#DCIMCAPSTONE

For my capstone project I chose to work on my personal brand. I write a lifestyle blog www.joelleregh.com and my mission is to inspire self-empowerment and mindfulness through visual storytelling of lifestyle driven content (fashion, travel, beauty). I want to raise awareness of Domestic Violence and I hope that by sharing my story it can become a page in someone else’s survival guide, and show them the light at the end of the tunnel. I am represented on social media, specifically Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. I also have an email list for my blog as well.

First and foremost, I am working on building my brand, finding my brand color, embracing and sharing authenticity, creating a community, and finding my voice.

As part of my Capstone project, I am looking to publish a gratitude journal. I am currently conducting a survey and doing market research, to get some feedback from the market. In the upcoming weeks I am going to share this survey on my Instagram, and in the class, and hope that my classmates will participate. In addition, I purchased a few journals myself to get more inspiration for my own journal and take my own feedback on what I like and don’t like about the product and fix that aspect of it, to create a better product. In addition, I am researching the power of gratitude and how it can positively affect someone suffering from PTSD. My plan is to share that with my audience, especially for marketing purposes, and basing it on research how gratitude and journal can have a positive effect on you when suffering from PTSD. “Similarly, gratitude was shown to be a common emotion following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and stronger feelings of gratitude were related to less psychological distress (Fredrickson et al., 2003). Thus, there is some evidence showing that gratitude should be considered an element of resilience.” Including excerpts of research will strengthen the marketing perspective and showcase how much of a positive effect expressing gratitude and journaling can have on your life.

Furthermore, I attended a webinar hosted by Jay Shetty, a former monk, now motivational speaker, and he described how important consistency and just starting is. “If you plant the seed today, and water it every single day, you can trust, that in the future it will grow into a tree. But only then can you trust in the future by planting a seed today.” It was a very inspirational webinar. Attending meetings like that, listening to Podcasts, TED talks, inspire me to do my own TED talk some day, and I know that I will give one some day. I am doing all this research by crafting my own theme and talk, and this research also helps me with creating my gratitude journal, because it all ties in together with my theme.