You probably have to make good birthday presents for all kinds of people on your birthday list. It is hard enough buying gifts for people you know well, let along for casual acquaintances. When you are having a hard time figuring out what to give as a birthday gift, think about giving a gift basket.

You can make one yourself or buy a birthday gift basket already made. These can contain all sorts of treats and goodies but here are some things to think about so you give the nicest gift basket possible. Save money where you can you don’t want to seem like a tightwad, but if you make your own birthday gift baskets, you can save quite a bit of money.

Making your own, costs much less than buying one at a specialty shop. Those are more expensive because you pay for the package deal which costs much more than the individual items when purchased separately.

Good birthday presents can come in real handy in some situations but there is a lot to be said for making your own. It costs less and is also more personal. Everyone can appreciate a homemade presents.

Consider the recipient while a gift basket is the perfect gift for just about anyone, you do need to fill it with things each recipient will like. You don’t want to just throw things into the gift container. Show them you took your time to consider the things they enjoy and appreciate. First you must buy a suitable basket and decorate the outside of it. You don’t even need to spend a lot of time doing it, a fancy boy or ornaments attached to the basket would suffice. Anything that makes it look festive would work great.

You could even opt to buy a fancy basket that doesn’t need any decorations at all. Fill your birthday gift basket when your basket is decorated, it is ready to fill with all sorts of goodies. The gifts don’t need to be expensive at all, just include a variety of fun and useful gifts you know will be appreciated.

You might put in a movie on DVD, music CDs, candy, and other small accessories. While you don’t have to spend a lot of time stressing over the perfect gifts, you do want to be creative and include items that can be of good use to the person receiving your gift basket.

You can tailor your gift box to include items young kids would enjoy or make one gift geared towards a hobbyist. Fill a basket with golf related presents or cooking utensils and recipe books. Spa baskets are always great for the ladies. You can fill these with lotions and potions they can pamper themselves with.

Good birthday presents are such a great idea, you may even find that your family and friends want you to make baskets for them to give as presents as well. They are ideal for people of all ages and genders. You really can’t go wrong with a gift basket for birthday.

OK, so you’ve got a big presentation coming up and you know that you want to make a difference and have the audience walk away with a good understanding of the complex info that you are going to present. What can you do to really make sure that you key points get hammered home?

Setting yourself on fire halfway through the presentation or using trained animals both would be great, if impractical ways to accomplish this. How about two simpler ways that us technical folks always seem to forget as we pull together our presentations?

Audience Attention is drawn to LARGE differences that are perceptible.

Let’s say that you’ve got a slide that contains one of the key points that you want to make to your audience. There is probably other things on that slide (like a title?). You need to make sure that your key point, be it a number, a comparison, a figure, etc. jumps out at your audience. Background images, scrolling text, clipart, video clips, etc. are all swell; however, if they distract from your key point then they need to go away. Keep in mind that PowerPoint’s ability to have items join the slide via animation might be a good way to lead up to and introduce the key point.

People group elements into units automatically, which they then remember

The human mind is an amazing thing. We can quickly take in large quantities of information and rapidly make decisions about it. You can make this talent work for or against you in a technical presentation. Things that you place close to each other on a slide will automatically be considered to be related by your audience. A good example of this is labels and the thing that they are labeling. A bad example of this would be a graph that shows that both the price of copper ore and the price of apples have both increased by 25% in the past 6 moths. Both items would be shown closely together on the same graph and the audience would associate them. However, they really have nothing to do with each other (unless you are trying to talk about the cost of copper apples…).

Just a few things to consider when you are making that last pass though the big presentation that you’ve created – do your main points jump out or are they buried?

Teenagers are difficult when it comes to all aspects of life, most especially when trying to choose a present for them. The obvious solution is to just buy very expensive Christmas presents for teenagers but it is not necessarily the best. There are many Unusual Christmas Gifts out there that are bound to capture the imagination of your teenager and make him / her feel special.

Let them choose
Teenagers love to feel like they are in control of their lives. Therefore letting them choose what they get for Christmas often soothes their fragile egos and gives them the sense of power that they so desperately seek. Depending on the individual, asking them to supply a wish-list may be risky as the list may comprise of unrealistic gifts. In such cases gift vouchers/cards make the perfect Christmas Presents for Teenagers.

Experiences
When choosing Christmas Presents for Teenagers, it is always a good idea to think outside the box. Christmas gifts needn’t be tangible items wrapped up with a bow. Packaged experiences make wonderfully exciting and Unusual Christmas Gifts, Obviously the interests of the individual should be taken into consideration, but the options here are limitless. Balloon trips, skydiving expeditions, caving adventures or bungee jumping are just some ideas for the adventure seeking teenager. The more creative may prefer an annual pass to the theater or the nature lover a trip to the local game reserve with three friends.

Irish Christmas Gifts
The range of Irish Christmas Gifts extends from chocolates to collectibles. However the ones that may be of interest when seeking Unusual Christmas Gifts for teenagers are those of a Celtic nature. Celtic art has long been, and still is a fascination of teenagers and can be spotted in many elements of teenage culture including tattoos, clothing and jewelery. Buying a piece of authentic Celtic art or a Celtic print may very well be one of the Unusual Christmas Gifts that will please your budding adult.

In my last two articles of this series, I wrote about the importance of visualisation as an important techinque of developing great presentation skills. I also wrote about detalied steps to take when practising external mental te

The second technique of mental practice is internally focused. Instead of watching yourself on a movie screen, this time, get inside your own head. Look out of your eyes. Hear with your own ears. Let your own hands feel the wooden edge of the imaginary podium or table. You are the performer looking out over the imaginary audience. Feel the carpet beneath your feet. Hear the applause for you. See the senior people or clients looking up to you and nodding in agreement. Feel yourself looking straight back at them and holding their gaze. Feel yourself smiling. Hear an imagined question from an audience member and hear your clear measured answer.

Some presenters I know who often have to speak to relatively cynical or even potentially cynical audiences (these are often company sales conventions) take this whole idea one stage further and imagine the audience as if they were stark naked or wearing paper party hats or so on. Another friend of mine is a very relaxed Richard Branson style of dresser. He is quite intimidated by an audience in formal business attire: dark suit and tie. So he imagines them in faded, scruffy, worn jeans. You can do that too or maybe make them very thin or hugely fat. Or see them all as kids in trunks, sticking-out ears and “false moustache and glasses” sets. You can visualize them anyway you like.

The thing you will find is that once you have placed them in this context it is never possible to feel the same way about them again. Fear is a total imaginary imposter itself. Remember that fear itself is spelt F.E.A.R. and stands for Felse Events Appearing Real. Try it if you don’t believe me. Try to feel exactly the same about talking to ludicrous people with trunks and bug ears as you would about fearsome dark suited business executives. You just can’t.

As with any new skills it will take you a while to practice and get comfortable doing all these things. It won’t always go beautifully when you have practiced for a while. But persistence, easily the most important factor in this, will pay off for you.

If you are a person who has heard of Network Marketing or is considering leaving your job to become a network marketer, you need to prepare yourself to do so. It’s not a hard thing to learn and there are many resources that can help you get on your way. When you are considering resources to buy, there is a book that you should to add to your list. The book is called The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life by Don Failla. Don Failla and his wife Nancy have spent the last 40 years recruiting and sponsoring new network marketers and now Don has created a book sharing his best techniques for new network marketers. One of the keys to Don Failla’s success is that he has actually sponsored and trained strong teams that have endured to create strong teams of their own. He explains how to do this and why it’s so important to your success. More than this, he gets down to the nuts and bolts of the network marketing business.

He explains exactly what it is and exactly what it’s not in The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life, by Don Failla. As he explains, if you are serious about succeeding in any endeavor or in this case, network marketing, one needs training on the basics. The basics give a great foundation that will last for as long as a person wants to stay in business. Don Failla and his book is very readable and is very approachable for the new network marketer. He uses illustrations on napkins for what he calls his ‘napkin presentations’. As a matter of fact, he discusses his ‘Ten Napkin Presentations’. He has also coined some now popular phrases, such as “sizzle sessions”. Don Failla is considered a master and the master has a lot to teach his students in the book The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life, by Don Failla. This isn’t a bunch of hype and overloaded thoughts. This book is simple and packed with information that has worked through time. This is a great book for the new that wants to learn from a master marketer or for the veteran marketer that needs a refresher course or needs to revitalize their efforts. Many people love this book. They say that The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life by Don Failla broke down the network marketing process in a way that they could understand. A person simply can’t succeed at something that they don’t understand. It’s pretty much a foolproof book because it’s written so that the newest network marketing recruit can understand the concepts and the message.

This book is perfect for the person who is on the verge of giving up because they don’t understand the nuts and bolts to make it work. This is also for the person who wants to know how to create a quality team and experience for themselves. If you are a person who has been wishing that someone would help them understand the business in a way that they could comprehend, The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life by Don Failla is exactly what you need.