Chapter Four: We Get What We Give

Over the past year, gratitude for certain industries and workers has ebbed and flowed with the priorities and frustrations of public opinion. Appreciation, however, should be a constant, a standard operating procedure in our personal and professional lives. We enjoy receiving appreciation, so why wouldn’t we want to share our appreciation with others whenever we can?

It would be only too simple to say we should show appreciation in our daily interactions just because it's a nice way to behave. Of course that's true, but as entrepreneurs, taking the time and making the effort to show genuine appreciation to the people who have touched our businesses in any small way can make all the difference in terms of lasting impact and overall success.

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Appreciation for Our Supporters

No one gets anywhere alone.

When a business first launches, there will be no bigger supporters than the family and friends of the person whose dream is coming to fruition. They were most likely the only supporters in the beginning, and they weren't cheerleading because they knew this business idea would become a huge success and take over the world. They were rooting for their loved one, plain and simple.

It is the people closest to us who give us our first vote of confidence when we take on a new challenge. When we overcome that challenge and realize we are stronger and smarter on the other side, we cannot lose our humility. We must be honest to anyone who will listen about who exactly provided their support in the early stages of our endeavors.

Who shared our content on social media to share their pride in us and further our reach? Who recommended our services to potential customers in their own friend group to help drum up business? Who offered a pep talk when we had doubts? These are the people who will always be on our team, whether we succeed or not, and we should let them know how much their support means to us every chance we get before we find ourselves standing alone with no one to celebrate with.

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Appreciation for Our Employees

No one builds anything alone.

As any endeavor grows and more employees are added to the team, appreciation should become even more of a priority in any business owner or manager’s daily life. Employees represent a team that if nurtured, respected, and encouraged properly, can go on to accomplish amazing feats, both for their employer and themselves.

Employees are people, and people can sense when they are not respected or appreciated, and their work will eventually grow to reflect that reality. A paycheck alone will not produce the result we desire if we do not make our relationships with those we hire a priority. Just as in personal relationships, if we take our employees for granted, it will only be a matter of time before they find someone new who will.

The workplace is where most of us spend 40-plus hours a week. That’s time away from our families, friends, and more entertaining pursuits. A paycheck is not enough to keep employees happy and dedicated. It is on us to make them feel valued and excited to show up every day and do good work, because they know they are showing up for someone who will show up for them and is rooting for them to succeed as well.

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Appreciation for Our Clients

No one maintains anything alone.

Our customers are looking for more than just a quality product. Superior customer service is just as important and will often be the factor that clients remember most and discuss with other potential clients. Showing appreciation for their trust in us and our services, and our willingness to be accessible to them, can make the difference between a potential client and a recurring client.

Businesses cannot survive without loyal customers, people who have such a good experience working with us that they just have to keep coming back for more. If we never bother to show our appreciation for those who keep us in business, we know that we won’t be in business for very long. We want to do well for people who we know genuinely appreciate our efforts.

Every interaction we have is an opportunity to show our gratitude and potentially make someone’s day. This is how positive relationships grow and last. A job well done deserves to be recognized. This is not about false praise or undue credit, but rather acknowledging the effort and quality of someone’s work, and, if nothing else, that they devoted their time to something shared between us.

As previously discussed in Chapter Three: What Happens When We Shop Local?, we learned how important relationship growth of all kinds can be for small businesses. Appreciation is a two-way street. We not only get what we give, but we have to remember to give what we get. When others support us, we cannot forget to return the gesture.

At Noteworthy Communications, we make an effort to show our appreciation in every communication we have with supporters, clients, vendors, or anyone else we may meet along the way. We want to be appreciated for our good work, and we want others to know we appreciate them. We build long-lasting relationships here at Noteworthy, and that often starts with “thank you.”

Chapter Three: What Happens When We Shop Local?

We have all heard a lot this past year about “shopping small” and “supporting local.” Of the many slogans and mantras that will define this time in history and the myriad ways people reacted, these were some of the more unifying phrases. As consumers, we collectively understand that when we shop local, our dollars are going right back into the community and provide opportunities for growth. As business owners, however, these opportunities are even greater.

Entrepreneurs make decisions every day about who they work with and where they source their needs. When it comes to the services or materials required to keep small companies afloat, business to business (B2B) transactions that prioritize other local companies are a vital link in the supply chain and in increasing the impact of local support.

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Network Growth

When local businesses partner with other local businesses, the opportunities for growth in our professional relationships are boundless. Whether for marketing or editorial services, such as what Noteworthy offers, or other day-to-day necessities, our vendors are the outside associates that keep our companies operating smoothly.

Recruiting vendors from within our own community allows for that personal service that is just impossible for larger corporations to match. When you have a question about an order or need to confirm a delivery, having the mobile number of your vendor at your disposal is certainly preferable to waiting on hold with an automated menu of options for an hour.

Working with other local entrepreneurs means that you are helping each other to achieve your goals. This all occurs as you are expanding your professional network. Referrals from trusted sources can be the lifeblood of any small business, and your vendors and fellow entrepreneurs can prove to be both a treasure trove of referrals for you and recommendations on your behalf to potential customers.

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Economic Growth

Choosing to spend our hard-earned money in local businesses, even if the price tag might be a little higher, is a long-term investment that ultimately comes back to us every day. We see the dividends in the number of jobs available in our community and the expansion of the local tax base, which allows for the funding and maintenance of public institutions such as schools, libraries, and emergency services, as well as infrastructure projects.

So often, the national economy is judged by components that rarely affect the average citizen, such as the stock market. The real wealth of a town, however, can be assessed by more practical measurements, such as the quality of the public roads or the variety of extracurriculars offered for students at every level of education. By shopping local, we can all help to keep the money local, too.

As individual members of a larger society, we all want to prosper and see that prosperity mirrored back to us when we step outside our front doors. This requires a committed investment and continuous economic circulation that powers our neighborhoods. When a town’s commerce is healthy, residents can sense it in any number of ways, from cleaner streets and safer neighborhoods to higher wages from local employers.

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Community Growth

Every town likes to tout its uniqueness as a matter of pride. Sometimes that unique quality comes through historic landmarks, or a beautiful mural, or a championship trophy, but when local businesses choose to partner with each other, that pride is evident everywhere.

A big box store offers variety and convenience, but a stroll through the business district can draw someone into the true personality of a community and the passion that drives its entrepreneurs. That is one of the key ingredients to any local flavor. All you must do is check out the sponsorship pages in the high school’s musical program or the billboards at the youth league park. This is really what keeps communities unique and thriving.

As previously discussed in Chapter Two: Making the Choice for Peace of Mind, choosing associates and partnerships that you will trust with your business is an important decision. However, these are also the foundation of the greater community spirit. As entrepreneurs, we must practice what we preach when we ask customers to support us by supporting local, and do the same when it is our business that requires assistance in our operations.

At Noteworthy Communications, we choose to make an impact locally through small B2B operating practices, and the more we do so, the more we come to discover and appreciate the hidden gems of our own community and the people that keep it running every day. As a business owner and as a consumer, this instills a sense of pride and comradery that we are working with people with similar goals.

Noteworthy Communications was born during a tumultuous time for small businesses, but we knew that was precisely why our services would be useful. We make it our mission to create positive conversation around the institutions that make our communities what they are, offering that personalized service unattainable by larger communications corporations to promote the hard work and passion of our neighbors in their own missions every day.

Chapter Two: Making the Choice for Peace of Mind

Whether starting a new business venture or expanding a business already decades into operation, there are always new challenges testing our capabilities. Understanding our inherent strengths, where we can work to improve our skillset, and when we need to ask for help from outside sources are all vital to the overall health of our businesses. Recognizing these different occasions can provide us some peace of mind, knowing we’re well-equipped to make the best decisions for our future success.

Although we have years of editorial and communications experience here at Noteworthy, establishing Noteworthy Communications as a limited liability company (LLC) was uncharted territory for us. That’s why opportunities for actively choosing peace of mind became integral landmarks on the road to successfully launching Noteworthy Communications LLC, and will continue to help keep Noteworthy thriving well into the future, even as new challenges arise.

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Hiring an Expert

When Noteworthy made the leap to become a full-fledged communications agency, we knew there were aspects of that transition that, no matter how much we researched and planned, we would not be sure how to navigate on our own. We knew that for our business to get the best start possible, we had to look to those who had expertise that we did not. In this case, that expertise was in business law.

Making the choice to hire someone whose sole responsibility was to make sure our limited liability company was quickly and smoothly registered with the state and that we had all our legal records in order gave us the peace of mind we needed in order to move forward with our launch. We could relax knowing that this particularly complicated, and yet necessary, aspect of Noteworthy’s beginning was in expert hands.

We paid for peace of mind and, in return, we felt protected and secure. We made the decision to seek legal advice from a qualified source, which then allowed us some mental clarity to focus on other crucial steps in launching our business that were more compatible with our long-term goals and which we would certainly have occasion to utilize over and over again.

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Becoming an Expert

Even though business law did not feel necessary to learn for ourselves in order for Noteworthy to become a success, it’s nearly impossible to start a project on this scale without acquiring some new knowledge or skillset. The key is recognizing what will be important to bring with you as your business develops. For us at Noteworthy, this new arena was web design.

We knew being able to design, build, and maintain our own website would be invaluable to us over years of operation. We did not want to have to rely on someone else to do this for us, so while our business attorney was working to get our limited liability company off the ground, we were researching which web hosting platform would best suit our needs and we took several days to teach ourselves how to build our website from scratch.

By choosing to become the experts ourselves, we still have that peace of mind of knowing that whenever we have an update to share with existing or potential clients or a layout change we want made to www.NoteworthyCommunications.org, we can handle this quickly and independently. Working hard to learn this new skill of web design did not only assist with our launch, but will continue to provide dividends for Noteworthy for years to come. This is a talent we hope to sustain well into the future.

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Curating an Expert Team

By knowing which tasks should be delegated to outside vendors and which are an opportunity to develop additional talents, we can have the peace of mind that our business’s needs are always being met by an expert team. This expert team can then work with the singular goal of contributing to our business’s health and growth, each team member bringing their own valuable skill to the conversation.

The skill we at Noteworthy Communications bring to your team of experts is the conversation itself. With our background in a wide range of communications and editorial services, we make it our mission to create positive conversation around your success.

As previously discussed in Chapter One: The Value of Effective Communication, not everyone possesses this particular skillset, although its importance should never be underestimated. So often, a business owner is too busy actually managing the business to think about social media content, fresh website or newsletter material, or even press outreach celebrating the very achievements they’ve worked so hard to realize.

Trusting someone to be a part of your expert team is not a small gesture. At Noteworthy Communications, we understand that it is our responsibility to provide that same peace of mind for our clients that others provided for us in different aspects of building our own business. New opportunities for learning will always present themselves, but recognizing when it’s time to bring a new expert to the team is a skill in and of itself for any entrepreneur.