QVIews

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I was at the Good Experience Live conference in New York. It was my fifth year to participate. New York was at its most beautiful with daffodils, tulips and fruit trees all blooming. I got spend time in some of my favorite neighborhoods, but this year I didn't take many…

Photo credit: Downtown Denizen by Adam Baker (AlphaTangoBravo on Flickr). “I went to my favorite spot to watch the International Space Station fly overhead. Alas, it was too cloudy to see anything. So, I decided to just check out the big city.”   Welcome to the Houston Inventory of the Creative Economy. Use this directory…

Long-term loyalty is based upon a sense of relaxed familiarity between a customer and a supplier. What can you do to make customers more comfortable? Humor can be fabulous for helping your customers recommend you to their friends. Just be careful about what type of humor you use. Mitch Earleywine says you should pick the…

When operating a business, when encouraging innovation, when recovering from setbacks, one of the biggest challenges is recognizing our incorrect assumptions. Day to day, they are almost invisible. But what if the answer were as simple as 'laugh more'? The Daily Beast: Neuroscience of Humor, 2011-Mar=31 by Sharon Begley Inside Jokes argues that mirth (the…

My husband is a financial strategy advisor, and one of his clients asked him to research a business opportunity that would solve a problem the client has. (Sorry I can't be more specific, but I've got to be fair to the client who may be onto something.)  My point is that many of the best…

I recommend reading the entire article for tips on strengthening communitities and culture.  Sanders Says: Always Build Community, 2011-March-11, by Tim Sanders Focus on the Why, not the What. Talk about the purpose behind our efforts, either at work or in transit. By placing vision or cause at the center of the table, we naturally…

Although advertising campaigns are problematic, the method of building a campaign holds true today. First you decide what you want your target audience to DO, then you figure out what will persuade them, then you find out what type of media they listen to, then you convey that message in the appropriate media, each part…

I promise this will be my last negative post for awhile, but it's so disheartening to see small business owners ruin their existing business relationships while they chase after new customers, and I see it too frequently. Here's how Scott McKain experienced it recently when he got a chair massage.  …when I said I didn’t…

The current rage for coupons frustrates me. Maybe it's just a by-product of economic anxiety, but it feels like the relationship between customer and supplier is cheapened beyond repair. I recently took advantage of a photographer who offered a discount opportunity. I wish she had been upfront with me that I was pushing it too…