Bounce ? Flooring That Mums? Know Best
Mums at flooring company Barefoot Living have put their heads together to bring a new surface to life – with kids in mind.
Bounce is a seamless floor that gives a springy, easy to clean finish, available in a range of bright, bold colours and styles to make each one unique.
Ideal for nurseries and even children’s play areas at home, the floor measures up in four important areas – it’s ‘green,’ safe, durable and creative.
Barefoot Living’s designers, Andrea Hall, a mum of three, and Tamara Fearon, a mum of two – together with office manager Karen Nobes, a mum of twin boys, collaborated on the floor’s design to get the right finish.
Bounce is installed by Barefoot Living’s own expert, highly trained team.
Cheshire-based Barefoot Living is led by entrepreneur Dawn Gibbins MBE, herself a mother of two teenage daughters, who gave the ‘Barefoot mums’ a free rein to come up with the type of floor that could make a difference to youngsters’ home and nursery environments – and put a real spring in their step.
Dawn said: “Our mums wanted something that was safe, sustainable and easy to look after.
“The floor is nice and springy, so it absorbs knocks and bumps, but it is still really hard-wearing and – because it’s seamless and a sealed surface – it’s easy to clean too.
“It is a great surface for children to stretch their little toes and walk barefoot.
“Recycled materials are also used in the floor, so it does its bit for the environment too.
“Bounce looks great. A wide-range of colours and styles can be chosen, so the floor can really make a nursery or playroom bright and inviting.
“It just shows what mums can do when they are able to bounce ideas together.”
Barefoot Living is a new business venture, which creates a range of floors, all designed to encourage people to lose their shoes and enjoy the feeling of freedom underfoot.
It is the brainchild of entrepreneur Dawn Gibbins MBE, a former Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year. Last year, Dawn sold her South Cheshire based global business Flowcrete – which she built up from a start-up in the 1980s to a major international company with offices in 30 countries – for millions of pounds.
Through Barefoot Living, Dawn is now able to combine her love of flooring with her passion for health, wellbeing and Feng Shui.
Based in Bosley, on the outskirts of Congleton in Cheshire, the company is due to open a showroom facility at its offices in the Spring.
‘Grown-up’ floors available include Hot Rocks, a heated marble carpet surface, Smoothies, which are contemporary shiny resin ‘poured’ floors in all colours of the rainbow, and Cool Rocks, stone flooring for driveways and patio areas.
Dawn added: “I’m very excited to be bringing years of flooring expertise, with a new concept that is a revolutionary in the marketplace.”
Find out more at http://www.barefoot.co.uk
Barefoot phone 01260 22 33 07
ENDS
Notes to editors
Barefoot Living, based in Bosley on the outskirts of Congleton, provides luxury seamless flooring for homes, spas, healthclubs, therapy centres, gyms – as well as Bounce for nurseries.
Founded by entrepreneur Dawn Gibbins MBE ‘the Barefoot entrepreneur’ the company’s floors are designed to encourage people to lose their shoes and enjoy the feeling of freedom underfoot.
Press release issued by Jane Shepherd, Shepherd PR Limited.
01538 308685/308099
07985 129315
Email: jane@shepherd-pr.com
For further information about Barefoot Living contract Rosie at
Barefoot phone 01260 223307
Call Center Of The Future Best Practice: Startek “the Enterprise Of Call Centers Just Got Better”
I have had the privilege to watch the construction of StarTek’s newest call center based in Costa Rica and to get to know the on the ground leadership team responsible for Start-Up.
Why does StarTek make my Cut for Best Practices? Place, Passion and People!
As a former Customer Service Manager for one of the largest Call Centers in the U.S. and Coach/Consultant for Call Center Sales and Customer Service, I keep an eye out for call centers that demonstrate “Best Practices”, particularly companies that are working passionately to improve the perception that “Customer Service over the Phone” is a nightmare and “Working in a Call Center” an even greater one. Let’s not even talk about the reputation of “Off-Shore Call Centers”
1) Place: The Feng Shui of Call Centers.
StarTek recognizes that environment impacts employee attitude which impacts customer service call quality! Following leaders like Google, StarTek’s Costa Rica Call Center has a hip modern design to attract and energize employees who appreciate the quality of their work space. Costa Rica’s “Nature of Inspiration” is also evident in this creative design with each floor representing a different eco system of Costa Rica. There’s a Rainforest Floor, Volcano Floor and even a Floor that’s a Day at the Beach! A spacious and bright employee lunch room helps to energize employees so the last call of the day is as enthusiastic as the first.
Under the direction of Call Center Site Manager Ryan Carey, the StarTek Customer Service Call Center is a creative and comfortable environment with on-site catering, free transportation for employees, an on-site doctor and even a recreation room with a Wii that all combine to create a positive and productive workplace. Carey has gone the extra mile in the design, having sat in the chair of a call center agent and the results are note worthy.
Listen up Call Center Managers: There’s a reason prisons are depressing places! It’s called environment! I have witnessed far too many call centers including my own years ago, that do nothing to energize the employees and indeed resemble a prison. The result is what we have settled for in the industry and as customers: Robotic agents that can barely wow themselves yet alone provide WOW! Customer Service over the phone. PS: Providing a creative and positive work environment shows returns in both productivity and reduced turnover.
2) Passion and People: Hire for Attitude/Train for Skill and Commit to Hiring only the Best!
In my years of teaching “How to Recruit and Hire the Right People”, I perhaps have not seen a more rigorous recruitment process in the Call Center Industry. According to StarTek’s passionate Director of Strategic Recruiting and Talent Acquisition, Holly Reed, the secret is in the sophisticated recruitment process that seeks to identify the candidate’s value proposition. Does the employee fit both the skills needed by successful agents as well as the StarTek Culture?
According to Reed, StarTek is looking for the “5 E’s” in their Call Center Sales Agents: Engaged, Experienced in Sales, Enthusiasm, Excellence in English Language Skills and Employees who actually Enjoy Sales! Duh! Why hire someone who hates sales if their primary job is selling? It may sound like common sense but you would be surprised at the lack of that consideration by call center managers caught in a turnover tsunami. To those managers, a recommendation to stop the madness! Ask not why employees are leaving but why your top performers are staying and develop a strategic recruitment and retention process around that question.
StarTek’s recruitment process for agents includes an on-line application, followed by a sales assessment, followed by a 155 data point interview over the phone. Then comes the next phase of an on-site interview by the team in which the candidate also interviews StarTek, experiences first hand what the job is about, through listening and observation of calls and a final test which I believe is pivotal. Sorry if I told you that secret recruitment test, I’d have to kill you! No unfair advantage in the StarTek application process. Suffice to say the team at StarTek is seeking the Real Deal: Passionate, Personable and Performance Driven and Yes, they live by –Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill.
Rosemary Rein, PhD is the author of “Go Wild! Survival Skills for Business and Life” and contributing author on Customer Service Excellence in “Blueprint for Success” with Dr. Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard.
She is the founder of Now to WOW!™ Customer Service and Leadership Training which provides on-site coaching, training and NBI® Whole Brain Relationship profiles and methodology to International Call Centers.
For more information on Now to WOW!™ Training, visit www.gowildgogreat.com, www.retreatscostarica.com and www.yporetreats.com.
Is the Garage the Best Place to Teach Wing Chun?
Perhaps we should take a good look at how martial arts are taught today and the different mentalities involved. Maybe we should question not our methods of Wing Chun, but our motivations for teaching this great fighting system. There are several questions that come to mind when I think about how excellent Wing Chun is as a fighting system and yet here in the United States, we are few in number. If we were to compare to Tae Kwon Do schools we are last place. They have really nice schools that are not only beautiful to look at, but also safe to train in. Why is that? I know what you are thinking already. Tae Kwon Do schools are nothing more than McDojo’s that only exist to make the owner of the school rich. Don’t worry, I think that is true in many cases but not all. There are several reputable schools out there that have the complete package. Great martial arts and a great business for the owner. I believe the McDojo’s are the extreme and we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.
What if Wing Chun were to become as popular as Tae Kwon Do in the U.S. without “selling out”. Is it possible to run a very successful Wing Chun school that not only makes the owner really good money; but also produces above average, highly skilled fighters? Hasn’t our mentality been… ‘you can’t teach wing chun in a beautiful school with 50, 75, 100 or 200 students without somehow sacrificing quality.’? We all know famous masters who still teach out of a garage with only 6 or 8 students with this way of thinking. Of course they have to keep a day job to survive and there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe many of us suffer from a mentality that has either been passed on to us, or we just assumed that this is the way it’s done because after all, Master Dun Ol Way does it that way.
I used to think that if my Wing Chun was really good, I mean if I practiced so that no one in my city could come close to my skill, that people would just be busting my door down to learn from me. I wanted to at least achieve what my Sifu did in his school. In fact I secretly wanted to surpass him in the number of students he had. He didn’t hold back. He taught me with utmost care. Surely many people would just show up. I could not have been more mistaken. I was actually surprised that I didn’t have large numbers even though I saw other Wing Chun masters working out of ugly and sometimes dangerous looking buildings with only a hand full of students. No they didn’t come. In fact if it were not for the few “hard core fighter types” that darkened my door I would not have any students at all. I found out I was really good at running people off. Of course I would justify it by saying that they were not worthy any way. Not worthy to learn from a master like me who possessed this level of skill. Why this skill was only for the few who I could pass it on to. I could pass on my Wing Chun to my worthy students and the rest could go take a hike. Yea!!! Now I’m poor!
My friends, I discovered that I had the Wing Chun Poverty Mentality. I don’t quite know where it came from. Maybe it came from our Chinese fathers who operated out of the backs of restaurants and in homes. I don’t know and I don’t care any more. I made a decision that totally changed my school and made it not only an awesome place to learn hard core Wing Chun, but also a growing business with a high number of students.
I decided that I would have a new attitude and a new mentality about teaching. The first thing was to get rid of that old “poverty mentality” I didn’t teach some mish mosh kung fu. I taught the best martial art in the world. A martial art worthy of kings and anyone in need of self-defense. I began to develop the “luxury mentality”. After all Wing Chun is the Cadillac of martial arts. It has all the buttons and gadgets anyone needs in a martial art. But wait a minute, I bet you’re thinking that I have some kind of big head or something. No. The opposite is true. I decided that I would become a servant of sorts. That’s right. I would serve my students and help them achieve their martial arts goals. How did they hear about me? Well, an ingenious idea I found. I advertise on the internet with a very nice, well thought out website. No, advertising is not selling out! It’s getting the word out that you have something good you want to show others. It’s how we let people know about us and of course word of mouth is always good.
So now my mentality is this… I provide a beautiful, very Feng Shui kind of school for my students. I mean we have a real store-bought, CUSTOM-built Muk Jong. The walls and doors are painted Asian style and the floor is finished and flat. The dressing room and bathroom actually work and they are clean and sanitary. I have a desk, beautiful Asian decor on the walls and lovely furniture. We have a systematic approach to getting people in the door, interviewing them to find out their goals and sign them up in a very professional way. Most importantly we have a billing company that keeps track of tuition for me.
My approach to teaching is not to find the worthy, but to help all my students. I have found that this way I have their utmost respect and loyalty. Not only that, they want to stick around and learn more. And the highly sought-after, worthy student? I have them too and they get special training because of their commitment to high level quality. I even have inner-core students who I thought would never make it but stuck it out and now have become very proficient, excellent fighters. What if I would have run them off early on?
Imagine large Wing Chun schools in the United States that are the most beautiful places to train and contain the best martial artists in the world. I suggest we do away with the old poverty mentality ways if they bring us down. That old poverty mentality that would keep us in garages, poor and unknown. That old mentality that says Wing Chun and good business can never mix. I say it can be done because we do it every day. If I’m not mistaken, our school is one of the nicest and largest Wing Chun schools in the South East and the Wing Chun is high level, intact and undiluted. My Sifu and Si-Gung are pleased with our success and they quietly keep an eye on our success with familial pride. Now we have students who are happy to do it the “New Improved old way” if you will. And their skill level is excellent.
I would like to see teachers who want to train people for a living to believe that it is a possibility to have the best of both worlds and no longer think they are wrong for wanting a nice school with nice things in it. If Wing Chun is the Cadillac of martial arts, lets begin to put on that mentality. Let’s begin to recognize who we are in the world. We are the best. If there was something better we’d do it, right? Well there it is. It’s the more balanced approach to running a Wing Chun school. Let’s believe we can get out of the garage and act like we have something really good and well-balanced to offer people interested in self-defense.
Armando Sainz has been involved in martial arts since 1979. His school is highly recognized in the industry as being one of the top Wing Chun schools in the country. He is the number-one student of Sifu Bill Graves and seventh-generation Sifu in a line of senior students from Yip Man (Bruce Lee’s teacher).
http://www.centerlineacademy.com/
Armando is also owner of Sainz Personal Defense Systems. A company dedicated to helping others stay safer through the use of self-defense products http://www.sainzpds.com/ and surveillance equipment. http://www.sainz-pds.com/
Using Feng Shui To Change Your Life For The Best
Feng shui, the Chinese wisdom of wind and water, is mutated in our European latitudes, an important concept in the architecture, interior design and garden design. Feng Shui stands for harmony and energy flow (Chi), but also for well-being and health.
More and more people nationwide and companies build their house or business building in accordance with the teachings of Feng Shui. All room amenities are entirely subject to this art. The prospect of success, happiness and serenity and a positive are too tempting.
Nor should it be that the doctrines are now recognized, but not entirely scientifically sound. However, they find their origin already 6000 BC and were the years passed and communicated so that a degree of competence even critics can not be dismissed out of hand.
Applied Feng Shui observe the existing noise fields and to resolve to ensure that the energy flow is again guaranteed. Blockages dissolve and a harmonization of the human environment (house, garden) occurs.
Our personal habitats exert a strong influence on our lives. You decide with the success and prosperity, sickness or health, happiness and fulfillment, and much more. In aligning with Feng Shui colors, lighting, motion and rest, water, stones and accessories play an important role. The crucial factor is also the “how” – the shape of the arrangement.
More and more seminars on Self learning the art or reported feng shui consultant can help interested. Feng Shui supports all people whose goal is to make their habitats so that they are destined to vitality and vigor and vitality.
Having the proper scuba diving fins can make a huge different when you’re exploring in the ocean. Get more information at http://scubadivingfins.org
The Best Feng Shui Imports You Should Buy For Your Home
& lt; p& gt; Feng Shui is the adjustment and colocacià ³ n of certain objects so that armonÃa with the environment can be obtained. Qi, that también is known as the flow of energÃa in a certain zone is an important aspect of the Feng Shui. The people who practice the Feng Shui think that its well-being depends on the flow of Qi in Ãcriminal around them. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; AdemÃs of reorganizacià ³ n of colocacià ³ n of objects in its house to improve the flow of Qi, también can use some tools of Feng Shui to improve the flow of Qi. We are going to learn on some of the best imports Feng Shui, you you must buy for its home. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Feng Shui is made up of four elements. They are: geomagnetismo, astronomÃa, the space and the time. These four aspects that determine the flow of Qi in Ãcriminal. Therefore, some ways to improve the flow of Qi in regià ³ n serÃn the objects that emit sounds, vile objects mà ³ or objects with powers of Qi in that zone. These objects allow the Qi in this Ãcriminal for the flow without problems, improving asà the quality of its life. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Importacià ³ n 1: Vile Mà ³ Bambú & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; propà ³ situated of campanitas of wind of bambú is to redirigir the negative flow of energÃa (Shah Qi) in other places. Shah Qi to cause negative effects in his life and, therefore, is necessary to reorient the Qi Shah. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; wind of bambú campanadas to create melodÃas wonderful when the wind blows. MelodÃas can have a relajante effect on the mind and the body. ³ n of bambú near its bed is recommendable to place carillà to avoid Shah Qi so that it can sleep calm. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Importacià ³ n 2: Feng Shui Velas & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Feng shui candles comes in several colors and diseños. mà is one of productss popular in the market that these candles are of diseño attractive that can be given to its new and a totally different one home. The smooth light of the candles that they emit smooths your emocià ³ n. There is an old saying, candles Feng Shui helps the maternity, the romance and him aid yet what & needs aid inches; lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; If you suffer of long term insomnia, we recommended to him that ³ n of bambú forms carillà and to combine the use of a candle with the Feng Shui. Both tools allow him to relax and to slow down their mind so that you dormirÃbetter. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; importacià ³ n 3 Feng Shui Crystals & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Feng Shui crystals estÃn considered like one of products mÃs popular of the industry of the Feng Shui. Much people think that to have good posicià ³ n of crystal Feng Shui in her home or office traerÃgood fortune. Feng Shui Crystals to moderate the flow of Qi of the zone and desvÃo of Shah Qi. Feng Shui crystals in the form of jewels también. You can simply use pequeño necklace or a bracelet to resist any Shah Qi who estÃin its route. & lt; br/& gt; & lt; br/& gt; & #13; Although colocacià ³ n of the objects is an important aspect of the Feng Shui, is equally important to count on the aid of the Feng Shui and products. If you wish to improve the flow of Qi in his life, considers introduccià ³ n of certain imports of Feng Shui in your life. & lt; /P& gt;
Click Here to get Free Tips on how to improve your life with Feng Shui Decorating. Lynn Lee is a celebrated authority on Feng Shui providing valuable advice at http://www.whatisfengshui.net.