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Business Insights from Andrea Hill

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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
    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
    Merchandising
    With foot traffic down, suppliers are placing more focus on selling directly to consumers. The numbers game becomes an entirely different animal.
    Marketing
    Today's web development tools put the majority of web development tasks within reach of everyone but the most fearful of computer users. Put these six exercises to work for you first, and you will dramatically improve the odds that your website will deliver results.
    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
    I sat down and made a list of all the things I have thought about doing and learning but which I had never had time for. And suddenly, I was out of time again, but in a wonderful way, a way that motivated me to remove all the things that don’t need to be done.
    Management
    Managing a business through recession is all about cash flow. Keep in mind the entire system when you try to figure out who is sitting on your cash.
    Management
    An integrity-infused business is all-or-nothing. You’re either feeling it or you’re not, and if you’re not feeling it, it will bite you in the bottom line.

    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
    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
    What we really need now are a few good intentions.
    Management
    A great leader goes beyond those characteristics to combine a blend of intense personal will with great humility.
    Management
    Better decision making starts with accepting requests gracefully and responding to them logically. Read on too see if you are guilty of a deflection strategy that gets in the way of good communication and results!
    Management
    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
    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.
    Management
    Too often, rationalizing is an unhappy accident that leads to loss of market share, loss of profit margin, loss of jobs, and loss of a business. Unintended consequences are expensive.
    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.

    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.

    Taking a knee ... Long the choice of peaceful, PRAYERFUL resistance.

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

    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.

    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.

    "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