Skip to main content

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
    Purse strings mean a lot in our society, and that simple truth plays out in the most basic of our interactions. How we treat one another should be based on something far more valuable than that.
    Merchandising
    The jewelry industry needs to tell different stories if it wants to stay relevant.
    Marketing
    Want to do a better job of pricing? Understand how Value Proposition relates to pricing strategy, and how you can get more bang for your pricing buck.
    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
    Natural Christmas Tree
    Management
    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
    Why business diversity? Because when a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, and world views, it fires up the collective brain.

    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
    Here are some of the key structures that are absolutely necessary when converting to a more team-based organization.
    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
    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
    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'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
    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
    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
    Though being a good leader is hard work, the components are simply common-sense.
    Management
    There are two distinct styles of collaborative management. One is preferable to the other for a few reasons.
    Management
    An annual employee review process can be a powerful driver for business growth and innovation. Unfortunately, in most companies it's not used for that at all. Here's how to improve.

    Video

    Check Out Our Youtube Channel!

    Go to our Youtube channel and pound that SUBSCRIBE button!

    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.



    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.

    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.

    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

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