Home Away From Home on Hilton Head Island

Hilton Head Island's mild climate, slow pace, and beautifully forested landscapes are unique to the Atlantic coast. Deep-sea fishing charters, turtle watching, or riding a bike along the beach at sunset are some of the many wonderful outdoor activities available on the island. Sports enthusiasts can also play golf or tennis, hike or in-line skate at the many facilities or trails on this twelve-mile long paradise. This island is a wonderful location for an extended vacation or a work-related retreat, and Hilton Head rental homes are wonderful options for such occasions.

Visitors interested in an extended stay will want to consider renting a house on Hilton Head. A rental house allows a visitor more room, privacy, and comfort than a condo or hotel room might. Many of the homes for rent to visitors are privately owned, and all are excellently maintained. They are usually furnished, decorated, and complete with all the amenities found in a comparable home anywhere. Complete kitchens, linens, sound systems, internet access, private yards, pools, hot tubs, and, often, the ability to keep a pet are all options. Sizes of these homes vary from a small two-bedroom cottage to seven-bedroom mansions. Homes may be rented for a week or as long as a year or more. Rental fees can range from $1,000 to $10,000 a week, depending on the size and location of the home.

The island has over 40,000 year-round inhabitants, so resources for a community of that size are available to long-term renters as well. There are shops, many restaurants, telephone service, newspapers, and local tradesmen to hire if needed.

Hilton Head rental homes are also wonderful options for business and staff retreats, as many are close to meeting facilities and can house several staff members. Available catering and maid services can also help these functions run more smoothly, and allow meeting participants to unwind later with the many outdoor activities on the island.

Hilton Head Rentals Info provides detailed information on Hilton Head vacation rentals, condo rentals, rental homes, villa rentals, and oceanfront rentals. Hilton Head Rentals Info is the sister site of Lake Tahoe Vacation Rentals Web.

The Springtime of Peace

The deeper beauty of spring is its process. In winter's last days, as the sun warms the earth, each root and branch awakens to the patterned memory of who it is and what it can be. Life stirs and nature's growth in turn awakens all of us to the glories of being fully alive.

Consciousness awakens in much the same way, doesn't it? One moment, everything is dark and still. Growth begins and we are excited by movement and its vibrant promise of what is to come.

I have a sense of our world awakening to peace: not a blind pretense that we are coming up roses, but a soul-deep vision of the seeds of peace within us, just waiting for the warmth and light needed for them to flourish. In the quiet stillness of centering prayer and meditation, we connect with this warmth and light, and become it. Our joy sweeps across green valleys and white-clouded blue mountains kiss the sky.

That's how it was for Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mohammed, Mother Theresa, Buddha and so many others who became our great peacemakers. They were divinely illuminated in the silence and carried this peaceful inner light back into our world.

I remember the power of this impulse in the 1960s and see it taking hold again today, as people tire of war and destruction. It is a telling co-incidence that Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" comes along now to rip away the veils concealing our brutality. When people see in this movie the raw atrocity of violence, and know it for the monster that it is, then perhaps we will begin to reject it on our airwaves and refuse war in our lives and as a nation.

This awakening to peace is deeply needed in our suffering country, and I believe our silent prayers have brought an opportunity to choose a new symbol of who we are, in the U.S. Department of Peace. It is an impulse whose time has come, for within it is the potential to shift the consciousness of war to peace.

The Department of Peace, initiated by two spiritual peacemakers, Marianne Williamson and Dennis Kuchinich (D-Oh), holds peace as an organizing principle in our society. The DoP would teach conflict resolution in schools; address domestic violence, child abuse, mistreatment of the elderly, and other issues of cultural violence; monitor arms sales and weapons of mass destruction; and in every way seek to prevent conflict, determine the root causes of violence, and increase our national security.

By raising the torch of peace, the DoP has stirred up some fundamental questions for each of us to answer: Is there within us a compartment of peace or a compartment of war? Is it time to release our fearful struggle for power, position and possessions, in which we accept conflict and violence as ways of life? Can we shift to the life-enhancing perspectives of the heart and soul: that we are one humanity connected to a web of Spirit in which each person, drawing sustenance from this web, is fed by an unlimited abundance that supplies more than enough to satisfy us all?

Some 44 percent of all Americans are waiting for a messiah to save us from ourselves, when all we need to do is awaken to the divine life force within us and grow into the peaceful, loving and awakened beings that we are meant to be, as Jesus and other enlightened masters have taught us.

Do you feel this inner impulse? Just listen quietly to see. If an inner light urges you toward peacemaking, then perhaps it is time to act: if not to support the non-partisan Department of Peace campaign (dopcampaign.org), then to express your need and desire for peace in another way, so that peace can make your valleys green and you can raise the torch of peace in our world.

Each of us is an instrument of the peace awakening on Earth right now. May we experience it deep within and stir it in others, so that our springtime of peace blossoms and lifts us into the Perfection that pours life into every being.

?2004, Eagle Life Communications. All rights in all media reserved.

About The Author

Judith Pennington is an internationally published writer, spiritual teacher and author of The Voice of the Soul: A Journey into Wisdom and the Physics of God, a critically acclaimed book on the step-by-step evolution of the soul and consciousness. Visit her website, www.eaglelife.com, to sign up for her free e-newsletter and paid-for e-zine, OneWorld, whose open debut issue includes a fascinating exclusive interview with Barbara Brennan on the stages of our expansion into higher consciousness.

Hate Follow-Up Phone Calls To Hot Prospects Who Won?t Call You Back? Stop Calling!

We all learned in Sales 101 we must follow up with our prospects until they buy. Unfortunately, while we're busy trying to make all these follow-ups, some very fine prospects who are ready to buy now are flying under our radar.

The trick in sales is to talk to buyers. Rather than responding, "Duh!", professional sales people find this the hardest discipline to execute. But like most successful strategies, it requires a tactical plan. If you've been relying solely on follow-up phone calls to close sales, why not try this plan for 30 days?

1. Create a follow-up activity series. If you use ACT! or another contact manager, assign the series after you send your proposal. If you close the sale, you can always end the series early. Your series could look like this:

0 Day-Proposal Sent

2 Days-Follow-up Phone Call

4 Days-Follow-up Email

7 Days-Follow-up Voice Mail

10 Days-Follow-up Email

14 Days-Follow-Up Voice Mail

30 Days-Follow-Up Email

2. Write a compelling voice mail script. Limit it to 10-15 seconds. (Time it!) Start with your name, company and phone number (which gives the recipient an opportunity to retrieve your number without having to wait for the entire message to play). Next, say your compelling message; then, a declaration about what you want them to do. Finally repeat your phone number at the end. I often give my email address as an alternative way to "return the call."

My voice mail sales follow-up call goes something like this: "Hi, ___, this is Lori Feldman with Aviva, 800/264-5478. I just completed a project for another client who was as concerned as you are about ___. Listen to what happened when they bought my services: (Recap story). I have some additional ideas for (Company's project for which I sent you my proposal. When are you available to discuss it? Here's my phone number again and my email address, if that's an easier way for you to contact me: (Phone and email address.)

3. Send a Fax. Once I get 30 days out from a sent proposal, with no feedback from a prospect, I figure it's time to put him back in the prospect bucket where he'll receive the regular direct marketing I send to all customers and prospects (ACT! Tips, User Group invitations, newsletters, etc.) However, because he was interested in my services-enough to ask for a proposal-and he hasn't said "no" yet, I still want to give him his own follow up.

Based on the value of the proposal, I may put in a recall date every 30 days, or start emailing again, but first I'll try my "last ditch effort," a fax that says, "It looks like your needs may have changed since we last talked. Please check the appropriate box and fax it back to me at your convenience: 1) We're still interested, but I've had no time to follow up with you. Try me in ___ days/months; 2) Our needs have changed, and we don't need you! 3) We went with another vendor, sorry! 4) Who are you again?" Humor goes a long way, too.

It's true that persistence pays off in higher close rates. But your prospect is busy, too, and sometimes you're just not the high priority you think you are. Many potential customers prefer responding via email, which is faster and less intrusive in their day than a phone conversation can be. Giving a prospect several ways to communicate with you-especially when it cuts down on the time you're spending with non-buyers-is a more effective long-term sales strategy. When you focus selling time on buyers who want to buy today, your sales go up!

Lori Feldman is president of Aviva, a mailing list/database marketing and Internet consulting firm and an ACT! Software Certified Consultant. She is this year's Direct Marketer of the Year, awarded by the Direct Marketing Assn. of St. Louis. Reach her at http://www.aviva-aviva.com/act.html

Mission-Critical Public Relations?

As a business, non-profit or association manager, any tool that helps you reach your department, division or subsidiary objective IS mission-critical.

And particularly so when that tool helps you persuade your most important external stakeholders to your way of thinking, and then moves them to take actions that lead to your success.

Here is such a mission-critical tool. One that lets you get serious about your public relations. It shifts the emphasis away from communications tactics to a workable plan for reaching those outside groups of people with a large say about how successful you're going to be ? namely, your key external target audiences. The tool says, "People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished."

Use this blueprint to create behaviors that lead to activities like more follow up purchases, higher contributions levels, increased qualified employment applications, new joint venture proposals or a big boost in capital contributions.

First, meet with the public relations people assigned to your department, division or subsidiary and let them know you're serious about finding out what your most important outside audiences actually think about your organization. The rationale being that target audience perceptions usually lead to behaviors that can help or hinder you in achieving your operating objectives.

Decide among you which audiences are really key to your success then build and prioritize your list of important outside groups of people whose actions most affect your unit. Now, let's work on #1 on that list.

Your new mission-critical public relations effort will rest heavily on how efficient you are in rounding up the perceptions of your key target audience.

You can put your public relations team to work interacting with members of that #1 outside audience. Or, if you can tap a good sized budget, you can ask a professional survey firm to do the job for you. However, because your PR folks are already in the perception and behavior business, my choice would be to use them for this assignment.

One way or the other, someone must interact with members of that prime audience and ask questions like "What do you know about our operation? Are you familiar with our services or products? Have you had any negotiations with us? If so, were they satisfactory?"

But watch the responses carefully. Notice any evasive or hesitant comments about your organization? Be especially alert for misconceptions or untruths. Are there false assumptions or inaccuracies you need to remedy in light of experience that shows negative perceptions inevitably lead to negative behaviors ? the kind you must correct to protect your unit's operations.

The result of all this work is that you are now prepared to set your public relations goal. For instance, clarify a hurtful inaccuracy, fix that misconception or flatten that rumor once and for all.

But there's more to reaching your goal. As with just about any goal you pursue, you don't reach it without the right strategy to show you how to get there. Fact is, with matters of perception and opinion, you have three strategic options: change an offending opinion/perception, create it where there isn't any, or reinforce an existing perception.

Now comes some work that requires real writing talent ? preparing the message you will use to carry your corrective facts and figures to members of your key target audience.

The message must display several characteristics. It must be clearly written as to why that misconception, inaccuracy or false assumption should be corrected or clarified. Your supporting facts must be truthful leading to a finished message that is both believable and compelling.

Now, how about moving your message to your audience? This is the least complex step in the sequence because there are so many communications tactics ready to do the message delivery job for you. They range from op-eds in local newspapers, radio and TV interviews, speeches, consumer briefings and brochures to newsletters, emails, personal meetings and many, many others. Only caution: be sure the tactics you assign to the job have a good record of reaching people just like those members of your target audience.

What about progress? Only way to know for certain if offending perceptions have been altered, is to interact out there once again with those audience members asking the same questions as before. But this time, you and your PR team will be watching carefully for indications that the troublesome perception really is moving in your direction.

That's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? Alter the offending perception?that leads directly to the predictable behavior?that helps business, non-profit or association managers use mission-critical public relations?to reach their department, division or subsidiary objectives.

About The Author

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit and association managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit: http://www.prcommentary.com

Choosing a Daycare or Pre-School ? Top Ten Safety Tips

When it's time to put your child into a daycare or pre-school, there is some homework involved. Here are the top ten safety tips that are useful when looking for a pre-school or daycare center.

1. Take the time to make sure the program is reputable and whether the facility has had any past complaints. Either with parents, previous teachers or care-givers. You also want to know about the existing teachers.

2. Talk with other moms on where they bring their kids. They will let you know if they had good experiences or not.

3. If you are new to the neighborhood, go to the receptionist at your area's pediatrician. They know everybody! They pretty much have a pulse on the community. Nurses and doctors are O.K., but busy. Receptionists will have the time to answer your questions.

4. Learn about the school or center's hiring policies and practices. Find out whether they check an applicant's references, perform background checks, and verify previous employment history before hiring.

5. Learn whether the center or school welcomes and supports parental participation.

6. Make sure you have the right to drop in and visit the facility at any time.

7. Make sure you are informed about every planned field trip and outing. Never give the organization general permission to take your child off the premises.

8. Make sure that the facility has you sign a release to publish your child's picture in any local newspapers. And it is definitely O.K. if you don't what to have your child's picture in the paper for their safety.

9. Prohibit, in writing, the release of your child to anyone without your explicit consent. Make sure the program knows who will pick up your child on any given day.

10. Ask the facility what their policy is on strangers or unauthorized persons that might come into the facility. Do they have any type of safety measures when someone who does not have custody or right to a child, show up. What is their protocol? What would they do?

You want your child to have an enjoyable and fun experience in their first learning facility. By asking questions and doing some investigating, you can rest assure that they will be in a safe environment as well.

Michelle Annese is a 3rd degree black belt with 15+ years experience teaching self defense and safety for women and children. She is a World Martial Arts Hall of Fame inductee for Achievement and best selling author of The Realtor Survival Guide, Protection for Women, and The SafeGuard System for Kids. For more information on how to protect yourself and your family go to http://www.michelleannese.com and check out other articles by Michelle Annese and get her free safety tips e-newsletter.

Cell phone Etiquette. The Do?s and Don?ts

With more and more people buying cell phones, it becomes more significant to know how to use your cell phone without looking obnoxious. Cell phones play an important role in our lives, but cell phone rage, like road rage, air rage and general rage is rising. Here are some tips for cell phone etiquette.

Out with a group of friend(s) and your cell phone rings? Excuse yourself from the group and take the call elsewhere. Taking the call elsewhere will not disrupt the flow of conversation within the group.

With a friend and the cell phone rings? Keep the call short and sweet. Otherwise, it gives the appearance that the friend you are with is less important that the caller.

Out on a date? The point of the date is to be able to spend time to get to know the other person. I would suggest that you disregard such calls. The romance is lost by the sound of the ringtones of your cell phone. Your date will appreciate your undivided attention.

It's a good idea to put your cell phone on vibrate when in restaurants, theaters, churches, weddings and funerals. When I'm out in a restaurant, I feel like asking for the non cell phone ringing section. Like many others, it is not often do I get to spend a quiet evening away from the children, work or other distractions. An evening going out to dinner with my husband is supposed to be relaxing, and we do not enjoy being distracted overhearing how wonderful your life has become since you started using Viagra.

I was in a movie theater once and someone's cell phone rang and the individual took the call. Someone else in the theater did not react well to the intrusive call and started shouting at the cell phone user. The cell phone user ignored the cell phone raged individual and the focus of the movie was lost and everyone's attention was on these two people. While nothing came of the incident, a relaxing evening out with my husband was lost. I felt like asking for our money back. The next time we will.

There is no question that cell phones are an important part of our lives. Use cell phones with good manners. Everyone will appreciate it.

P.S. ? As for ringtones? Not all people will appreciate listening to the latest pop tune or classical music each and every time your cell phone rings. May I suggest using the vibrate feature instead of your ringtones in a public place.

Catherine Kenyeres is a free lance writer and publisher for http://Best-4u-Cell-Phones.com. Catherine provides the latest information, reviews and comparisons for cell phone clients.

Instant Car Loan - Get an Approval Online Quick

Your car loan is now less than an hour away from approval with an online car loan lender. You can have a check in hand to buy a car the next day once your online application is approved.

How It Works

Online car loan lenders work with several financing companies to offer car loans for all types of situations. Whether you have poor credit or a first time buyer, car loan lenders can find you financing.

The entire process just takes a matter of days to complete, but the application just takes minutes. The car loan application is completed online, which takes less than fifteen minutes to complete. You can expect an approval usually in less than an hour. Your car loan package will arrive as soon as the next day. You can complete the paperwork that day and buy your car.

Applying For A Car Loan Online

To apply for a car loan online, decide ahead of time the amount you are willing to spend on a car and the length of the loan. It is a good idea to apply for more than what you think you need, leaving you room add in sales tax and other fees.

Your online car loan application is a short form, requesting personal information, employment history, and mortgage payments if any. Once you complete the form, simply press the submit button. During regular business hours, you can expect a response within a few minutes. If approved, your check and paperwork will usually arrive the next day.

Buying A Car

With your check in hand, you can purchase your car. Your check allows you to buy your car from a dealership or an individual. You just enter the amount on the check and sign it over to them. You will also need to fill out some additional forms, which are including in the paperwork sent by your car loan lender.

With an online car loan, you are basically a pre-approved car buyer. You can shop anywhere and you have the money on hand, giving you added leverage in negotiations. Use this to your advantage when you sit down to make a deal regarding your car.

To view our list of recommended auto loan companies online, visit this page: Recommended Auto Loan Companies Online.

Carrie Reeder is the owner of ABC Loan Guide, an informational website about various types of loans.