The Refresh Orlando Heirs

You’ve been dating the man forever, and he has yet to cough up a ring. You spend every single weekend with him. You endure his flatulent buddies from college. You put up with his lunatic mother. You alternate spending holidays with his family and yours, spending handsome sums on gifts for his nieces and nephews. You cook for him. You’ve baked him birthday cakes. Occasionally you even do his laundry.

Should you give him an ultimatum? Doesn’t he owe it to you to marry you after all you’ve done for him?

No.

After all, it was you who decided to endure people you don’t like. It was your idea to cozy up to his nieces and nephews to show him how much you love children. You cooked and baked and did his laundry to prove that you’re superior wife material. All this in the hopes of winning the ultimate prize package: The ring! The dress! The 7-day/6-night trip to the romantic destination of your choice!

And all he ever does is take you for granted.

Of course he takes you for granted. You don’t have a life of your own. Your goal in life is to get married, you’re pinning your hopes on him, and he knows it. Put yourself in his place: Wouldn’t you take you for granted?

If you truly love him (and consider this carefully; do you love him, or do you love the idea of getting married?), don’t give him an ultimatum. It’s never smart to give any man an ultimatum. Ask yourself: Do you really want to marry a guy you had to strong arm? Don’t you deserve better?

Ask yourself what marriage to an ambivalent husband might be like. If the guy takes you for granted now, how bad will he be in five years when you’ve given birth to children who scribble on the kitchen wall, and he remains slumped on the couch while you scurry to scrub it off? How bad will he be in 10 years when, on top of cooking, cleaning, and laundry to do, you still have homework to supervise and Halloween costumes to make?

Stop yourself now. Otherwise, one day sooner than you think, you will find yourself among the legions of women who complain that their husbands never do a damn thing around the house, and you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.

So, take a step back. Decide what you really want from life. Determine whether this particular man is the right companion for the trip. Cease spending all your free time with him. Replace a bad habit with a good one by taking a class, signing up for yoga, or going away for the occasional weekend with the friends you’ve been neglecting since you hooked up with What’s-His-Name. In other words, don’t be so available.

Fill your time with opportunities to meet new people. Get to know yourself better (you’re worth getting to know). By all means, hang out with the guy every now and then but limit time with his family. Resist all inclinations to “wife and mother” him. Let him bake you a cake for a change.

Will he come to his senses? Will he fall on both knees and make all your Cinderella fantasies come true?

Well, here are three possibilities: 1) He won’t miss you all that much, freeing you to find happiness elsewhere; 2) You’ll realize you don’t miss him all that much and hold out for a man who’ll love you as much as you love him; or 3) He’ll ask you to marry him, and you’ll tell him yes or no, confident that you’re making the right choice for your own future happiness.

Keep in mind that if you say yes, the guy’s obnoxious college buddies and lunatic mother are part of the package. If you’re clever, you may get away with scaling back on his nieces and nephews’ gifts a bit. How much baking, cooking, and laundry you take on, however, is entirely up to you.

Terry Hernon MacDonald is the author of “How to Attract and Marry the Man of Your Dreams.” Visit her website at http://www.marrysmart.com

Human nature always seems to have this predilection with beauty
and what society believes is beautiful. When we are fat, we want
to be slim or thin. When we have the so-called “love handles”,
we decide we do not love them anymore, so we go to the gym and
exercise until our tongues fall out from fatigue. We are blessed
with dark colored skin, so we try all the new bleaching products
available in the market to lighten our color. We have white skin
so we go to tanning salons to get olive skin, and the
out-in-the-sun color to your skin. We are naturally brunette but
we go to the nearest salon to get our hair done and died to
blonde because they said “blondes always have such fun”.

And digital technology is also banking on the partiality of
people to not have fun with what the Lord has blessed them with
originally.

I have been in the digital business for quite some time now, and
what I regularly encounter are numerous questions on how to
remove blemishes from photos so that their faces would look
great and give that “fashion-magazine look” that the media is
glamorizing so much nowadays. Here are a few suggestions then
from a photographer on beauty retouching.

(Now, if I could just do it in real life, I would be a
millionaire by now.)

Beauty Retouching with Photoshop

1 - Try to improve the colors on the face in your photo as far
as you can go. To edit, it is better to do it in RGB rather than
CMYK. With RGB, editing is more flexible and easy. And explore
all the selections in the various feathers. Do not be afraid to
experiment. After all, being creative is all about using all the
choices available.

2 - After editing your color, it’s now time to create a new
layer. This is also a tool for you to be able to control your
work. Begin your retouch using a heeling brush and cloning stamp
to remove the things you want removed. Start with the bigger
imperfections and move your way to the littlest blemish. You
could also use the heeling brush to remove the lines under the
eyes to create that young look to the face.

3 - To adjust the size of any part of the face (e.g. big nose),
adjust to your liking with the Liquify filter. Click the Filters
menu and choose Liquify. This tool allows you to smudge, move,
squish, and even distort your image according to your
satisfaction. For best results and easy navigation, turn the
grid on. This will let you view the changes you’ve made.

For increasing or reducing the size of the area, you can also
use the Warp, although the Pucker and Bloat are most effective
with this type of retouch. Remember to be careful and again, do
not be afraid to experiment. Use the appropriate brush size and
go slowly, moving bits at a time.

4 -To smoothen the skin, use the cloning stamp and carefully
apply to the skin. The best would be to use multiple clicks
rather than strokes to even out the skin tone. This is the part
where you need to be patient. Be careful with your patterns and
do not repeat. Also, try to be creative. Don’t worry if you make
mistakes along the way. Just go back to the history palette
everytime you create something you don’t like and start again.

5 - For overdoing the smoothing process, just use the history
palette to restore the specific area. If this does not work, try
to select and add the noise filter to simulate the texture of
the skin.

Finally, after a little adjustments and a little nip and tuck
here and there, you are ready to view your final image.

According to the photographer, beauty retouching needs patience
and a lot of perseverance. Many methods are available, but there
are only a few tricks to help others retouch their photos. Even
for professionals, this job takes time to finish. However, with
time, one can get faster.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit
http://www.losangelesprintingservice.com

In today’s climate of business, CEOs and executives are cautiously optimistic about the economy and their company’s future growth. They realize that they still need to market to drive profitable growth and increase the company’s value, but the financial strings are being tightened. However, there is a clear growing trend for companies, regardless of size and industry, to outsource (or a term used not to long ago sub-contracting) an element of their business. Why does this trend continue to grow, and how do executives assess their needs? Outsourcing is not a passing fad, but clearly a paradigm shift that can change a business model for the better.

Outsourcing involves the use of resources outside of the organization to perform specific tasks required for the business. However, there are a variety of ways to use these resources, including business process outsourcing and co-sourcing. Business process outsourcing involves the selling off one part of the business to create positive cash flow and probable gains in productivity and quality. Co-sourcing involves retaining part of the service in-house, and off-loading or outsourcing a portion to a third party partner. This is the one we will discuss, and in our case the marketing function.

Companies often forget to ask the basic question: What business are we in? Too often the need to perform various functions and to keep a business running does not allow management to step back and ask this question. The answer should bring management to the fundamental product/service that generates revenue for this company.

In the book “Living on the Fault Line” (HarperCollins, 2000) by Geoffrey Moore, described an outsourcing concept. He says, all employees should be focused on core activities–that is, things that contribute to the company’s competitive advantage and increase shareholder value. The opposite of core is context–activities that do not contribute to competitive advantage. Context activities should be outsourced.

For example, your head of marketing was hired to develop and coordinate strategies, direct tactics and their implementation, to generate more sales leads by new customers, while maximizing the loyalty and profitability of current customers. That is their “Core” function. However, over time they have developed a talent for public relations and as a result have become the communication manager of the company. They edit the company website, makes changes, etc. These responsibilities (those of PR Manager) can be described as “Context.”

This is how most companies handle the “Context” with respect to positioning, messaging, and public relations, three tasks for marketing. A similar example could be used for any marketing tasks. It is not their core responsibility and yet, they take it on. The problem with “Context” is that it often takes on a life of its own and begins to obscure what the “Core” should be. The example above was selected because it represents what actually happens for most small to midsized companies. What management needs to consider is the effect that “Context” has on productivity, return-on-sales, ROI and the general operation of the business.

Outsourcing allows companies to focus their resources and control their head count. This form of operations allows the company to hand over full responsibility for the outsourcing function within clearly defined management guidelines and then monitor the performance. When you break down the costs of a full marketing department internally, versus the cost of outsourcing with an external partner, the business case begins to tip in favor of not allowing the “Context” to conceal the “Core.” The following elements would be common to build out a high-quality and stable relationship in a typical small organization with gross sales revenues of $20 million.

Description Annual Salaries Outsourced Cost
Marketing Director $120,000 NC
Marketing Manager $75,000 NC
Marketing Assistant $40,000 NC
PR Manager $80,000 NC
Program Budget $1,000,000 $900,000
Outsourcing Fees NA $150,000
Total Approximate Annual Cost: $1,350,000 $1,050,000

(The costs above are average for mid-sized companies.)

Consider the example of a high performance marketing partner that offers you results, flexibility, and reduction in staff and overhead. Companies can typically have equal if not better results, while maintaining product and service quality for a fraction of the cost by turning to an expert in sales and marketing. And what is the cost of a bad hire? The commonly referenced cost of a bad hire is 2.5 the times annual salary. In most small to mid-sized organizations, marketing can be outsourced while they focus on the core.

Cost is clearly the most popular reason for outsourcing. However, strategic reasons such as improving company focus on core business and improving quality are next.

Why companies decide to let “Context” take over and drive the business can usually be attributed to lack of information. Many businesses and marketing specialists believe that by keeping everything internal the sales growth is more efficient. It’s hard to find sales and marketing experts that have years of experience and are all aligned with the top line growth objectives. Companies who are not using marketing as part of their “Core” focus usually do not have the teams of marketing experts to handle the needs of their marketing. As a result, the “Context” begins to take over leaving less and less room for the “Core.” So, is it worth “controlling” all of your marketing functions? Is this an area of your business that is core to your success? Probably not.

It is important for a company to focus on the things that add value and make it competitive. If you build software, stick to doing those things that help you to build better software, and outsource all those things that can be outsourced. The more focus you place in “context” areas, the harder it becomes for you to do your “Core” well. When you take into account the cost of what it really takes to do it right, the business case cannot be ignored.

George Schildge is the president and CEO of Matrix Marketing Group Inc., a full-service marketing firm that specialize in helping small to mid-sized business-to-business firms grow profitably and build their business through effective growth planning and marketing. He can be reached at press@matrixmarketinggroup.com or www.matrixmarketinggroup.com or 86.456.9100.

George Schildge has over 20 years of marketing and operational experience in the high-tech, computer hardware and software, and medical fields. George’s experience includes working at Sun Microsystems, CoCreate Software, Baan Business Systems, IBM and several start-ups. During these affiliations he gained experience in developing, launching and managing a company’s business and marketing strategy and operational plans for products and services. Working on numerous high-tech firms, he has helped companies bridge the gap between technology and branding.

As a senior executive at these major high technology firms, George has gained expertise in the areas of marketing strategy, product development, organizational development, international marketing and distribution, interactive marketing, brand management and integrated marketing communications. He has a track record of ramping multiple products and firms to profitability and has extensive knowledge of computer and high-tech markets and trends.