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I love learning new things. One of my favorite things about working at Vitality South is the culture of learning that we all actively take part in. We are encouraged to learn independently and provided with the tools to learn and grow our skills, knowledge, and experience. My experiences in school and at Vitality South have given me a new title, A Forever Student/Learner. What does a Forever Student even mean? It means that I am always willing, able, and trying to learn and grow. I always want to improve myself as a person and my skills as a professional. I always want to be better today than I was yesterday. This perspective and attitude towards life have helped me in every step. I am confident that a behavior built upon learning can help individuals grow past their expectations and help their businesses or workplaces thrive. How do you develop

Several years ago, a national alarm/security system company came knocking on our door and convinced us to sign up with them for a home alarm system. We kept that system for many years until we decided to go a different route. Having paid this company on time for nearly a decade and having no contract with them whatsoever, you’d think cancelling would be a fairly simple thing to do. They have a fancy app, customer service phone number, website with chat functionality, and even an access panel in our home. Alas, my family has been working towards cancelling this service for nearly 6 months. When you chat with the website, they will let you spend a long time giving them all of your information before they share with you the fact that they don’t do cancellations on the chat – even though they knew this all along. The website online

If you’re a Facebook user, you know about the @everyone feature on Facebook that the group admin can write “@everyone” and it tags every single group member in the post. This is a wonderful tool for administrators to be able to ensure important messages get noticed by their users. For example, a session is cancelled for inclement weather at the last minute and they urgently need to let everyone know. This would be an excellent use case for the @everyone feature. However, I’m a heavy Facebook user. I use it professionally and personally. As a marketing agency, I dare say I have even more use of Facebook than the average bear. Also, my whole stance on business is pro-business. So that being said, if just about anyone invites me to be a part of their page or group, I accept. I do this to support their business and I do

I’m sure you’ve all heard the adage “work smarter not harder.” I definitely agree. My secret to success thus far has been to work smarter AND harder. If you can do 8 hours of work in 6 hours, then why not do 10 hours in 8? I feel certain we all agree on the merit of working smarter. I think the real question is, “HOW”? I don’t have all of the answers, but I have some of them; I’ll gladly share those and would love to hear from you tips that work in your business. One working smarter tip is eliminating the fallacy of multitasking. Studies show, there is no such thing. What you are doing instead is rapidly shifting your focus from one thing to another. You are unable to truly focus on any of the tasks at hand and each will take longer, even if they are done

I’ll be the first to tell you, 2022 was a hard year for me. We had many changes at Vitality South in 2022 that necessitated new processes. Luckily for me, I’ve never been afraid of hard work.  One of those changes was the addition/expansion of our IT team to compliment our Marketing and Software teams. We technically did IT (information/computers) support in 2021 also, but we didn’t have a whole team dedicated to this alone. We had our Software team double-timing to meet these needs. We had reached the point of full capacity where we needed to get all in or get all out. We got all in! In addition to our faithful Sheila that many of you love and call the GOAT (greatest of all time), we’ve added a full time IT director, Jayme Bennett. He came on board in March and really embraced improving our support, improving our

Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to enjoy a few days of R&R on vacation. We ate too much, enjoyed seeing the beach, and spent time laughing with good friends. On one of the days, my friend suggested that we go get massages, which I was thrilled to do. We scheduled our time and went to get our massages. As I laid on the table, it felt like the hands of God himself began working all of the tension out of my body. It was magical. And then I came to a funny realization. I became aware that I had a tension headache- but it wasn’t new. I realized I’d had it for a very long time. This ache was an old companion of mine that I had simply learned to ignore. I have been putting my body through long days and short nights and have not

This is a true story. Many moons ago when I was getting married at the “ripe” age of 21, I went to a hairdresser to style my hair for my wedding. I had been growing my hair out for months with visions of it being down and long and wavy. It sounds ridiculous saying it now, but when I sat in her hair to get my hair styled, she told me it would look better up with my strapless gown to show off my dress and so I let her put my hair up in a french twist instead of how I’d been planning for months. I’ve become aware of this conflict avoidance tendency of mine and have worked on it over the years with some success, but for my wedding – my hair was up on the most photographed day of my life and I really wanted it down.

As I made my way to work this morning, I admired the beautiful sunrise. I was reminded of new beginnings, new opportunities, and new learning experiences. Along with the sunrise, over the fields I passed along the way, a thick fog had settled. The breathtaking scenery reminded me that in every new beginning or opportunity, there is an element of the unknown. Personally, I have always struggled with the unknown. I want to feel like I am in control. The past year, I have moved more than once, I have been promoted to a leadership position, and I got another dog. There’s plenty more to my year, but this year has been a year of many changes. Each of these situations brought about new excitement but also fear. Fear of the what if’s in the situation. Fear of failure. However, out of the situations, I have been successful and learned

This past week marked our 3 year anniversary! In some ways, it feels like it has been eons that we have been doing this, and in others, it seems like just yesterday Megan and I were sitting on those beanbag chairs in the Renasant Center for Ideas while we were waiting for our furniture to come in. Our third year in business has been remarkable – our best ever! We’ve completed some amazing projects. We’ve helped some new (and old) businesses launch their online presence for the first time, which is always exciting. We’ve launched our IT business this year – we’ve been dabbling in IT for years but with the addition of two full time IT professionals, we’ve taken it to an entirely new level and our customers say things like “I never knew IT could be this good!” We’ve also reached new heights with our Software development team.

Helping small businesses is really synonymous with helping your own community grow. Major corporations that operate within your community obviously employ and sometimes contribute locally, but it’s irrefutable that their profits are shipped out elsewhere. Helping local businesses is investing in the businesses that are invested in our community. It’s giving business to your neighbors and friends. It’s helping a community partner that will likely be in the position to return the favor. It’s choosing to be able to work with someone that you will run into on the ball field or grocery store aisles. Helping small businesses is good business. Some may ask “how can I help small businesses?” We’re glad you asked! Patronize small businesses. This might be obvious, but where you choose to “vote with your dollars” makes a big difference. Even if it’s just a burger, I’m sure Trish at Neon Pig appreciates it a lot

In business and life, there will always be things to celebrate along with things that are not as celebratory. Despite these less enjoyable times, it should still be a priority to look for the good. This is, of course, easier said than done. But when we shift our perspectives and stop looking at the bad as much, everything else will shift with it. As a leader, it is important to lead by example. If you are consistently dreading and stressing over your work, those you are leading will begin to feel that way too. On the flip side, even if you are not in a position of leadership, you can encourage others with your joy. Joy is contagious. Personally, I have begun to focus more on the small victories. For example, I am in the process of moving. I had several small goals for packing, however, I only completed a