We Are The Champions!

This past week the #1 song on my iPod was We Are The Champions by Queen. Why? Because I'm so lucky to have so many great champions in my corner in all aspects of my life. We all need champions that will go to bat for us when others will not. I have learned over the past few years in owning my own business that the BEST marketing and PR is really good friends, or champions if you will. These are those people that are in your corner and will promote you and your business all most as much as you do. I have a whole list of them. I had a professor in college tell me once that you should thank someone everyday because you never make it through a day that someone doesn't help you in some way to get you where you are now and want to go. So I'm going to dedicate this post to all my champions and I'm going to take a minute to thank them and give them a shout out.

First, my parents for always supporting everything I ever decide to do whether they like it or not, which probably errors on the not liking what I decide to do more times than not. Both of my parents are career minded individuals and worked hard to get where they are and always told me and my brother if we did the same we could do anything we wanted and that hard work and dedication were what was needed to be successful. They also told us once that I was the pretty one and Brett was the smart one, so you make the decision as to whether they were right or not.

I'm so lucky to have such good friends and family that I know always have my back without them I would moop around doing nothing probably. Allen is the man in my life that let's me get away with all my crap more than I probably should but he does and I'm grateful to have him in my life everyday. Then, there are my besties Jenn, Clare, Kristi and Shauna who go have drinks with me and let me vent about anything and everything, which tends to be a good solution for just about any problem. And a huge shout out to Shauna for being a rock star and influencing the Influential Women in Business judges to make me influential. Every single one of them have a huge piece of my heart.

Then there are the companies I work with. Not only do I work with them and help them and their businesses but they probably don't even know how reciprocal it is that they are helping me so much. I have a great education but my experience with all the people and their companies really make me so much better at what I do. I thank the guys over at W5 for being super supportive and teaching me so much and ARG for giving a young college grad a start. Then there are clients like Dr. Zipp at iStress for telling everyone how fabulous I am (everyone should have clients that go around telling people you are fabulous), Brian Tuffy of eyeNET Security for giving me good advice and infinite material to blog about, Agnieszka Siuda for creating Bartleby and giving us an identity and the guys at Connecting Point who have taught me more about planning then they will ever know. 

If I am nothing else at least I'm smart enough to surround myself with people that are smarter and more influential than me so by default I'm smarter and more influential. I can't thank everyone enough for being there for me and making me a better person. I know that they are all champions for me as much as I am for them. I hope they all know how special they are to me and that I'll always have their back.

Who are your champions?