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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
    Why business diversity? Because when a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, and world views, it fires up the collective brain.
    Merchandising
    If you don't solicit customer feedback, you can't get inside the customer's head. Here are some ways to get useful customer feedback.
    Marketing
    But building a brand requires commitment to every aspect of your business, from the quality and cost of components, to post-sale support, and all the way through long-term product satisfaction.
    Retail
    You already know being in business for yourself is hard work. But working this hard for no money? Differentiate.
    Branding
    Two new studies tell us the new consumer is different and the luxury market is changing, but they don't tell you what to do about it. Here are some ideas.

    Leadership
    Even in times of deep worry or emotional pain we can still have moments of beauty and perfection.
    Management
    Making time to plan is the most important thing you can do.

    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
    Why business diversity? Because when a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, and world views, it fires up the collective brain.
    Management
    Every business leader preaches the importance of innovation and outperforming the competition, yet business managers are busy squeezing every threatening and/or unconventional element out of their environment.
    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
    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
    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 business will suffer.
    Management
    I don’t think companies can afford to continue to operate in the old hierarchical ways. Those structures will be the dinosaur bones in the dirt within this century.
    Management
    Push people because you owe it to them, not because they’ll appreciate it – because they won’t.
    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.

    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. )"

    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.

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

    "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

    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.

    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.