Friday, June 1, 2012

10 Steps to Building a Killer Marketing Campaign

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Expert Author Richard Gabel
Building a marketing campaign that is sure to be effective and accomplish your goals is not that hard if you follow some very easy steps along the way. A killer campaign is one that has a defined goal, minimizes risk and has a high ROI. It is usually part of a planned flow of related campaigns and not a distinct event. Being part of a progression of activity and being a segue into the next campaign, containing multiple promotional tools and designed with achieving a return commensurate with its cost, insulates you from striking out completely.
Here are some simple steps to follow:
1. Establish the objective. This is usually to sell more of a product or service. While this may seem rather simple, marketing campaigns are all too often developed around a promotional tool and not revenue generating product or service. The content and call to action are after thoughts to the brilliant idea of sending out a postcard. Always remember that the objective is to make money, not create an award winning promotional piece.
2. Link the objective to the prior campaign. A great marketing calendar will link campaigns so that most can be thought of as up-sell opportunities to the prior campaign(s). Others may provide alternate ways of accomplishing the same thing or satisfying the same need for those that were not engaged by the last progression of campaigns.
3. Define the target market. As your campaigns progress in the up-sell mode, the target market will narrow in focus. Each addition to the product line will add cost to the solution. Instead of trying to sell to the same broad market, begin segmenting the market to those prospects or customers that will benefit the most from the features and benefits of the product or service that is the objective.
4. Establish your value proposition. Make sure the value proposition is consistent with your company strategy. If you're strategy is cost leadership, make that benefit clear. If it's differentiation, are the features and benefits highlighted. If you're a nicher, is the target market focused and the features geared to that market.
5. Select your promotional tools. Never use just one media. Marketing is both an art and a science. Sometimes one of your marketing weapons doesn't work. Don't place the whole campaign at risk on a single postcard. Use a variety of coordinated inbound and outbound marketing tools.
6. Establish your call to action. What is it that you want your target market to do? Make it clear in your content and be prepared to act when it happens.
7. Create a sales process specific to the campaign. Your team needs to know what to do when a prospect responds to your call to action. Nail down the response and subsequent steps. What are the anticipated customer touch points, how will you engage and convert?
8. Create the content. Make sure the content is consistent between the various promotional media. Adapt as required to best utilize an email, blog, video, etc., but make sure the campaign holds together from the value proposition to the call to action for each.
9. Setup a measurement and control system. People don't like to log data because it's never available at a convenient time. Keep it simple and make it easy to ensure it's done. Measure leads, prospects and conversions. Measure the value of the conversions and the costs of the campaign.
10. Plan, launch and adapt. A good campaign is like a symphony, the team acting in a coordinated way and the promotional tools all working together to make money. Follow your numbers and determine if, where and when to adjust the tactics to maximize your return.
Each step is critical. That does not mean you need a 50 page play book for each campaign. You just need to think it through and create the tools to compliment the campaign's execution. You can replicate much of this for the next campaign and develop a rhythm for a continuous business development effort.
Once again, the objective is to make money!
Our mission is provide small businesses the tools to grow and prosper. To Meadow Creek our offices are not just a place to work from, but your image to the market. We carry that through by providing:
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Modern Retail Display Cabinets

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Modern retail display cabinets are cabinets that can be used for commercial businesses to display their products and thus hopefully drive sales. These are shelves, racks and other kinds of stands and displays that can house your objects and that can make them look more appealing and draw more attention - and it's important that you use these correctly as a store owner or manager in order to increase your sales and in order to help you to sell more products ad items.
One way to use modern retail display cabinets is by placing them in your shop window. This is a very good move as it can help to attract people's attention as they are walking past. Bear in mind that if you hope to sell anything you need your customers to first come in to the store. Your shop window is in many ways perhaps your most valuable asset, so you need to make sure that you utilize this as an advertisement and as a lure to get people to come into your store. The best items to put in these display cabinets are the ones that will draw people in - the most in demand items that other stores that don't have, and your very best deals.
Another tip here is to try not to stock these cabinets too much. One of your big challenges as a store owner is to get people to buy right away and to come in now rather than going away to think about it - because more often than not a purchase is an emotional rather than logical decision. By making it look like you don't have many of these items you can ensure that people will come in quickly to pick them up before they sell out.
Another useful place to stand your display cabinets is at your POS - your 'Point Of Sale'. The reason this is so important is that it can help you to work with the psychology of your buyers. Basically this way you will be able to attract people to your chosen items at the point where their wallet is already out and where they are already committed to spending money and to queuing. The best items to sell at this point are cheaper things that you can best hope to sell on impulse to people who want to add something small to their order.
You also need to think about the geography of your store and the route that people will take through your store. If you know that there is something people will come into your store looking for, then you should make this quite hard to find - and the reason for this is that it will force them to look around and to see more of what you have to offer at the same time. You then use your display cabinet to promote the items you're having difficulty selling in the areas you know they are going to have to walk past and this way you can sell stock that isn't shifting or that is perhaps going to get you the biggest profit.
In retail, the way you present your products is critical, as is the use of space. So modern display cabinets are designed with this in mind. The same can be said for a variety of shop fittings such as shelving and racks.

How to Appreciate Movies

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Do you know how to appreciate movies? Why are you going to movies? Why are you watching movies in the first place?
Since the birth of cinematography, the movie industry has developed to an extent that no one would have even dreamed of 150 years ago. Yet audio-visual presentations have entirely changed our lives. From entertaining movies to the daily TV ad diet, the movie or TV screen has us glued to its message.
But how do you appreciate the message? Even if the message itself is not what you're looking for, you can still appreciate how it comes across to you. When you understand and realize all the intricacies that go into creating an audio-visual presentation or a movie, you can see whether what you are being presented with was done with care and with you in mind or without any thoughts and doesn't really deserve your attention.
You usually watch a movie for entertainment. You want to take a break from your daily grind and fly into another world. A world of dreams or minimally a world that will make you forget for a couple of hours the boring day to day activities that you're clung to.
What's better than being transported flying the air, climbing a mountain, diving a deep sea or sleeping lazily on a beach for two hours? It's nice from time to time to believe you can simply dress in a Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde or be encapsulated in a lunar module on Apollo 13 for a moment. How two men in a room, as in the "King's Speech", can captivate an audience for a couple of hours?
What is it that makes the difference between a movie where you literally forget who you are and a movie that is boring to death and you leave before the end?
It all comes down to the minute details that capture every single one of your senses: feeling, touch, sight, sound, vibration, color, atmosphere, motion, etc. The screen will encroach deeply upon each of your organs right down to your guts and the blood in your vessels.
You'll be feeling happy, sad, angry, hopeless, excited, etc. depending upon the action, the music, the colors, the speed. The combination is extreme and your enthrallment will rest on how well each art is applied.
The most amazing aspect is that this is done in harmony and with the participation of many, many artists who each cooperate with one another to bring about a spectacular presentation, a message that will have you glued to the screen.
There is a book where you can have a glimpse of each activity to make this come about: Dreaming of Hollywood - A Handbook for Moviegoers and Movie Lovers, by Amelie Couremer. It's short and really a guide to a better understanding of what goes on to bring you these entertaining moments. Read and you'll know how to appreciate movies.
Dreaming of Hollywood - A Handbook for Moviegoers and Movie Lovers is clearly a handbook. Acquiring the knowledge in each aspect of film making and what goes on behind the camera, will make your layman film watching a memorable experience. http://trckrs.com/116488/ezine

Basic Marketing Strategy 101: Winners Sort, Losers Sell

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Expert Author Dan Pine
Which do you think is the better method for obtaining a pearl - find an oyster and introduce a grain of sand into it in the hopes of convincing it to produce a pearl, or find and shuck a hundred oysters until you find one with a pearl? Who do you think ends up with the most gold - an alchemist trying to turn lead and other base metals into the precious element, or a miner who sluices and pans yards and yards of gravel from a frigid riverbed? How would you go about obtaining rough diamonds - find a lump of coal and apply heat and pressure, or build a diamond mine in Africa?
Each of the above examples provides an effective illustration for the effectiveness of sorting. And there are countless other examples that could be used.
Each of these also provides us with a clue to the circumstances under which the sorting process works best. Not all tasks are equally suited to the sorting method.
It would be quite foolish for a potter to go digging through a clay pit in hopes of finding a crafted vessel. Likewise, searching the pasture for the steer that is already nicely divided into steaks, or the cow carrying her milk in a pail, would be the height of stupidity.
So what then are the criteria for a task suited to sorting? Two factors come to mind from the illustrations. The first condition is that which is desired is comingled with the undesired indiscriminately.
This is certainly true of the oysters, the gold, and the diamonds. It is impossible to tell which of the oysters contain pearls before they are opened. Also, it is difficult to know where the gold and diamonds are located before digging. In each case I am sure there are places with higher concentrations of what we are looking for and that the chances of success can be vastly improved by starting in the right place. However, in each case the sorting through the materials must be done.
Marketing and sales are much the same in this regard. The desired and undesired are mixed indiscriminately on the surface. And by this I simply mean that the potential customers who want the product or service and are ready to buy now are sprinkled among the thousands of those who are not.
The second factor which makes sorting the method of choice is that it is more efficient to find the desired than to create it. You may have developed a method that effectively changes coal into diamonds. That does not mean that the process is more efficient than digging them from the ground. Oysters may also be induced to produce pearls, but at what cost of time and expense?
And so too it is with marketing. At any given point in time there are a certain number of people predisposed to buy from you. Again, those who do not want the product or service are a waste of time. It's not worth the effort to change a lump of coal to a diamond. It is much more efficient to find the customers who want the product or service than to create them from resistant leads.
And so we see that marketing efforts are best conducted in a manner akin to finding pearls, gold, or diamonds-sort, sort, sort, and sort.
The successful marketer recognizes that his time is used to better advantage sorting through hundreds of would-be prospects, rather than trying to cajole a handful of distant leads into buying. And indeed, that his time is best spent creating systems to automatically carry out the sorting process.
Creating a system that will help you sort out those ready and willing to do business with you from the apathetic masses will be a much better use of your time than trying to convince one reluctant prospect at a time. Sort, don't sell.
Author and consultant Dan Pine specializes in helping local businesses get more customers through proper implementation of online marketing systems. His goal is to see 50 local businesses each double within a twelve month period over the next 5 years using his techniques. To learn more see the official website http://www.CreateLocalCustomers.com where you can find out the number one thing every local business must do to avoid being lost in the crowd.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

How To Make a QR Code Stand Out From The Crowd

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Expert Author Ben Blackman
QR codes are an exciting way to help promote your business but I think you would agree that they look pretty ordinary. Say, for instance, there are two codes side by side, both offering the same incentive but for different companies. You would probably just scan the code closest to your phone, right? In this situation, what can you do to make a potential customer scan your code, instead of a competitors code? The answer is to make it more visually appealing.
QR codes can be physically altered a certain amount to make them stand out from the black and white, pixelated crowd. When you create a QR code, it has built-in error correction, more specifically, Reed-Solomon error correction. This means that a code can be physically altered by anywhere between 7% and 30% before it becomes unrecognisable to barcode scanners. The four levels are:
Level L = 7%, Level M = 15%, Level Q = 25% and Level H = 30%.
If you are going to use an online QR code generator, ensure that it offers a choice of error correction levels. If there is no option then usually the lowest level is used, Level L at 7%. This means that only 7% of the code can be altered before it becomes unreadable. The best for decorating a QR code is Level H, because 30% of it can be altered. Bear in mind that the higher the level, the denser the code. This means there are more pixels for the same information making it harder for scanners to decode it.
What can you do to make your code look interesting?
Whenever you change anything on a QR code, make sure you test that it can still be scanned every step of the way. Test on different phones using different scanning apps. If you keep making changes to your code, at some point it will become unreadable.
Probably the easiest thing to do is change the colour of the code, although make sure that there is good contrast between the light and dark areas. The ISO standard states that a QR code should be black on a white background, but due to the advanced technology available in smartphones, and also the apps used to scan codes, we can now add colour to a code and still successfully scan it. Some scanners have trouble reading light pixels on a dark background so I advise keeping the background lighter than the foreground.
To really make your code stand out, you can add an image to it, such as a logo. If people recognise a logo as one they know and trust, they will be more likely to scan the code to see what is on offer. Part of the code can be covered with an image because the error correction will work to make sure the information will still be correctly decoded.
You can alter the code itself to make it more interesting, such as making corners round or changing the shape of some pixels. Of course, if you change it too much, it may not be recognised as a QR code which would defeat the purpose of decorating it.
Any alterations you make can be done on any imaging software, even MS Paint, which is usually included on most Windows based PC's. There is a good introduction to enhancing QR codes at nebZone.com. Just remember to test and retest all the time, this is most important. If you can, use different phones and use three or four different scanning apps. Just because it works on your phone, it doesn't mean it will work on another one.
Add some zing to your next QR code campaign, bring your codes to life with some decoration.

What It Takes to Become an Animator

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Expert Author Nash Lin
Animation is fun and entertaining to watch, but it is not easy to produce a good quality animation. If you are keen to become an animator, learn to animate with the following pointers:
1. Be passionate in your animation.
Animation is a form of art and you have to be passionate about what you animate. You have to love what you do and treat all your animation like your baby. At times you might feel that the animation process is tough, this is when you need to have your passion to keep you going. Think of how you can improve it, think of how you can make it more realistic and finally, think of how your audience will be proud of you when they see your animation.
2. Learn to be meticulous in your work.
Be observant when you are looking at all the details of your animation. If you are unsure of what went wrong in your animation, search for references on YouTube and compare the references with your animation. Most animators practice video recording of their own action and use it as their reference. Every small detail counts in your animation. If you put in effort to make each small detail looks good, the final animation outcome will look convincing and of good quality.
3. Be objective when you are receiving critics from audiences.
Most of the time you will be hearing negative comments on your animation, specially when you just started learning animation. However, do not take these comments personally. Your friends or family who give you these feedbacks are the ones who are able to point out your errors or mistakes. In fact, you should be asking more specific questions to verify where the problems are. For example, when someone tells you that the animation is weird, you should ask more precise questions such as, "Are the errors coming from legs movement? Are the hands movement not swinging smoothly?"
4. Always set a goal or target to your animation.
Before you even start to animate, you should have already planned what you want to achieve at the end of the day. The goal serves as a check point during your animation process. You will consistently check to make sure your animation is looking closer and closer to what you had in mind. You might not be a good artist to draw storyboards or sketches, but you must find references to serve as a check point. A couple of relevant videos you had found on YouTube can be very useful because you can view the video repeatedly as comparison.
Tip #1:
Which player should I use to view video?
Quicktime movie player is a great playback software to view video. It allows you to playback the video frame by frame using the left and right arrow key so that you can observe actions and motions in detail.
Tip #2:
How do I view YouTube video with Quicktime player?
You can use www.keepvid.com to download video on YouTube for your own reference. It allows you to download the video at various format and most importantly, you can download the video at MP4 format which allows Quicktime movie player to play it.
Nash Lin is an expert in multimedia and animation industry. He has 7 years of creating animation for games and 3D video trailers. To find out more about animation, visit www.ilearntoanimate.com

Magical, Mythical, Mental and Integral Modes of Music and Consciousness

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Expert Author Elide Beltram PhD.
There is definitely an interaction between music and development of consciousness.
The Swiss cultural philosopher Jean Gebser defines four modes as magical, mythical, mental and integral. The magical mode is illustrated mainly by rhythmical cult music of the shamans of the former North European and African cultures, the chanting of South American and Mongolian priests, and the gamelan orchestras of Indonesian villages. This form is often enhanced with dance and movement and fulfills an initiatory function. The mythical mode of consciousness is common to Eastern and early Western traditions where speech and music are closely associated, like Gregorian chants, Persian music, the ragas of India, and the Vedic chanting of ancient India. The mental mode came into its own around the fifteenth century with the three-dimensional view of the objective world. Along with the development of perspective in painting came polyphony in music, which necessitated intricate techniques of construction and notation that led to the Western musical tradition: fugue, sonata form, the laws of harmony and modulation, tonality, and tempered intervals.
In Asia, the music of Japan, China, and India continued with its "mythical" way, using sounds that have a wide range of micro-intervals. These sounds are closely spaced pitches sounded simultaneously. One can hear the power of this contrasting timbre in the Tibetan cymbals, which have slightly different pitches, or in Balinese gamelan instruments. The sounds of these untuned instruments, along with African gongs, Native American drums, and Peruvian whistles, can create a resonance with a holistic quality based not on the mathematic tuning but on the quality of the psychic feeling response they are meant to elicit.
P.M. Hamel writes of this acoustical phenomenon of contrasting timbre creating sound bipolarity, which lends itself to the expression of emotional bipolarity often heard during shamanic rituals, such as calm and anger, love/hate, harmony and disharmony. He states that its effect is to create, with particular sound frequency of the drumming, a resonance of sound meant to stimulate particular areas of the brain that rule out distraction. In order to approach the "spirit world," the shaman calms the left brain to enter the right hemisphere using the channel through the intuitive and receptive world to reach an altered state. According to R. Assagioli, this intuitive and receptive world of the supraconsciousness, or the transpersonal, is the part of the higher unconscious, which is a region of the mind containing material from which we derive creative insight and higher order drives.
The mental consciousness of music is geared to view the objective world. Cognitive reality is over emphasized; the process of perception is reduced, causing loss of feelings. This may interfere with the spontaneity seen in the magical-mythical mode, helpful for the creative acts of the artist and scientist, and also that resulting from sexual bliss. Music, as a function, tends to minimize suppression by reducing the active process of cognition, as seen in the shamans' practices. One may enter a deeper state of passivity where the mind is emptied of personal memories. Music may sometimes quiet the left cognitive side of the brain, and the listeners could experience it from the right, intuitive hemisphere.
According to Assagioli, our human mind involves four levels. The bottom layer of the lower unconscious contains the elementary physiological activities that direct the coordination of bodily functions, the fundamental drives, and the roots of various pathological states such as phobias, obsessions, compulsions, and delusions. This is what Freud calls the id, the area of the psyche that is the seat of the libido, not in contact with the outside world, only with the body. The next level is the unconscious, which holds impulses, habits and conflicts of which we are unaware and which causes problems in ordinary life. It also holds material easily accessible such as motor reflexes and manual movements. The next layer is the ordinary consciousness in which, according to Assagioli, very little of our mental activity belongs to that level. On the top level, the area that is the supraconscious or the transpersonal, in which the mind contains material from which we derive creative insight, and higher order drives. This is where we receive our higher intuitions and inspirations.
H. Bonny's studies with altered states of consciousness and consonant music verify music's unique access to the supraconsciousness. Consonant music, mental in nature, can bring personal memories from the unconsciousness through familiar sounds. However, the magical and mythical mode of the dissonance, which uses the unfamiliar sounds, may evoke one's unfamiliarity by transcending known feelings and memories and excluding personal issues and problems.
Bonny claims that spiritual states induced through music can reach the same pure states of inner awareness reached through psychedelic drugs. Some musical techniques used in the magical-mythical mode of Tibetan music and Indian cosmic singing seem to accentuate certain overtones, which may create musical vibrations that can open inner psychic centers. Through music visualization techniques, my clients have reported connecting with their dark side. Peacefulness, wholeness, and understanding of one's spiritual life are not reached through intellectual involvement but through total integral listening, the process of "letting go."
In my mystical walk I connected with the atonal sounds of my "child" times. In my self-absorption with visceral sound, I discovered the primordial musical sounds of the universe, the energy vibrations that first formed things. In this state I felt enlightened, and humbled by the higher power of God in me, the self. My body was opened, sexual energy released. I experienced the vortex of creation, the earth, the energy of life. I became who is in me; I experienced the Imago Dei.
Dr. Elidé Beltram, PhD is a psychoanalyst and a New Age scientist. Prior to her studies on humans, she studied the behavior of the wild orangutan of Borneo and taught language to dolphins in Hawaii. She was a composer who founded the Westchester Music Ensemble for Living Composers (Carnegie Hall, 1995) She created a therapeutic modality called "Shadow Sound Therapy," a cathartic treatment using music. She has given lectures and workshops in Switzerland, Italy and New York City. She is a scholar of Astrology and Homeopathic Medicine and is on the faculty and staff of the Washington Square Institute for Psychotherapy in New York City, where she also resides. Her current book The Memory of Vinegar and Oil: Origins Unified, is about her travels to; and scientific studies in Mongolia, Borneo, Spain, Italy, Torajaland, Morocco and Greece, on the topics of sound and healing, study of the Borneo Orangutan, spirtual symbolism and rituals, dissonant music used to heal. quantum physics, http://www.thememoryofvinegarandoil.com

Dealing With Negative People

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Expert Author Patricia DiMaggio
So you finally decided to take control of your financial future and started an internet business- be it a networking marketing company or your own product/service. If you haven't yet, you will most likely have to deal with these people soon, so how can you prepare yourself?
I doubt there really is a way to prepare for this, so just be ready to take the criticism. Many times it's from someone in our family who doesn't understand our business or reasons for doing something different. Generally it's out of their own fear and ignorance that they belittle your decision or say things like "it'll never work". These words hurt when they come from someone who is supposed to love you don't they?
For me, it was my aunt. I and my business mentor met with her and my uncle when I first started my telecom business to present the opportunity and see if they would be interested in partnering with me. Well, they weren't. I was crushed! Being new to this I took it personally that it wasn't for them. It feels like they're rejecting you when they say no, but it's not about you. If they don't think they can do it, they're doing you a favor by saying no rather than joining you with their fingers crossed.
It's not easy to be an entrepreneur, the most successful men and women business owners will be the first to tell you. The majority of them get to the top after years of struggle, debt, and even financial ruin. Take Dan Sullivan for example. He started his own coaching company and for 8 years failed to make a decent living from it. He went into bankruptcy. It seems when one is right on the brink of total destruction, after the hit rock bottom, that's when all of a sudden things start to turn around. It's amazing some of the success stories out there, especially from some of the leaders in my industry.
There's a quote by Thomas Edison about success; that it takes "stick-to-it-iveness" and common sense. He of all people should know. It took over 10,000 tries to get the lightbulb after all. And what if he had quit? We may still be lighting the lamps every night.
So if you've encountered some "rotten apples" as my company puts it, and they've got you questioning your decisions and goals, take a time out and go somewhere peaceful and private with your journal. Write everything down that you're worried about. Write down all your fears. Then tear out the piece of paper light a lighter or match (if it's safe to do so) or crumple up the paper and bury it. By doing this you should let go of all the fears, hurt, and doubt. Start fresh. Don't let people's words get to you but rather take it as a sign of their own dissatisfaction with their life. And consider surrounding yourself with people who are positive and share the same goals. Friends should challenge you to grow, not bring you down.
Leave a comment below if you have found this to be helpful.