fillings and many sizes. Come in lounge, bolster and travel sizes.  TeaGW, San Francisco. For more gift ideas visit us at: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Baskets by Consuela   "we think outside the basket" Phone: 678.499.2765 Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous

What A Man Needs

Father's Day is Sunday, June 20th.  This year, unlike others, it should be easier to figure out what a man needs.   Any gift that will give him an opportunity to nourish his mind, body and soul is a perfect choice.  The gift basket in this picture was custom made to include the recipients favorite snacks and treats.  It even included a quality cigar and travel case to keep it fresh. A grooming kit is ideal for those quick touch ups he might need before stepping out for work, fun or play.  How about a Swiss army knife.  He can leave it in the glove box of the car or truck.  It's a gadget that will be there when he needs it. After a long day of work or a strenuous workout at the gym or home, why not treat him to a in home spa gift basket.  Any gift that compliments his sports interest or recreational activity would be well received.  A new set of personalized golf balls, golf glove or fishing equipment are all good choices too.  Go here www.basketsbyconsuela.com for more gift ideas.  We have lots of gifts for what a man needs this Father's Day.   Baskets by Consuela   "we think outside the basket" Phone: 678.499.2765 Fax: 1-610-885-7584 Email: baskets.byconsuela@yahoo.com Website: http://www.basketsbyconsuela.com Blogs: http://Basketsbyconsuela.wordpress.com & http://basketwrapup.blogspot.com/ Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/basketsbyconsuela/

Posted via email from basketsbyconsuela's posterous