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In full disclosure, I may or may not have the Shawn Mendes song stuck in my head at this particular moment. My girls, Layla and Vivienne, are currently obsessed with that song, as well as the rest of the Sing 2 soundtrack. But the thought of “nothing holding me back” got me excited all over again. That’s why I started my business in the first place. I wanted to be able to succeed or fail according to my efforts and abilities. I wanted to be able to say “YES!” to my customers. I wanted to be able to unconventional if needed to take advantage of opportunities for me and those that depend upon me. Business ownership is the epitome of “nothing holding me back.” The dark flip side of “nothing holding me back” is “nothing pushing me forward.” There is no one double-checking to see if I am making wise

I’ve been working in the marketing and technology industry for more than a decade at this point, and I have discovered a trend. Technology in business is a very specialized niche that is not necessarily all that easy to fully grasp. A lot of people understand specific aspects of it, but it isn’t intuitive to the masses. The trend that I’ve noticed over the years is when people know they need a specific thing in their business but don’t necessarily know that thing inside and out, they tend to throw money at it. I’ve seen businesses select entirely inappropriate computers – either way more power than they need, too little and they ultimately have to upgrade again or invest in the wrong specs for their needs. With digital marketing, I’ve seen businesses invest in channels that have a good result but could have been achieved far simpler with less investment.

Vitality South’s Services For many businesses, you never need to ask the question “what do you do?” For a caterer, they cook and deliver food. For a dentist, they fix and prevent dental issues. Maybe that’s an oversimplification, but most customers walking in the door have a pretty good idea about the majority of their services.  Vitality South is interesting because a lot of people are familiar with a particular subset of our services and in their mind, that’s what we do. When they have further discussion with us, they tell us all the time “Oh! I didn’t know you did that.” Kind of like when you think of a company like Pepsi and you think – ‘yep, they make soft drinks’, so it doesn’t surprise you when you hear they make Sierra Mist. And then you hear about their Tropicana Orange Juice – and you didn’t know it but

Ready for Business This morning as my alarm went off, time for me to get ready for work, I felt fatigue catch up with me. It’s near the end of Spring Break week, having worked the week in full, and I was tired. In fact, I really just wanted to roll up into the office wearing pajamas. Before your imagination gets the best of you, for me, pajamas means sweat pants and a t-shirt. When I looked at my appointment book, I didn’t have any scheduled in-person meetings today. As the CEO of my marketing agency, I wouldn’t be hearing from Human Resources about this decision. I was chilly. I was tired.  And I wanted to just relax. But after a little self-pep talk, I reminded myself that I don’t go to work to relax. I go to work to help businesses. Help my business. Seek new opportunities for myself

Cybersecurity for Businesses When I was in college, my sister and I decided to take a SCUBA diving class just for fun. We practiced each week in the college pool with our oxygen and masks, and then eventually took a trip down to Florida to do an open water dive and get certified. One of our classmates asked what we needed to do if we encountered a shark. Our instructor grinned and replied that we don’t have to outswim the shark, just our buddy. When we help businesses with Cybersecurity, many of them find it absolutely overwhelming to never make any mistakes, never use weak passwords, always recognize scam attempts, etc. And the advice we offer our customers is the same that my dive instructor offered us; you don’t have to be perfect, just don’t be an easy victim. The truth in online security is, even if you let us

Change Management in Business While driving, it’s incredibly important to use our turn signals to let other cars know our intentions. Not only is it considerate, but it’s also a matter of safety. Cars often move at high speeds which requires rapid decions and have little time to decide which actions to take and the little blinking light gives insight. I can think of another instance that a turn signal could have been paramount. Chris (my husband and VS’s VP of Technology) took me snow skiing once. I had never been, so everything was new. He took me to the top of a mountain and as we started our descent, he decided to show me, impromptu, how to stop. Directly in front of me. Without telling me he was planning to do so. I’m sure you can imagine the results.  I’ve been thinking lately about other practical applications of this

Technology in Business Have y’all noticed how many things we’ve started doing online as of late that we used to do in person? Yes, it’s been heading in this direction for years, but during the Pandemic it seems to have really escalated. Shopping – I’m not just talking about buying from Amazon – but even our orders placed with local companies are ordered online many times. We’re interacting with our favorite local businesses more and more in a digital way. I see some of my customers with digital appointment scheduling links on their websites. I see customers with text or app-based loyalty systems.  I see customers with contact forms receiving record-level messages. I see signs all over the place of local businesses utilizing technology, and I don’t see this changing, ever. These are all customer-facing technologies – I haven’t even gone into the behind-the-scenes technologies we’ve been able to help

Customer Feedback Because I am in my line of work, I see a lot of comments for a tremendous amounts of businesses. These comments come in a variety of ways: social media messenger, contact forms, comments on posts, reviews, etc. And for better or worse, sending these comments over a digital media, there seems to be no filter at all. I’m guessing many of you are familiar with the Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets where the celebrity reads aloud things that have been written about them. While the celebrities roasted are good sports about it, they are really, really mean comments. And I have a feeling that most of the amateur authors would have never said that to the person if they had to do it in person. When a business receives a really mean message, it seems like the instinct should be to ignore it. File it away as garbage

Business Tax Credit There’s a popular hash tag these days #IYKYK which means “if you know you know.” I like it. I definitely had to google it the first time I saw it, but now I’m in the club. #IYKYK. 😉 What’s been so shocking to me in this business adventure is how much I don’t know I don’t know. There are smart business strategies that some companies take advantage of and other businesses have never heard of. How did President Trump only pay $750 in federal taxes? I’m not making a political statement here, I’m really looking for literal answers. As a business owner, I have *tried* to be intentional about working ON my business, not just IN my business. And in doing so, tax strategies have been one of my focuses. No, it doesn’t replace a great CPA – I’m just trying to give her a little more

You have a friend that’s a business owner. You use her products/services as much as you can and recommend her products/services to everyone. This is amazing and you are a great friend. That’s all you can do, right? Wrong. There is something else. It will take you less than 5 minutes, cost nothing, and help your friend win business from people you’ve never even met. She needs your online reviews. According to a recent study I read, 89% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. That’s a whole lot of prescreening online before they even meet your fabulous entrepreneur friend. And 79% of consumers trust the reviews they read. This is your chance to tell people you’ve never met how wonderful your friend’s business is. To give your friend the absolute best review possible, think for a minute what questions you’d have about that business as an outsider.

Am I the only one that feels work stress is just a little heavier than everyday stress? I’ll be honest, I’ve been stressed lately. I’m typically a person that handles stress well. Nothing in particular wrong, the weight of running a business is a lot sometimes. It seems like it should be true that the more employees you have to handle the workload, the less stress the owner will have; but we have a lot of capable and talented employees at Vitality South and from my seat, that doesn’t ring true. I believe that the stress that I’m feeling is actually the weight of my responsibility. I feel responsible for the livelihoods of my employees. I feel responsible for the success of my customers’ businesses. I feel responsible for the toilet paper staying in inventory for the work bathrooms. I feel responsible for the culture and morale of the office.

Vitality South is well known for its website design. Website development is not going away and is exceptionally important. I have been asked “why do I need a mobile app if I have a great website?” For some, the answer is – you don’t. However, there are multiple distinct advantages that mobile apps can offer above and beyond a website. Why choose mobile apps? Off-line availability – One feature that mobile apps can provide that websites cannot is off-line availability. You instinctively know you can use your maps without internet connectivity, but there are many other use cases for this service. We made one app for a customer’s internal business needs that required uploading photos from varying locations in the area – that may or may not have internet access. A mobile app is able to accommodate this need. Push notifications – In the marketing world, we talk about 2