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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

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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.

    Merchandising
    Part 1 of the series. Each industry, community, and business must manifest this concept in different ways.
    Marketing
    Text marketing has its benefits, but is it worth the money?
    Retail
    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
    To deliver outstanding customer service, create a customer service culture.

    Leadership
    Just because you believe something to be true doesn't make it true, even if others believe it with you. Personal beliefs are just that. Personal.
    Management
    The job of leadership is a big one – whether it is leading a country or leading a department.
    Management
    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.

    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
    The larger a business grows, the more difficult it is to manage communication among all of its constituents. Some policies are unavoidable, but it is desirable for an environment to operate on sound principles rather than rules and policies to the greatest extent possible.
    Management
    Sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power.
    Management
    Most folks don't think. We react, daydream, deny, endorse, commiserate, argue, wish, and even wonder. But being a thinker is different.
    Management
    Small businesses have a distinct advantage that large businesses do not have, and one of the things we must do is exploit this advantage to the maximum extent. What is it? Our ability to be flat, networked, and flexible.
    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.
    Management
    Push people because you owe it to them, not because they’ll appreciate it – because they won’t.
    Management
    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!
    Management
    We all owe ourselves and all our present and future employees something very important – a commitment to excellence and continuing knowledge development in our chosen fields of endeavor.
    Management
    If business is about continuous improvement, then people must be continuously improving too. Giving better feedback will help your business improve.

    Video

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

    Taking a knee ... Long the choice of peaceful, PRAYERFUL resistance.

    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.

    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.

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

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