Lyons Leadership

One of the biggest focuses of our company recently has been to offer our clients more than they ask for.  It is not intended to charge them more for our services by any means, but rather an opportunity for us to thank them for being our customer.

We started the campaign by offering an up front cheap car insurance rate before they even ask.  Most of the customers are shocked that we are not trying to milk every cent out of them right at the start, but instead we are trying to save them time from looking for cheap auto insurance quotes.

We have also been trying to get better rates for our classic car insurance plans.  It hasn’t been easy, but over the past five months, we have been able to shave money off of all of the classic car insurance plans that we offer.

It is definitely nice to work for a company that values their customers instead of just treating them like numbers.

Since I wrote yesterday that I went shopping with Grandpa, I should mention that I went out with Grandma as well.  The big difference between the two of them was their shopping styles - Grandpa liked pawn shops, and grandma loved to use coupons.

She taught me the fine art of finding the right coupon for the right store.  I guess it was pretty self evident that you couldn’t get a deal on a cheeseburger at a furniture store, but I really didn’t know where to find the best coupons.

I learned where to find the best dining coupons and she was even able to show me some of the best stores that had beauty coupons (for when I was married someday).

Between my two grandparents, I was able to become great at shopping - never paying too much and always knowing how to get a good deal.

One of my clearest memories of childhood was spending time with my grandfather every Saturday checking out the pawn shops in our city.  These outings were great for me as I was able to get to know my grandfather a little bit better and it also gave my parents a much-needed break for me.

While most shoppers that enter a pawn shop are looking for a great deal on just about anything, my grandfather was just looking for one thing: mens cufflinks.  Though he never really had a collection of them, he would spend the a lot of time browsing through the many vintage cufflinks and photo cufflinks that each store had and haggling over the price of the ones that he liked.

It was from this experience that I learned that a price was never truly fixed and it didn’t hurt to ask to get a discount.  I would say that I learned my savvy shopping skills from those trips to the pawn shops each week with my grandpa.

When my husband and I were married for thirteen years, we decided that we wanted to build a home that we had designed ourselves. It all came together very nicely, until it came time for the finishing touches. We had contracted a roofing Newport RI company and they never showed up on the day they were supposed to.

No one else was available except a commercial roofing Newport RI company and I was sure they would not want a small job like our house was to be when they were used to very large roofs. I decided to give it a shot anyway, and to my amazement they said they would do it.

They were actually happy to be able to do flat roofing Newport RI on a house, as it is very rare. We told them that we had designed the house ourselves and we wanted it to be anything but ordinary.

One of the things that I’ve noticed in life is that some people cannot handle credit properly.  It is almost like giving a kid a big bag of sugar and asking them not to eat it - some kids eat it anyway.

A good example would be the situation that my brother finds himself in.  After going through a poor credit debt consolidation program and promising himself that he would follow one of those debt diet plans see on television, he is going down the path that will only lead to bankruptcy.

What makes it worse is that this isn’t his first time.  When he went bankrupt the first time, he was shown how to reduce credit card debt and how to budget, but he never took those lessons to heart.

Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever get out of this trap and his addiction to credit.  I guess time will tell.

One of the biggest challenges that we face starting our new business is figure out which business forms we need.  It may be a different story if you have started your own business before, but in our case it is our first time and there is a steep learning curve.

We had some help from a lawyer to draft the incorporation documents but beyond that we were on our own.  After reading a number of books that we borrowed from the library, we had a little bit better understanding of what we needed to get started.

We went down to the local business supplies store and picked up some recruitment documents and employment documents so that we would have the necessary papers for our new staff.

We just finished putting an ad in the local paper to find staff for our new restaurant and we are hoping to be open by next week.  Wish us luck!

One of my favorite things to do while on vacation is to look at the stars at night on the beach.  Usually, it is much darker than living in the city and you can see the constellations clearly.

So what I was looking at options for cheap holidays, I wanted to make sure that I was going somewhere that had a beach where I can look at the stars.  This obviously eliminated a lot of choices, but it still left me with quite a few options of places to go.

After doing a little bit of research, I found a nice beach community of Icmeler Turkey.  I’d never been to Turkey before so I thought it would be a nice chance to get out of the country and see something new.  As an added bonus, I was able to find cheap flights to Turkey online which allowed me to have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer.

So for the last three nights, I’ve been staring up at the sky from the beach and I am in heaven.  I know that the two weeks of holidays will come up very quickly, but at least I will have a good time while I am here.

One of the first jobs I ever had was at a telephone call center, giving out Disney ticket information. It was a fun job and, though I was not actually working in Florida, I found that I really wanted to go and experience for myself, the vacation that I was trying to sell to people.

I decided that I was going to get a bunch of friends together that would want to take the trip with me, we would get ourselves some WDW Hopper tickets and we would have a blast. It was not hard at all to convince my friends that we needed to go on a road trip.

When I ordered the tickets, I was given a number to call for more info and I found it rather amusing that the number they gave me would get me through to my own workplace. The trip was so much fun that my friends and I decided to make it an annual event.

One of the most frustrating things for me when I go traveling is being able to find all the coupons and promotions that are going on in the city that I will be visiting.  It can be deals on meals, on accommodations, or on activities and shows.  When I am doing the research for a trip that I will be taking, I find it takes way too long and a half to take a look at way too many sites to make sure that I get the best deal possible.

With that challenge in mind, I decided to set up my own website that has all of the Las Vegas hotel deals in one place.  This way, when someone is looking for a great deal on a nights stay in Vegas, they can just look at my site and find everything that they need.

In order to make this a reality, I will have to do a lot of research and make sure that I have the latest Mirage promotion codes.  I will also try and find that ever elusive MGM Signature hotel Las Vegas promo code.

I am hoping to have my site up and running shortly and I hope that many people will benefit from having the best Las Vegas hotel deals all in one place.

One of the things that I have wanted to do for most of my life is travel to Croatia.  My reasoning behind it is that I have a lot of friends from there as well as my mother’s side of the family that I haven’t seen since we were children.

But I have been checking out the costs that will be involved, and it is going to cost a lot.  Between the airfare and hotel stays (not to mention spending money), it looks like I am going to have to save a lot of money before I will have the opportunity to go there.

After expressing my concerns with the prices of traveling to the country, a good friend of mine suggested that I look into apartment rentals in Croatia.  I checked out some sites that offered rates for Croatia apartments and I found out that they are cheaper than a hotel.

In fact, they are much cheaper.  So, if I can get a good deal on an apartment, chances are I can go there by Christmas - that would be great!