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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
    Sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power.
    Merchandising
    Before you start fantasizing about being an international player, you might want to evaluate how much opportunity for growth still exists close to home.
    Marketing
    There's an art to being on sale, especially for luxury businesses.
    Retail
    The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown diamonds.
    Branding
    When you introduce someone to the joy of buying art the experience can be transformative. Consumers should have that experience buying designer jewelry.

    Leadership
    There are so many truisms we accept without evaluation, and many of these lessons were important teachings on the path to becoming an ethical adult. But not all of them.
    Management
    You already know that reading, writing, and an education are a requirement for success. Now you must add technical skills to that list.
    Management
    The job of leadership is a big one – whether it is leading a country or leading a department.

    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
    Leadership requires a lot of consistency and discipline and is one of the biggest challenges facing small business owners.
    Management
    Do you have enough information to analyze your business from product to price to timing to turns?
    Management
    Strong leaders are integral to healthy business behavior. To influence the behavior of your organization, define a business culture and cultural norms.
    Management
    Why business diversity? Because when a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, and world views, it fires up the collective brain.
    Management
    Millennials are changing everything we know about luxury. Here are 5 key areas your luxury business must master to stay relevant.
    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
    You've created a business strategy, minimum viable product or service, and a business plan. Now you need goals, measurable objectives, and a method of monitoring and managing results; in other words, a Management Framework. This article compares and explains your options.
    Management
    Had I stopped to think deeply about it, I would have realized much sooner that profit and a higher purpose are not mutually exclusive.
    Management
    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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    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.

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

    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.

    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. )"

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

    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.