Self-Talk is one of the most powerful tools that you have in your life skills toolbox. It will help you develop and manifest your dreams. But like any other building tool, if used the wrong way it can easily tear down everything you have built. The sad truth is the tearing down will happen a lot faster than the building it up again. I remember building card houses and towers with a deck of playing cards has a child. I would work real hard to get them to stand up by themselves and the feeling of accomplishment that came when my card tower was three or four cards high.  But if they fell, I wasn’t all that eager to do it again.

I have been asked by one of my clients why I think having a personal mission statement is important.  The first thing that came to mind was my own personal mission which I wrote 20 years ago and is still to this day the guiding light upon my life’s path. I will share it with you at the end of this blog. To answer the question as to why it’s important I would quote Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Think of your target market like fishing; if you don’t know what to fish for, then how do you expect to know what kind of bait, poles and sinkers you should use to catch them? How do you expect to catch something if you don’t even know what you’re trying to get? Once you can determine your market, you can tailor your media towards them and make your marketing so much more effective and efficient! Associate any media with that market, and with the correct combination of media, placement of ads and potential customers, you will certainly get people headed for the doorstep of your business.

With the constant change that we experience in today’s society and culture, things don’t work like they used to. A lot of companies nowadays think that just by conducting some form of advertising that their sales will increase, they’ll gain greater market share, and become more successful. However, just like how society has shown us many times before, things have changed, and what used to work in the past no longer applies. Before, you could just put an ad on television or the radio and you would increase your sales, market share, and success; but this could not be further from the truth.

Have you ever heard the saying, “You’re a natural-born leader”? Odds are you probably have, but that statement couldn’t be further from the truth.

For years public relations has shaped the way we think and behave. It has influenced us from what news station we watch to what insurance company we use. But why is it so impactful? How does it change a person’s mind from making one decision versus another? All of us have been so inundated with PR our entire lives we don’t even realize it is there. It plays on our emotions; it impacts our values and the way to think. For example, every political campaign since the 19th century has tried to use PR to sway our vote from one politician to another. In today’s society, PR is crucial in determining who will be the next President of the United States.

When you think of a leader, what do you think of? What qualities do they possess? To us, leaders are someone who you can depend on, someone you can look up to and makes the whole team better. Leaders have many traits; however, some qualities outweigh the others. Here is a list (in no particular order) of what we feel are the most important characteristics a leader can have:

With the rise of the internet, it has never been easier to get information. Access to all kinds of data is right there at our fingertips; waiting to be found. However, with social media playing such a prevalent role in society, the influence that other people’s opinions have on us, and the chance that we receive misinformation has never more significant. We are constantly inundated with posts, tweets, status updates, and material that fuels what we believe and influences our opinions. We repeatedly engross ourselves with ways that enable us to have information almost instantaneously. In being able to find the truth so easily, and inversely being so susceptible to misinformation, it is easier more now than ever to help or hurt your business through social media.

It’s a fact, people don’t like change. People are all too comfortable doing everything the same as they have always done before. But why are we so content with the status quo? Why do we insist on keeping things the same? Well I’ll tell you why… It’s because of fear.

Imagine if people had the mentality that once they failed for the first time, they would just give up and move on. What would the world be like if Thomas Edison quit after one light bulb, or the Wright Brothers quit after one test flight? Now imagine what your business would be like if you just gave up if you weren’t immediately successful. If people never persevered, the world would be stagnant; we would never get anywhere!