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Productive Marketing Requires a Productive Office

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Maybe it’s because home decor is on sale this time of year. Or maybe it’s because I recently relocated my office. Whatever the reason, I’ve lately been obsessing over home offices. Yes, I know this is a marketing newsletter, but to do good marketing, one definitely needs a good office. 

Functional, Not Fancy

There’s a plethora of information online for creating a functional home office. While each business requires workspace specific to its industry, here are five essentials for every office:

  1. Dedicated and personalized workspace
  2. Desk and ample work surface
  3. Ergonomic chair
  4. Reliable high speed internet
  5. Good lighting (preferably natural)

Want to see how I supercharged my new home office? It’s nothing fancy. Nonetheless, I’ve put together a space that works for me and keeps me motivated. Take a look. 

LET’s WORK TOGETHER

What I’m Working On This Month

January’s winter pace is usually slower, giving me time for Adunate updates. Not this year. I’ve taken on two new clients; one has me learning zoning laws, the other COVID safety. Stay tuned!

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. What’s in your trunk could save your life: one columnist’s thoughts after Virginia’s highway shutdown on January 3.
  2. Growing your business and working from home, a conversation with Erin Ogden of Ogden, Glazer and Schaefer. 
  3. The Seed Keeper, a novel by Diane Wilson. A Dakota family’s struggle for preservation, meaningful because it takes place in my Minnesota college town. 
  4. What I Learned From a Lynching Survivor About Anger: An excellent speaker, one from whom we can all learn.
NOT SUBSCRIBED? LET’s Do This!

Collaborate With Your Competitors? You Bet!

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My husband and I just returned from our annual Octoberfest Brewery Tour. This year we took our sipping and scenery to Charleston, SC, and it was glorious! 

Businesses Working Together

In one of Charleston’s lesser known but rising neighborhoods is the Charleston Brewery District. It’s a community of ten breweries “sharing their love of beer with the Lowcountry,” as they like to boast. It’s also an example of savvy entrepreneurs working together to create a tourist hotspot, benefitting both their businesses and their community.

Used with permission from the Charleston Brewery District

Creative Collaboration

Tarah Gee, president of the Charleston Brewery District, says there are many advantages to working together. Two innovative ideas rocking it for both the breweries and the community: 

  • Free Shuttle
    The ten breweries have chipped in to provide a free shuttle every Saturday. Beer enthusiasts ride from brewery to brewery, sampling and enjoying.
     
  • Keep Charleston Beautiful
    Once a month, the breweries take turns hosting a neighborhood clean-up. The breweries provide the bags and volunteers provide the umph. Afterward, everyone gathers for a beer. 

What about you? How can you and your competitors work together? 

LET’s WORK TOGETHER

What I’m Working On This Month

Join me November 4 as I present an inspiring workshop for the Women Food & Ag Network. Here’s the scoop!

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. It takes a team, even in the craft beer industry.
  2. October was National Women’s Small Business Month: Two women forge their way and help others to do the same.
  3. What makes Wisconsin special: One brewery’s pandemic business model.
  4. Are predicted shortages stressing your gift plans? Give an Ice Age Trail poster.
NOT SUBSCRIBED? LET’s Do This!

The Sweet Freedom of Your Own Business

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There’s so much to love about winter—glistening beauty, outdoor adventures, indoor coziness. But if there’s one thing we all really love, it’s the END of winter.

a.k.a. Maple Syrup Season

Since I’m relatively new to syruping, I appreciate learning from social media groups. There you’ll find tappers of every kind, from a single tree in their urban backyard to thousands in rural forests. You’ve got your traditionalists hanging buckets and your enterprisers stringing tubal lines. You’ve got your watchkeepers over heat-induced evaporators and your innovators pushing the process with reverse osmosis.

Me? I’m thrilled with my six taps drip, drip, dripping into old-fashioned buckets and I happily stoke wood into our even-more-old-fashioned, not-at-all-efficient, outdoor fireplace. Yet, I’m hinting to my engineering peeps that a home-fabricated RO system sure would be interesting.

When it comes to maple syruping, I’m definitely my own girl. 

Speaking of Sweetness

In a recent workshop, I showcased Hilary Kearny, of Girl Next Door Honey. She’s a savvy business woman and is brilliant in branding herself to her profitable customers. 

When I asked Hilary about her tactics, she admitted: “If I’m totally honest, I was mostly just celebrating my own freedom to make my business and branding whatever I wanted.”

Celebrating your own freedom. Isn’t that simply the best?

Running a business is like tapping for syrup: there are many ways to do it. But in the end, your business is YOUR business. Celebrate the freedom to make it whatever you want it to be!

What I’m Working On This Month

As mentioned above, I recently presented a marketing workshop for the Women Food & Ag Network (WFAN) for its “Stories that Sell: A Robust Communications Toolkit for Sustainable Ag Farmers and Ranchers.”

Be sure to follow WFAN for upcoming podcasts, videos, webinars and handouts. 

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. Family Recipe: A poetic video of family, ingredients, and blending together.
  2. No Ordinary Woman, by Janice Sanford Beck. Outdoor adventures—my own and other’s— have saved me from winter/pandemic blahs. Looking forward to reading this for my book club.
  3. Emily Ford—another amazing woman—has been hiking Wisconsin’s 1200-mile Ice Age Trail through since December 28.
  4. 13 Ways to Launch a Food Business of Your Dreams: by Bon Appétit. 

Pickles, Pumpkins, and the Pandemic Pivot

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This year, for whatever reason (let’s just blame COVID), we had a horrible cucumber crop. But we had green beans galore, so we pickled dillies instead. We lost all our pumpkins to beetles. But we had a glorious peach crop, so I’ll buy a pie pumpkin for Thanksgiving and serve cobblers the following months.

Our summer gardening mimics the change in direction many businesses have recently taken. Call it the Pandemic Pivot, if you will, it’s the dance businesses large and small have done in order to survive these past seven months. It’s the steps they may have to continue for the next seven months. 

How’s business been for you? What might you need to do differently next year? Now’s a good time to take a reality check.

What I’m Working On This Month

Ever wonder why some businesses get all the media attention? I’m putting together a workshop that answers just that. Check out the Women’s Farm & Ag Network Annual Conference and sign up for “Create a Media Kit that Brings Publicity to Your Farm.”

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. The Land Remembers, by Ben Logan.This month would have been his centennial birthday. A great memoir of growing up on the farm in the 1920-30s in Driftless Wisconsin.
  2. Young Blood Beer Co. Their business plan was to open a taproom, then COVID hit. In their words, they “revised,” “adjusted,” and accepted “it is what it is.”
  3. Octoberfest Brewery Tour. Every year we take an annual “celebration of sipping and scenery.” This year we’re social distancing on the North Shores.
  4. Revisiting Carole Cadwalladr’s still-relevant TED Talk. “It’s not about left or right…it’s about whether it’s actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again.” 

Celebrating Fat Tuesday with Sense of Place

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You know how you walk into a local bakery and the aroma of fresh baking fills your soul to its deepest depths? That was my husband and me this last weekend as we followed the Wisconsin Foodie trail in Sheboygan. Stepping into the first bakery was an aaah-romatic indulgence of Paczki. Coming upon the second was a heavenly whiff of hard rolls before we even walked through the door. Oh, how I swoon.

Good Smells, Good Marketing

They say good smells are good marketing. In truth, tapping into all the human senses is good marketing and our weekend getaway was a perfect example. Think cozy lights welcoming us as we arrived at our B&B. Or a friendly hubbub at the local foods cafe. All of these absorbed together created a memorable image of Sheboygan, an image which, jargonly speaking, can be referred to as “sense of place.”

Defining Sense of Place

Sense of place is the impression we get from a place. It’s the look, the feel, the sounds—it’s the complete physical and emotional lens through which we experience a place. 

When it comes to your business, sense of place is equally important. It’s an element of your brand. Whether it’s your venue, your website, your logo…they all evoke a sense of place.

NEED HELP WITH YOUR SENSE OF PLACE?

What I’m Working on This Month

I was proud to participate in an upcoming toolkit called “Amplify Our Voices: Connecting Organic Women Farmers with the Media.” It’s put together by Renewing The Countryside and coming out soon. Join their newsletter! 

What I’m Tuned Into This Month

  1. Paczki Day! Everyone is Polish on Paczki Day, so Happy Fat Tuesday to all!
     
  2. Gastrophysics, Charles Spence. A little science-heavy for my right brain, but interesting nonetheless. Eating is multi-sensory, meaning there’s truth to Good Smells, Good Marketing. 
     
  3. “At Berea College, Students Craft a Bright Future, Tuition-Free,” Are you a maker deciding on colleges? Interesting article from an equally interesting magazine.
     
  4. The Corner Table Podcast: Food Photography, A beef farmer recently lamented that the food photographer he hired altered his meat presentations, leaving them inedible. Yep, sorry, but I bet they looked tasty good in the photos. I’m suggesting he listen to this podcast.