Shoe Repairs And Several Other Things When I Was 7

Shoe Repairs And Several Other Things When I Was 7
My Dad repaired most of our shoes believe it or not, I can hardly believe it myself now. With 7 pairs of shoes always needing repairs I think he was quite clever to learn how to “Keep us in shoe Leather” to coin a phrase!

He bought several different sizes of cast iron cobbler’s “lasts”. Last, the old English “Laest” meaning footprint. Lasts were holding devices shaped like a human foot. I have no idea where he would have bought the shoe leather. Only that it was a beautiful creamy, shiny colour and the smell was lovely.

But I do remember our shoes turned upside down on and fitted into these lasts, my Dad cutting the leather around the shape of the shoe, and then hammering nails, into the leather shape. Sometimes we’d feel one or 2 of those nails poking through the insides of our shoes, but our dad always fixed it.

Hiking and Swimming Galas
Dad was a very outdoorsy type, unlike my mother, who was probably too busy indoors. She also enjoyed the peace and quiet when he took us off for the day!

Anyway, he often took us hiking in the mountains where we’d have a picnic of sandwiches and flasks of tea. And more often than not we went by steam train.

We loved poking our heads out of the window until our eyes hurt like mad from a blast of soot blowing back from the engine. But sore, bloodshot eyes never dampened our enthusiasm.

Dad was an avid swimmer and water polo player, and he used to take us to swimming galas, as they were called back then. He often took part in these galas. And again we always travelled by steam train.

Rowing Over To Ireland’s Eye
That’s what we did back then, we had to go by rowboat, the only way to get to Ireland’s eye, which is 15 minutes from mainland Howth. From there we could see Malahide, Lambay Island and Howth Head of course. These days you can take a Round Trip Cruise on a small cruise ship!

But we thoroughly enjoyed rowing and once there we couldn’t wait to climb the rocks, and have a swim. We picnicked and watched the friendly seals doing their thing and showing off.

Not to mention all kinds of birdlife including the Puffin.The Martello Tower was also interesting but a bit dangerous to attempt entering. I’m getting lost in the past as I write, and have to drag myself back to the present.

Fun Outings with The camera Club
Dad was also a very keen amateur photographer, and was a member of a camera Club. There were many Sunday photography outings and along with us came other kids of the members of the club.

And we always had great fun while the adults busied themselves taking photos of everything and anything, it seemed to us. Dad was so serious about his photography that he set up a dark room where he developed and printed his photographs.

All black and white at the time. He and his camera club entered many of their favourites in exhibitions throughout Europe. I’m quite proud to say that many cups and medals were won by Dad. They have been shared amongst all his grandchildren which I find quite special.

He liked taking portraits of us kids too, mostly when we were in a state of untidiness, usually during play. Dad always preferred the natural look of messy hair and clothes in the photos of his children.

Business Loans In Canada: Financing Solutions Via Alternative Finance & Traditional Funding

Business loans and finance for a business just may have gotten good again? The pursuit of credit and funding of cash flow solutions for your business often seems like an eternal challenge, even in the best of times, let alone any industry or economic crisis. Let’s dig in.

Since the 2008 financial crisis there’s been a lot of change in finance options from lenders for corporate loans. Canadian business owners and financial managers have excess from everything from peer-to-peer company loans, varied alternative finance solutions, as well of course as the traditional financing offered by Canadian chartered banks.

Those online business loans referenced above are popular and arose out of the merchant cash advance programs in the United States. Loans are based on a percentage of your annual sales, typically in the 15-20% range. The loans are certainly expensive but are viewed as easy to obtain by many small businesses, including retailers who sell on a cash or credit card basis.

Depending on your firm’s circumstances and your ability to truly understand the different choices available to firms searching for SME COMMERCIAL FINANCE options. Those small to medium sized companies ( the definition of ‘ small business ‘ certainly varies as to what is small – often defined as businesses with less than 500 employees! )

How then do we create our road map for external financing techniques and solutions? A simpler way to look at it is to categorize these different financing options under:

Debt / Loans

Asset Based Financing

Alternative Hybrid type solutions

Many top experts maintain that the alternative financing solutions currently available to your firm, in fact are on par with Canadian chartered bank financing when it comes to a full spectrum of funding. The alternative lender is typically a private commercial finance company with a niche in one of the various asset finance areas

If there is one significant trend that’s ‘ sticking ‘it’s Asset Based Finance. The ability of firms to obtain funding via assets such as accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets with no major emphasis on balance sheet structure and profits and cash flow ( those three elements drive bank financing approval in no small measure ) is the key to success in ABL ( Asset Based Lending ).

Factoring, aka ‘ Receivable Finance ‘ is the other huge driver in trade finance in Canada. In some cases, it’s the only way for firms to be able to sell and finance clients in other geographies/countries.

The rise of ‘ online finance ‘ also can’t be diminished. Whether it’s accessing ‘ crowdfunding’ or sourcing working capital term loans, the technological pace continues at what seems a feverish pace. One only has to read a business daily such as the Globe & Mail or Financial Post to understand the challenge of small business accessing business capital.

Business owners/financial mgrs often find their company at a ‘ turning point ‘ in their history – that time when financing is needed or opportunities and risks can’t be taken. While putting or getting new equity in the business is often impossible, the reality is that the majority of businesses with SME commercial finance needs aren’t, shall we say, ‘ suited’ to this type of funding and capital raising. Business loan interest rates vary with non-traditional financing but offer more flexibility and ease of access to capital.

We’re also the first to remind clients that they should not forget govt solutions in business capital. Two of the best programs are the GovernmentSmall Business Loan Canada (maximum availability = $ 1,000,000.00) as well as the SR&ED program which allows business owners to recapture R&D capital costs. Sred credits can also be financed once they are filed.

Those latter two finance alternatives are often very well suited to business start up loans. We should not forget that asset finance, often called ‘ ABL ‘ by those Bay Street guys, can even be used as a loan to buy a business.

If you’re looking to get the right balance of liquidity and risk coupled with the flexibility to grow your business seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor with a track record of business finance success who can assist you with your funding needs.

Basics on Online Business

It time for the search of real online business! Many people claim that its easy to make money online if you follow the so called proven system. There are actually no statistics of any proven system that we could decide on. It is almost a chain of reactions that takes place and it circulates within the Internet world from people to people.But, believe that making money online is though not easy, but a possible one. When we plan to start a business on online with or without investment, we definitely start from somewhere. There are no automated systems that could generate $$$$ with out having to spend time or energy.We don’t have to spend for any marketing in the Internet, but spending money sometimes may increase our income.If we feel that we are not going to spend for this, then we are planning for a long term target and we will have to rely only on our hard work and unlimited time.There will be several failures and disappointment doing business online. We may feel that nothing is reliable, the process is too complicated, each one is linked with another so it goes on and on, never ending!! But remember that if a person tells that he is making profit means that he is making profit. We read his column somewhere in the web that itself is a profit of success to him. Hence always remember that success is following us when we fail.Marketing is the ultimate aim of Internet business. What ever business we do, we should have customers, clients, readers, commentators etc, We need people to visit our business, express their opinion, add suggestions on further improvement etc. So, attracting people is the main task of marketing.We may have to adapt several methods and techniques by trial and error method as all standard marketing practise may not yield the same positive results each time.There are some advantages as well as disadvantages of starting online business. First let us see the advantages.Opportunities are everywhere in the Internet world. Since the reach of the Internet is far beyond our imagination, this can bring audience from anywhere in the world. The Internet network and the viewers are ever growing so there are no bound for the business limitations. We can work on our own time, flexible working hours and at leisure. We can spend more time on other activities as the Internet business once established would give you lot of free time. Any online training, research or studies is much cheaper compared to the conventional ones, most of the references are available free of cost. It is indeed thrilling to surf and work online as we will be stunned to see the scope for so many businesses on line. We can start business with very low capital and also chances of multiple stream of income at the same time.The disadvantages are initially we will have to spend too much time to know, understand and establish what we really want to do. There are lots of research work needed. Internet philosophy is far beyond our understanding the reason that what is hot topic today may not even be talked tomorrow. So we should always be ready to accept and adapt to regular changes. Too many HYPE in the Internet marketing may mislead us in selecting our business and going right way. Selecting Internet business would not yield overnight profit as we dream of. Be practical and accept the fact that our web page one in billion and chances of people visiting and business is also in the same probability. There are more chances of jumping from one opportunity to another and that will definitely not help us to grow in the Internet business.Well, there is a question how much we can earn a day in Internet business? It all depends on our adaptability, skills, ability to learn, hard work and intelligence. It may take a lot of time initially to start earning through Internet business, there will be a quite lot of testing times before we enter into the right one. All depends on how we sell ourselves in the world of Internet business. Marketing, as i mentioned earlier, is a vital aspect of the business, We should select the right ways of marketing. There are some faster ways of marketing also, but that may not always suit our business.More importantly we as the online business owner need to be aware of spam, the practise of sending unsolicited, untargeted mass commercial messages. There are some serious consequences of spamming, including suspension or termination by our web host, affiliate programs etc. as spamming is a very poor business practise.There are plenty of legitimate ways available to market our business instead of spammingShould we spend invest money for starting online business? We may or may not spend and that depends totally on how we want to go about marketing our business. There are quite a lot of ways to start and continue online business free of cost. The main part of expenditure is for marketing. If we start the online business as a writer, then, the cost of marketing is less compared to other online business. As a writer we only need to search the right publishing sites that pays for our articles. These are available in the free web directories, we can find through search engines etc.There are some paid membership sites also that saves lot of our time rather than going to the web directories to search for. What we can earn by writing articles again depends on the selection of topic, method of writing, how quick we are and how relevant the subject is.There are several other online businesses that need to bring in the traffic to our website in order to generate revenue. Many sites claim that they can get us loads of traffic, but always prefer to get the targeted traffic that would benefit out site and our business.