April 8, 2024

Happy Monday!

Here’s the Business Buzz with A Helpful Trend, Tip, Tool, and

a Hot Take from HiveThink to help you this week.

01 HiveTrend - McDonald’s Serving Krispy Kreme Donuts? (The Rise Of Unexpected Business Partnerships)

🍩 Yes, you read it right. They’re rolling them out in phases. These fresh, but not hot, donuts will be delivered daily to McDonald’s. This is huge partnership, and it’s not the only one.

Absolut x Ocean Spray

Olive (nail art) x Coleen Hoover (fiction author)

Eggo x HomeToGo (breakfast inspired getaway)

etc.

Not only do the companies get to promote each other with every purchase, but the novelty of what they’re doing drums up it’s own interest.

“They did THAT with THEM?”

Makes me wonder what cool Chattanooga versions of this could be…

02 HiveTip - How To Start Conversations In Professional Settings

When communicating in a professional setting (but really any serious conversation), it can be helpful to start off by speaking your intent. Cast vision for what success looks like at the end of the discussion.

🖼️ This can set the frame of the conversation, helping everyone know what is on or off topic, ultimately helping you get the result you’re looking for.

Here’s the basic structure guideline (the middle two can switch around depending on what makes more sense):

Hello.

Context.

Desired outcome.

Transition into it.

Here’s a couple examples below to help make it more concrete.

Example 1: “Hey Sarah, thanks for meeting with me. The purpose of this conversation is to walk away with a concrete set of to-do’s to move forward that website project this week. I feel like we got pulled away from the project to handle all those space bears, but I think it’s time to get back to it. It’s a win if you and I both have specific action items we can work on for this week. Make sense?… Great! Let’s get started.

Example 2: “Hey John, I feel like there’s been some tension in the office with your team ever since that day we all watched Jumanji in the break room. My hope with this conversation is to figure out if that’s the case, and if so, figure out how to resolve any issues. Does that sound reasonable? Awesome, let’s jump into it.”

Now go have some productive conversations!

03 HiveTool - The Visual Dashboard

The more areas of responsibility you have, the more potential there is to feel overwhelmed and drop the ball.

One solution is to reduce the amount of things you are responsible for, but what if that isn’t possible (or you just can’t help yourself but add more things to your plate)?🤩 Enter the visual dashboard. It’s really simple.

1. Get a real whiteboard or a digital one like Miro, Freeform, Obsidian, etc.

2. Create and title a section for each of your according areas.

3. Put important things to not forget in each section.

Now you can see all the major things in one glance.

Here’s an example below using Obsidian.

There’s no right or wrong way. Do a “bad” version, and then make improvements to fit your life. You got this!

04 HiveTake - Principles First, Then Tactics

“If you understand principles, you can create tactics. If you are dependent on perishable tactics, you are always at a disadvantage.”

Tim Ferris - Tools Of Titans

This is especially true in the world of business and marketing. Having a good grasp on the principles can help you cut through all the noise and make informed decisions for how to move forward.

Principles first, then tactics.

Until next time,

The HiveThink Team

P.S. Startup Heroes is back with our first amazing guest of the season! In this episode we hear Hudson Brock’s story of starting AlloHire, advice on business and leadership, as well as dive into some of what makes Chattanooga great!

Listen here.

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