Got an email today that put something in perspective for me, and confirmed a thought I’ve had for a while….you can’t rely on a SINGLE source for your business to succeed AND maintain success.

The email I got was from a lady I’ve been following for a bit…her Youtube channel was randomly deleted by Google and she is fighting to get it back. There was nothing she did that caused it, it was a legitimate glitch that caused it to be deleted. And, the reality is it may be gone forever with no recourse, or anything she can actually do about it.

This happened with a website of mine years ago – I didn’t own it completely and it randomly got deleted after a hack from a hacker in a foreign county. Still hurts thinking about that loss honestly, but back to the Youtube gal.

The problem? She has built a significant portion of her business via Youtube. She receives most of her leads and hence makes most of her business income thanks to Youtube.

Where are your promotions at online?

This is similar to something I’ve seen other business owners doing – building nearly all of their business on Facebook, or Twitter or Linkedin.

Building your brand across multiple platforms is great, but you must make sure that no matter how you’re promoting yourself that you’re not relying on JUST ONE platform. If at any given moment it vanishes, it could cripple your business.

Now, this lady is pretty resourceful, and I’m sure she’s collected many email addresses and will ultimately be fine. However, the difference is she has been doing this 6 years and may be able to recover faster than other people who are still new in business.

I’m not 100% sure what will happen for her, but obviously I’m wishing her the very best.

Don’t focus all your promo efforts on one platform!

The bottom line is, don’t rest all your business plans on one platform. Especially one you don’t own. You must realize that when you do that if the platform ever vanishes or your account is randomly deleted, it can cripple you.

In all honesty, this is why I’m a huge fan of cross posting. I’ll take the same piece of content and use it in multiple ways so that no single platform is ever getting all of the focus. Some people have called me crazy for doing this and have said I could build my business faster if I would just focus on ONE.

But to them I say this – if Facebook vanishes tomorrow, I’ve still got Twitter. If Twitter vanishes, I’ve still got Linkedin, and if they all vanish, I’ve still got my website and my personal database of contacts. I won’t quit, and hopefully it means I won’t fail.

I felt compelled to share this, and I hope it gets you thinking about how you’re promoting yourself. I also hope that you avoid focusing all of your energy on a single platform you don’t own. Happy Monday my fellow entrepreneurs!

Thanks to my membership in the Tampa Bay Bloggers and their partnership with the Straz Center I received two complimentary tickets for the purposes of review to the Book of Mormon. This has not impacted my review and all opinions below are my own.

The Book of Mormon – My Review

I confess that upon entering the theater for The Book of Mormon I didn’t know what to expect. But, by the end of the show I was incredibly grateful that I didn’t know what to expect. Every single song, every single act, thrilled and excited me and away I couldn’t have imagined. Because of that fact, I will intentionally not share a single spoiler in this review. (If you want spoilers, however, I recommend you read Run DMT’s review).

Instead, I will focus on telling you why you should or should not see the show. If you are a very religious person who is easily offended by jokes about religion – don’t see this show. If you’re a person who is easily offended by curse words, crude humor, and incredibly explicit content – don’t see this show. If you’re a person who believes that the show South Park was invented by the seed of Satan – don’t see this show. However, if your fan of inappropriate humor, religious puns and jokes, and clever musical numbers that poke fun at religion at every turn –  GO SEE THE SHOW!

I have to say that I am recovering churchgoer. I became disheartened by the business of “the church,” and I’ve got to say that that is part of the reason I liked this show so much. There were some very clever statements made throughout the show that actually speak to how religion can in fact make a person feel better about whatever situation they’re dealing with in their life may be.

By that same token, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it felt to me as though the people who wrote this show do not exactly have respect for religion. That doesn’t change the fact though, that I laughed harder in those two hours watching The Book of Mormon than I have laughed in a very long time.

From the very first musical number to the last hilarious dig at the religion of Mormonism, and all of the terribly non-politically correct humor in between, I thoroughly enjoyed every single bit of it. I must admit I thought for sure there would be at least one or two jokes about Scientology somewhere in the play. But, maybe reading between the lines to find those jokes for myself was what the playwrights “were going for.” (<- that’s a joke from the show and the closest I’ll get to a spoiler!)

I will warn you that if you’re like me, and have a lot of friends who have very religious views, you will find it incredibly difficult to tell them about the show you just watched if you go and see Book of Mormon. I personally went with a girlfriend of mine to watch this, and after it ended we both looked at each other and kind of knew that we would not be able to tell many of the people in our lives about what we had just witnessed. What’s funny though is now that gives us something to bond over, and laugh about at events we’ll attend in the future.

I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed the show, and just how funny I found it to be. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a Southern Baptist Christian home, but I could see extra humor that was unique to myself. Then again, I think it’s safe to say anyone who saw this that has any kind of religious background probably interpreted some jokes in their own way that made the show that much funnier than it may be to other people witnessing the same material.

Bottom line – I would see the show again in a heartbeat. And, I have a funny feeling that if I were to watch it again I would laugh that much harder the second time around even though now I know what to expect. I can now completely understand why critics have raved about the show, and I concur wholeheartedly with every positive review that I have read about it.

The Book of Mormon is playing at the Straz Center through December 10. To see all the shows playing at the Straz, click HERE!

Is it truly the most wonderful time of the year? Perhaps for young ones and teachers eagerly awaiting winter break, and children aged one to 100 that are excited about the holidays, yes. However, for our skin, it may not be the most wonderful time of the year. Dry Skin in Winter is a common complaint for many but thankfully there are things you can do to combat this. Dry and flaky skin, itchiness from all those clothes we have to pile on, the bite of that winter air – old Jack Frost can leave our skin craving those warmer months. If this sounds familiar, below are some things that may help your skin to feel better all winter long. Making sure your home is no cooler than it needs to be will be essential. Look for new heat pumps Charlottesville if yours is currently damaged.

Your Four Steps to Winter Ready Skin

1. Give Yourself a Hand (Moisturizer)

Dare I say, during those cold winter months, the hands take the brunt of the damage. Most people wear long sleeves, pants and jackets, but the hands are another story. Unless you’re frequently donning gloves or mittens, which most people don’t until it gets “really cold,” your hands are being constantly exposed to the frigid temps. This dries them out, and can lead to cracking and bleeding. It’s critical you use a good moisturizer, and many experts think it should be one that is glycerin-based. You should at least be putting it on when you get up in the morning and before bed. And, put on some more when your hands feel dry. Moisturizing gloves while you sleep my also be beneficial.

2. Remedy Your Chapped Lips

First, one thing that can actually help you a ton is drinking more water. Staying hydrated may not be at the top of your mind because you’re not as thirsty when it’s so cold, but you need to be drinking plenty of water all year long.

Second, wear a quality lip balm or chapstick that has sunscreen in it. Not only will this help moisturize and mend your chapped kisser, it will protect as well.

Third, and this is the hardest one for most people, don’t lick your lips. Believe it or not, licking your lips can make the chapped factor worse!

Finally, the winter weather wreaks havoc on the lips, but you shouldn’t exfoliate them. Instead, make sure you are using a good quality lip balm to avoid chapped lips. Learn why exfoliation is bad for your lips here.

3. Exfoliate and Moisturize All Over

Perhaps even more so than the rest of the year, you’ll have dead skin that needs to be exfoliated away. When you exfoliate, you’re replenishing your skin by removing the dead layer of skin cells. Twice a week you should be gently buffing away these cells making way to the new cells to develop without anything in their way. While bathing, use a nonabrasive exfoliant, and after you’ve dried off, moisturize from head to toe. Don’t overdo it with exfoliation, twice a week should be fine, but don’t neglect doing it either. Exfoliating helps replenish skin and improve your moisturizer’s effectiveness.

Exfoliation allows moisturizers to penetrate the skin more easily, and during the winter you really want to maintain some moisture. Moisturizers will help prevent your skin from becoming too dry in the harsh winter weather. You may also want to consider moisturizing more than once a day.

Exfoliation and moisturizing alone will make a massive difference in repairing your skin. However, there are also products you can use at home to heal some of the damaging effects from the sun you may have endured over the summer.

4. Protect The Skin You’re in

It’s easy to forget that the sun is still shining during the winter, especially when you’re so cold you’re wearing three or four layers of clothing. But, believe it or not, you can still experience sun damage that could lead to skin cancer if you’re not protecting your skin from the sun in the winter. Sunscreen is a must all year long.

Additional Things to Consider When Prepping For Winter

– You don’t need to replace all of your products, but some experts do recommend using a heavier cream or an ointment as your moisturizer.

– Although you definitely should exfoliate twice a week, it’s imperative that you use a gentle exfoliation product. It’s also important not to do it too frequently. If you’re experiencing too much redness and irritation, you may be exfoliating too often.

– Cracked heel skin is pretty common, and it only gets worse in the winter months. All the dry air can exacerbate the cracking making walking painful, and putting you at more risk of infection. One thing that can help in a big way is to moisturize your feet with something like Vaseline. Before bed, don your feet with petroleum jelly, wrap them in plastic wrap, and cover with socks. You should wake up with your heels much more moisturized, and hopefully your heels will begin to heal.

The winter months may be frigid and drying, but your skin doesn’t have to suffer. May your skin be merry and bright. And, may you be protected from winter’s cold bite!

In our business lives, we hear the saying all the time. “Work smarter, not harder.” But, how many of us do it? Or for that matter, how many of us know what working smarter actually even means. The problem is knowing something and implementing it are two very different things. If you are facing this problem of knowing that you could be working smarter rather than harder, try the pointers below to help you get more productive with your time and create more profits overall.

Now you may not get to implement all of these ideas, particularly not all in one go. However, if you start with one and build on that, then you are at least moving forward.

Work on what is relevant and most profitable.

This may seem obvious, but what seems obvious is not always easy to implement. Do a self diagnostic test to see what takes up the most of your time, and you will likely find it is the part of your business that is the least profitable. It may be time to outsource that element, so it costs less time and resources and moves it off your plate. Or, you may just need a better system in place for getting it done faster giving you time to focus on the more profitable projects or components of your business.

Manage your projects more efficiently.

Once again, easier said than done. Still, you should try to build structure into what you are doing. Many people have so much going on in their day-to-day, that they are continuously jumping from project to project with little focus. What you should do instead is finish a task completely before starting another.

No, this doesn’t mean completing entire projects in one time period. I’m a realist and I understand that this isn’t possible for every project. What I do mean though is that you should chunk your projects down and complete an entire chunk at a time before moving on to the next chunk of whatever project you want to move forward on. Bonus points if you document where you left off on every project so that you don’t come back to it wondering what’s next!

Set deadlines for everything.

How many times do you set a deadline to get something done and make sure it is done? You have client deadlines I’m sure, but have you ever created self-imposed deadlines for yourself to ensure things get done in a timely manner? Doing this triggers a sense of need to get it done now, rather than allowing ourselves the “luxury” of putting it off until tomorrow. Just knowing you have a deadline regardless of who set it will inspire your brain to complete it now, not when it’s actually due.

We all know how much we can get done the day before we go on leave or a nice well earned vacation. Apply the same principle to what you do on a daily basis.

A simple starting point is to chunk down your top 5 tasks and create the deadlines you can set around these. The deadlines must be realistic, however. Otherwise you are going to burn yourself out trying to reach them, or you’ll do a piss poor job of accomplishing the tasks to the best of your ability.

Employ people that have strengths where you have weaknesses.

This is really about leveraging your time. If you are not good at doing something, but you still need it in your business, get someone else that is an expert in that area to do it. Then, let yourself get on with the next task in your business. You can either do this by hiring virtual assistants part time or full time, or by hiring contractors for one off tasks as frequently or infrequently as needed.

Manage time interruptions.

Think about the number of times you are trying to get something done that will help with the profitability of your business, when your phone rings or someone knocks on your door for a “quick catch up.” It’s imperative you become more structured in managing these interruptions. Let the phone go to voicemail and set aside time to return all the calls, for example. Ask people to book in time for you so you can manage your day, and not have their interruption mess up your entire schedule.

Remember, time management is not about trying to manage time; there are only 24 hours in a day. It is about managing yourself, your sanity, and the moving parts in your business. For some people time management is easy and effortless, but for many of us it’s a daily struggle. As you work on it though, you’ll build habits for better efficiency in your life.

Additional ideas for getting more done in your day include:

Activity Logs: If you often wonder at the end of the day where your day went, create an activity log to start logging how much time you spend on your various activities. Only once you know where your time went can you change anything.

To Do List: Yes, having a to-do list is important, but if you’re spending too much time on creating lists, you’re not going to get anything done. Keep them short and simple with your top 3-5 things you HAVE to get done each day, and then try to do them before you do anything else.

Create a schedule, and actually plan your day: Unimportant, but time-consuming tasks can end up consuming a lot of your time. Schedule your most important things first, and leave plenty of buffer time for each item. Prioritizing enables you to focus your time and energy on the important things. You can’t successfully manage and grow your business if you can’t successfully manage your time.

Today my dad would have been 58. 🙁 I’m still so upset that he has already missed so much since the last time we spoke in November 2015, we’ll never reconcile, and he’ll miss out on so much more in the coming years than he should have. Wishing and hoping for things to be different won’t make it so.

However, I do want to remind everyone that if you’re unhappy in your life you CAN change it. You don’t have to live in misery. As much as people may disagree with me, at the end of the day YOU DO HAVE A CHOICE! We all do!

You can choose how you react to the cards your dealt. In some ways, you can even choose some of the cards. I wish my dad could have seen that he had so many choices, and I’m still devastated that he made the ultimate bad one by leaving this earth too soon nearly a year ago.

I know everyone has been telling me this year that he took his life because he saw no other way out. And, yes…I believe by the time he let that much darkness take over…he did believe that. But, I also know that there were so many times he could have chosen to step out of the darkness, but instead opted to shun the light.

Looking Back, We Did All We Could

Nothing I or my family could have said or done could have changed his choice to repeatedly choose the darkness. You can only show someone a different path so many times before letting go, and ultimately letting them decide which path they want to take. Looking back I see how many times we did try to intervene.

No, we never hospitalized him, but we did try everything we knew how to do to make him happy and show him how to be happy within himself. We did the best we could, and it was actually never our choice of how he would move forward after each intervention. There is a saying that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and I feel like at the end of the day, as much as it hurts, he didn’t want to be saved.

I forgive him for taking his own life, and am saddened at how much I understand now what he did and even why he did it. I just will never accept it was the right choice, or that he couldn’t have found another way. Happy birthday dad. I guess you finally found your peace, I’m just so sorry for you that you never found the light.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Call 1-800-273-8255

It may be hard to believe, but even with all the advancements in skin care, people are still destroying their skin daily. Some people don’t even realize they’re doing it, and what’s worse is some people think things they are doing are helping their skin when in fact they couldn’t be more wrong. Check out the 5 common ways people are damaging their skin and see if you’re guilty of it too and how you can stop it.

You may think that you’re doing everything right when it comes to your skincare routine, when in fact, you could be causing more harm than good. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of. When it comes to your skin, everything that you do becomes a learning process, and you’ll soon establish the best cause of action and products to help you get better skin.

1. Despite your best efforts you are killing your skin with UV rays. Just because you put on sunscreen in the morning, does NOT mean you’re protected all day. Just 15 minutes can cause a burn that leads to premature wrinkles.

A re-application of sunscreen midday might be a good idea even if you’re just going to be in the sun from your office to your home during your commute.

Oh and by the way, don’t think for a moment that there is anything such as a safer ray. Many folks make the mistake of believe that the rays of a tanning salon are better for you.

2. You’re exfoliating too much/ too often

Yes, exfoliating is great for your skin, but you can do too much. For most people exfoliation shouldn’t be done more than 2-3 times per week and for others it should be done even less! Over-exfoliation can cut, break, tear and wear down your skin leading to rashes, breakouts and more

3. You use soap to wash your face, and worse you do it with a wash cloth.

The soap you use on your body is not okay for your face. Why? Because not matter how gentle you think it is, it’s likely too abrasive for your more sensitive skin on your face.

As for the wash cloths, use those on your body, not your face. A washcloth can be too rough and breakdown your skin and could have more bacteria than you realize on it.

4. You don’t take off your makeup before bed.

Sleeping is one of those wonderful times that your skin’s cells can renew and heal, but if your face is covered in makeup at bed time you’re blocking the pores and asking for breakouts.

5. You don’t get enough facials.

Not only does it feel much better to have someone else care for your skin, having a professional give you a facial can give you additional insight as to what your skin is missing and help you learn the proper way to do facials to yourself at home. Plus, who wouldn’t want to visit day spas austin (if you live in and around this area of Texas) to help get your skincare game on top form? You may also learn a thing or two while you’re there.

Now, we want to hear from you. Are you guilty of any of the above bad skin acts? If so, now is the time to change! Stay tuned to our blog for more great ideas to help take better care of your skin.

Warning! This is not a warm and fuzzy blog post. If you are looking for warm and fuzzy go google sweet cat pics or something. This is me being sick and tired of writers (and all artists for that matter) being asked to work for free. I’m over it! This trend of websites popping up all over posting job openings for unpaid positions ticks me off!! In my opinion they should not be allowed on job boards because unpaid= not a job in my book!

What prompted this angry blog post from me? Welp, I’ve been trying to get more writing work because my husband is planning on going back to school in the fall and I am going to need to take over more of the money making responsibilities. I’ve been filling out lots of applications and stumbled onto a website similar to one I’m already getting paid to write for. So, I sent an email to this writing website because I heard they too are seeking new writers. In the email I listed my credentials, how long I’ve been writing and ended with an inquiry about compensation. Was promptly emailed this:

“Right now, we are only inviting people to join our writers community, which offers a link and Google+ authorship, but they are not paid positions. It’s a steadily growing group of writers who want a bit more exposure with their work. If you’re interested in that, you can read more and sign up at (website redacted).”

Below is the response I WANTED to send back to the company but instead opted to not respond at all.

Dear evil company that plans to make money off the backs of unpaid writers,

Most writers don’t need exposure. For the most part, we all get plenty of exposure by excitedly sharing what we write with friends, family and our social networks via facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and more.

What most writers DO need is rent money, food money, gas money and money to pay the rest of our bills. Would you expect your dentist, your plumber, your landlord/ mortgage loan officer, your doctor or any other service provider to be paid in word of mouth advertising? I highly doubt it, so why can’t you pay a writer for their services?


No, I’m not interested in working for your company and I sincerely hope other writers will refrain from writing for your company for free as well. Continuing to make websites and publications think it is okay to not pay us is unacceptable and needs to be stopped. However, as I’m not a jerk, I do wish you good luck in your future ventures.


All the best,
Ashley Grant