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What a Trade Show Can Teach Us About Good Marketing

Trade shows function like temporary cities, bringing buyers, sellers, education, marketing, and operations into one shared space. When they work, alignment is visible. When they don’t, misalignment is just as clear. This article uses trade shows as an analogy for B2B marketing, exploring what happens when organizations lose focus on their primary customer, how drift happens quietly, and what it takes to restore clarity and long-term value.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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    Reflections
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    Ethics

    To Knock Off or Not to Knock-Off Designer Jewelry?

    Designers throw their life savings and energy into creating jewelry lines. Custom jewelers are asked to copy it. How do we avoid knock off designer jewelry?
    Merchandising

    Do you know it when you see it?

    People who know to look for the common threads, who have trained themselves to read a little deeper, listen a little harder, who have honed a skill for seeing patterns, these are the people who are figuring out why the Internet is beautiful.
    Marketing

    The Art of Being on Sale

    There's an art to being on sale, especially for luxury businesses.
    Retail

    To Knock Off or Not to Knock-Off Designer Jewelry?

    Designers throw their life savings and energy into creating jewelry lines. Custom jewelers are asked to copy it. How do we avoid knock off designer jewelry?
    Branding

    What's Your Merchandising Point of View?

    Your Merchandising Point of View is the thing that draws your ideal customers in, keeps them engaged, and differentiates you from your competitors.
    Leadership

    Only a Small Dose, Please

    We humans are so frail. We need our truths spread out in small doses.
    Management

    Right Action Begets Right Action

    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

    Make Time to Plan

    Making time to plan is the most important thing you can do.

    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!

    Order Yours Today
    Management

    I Had This Wrong for 20 Years: Profit is Not a Purpose

    Had I stopped to think deeply about it, I would have realized much sooner that profit and a higher purpose are not mutually exclusive.
    Management

    Surviving Tough Times: Part I

    The Jewelry Design Professionals’ Network (JDPN) invited Andrea Hill to prepare two presentations for their members and students, to help them manage their careers and business during the Covid-19 crisis.
    Management

    Getting Employee Reviews Right

    An annual employee review process can be a powerful driver for business growth and innovation. Unfortunately, in most companies it's not used for that at all. Here's how to improve.
    Management

    On DNA, Ruts, and Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

    Why business diversity? Because when a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, and world views, it fires up the collective brain.
    Management

    Everything You Know About Luxury Has Changed

    Millennials are changing everything we know about luxury. Here are 5 key areas your luxury business must master to stay relevant.
    Management

    Breakfast Lunch and Gratitude

    Focusing on weakness or even mediocrity at the expense of rewarding strength will lower the average performance of your organization.
    Management

    The Lost Art of Intention

    What we really need now are a few good intentions.
    Management

    The Small Business Leadership Challenge

    Leadership requires a lot of consistency and discipline and is one of the biggest challenges facing small business owners.
    Management

    Giddy’up

    Managing risk requires an ability to analyze the pros and cons of each decision from an objective place. Here are some tips on how to do it.

    Video

    Check Out Our Youtube Channel!

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    We post a lot of videos: business educational, inspirational, motivational, and even lots of software/technical. You don't want to miss it, so subscribe to our Youtube channel today, and get alerts when we post new content.

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    jewelry industry, supply chain

    jewelry industry, marketing

    branding

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

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

    Don't get FOMO over unicorns in the news. It's not usually the first person with the idea who makes the money, or even the first person who invests the cash. The person who invests the discipline is always the one to bet on.

    Hmm . . . my favorite new term-of-the-week: Ratlicker
    "A person who refuses to wear a mask, or take any of the basic precautions to help society prevent an air born illness during an epidemic. ( In reference to the bubonic plague being spread by rats. )"

    "The tricky thing about hope is to not confuse it with optimism." Rebecca Solnit

    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.

    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.

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    For All the Moms of the Not-Conventional

    Crazy-Ass Gods Get All the Press

    All Hail the CEO: The Trade-in of Democracy for Power

    It's Not Locker Room Talk. It's Violent Foreplay.

    You Don't Own Me

    Christmas 2020 - a Reset

    Our Grammarless Society

    Prayer for a Nation

    Stupid, Egotistical, or Both?

    The Embalming of American Women