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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

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.

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.

    Ethics
    Hire a consultant wisely. The best consultants are hands-down experts in their fields, able to guide you through risks and take you to the next level. Don't settle for less.
    Merchandising
    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
    They key to a good marketing strategy is asking and answering the questions who is buying your stuff, how often do they buy it, and how much do they spend?
    Retail
    Consumers - female and male - buy based on emotion, not logic. No matter how many facts and statistics they cite, they ultimately buy based on how you made them feel.
    Branding
    This business made its values and strategy so transparent that we as customers can see what matters to them and why they matter to us. That's branding.

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

    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
    When I consult for entrepreneurs I invariably encounter some version of this problem. The entrepreneurs who have hired me like the idea of enhanced planning and communication, but they always balk when they realize that they, too, must use the systems that are being put in place.
    Management
    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
    We may be in the grip of a virulent form of mass business codependence.
    Management
    The truth is, nearly every manager demonstrates a little FETCH once in a while.
    Management
    There are two distinct styles of collaborative management. One is preferable to the other for a few reasons.
    Management
    An entity worthy of allegiance, clearly defined challenges that require significant effort to achieve, and strong leadership. That’s the recipe for creating pride in a workplace.
    Management
    The most powerful thing a small business owner can do is be an effective leader, and ensure his entire organization conveys a strong message of character and integrity to his business community

    Video

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    "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

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

    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.

    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.

    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.