Business By The Bay

Andrea believes that storytelling enables businesses to forge deeper connections with their markets. Rather than just explaining what products or services do, she emphasizes the need to elevate the brand’s message. She advises engaging with communication professionals who have industry experience, understand market sentiment, and maintain relationships with media contacts—key to getting the right stories placed.

Andrea highlights the importance of a cohesive message, warning that inconsistent stories can confuse audiences. Drawing on her journalism background, she understands how to position stories in ways that capture media interest. Andrea assists clients by developing PR strategies, crafting compelling narratives, executing outreach, and securing media coverage. 

She also recommends regularly evaluating your messaging to ensure it resonates and considering adjustments as necessary. Building a brand, she notes, is a long-term endeavor, where nurturing relationships is crucial to sustained success.

Many business leaders, particularly millennials, feel they aren’t receiving the development they need in today’s organizations. A significant leadership gap exists because many companies rely on generic online training or allocate a budget for personal development without proper guidance. Additionally, these organizations often lack a feedback loop and fail to establish a clear vision or foster a culture where teams can thrive. Monique emphasizes that building trust and ensuring psychological safety are essential for cultivating strong leadership and creating successful companies.

AI can significantly enhance employee productivity by enabling them to work faster and more efficiently. Despite some concerns about AI replacing human jobs, many employees have reported positive experiences with AI in the workplace. For instance, Steve notes that when his company conducts surveys, the overwhelming majority of employees, even those initially skeptical, express that AI has made them more effective, engaged, and productive.

Notably, AI is user-friendly for employees of varying technical abilities. Unlike learning a complex programming language, employees only need to learn how to communicate with AI, which they can do in everyday language.

However, accuracy is crucial, and one may think of AI as an intern—valuable for streamlining tasks, but still requiring oversight for critical work. Unlike a human intern who may tire of repetitive tasks, AI continuously improves with use.

As AI adoption accelerates, organizations must embrace it to stay competitive. Failing to do so could leave them lagging behind their more forward-thinking competitors.

Arnav and Vallabh, two high school students, have been dedicated to community service from a young age. Through their experiences, they discovered that helping others brings out the best in you. Motivated by this realization, they founded the non-profit organization "Open Arms Refugee" to address the harsh realities refugees face daily.

The journey was challenging, as reaching out to refugees proved difficult. Many are hesitant to meet strangers, struggle with English, and lack access to technology. Instead of simply providing short-term aid like food and supplies, Arnav and Vallabh focused on empowering refugees with education and resources for long-term impact. To better understand and assist refugees who have endured trauma, both earned certifications in emergency services and trauma care. They also partnered with other organizations to amplify their impact and raise awareness.

During our conversation, Arnav and Vallabh shared valuable lessons they've learned along the way: understand your audience, offer meaningful support, build partnerships within the community, step out of your comfort zone, and experience the joy of serving others.

Organizations strive to position themselves as trusted partners, aiming to attract and engage their ideal clients. Leveraging the power of storytelling through captivating videos is an effective way to stand out from the competition and showcase core values. Creating high-quality videos is very beneficial; however a well-planned marketing strategy is also crucial to maximize their impact and achieve the best results.

Stephanie emphasizes the importance of a solid process in producing compelling videos that feel natural and authentic. She dedicates significant time to preparation before filming to ensure every video aligns with this vision.

Caleb has worked with many businesses and he says that time is a challenge for business owners as they have too many things to look at. Having the right team to support the management makes it easier. In the initial phase, founders cannot afford an in-house HR person because there is not enough work. At the same time, when you are hiring your first employee or converting contractors to employees or moving beyond the initial core team, it is important to have HR support. Getting outsourced HR help is usually a good solution. For example, hundreds of employees at OneDigital are helping their clients with a variety of tasks like talent acquisition, onboarding, offboarding, being part of leadership meetings to make sure HR is in sync, management coaching, HR platform support, compliance, benchmarking of compensation & benefits, etc. Caleb believes that in order to be successful, it is better to keep messages simple and have conversations keeping in mind what is in it for the other party.

Vladmir built a 'get the job done and client first' culture from the time he started his outsourced IT company. He mentioned that many small business owners think that 'we are not at risk and one of us can handle our IT environment because we are good enough in using the technology or even have a friend who can help us'. Vladmir says that the important question a business should ask is that what would happen if their data is lost or compromised. If the answer is that it will be a big disaster and they are not confident in securing it internally, it is critical to hire an outsourced IT company.

Aman believes that there is a CRM available for every business owner. A professional integration consultant can help pick the right one because he or she will have experience of working with multiple CRM solutions. He thinks two common reasons CRM implementations fail are lack of standard operating process and top management not using the system themselves. He also sees that many struggling business owners are self employed and micro-manage most of the tasks. So they don't own businesses in a true sense. He suggests that to be successful and scale, it is better to macro manage.

Maile Collmer, president of northern California chapter of the National Speakers Association (NSA) was an introvert growing up and today she is an in-demand speaker and helping people become master networkers and generate a lot of referrals. She encourages people to hang around those who can inspire us to become better. NSA provides great environment for people to become better speakers. NSA hosts various events, podcasts and has an academy to provide excellent support to people who want to maximize their speaking potential.

One may contact Maile at https://contracosta.asentiv.com/our-team/ 

Business owners don't know what they don't know. Small business owners try to wear too many hats and there are areas where they are not good at. For example, financial literacy or tax laws are typically not the focus areas of business owners as most of the energy goes into the products or services they are offering. A conversation with an accounting professional is a must at the start because establishing the right business entity will have a significant financial impact. A good accounting professional should act as a trusted advisor, be truthful and should be willing to connect with the right experts in areas where he or she doesn't specialize in, and should also be a good communicator. Joe loves to discuss the possibilities of Section 1202 and R&D credits with his clients because these are great for eligible businesses. He believes that business owners should focus on doing themselves what they are good at. For rest of the things, hiring the right partners will add lots of value to the business.