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As we pivot closer to reopening the local economy, area business owners of all sizes are encouraged to learn more about the latest marketing methods, as The Mount Airy News is hosting a free virtual marketing workshop May 6.

Were excited to bring digital marketing leader Mike Martoccia to our local business owners, Sandra Hurley, Regional Publisher for the newspaper, said.

The virtual workshop How To Effectively Market Your Business In Todays Challenging Times offers business owners one of two time slots, 9 a.m. or 1 p.m. Space is limited, so area business owners are asked to reserve their spot in the virtual webinar as soon as possible, by contacting Regional Advertising Director Serena Bowman at 336-415-4631 or by email at serena.bowman@mtairynews.com.

Martoccia, who has assisted more than 30,000 businesses in growing their revenue and customer base, will present the latest and most effective ways that businesses should be using to market their products and services. Hell cover targeted digital, search and social media marketing, as well as effective ways to use promotions, e-mail and other methods. Were excited to get on Mikes schedule at a time when local businesses are struggling to know the best steps, Hurley said. Were sure everyone will come away with ideas, and learn new ways to share their message during the free webinar.

The 45-minute virtual workshop will also include a few regional marketing opportunities that area business owners can quickly activate to ensure they are staying relevant now and as pandemic restrictions ease up in each community.

Martoccia adds its important to remember that you cant totally stop advertising and marketing in a crisis, because it will take a lot longer to rebuild your presence and brand once consumers re-emerge. Well show everyone what they should be doing now to keep their place in the market and how to keep generating customer revenue, whether it be from a storefront or purely from their websites and social media networks. Those registered, and attending the webinar, will receive a free digital analysis.

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Free online business seminar coming up Thursday - Mount Airy News

MAY 2, 2020

IN HIS 2020 State of the Union address, President Donald J. Trump called upon Congress to support his budget that would provide vocational education in every single high school in the United States. Early in his administration, Trump authorized the secretaries of Commerce and Labor to promote apprenticeships in fields such as manufacturing, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and health care. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has enjoined states to act boldly and break down the silos that exist between education and industry.

Democrats are just as enthusiastic about the federal government funding career and technical education (CTE) programs, including through the Perkins Act. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called upon the country to ensure that all students [] have access to career training that will provide a path to a good-paying job, and Senator Bernie Sanders says that it is in the national and economic interest to ensure that every young American may enter a CTE program, which was the only education issue that received bipartisan support in the 2018 midterm elections.

Stephen F. Hamiltons Career Pathways for All Youth: Lessons from the School-to-Work Movement is a helpful guide to making sense of the current American discussion about career pathways, a term that covers apprenticeships, CTE, tech talent pipelines, and other initiatives to make public education focus on preparing young people for jobs.

Early in his book, Hamilton mentions a mother who protested the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 by saying: My daughter isnt going to work. Shes going to college. Hamilton calls this statement a distortion of the school-to-work idea, now rebranded as career pathways. But he is not able to explain how this mother is wrong. If policy makers create a national career pathway system, then college as commonly understood will become a privilege of the wealthy and the beneficiaries of their largesse. Everybody else will be placed in a vocational pipeline from which there is no easy escape.

Why create career pathways? Why not just let young people go to school, learn about different topics, mature, and then once they graduate from high school or college look for a job? Hamilton argues that young people need a vocational focus from an early age in order to become productive workers, nurturing family members, and active citizens.

This is the most powerful justification for career pathways. Poverty makes everything harder: buying a house, starting a family, running for office, and so forth. Career pathways have the potential to teach young people, including in historically disadvantaged groups, the skills they need to enter and remain in the middle class. This is particularly true when young people pursue what American Enterprise Institute researcher Nat Malkus calls new era fields such as engineering, computer science, and health care, in contrast to traditional fields such as manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture.

Businesses also have good reason to support career pathways. Rather than post job openings and cross their fingers for qualified applicants, employers can build an education/training pipeline to meet the current and projected shortage of middle-skill workers. Throughout his book, Hamilton describes companies such as Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and a South Carolina restaurant called SNOB that have profitably used apprenticeships. Apprenticeships seem to be a win-win for individuals and businesses.

It appears that Hamilton wants taxpayers to pick up the tab for training workers. Is the task of public education simply to raise worker bees?

If things stay as they are, Hamilton replies, then many public schools are preparing many young people for low-skill, low-wage jobs. Career pathways prepare young people for high-skill, high-wage jobs, and they may help reduce racial and economic inequality. It seems more precise, however, to say that career pathways may pull some people out of poverty. As the economist Thomas Piketty has shown, in the new gilded age the rate on return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth. In other words, skilled workers will make more money, but employers of skilled workers will make even more money. The gap between the one percent and everybody else may widen in a new era of CTE.

Skeptics may wonder whether career pathways are a way for employers to use schools to create obedient, useful workers. Hamilton thinks that this perspective does not give enough credit to employers, who value independent thinking and willingness to identify and advocate for improved working conditions and procedures.

I would like to register my doubts about Hamiltons rosy picture of employers. In high school, I worked as a merchandise stocker at a cosmetics store. My job was to open and break down boxes and place supplies on shelves. The only time I had alone was in the bathroom, during the half-hour lunch break, and in a 15-minute break after four hours of work. My high school teachers encouraged and challenged me to think for himself. At work, I had to follow orders or be fired.

Hamilton wants to end the independence that educators have from workforce training. In one disturbing passage, Hamilton corrects the misperception that children under the age of 18 are not allowed to be employed in a factory. Apprentices are allowed to do work age sixteen that is otherwise limited to people who are at least eighteen. It is incredible, in the 21st century, for an educated person to advocate 16-year-olds working in factories. Young people in a democracy should have the chance to pursue their dreams, not be assigned a job track after middle school.

What the United States has now, according to Hamilton, is a congeries of programs that should be coordinated into a system. In Brooklyn, New York, P-TECH high school partners with IBM to place its graduates in entry-level jobs at the company. The schools curriculum is based on skills mapping, that is, providing the academic, technical, personal, and social competencies with a specific job in mind.

In Californias Long Beach Unified School District, whose student body is 57.3 percent Latino, students enter high school having made a choice about a career pathway. This choice is informed by workplace visits, guest speakers, and counseling while in middle school.

The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce has provided students with opportunities to apprentice at auto parts manufacturers including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Michelin.

While Hamilton thinks that all of these programs are promising, he maintains the country needs a career pathways system that links secondary education, postsecondary education, and careers rather than isolated programs. So how do we get there from here?

According to Hamilton, federal, state, and regional governments should fund and regulate career pathways. Schools must adjust to the new reality of a work-focused education system, including by awarding microcredentials, or badges, to signal mastery of specific skills, rather than focusing on four-year college degrees. Hamilton directs much of his advice, however, to the business community to change the American education system.

Businesses could offer ad hoc apprenticeships, but it would be better for Hamilton if they worked together to create a talent pipeline. Talent pipeline management produces a well-calibrated supply of applicants whose credentials help employers identify which are appropriately qualified. Hamilton identifies the United States Chamber of Commerce as a leader in this effort. Rather than compete against each other for talented workers, businesses can cooperate to train and identify a sufficient number of skilled employees.

Throughout Career Pathways for All Youth, Hamilton acknowledges that the American education/training system should respect the interests of each individual young person. A career pathways system must comport with Americans values and aspirations. Like Hamilton, I believe that young people learn by doing things with their hands, that there are benefits to learning about different career paths, and that schools should help young people attain a rewarding occupation.

Nonetheless, Hamilton insists that young people should not be free to choose careers for which there is not a sufficient number of jobs in the region. If tax-supported schools persistently turn out far more auto mechanics or cosmetologists than the labor market can absorb, they are misguiding students and wasting resources. Say that a child dreams about acting on Broadway, playing professional basketball, or becoming a liberal arts professor? In Hamiltons scheme, these doors would be closed from an early age unless the parents can afford to send them to private school. Despite his claims about wanting to reduce racial and economic inequality, Hamilton is helping to create an oligarchic education system, one where only the rich kids are encouraged and prepared to lead the kind of life that they want.

In the appendix, Hamilton lists dozens of people he interviewed for this book, including people who work for the California State University Chancellors Office, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, IBM, United States Chamber of Commerce, Apprenticeship Carolina, and so forth. But Hamilton does not list any students or families who have gone through a career pipeline. This book is informed by, and speaks to, the economic and political elite, not the people affected by these plans.

One of the groups praised in the book, Jobs for the Future, received a $3 million grant from the Walmart Foundation to improve job training programs in the transportation, distribution, and logistics industry. Despite the rhetoric of preparing young people for a vocation, career pathways enable companies to pay for the kind of education they want and little more.

Hamilton takes for granted that the economy is what it is and that education should prepare young people to fit into this arrangement. Schools could teach young people to understand the worlds, gain confidence in their right to change it, and then collaborate to create a more just economic regime. From a democratic perspective, Hamilton envisions a dystopian future in which corporations use public schools to create human cogs in the machine. The best private schools in the United States tailor the curriculum to the talents and interests of the students, regardless of whether there is an immediate economic payoff upon graduation. This is what all students deserve.

Hamilton realizes that many parents will become upset when they figure out that their dreams and aspirations for their children do not align with those of the architects of the career planning system. Hamilton recommends that advocates of career pathways examine and improve language: rather than say school to work, advocates can say school to career; instead of vocational education, proponents can call it career and technical education; instead of work-based learning, proponents can call it interning; rather than oppose the idea of college for all, redefine college to include career-related certification programs.

Hamilton does not entertain the possibility that parents have good reasons to oppose these plans. Social marketing expertise can help. Alas, social marketing cannot change the underlying dynamic that career pathways are creating an economic caste system in the United States. The country is moving toward an arrangement where rich kids get horse farms upon college graduation, and nearly everybody else is placed on a career pathway starting in high school. I stand with the mother who does not want this deal for her child.

Nicholas Tampio is professor of political science at Fordham University. He is the author of Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (2018).

Go here to read the rest:
Horse Farms and Career Pathways - lareviewofbooks

Jordans quick response to the COVID-19 outbreak has made many Jordanians, including myself, feel safe and proud. The prime minister and his cabinets response has been commended globally, as the epicenter in the country has been identified and contained. But at the same time, such accolades have been focused on the males, erasing the important role that Jordanian women have played in the response.

One such social media advertisement (Image 1) pays tribute to six male political figures titled the Jordanian Heroes. In the middle right is the prime minister surrounded by his ministerial cabinet members.

Image 1. The political advertisement featuring Jordans heroes

Missing from this ad, however, are two, if not more, of Jordans female ministerial cabinet members whose decisionmaking during the early days of the crisis was critical to the success of Jordans response: Minister of Energy and Natural Resources H.E. Hala Zawati, and Minister of Social Development H.E Basma Ishaqat. Zawati ensured that Jordans gasoline and diesel reserves were sufficient for the coming two months, while Ishaqat activated the network of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to distribute bread, vegetables, fruits, and other necessities amid the chaos. Neither minister has received public recognition remotely equivalent to their male counterparts.

Like the rest of the world managing the COVID-19 pandemic, Jordan is in the midst of history in the making, but actively erasing women from that history. A recent study in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region found that women constitute 44 percent of Jordans health sector workforce, higher than any other country in the MENA region. Among pharmacists, the percentage of women is even higher, with more than 66 percent female pharmacists. But despite these numbers, the health and social workers are excluded from decisionmaking bodies responding to COVID-19.

In my research as an Echidna Global Scholar, I concluded that images of women in the Jordanian national curriculum are a powerful conduit for teaching girls their place in societywhat scholars call a hidden curriculum that transmits dominant values and beliefs, including gender norms. The same can be said of gender bias in public images of women (or the lack thereof) during COVID-19. Just as gender bias in the curriculum can negatively affect girls participation in the labor force, so too can erasing women from Jordans COVID-19 response negatively influence womens political, economic, and social aspirations in a postcrisis society. Recognition of womens roles during a time of crisis not only empowers women but also helps Jordan become a more progressive society where equal value is placed on womens participation in the workforce and in leadership positions.

Using the same principles derived from my research, World of Lettersa social enterprise that works on content development and social marketinglaunched a social media campaign to highlight Jordanian womens contributions in responding to COVID-19. In contrast to the men in black advertisement above, we created images featuring Superman cloaked by Jordans flag, standing proudly alongside other Jordanians saluting the women on the front lines combating the virus as doctors, medical technicians, and nurses (Image 2).

Image 2. Superman saluting women in the health sector and those manufacturing protective masks during the COVID-19 crisis

Yet amid our attempts at creating counterimages that honored women, even we fell prey to depicting men as protectors and women as caretakers. In our deep sense of pride in our country, we unconsciously reverted to deeply held gender biases by embodying Jordan, the superman, as a man. Realizing this, World of Letters created new visuals with a superwoman (Image 3) saluting women leaders ranging from army pilots, scientists, and law enforcement agents. Our campaign of superwomen saluting these remarkable women leaders will continue until we can create a network of collective voices of women to catalyze change.

Image 3.Superman has been replaced by Superwoman saluting the pilot and the scientists

As we think about the many kinds of responses to the pandemic, we must bear in mind how gender roles portrayed during the crisis will continue once the COVID-19 storm settles. As companies struggle to remain operational, choices will be made on sustaining the workforce. Could erasing women in the COVID-19 response and the assumption about their primary role as caretakers justify the termination of womens participation in the labor market post-COVID-19?

Jordan needs to use this moment in history to actively recognize and value womens role in the economy.

Read more:
Recognizing womens important role in Jordans COVID-19 response - Brookings Institution

Did you know TNWs Couch Conference has a track fully dedicated to exploring new design trends this year? Check out the full Sprint program here.

Having started MING Labs in China in 2011, we have seen a big development from the old-internet world of overladen landing pages, to digital products of world-class defining design today. In parallel, we have seen the move from clunky desktop applications with small user bases, to the mobile-first B2C revolution to the rise of the super apps that are the new all-encompassing ecosystems in the market.

Throughout those major shifts in digital products and behaviors, some preferences have remained constant that differ from those in Western markets. Understanding what is actually different, and what is just a different stage of development, is an important factor when launching your product in the market. From key differences in UX requirements to the preference for larger ecosystems and a different understanding of value, China is unique in many aspects (as are other markets, to be sure).

Over the years, we have helped many startups and MNCs to launch their products, built and validated in their home markets, into the Chinese market.

We have thereby seen many of those differences in action and came to certain conclusions on what a good approach of scaling into China should be.

Read: [Good design should be inclusive and accessible but whats the difference?]

This article is therefore mainly aimed at those thinking about, tasked with, or actively working on expanding into the Chinese market, and who are wondering what that means for their digital products and services.

When launching in a new market that has some important dissimilarities from your home market, essentially you have three choices in product adaptation.

1. Minimal

At the very least you will have to translate the interface into Mandarin, to make your product accessible. Additionally, there might be certain legal requirements for your industry you will have to adapt to if you want to do business in China. Replacing certain pieces of technology might also be necessary, in order to get through the Great Firewall (many Western services are blocked).

2. Localized

At this stage, you might be redesigning the UX of your product to fit the local market tastes or you might port your product onto local platforms (such as the WeChat and Alibaba ecosystems). In the Marketing, you might also adapt your messaging to emphasize the points that would resonate more with Chinese customers.

3. China business

In some cases, it might be necessary or advantageous to pivot your target audience or business model, which will result in a very different way of doing business. Your core value creation might still be relevant, yet other parts of the business have to change drastically. We call this China Business as the local operations will be very dissimilar for your other operations in a China-focusedapproach.

The trade-off here is that with an increasing China customization you are reducing your Economies of Scale, as a very localized business will not be scalable into other markets and will need a lot of local, dedicated resources, whose learning you cant leverage in your global expansion. At the same time, a low level of customization will stay highly scalable, yet might not yield success as it is a very specific market.

That trade-off and the decision is by no means trivial. Finding a good answer typically requires taking on a beginners mindset (going back to the Exploration stage) and first testing your product and value proposition locally.

Assume that you have lost productmarket-fit as you enter China, and start over with an open mind, local research , and fast iterations to the right approach.

In the next parts, we will assume that you have come to your conclusion and you are opting for a Localized approach (as Minimal is straight-forward and China Business goes to Business Design). What exactly then are the differences in UX design and local platforms you should be aware of and adapt to?

Some of the preferences in design and interaction are rooted in Chinese culture. There are few things to be aware of that make a big difference:

1. Collectivism

On an international scoring of Individualistic versus Collectivistic cultures, China scores among the highest on the Collectivistic scale. This means that every context is about the group, the larger unit, and deviating from group norms or standing out is not desirable. Similarly, group approval and high degrees of communication and social context are important.

2. High-Context Culture

The Chinese culture, and also language, are very high-context. This means that every interaction needs to be seen through myriad lenses of context, instead of being taken at face value. In a low-context culture, a no is a no. In a high-context culture, it can mean ask again, not yet, not like this, have your boss ask me, lets have a drink first or many other things. The context of when it is said, how and by whom matters to understand the answer.

3. Chinese calligraphy

4. Complex Language

The Chinese language is low on grammatical complexity, yet very intense on the complexity of the vocabulary. There are over 20,000 characters in use and different combinations mean different things. Not only is it very tedious to type in Chinese (which means drawing characters or typing in Pinyin to find the right characters), but it is also impossible for search engines to understand whether you made a mistake in your query and suggest corrections.

These are substantial differences from the West and also from some other Asian cultures. And they invariably manifest in specific preferences from social interaction to communication styles and UX design.

The cultural differences manifest in different preferences regarding UX and service design, which produce the services you see on the Chinese internet today. While they often have Western inspirations or counterparts, they work differently in some key aspects. Including:

1. Practicality > Aesthetics

As typing Chinese is painful and auto-correct is not an option, websites are created to allow for browsing as the main behavior rather than searching. What that also means is that aggregating functionality is popular, as quantity and context make it seem useful rather than cluttered. From the early stages of the internet and the local differences, patterns have formed that are now deeply ingrained. Respect them, and do not try to enlighten them.

2. Social anywhere

Everything lives within a social context and the group is more important than the individual. Hence everyone is always connected and sharing. Wangwang is hugely important for Alibaba, because users dont trust the information on the website. They want to speak to people. Similarly, reviews are more trusted than in the West. Do not save on customer service. Always have ways of direct contact and chat available.

3. Everything connected

No experience exists in isolation, it is always embedded in a context and connected to everything else. O2O is a very important trend that has taken over in much of the physical space in China. The key is to remove friction and media breaks for the consumers and connect experiences in the most straightforward way possible. The most popular services in China are dynamic, lively, high-context, and interesting, offering discounts, games, and other interactions.

These are a few guiding principles to consider when redesigning your digital experience for China. Driven by cultural differences, these are expectations that exist with consumers today towards any product or service.

How you incorporate them is up to your creativity, and again we would recommend short and fast iteration/feedbackloops and a discovery mindset, rather than a big-bang design approach.

Any thoughts on product adaptations for China would be incomplete without the considerations of local platforms first and foremost super apps. These are applications owned by the biggest ecosystem players in China (Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent), which aggregate many different services into one touchpoint, offer foundational layers of identity and payments to tie them together, and allow for third parties to write small applications that can be pulled into that powerful context.

As their platforms essentially monopolize consumer attention across verticals, the companies owning them generally let new trends play out, invest in them, and later buy them out. Therefore, creating larger and larger kingdoms that lock in consumers. They are therefore a great distribution channel and are very open to partner with and enable new entrants. It also means that without them, you are facing a heavy up-hill battle.

Of course, there are trade-offsto be aware of. Where on Amazon you run the risk of the marketplace introducing their own brand of products to price you out, Alibaba essentially owns the consumer and their data, with a stark indifference to who wins the battle for their wallet. If you enter with a novel product, Chinese competitors will soon copy you and there is no one to protect you from it.

In terms of platforms, probably everyone is more or less familiar with WeChat and Alipay. Some of the key ecosystems that are open to a degree to integrate with. The way to get in there, except for acquisition, are mini-programs. This is a rising trend of apps-in-apps that are becoming very important for business.

Mini programs account for the majority of customer interaction already in all major consumers verticals. They have only really been launched in their current shape about over a year ago but are taking over quickly. They are becoming entry points into engagement with brands from shared content, over quick entry to the official accounts. Mini programs are the new beachhead to customer interaction.

They are not great for retention. Usually, they underperform other owned touchpoints, such as native apps and web applications, in terms of retention. Tencent has invested a lot of effort to make them stickier and they are improving already. With high barriers to get people to install native apps though, Mini Programs are a great entry point to then lead people over to install native apps.

Mini programs are ideal for simple and low-frequency use cases. Entry is easy, retention is low. Yet they are powerful at mitigating media breaks and reducing friction. So, identifying the right use case is key. Like order to the table at a restaurant. The more complex or frequent a use case is, the stronger the need for an app or web app.

In China, customer preferences pivot quickly, and markets move fast.

Competition is happening at a breakneck pace, with todays lauded innovation being the next spectacular failure tomorrow. To successfully launch into this environment, it is paramount to keep an explorers mindset, be aware of underlying foundational differences, and iterate quickly. And to keep iterating and adapting even after a successful launch, as the market and the customers will keep moving on, in a country where change has been the only constant for decades.

This article was originally published on uxdesign.cc

Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.

For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.

The rest is here:
How to adapt your product's UX for the Chinese market - The Next Web

As an engineer, Elizabeth Davis helped plan the construction of Porsches North American headquarters in Hapeville, Georgia and was on the team that built the MGM Casino at the National Harbor in Washington, D.C.

But when she wasnt working, Davis, now 34, loved spending time on an entirely different interest: Hair. In a perpetual quest for longer locks, Davis would mix up natural elixirs and other products she made with herbs, essential oils and Ayurvedic products at her home.

After testing her recipes on herself and her friends and finding they worked, Davis turned her passion into a side business called Shedavi. Registering the company with the state of Georgia in 2014, she worked on it during every spare moment. It took me time to develop the product, get the branding done and do all of the basic things I needed to launch, she says.

Engineer Elizabeth Davis turned her passion for long, healthy hair into a beauty brand called ... [+] Shedavi.

In 2016, she began selling her first products, a hair and scalp elixir and a vitamin to support healthy hair. Customers snapped them up. Davis has since grown the luxury hair care brandwhich sells vegan products such as shampoo, styling products and vitaminsto a seven figure, one-person business with close to 65,000 followers on Instagram.

Davis is part of a growing trend toward solo entrepreneurs bringing in seven-figure revenues. The U.S. Census Bureau found that the number of nonemployer firmsthose staffed only by the ownerswith revenue in the $1-2.49 million range reached 36,984 in 2017, up 38% from 2011, when it was 26,744.

Million-dollar, one-person businesses are subject to the same economic forces as other small businesses, and Davis has had to navigate the tough conditions COVID-19 has brought.But her propensity for planning has helped her keep the business thriving since the coronavirus struck. Shes added a detailed order tracking system to make sure customers know where their products are until theyre delivered and stays in close communication with her fulfillment center daily to make sure orders are delivered in a timely manner. One early decisionto make all of her products in the U.S.has made logistics easier during the crisis.

Fortunately, sales havent slowed at a time many people need to look polished on back-to-back Zoom callsor want a pick-me-up to look forward to. Since people are home, they are engaging in more self-care rituals, Davis says.

Heres a look at how she built her business.

Embrace your personal passions.When Davis was working as an engineer, she knew she wanted to start her own business, but there was one problem: I didnt know what it was going to be, she recalls.

Davis let the idea of entrepreneurship percolate and stayed open to clues from her daily life on what direction to take. As she tested her hair products on herself and her friendsand found that they workedit dawned on her that she was already working on the business, even though part of her resisted the idea that a business could be this much fun. A hair care business sounds too easy or too good to be truebut thats what I did, she says.

In 2014, she made a commitment to turn the idea into a business and formally registered it with the state of Georgia under the name Shedavi.

Stretch your savings. Although Davis had saved up about six months of living and business expenses prior to launch, she didnt want to burn through it quickly.

To make her money last, she turned to two credit cards with zero percent interest deals for 18 months. That gave her about $25,000 to spend on research and development, buying raw goods, tools and packaging, and work on branding.

All I had to do was make a minimum payment on my credit card, she says. She paid off the balance once she started making sales.

Still, Daviss budget was limited. Instead of renting a commercial facility to create her first batch of hair products, she mixed them up in her kitchen. That was where she made the first 1,000 units of her first product, a hair and scalp elixir, pouring it into bottles she ordered online from a packaging store and adding labels from a label company.

One decision Davis made that gave her an edge in the crowded and competitive beauty field was custom formulating her hair products. The most important thing is to distinguish yourself, she says. Even though my products are natural and Ayurvedic, they are unique. No one else is selling my product.

Vitamins cant be made in a home kitchen, under health and safety laws. To make sure her products were made properly, Davis used part of her budget to hire an FDA-approved factory.

Use all of your talents. Although Davis worked as an engineer, shed always had an eye for design and loved to draw, studying architecture her first year at Florida A&M University. When it came time to create her white and gold packaging, she tapped that hidden talent and began sketching her ideas before having a graphic designer finalize the look of the logo and product. I wanted the packaging to be gorgeous, she recalls. I wanted it to look clean, simple and clear but I also wanted it to have a luxurious side to it.

Build a freelance team.Although she did get involved in package design, Davis didnt try to do everything herself. When she needed a graphic designer, social media manager, videographer and digital marketing manager, she turned to freelance professionals, finding them through word-of-mouth and recommendations from her network and even on Instagram.

Although her team was made up for freelancers, she focused on building long-term relationships with them. Its not like a one-off thing, she says. I work with them consistently.

Start your social media work early. Long before she had a product to sell, Davis put up an Instagram page where she shared tips and information about healthy hair. By the time she introduced her hair and scalp elixir and the vitamin, she had attracted 10,000 followers who shared her passion for hair.

Having an audience helped her as she did a countdown to the release of her first product. I put videos together myself on how to use the product, she recalls. We distributed them through social marketing channels. Thats how I was able to get so many people.

Embrace outsourcing.Like many solo entrepreneurs, Davis wasnt in a position to open her own factoryso she did the next best thing and turned to an outsourced manufacturer called a co-packer to make the formulas and put them into the bottles she designed. This gave her access to the manufacturers knowledge and experience, reducing the learning curve and newbie mistakes.

Thats something I recommend initially, says Davis. When you first start your business, you should probably outsource.

When it came time to ship her products, Davis didnt pack them up in boxes herself to mail them to consumers. She found an outsourced partner that does third-party logistics, or 3PL, so she could concentrate on building the brand.

Market smart.When Davis first started selling her first products the elixir and vitamin February 2016, it was only to her family and friends and a then relatively small Instagram following. She brought in about $2,000 the first weekend after her product launch, where she and used a digital and video marketing strategy to promote it.

Shedavi picked up traction quickly. Rather than focus on selling her products bottle by $25 bottle, Davis looked for ways to group them according to her customers needs, which helped in selling more products. Her first kit was the Hair Starter Bundle ($49). Customers like the recommendation and prescription of the bundle, she says. They know the bundle caters toward their specific problem or issues.

From February 2016 to February 2017, Shedavi brought in about $1 million in revenue per year, and Davis has grown business since then, she says.

Take time to decompress.Prior to COVID-19, Daviss escape from work was world travel. Shes hoping that shell be able to continue that passion once the crisis ends and its safe to hit the road. The last place I went to was South Africa, she says. Ill be going to Europe when were allowed to fly again.

See the original post:
This Engineers Passion For Healthy Hair Sparked A Million-Dollar, One-Person Business - Forbes