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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

    Gender Bias in the Jewelry Industry

    Gender bias is not unique to the jewelry industry. But as a small industry that predominantly serves women, addressing it may be essential to our survival.
    Merchandising

    Marketing made manifest (Part I)

    Part 1 of the series. Each industry, community, and business must manifest this concept in different ways.
    Marketing

    Marketing made manifest (Part II)

    Part II of the series. To manifest your marketing is to make your unique offering of value obvious to your customers.
    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

    The Lonely Fight

    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

    Don't be a Virtual Leader

    If you find yourself assembling virtual teams of home-based contract workers, you will need to develop new skills and sensitivities to motivate, manage, and assess them.

    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

    There’s No Pink Pill For This

    We may be in the grip of a virulent form of mass business codependence.
    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.
    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.
    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

    Don't Play a Zero Sum Game

    Selling is understanding what a customer needs, then providing solution to their needs. A good sales effort tells the customer what to decide.
    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

    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 business will suffer.
    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

    Caution! Don't Try This at Home

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

    Diddy or The Donald? What Should One Expect from an Employer (and what should we expect of ourselves?)

    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.

    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, strategy

    branding, selling

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

    "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.

    I sometimes wonder what our country would be like today if Christians had thrown themselves into eradicating poverty or inequality with the same energy they invested in fighting abortion.

    "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.

    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.

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    It Really is up to Women

    On Generation Bashing

    How Do You Bend the Lens?

    When Leadership is Lacking, Nothing Else Matters

    Death Expands Life

    Zero Sum Gamers and the Covid-19 Moment

    My Granddaughter's Heroes

    When Politics Becomes Religion, We All Lose

    Who Will I Stand For?

    (bowing low to The Economist) Great Minds Like a Think