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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

Most Popular Article

The Small Business Marketing Trap

Most small business owners judge their website content relative to how close it sounds to the way they would have said it themselves. That standard makes no sense for businesses trying to get found by AI search engines. AI search rewards two things above almost everything else: how recently a business published and how consistently it publishes. In this story, a jewelry store analogy offers the clearest way to understand this vital concept in our rapidly changing marketing landscape.

First Things First: There's an Order to Profitability

The building blocks of profitability are clear and they even have a required sequence to them. But without knowledge of the building blocks - or awareness that these building blocks even exist! - your marketing can underperform for years (or decades).

Principles of Graphic Design

Most small business owners are doing a lot of graphic designs themselves. But without understanding graphic design principles what you save in time and fees will cost you in results. This 36-minute video will help you understand the basic principles of graphic design. Whether you are doing your own graphics or working with a graphic designer understanding these concepts will most certainly improve your marketing efforts.

Radical Inclusiveness - the Competitive Edge

In a business climate where competitiveness and innovation are everything equality and diversity in the workforce are important keys to success.

Outstanding Customer Service is a Culture Thing

The question of how to deliver the outstanding customer service consumers expect is easy to answer but harder to implement.

    Ethics
    The most powerful thing a small business owner can do is be an effective leader, and ensure his entire organization conveys a strong message of character and integrity to his business community
    Merchandising
    Publicity is not really free – there is a cost to the effort. But in a world where branding, where telling our stories and connecting to our customers (beyond price, selection and service) is essential, it’s a powerful way of making meaningful contact. And it’s sort of free.
    Marketing
    Part II of the series. To manifest your marketing is to make your unique offering of value obvious to your customers.
    Retail
    Consumers - female and male - buy based on emotion, not logic. No matter how many facts and statistics they cite, they ultimately buy based on how you made them feel.
    Branding
    To deliver outstanding customer service, create a customer service culture.

    Leadership
    Natural Christmas Tree
    Management
    The most powerful thing a small business owner can do is be an effective leader, and ensure his entire organization conveys a strong message of character and integrity to his business community
    Management
    If you follow a logical, tested, practical strategic process, you can implement all the strategic building blocks your company needs to be competitive and successful.

    Tell Better Stories

    It's not enough to sell a product or a service any more. You must also be able to tell the story. The Pip Storytelling Deck is a tool we use at the Werx Brands to construct and tell better stories. You can be a master story-teller too!

    Management
    Conflict has value. Any alliance without an occasional clash of diverging ideas will be as satisfying as a diet of chicken broth or a dip in a tepid bath.
    Management
    The right action of which I speak is the right management, right planning and right leadership action necessary to run a profitable business that will fund the rest of our altruistic notions.
    Management
    If you want a quick insight injection on how to take goal setting and self-assessment to the next level, let this be your 5-minute primer.
    Management
    First in a series of 8 articles on becoming a better leader. How do you balance patience with people against impatience with progress?
    Management
    If you follow a logical, tested, practical strategic process, you can implement all the strategic building blocks your company needs to be competitive and successful.
    Management
    Knowing you need help and willingness to ask for help are very different. Only those who truly want help can benefit. And help often determines success.
    Management
    Millennials are changing everything we know about luxury. Here are 5 key areas your luxury business must master to stay relevant.
    Management
    Many people become so overwhelmed at the notion of transforming their entire organization that they never get past thinking about it. Think much smaller.

    Video

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    Perfectionism is a luxury for (starving) artists, or artists with benefactors. The rest of us must learn the difference between being in love with our own ideas and being in love with progress.

    At the end of the day, we all have to fight our demons alone. And I think that's the source of loneliness. If you spend your whole life insisting there are no demons to fight or hiding your demons or determined to fight them in private, you end up existentially alone.

    I suspect the fear of being afraid is the most destructive fear of all.

    It's surprising how many people are not aware of their reasons for doing things. They think they know, but when asked to reflect upon it, they don't. Why are you in business? Why are you pursuing this role? Why are you frustrated, lonely, anxious, doubting? Why are you making this decision? Why aren't you asking for help? If you ask why before deciding what, who, how, or when, you will come up with a stronger answer every time. In business, why is the essence of strategy. In life, why is the essence of progress.

    "Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”
    William James

    Maybe the reason its so hard to remain in quarantine is that it's hard to outrun sadness when you're forced to be still.