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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

Most Popular Article

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.

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
    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
    Somebody always makes money during a recession. Might as well be you.
    Marketing
    Don't just use digital design to do your old work faster. Use it to transform your business.
    Retail
    The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown diamonds.
    Branding
    Once you are armed with insights about your customers' behavior both as shoppers and as online participants you can flesh out your marketing strategy.

    Leadership
    Sometimes you have to get creative when dealing with the elements.
    Management
    If you are experiencing a persistent pain in your business, don’t let it slide.
    Management
    Do you have enough information to analyze your business from product to price to timing to turns?

    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
    To be a better leader, be a student of business. This article gives advice on what areas to study and where to go to find that information.
    Management
    Tips on how to make meetings more powerful, to develop strong facilitators, and to become more effective as a management team.
    Management
    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
    If business is about continuous improvement, then people must be continuously improving too. Giving better feedback will help your business improve.
    Management
    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
    Though being a good leader is hard work, the components are simply common-sense.
    Management
    Focusing on weakness or even mediocrity at the expense of rewarding strength will lower the average performance of your organization.
    Management
    Making time to plan is the most important thing you can do.
    Management
    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    "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

    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.

    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.