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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
    The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown diamonds.
    Merchandising
    You already know that reading, writing, and an education are a requirement for success. Now you must add technical skills to that list.
    Marketing
    Shopping and buying have changed dramatically, creating new challenges - and opportunities! - for digital marketing.
    Retail
    It’s no longer enough to just have a website. You must have a website that looks and feels current, and offers more than just a few pretty pictures.
    Branding
    There are several business skills you must cultivate to ensure the survival and profitability of your company.

    Leadership
    Management
    Strong brands are a direct reflection of strong leadership. Embrace your role as the primary brand builder for your organization.
    Management
    Twitch your nose all you want, but then you should probably get down to the grown-up work of evaluating, making informed decisions, being patient, accepting current reality, and creating incremental change.

    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
    Making time to plan is the most important thing you can do.
    Management
    The right action of which I speak is the right management, right planning and right leadership action necessary to run a profitable business that will fund the rest of our altruistic notions.
    Management
    Many companies will conduct their annual employee reviews at the beginning of the new calendar year. Here are the key elements for ensuring a good review process.
    Management
    If business is about continuous improvement, then people must be continuously improving too. Giving better feedback will help your business improve.
    Management
    Push people because you owe it to them, not because they’ll appreciate it – because they won’t.
    Management
    Many people become so overwhelmed at the notion of transforming their entire organization that they never get past thinking about it. Think much smaller.
    Management
    The definition of fair means to be free of favor to any side. But in business we really do favor some things.
    Management
    Though being a good leader is hard work, the components are simply common-sense.
    Management
    Small businesses have a distinct advantage that large businesses do not have, and one of the things we must do is exploit this advantage to the maximum extent. What is it? Our ability to be flat, networked, and flexible.
    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

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    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. )"

    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.

    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

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

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