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You’re Booked Out. What’s Next?
How to Prepare Your Instagram Feed for the Holidays
The Holidays are amazing, but between presents, parties, and family, the last thing you want to do is scramble for content for your Instagram feed. Here's our 7 step process for preparing it ahead of time so you can feel free to sit back and sip egg nog (bonus if it's the grown-up version).
Pricing Has Nothing To Do With Numbers (BONUS: FREE Download)
Pricing is our jam. Figuring out our worth so we can pay our bills, grow our business and have happy clients and customers is kind of our favorite. In fact, pricing is what brought this whole thing here at TCC together (meaning it’s how Emylee and Abagail met!). The very first program that we launched together was called “Pricing for Profit” (now known as The Money Making Creative). All that to say we’ve had the conversation about pricing with other creatives many a time, and you want to know a big fat spoiler? When it comes to mindset and “do you think they will pay $X?”, pricing has absolutely nothing to do with numbers.
Our Big Secret to an Organized and Balanced Workday in Our Small Business
Let me paint you a picture of our lives before Trello! Endless piles of paper, three journals working simultaneously (supposedly with different subject matter in each), scratched out to-do lists (and when they got too messy we would spend time rewriting them). I was in a constant state of panic, like I was going to forget a meeting or a deadline. I worried (even more than normal) that our whole business would fall apart over one missed task.
In the past we used Wunderlist as our project management system. It worked for a time but as our business grew and became more complicated, it ended up like the notepads, one hot mess.
We knew there had to be a better way!
Enter Trello - A free business tool that changed our lives and improved our business. But don't Google anything yet! Trello on its own is a little confusing, but don't worry - we've fixed it.
How to Know You're Ready to Launch Your Next Big Thing
If you're the kind that has lots of 'almost-ready-but-not-quite' products on your launching back burner, this get shit done post is for you. Here's what we know for sure: launched is better than perfect, and there are people out there who need what you have to offer. Here's how to know if it's time to get it off the shelf and into the hands of your dream customers.
Why You Need to Create a Business Plan for Your Small Business
Creating a business plan is one of the best fundamental things you can do to promote success in your business. A business plan will help you stick to, well, your plan for your business. It also helps you think about things you haven’t thought about before and things you should know for your business.
I’ve started several businesses and they’ve all failed because I didn’t have a business plan in place. Once I decided to take this latest business seriously, I filled out a free business plan sheet and it’s been one of the best fundamental things I could do for myself and my business.
It’ll help you hone in on your ideal client and get you thinking about the products, verbiage and places to market. Which, in turn, means more revenue in your pocket. It also helps you think about places you’ve never thought to market to before.
How to Find + Collaborate with Instagram Influencers to Grow Your Brand
Instagrammers. Influencers. Tastemakers. These are a lot of the buzzwords that have been circling the marketing realm in the past few years. It may seem super daunting and corporate but influencer marketing is something that can be scaled back to work for your small business. But how?
Getting your brand out of the shadows and reaching out to Instagram influencers can be terrifying. You’re putting yourself out there and you're getting visible. The idea of this makes a lot of us recoil and want to get back into bed. (Try to resist that temptation and hear me out. I know it’s hard!)
But, it can also bring invaluable results to your business. By creating meaningful collaborations with Instagrammers, you can increase your brand exposure, grow a community and build trust in your brand. Let’s get started!
How to be a Productive New Entrepreneur
Starting a new business means introducing a whole new set of tasks to your plate, and the crazy part is, you don’t even know what half of them are yet.
The first few days will be busy as you set things up, such as your domain and social media accounts. Maybe you’ll write a business plan. Then comes the hard part, as you settle into a routine.
10 Email Marketing Mistakes to Fix and Triple Your Website Traffic
Email marketing isn't as simple as compiling a list, writing a message and then sending it out. Of course, if it were that easy every company would be doing an effective job with their email marketing campaigns. There is much more that goes into a successful and highly effective email marketing effort, but once you've realized the mistakes you may be making and work towards fixing them, you'll almost certainly see a significant increase in the conversion rates you see and the amount of traffic being driven to your website.
July 2017: Income Report $18,496
Ready, set, wait! Yep, July as much as it was prepping our signature course content and launching an affiliate program, it was really about working really hard to wait for results later. Not that over $18k is anything to cough at, it was just residual income off our previous launch and evergreen course sales. The BIG surprise doesn’t come until September, in the meantime check out all the details that made July the success that it was.
Communicating Your Brand Messaging Through Your Packaging
When you set up a product-based business, you spend a lot of time thinking about the product itself. You’ll devote time to planning how to market and communicate it to potential customers. But often, packaging is last on the to-do list, because it’s seen as a practical way to protect and ship, and nothing more.
How to Collect More than just the First Name from Your Convert Kit Forms
Everyone wants to get tailored content. But how can you do that when you just have a huge list of names? How are you supposed to make sure Taylor gets emails about building his brand and that Monisha gets emails about creating systems to streamline her business?
It’s time for you to up your email marketing game and collect more information on your subscribers.
What Do You Really Need to Know?
How to Organize Your Launching Strategy with Trello
Raise your hand if launching gives you the heebie jeebies. I get it, boss. There are a million and one moving pieces and it’s hard enough for you to remember all the steps - let alone have some sort of organization that helps you keep it all together. Here's our secret formula for using Trello to go from Idea to 10K launch in just 30 days.
Money Mindsets: 10 Tips to Trick Yourself into Making More Money
As much as we all want to make a fabulous living while drinking fancy cocktails poolside, as entrepreneurs we don’t always have that luxury! The weeks seem to fly by, and late nights and work overload become common.
What if, instead of spending every waking hour of every day with your nose to the grindstone, you could instead trick yourself into making more money? Spoiler: you can! | Think Creative Collective
Working Less and Making More: A Practice in Patience, Systems and Trust
You’ve heard it a million times. “I want to work less and make more.” But do you actually know what it takes to make this happen? The entrepreneurs who are making bank are NOT lazy. They are strategic, methodical, and extremely patient.
Do you think Pat Flynn went from being laid off to earning over $100k per month revenue overnight?! Are you kidding?
Do you think Oprah went right from waitress to world-recognized thought leader?! Heck no.
Do you think Marie Forleo rolled out B-School her first year in business?! Absolutely not.
Their careers didn’t fall out of thin air. They spent years perfecting their craft, tweaking their processes and making shifts towards their big dreams.
We’re no different. We absolutely want world domination (for all female creative business owners). But we know the tide won’t shift overnight.
Need to prioritize building your email list as a small business, but struggling to pin down which platform to start with? During the last ten years, I’ve been with four different email marketing software companies, and Flodesk by far the longest. If I had to start over and choose again, I’d STILL pick Flodesk.