Is it "its" or "it's"?  Did Jane give Sally and I or Sally and me the ball?  Does fear of grammar keep you from writing?  The best advice is keep it simple.  The less elaborate your prose, the less likely you are to make mistakes.  Here are a few common grammar problems to look out for:

1.    Its is a possessive pronoun (just like his, hers, and yours) and doesn't use an apostrophe.  It's is a contraction short for "it is".
2.    Your is another possessive pronoun, while you're is a contraction short for "you are".
3.    I versus me is usually easy to decide when the pronoun is used by itself, more difficult when it's paired.  In the example above, the correct phrase is "Jane gave Sally and me the ball".
4.    Make sure the subject and the verb agree -- either singular or plural.
5.    Keep the tenses (past, present, future) straight within a sentence.

There are some great books out there to help out, including the delightful Woe is I -- the Grammaphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner, the equally amusing punctuation guide Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (spotlighted in Issue 1 of this newsletter), and the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.

In the musical Gypsy (the backstage tale of vaudeville entertainer turned stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and her overbearing mother, Rose), one of the more amusing songs is "You Gotta Get a Gimmick", which includes a stripper who plays the trumpet.  Well, having a gimmick not only holds true in the world of strippers but for other businesses as well.  You need to decide what is unique about your business -- what does your business do better, differently, exclusively?  Is there a particular niche that it fills?  This is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and should be the focus of your marketing.  Do not try to be all things to all people (or markets) -- it only dilutes your efforts.  And while you're deciding what your business does well, don't forget to look at what you enjoy doing.  It's so much easier to "sell" something you really like.

This summer I found myself dealing with issues I hadn't expected.  My mother-in-law had surgery -- highly successful, but requiring a hospital stay followed by rehab.  She's now home with part-time home health aides.  Due to various circumstances, I was the full-time go-to person for about four weeks, now, thankfully, reduced to part-time status.  Trying to deal with this along with keeping up with my business, my family, and my other obligations was very stressful.  My personal mantra became "Don't forget to breathe". 

Remember the safety instructions on the airplane?  The flight attendant always says to put on your oxygen mask before you help anyone flying with you.  The same is true in our daily lives.  If you are going to help anyone, you must first be sure to help yourself.  In Marilyn Ross's book Shameless Marketing for Brazen Hussies (see sidebar), she writes, "Perhaps the best advice I can give you concerns not just your business, but yourself:  While making a living, don't forget to make a life."  So, remember to keep breathing, especially when life gets a little more complicated than you expected.