Here are 5 ways we helped Dream Centers improve their messaging:

Made the Donor the Hero
On their old website, Dream Centers walked through how they as an organization would help solve the problem of homelessness, but didn’t give donors a place in the story story. Although talking about the problem is necessary, they neglected to talk about the important role of donors/volunteers. As a result, visitors to the website didn’t feel excited or compelled to join the mission, but were left with questions of how their donations would help.

Every month we like to share business advice with you, make you laugh and show you what we’ve been enjoying this past month. So here are our Loves, Learns and Laughs for May 2017.

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Loves
Around these parts we are pretty obsessed with our pets. Cats and dogs alike, all animals are welcome here. We even get very partial custody of our officemate’s dog, Banner. Banner days are always the best days. Here are the pets we currently love.

You read the title right, stop being so focused on how much you need customers. You may have seen a decline in sales recently, but you don’t want current or potential customers to know, so you have to stay cool as a cucumber. Grasping for customers can turn a lot of potentials away and make current customers question their loyalty.

Here are 3 reasons to stop needing customers:

Desperation is unattractive
If you approach an interaction with a potential customer feeling desperate about landing them, you’ll often look desperate and make compromises you wouldn’t normally make. Whether you’re dating, selling a product or networking, desperation doesn’t look good on anyone. You likely don’t know you look desperate, but if you’re quick to offer discounts, fast to schedule appointments or respond to emails in a matter of minutes, you may just be giving off the air of desperation.

It’s time to retrain your brain. Understand your company won’t crash and burn because you don’t land this one customer. It’s not the customer’s responsibility to keep your company alive, it’s yours. Remember taking on the wrong customers or clients is never the right decision.

We love writing. Well, more specifically our Social Media Guru and Content Creator, Keely (oh hey, that’s me!), loves writing. But as with all true loves, nothing is perfect. Writing comes with it’s fair share of ups and downs and can feel overwhelming, exhilarating and make you want to bang your head against a wall all in the the course of an hour. From researching to writing to editing, we’ve covered it all in this roundup of gifs.

Here are our 16 GIFs content creators and writers everywhere will relate to:

When you submit content for editing…

Every month we like to share business advice with you, make you laugh and show you what we’ve been enjoying this past month. So here are our Loves, Learns and Laughs for April 2017.

(PSST get this and more in your inbox each month! Sign up for our mailing list today!)

Loves
We are loving the “spring weather’’ in Colorado. Nothing beats 80s one week and snow the next. As we natives like to say, “If you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait a minute.”

We also love snacks, gotta satisfy that 2:30 craving. We’ve been keeping some Boom Chicka Pop in the office to share when we’re feeling especially snacky. They have so many flavors to try, we haven't even made a dent! What flavor looks good to you?

The internet has revolutionized the world of retail. What used to require a high upfront cost to build out a store now requires as little as a few clicks and some nice photos to get yourself up and running. Of course selling online is never quite that simple and does require investment in promotion. If you’re ready to dive in as an online retailer there are a handful of solutions at your disposal. Here are a few to help you decide which path you would like to take.

Here are our top 5 online store solutions for small retailers:

Shopify
Shopify is one of the newest store solutions on the market. This is a good solution for a business who is looking to sell primarily online. Depending on the level you sign up for, Shopify will handle everything from marketing and payments to providing secure checkout and shipping! Shopify allows you to have your store on Facebook, on your website and in person. You can select a theme to match your brand from the hundreds provided.

In January LinkedIn released its biggest update since it’s birth 14 years ago. In case you haven’t logged in recently, we wanted to give you a breakdown of some LinkedIn’s recent changes. So go ahead and login, accept all those connection requests, and take a look around.

Here are 6 big changes to LinkedIn’s new user interface:

A New Feed
When you login you’ll see the changes right away. Look how different your feed looks. The feed is a bit cleaner and updates from your connections and business you follow are far more prominent than before. You are still able to post update right from this page, with the added feature of adjusting privacy settings. You can decide who will see your updates by clicking on the drop down just to the left of the post option. While you can limit who sees your posts, we recommend you keep these public to get the most reach.

We know, we know. The snooze button is oh so tempting, just another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes. While it may feel restful to keeping hitting snooze, it’s actually a bad habit to keep. By waking up earlier and having extra time in the morning, you’re able to start your day off on the right foot, peacefully.

Here are 7 morning habits everyone should keep:

Wake Up Early
The first step to a great morning of course is to give yourself time, which for most will mean waking up early -- and not to get straight to work. Wake up and give yourself at least an hour to get your day started BEFORE you dive into your email. This is time for you and your family. You’ll be able to watch the news, read a book, workout, make breakfast and not feel rushed as you head out the door.

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
-Walt Disney

There is little doubt Uncle Walt and his “nine old men” revolutionized the film industry while creating some of the most memorable (and profitable) characters. After the success of Disney films Walt stood back, admiring the recently built impossibility, and gained a sense of accomplishment.

While this level of success is unlikely to be replicated, there are commonalities found in teams who have changes industries.

Here are some tips for building a high performing team:

Be Selective
The right players produce the right results, and the right results are worth the investment in the right players. Jim Collins famously calls this, “First Who, Then What.” Focusing first on having the needed skills, experience, mindsets and abilities sets the strongest foundation to achieve. This means being selective. It is arguably the single largest lever in building a high performing team.

Whether is costs more, you have to wait longer, or you need to negotiate with talent, the investment is worth building the right team.