Project: The Root Word

Few are the days we discard the alarm clock, trusting the international anticipation of tomorrow and euphoria of life to keep us awake.

But as December 31^st blends into January 1^st, as one day ends and another begins marking not just another month but a new year, we recognize a season of hope. Renewal. The season of resolutions.

We all have succumbed to thinking them. Since childhood we’ve been conditioned to bettering our lives and it all starts on the first day of each year. To break a bad habit. Start a good one. Lost five pounds. Try five new things. Floss every day. Quit smoking. End a relationship. We resolve to bridge the gap between where we are and where the happiness resides outside of our reach.

Personal or professional, resolutions don’t just have to take place in January. The most important factor is that they solve an issue.

If we slow down and enunciate the word that trips us up emotionally, we’d recognize that resolution sounds a lot like solution. That’s because the word is a derivative of solution.

Too often when we think of resolutions we set before us new hurdles, thus new problems to solve.

This year, we challenge you to follow this five step plan to fulfill your 2016 dream, to successfully SOLVING your resolutions:

1) Identify: Realize what the problem is – what it is you want to change.

2) Analyze: Create a custom, tangible plan with bite size manageable steps

3) Pace: Pace yourself. One of the reasons people often give up on their resolutions is because they forget it should be more than a marathon. It’s a lifestyle, it’s long-run. If your goal was to floss every day but you kicked off by flossing five times in one day – overkill will kill your momentum.

4) Forgive: If you skip a day, two or three, pick yourself back up and keep going. The worse thing you can do after inadvertently missing day five of mark, is purposely miss day six because you think you’ve lost too much momentum or failed the system.

5) Reward: Incentivize yourself. Don’t wait until the end of the year to determine if you achieved your maximum potential. Highlight your calendar with several future dated celebratory milestones to benchmark your success. Everyone needs a little sticks and carrots to keep them going. Figure out what your carrot is and keep it forefront wherever you are.

- The Green Couch

Project: Say Cheese without Being Cheesy

Kodak moments are a thing of the past. Everyone is instagramming, tweeting, snapchatting and adding filters cropping and for aesthetic purposes, and these images have overtaken social media.

However, these should never grace your professional profile, resume, business cards or web pages; It is cheesy. Although these candid or even posed scenes may seem truer to your authentic self and are a great a way to interact socially online, highlighting a side of your personal life they, unfortunately, often do not give your clients and associates the professional personification of your business.

Blurry images, outdated images, images with date marks – all these indicate someone who hasn’t invested energy, time or finances in their company reputation.

Here are five ways to present yourself professionally:

1) Headshots: Before your clients meet you, they want to meet you virtually, they want to put a face to the voice they might hear over the phone, or the bio they read online. They want to get a sense of comfort that they know you and feel a sense of trustworthy connection.

2) Filler Images: Things like heading images for your blogs increase not just your SEO but your viewing pleasure. There is a fine balance between white space and blank space. No one wants to look at your web pages and think that your site and an overly blank page is a reflection of your company: blank and bland.

3) Landscapes and Offices: Showoff your accomplishments. Whether you are in construction or you have a medical practice, why would people choose you if they cannot see your craftsmanship or you establishment?

4) Stock Photos: If you do not have any of the above, and if you do not have a way to create any of the above, stock photos is an affordable, legal way to purchase and own the copyrights to images that match the theme and needs of your company.

5) Renderings: I cannot believe it’s not butter! Whether it is the future architecture project, a visualization for a presentation or just a grainy picture that needs to be revived, rendering turns imagination, visualization and existing art into perfection. With programs so advanced and creatives so in-tuned, one can hardly define the reality from rendering.

The eyes and our sight are perhaps one of our most valued senses and should never be undervalued commodities in whatever trade, services and product our companies provide. Vision is an asset - both in what we can physically see and what we can see happening with our physical business. We all have a good side. Perfect it, flaunt it and let the camera keep on rolling!

-The Green Couch