AI has been around for many decades but it can feel like it just popped into the chat a year or two ago. The reality is that it’s been on our phones, on our computers, used in video game consoles, part of our smartTV’s and everything in between for decades. When you pull out your phone on an airplane to text your partner, “I love you” but you only had to type, “I lo” and your phone suggested the whole phrase, “I love you”...this is a form of artificial intelligence. Or perhaps when you were doing some online shopping and the place you were buying from recommended just the right item for you. This is a form of AI. See, you’ve been using it long before AI was a common term. It’s been around for many years and whether we recognize it or not it’s value has already been proven before it came into our awareness and it’s here to stay.

When I was younger, my dad used to tell me, “If your lips are moving, you aren't listening and if you aren’t listening, you aren’t learning.” Dad was right. But something that is important to note here is that there is a point in your career where something switches and you’re leading people, organizations and folks want to hear from you. See, they want to hear the tools you used to get over those struggles, they want to hear what it feels like to face and overcome the challenges you’ve come up to and they also want to learn from you as a person. So there comes a time in almost every leader's life where you should be speaking publicly.

Remember that time you had to work late? You’re sitting at your desk crushing through the work at hand, then you close your laptop, push your chair back into your desk, and emerge from your workspace. You stumble down the hallway and find your way into your dining room to find that your partner made your favorite meal, has an ice-cold one waiting for you, and your favorite record is playing at just the perfect volume.

A picture is worth a…you know the saying but what do your product images say about your brand? Do they tell a consistent story about what is inside of that bag of coffee or is it more of a mystery? We think about this often and it’s a very easy and relatively affordable way to increase trust between your roaster and your buyers as well as to increase overall sales.

Years ago, your website was a huge part of your brand and being visible to the world. Even just having a site on the world wide web legitimized businesses. But now, everyone and their brother has a website and this has forced some changes to how Google ranks sites and how websites perform. Moreover, user preferences and habits have changed pretty dramatically.

For years, I’ve been saying that your merch should be first cool, then marketing. It needs to be something that folks want to wear, use, take with them and moreover be seen in and with. If it’s cool, folks will wear it, use it and be seen in it…thus fulfilling the goal of said item…marketing that someone else paid for or was subsidized by the buyer.