Are You Building a Community?

Last year, I spent a weekend with my daughter and her boyfriend at a Supernatural Convention in Chicago. If you’re not familiar with the TV show Supernatural it’s in its 13th season, largely due to the huge fan base that it has built and how vocal they are about the show and its very existence.…

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What’s In It for Me? A Summary of Social Impact Tax Reliefs

Interested in injecting an ethical component to your investing? Well, we have good news – with the SITR, you can have your cake and eat it too. So-called ‘impact investing,’ in which investors aim not only to make a return but also to make the world a better place through their investments, is a relatively new…

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How Companies Can Start Planting Roots in a Community

Consumers don’t favor Whole Foods over Walmart for reasons relating to the chains’ respective sizes or ubiquity — it’s because only the former serves as a catalyst to community. The competitive difference between the homogenous corporate paradigm embodied by Walmart and the community-centered model cultivated by Whole Foods grows increasingly stark. At Walmart, sterile interchangeability and…

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What is Your Marketing Doing to Develop a Better World?

Is your business solely focused on profit-making or does it try to make a social impact, too—aligning profits with purpose? What does social impact mean? “Social impact has become much more than just a business strategy—driven by Millennials, social impact is, instead, a way of life and a way of being in the world. It has undeniably…

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How to Embrace Brand Citizenship for Purpose and Profit

Any-sized business can practice social good. Yet, “businesses have traditionally looked to customers and employees to advocate for their brands. Today, the equation has flipped. More and more, customers and employees demand that brands advocate on their behalf, for the things that matter most to them.” Anne Bahr Thompson, the author of Do Good: Embracing Brand Citizenship…

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How to Make Big Money in a Small Town

When we imagine big businesses, we tend to imagine tall offices in impressive buildings at the center of some of the world’s most powerful cities: London, New York, Seoul, Sydney, and — if it’s a tech company — San Francisco. The idea is that, in order to thrive, your business needs to be located where…

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Give Back, Get Inspired: How Small Businesses Connect with Community

Community engagement can be a major determinant in business success – people prefer to work with companies that give back to their neighbors. But while there are plenty of mundane ways businesses can partner with the community, such as adopt-a-highway programs or volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, these activities often fail to make a long-term…

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6 Ways to Think Outside the Box for Customer Service

Small business owners have to be mindful of their customers. If they provide poor customer service, they will lose valuable business. If they neglect them, they will lose customers. If the customers are satisfied but are not acknowledged, owners will never know how they could improve their service. Thus, business owners must constantly find new…

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Investing in Your Community is a Big Investment in Your Business

As a small business owner, networking is a highly valuable tool for growing your business. This fact seems to be widely accepted. Yet many small business owners are unsure of how to successfully network within their community. Or worse, they don’t see the value in networking outside of areas where potential clients/customers are obvious. Looking…

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