This month was big for shipping. Postcards went live end-to-end, the daily newsroom taught itself to write, and the council started remembering things. The biggest piece: community-2500 postcards are real now. You can design, order, and mail them. No more beta. Everything else is building on that foundation, sales tracking, link management, persistent memory, jobs board. The infrastructure is getting solid too. One login across apps. One gallery system. One way to do things. That matters when you're running a real shop.
The 6x11 community mailer works end to end. Order them, they arrive.
Adhere is our shared direct-mail postcard program for Coastal Bend businesses, one local pro per trade.
By The Shop · Dispatch from Alice
The community-2500 postcard is fully functional. You can design it, order it, and it ships. No more scaffolding or half-baked features.
This matters because direct mail actually works for local services. You pick a neighborhood, design a card about what you do, and people call. It's old school and it converts.
Adhere now has a sales engine and a route optimizer. Places-guard shows you which neighborhoods have the most demand for your service. The sales console lets you log a win when a postcard converts.
NPCLocal now has a jobs board. Anyone can post a job opening. It's free, moderated to keep scams out, and shows up in search. People looking for work in South Texas can find real openings.
The lead-network board now ranks slots by real outcomes. It's not just 'how many people are asking.' It's 'how many people called' and 'how many turned into leads.' Real conversion data.
NPCLocal episode links now support custom slugs. You can change the URL of an episode after you publish it. Old links still work, they redirect to the new one.
This short video from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission breaks down exactly how a ransomware attack starts and what a small business owner can do right now to stop it before it wipes out their files. It comes straight from the feds, it is free, and it is plain enough that you can watch it with your whole staff in one sitting.
This free step-by-step guide walks you through fixing slow mesh Wi-Fi the right way, starting with node placement and reboot order before you spend a dime on new gear. We like it because it covers the stuff that actually trips up small shops, like weak backhaul, sticky clients that won't roam, and ping spikes on video calls.
This is a free workshop straight from Google that shows small business owners how to use AI tools like Gemini to knock out real everyday tasks, not just theory. We like it because it is built for folks with no tech background and walks you through actual things you can do this week.
We found this one real useful because it walks you through the right tools to have on hand and the safety steps to follow before you crack open any device yourself. If you have been paying a shop for fixes you could probably handle at home, this video is a solid place to start.
We like this one because it comes straight from the federal government and covers ransomware, phishing, and hacking in plain English with fact sheets, videos, and quizzes built for owners like us. No vendor upsell, no fine print, just solid free advice we can share with anyone on our team.
This free guide walks you through the 3-2-1 backup rule in plain English, tells you exactly what NAS does versus what cloud backup does, names the actual tools and what they cost, and calls out the mistakes most small businesses make when they think they are already covered. Down here on the Coastal Bend where a hurricane or a ransomware hit can wipe you out overnight, knowing your data is in three places on two different kinds of storage is worth an hour of your time right now.
