Author: admin Published: January 24th, 2010
Baby boomers are a very creative people. But so often the demands of career and raising a family leaves little time for creativity in your middle age years. But as more baby boomers complete their years of service in their careers and move toward retirement, they have plenty of energy and creativity left for a new passion in life, one that expresses all that creativity of their youth.
This is one reason we have seen such an explosion of craft fairs in the country which provide an outlet for all of that creative talent baby boomers are expressing through their arts and craft. The great thing about crafts shows is you can start wherever you are in your creative arts and continue to grow and become more skilled each passing year. To get started, you should take on this new hobby and small business with the same enthusiasm and passion you did when you were employed in your former career. That is the great thing about baby boomers having this kind of free time in the retirement years. There is so much talent and energy available that to not make it available to the public would be a crime.
It is going to take some preparation to get ready for your first craft fair. The preparation will be on three fronts. One is making contacts with the organizers of upcoming fairs and getting on the schedule to be able to display a booth there. The easiest way to find out how to do that is attend the new craft fair that comes up in the area. They are often associated with special events such as Oktoberfest or a food or music festival. By attending several as you are in your preparation period, you can accomplish several good things…
. You can look at booths of many different vendors to get ideas for your booth when you are ready to take the plunge.
. You can talk to vendors who are selling there and learn about how to go about getting on the program for this fair and to learn about upcoming events you can participate in. Don’t worry about you seeming to pose a threat as a future competition for sales. There is a camaraderie among crafters and you will enjoy the social aspect of mixing with other creative people.
. You can talk to the people who organize the show and get a feel for how you will fit in to their next event.
Another line of preparation is booth creation. It’s good if you are starting early because it will take some time and a bit of expense to get the materials together and for you to build the skills to put the booth up, take it down, move it and store it between shows. Again, your contacts with experienced craft show veterans will be invaluable for this.
Finally, but this is the most important part of your preparations is your talent and craft that you will be preparing to sell at the craft shows. You can purchase some examples of similar crafts you see doing well at the fairs you scout out. These can be templates for what you want to do. But you will impose your own creative vision on the craft so what you offer when you finally get to the craft faire will be uniquely yours and speak of your vision.
Along with these preparations, think about how you will customize your booth to draw customers in. From craft fairs you have attended in the past and the ones you scout, you will witness that there are certain booths that draw crowds and others that just don’t seem to get the customers. So you want to make your booth inviting to customers so you will reap a good return on your effort in the form of sales.
There are a variety of ways to draw customers. From candles, to contests, to videos playing, to using music or live talent to making your craft as people watch, there are many ways you can experiment around with to draw customers. You will get a unique thrill from the sales you make each day. But more importantly, you will be expressing that creative side of you and getting that fulfillment that you had to wait to this phase of life to express. And that’s a wonderful benefit of learning to sell your crafts at craft fairs.
Tags: Baby Boomers, Business, Career, Craft, Hobbies
Category Baby Boomers |
Author: admin Published: January 24th, 2010
One thing that many home and business owners neglect to check when establishing security measures for their homes and businesses is whether or not the standards being established will actually work to lower their insurance rates. Just as many companies reward safe drivers and drivers who own cars with GPS tracking enabled, they also reward home owners that take logical and practical steps to reduce the vulnerability of the homes to invasion as well as other security risks such as fire.
This is one question you should ask the security expert that assesses your home or business for security measures and upgrades as he should be able to give you a ‘heads up’ when it comes to this sort of information and which insurance companies prize these sorts of upgrades more heavily. The bottom line is that the experts keep up with this type of information in order to encourage hesitant buyers to make the purchase. In all fairness toe the experts; the fact remains that much of the costs involved in these security measures can be recovered through the discounts that are applied to the insurance costs.
One thing that may be worth mentioning is that in some cases, the savings translate into enough money to cover the monthly monitoring fees that the security services charge. When compared to the insurance savings, the peace of mind that is involved in providing these added security measures to your home or business is well worth any additional costs in most cases. This is particularly true if ever the time comes when these things pay off by protecting your family or employees as these security measures are designed to do.
Insurance companies are well aware that property is not only damaged due to theft but in many cases possessions are taken away from homeowners, never to be recovered. Some of these possessions are priceless in value, as dollar signs do not begin to touch their significance. However, by taking preventative measures to protect your belongings, most insurance companies will find you a more acceptable risk simply for taking the small step of hiring a monitored security company.
Other things you can do when it comes to the safety and security of your home or business include getting a new roof that is fire resistant, installing a fire extinguishing system, offering courses on fire safety (to employees), and installing fire barriers in larger companies that should work to protect some of the building even when all of the building cannot be protected.
Upgrading the electrical services in your home or business can also help you save money on your insurance as it reduces yet another fire risk. Fire is one of the greatest damaging forces that the average business will experience as far as structural risks goes and one that is in many cases preventable by taking certain measures. There is very little that can actually be done to protect a business or home from the ravages of flood or tornadoes so there is little hope available for lowering the price of your insurance premiums by seeking to defend against these types of damage.
In many cases, small steps can net big rewards when insurance companies sees the combined total of your efforts to protect your home or business not only from invasion but also the dangers that often arise from within. Protecting the structure of your home or office is only a small part of the security efforts that should be implemented by taking the steps to do just that often make a big impression on big business and will result in savings for you down the road.
Remember always that prevention is the best cure and insurance companies know this as well as you know it. For this reason, they are willing, in many cases, to reward those who take this information to heart and act upon it. Check with your insurance company and see if your new security measures for your home and business will actually cost less in the long run than you may have originally thought.
Tags: Business, GPS, Home, Insurance rates, Security
Category Protect Asset |
