Skip to main content

Business Insights from Andrea Hill

Latest Posts

Most Popular Article

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.
Read the full article
Follow Andrea Hill's Business Posts

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).
read more

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.
read more

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.
read more

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.
read more
    Reflections
    Follow Reflections
    Ethics

    How Do You Bend the Lens?

    To understand the truth in the world, simply look at yourself and what you believe. Your belief system dictates how you see the world.
    Merchandising

    It's a Large World After All

    Before you start fantasizing about being an international player, you might want to evaluate how much opportunity for growth still exists close to home.
    Marketing

    Cut! Cut! Copy, Print

    At some point we all end up either writing our own marketing or working with someone who is writing our marketing. Here are some tricks for putting what we want on paper.
    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

    Can You Put 200,000 Miles On Your Brand?

    But building a brand requires commitment to every aspect of your business, from the quality and cost of components, to post-sale support, and all the way through long-term product satisfaction.
    Management

    Being a Better Leader Part 3: Be a Student of Business

    To be a better leader, be a student of business. This article gives advice on what areas to study and where to go to find that information.
    Management

    Caution! Don't Try This at Home

    The truth is, nearly every manager demonstrates a little FETCH once in a while.

    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

    What's Your Business Vision?

    A thoughtful review of your business vision (the strategic one) will yield surprising insights that can jumpstart your business again.
    Management

    Criticism: The fire in the forge of great leadership

    A great leader goes beyond those characteristics to combine a blend of intense personal will with great humility.
    Management

    Take a Hammer To It?

    I don’t think companies can afford to continue to operate in the old hierarchical ways. Those structures will be the dinosaur bones in the dirt within this century.
    Management

    Collaborative Management: Consultative vs Consensus

    There are two distinct styles of collaborative management. One is preferable to the other for a few reasons.
    Management

    Power, Politics, Sex, and Religion (yes, this is a business blog)

    The primary goal of a business is to create value for its customers, and each business relies on its employees to deliver that value. Employees who feel respected, safe, and appreciated do a much better job of delivering customer value than employees who feel compelled to put up self-protective walls.
    Management

    Be a Better Leader Part 5: Be the Brand Builder

    Strong brands are a direct reflection of strong leadership. Embrace your role as the primary brand builder for your organization.
    Management

    That cash won't hatch! Don't let your strategic players just sit on it.

    Managing a business through recession is all about cash flow. Keep in mind the entire system when you try to figure out who is sitting on your cash.
    Management

    Getting Focused

    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

    No Poo Throwing

    Better decision making starts with accepting requests gracefully and responding to them logically. Read on too see if you are guilty of a deflection strategy that gets in the way of good communication and results!

    Video

    Check Out Our Youtube Channel!

    Go to our Youtube channel and pound that SUBSCRIBE button!

    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.

    Subscribe on Youtube
    Get Alerts for New Videos

    jewelry industry, marketing

    jewelry industry, marketing

    branding, selling

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

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

    Well, Catholics pray to saints," I mutter to myself as I begin my nightly prayer to RBG.

    "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

    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.

    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.

    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. )"

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    Crazy-Ass Gods Get All the Press

    Death Expands Life

    Cynical? Just a Little

    The Oldest Game in the (Rule) Book

    You Can't Have it Both Ways

    We Are Who We Lead

    Education 3.0

    The Embalming of American Women

    And Now for an African-American First Lady

    Who is Worthy Anyway?