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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.
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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

    Expertise, Hubris, and Success

    How do you balance the requirement for expertise with the hubris that sometimes accompanies it? In this video, Andrea Hill explores this topic and makes to important suggestions.
    Merchandising

    What Price Brand?

    Brands are the glue that holds a relationship together, and not just in marketing.
    Marketing

    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.
    Retail

    Embrace the Internet to Increase Business Value

    It’s no longer enough to just have a website. You must have a website that looks and feels current, and offers more than just a few pretty pictures.
    Branding

    How Strategic Planning Works

    In this podcast, Andrea Hill describes the strategic process.
    Leadership

    Birthday Night

    Management

    Your Twitch is Showing

    Twitch your nose all you want, but then you should probably get down to the grown-up work of evaluating, making informed decisions, being patient, accepting current reality, and creating incremental change.
    Management

    Being a Better Leader Part 2: Be the Chief Customer Finder

    To be a better leader, become the Chief Customer Finder. Foster a strong sales and service culture, support your sales organization, and demonstrate true customer leadership.

    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

    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

    All of the Responsibility, None of the Authority

    Here are some of the key structures that are absolutely necessary when converting to a more team-based organization.
    Management

    An Ode to Difficult Geniuses

    Every business leader preaches the importance of innovation and outperforming the competition, yet business managers are busy squeezing every threatening and/or unconventional element out of their environment.
    Management

    WYSIWYG

    Things go wrong in business for a variety of reasons. Failure to create clear expectations is a big culprit.
    Management

    A Reflection on our National Obsession with Mediocrity (and what it means for business)

    If the dangerous belief that mediocrity is acceptable, or that experts and intellectuals represent some vague threat, has wormed its way into your psyche, you have reason to be concerned.
    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

    Who Says Purgatory's Just for Catholics?

    Tips on how to make meetings more powerful, to develop strong facilitators, and to become more effective as a management team.
    Management

    The Knee Bone's Connected to the . . . (or, A Cure for All Manner of Social Problems

    This failure to make connections is not isolated to the medical community. Business owners regularly fail to make the connections necessary to ensure the health of their businesses.
    Management

    Evaluating Business Software Programs? Dig Deeper From the Beginning

    When investigating business software programs always start by evaluating the underlying code and technology and how the software is designed.
    Management

    Are You Writing Your Own Obituary?

    The bottom line is that the jewelry industry is going to be fine. But retailers and small manufacturers need to ask of themselves a few vital questions.

    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.

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    jewelry industry, marketing

    marketing, management

    branding, selling

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

    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.

    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. )"

    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.

    "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

    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.

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

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    Must POTUS Believe in Evolution?

    Education 3.0

    Guns, God, and Platitudes

    On Generation Bashing

    When Talking Gun Violence, Look at the Whole Picture

    A Logic Puzzle About Gun Ownership

    The Religion Trap

    Prayer for a Nation

    And Now for an African-American First Lady

    Reflection 2017: Big Themes from Individual Choices