Aaron Hautala, Strateligent CEO, Presents Keynote at 2022 Iowa Trails Summit
BRAINERD – Aaron Hautala, CEO and Creative Director of Strateligent and destination development consultant, recently delivered the keynote address to a captive audience at the Iowa Trails Summit, an annual event that focuses on trail development topics including land acquisition, engineering, funding, maintenance, and marketing. “Aaron has a remarkable ability to connect with trail advocates through shared challenges and visions,” said Andrea Boulton, Trails and Greenways Director at INHF statewide trails coordinator. “In a matter of moments, he created a relationship with everyone in the audience and inspired them to not only consider what could be for their own communities, but also provided them with action...
Aaron Hautala, Strateligent CEO, becomes Certified Executive Coach
BRAINERD – Aaron Hautala, CEO and Creative Director of Strateligent, recently attended the Center for Executive Coaching in northern California, where he fulfilled the requirements of the program and is now a Certified Executive Coach. The certification seminar was led by Michael Neuendorff who has been coaching since 2008 and is a professional certified coach with the International Coach Federation, as well as a faculty member of the Center for Executive Coaching. Neuendorff specializes in communication, achieving success in a new role, and building high-performance teams. “I chose to become a certified executive coach to ‘learn another language,’” said Hautala. “At Strateligent, we continually consult and advise...
What’s “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following?
Strateligent’s CEO and Creative Director Aaron Hautala recently presented during the local lunch segment of Leadercast, a nationally broadcast leadership seminar hosted locally by Sourcewell at Timbers Event Center in Staples, Minnesota. Approximately 70 local and regional leaders in education, non-profit, manufacturing, and healthcare, attended. This year’s Leadercast invited ten of the world’s most influential leaders to give a talk on “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following. Each host site also invited a respected community leader in the community to share their perspectives to local attendees. For Hautala, that one thing is building relationships. “Good leadership starts with building relationships—and those relationships make the...
7 ways to improve your hiring process with digital advertising
These days, many businesses are understaffed and struggling to find new talent. Gone are the days of placing an ad in the “Help Wanted” section of the local newspaper and receiving a flood of qualified applications. Fortunately, the digital tools you use for marketing your products and services can also be used to market your business as a top-notch employer. We’ve highlighted seven digital tools you can tap into to reach more candidates and fill positions. 1. Post job openings on your company careers page. If someone really wants to work for you, the first place they’re going to look for openings is on your website. Using...
3 Simple Questions to Help Understand the Future
Can you predict the future? Of course not. But you do have the ability to understand what your customers are currently thinking and to use that information to find out what we, as business owners, could all do to better serve them. Over the years we’ve seen countless surveys, but we’ve never received better customer feedback than when we’ve asked three simple questions. 1) What do you like? 2) What don’t you like? 3) What would you change? These can be hard questions to ask because sometimes you don’t want to hear the answers. But the only way to predict the future is to ask in the present and plan and improve accordingly. You...
Two minute tip to create Monday momentum
Every business can continue taking steps to strengthen customer confidence during the pandemic. Let’s look at these steps from the perspectives of three different types of business: 1) Business that are unable to be open. Think about what you’ve been doing while you’re not open. What plans have you been you working on to reopen or what new ideas do you have? Post these plans to social media daily and weekly so your customers can see your ideas and can begin to anticipate returning. 2) Businesses that are open but at reduced capacity. This type of business describes us at Strateligent. We’re open, but our daily work life...
Make money by saving money through the fine art of advocacy
Times are tough right now for small businesses—including ours. But you can be a financial advocate for your business and find ways to save money. Financial advocacy takes time—but a little bit of research, a few phone calls, a smile, and a “thank you” can be all it takes to reduce costs. During the Great Recession, we made a few changes that helped us stop leakage and save money—today we’re implementing some of those same changes to help weather this storm. Hopefully, these practical tips can help your business, too. CARES Act PPP Congress recently passed the CARES Act, which includes the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). This...
What are businesses able to do now?
There is no one-size-fits-all for businesses during the pandemic. Here are two areas of communication opportunity for essential businesses and those who are now operating through different procedures due to our shelter-in-place. What could businesses that are temporarily closed do? If people don’t see your new blog, story on Facebook or Instagram, or email blast, you’re not visible. If you’re not visible, you don’t exist within the mind of the consumer, and if you don’t exist, that potential customer cannot buy from you. Keep telling your stories. Continue to take active steps toward selling your partial or complete product inventory online. Continue to be digitally present by...
Planning for an uncertain future
Proactive is one of our company values. It gives us a path forward. It provides us the stability to look beyond the here and now and plan for an unseen future. As this is a challenge that many businesses are facing right now, we thought we’d share some practical steps that have helped us move forward and create a new normal. Staying informed through national and state news conferences. Watching news conferences won’t tell us how to do business, but it does give us information about how the world is changing around us, and how that might impact our business. Keeping an eye on what’s happening on...
8 tips to get your eStore up and running
Stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders have been crippling for many small, brick-and-mortar businesses—but all is not lost! With these safety guidelines comes an increasing demand for online shopping. An online eStore gives your loyal customers a convenient, new shopping experience. And, without the limits of a physical location, you can reach new customers, too. Setting up an eStore can be overwhelming, but once up and running, you can track buying habits, manage inventory, offer a 24/7 shopping experience, cut operating costs, and more. But how do you get started? Consider these tips: Pick an eCommerce platform that does it all. Our Strateligent web designers use WooCommerce. It...