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.

Chapter One: The Value of Effective Communication

At Noteworthy Communications, our mission is to create conversation around the success of others. No aspect of what we do could be accomplished without the power of effective communication.

In our modern world with seemingly endless ways to stay in contact with each other, the ability to communicate effectively is often taken for granted. However, just like any other marketable skill, communication is something that must be honed over time. For many, that starts in the classroom.

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Communication is Talent

The Association of Departments of English released a report in 2018, “A Changing Major: The Report of the 2016–17 ADE Ad Hoc Committee on the English Major,” which highlighted how English departments in colleges and universities across the United States have expanded to include multiple tracks, such as rhetoric and composition, creative writing, professional writing, and technical writing. According to this study, writing-intensive courses are among the most commonly required across all majors.

Educators realize that no matter what course of study or career path someone chooses, the ability to impart accurate information succinctly is a key talent that only makes someone more attractive in a job market that had never been more competitive. Skillful communication is always vital, whatever the field.

Even still, there’s a stigma surrounding academic majors that focus on this skillset. So often, the humanities are pitted against STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), as if one is inherently more valuable than the other, when in fact, society would come to a screeching halt without them both.

Someone has to write our favorite books, films, and binge-worthy television shows. Even if that never happens for some, a writing student could still go on to write the grant proposal that brings a life-saving program to a community non-profit, or manage the social media account of a Fortune 500 company and reach millions, or go on to launch their own small business in that very industry of communications.

The communications field is a boundless one, limited only by our own small-mindedness. Studying the craft of writing, even if it’s not their declared major, will reap only benefits for any student. Young people are often discouraged away from this field because there’s a stubborn stereotype of “the starving artist,” that a humanities concentration is not reliable or profitable in the job market.

This is narrow-minded, old-fashioned thinking, although it is understandable why the stereotype persists. Communication is a skillset that seems less tangible than, perhaps, civil engineering. However, it’s possible that what appears as intangibility is, in fact, flexibility. Employers will always need effective communicators, across all industries. The ability to expertly communicate is pertinent in any field, so while writing students may be mocked for their impractical choice, we know that their options post-graduation are limitless.

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Communication is Respect

In any personal or professional relationship, one of the easiest ways to show the most basic level of respect is to communicate openly. When that pathway becomes blocked, for whatever reason, the worth of that relationship is undoubtedly brought into question. Whether our feelings are based on concrete evidence or a gut instinct, we have learned to recognize when someone is not being completely honest with us, and that inevitably alters the relationship in a negative way moving forward.

Honest communication is plain old common courtesy. Making an effort to demonstrate that courtesy on a regular basis, and in a thoughtful manner, goes a long way in strengthening a personal or professional relationship, whether that relationship is new or old, or in the early courting stage. Consistent communication is a sign that this relationship is a valued one, and that the needs of all parties are being met.

This holds true in the home, in the workplace, and with our customers. Consumers are intelligent, especially when it comes to where they invest their hard-earned money and their trust. An unrestricted pathway of communication is the surest way to build a solid, lasting relationship between a business and their customers.

Having a genuine message, and a strategy for how to share that message with the world, is the foundation upon which customer trust and loyalty are built. A communications plan is a vital aspect of any overall business plan. Without it, a business leaves itself vulnerable to missed opportunities.

A business is more than the product or service they sell to clients. A business is also the quality of the relationship they nurture with their employees and their clients, and that is rooted first and foremost in their choice to communicate. Communication has the power to set expectations, and the goal should be for high expectations that are repeatedly met.

Different people, different businesses, and different subject matter all require different approaches to communication. Finding what works to accommodate all of these aspects of a communications plan is exactly what a professional brings to the conversation. We have the techniques to communicate effectively, but the willingness to communicate openly stems first from the business owner or manager. They set the tone, either positively or negatively.

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Communication is Connection

As the world evolves, so does our communication. We’ve seen it with generational slang that falls in and out of style, as well as the abbreviated language of text messages. Emojis are the hieroglyphics of our evermore virtual world. The use of translators and closed captioning have become standard inclusions in telecasting, because whether we’re watching a press conference on international policy or killing time with funny videos, why should any of us miss a single word?

Communication is what bonds us all together and provides opportunities for genuine connection. Words transcend time and space, quite literally. We study texts written by philosophers who have been gone for centuries and keep in contact with loved ones across oceans and continents. Communication proves what resides in our hearts, as well as in our minds. The words we share today are the record we leave behind forever and will be our voice long after we can no longer speak for ourselves.

The stories we decide are noteworthy have the ability to become immortal, if we so choose. There’s a heavy responsibility in that notion, one that we as individuals or as organizations should never dismiss when crafting our message or our brand. Communication is powerful, both in what we say and how we say it.

We recognize that the sentiments we choose to share with the world proclaim who we are and what we care about. That’s why it’s so vital to communicate wisely, and that’s why Noteworthy Communications came into being. We work with organizations to refine the message they want to share with the world and utilize all the tools at their disposal to do so creatively, responsibly, and consistently.

Communication is the foundation for everything we do and how we all interact with each other. Overlooking its potential can mean the difference between a business that a community wants to rally around, or one that gets lost in a world of endless other options.

For Noteworthy Communications, there are no other options. Our business, and our passion, is creating conversation around your success, because the value of effective communication should never be underestimated.