creativity

For most of grade school and middle school, my granddaughter was homeschooled. . . at my house. Each morning her mom dropped her off before she went to work, and Aubrey and would I head to our shared office. Most days she jumped on her computer, loged into her curriculum (she is enrolled in an international online school), and knocked out her lessons. Some days though, she just couldn't get into it. And most of the time when that happened, it’s not that she wasn't motivated to do her lesson. It’s that she couldn't relate to it.

Sales motivation is not something that can be delegated like a task or taught like a lesson. We can try to motivate others by focusing on outcomes (carrots and sticks), but ultimately, the only type of motivation with staying power is self-motivation. Self-motivation happens when the desire to learn or achieve comes from a deep interest in or attachment to the work.

One aspect of marketing that manufacturers and designers should pay much closer attention to is retail sales training. That’s right, sales training—at least at your level—must be part of your marketing program. If you sell to retailers, you are entrusting much of your business success to the marketing, merchandising, and sales skills of each retail store. Ultimately, your sales fate lies in the hands of sales representatives you may never have met and who may or may not ever purchase fine or designer jewelry. What motivates them to sell your jewelry, and not just show it if a customer appears interested? You need to cultivate in them a deep interest in and attachment to your work.

Your sales training can be delivered in person, on your website, in printed materials, or as a video. Most companies doing a good job of sales training use a combination of these. So don’t get fixated on whether you are shooting a video or buying airfare. At least, not yet. To begin, create an outline of the information you can share that will stimulate salesperson interest in and passion for your work.

1.  Start with your people. We don’t establish relationships with things—not even with jewelry things. We establish relationships with people. So share information about your company and the people who work there. Share photos of your workspace, introduce your employees, and paint a picture of what it’s like to work in your workshop. Stories are your best, most powerful tool for evoking a feeling of attachment. Help the people selling your jewelry feel part of your organization.

2.  Move on to consumers. Next, share some stories about consumers who have purchased your jewelry. Talk about why they collect your work and what drew them to your work in the first place. Share a few customer tales that can convey the humor, sentimentality, ethos, or charm of your brand. By helping salespeople picture the ultimate consumer of your work, you will help them envision their own customers as buyers of your work. What we can imagine we can do, so stir the imagination.

3.  Now talk about the jewelry. Retail sales experience runs the gamut from brand-new-to-jewelry to 40 years in jewelry sales, and you must appeal to all of them. Describe your designs in terms of design aesthetic, what motivates you to create the designs, how you may have evolved to this point in your design aesthetic, and the materials you work in. Talk about any particularly meaningful, unusual, or important elements of your design in terms of why you chose them and what those elements mean as part of your brand.

When merchandising your line, consider whether or not the elements of your line sheet create any sort of connection for the salesperson. I love it when designers name their jewelry. There’s so much more emotional connection to a ring that’s named “Serendipity” compared to a ring that’s named DT-104. At the very least, name your collections, and explain the thoughts behind your naming.

4.  Share your selling experience. You’ve been out there selling your line at trunk shows, trade shows, chair-side visits with editors, and cocktail parties. You have a pretty good idea of sales techniques that work. Share them! Give the retail salesperson some tools to put in her toolbox in the form of anecdotes and approaches that work for you or for your salespeople.

5. Get to the salespeople. This part can be tough. For every store owner that immediately shares everything he learns from a salesperson or designer, there’s another who takes the box of candy home and forgets to pass along the line sheets. But it’s in your interests to get to the salespeople, so figure out a way. Some good methods include:

• Offer to provide in-person training. For an appropriately-sized order, this can be well worth your expenditure.
• Produce a booklet. Think “booklet” more than brochure or pamphlet. You need to entertain and entice the sales staff. As long as you’re telling stories, deliver them in a form that feels like a story-vehicle.
• Produce a video. Put the video on your website, send e-mail links to store managers and sales staff, or burn DVDs and send them via mail.

Now you just have to get to the salespeople. If you’re not traveling to the store, you’re sending something. Ask the store manager or owner for a list of salespeoples’ names and, if available, e-mail addresses. Send your training information with a personal note and perhaps a small gift (something as simple as a tiny box of chocolates or a $5 Starbucks card) to thank them for their time. This won’t be possible with all retailers, because some retail storeowners just won’t let you have access to their sales staff. But for those who do, you can establish a bond of increasing familiarity, interest, and mutual benefit.

When my granddaughter couldn't get into her lessons, we went into story mode. That’s was my role as a learning coach — to come up with the right stories at the right times to reignite her motivation. That’s your job too.

I didn't have a period of adulthood without children. They arrived together in a joyful rush of sleep deprivation and responsibility. So my daydreams of luxury weren't about cruises or cars or jewelry, but rather, about having an hour each morning to drink my coffee, stare out the window, and meditate. Now that it's a reality, I'm finding it's every bit the luxury I dreamed it was.

I enjoy bird watching. We have created a bird sanctuary of sorts on our land in Wisconsin, and we pay attention to how to attract a variety of birds and how to keep them healthy.

Business Lessons from Birds

One of the things we learned early on is that birds are opportunistic feeders. We were constantly worried that we would fail to provide enough food or put out the wrong food, and that as a result our little friends would suffer. But that is not what happens. When a food supply dwindles, birds don't sit around waiting for it to reappear. They move on - quickly - in search of a new food source.

Your customers are also opportunistic feeders. If you fail to attend to the reasons they do business with you, they will move along quickly in search of another source.

We also learned that we could attract the kinds of birds we wanted to observe by putting out the right types of food in the right places. We studied and planned, because we love being surrounded by colorful birds, playful birds, and song birds. By defining the birds we wanted to attract and then studying their preferences, we created an environment that delivers birdwatching pleasure every day.

You must also define the specific customer you wish to attract. If you don't, the results will not please you. Early on we attracted too many sparrows - which annoy the birds we wanted to attract - and raptors, which ate them. Bad planning or no planning can have miserable consequences.

Finally, remember that birds are evolved from some of the oldest species on our planet. They clearly have staying power. This is due to many factors, but being opportunistic feeders is one of their strengths. Opportunistic means more than just taking advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. It also means being on the constant lookout for opportunities. When food sources dry up, birds waste no time feeling sorry for themselves. Because even when times are good and food is bountiful, they scout for other nearby food sources constantly.

Apparently, success is for the birds. Let's learn from them.

This is the second of a two-part post. To read the first installation, click here.

I'm not suggesting collaboration is new - I'm suggesting we need more of it. Here are some examples of collaboration from which we can draw inspiration and fuel new ideas.

Ethical Metalsmiths

This group has existed for a long time, quietly gathering a membership in the hundreds. Like many small non-profits, it has suffered from diffusion of its mission. Recently, with a dynamic new board in place, the group has focused on its role in the larger universe of social justice, social responsibility, and environmental protection groups as one of collaboration. Rather than trying to be and do all the things that much larger (and better funded) organizations have tackled, the Ethical Metalsmiths group has decided on a collaborative approach.

Working as an advocate for its own membership, Ethical Metalsmiths will provide a framework to support its members on a journey of better practices. EM will reach out to organizations like Association for Responsible Mining and the Responsible Jewellery Council, and bring back practices and knowledge from them for the EM community. EM members sit on committees for the Jewelry Industry Summit, creating cross-pollination with other groups concerned about the same issues.

This approach will facilitate the growth of EM, and also helps promote the overall goal of sustainability and responsibility by spreading the love around through collaboration.

MJSA Collaborations

The MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America) is always looking for ways to build collaborations among its members to better all the members. Their BEaJEWELER program* is a great example of this. BEaJEWELER seeks to entice new people to the profession of jewelry. It provides a website with extensive resources to direct interested visitors to schools, training programs, and information to help them make a good decision and set out on their path. BEaJEWELER also invites its jeweler members to share their own stories and insights, because it’s that human element that makes a career choice come alive. Of course, this benefits all of the participants, because we all know the struggle of finding qualified help in the jewelry production studio!

Now, MJSA is introducing a new initiative – the Studio Jeweler outreach program. Again, collaborating with members, MJSA will reach out directly to consumers to connect them with the satisfying experience of buying jewelry made locally and traditionally. Both MJSA initiatives are funded in part by a JCK Industry Grant – itself another form of collaboration.

ANZA Gems

Monica Stephenson, known by many in the jewelry industry for the long-running iDazzle blog, offers another example of powerful collaboration. After traveling to Africa as part of the team that participated in the making of the gem documentary Sharing the Rough, Monica became very committed to helping making a difference on the ground in artisanal mining communities. She started ANZA Gem. ANZA Gem takes gem rough from artisanal miners, collaborates with designers and consumers to make and sell finished jewelry, and returns a significant portion of that value back to the original mining community. This effort recognizes in practice what Sharing the Rough demonstrated in film: that the materials we take from the ground form a chain from the person who digs in the dirt for it to the person who ultimately wears it. Monica’s goal is to make sure every piece of that chain also benefits from it, and she chose collaboration as the way to do her part.

Endorsements and Influence

Before the term influencer came to mean a previously anonymous person with 50,000 social media followers, influencer marketing was also a form of collaboration (OK, in truth, it still is). When people with a following endorse specific products, theoretically the sales go up. This works best when it is apparent that the endorser clearly believes in the product and the exchange is not purely financial. So, athletes endorsing shoes they’ve been wearing all along (prior to the endorsement) have more influence than Cindy Lauper being paid to endorse a pharmaceutical.

Are there ways to create stronger collaboration of the influence sort? Sure there are – that’s exactly what social proof is. If you’re not using product reviews and testimonials from customers to persuade prospects, you’re not taking advantage of this potent source of marketing collaboration. And the collaboration isn’t just about you and your customers – it’s also peer collaboration, as consumers rely on friends, acquaintances, or just people who seem like them to give them advice regarding the products they are considering.

Co-Branding

Many retail jewelers have dabbled in collaborations with other local businesses. Most of the time, it doesn’t go beyond basic co-branding for a promotion or event. But what if it did? What if several businesses banded together to create an omnichannel experience for customers that went way beyond one store?

Big corporations can achieve the benefits of collaboration (more minds to tackle tricky problems) just by virtue of their employment pool. And even then, smart corporate leaders often look to collaborate with other corporations to gain competitive advantage. We are all self-limiting to some extent (if not inherently, at least practically), and the way to combat that is by inviting in the wisdom and experience of others. Small business owners need collaborations to compete.

The future of retail hasn’t been invented yet – it’s still being conceived of. The questions are: are you part of that conceptualization, or are you waiting for others to do it? Are you going it alone, or are you looking for the advantages that come from smart people putting their heads together? My money is on the outcomes of strong collaborations, and the smart people who decide to engage in them.

I’m giving myself a subscription to Code4 Startup this year. Why? Because I need to learn a new programming language. Of course, I employ excellent programmers, and I don’t need to personally perform any coding for my job. So why am I doing it? For the same reason I learned to make patterns and sew when I ran an apparel company, and why I pursued goldsmith training when I ran a large jewelry manufacturer; because understanding the customer (business customer and end consumer) experience of any business is essential to business success, and I am very curious.

More than 70% of small businesses fail within the first five years, and that staggering statistic owes a lot to the failure to understand what customers need, how they need it, and why they want it. In other words, our economy loses a massive amount of capital due to a dreadful lack of curiosity.

I recently interviewed a fellow who had purchased a Seven Eleven franchise in a hot urban market, only to have the store taken back by Seven Eleven corporate after two years. I certainly felt bad for the guy, but there was no doubt he suffered from a significant customer-awareness failure. His reason for the business failure was that a QuikTrip had opened down the street and the competition killed him. But in that densely populated urban area there was more than enough market share for both businesses. The real reason for the failure was that the QuikTrip was new, bright, clean, and felt better to the shoppers. The Seven Eleven owner had failed to shop the competitor, see the difference through the eyes of his customers, feel the difference for himself, and take the simple – and relatively inexpensive – measures to brighten and freshen up his store.

What can we in the jewelry industry do to vigilantly pursue awareness of what our customers experience relative to our products and services? Fortunately, quite a bit!

The first level of awareness – usage of our own products – the jewelry industry excels at. Designers and manufacturers wear their own jewelry and retail store staff put on goods from the cases each day when they arrive at work.

An area that could benefit from more curiosity, however, is how the consumer feels and what the consumer needs from the buying experience. The last time this aspect of consumer awareness was explored at an industry level was nearly a half century ago when DeBeers initiated the 4Cs movement. For the most part, all jewelry industry consumer awareness training since that time has focused on some derivative of 4Cs knowledge.

But consumers need much more than diamond knowledge when buying fine jewelry. I regularly observe consumers in jewelry retail stores. They tend to be slightly intimidated, they are unable to experience the jewelry without help, and they lack visual cues to help them interpret the different things they are seeing. One of the reasons fashion magazines are so popular with consumers is that the vast majority of women feel insecure about their ability to put together a fashionable outfit without some guidance. That fashion magazine guidance is carried through to the clothing stores with mannequins and posters. In contrast, the jewelry store experience provides static displays of jewelry in a sterile environment. No wonder so many jewelry buyers end up at Macy’s or Kohl’s with all their department-store prowess at merchandising display! If you are in the business of putting jewelry into retail stores, you might want to consider ways to supplement your jewelry with in-case display elements that support the buying decision. Do things that inspire curiosity and engagement in your customers. I know this isn’t easy – retail store display requirements can be pretty rigid – but the manufacturers and designers who find ways to mitigate this problem are most likely to win at the sales register.

Speaking of putting jewelry into jewelry stores, if you are a designer, how much curiosity do you have about what it means to work in the retail store? Have you worked behind a counter? Have you set up and torn down display cases each day? Have you spent hours answering customer questions and helping consumers find meaningful jewelry? Working a trunk show doesn’t count; if you want to build awareness of the retail store staff’s experience, you need to get in there and do it yourself. Ask one of your retail clients to let you shadow their sales staff for a few days. You’ll be surprised at all the important things you learn that will help you do a better job providing marketing collateral, training materials, and display elements to your retail clients. Are you worried that nobody will let you shadow? Well, some won’t. When I first wanted to learn about jewelry retail I had to ask eight or nine different store owners before someone said yes. Just keep asking.

Learning the building blocks of jewelry business is a never-ending pursuit. To date I have learned every aspect of jewelry business from rough diamonds to retail selling. In my consulting role, technology is one of the essential building blocks of all modern business, and JAVA is a technology I haven’t added to my knowledge base. I won’t become a master in it any more than my goldsmith training made me into a master goldsmith. But I will have a clearer understanding of how to deliver the tools my customers need and greater empathy for my employees engaged in delivering it, and that deeper knowledge will continue to distinguish me from my competitors. Now it’s your turn to figure out how to do the same for your business.

An Organization Process to Lighten Your Load

I am enjoying my new grandson. At four weeks old he has very few needs, and they are all equally essential. But with every week that goes by he will add new needs, and before you know it, prioritization will be in order.

The interesting thing about prioritization is that it must be a conscious act. 

Oh sure, if you're in the middle of the road about to get hit by a car, your brain (or, more accurately, your autonomic response system) will tell you the most important thing in the world is to get out of the way.

But beyond genuine fight-or-flight situations, your mind pretty much treats buying next year's Secret Santa gift and completing a promotion-worthy proposal the same way. If either of those ideas happens to pop into your head, they both take up the identical amounts of space. Do you happen to be a worrier? The subconscious mind also has a difficult time distinguishing between the real and the imaginary - which is why your worries feel so real.

In fact, your mind obsesses over every detail it perceives as not-managed. Important meeting with your boss? Check. Pick up milk on the way home? Check. Call an important client? Check. Look for your favorite blue socks? Check. The more details you have in your life, the more crowded your head space becomes. And this is no word cloud, thoughtfully assembled with a puzzle-graphic of harmonious words fitted thoughtfully together. No, it's all big words, each shouting to be heard over the others.

How do you quiet the noise and clear your headspace? The solution is laughably simple. Write. Everything. Down. If it needs to be done, and you can't delegate it nor can you do it right away, write it down. Is it a meeting? Put it in your calendar. Is it a task? Put it in your task list. Is it an idea you want to remember for some day? Put it in your idea drawer or folder or box. Is it something you are worrying about or stressing over? Write it down in your task list along with three things you can do to get on the road to resolving it. Write it all down.

Why does this work? Because once you have consciously managed your random concerns and open tasks, your busy busy subconscious mind takes a big sigh of relief, grateful that you have taken conscious control of the situation. This means your subconscious mind can stop rummaging through all your unfinished business, frantically reminding you what needs to be done. Your subconscious mind can turn it's attention to higher-value and more interesting work, like storing and indexing memories and running your nervous system. In return, you will feel calmer, with more clarity and creativity.

After years of experimentation with every possible version of tasks lists, I have distilled it to this: one spiral notebook. I have tried notebooks for every subject, notebooks for every topic, color-coded notebooks. But ultimately, what works best is one notebook for everything: work, family, personal development, grocery store lists, board and volunteer responsibilities. Spiral, because you want your list to hold together. Only one, because you shouldn't have to create a management system for your management system.

Don't make it complicated. Write each distinct task and put an open box at the front of each line. When you have completed each task, put a check mark or an X in the box. A quick visual scan will tell you what still needs to be done.

Can you use an app or computer task list instead? Sure. Just choose one without unnecessary complexity; something you know you will use every single time a random to - do cycles through your brain.

Our world has changed faster than our biology has evolved, leaving us swimming in a sea of demands and details that conspire to put us under.  This simple process (and the understanding behind it) will give your subconscious mind a much-needed break. Yourcreativity and clarity will thank you.

If you found this helpful, you may want to take Andrea Hill's webinar "The Secrets to Organizing Yourself and Your Staff." New sessions are scheduled regularly. Watch for all training sessions with Andrea Hill here.

Did you think I could resist showing you a picture of my new grandson? Here he is :)

I’m doing my annual ritual rounds at the Las Vegas jewelry shows: Part information gathering for my blog and industry articles, part assisting clients who are exhibiting, and part checking in with designers. Working a trade show is hard. I don’t mean for me – I mean for the people who are selling. And it’s particularly hard for the artists who are selling their own designs. If that’s you, I’m writing this for you. I hope you get a chance to read this before you do the show all day Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

When you create a piece of art, you put a big piece of yourself into it. You dug around in your essential self and you figured out something to say. You’ve done something unusual, something special. Many people spend an entire life without searching for and finding something authentic to say. Then, you take it one step further. You take that expression, that thought, that idea, and you turn it into a physical thing. Then, you do the nearly unthinkable. You stick that physical object out there in public for other people to look at, comment on, fall in love with . . . and reject. Of all the people who do the work of finding something authentic to say, only a fraction of them go on to express it and risk exposing it to others.

But you do this. And you don’t do it because you have this excess of confidence – because while some of you may have that, most of you have the normal amount of confidence which involves a lot of self-doubt. You don’t do it because you have a thick skin, because having a thick skin seems to be somewhat at odds with having the will and the ability to create art. No, you do it because you must. You do it because you want to live your life creating art, and that means you must also learn how to sell art.

Which is why I often encounter overwhelmed designers at trade shows.

Never mind the weeks you’ve spent preparing your inventory (and the debt you went into to do it), or the fact that you’ve spent a small fortune just to be here. You’ve learned to work crazy long hours and take massive leaps of faith; the contestants on Shark Tank have got nothing on you when it comes to true entrepreneurial spirit. No, the deeper test comes when the show opens.

You understand that your product is right for some stores and not others. You get it when someone says to you, “You have great work – I just don’t have the client for it.” You readily smile back at people who smile at you but walk by on their way somewhere else. But still, those rejections add up (and a lot of buyers are much ruder and cruder than that). It’s really easy to start thinking, “Why don’t they like my work? What’s wrong with my work? There must be something wrong with my work.” And since that work is something you dug up from inside you, what you’re really saying is, “There must be something wrong with me.”

It’s not true though. There is nothing wrong with you. Those rejections are not even about you.

What you are experiencing as rejection is something entirely different from the perspective of the person on the other end of the transaction. The person on the other side of the transaction:

• May actually love your work and would buy it for herself, but has learned the hard way that the people in her area really don’t buy your type of design. Let’s call this person the “I’d buy it if I could sell it” buyer.
• May not like your style, but it has nothing to do with you – it has to do with her own tastes, and she merchandises her store as if all her customers share her tastes. This is the “my clients are all reflections of me” buyer.
• May only know enough about merchandising to consider things she finds familiar. This is the “buys the outfit in the department store window” buyer.
• Is sitting under a crushing mountain of inventory and totally cash poor. This is the “saving face by acting like I’m shopping at the show” buyer.
• Is so terrified of losing her one or two big brands that she’s buying their minimums even though she still has some of last year’s buy and some from the year before. Let’s call her the “Rolex Retailer” buyer.
• Knew enough about jewelry to buy in some great designer lines, but lacked the experience in marketing to know how to attract the right customer, and now she’s scared to invest more. Let’s call her the “an awful lot like me” buyer.
• Is running the store that her grandparents started, and doing everything right, but she’s in a town made up of middle America and her customers no longer have the money to buy jewelry. Let’s call her the “same reason we have Trump and Bernie” buyer.
• Is just a jackass. Kept you assembling an order for 90 minutes only to walk away; told you how he already did something like that, only 20 years ago and better; picked the line apart for no other reason than to make someone else feel worse than he apparently feels inside; nickles and dimes you to pieces. Let’s call this one the “karma can’t come fast enough” buyer.

I share all this not to bring you down, but to remind you that there is a reason behind each rejection that has nothing to do with you. And when the malicious little shame monster starts telling you you’re not good enough, you must silence it. You start with:

That buyer didn’t just reject me. That buyer is having an internal negotiation that actually has nothing to do with me. Whatever is going on with that buyer has nothing to do with my designs, their value, or my value.

And then you add:

And if you choked up a little bit just reading those words, if they made you uncomfortable, sad, or angry, I want you to go to the nearest mirror and say them out loud. Don’t mumble it, don’t rush. Just say them with conviction.

Yes, the market is tough right now. Nobody can really say if this is a just a down cycle or the beginning of a new consumer era. But consumers will continue to buy and wear jewelry, and there is a consumer for you. You may or may not find what you need at any particular show, but that customer is out there. And one sure way to build the energy and enthusiasm you’ll need to keep looking for that customer is to put each rejection in perspective firmly and quickly.

So for the next three days, turn the passers-by, the no-thank-yous, and the maybe-next-years into a game. Think about which buyer type they are (hey – if you have a new type to suggest, put it in the comments!!), then quickly remind yourself that you are enough, and that it is not you or your work that has been rejected. Doing this will help you stay strong, stay positive, and stay in the game, because your buyer is out there too, and you want to be in a positive, confident place when that one arrives.

My office excites me. Every morning when I walk in (and especially after being away for travel), I ignite with the potential of the day. I’ve taken a bit of crap for this in my career. Even in my smallest of offices, I always had fresh flowers, pictures that inspire me, a tiny coffee maker – anything that would look, smell, and feel like motivation — anything that would help me get inspired.Today my office contains a substantial library, organized beautifully, lovely light wood furniture with clean lines, beautiful art – including a few sculptures -  and windows on three sides. My office is where I go to create, to achieve, to succeed, and I expect great things of myself when I am in my office.

Of course, sometimes my desk gets out of control. I come in to piles in three places, and I immediately feel weighted down. The creativity goes out the window. If I’m smart about it, I clear it immediately. But I’m not always smart about it, and sometimes that weighted energy is allowed to stay for several days before I snap to the fact that if I just cleared the space, I would get my groove back. I’ve also noticed that having to deal with dirty coffee cups in the morning is a downer, whereas clearing out the dirty coffee cups at the end of the day brings a peaceful sense of closure.

Why does this matter? Because environment matters. The quality of your work space, its energy, the sounds within it, the way it makes you feel – all these things have profound impact on the work that you create there. You probably already know this, but it’s so easy to lose sight of it in the day-to-day hustle of business. So today is a good day to set aside some time to reinvigorate your work place.

You can make almost any space an inspiring space. I have had magnificent cubicles, an office the size of a closet that I turned into a cozy refuge, and the corner of my kitchen that allowed me to work at home when my children were small. I found that I had to turn whatever I was given to work with into a space that inspired me. Of course, if you are dealing with poor air quality, mold, or intensely noisy neighbors, this advice will only go so far. But assuming that you have some control over your workspace, turn it into a place you can’t wait to get to in the morning.  Your customers – and your mental health! - will thank you!

If you ever worry that you have adult onset ADD, you're not alone. Maybe you do, or maybe your life is just filled with way too many distractions. Before you go running to the doctor for help, consider these tips for getting focused and staying that way.

Getting Focused Requires a Plan

One of the best ways to waste an entire day on minutiae is to start without a plan. You know those days. You start with high energy and big ideas, but by lunch you realize you've been doing nothing but email and trouble-shooting, and by the end of the day you're experiencing the bad sort of tired; the antsy, agitated, tired-with-nothing-to-show-for-it tired.

When you start the day with a plan, your efficient brain will help keep you on track all day long, even if that plan is just lurking somewhere in the back of your subconscious. The plan doesn't have to be some big Microsoft-Project-worthy thing either. All you need to do is start each day with writing down the one or two or three things you intend to accomplish that day. So simple, yet so profoundly effective. And if you get to lunchtime and realize you're totally off track, write your plan at lunch and rescue the rest of your day.

Getting Focused Means Managing Distractions

If your email is binging, sending a popup to your screen, or otherwise alerting you every time a new email comes in, then you have turned the management of your life over to Google, Microsoft, or Apple. This goes for your phone too! In fact, any app that alerts you about new information is being given an inappropriate amount of control. If you want to know what the temperature is outside, you can check it. Trust me - your phone really doesn't know specifically when you need to know these things - it only knows that something has changed and you have asked to be alerted.

I love technology and all the information and advantages it can provide. But the best way to get focused and stay focused each day is to take control of your devices. Turn off your notifications (OK, I leave on severe weather alerts), and check email, weather, Instagram, Facebook, etc. when it's the right time for you to check those things -- not when your devices tell you to.

How Your Brain Works

Your brain loves stimulation. When interesting things are cropping up all around you, your brain wants to take it all in. And different parts of your brain respond to different stimuli, so when there are lots of distractions, your brain looks like a little thunderstorm, with lightning in the back, then in the front, then on the side . . . you get my drift. And all that activity in the brain actually feels pretty good, so we let it happen.

But do you know what feels even better? Flow. When you get into a state of concentration - and manage to tune out the distractions for about 15 minutes - you settle into that ultra focused, high-quality, high-productivity thinking called flow. You can stay in a state of flow for hours if you're not disrupted. Not all tasks require hours of concentration, but think how effective you would be if every task or project that required more than 15 minutes of your attention benefited from your highest quality thinking!

So put your cell phone on silent and check voice mail later. Turn off the email, and turn it back on at a specified time. Tell your studio mates, employees and loved ones that you are unavailable for a few hours. Do this on a regular basis, and train your brain to love the feeling of focus more than it loves the feeling of multi-tasking.

And believe it or not . . . that's it. If you simply start each day with a conscious plan, eliminate unnecessary distractions, and allow yourself to get into a state of flow, you will become the most focused version of you that you have ever known.

Have fun getting focused!

One of my earliest jobs was at an advertising agency, and the main thing I remember about working there is that everybody screamed at each other all the time. Sometimes the screaming was loud, sometimes it was more of a hiss, sometimes it was profane, but invariably, the people who worked there were entrenched in conflict with one another. Everything was an argument, from who made the coffee to who was smarter than whom. They fought over ideas, handling of clients, kissing of asses, and compensation. I left that job as soon as possible, and with a minor case of PTSD.

Each subsequent job I took involved a careful screening of the environment. I was not going to work in an angry and competitive culture ever again.

And I never did. Instead, I found something even more disturbing. A place where nobody was supposed to argue or dissent at all. Over anything. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t part of the culture. It was conflict.

I am neither a screamer nor a fighter. I am, however, very comfortable with argument, and I am very direct. Some of that is just my personality, but some of it is purposeful self-development. Two of the things I value are clarity and progress, and a good argument can be a tremendous facilitator of both. So working at a company that stifled anything that looked like conflict was very disturbing. And as you might guess, the company had stagnated. Everyone was happy, though nobody got a raise. Everybody was equal, but the company had dropped to the lowest common denominator.

You company – heck, your life, your marriage, your relationships – need argument. Argument isn’t necessary all the time, nor does it need to be disrespectful or demeaning, but it must exist for change and progress to occur. A collaboration of any sort without at least an occasional clash of diverging or opposite ideas will be as satisfying as a diet of chicken broth and as energizing as a dip in a tepid bath.

Progress, innovation, and breakthroughs happen in the space between assumptions and ideas. When two or more people engage in a passionate discussion, throwing all their experience and beliefs out on the table for dissection and examination, great things can happen. Of course, it’s not actually an argument if nobody is listening. An argument is defined as an exchange of ideas. If each side is only throwing and not catching, that’s a game of dodgeball.

If you want to cultivate an environment that encourages people to bring their whole self to work, you need to encourage an environment that makes it safe to argue. That means helping people who like to argue do so in a respectful manner, and it means making argument safe for people who are terrified of argument. It means helping managers understand that the exchange of ideas must also come from their subordinates, and it means creating a safe environment for subordinates to bring their ideas to the table and even fight for them.

One of the best ways to do this is to create a culture that identifies and encourages arguments as debates. First, you must help everyone understand that a debate is a structured forum in which opposing ideas are presented, supported with facts or evidence, and dissected to find the flaws. In a debate, one side listens while the other side speaks. Speaking with passion and heat are perfectly OK, but attacking the other side professionally or personally is not. The goal is to at least decide on the best course of action among the alternatives, or at best to determine an even better course of action than anyone had thought of prior.

In the early stages of introducing this idea to a culture, the debates must be moderated – and some companies get so much out of the format that they continue to moderate forever, just to get the best results possible. The most common time to find such an argument brewing is in a meeting. It should be acceptable for anyone in the room to say, “It looks like we have a few conflicting ideas here. Let’s debate it.” This simple statement validates that it is perfectly acceptable to have conflicting ideas, and it serves as the cue for the group to move into the debate structure. One person should be at the white board, capturing the main ideas of each participant. A moderator is needed to summarize and reflect back what is said (which ensures understanding) and to make sure people wait their turn to talk (and to remind them to write a note so they don’t forget what they wanted to say).  It helps if the moderator is an extremely good listener with an ability to see the points of agreement among the debaters. And if a few raucous free-for-alls break out with everyone talking at once? The moderator steps in, cools things off, tells everyone to write down what they wanted the rest of the group to hear, and moves the group back into the debate structure – without judgment or criticism. Just re-focus.

Will every debate end up with a group hug? Definitely not. But neither does most passive aggression and conflict avoidance. By implementing this approach and practicing it over time, your company can gain skills in the cultivation of new ideas. Eventually people in the organization will get comfortable enough to realize that conflict is neither good nor bad, but how we embrace it makes all the difference in the world.

One of my favorite books is Art & Fear by David Bales and Ted Orland. I’ve found it to be an excellent reflection on the artist’s challenge.

In the book, the authors write about a Zen teaching that says when you start on a long journey, trees are trees, water is water, and mountains are mountains. After you have gone some distance, trees are no longer trees, water is no longer water, and mountains are no longer mountains. But after you have traveled a great distance trees are once again trees, water is once again water, and mountains are once again mountains.

Good designers notice things, and good design depends on this fact. They notice things about themselves, their methods, their materials, their customers, and their subject matter. At some point, every jeweler notices the relationship between their will and the will of the material. Before the moment of this realization, the relationship doesn’t exist. Afterwards, it’s impossible to imagine it not existing. And from that moment on every material talks back and forth with the designer’s will.

The jewelry designer’s work is the source for an incredibly large number of such relationships.The relationship of the arms to the bench, the relationship of the file to the fingers, the relationship of the pencil to the paper’s edge. As the designer’s skill develops, conceptual relationships increasingly define the shape and structure of the world they live in. In time, those relationships are the world. Distinctions between the designer, the work, and the world lessen, grow transparent, and finally disappear. In time, trees are once again trees.

This all has me wondering how I can support the designers around me (and there are many of them) for whom inter-connectedness must be an essential aspect of their ability to create. In the past I was a fan of the arguments regarding the difference between art and design. As time goes on, I guess I’m more interested in what differentiates good design from not-so-good design. And is not-so-good design actually design, or is it just “stuff?”

Gene Fowler (scriptwriter) once said “writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Design is sort of easy that way. It’s lovely when it floats into your head and realizes itself quickly, and every designer deserves a few of those throughout their lifetime – a carrot that keeps you going when the inspiration wears thin.

Truly good design comes only with mastery, patience, humor, and flexibility. It’s not done once the idea is complete, because the execution is an essential part of its success.The world is filled with a lot of things that no-one really needs (I guess that’s the “stuff”).But one thing we could all use more of is truly beautiful things that serve a purpose and inspire us.

So if the Zen teaching above can be applied to the jewelry design journey, then I guess “good” design is design that has been informed by breaking down each of the components – customer, purpose, process, materials, skill, aesthetic – into discreet elements, and then recombining them to achieve a result that would not have been possible had not each one of them been individually considered first.The result is most likely to be masterful. Of course, some might call that art.

If your brain is all filled up with knowing the answers, you won't have any capacity for asking the questions.

Yoda is a beloved icon of mastery. At one time success - indeed, survival - depended on developing mastery in some area. We don’t spend much time thinking or talking about mastery anymore, but we should. Today’s world worships the generalist. The person who can make a product, shoot the photograph, write the copy, post it on social media, and then go make a sales call. After hours she does the books, follows up on customer email, and reviews contracts. Today’s business person does a lot, but feels like she accomplishes little. Lack of time to focus on mastery is at the heart of this.

If you spend all your time skimming the surface of a thousand tasks, you won’t find happiness or success. The mind needs times of intense focus, times of reaching just beyond its capacity to develop new skills, and this type of focus doesn’t occur when we spend 20 minutes on one thing and 18 minutes on another.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (chick-sent-me-high) expressed this best in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).

“It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.”

We often hear the phrase “do what you love, and you’ll find success.” I believe it’s true, but with an important caveat. If you are doing what you love, but only as 1/50^th of all the things you do to make a living, it won’t sustain you. Does this mean you should just drop the other 49 things? Not if you want to pay the rent. So what can you do?

First, you identify your desired mastery. You can pick anything you like! It could be your chosen craft, writing copy, becoming the best diagnostician; just pick something that interests you with enough depth that you have to work hard to master it. You probably already know what it is – it’s the thing you always wish you had more time for. It’s the thing you naturally enjoy when you get into it. Find something that requires your deep concentration, something that forces you to stretch, something that you can focus on for an hour or two at a time, something you can lose yourself in.

Next, set aside time for mastery. Perhaps it’s an uninterrupted hour each day, perhaps it’s a block of three hours once a week. You think there’s not enough time to do that? Just consider how many hours you spend doing things that don’t involve any real commitment: watching T.V., playing around on social media, scrolling through news headlines, shopping, clubbing, hanging out at a coffee shop. I have yet to meet a person who has no wasted hours in a week.

Don’t get me wrong- I love my wasted hours! I bookend my days with sipping coffee in the morning and skimming my phone or watching a bit of TV in the evening. I consider these my rejuvenation times. But when I realized I had slipped away from the pursuit of mastery, I reconsidered those activities carefully. My morning coffee time is genuinely restorative to me; my only time of meditation. But my evening time didn’t have the same benefits. I was relaxed, but I wasn’t engaged. I traded half of my evening lounge time for writing time, and found new pieces of myself in the process.

People often think that the reason they feel so stale or anxious (or both) is that they aren’t making the kind of money they wanted to (expected to, need to) make. But people who are engaged in pursuing mastery don’t report the same feelings of malaise. This tells me that how we invest ourselves ultimately matters more than how much we earn.

Some types of mastery take a lifetime to achieve, others merely years. It’s not critical that you pick something that can take a lifetime. It’s enough to always be working on mastery. When you find you are no longer challenged enough, it’s a sign that you have learned what you can learn. Identify something new to master and get on with it.

I am writing this blog while walking 2mph at my desk. My treadmill desk. This has probably cracked a few of you up already, because I am no fitness buff. But in the past year I’ve noticed that my energy and my creativity aren’t what I want them to be, and this concerns me, as does the extra 25 pounds I’ve put on and what that means for my overall health.

I didn’t just start worrying about this in the past week. It’s been on my mind for, well, several years. But what to do? I own a business, work about 60 hours each week, help care for my grandchildren, and I’m the primary educator for my home-schooled 13-year old granddaughter. What do I enjoy most in my precious little downtime? Knitting. Hardly an impact sport.

Two years ago, the National Institutes of Health published a study that showed prolonged sitting increases death rates across all demographics. Even worse, this result was despite exercise. So even if I could find time to walk 5 miles per day, I would spend the rest of each day in a drawn-out suicide. Hopeless. I chose to ignore it. One year ago, the idea that sitting is more deadly than smoking started getting a lot of press.  Harder to ignore, yet still I chose not to act.

But last week, when I forced myself to look at the actual me in the mirror (and not my 25-year-old self), and realized that taking a long walk had made my lower back hurt, everything snapped into place. Time for a change.

My situation hasn’t changed, so finding time was the real challenge. I thought about making a standing desk, but to me that seems like just another form of not-moving. I made it downstairs to our workout room a few times (yes, we have a fully equipped workout room – which I almost never enter), but found myself distracted by the things that weren’t getting done.  I started researching treadmill desks.

When I first mentioned it, my wife looked at me with high skepticism, my son laughed out loud, and my granddaughter shook her head. If they suspected I would not stick with it, they could be forgiven, because that is a real risk with me and exercise. In fairness to them, they could not picture it either. I had done my research without letting them in on it, so the idea of working on a treadmill was a bit foreign.

My research showed that a treadmill desk – without the extra required computer – would cost anywhere from $1,400 - $2,000, which is a lot to spend on something I might not take to. So I got creative, and decided to build my own.

I wouldn’t need a $6k treadmill like my wife, daughter, and granddaughter use for their long runs. Something quiet and sturdy would do for my anticipated 2-3mph pace. I would need a writing table that could span the treadmill, and would need to build a riser for the table. I also wanted a sufficient computer to network with my main work computer. After all, this would be a full working desk. Here’s how much it cost:

We called in some muscle to haul the treadmill up to our 2nd floor office, but the rest of the project was truly do-it-ourselves. We decided to use Duck Tape to seal and decorate the boards, rather than going through the trouble of sanding and staining. I was in a rush by then, and this seemed like a fun and artsy way to make fast work of the risers.

Here’s how much time we spent:

Assembling the treadmill: 25 minutes (Weslo makes it super easy, since the wiring is pre-assembled. But make sure before you drive home with it that the hardware pack and instructions are in the box! Online comments showed that there is a big problem with that. Ours were there, but still it's wroth checking. Otherwise, the treadmill is extremely good for the price!).

Assembling the escritoire: 40 minutes

Building the risers (including Duck Tape embellishment): 90 minutes

Total: 2 hours and 35 minutes

My goal is to walk 5 miles per day, but I started at 2.25 miles and I’m working my way up over the next week. The biggest adjustment is learning to type as fast as I am accustomed to at my regular desk. I read articles that suggested the adjustment time to full productivity is anywhere from 2-6 weeks.

Will I stick with this? Yes. I know I will, because this is what I have decided to do. Looking back on various exercise plans, I know that I never committed to them, and all it takes to stick with something is conscious commitment.

Is this for everyone? I’m sure it’s not! The treadmill desk suits me because it is part of a lifelong pattern of wanting to have it all. I get to work and exercise at the same time, which means I make no sacrifices of the other things I want to do with my time.

I think that’s the trick to creating a life that has balance (and we are always creating, because we – and conditions – are always changing). We have to figure out the things that work for us, that facilitate a life that includes family, hobbies, work, rest, community. For me, today, it’s a treadmill desk.

After spending a week in the design studio of one of my clients, I am thinking a lot about creativity and intention. Most of my clients are designers - jewelry, interiors, software, food - all involve similar requirement to create something new and exciting that also serves an important purpose for its intended audience.

I don't believe that all people can be designers. The ability to design requires a certain amount of gift, innate talent. But just because one has that gift or that talent doesn't mean they will be extraordinary either.

This takes practice. Creativity and intention are essential to one another.

I started thinking about this today as I read an excellent article on how to practice. This article is relevant for anything one wants to excel at - whether design or learning a new language or becoming a better parent.  But it made me think in terms of my designer/entrepreneurs.

Specifically, how little time they give themselves to practice design once they are engrossed in the responsibilities of running a business. I have seen many talented designers produce one or two exciting offerings, only to fade away into obscurity. Is this because they did not continue to practice the skill of design?  I know other designers whose work becomes repetitive over time. Again I ask, is that lack of practice time?

To all you designers who find you only have time to  design on command (commission work), when you are preparing a new line, or late at night when you're not busy selling and bookkeeping, please consider this: your skill is ultimately only as salable as your excellence. Make time to practice even if other things suffer (or preferably, by paying someone to cover other, non-design tasks).

If every design you make is for a purpose, then you aren't giving yourself the time and analysis needed to take your design to the next level, and the next, and the next. More important, when you do your art without the time or the intention involved in good practice, you make permanent those things you do and choices you make that undermine your talent and your vision.

So go ahead, give yourself the gift of intentional practice. Your soul, your creative center, your customers . . . and your bottom line . . . will thank you.

Build the Ultimate Competitive Edge

I have been a student of creativity for most of life. My original career goal was to be an opera singer - I'm a mezzo soprano. So I trained all through adolescence and studied drama and music at university. But what I saw there quickly turned me off forever to a career in opera. In that world, everyone was fixated on having a competitive edge. The intense focus on standing out individually ultimately isolated everyone from the collaboration that would make us exponentially better together. I found my solace in jazz — quite the opposite of opera.

Jazz performance depends on one's ability to intensely listen to and feel one's fellow musicians; to complement them rather than compete with them. I learned that the very best musician experience — at least for me — was the art of completely blending in and becoming part of a "body" of creativity that was bigger than myself. It is this experience that informed my  business ideas about how to create a competitive edge.

Some people think that radical inclusiveness hides mediocrity. And it can. But what I learned as a jazz musician is that each instrument and voice has to be the absolute best for the ensemble to be the best. It's not that we sacrifice excellence — it's that excellence is each of our individual gift to the whole, so the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

I've worked with many jazz ensembles (and choirs - a magnificent choir has the same allure) over the years. Some were merely a diversion. Others, I got such a thrill out of working with I wanted to sing with them every night. The difference? Part of it was individual excellence for sure. It's magical to work with extremely talented people. But mostly the difference was in the bond, trust, and respect within the group. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it is strong enough to welcome new-comers and still maintain its cultural/artistic core. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it can bring in a student, an apprentice, and help them achieve virtuosity quickly. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it experiences explosive creativity.

And when you're experiencing explosive creativity, the concept of competitive edge becomes mundane. Why settle for being better than the next guy, when you can be better than your own imagination?

These things I learned as a musician quickly carried over into my business life. First, I noticed that some teams were more effective than others. Then, I realized it was more cultural — not just a team issue, but a company issue. Some companies experience almost virtuosic, sustained, creativity and innovation. But most do not. And the difference isn't determined by the individual talents and skills of the employees. The difference is determined by the quality of shared vision and trust. Trust in one another, and trust in leadership.

There are many things leaders must do to create trust: clarity of vision, consistent behavior, accountability for failures. But the one thing I want to address today is equality.

If a company wants to experience sustained excellence, it must invest in a culture of equality. This doesn't mean everyone is the same. Strong companies are built on teams of subject matter experts (SMEs), individuals with unique strengths and talents that can be applied in different ways. Each individual also has weaknesses, but if you build the right team, no one weakness will stand out, because it will be offset by the strengths of those around them. So everyone is not "the same," nor do we want them to be. When it comes to taking on certain projects, entrusting people with certain objectives, then we lean on expertise, talent, and capability. We recognize that some people have more talent and skill for some things than others.

But outside of the creative or skilled output — when it comes to the humans in the workshop, troupe, or company — then everyone must be equal. One set of rules for everyone. One set of expected behaviors for everyone. Rewards equally available to everyone. I'm not saying everyone gets paid the same. But everyone must know that their pay is based on objective factors related to their responsibility and tasks — not based on subjective, opaque criteria.

Equality means choosing inclusiveness over exclusiveness every chance you get. If you are the leader, equality means challenging your own preferences constantly. What do I mean by that? Well, as humans we gravitate to some people more than others — it's natural. As a leader, you must constantly check yourself, to make sure that your own behavior doesn't create a sense of inequality where one is not intended. This is really hard — in my opinion as someone who has led many companies, it is the hardest thing to do, and one of the things I have most consistently failed at.

Without equality, the dynamics of the group suffer, which damages the results of the group. Since the only reason that group is assembled is for their shared goals, why would you risk damaging the group in any way?

It can be difficult to teach the importance of equality to business leaders — particularly those fueled with a sense of competitiveness. There is a tendency to think that equality is a kindergarten platitude. But it's not. It's a business imperative. If we want to be the best, we have to hire the best, yes. And then, we have to treat them the best.

Because ultimately, each one of us is not the sum of our parts. We don't bring just our relevant skills to work each day. We bring our whole selves. And we expect to be honored. At some level, each of us knows that we are a reflection of godliness, and therefore . . . equal. Fail to honor that, and you fail the one element that will make your company (or your family, or your team, or your club, or your musical troupe) exquisitely successful. The human.

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One of my earliest jobs was at advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding back in the late 70s. I wasn't a management trainee or even an intern. I was a Kelly Girl, a temporary secretarial services worker, brought in to cover a maternity leave. I took minutes in meetings, typed volumes of communications, ran art boards and interoffice envelopes between departments, fetched supplies and prepared coffee. When the person I was covering for returned, they made room for me at the next desk and kept me on, making it possible for me to learn one of the more important business lessons of my career.

It was my first exposure to advertising and to the individual specialties required to create it: Writing, graphic design, photography, film, layout (this was the era of x-acto knives, rubber cement and adhesive wax) and account planning. As I silently transcribed often heated discussions among creative teams and account executives, I discovered the world of designers who reverentially referred to the works of Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli, copy writers who studied David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz and Claude Hopkins, and a building full of people who had read (and re-read) Marshall McLuhan the same way medical students study the Atlas of Human Anatomy and law students study the U.S. constitution.

I arrived at this job already knowing about music and music theory, art history and art theory, and the different styles of writing. I knew that great success in artistic pursuits was almost always preceded by studying masters, learning the rules before one broke them, and practice, practice, practice. What I learned during what turned into working on and off at the agency over the next three years was that advertising is equally a profession, and that you can't fake or luck your way into effective promotions.

Since that time I have enthusiastically embraced each of the advances that make it easier to execute advertising, from the advent of digital design to the ability to communicate directly with audiences online. And as McLuhan pointed out in 1964 when Arthur C. Clarke was first predicting the internet, the digital age has not only changed how we create advertising, it has also changed what we can create.

But there is another, insidious aspect to this evolution: Digital tools and publishing have also changed who can create.

At this point you may be thinking I’m a bit of a snob, and I’ll own some of that. I appreciate good advertising. I want to see graphics that are not just visually appealing, but which are also clearly designed to achieve a purpose. Grammatically correct isn’t sufficient to be considered good copy. Good copy is compelling and works within the larger design and media to be greater than the sum of its words. A bad photo crop can ruin composition and distract the eye. Professionally produced advertising should make you think. It should stick with you.

This doesn’t mean that one can’t create great advertising without study or experience. Every medium has its savants and prodigies and all of us land on an amazing idea now and then. But savants, prodigies and luck are exceptions, not the norm.

However, the predictable outcome of lots of bad advertising isn't my reason for calling the democratization of design insidious. Bad advertising has always existed. I don’t even say it because bad design leads to waste of advertising dollars (though it does). I say it because producing mediocre advertising has become a distraction for businesses everywhere.

I Can Do it Myself

Most people couldn’t afford a printing press, so developing the knowledge to set up, maintain, and use one didn’t occur to the average person. But Microsoft Word and — worse (much worse) — PowerPoint have made it easy for anyone to assemble pages that look like graphic design. Comfort with those tools led to the confidence to try a variety of digital design tools, including complicated software like Photoshop and Illustrator. Into this opportunity stepped Canva and dozens of software look-alikes; design programs that make it possible for anyone to create advertising.

All these developments are good. Even Canva (and its ilk) have a role to play within professional marketing departments. What’s not good? Business owners spending their precious and limited time creating advertising instead of spending that time doing the strategic and technical work of their businesses: Producing and delivering the products and services they sell.

Before easy-for-anyone-to-use digital design tools, a business owner had no choice but to hire a professional to create their advertising. In most cases the result was a professional advertising message. But even if they lobbed the advertising creation off on the local newspaper or a less-than-effective advertising resource, the resulting advertising still didn’t take up the business owner’s time and distract them from the business at hand.

The “I can do it myself” movement in business advertising isn’t reducing the cost of advertising. It’s reducing the effectiveness of management.

I Can Direct a Team

What about the business owner who has a large enough organization to afford hiring a marketing person? Is that better? Not necessarily.

The person hired is almost always expected to write copy and blog posts, create graphics, manage social media, take photographs, and manage the website. These are all distinctly different skills. Again — not being a snob here. I know many people who do an admirable job of managing all these tasks. But who is developing them? Who is helping them hone their skills as an advertiser and marketer? Because invariably the do-it-all person who assumes this role is not the more senior advertising professional who has been developed over many years by many mentors to understand the theory and practice of each of these specialties. No, it’s the entry level or lower management person who appreciates the flexibility and creativity of the job and is happily making it up as they go.

This scenario is still better than the business owner themself producing the marketing. In this content-driven marketing moment when volumes of creative and writing must be produced just to try to penetrate the noise (even while contributing to it), a do-it-all marketing team member can play an important role.

If the work they produce delivers a measurable positive outcome.

If the do-it-all marketing person is successfully (and measurably) producing new leads and helping to deliver those leads into the hands of salespeople, or guiding those leads down the sales funnel to close sales, or inspiring repurchase behavior and loyalty, then having an in-house advertising department makes sense. But if this person, which often becomes a team, is costing one, two, or more salaries to produce lots of satisfying visuals without leading to increased sales sufficient to pay for their salaries and deliver profit, then the business is simply wasting money.

The problem with the average in-house marketing/advertising/creative effort is that most business owners are not trained marketing or advertising professionals, nor do they hire seasoned marketing or advertising professionals to run the department. The result is too often a cost center that produces volumes of low-yield work.

I Don’t Like It: The Misplaced Insertion of Personal Taste in Advertising

“It’s hideous.” I remember the first time I heard an art director proclaim this, curling his lip at a presentation while simultaneously crushing the soul of the graphic designer presenting it. I didn’t see the problem with the graphic; in fact, it looked pretty good to me. But instead of sending the graphic designer out of his office to wallow in her shame, the art director proceeded to dissect the presentation, explaining why it was off message and how the elements of the presentation failed to deliver the intended result. He made suggestions about elements that would work better. It reminded me of one of my professors dissecting my poetry, explaining why the word choices and cadence might work for other forms of writing, but not for the work at hand.

When an untrained business owner directs, criticizes, corrects, or rejects the advertising efforts of an untrained employee, the only basis they have for argument is personal taste and opinion.

Without technical knowledge about why the color orange might be the correct color for a certain psychological response, why a line wrap might matter (and conversely, when it shouldn’t), when illustration might be a better convention than photography, how an eye moves across a printed page compared to a digital device … without technical knowledge, the decisions will be based on what colors each individual prefers, how certain shapes or graphics affect them personally, and whether or not that person would use a certain word choice in their own speech.

As Christine Catarino, marketing director at E.A. Dion recently said to me in a conversation about this topic, “When people who are not in that world (advertising) put all of their subjective feelings into that world, it becomes really difficult to achieve a great result.”

There should be discussion between the person commissioning the advertising and the professional creating it – lots of it. But the conversation should be anchored by reasons and intention, not taste and opinion.

The past decade has seen a significant in-housing of marketing creative across corporate America. Much of this is driven by the sheer volume of online marketing that must be produced and the commensurate need for speed and flexibility. In 2021, at a time when marketing budgets had plummeted to 6.4% of overall company revenue (down from 11% before the pandemic), a Gartner survey of 400 marketers revealed that 29% of the work that had been previously managed by agencies had been moved in-house since 2020.

But that trend appears to have slowed significantly as corporate managers discover the risks associated with in-housing creative. Chief among those risks is recruiting the right people. Even when a company manages to recruit strong creatives, retention can be difficult given that this workforce typically thrives on new challenges and creative diversity. And there is a bigger, more difficult issue as well: No matter how abrasive the feedback might be, talented creatives would rather take knowledgeable criticism from a skilled art or creative director than from a boss suggesting arbitrary changes based on personal taste and opinion.

So what is the average business-owner to do?

Start by recognizing that the creation of effective advertising requires professional knowledge and experience. A massage therapist can help you address back pain, but if your disc needs repair, you don’t ask the massage therapist to cut you – you go to an orthopedic surgeon. If the orthopedic surgeon recommends something you’re uncomfortable with, you’d be wise to check with a different orthopedic surgeon, rather than arguing for a treatment plan based on your opinion and research you did on Google (though medical specialists will tell you that even this is changing. Apparently now everyone has the same knowledge as their doctors).

You may need an in-house person or team to crank out constant content, but give them access to professional guidance and support. This will make their work product more effective, and it will also help them develop as marketing professionals. Most agencies are accustomed to collaborating with in-house teams, which can keep your agency-associated costs down and can significantly improve marketing employee retention.

Finally, make sure you have access to professional marketing and advertising guidance as well. A true professional will share the reasons and experience behind their suggestions, allowing you to rent years of professional knowledge on very favorable terms rather than having to purchase it … or do without. 

If you have ever looked at a couple and wondered what one saw in the other … if you have ever looked at a famous painting and realized that it does nothing for you … if you have ever discussed the likability of cilantro … you know that taste is not universal. Stop basing your advertising creative on taste. Stop thinking the customer sees things the way you see them. Stop believing that opinion is the same as experience. Instead, look for an adviser, agency, or resource that can guide you — or better, your team — to create the kind of advertising that cuts through noise, grabs attention, and inspires response.

Don’t worry. You can still apply your preference for blue to your home décor and you get to choose what to hang on the walls of your office. But when your focus is appropriately placed on how much return your advertising dollars deliver — and not simply on how much you spend or if you personally like it — your bottom line will thank you.

Hurtling through the day without time to think? Stop. Write down your objectives, solutions, or ideas. Clear writing forces clear thinking.

Nobody loses herself all
at once.
It's stealthy.
It spreads itself out to
blend in. Slip by.
You don't realize
you should be mourning.
You go on.
You do,
while pain puddles in shadows.
It's life.
It waits.
Late nights it's a moth. Or imagined?
Batted away, it talks to your dreams.
Daylight scatters it,
until it doesn't.
It begins to wake with you
Wake you
Walk with you
You should have been mourning,
but you missed it.
Until the pieces were gone,
And you can't understand how you didn't know.

andrea hill

(with a big bow to Marshall McLuhan)

When you were a mere toddler, it's likely you took boxes, pots and pans and turned them into toys. In grade school, we took plastic sheeting and turned it into sleds on the perfect snow of Hospital Hill. In high school we turned Chevys into love machines, and I furnished my first apartment with crates and boards transformed into tables and shelves.

We humans are geniuses at repurposing. We take a thing and apply it for the purpose that we require of it, even if that is not the purpose for which it was intended. And we come up with some pretty terrific solutions.

But sometimes, we repurpose something accidentally. We actually think we are using it correctly, when in fact, our failure to understand its essential purpose means that we are under-utilizing it.

This is what has happened with websites. Here are a few examples:

The company that spends $40,000 on a custom website design to have a look that is unlike anyone else's.  Only to have to redesign the website from scratch two or three years later because the look is no longer current.

The small business owner who puts off his website design for months on end, because he has a "look" in his head and he's determined to achieve it. In the meantime, his online business suffers due to outdated technology and appearance.

The woman who loves minimalism - in her home, in her office, in her wardrobe - and insists that the website for her business mimic the same minimalism in its design - even though her business demands that a lot of information be shared.

What thinker/philosopher Marshall McLuhan taught us nearly 40 years ago was that we must employ each medium in a manner consistent with its inherent qualities and the way people use it. His point was that you couldn't separate the message from the medium (i.e., the medium is the message). Take billboards (please).  A billboard is designed to be read while driving by at 55+  mph.  You could certainly write a novel on one, but nobody would be able to read it. To use a billboard well, you have to think about what the user is doing when they encounter the medium (driving), whether or not the viewer can react instantly to the information (yes if it's to get off at the next exit, not as likely if it's to make an appointment), and what the user most appreciates in the billboard medium (tidbits of entertainment that can be fully digested in milliseconds). The physical reality of the billboard and the experience of the people viewing it are an essential part of the message itself. To use a billboard well, the message must be crafted in very specific ways.

The same thing is true of radio. Unless you have your own radio program, your options for reaching a radio audience consist of 15-, 30-, and 45-second spots. The medium requires that the message be fully understood without the use of visuals. The medium requires very tight writing. If the radio station is a music/entertainment station, the message has a better chance of being heard if it is itself entertaining. If the station is information-based, then an information-based message is likely to be effective. As with the billboard, the medium of radio plays a fundamental role in its message.

The concept of the website was developed by graphic designers excited about wireframes and by business visionaries excited about possibilities. And rightly so. But now it's time for us to be more thoughtful about the medium and how it interplays with the message.

Every type of website you can imagine - from a film studio to an accounting firm, from a music label to an online store - must provide content to its users. This is what people want from a website. They don't expect the website to give them a reflexology session, they don't expect it to repair their car, or test them for strep. Content. Information.

The information can come in the form of video, articles, infographics, pictures, social media streams. blogs, podcasts, and online flipbooks. Many of those content types are highly visual in nature. But here's where business owners often get off track - the website itself isn't a work of visual art. In fact, most websites - given what they need to accomplish - don't need to be very artful at all. They are containers for a broad range of content - content the consumers of your products and services want to access in order to cultivate the desire they need to make the decision to buy.  And when the container gets in the way - either by being too much the center of attention or by taking too long to achieve - it undermines the real purpose of the website.

Think about it in terms of a retail store. A store is a physical reality, a room or a series of rooms in an architectural structure. The structure itself needs to accommodate the store - space for safes with floors strong enough to hold them, space for displays and consumer floor traffic, counters, cabinets, offices, and bathrooms. Some physical spaces are very elaborate and some are plain, but at the end of the day they are just physical spaces with conduits, plumbing, drywall, and flooring.

What ultimately makes the space is the information you put inside it. The information includes display cases, the products within display cases, the colors of the paint,  light fixtures, lounge furniture, publications on display, signage, scents, sounds, and tactical experiences. The most magnificent architecture in the world won't compensate for poorly planned information inside the store.

The information in your website includes products, expanded information about products, company information, fonts, feeds from related content, embedded videos and graphics, interactive/social content, wish lists, ask-an-expert forums, and the shopping experience. The fanciest wire-frame design and most pricey website graphics in the world will not compensate for poorly planned - or missing - information.

Unlike real estate, the architecture of web design is changing rapidly. The conventions that looked good four years ago look stale today.  The designs that look appealing today will be out-of-date again soon. And though most of us know it's too expensive to give our real estate a face lift every other year, the stakes for not maintaining a contemporary look on a website are high.

Is there a solution? Yes, there is. It's to stop spending all this money on custom websites! I imagine a lot of graphic designers are cursing me right now, but as far as small business owners are concerned, custom websites are a waste of money - and they are not necessary. You can create a website in Magento, Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress with complete confidence that the underlying technology will continue to evolve. That means you don't have to invest in that evolution (though I strongly recommend providing some financial support to the open source community you commit to).

But what about the design? you ask. First, remember that design means a lot of things. The beauty of the design of each of these open source web platforms is the functionality, the ease with which you can integrate them with extra functionality, their tight integration with databases, and their constant evolution. And yes, design also means the look of the user interface.

If you take an open source program like Magento, Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress, then pay a designer to create a custom front-end design for it, you are still throwing money out the window. Why? Because the next time you want to update your look, you will have to pay for additional custom design. The next time your core software takes a technological leap (which is happening every few years), you will have to pay for more custom design.  The next time website styles change (which is happening every other year), you will have to pay for additional custom design.

Instead, use a design template made by a company who is making its money developing templates. Not just any template. Don't buy any one-hit wonders. Buy the template from a company like Infortis or Yoothemes, a company that is dedicated to updating its templates and keeping them relevant and functioning with the current technology. A company that is staying on top of - or even setting the trend for - what is hot in website design. Then pay a website expert to tweak and tune that template to match the colors, fonts, and essential feeling of your brand.

Now it's the designer end of my customer base that's in a dead faint. "But I make beautiful jewelry! My website has to convey my design ethos!" one says. "I am known in the fashion world as a fashion adviser. My site has to convey my fashion sense!" But is that true?

When you advertise in a magazine, does your ad pop up in 3D to show your design ethos? Or do you simply choose colors and a layout that express your brand in a consistent manner? Because print ads are terrible at being anything but one-dimensional, though they are terrific at showing a photograph of amazing design.

When you run a radio spot, does your spot appear to be adorned in fashionable clothing? Or do you simply choose words and music that express your brand in a consistent manner? Because radio is absolutely awful at showing anything visual, but it can do a terrific job of conveying a message.

When we expect any medium to achieve things for which it wasn't designed -or that the cost of achieving isn't worth - the medium, and therefore the message, is undermined.

If you look at some of the most powerful, profitable websites, you will see that the design isn't particularly noteworthy. Amazon isn't that great to look at, but it is the king of all content providers. Lands End's design elements begin and end with simple navy blue elements, but they sure do sell a lot of clothing and home goods. The website for the Art Institute of Chicago has exceedingly basic design elements, but the website performs beautifully and looks beautiful because they use images to convey the mood.  There is nothing designerly or artiste about Jeff Koons' website, but it does a terrific job of sharing information about his body of work.

The underlying promise -and therefore, the message - of websites is content, experience, information, engagement. To sacrifice any of those things for an idea of the prettiest, funkiest, coolest, or most luxurious graphic design is to undermine the medium. To pay $50,000 for a look when you could have spent far far less and put the rest of the budget into content development is to undermine both the medium and your business. And to spend precious marketing dollars on elements that don't ultimately bring value to your business or meaning to your message is unwise.

Learn to use each medium for the purpose it serves best. Use the print medium to engage the visual senses and convey color and richness in a way that cheap monitors cannot. Use video, film, and television to tell big stories. Use billboards and social media to deliver snackable content. Use radio to speak directly to your customers and engage the sense of hearing. And use your websites as a container for all those exciting elements - and more. More information, more detail, more engagement, more content. Stop trying to make the body into a dress. After all, in the case of the website, it's what's inside that counts.

Thoughts on avoiding knock-off designer jewelry for custom jewelers

The subject of whose idea was it anyway is a sore one in the world of jewelry design. Designers throw their life savings and energy into creating a jewelry line, and worry (with good reason) about being knocked off. When they try to get a design patent, it’s nearly impossible. Why? Because it’s difficult to prove an original concept in a medium that has been well-documented for thousands of years. So how do we address the issue of knock-off designer jewelry?

Here’s the advice I give my design clients: Do what you do better than anyone else. Refine your designer aesthetic so it is clearly your own. Design cohesive collections that will work well at retail. Establish yourself as a quality, reliable manufacturer and service organization. And keep innovating – within your specific and identifiable design aesthetic – to ensure a steady supply of new, exciting products. Sure, someone will likely copy you at some point, but your strong business model will protect you against one – or even a dozen – individual knockoffs of your line.

Enter the Custom Jeweler

For the most part designers have come to accept this reality, even if it bites from time to time. They realize the one sure way to stay ahead of competitors is to keep innovating and improving. But there’s another area of possible infringement that is grayer than being knocked off by another jewelry designer, and that’s the design role of custom jewelers, particularly custom jewelers carrying designer lines.

I am often asked by sales staff and managers at retail stores producing custom work to tell them how to handle consumers asking for designer knock-offs. From a designer perspective, it’s a simple answer (absolutely not!). From the retailer’s perspective the problem is more complex; it involves everything from dealing with a tricky customer issue to being able to recognize the request for what it is.

The problem presents itself like this. A customer looks (often extensively) at the designer jewelry in the showcase (or online, or at another showroom). Next, the customer asks to speak with someone about creating a custom design. And she says something like:

“I’d like a ring. I want it to be made of yellow gold, but a really bright, rich yellow gold. And can you give the surface a really textured finish, like maybe with a lot of fine hatchy lines in it, but still shiny? Also, I like those rough looking diamonds, in gray or black. And maybe a lot of the little square gray diamonds set in a channel around the band. And when you set the big diamond, I don’t want those prongy things. I want the metal that comes up all around the main diamond like a tiny wall, matching the shape of the diamond.”

Oh, you want a Todd Reed ring?

The customer is often a lot less subtle. “I have an antique locket. Can you clean it up and put it on a chain like those lockets from Just Jules, and maybe add a few gemstones to the chain like she does?”

When the request is a blatant attempt to knock-off a designer at a lower price, a jeweler with integrity always says no. A good jeweler usually knows – or can find out – what their client has been looking at prior to the request – their jewelry inspiration. If it’s clear that the customer wants a custom-made designer knock-off, the response must be clear. “That look is the result of a designer pouring his heart and probably all his finances into creating it. My store will always honor that and will never copy it.”

Sometimes the request is less cut-and-dried. For instance, maybe someone absolutely loves the hammered look on the Pamela Froman jewelry, but doesn’t like the scale or design style. On the one hand, Pamela’s finish is a deeper, somewhat chiseled finish – in my opinion more distinctive than most hammered metal finishes. On the other hand, history is filled with examples of hammered metal finishes. As long as the jeweler seeks to create something entirely different, with the only similarity being a hammered finish, this can be an ethical choice. I view this as an example of a customer using a designer’s technique to express an element that they appreciate but for which they do not have the words (i.e., “hammered finish”).

I Made That Years Ago

If there’s one thing I hear over and over in retail stores – and which I admit sets my teeth on edge – it’s a custom jeweler looking at a piece of a designer’s collection and saying, “well that’s not original. I made something like that 10 (15, 25, 30) years ago!” (if you’ve said this, don’t cringe too much – I’ve heard it from at least several dozen custom jewelers by now). Well, that may be so, but one item with a similar element or look is hardly an example of preceding a designer’s entire design aesthetic. Most people who have made jewelry for any period of time will eventually create a version of just about everything.

So what’s the difference between a having on occasion designed with byzantine elements (mixed precious metals, mixed colored gemstones, scrollwork, granulation, talismans) and, say, Chanel’s 2010 Paris-Byzance collection? Well mainly, it’s the word collection. The Paris-Byzance collection is the result of a very intentional act of using Byzantine elements to create a cohesive and entirely self-contained grouping of jewelry (and apparel in this example). So to knock-off a piece of jewelry from that collection isn’t simply to draw a similar page from history. When a designer creates a cohesive collection using historical elements, they augment history.

What’s a Custom Jeweler to Do?

One of the most important things we can do is create a strong sense in our communities of being trustworthy. Even if the occasional customer doesn’t appreciate being told no (and will invariably find a less ethical jeweler who will accommodate them), word will get around that your jewelry store is the one that can be trusted. That’s worth more than any one commission. But that just addresses the risk of saying no.

What about the more challenging problem of recognizing when you’re being asked to create a knockoff? It’s impossible to know all the designer jewelry lines on the market. But it’s also essential for anyone in the jewelry industry to be particularly curious about and interested in the work that is being created, so one of the best tools in your toolbox is to be informed. Even if you don’t carry designer goods (though why wouldn’t you?) shop the designer areas of jewelry trade shows, look at designer news in jewelry trade magazines, watch particularly savvy designer retailers like Gump’s, Ylang 23 and I Gorman, and study your craft. And at the very least, it’s easy to ask a customer where they got their idea from.

Learn to distinguish (and make sure your staff knows how to distinguish) the difference between a request for a knock-off and a request for an element using a designer’s work as an example. You’ve chosen to be in the jewelry business, so let’s all be serious about jewelry. If you can’t immediately think of other examples of a particular technique or design element, do some research. If something is truly unique, be prepared to say you won’t copy it, and suggest to the customer that they invest in the real deal.

Most of the custom jewelers I know take immense pride in creating custom jewelry that fits within the design aesthetic and standards of their own shop, and wouldn’t be at all satisfied with simply knocking of someone else’s work.  And perhaps this overview of how to think about the designer/knockoff issue will prove to be useful as you continue to refine and promote your very own designs and brand.

To Succeed in Business, You Need to Play the Long Game

 In this six-minute video, Andrea Hill talks about the importance of using your marketing strategy to build a long game of exponential value.

 Transcript

I’m thinking a lot the past few days about how hard it is to play the long game in business. It requires several things most people lack: trust in the future, confidence about their choices, and patience. The requirement for a long-game is true in many areas of your business, but nowhere is it more stark than in the area of creating a meaningful online marketing presence.

When social media first hit the scene in 2007-2008, we were all struck by the instant-ness of it all. I think of an idea, I write it, I publish it. I come up with an idea for a visual, I turn it into a graphic, I post it. Fast, fast fast, right? The problem, is that the ability to produce and post things quickly has nothing to do with creating customer awareness or becoming a fixture of their consciousness. That is slow work, tedious work, and it takes a long time to see results. Because in today’s marketing environment, success isn’t measured by how many messages you can blast out to the public, but by how many meaningful links you can create that will bring a searching public back to you. Let me say that again, because what I just described to you is the most basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Success isn’t measured by how many messages you can blast out to the public, but by how many meaningful links you can create that will bring a searching public back to you. When we talk about telling stories online, when we talk about creating rich content, what we’re talking about is all the words and phrases you bake into your website that will help a searching person find a product or a service you offer. And that takes time.

Time isn’t the only thing – it also requires a strong CMS website. It requires the creation of lots of good content across articles and products and promotions on your website, and it requires patience as you build out that content over time, and that content gets turned into links by search engines. But time . . . time is the thing that most small business owners underestimate. After all, in the past, you could run a radio ad, and a few people would come in off the street as a result of it. You could run a TV ad or a newspaper ad, and you could see pretty quickly if there was a response. You can run those same ads today, and you might even have a few people respond. The problem is that today’s consumers are completely distracted by whatever is happening on their smart phone, they are inundated with marketing messages everywhere they look and listen, and they aren’t “shopping around” for products like they did in the past. They do their shopping online, and then – if they like what they see – they come into the store to buy (and yes, 90% of all purchases are still happening in a store).

In a recent report on retail, the NRF, or National Retail Federation, reminded its membership that it’s not about “online versus retail.” It’s about “retail dependance on online.”  Today’s consumers see online marketing as a seamless part of their retail experience, as they search online for products, knowledge, and references, and then seek products out in stores and in-person. And, how do those consumers FIND your business so you can be the store they walk into? Using search. They search for what they seek, they drill into the links that show the most promise, they check out the ratings and reviews of the seller and the products, and then they decide where to go to buy. The creation of that website content, leading to meaningful links, takes time. The creation of a strong system of references and reviews – which we call Social Proof – takes time. And patience. And more time.

But here’s the interesting thing. In the first two or three months, it feels like you are doing a lot of work for absolutely no results. Then, in the four to six month range, you start to see tiny benefits, but it’s hard to trust them. Then, if you’ve been super disciplined and continued to develop content despite the fear and frustration, at around one year you really start to see results. They begin to build slowly and steadily.

When I first started my blog in 2006, I had a grand total of three readers, and I was related to all three of them. Now, 13 years later, my blog drives thousands of visitors per day to my websites. All those blog posts over all those years serve as links to my online presence. I don’t pay for any advertising beyond my blog, because the rich content I have put on the internet is all the marketing I need. Of course, 13 years is a long time. You won’t have to wait that long to see results – and if you are selling jewelry or other luxury goods, you will need other marketing tools besides a blog. I just use that as an example of the exponential power of rich content.

What you need to remember is that a year or two is not very much time at all. You also need to remember that this IS the way marketing and selling work now. So if you haven’t already, you need to commit to a long game of content creation, so that a year from now, you have already made significant progress. After all – the time is going to go by either way. What do you want to have to show for your business’s marketing presence when next year rolls around?

Ever share a great idea and get... crickets?

It may not be the idea. It could easily be the frame.

When you come up with an idea outside the usual frameworks or structures... when it doesn't look like something people are familiar with, or follow familiar rules... people often don't know how to think about it.

The brain likes patterns. Known shapes. Clear comparisons.
No pattern = no traction.

I'm sure thousands of million-dollar-ideas have been abandoned because a person of influence didn't 'get it'.

So if you've done the work of assessing your idea*, and you're pretty sure it's good, don't let other people's ho-hum reactions cause you to lose your mojo. Press on! Give yourself permission to be the only one that 'gets it', and maybe your idea won't be one of the million-dollar-ideas lost to history.