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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
    Some guidelines on how to implement business ethics in your environment.
    Merchandising
    Here's an example of what happens when even one detail of your operations, sales, or marketing fails to be consistent with the brand you have created.
    Branding
    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

    Leadership
    We humans are so frail. We need our truths spread out in small doses.
    Management
    Sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power.
    Management
    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.

    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 question of how to create and sustain accountability for behavior is one that comes up regularly in business. The answer to this question is clear, but it’s not easy.
    Management
    Push people because you owe it to them, not because they’ll appreciate it – because they won’t.
    Management
    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
    Here are some of the key structures that are absolutely necessary when converting to a more team-based organization.
    Management
    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
    When faced with difficult options, all one can do is analyze it to the best of his or her ability, try to challenge all assumptions, then make a decision.
    Management
    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
    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
    Selling is understanding what a customer needs, then providing solution to their needs. A good sales effort tells the customer what to decide.

    Video

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    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.

    "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.

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

    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. )"

    Maybe the reason its so hard to remain in quarantine is that it's hard to outrun sadness when you're forced to be still.