Lots of people like to send out holiday cards but it’s such a small window of time.. especially if you want to do something special like add a photo of the family to the card or include a personal “what we did this year” letter.

It’s already December 7 and it’s about time you get those cards out right? It’s probably too late to try and get a family photo to have a specialty card done. Right? ….I mean.. right? How can it possibly get done then addressed and stuffed and stamped and THEN actually make it to the post office? Is that humanly possible?

Let me answer that question with a simple YES!

In years past if you have spent a couple hundred bucks on cards with your family photo on it and then spent hours writing in them and addressing them then you know the frustration …yet you want to acknowledge the people in your life…what do you do?

Simple 3 words… Send Out Cards. Send Out Cards is an EASY online application that lets you upload your family photo, create a card and send it to multiple people at one time. All you do is create the card and click send… Send Out Cards will print your 1 card or your hundreds of cards and stuff them, then stamp them all within 24 hours. It even sends cards overseas for you.

Last year I found an old pic of me and my brother visiting Santa back when we lived on base at Ft. Campbell KY and made a card. He got such a kick out of this card when I sent it.

Is it too late? Absolutely not. This incredible tool will help you get all your holiday cards out this season in just a few minutes and you don’t even have to leave your house!

I will even let you try it for FREE… that’s right. FRE.E!!

You know you want to see how it works, go ahead… contact me… I’ll give you the link and you can try it out for yourself without getting nagged

My contact info is charlottesalafia@yahoo.com or 480-278-5024 OR you can just google me… Charlotte Salafia and you will find the site.

I spent 3 years looking for a home business I could get excited about. I would fill in those e-mails that advertised working from home and would get calls every so often to about opportunities I didn’t see myself pursuing. I would also call the numbers on peoples cars or on fliers. Not much was exciting me.. I tried a home party business which works great for a lot of people but I find it difficult to be out when my family is home.

One day after I filled in a form online I got a call from a lady named Stephanie, she is from Toronto and she asked me if I ever heard of Send Out Cards. I had never heard of it but the name of the business intrigued me. She set up a time to demonstrate it to me and was consistent with her follow up. I fell in love at first sight. I could totally see the value of the system and could see myself using it and sharing it with others. So…. I signed up!

Why is Send Out Cards the perfect business? There are 2 components to the answer. One is that it’s a great opportunity for me to earn from home and teach others how and the other is personal….. love of the system and what it does for me.

First of all, I can truly sell it from home. I don’t have to send anything out as a sample, I have no investment in CDs or product in order to show others how it works. I can demonstrate how it works to others over the phone. I like to do it in person but for some, the phone works better. There is no competition to what this system can do. It’s an amazing system that will help anyone manage a database and take care of any personal correspondence whether it be for business or personal relations. This is such a great system that other network marketers use it. It’s easy to attract entrepreneurs to the system because it’s not only easy to sell but it can be used in tandem with their current business.

For me personally … as a business I like the ease of use. I don’t have to know a lot about a lot of product and I don’t have to fill in complicated order forms. It is the simplest product I have ever sold. Also, by doing the demonstration with people, teaches them how to teach others. SO…….. easy to replicate.

As a business, it’s easy and there is no competition (or complications) ..now on a personal level it’s even greater!

Even if I had never signed a customer or another team member I would still LOVE it! Before I had my son, I was so good about correspondence and sending the latest info to friends. I was good about acknowledging peoples special occasions and I was good about sending them cards and letters when friends or family were down or had a loved one pass away. After I had my son and faced some difficult times, I found that I had gotten away from staying in touch with friends and even family. I live the furthest away from everyone in my family and I also lost touch with so many friends. When I started sending cards.. I was so excited about the ease of use that I started sending cards to everyone! I mean.. I was on my computer a lot.. it was easier than going to the store, picking out a card (that may or may not express how I feel) then making sure I have stamps.. much less actually writing in the card and addressing it, stamping it then… making it down to the mailbox with it. It used to be easier but when I had someone else to look after.. I found myself with less time to do all that.I laughed at myself last winter when I opened a box of ornaments and found 4 years worth of seasonal cards that I purchased and NEVER sent.. I didn’t fill them out, I didn’t do anything with them. I sent seasonal cards this past winter in 15 minutes.. that’s it.. design a card with a family pic, fill it in, mail it to 60 people.

With some events, there is a short window.. I had a friend whose mom passed away, it was easy to send a sympathy card from my computer. A couple of weeks later my family was invited to their house for a BBQ. They hadn’t lived here very long so they didn’t know a lot of people here. While I was there, he was very sincere when he thanked me for the sympathy card.. he pointed to the bookshelf where it sat….. with 3 other cards…his mom passed away and all he had were 4 cards. I was glad that one of them was from me. It’s sad not to acknowledge people. One might have thoughts of the person but it is meaningless if those thoughts are not expressed.

People these days know that they have gotten away from that personal touch. In their personal lives and in business. We might thank someone on the phone or in an email but what people really appreciate is the time someone took to mail something personal.

Why is Send Out Cards the perfect business? It is truly a NO BRAINER.  It’s easy, it does what no other system does and it is incredibly handy when you want to act on a prompt and acknowledge a client or friend.

As you think of this post, I’m sure you are thinking of someone you need to touch, who is it? Send them a card, the first one is free.. Contact me to find out how. charlottesalafia@yahoo.com or Google me Charlotte Salafia.

I couldn’t think about how badly my marriage was failing. I could barely notice that my husband wasn’t coming home before 11 each night. I couldn’t think about how our finances had become a wreck. I could barely function in the way of housework at home… my husband certainly wasn’t taking care of anything there.

I was due on 24 August and my friend Rachael had volunteered to come live with me and stay with me for 6 months as I transitioned into motherhood (I’m sure she detected my nerves). She arrived on 10 August and I had my son on 14 August. I was nervous, she was excited. At the time I didn’t realize but she let me do my own thing finding out about motherhood and only advised me when asked.

She was also my eyes..she was able to observe my husbands behaviors when I could not. She observed that the environment that my son and I were in was not safe. She kept it quiet for a bit… I suppose she wanted to see if it was just jitters with my husband but after a while, things only got worse. In January when she clearly figured that things were not going to improve she started prompting me to think… “Things aren’t right Charlotte… what are you going to do about it?”. She didn’t rip him apart or talk him down, she just kept asking me that. I wasn’t hearing it… it was hard to face, I was a new mom and focused on getting acclimated.  I was never a baby person nor had I ever felt motherly… it took a while to develop that. I’m still not a baby person but I did love my son as a baby for sure.

As the the days went on, prompts from Rachael got stronger and more frequent, she was very frustrated. I was still not hearing her. She became so frustrated that she left a month early. I was angry…. at first. I was upset that she suddenly left and I was hurt. I didn’t understand.

When another month went by and I didn’t have her as a buffer I began to realize that she was right. That I couldn’t continue in the situation I was in. My husband was only concerned with himself, not me or our baby or making sure everything was OK at home. He was drinking more and more and still not coming home, still not taking care of any bills. So… I made a decision and took action.

My brothers offered to drive up to Washington DC from Atlanta to come get us. I accepted. I ended up staying with my brother for a few months, who was single with no roommate. I started thinking about how Rachael was right and that she hadn’t abandoned me, she was just too frustrated to watch me in my situation… I reached out to her.

I re-connected with her on-line. She was not angry at me but she was relieved that  I made the decision and took action to move on. She was so encouraging and said that even though I had already been married twice, there was someone better for me. She complimented my mothering skills and how they were coming along. She made me feel confident after I had felt beat down emotionally for so long. I am so grateful to have a friend like her.

Now that my head is clear and my thinking is right, I have taken further action to secure a good environment for my son and myself and am moving forward at hyper-speed. I couldn’t be more grateful that my friend was willing to risk friendship to help me and my son. She was my level head when mine was greatly tilted.

I have expressed gratitude to her quite often as time has gone on. I miss having her here every day. I sometimes get to chat with her on Facebook and in e-mails. We also call each other on the phone. I want her to have a physical reminder of all that she has done for me. I often send her cards with my sons pictures on them. She loves him like her own son and misses him.

Is there someone in your life that you need to express your gratitude to? Is there someone who helped you through a crisis? Is there someone who has always been there for you? … a mentor?… it’s not enough just to think it, you need to say it, put it out there. It’s amazing the energy both get when gratitude is expressed.

Who in your life do you need to send gratitude to?

Orthodontists have a lot of competition. He was so smart to get mentoring from an orthodontic expert and constantly update his practice ideas and techniques. One of his goals for his staff was to “own the practice” with him. He was great at empowering his staff and made us feel important and I eventually came to own the practice with him.

He was expert at delegating, hence the empowering. I loved that he had enough confidence in me to put me in charge of things, that way he could leave his practice in good hands and I could learn something new. He would rather I make a mistake and learn than not attempt at all, he made it safe.

One of the tasks he delegated out was marketing. I know a lot of dentists and orthodontists will keep tight reigns on that but he formed a marketing committee, someone from each area of the practice, assistants, administrative and treatment coordinator. We would reformulate old marketing ideas or come up with our own. It caused us to be creative and keep an eye out for opportunities to market. We would go to him with our ideas and he would usually give us the go forward.

The greatest way he marketed the practice was internally. His philosophy was: If the patients love the practice, they will refer their friends and family. He was SO right, we spent most of our time and efforts on making the patients feel good and important. I knew the patients by name and usually the family members who came in with them (I was the scheduling coordinator and computer tech).

He started 30 new patients each month or more (summer time was always busy) and he would also deband about the same amount of patients. Anyone in dental knows that taking braces off is not the end of the relationship, the patients still wear retainers and are checked periodically for another year or so.  For each patient he would deband, he sent them a card in the mail.

When patients get their treatment started they always get a series of photographs taken, back then, we used a Polaroid…this was WAY before digital. At the end of treatment we would take those same pictures again for comparison. What the patient didn’t know what that one of those photos was for them. We had cards with picture holders and would slide a photograph into it and welcome them to their new smile and thank them for coming to the practice.

Each patient got a card like that. Those patients and their families invested a lot of money and time at our practice, we wanted to make sure they knew they were appreciated and that was such a huge part of the internal marketing. We rarely advertised outside the practice because the patients loved us so much that they sent us all their friends and family.

Now there is a much simpler method to doing these cards that is just amazing. This website lets you upload your digital photos to the card… EVEN the front of the card. This site will let you customize your card, then when you click the button, they will print it, stuff it, stamp  it and mail it!!! It would have been such a time saver to have this application back then. It’s great to show appreciation for your patients and for general dentists who treat a large case or even for birthdays and thank-yous.

Would this work for your practice? contact me for the link to the site. charlottesalafia@yahoo.com