Refine and Focus

We have a New Year’s gift for you.

Purnima is hosting a free, online guided workshop called
Strategic Stillness: Designing Your 2026 from the Inside Out

We're offering this because we see so many capable, thoughtful people trying to plan their future from urgency instead of clarity. Our best decisions come from stillness and pauses, when ambition and humanity are allowed to coexist.

This is not hustle-based goal setting.
It’s a calm, guided pause to listen for direction before making plans.

What to expect (55 minutes, online):
• Time to settle in and arrive
• A guided future vision meditation
• Gentle reflection with a thoughtful, impressive community

The workshop is free to attend.
We'll use a scheduling poll to find a time that works best for the group.

Share your availability here:
https://calendly.com/d/cx6z-63n-m22/designing-your-2026-from-the-inside-out-strategically

Once the time is finalized, you’ll receive simple prep instructions, the Zoom link, and an optional donation link for those who wish to support and sustain my community workshops.

More about Purnima here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnimathakre/

If you want your 2026 to feel intentional, aligned, and human, you’re welcome to join. Also welcome to share this info with those who would love to join.

Bad outputs stem from poor inputs. If your customer insights are inadequate, it will result in flawed product, branding, marketing, messaging, advertising, business strategy and even business model. To avoid failure, it's crucial to conduct customer research effectively and accurately.

In our last Livecast Purnima Thakre shared 5 common Customer Research mistakes and ways to avoid them - https://www.refineandfocus.com/post/customer-research-do-it-right-please-and-thank-you

Customer Research - Do It Right. Please and Thank You. Bad outputs stem from poor inputs. If your customer insights are inadequate, it will result in flawed product, branding, marketing, messaging, advertising, business strategy and even business model. To avoid failure, it's crucial to conduct customer research effectively and accurately. Here are 5 co...

Curious about our 2022 wins? See what we're proud of, what we're reading, what's new in our community in our December newsletter. Extra bonus: dancing pictures, fireside chat interviews, and a whole lot of celebration. Read on...

Link in bio! #2022

When was the last time you called any customer service and were helped immediately? It certainly wasn’t in the past 2 years. Why must we hold for hours, and once we finally get a hold of an agent, why does the service almost never meet our expectations?

To find out we asked a few business leaders to their “why” behind the current state of customer service. Combining their root cause with our expertise we developed 7 actionable tactics that will help you improve your customer service.

Join us for a LinkedIn Live session tomorrow at 4:30 pm EST to discuss and learn these tactics-link in the bio.

Calling all entrepreneurs and startup founders, this is your opportunity to be inspired. Hear from this who’ve been there and done it successfully.

Sushil Bhatia has had an incredible journey as an entrepreneur and innovator. He is a TiE Boston founder and President of JMD Manufacturing. In addition to his business success, Sushil is also an accomplished inventor and life coach. The chat will be moderated by Zach Braiker, Innovative Marketing Strategist and CEO of refine+focus. This promises to be an inspiring event, as Sushil will share his entrepreneurial journey and the lessons he has learned along the way.

Register today and see you there tomorrow!

Even after almost 3 years of our "new normal", customer service is still exasperating.

Customers expect instant resolution and customer service puts them on hold for hours. The gap between customer expectation and service is only widening with time. We asked business leaders about the "why" behind this widening gap. Here are the 10 reasons why they think customer service sucks.

You have been there holding the phone for hours, what do you think went wrong?

10 Reasons Why Customer Service Sucks Contributors - Purnima Thakre, Jiwoo Suh When was the last time you called any customer service and were helped immediately? It certainly wasn’t in the past 2 years. Why has customer service declined in the past 2 years? Why must we hold for hours, and once we finally get a hold of an agent, why d...

Asking right (and interesting) questions and having great conversations are art and science. Some people just know how to do it right. Our 3 friends and 3 of the most brilliant aviation and innovation strategists Ravi H. Singh, Chris Fernando and Basil Yap are a few of those people.

They made it so easy for us to share our thoughts and experiences on innovation, community, curiosity, learning and everything in-between and beyond in this latest episode of No U-Turn Podcast.

Listen in to enjoy and understand why we love what we do and how we do it. And also to know what to watch next on TV when you can't seem to find anything to watch. Yes! They covered it all. :)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-31-a-passion-for-community-and-innovation/id1536994324?i=1000579220635

Why are you waiting for lightning to strike when you could be harnessing the power of lightning itself? Bill Bernbach said, “It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.” Knowing your creative type can help your teams collaborate and reap the benefits for innovative ideas and better decision making. Take the quiz to learn your creative qualities and your best collaborator, tell us what you get: https://mycreativetype.com/

Creative Types by Adobe Create Everyone has a creative “type”—knowing yours helps you maximize your potential. Take our quiz to discover your type!

Investing resources in the right places is essential for thriving in a pandemic. Product and industry matter, but success has also been seen in unlikely places. A commonality among almost all unlikely success stories? Investing in digital marketing. In a stay at home environment, opportunities to engage customers have shifted to online platforms. But it isn’t just about having a webpage and maintaining a decent social media account, it’s about building online communities for your customers to immerse in your brand. Share an example of a business that thrived during the pandemic and tell us why.

These Businesses Thrived as Others Struggled to Survive As the pandemic ravaged small businesses across America, some were surprised — and conflicted — about their success.

Has the pandemic decreased or increased your creativity? For MrBeast, the idle restaurant kitchens of the pandemic provided a resource to make and package their own burgers for sale.

Innovative models like this show that business can thrive even in this challenging environment if leaders are opportunistic. But as with all innovation during the pandemic, we’re curious: Is this model the Uber of the restaurant business or an idea destined to fade after the pandemic?



https://www.strategyzer.com/blog/business-model-disruption-mrbeast-vs-mcdonalds

Business Model Disruption: MrBeast vs McDonalds Let's analyze the Virtual Dining Concept behind MrBeast’s Burgers, a new business with the potential to disrupt the fast food industry.