Revisiting Hurricane Katrina

Katrina Cottages 6
It's hard to believe that's it's been 10 years since Katrina set her eye on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. So much of the media was focused on New Orleans, but the entire Gulf Coast especially in Mississippi has yet to fully recover from her wrath.
When it became obvious that here was going to be extensive loss of housing , the Manufactured Housing Institute and the manufactured housing community sprung into action to make sue that people would have a place to live that was safe.
A few years after the storm MHI's magazine: Modern Homes had an article written by Lifestylist® Suzanne Felber with photography by Lisa Stewart Photography that shared what progress had been made, and what an important part of the rebuilding process manufactured housing played.
You can read a copy of the article here.

Creating Your Own Online Identity

I'm amazed every day by people who have decided to go into business for themselves, or start a blog and never do the homework to make sure that the brand that they create will be something unique to them.

When I decided to create the Lifestylist® Brands over 20 years ago, the first thing I did was make sure that no one else had trademarked the term or used it in a way that would conflict with how I wanted to use it. Now it seems like everyone wants to be a Lifestylist or use my brand to promote their own vision.

If you are wanting to start your own brand and identity, I recommend doing 3 things before you put a lot of time and effort into your idea:

1. Visit the US Trademark website and make sure that someone else hasn't trademarked the term.

2. Visit your favorite domain registering service and make sure that the .com, .net, and .org registrations are available, and if not if the compnay who has registered them is using them or just is holding on to them to sell.

3. Use Google and the other search engines to see if anyone or any site has a strong tie to your name.

All of the above can be done in less than 30 minutes, but it can save you years of grief protecting your brand in the future. I hope this helps others protect themselves from the headaches I've had protecting my brand.