Lindsay Lohan made her bed and now she'll sleep in it. She violated her probation on a DUI case and gets to spend 90 days in jail followed by 90 days of rehab.

In America, we love to watch a celebrity fall. We get satisfaction from watching those we think of as leading privileged lives get held accountable when they act as if the rules don't apply to them.

Let's not act as if we are blameless.

From Lindsay to Michael Jackson to Anna Nicole Smith, it is our society that likes to participate in the feeding frenzy that exposes them to greedy individuals who befriend them for nothing more than personal gain.

It is us who lures them into the feeding frenzy with promises of our attention and fame. Their handlers protect them from any accountability for their actions for the sake of keeping money flowing their way.

When they find themselves surrounded by nothing but sharks, how do we really expect them to act?

When the world finally comes crashing down on them from the weight of the mess they got themselves into (and we and their handlers encouraged), we throw them aside and dismiss them as screw-ups who deserved everything they got.

Perhaps they did. But let's not act as if we didn't have a hand in it.

It has long been said that the company you keep is a major influence on the way you live your life, and whether or not you are successful.  

Those looking for proof need look no further than a new study that shows a correlation between couples who divorce and having friends, family and co-workers who do the same.

It means that divorces can be infectious. It means that those you choose to hang around with can have an impact on you personally, whether you like it or not.

Every decision you make has consequences, including who you choose to have in your life. Negative influences breed negative behavior; positive influences do just the opposite.

The benefits of having positive relationships in your life go beyond simply getting good advice when it is needed, or getting access to the right contacts. Successful people are successful because they have success-breeding habits. Whether or not you are even aware of it, being exposed to these habits can have an impact on you subconsciously, causing you to repeat them.

As you evaluate where you are in life, where you want to go and how you are going to get there, make sure that you are evaluating the company that you currently keep, and who you are going to have in your life in the future.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the importance of being media agnostic.

Agnostic isn't just a word that has religious connotations.  It can also be defined as being without bias.  The reason why it is so important for marketing professionals and business professionals to be media agnostic is that it allows them to look at all of their media options objectively as they apply to their current situation, rather than simply making decisions based on biases that may have been formed years ago.

The agnostic outlook is an important one for any business professional in any industry.

CNN is reporting that 7.9 million jobs have been lost since the start of the Great Recession, and that many of them aren't coming back.

Different economists will give different reasons why this occurred, but in my non-economist view the reason is pretty simple: during the recession individuals and businesses cut back; now that the economy is rebounding again, they have found that the things that they trimmed aren't really things that were needed anyway.

The lesson here is that one can never get too tied to one particular industry. I loved the radio industry, but it doesn't pay my bills today. I recently saw a video chain hold a fire sale as it closed one of its locations. A rebounding economy isn't going to make those video store jobs come back; they are gone forever.

If you want to be successful, you have to look at the world through an objective lense and ask, "What is it that people are really going to want, and what are people really going to pay me for?"

It's okay to have strong convictions, opinions and beliefs; but you need to be certain that those positions have been developed by really looking at the way things actually are, not how you want them to be.

Re-evaluate your positions often.  Doing so will help you develop better business savvy, and help keep you and your family financially secure.

When it comes to marketing, it's easy to become passionate about one type of media over the others. The old guard likes to defend television and radio as still-reliable staples of the media mix, while many next-generation marketers become passionate advocates for guerilla tactics such as viral and social media marketing.

The fact is, all media has its advantages and disadvantages, which is why it is important for all marketers to learn to become media agnostic.  It's not a phrase coined by me, but by advertising executive Robert Solomon in a great book called, The Art of Client Service.

For many, the word agnostic has religious connotations. It's often used by people to describe their religious views as being ambivalent.  "I don't necessarily believe in God, but I don't necessarily not believe, either," they might say.

Aside from the religious reference, however, Merriam-Webster also defines agnostic as "a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something".  Pre-determined opinions are what keep you from looking at things objectively as they pertain to your current situation.

In order to properly choose a media mix, you have to get rid of pre-conceived biases towards what you like, and what has always worked in the past. Yesterday's media mix might still be relevant today, but something else could be better.

Putting together a proper media mix really involved asking just a few simple questions: Which media options best allow me to effectively communicate my message, and which allow me to reach the most number of people the most number of times for every dollar I spend?

It's really as simple as that, and an agnostic outlook will help you answer those questions as objectively as possible.

There’s an interesting article out today talking about the growing number of people who are fighting back against debt collectors.  With the recent recession, more people are finding themselves in the position of having bill collectors come after them.  Now people are starting to fight back.

Lawyers and even former debt collectors are doing their part to educate consumers on what debt collectors can and cannot do when it comes to collecting a bill.  Consumers are taking advantage of websites such as Debtorboards.com to learn how to get rid of collectors once and for all.  Many bill collectors have been successfully sued for the tactics they use to collect, and more consumers are using the courts to keep the collectors away.

So, what can we expect to come as a result if more and more fights against collectors are successful?  Most likely an atmosphere where it’s that much harder to get credit.

I hate the bill collectors just as much as the next guy, the tactics they use are horrific and they often go after people regardless of whether they owe the money.  But making it harder for collectors to get their money means many of them will go out of business, and many more will pay less for the bad debt they do purchase.  That means companies that issue credit will be that much more careful before they issue credit or give you the okay to be on a payment plan.

Is that a bad thing?  Not at all.  I just hope that people realize that successfully fighting debt collectors means companies will be forced to be less trusting than they have been in the past.  After all, rarely in life do you get to have things both ways.