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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

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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
    Follow Reflections
    Ethics

    We Don't Get to Tell Employees How to Vote

    We don't get to tell people how to vote. This violates one of the most important responsibilities we have as human beings - respect for the other's right to his or her own values and opinions.
    Merchandising

    Hold the crystal goblet, give me the Boone’s Farm

    Given a choice between delivery devices and content (assuming the delivery device isn’t required to get at the content) one should choose the content!
    Marketing

    Guilty Pleasures

    But the sale prices we see today are the desperation moves of companies that have run out of ideas for getting customers in the door. Margins are essential to survival. Always.
    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

    Past Time for Change - A Post to the Jewelry Industry

    A business living on auto-pilot ultimately dies of its own apathy. In business, every time is a time for change, and change is the only way to grow.
    Leadership

    Subterfuge

    Management

    When Each Option is Potentially a Bad One

    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

    You Can't Tell Me What to Do!

    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.

    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

    Help is On the Way! (but did you ask for help?)

    Knowing you need help and willingness to ask for help are very different. Only those who truly want help can benefit. And help often determines success.
    Management

    It's Just Conflict

    Conflict has value. Any alliance without an occasional clash of diverging ideas will be as satisfying as a diet of chicken broth or a dip in a tepid bath.
    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

    Change Mismanagement

    The types of changes you should – and should not – make during a recession are the same types of change you should consider during a strong economy.
    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

    Ego and Humility: Seeking the Right Balance for Business Success

    While a healthy ego is essential to any business success, it is the ability to balance ego and humility that leads to the most influential leaders.
    Management

    The Gift That Keeps On Giving? Technical Skills

    You already know that reading, writing, and an education are a requirement for success. Now you must add technical skills to that list.
    Management

    When Each Option is Potentially a Bad One

    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

    What's Your Business Vision?

    A thoughtful review of your business vision (the strategic one) will yield surprising insights that can jumpstart your business again.

    Video

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    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, supply chain

    marketing, strategy

    branding

    ethics, personal development

    marketing, management

    Strategy

    Branding

    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.

    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
    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. )"

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

    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.

    Society and Culture

    Follow Social Articles

    Education 3.0

    A Logic Puzzle About Gun Ownership

    Who is Worthy Anyway?

    It's Risky Business Speaking for God

    Home School – Going for the Least Damage, When the Most Good Isn't an Option

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

    Be the Change. Every Two Years.

    Facts Are Facts

    Republican Suicide Pact

    The Religion Trap