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100 Profitable Digital Product Ideas

Plus, a totally free challenge to kick you into action and get this baby launched.

Optimize, Services Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Services Abagail Pumphrey

7 Tips to Streamline Your Services so You Can Boost Your Team’s Productivity

We see you, frazzled service provider. We see you bustling and overwhelmed, reinventing the wheel every time you perform any admin task in your business. You’re building your proposals and forms from scratch, manually emailing clients repetitive emails in your process, chasing down payments, etc.


The overwhelming majority of service providers are, well, overwhelmed (and quite frankly, underpaid). We understand because we originated as a service-based business. There are 7 tips that massively helped us streamline our services and made a huge difference in our overall productivity, which is what we’ll be sharing in this blog post!

If you want to take this a step further with us to help you create a High-Touch Signature Service on Autopilot™ so you can work less and make more, we invite you to apply for The Incubator.

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Systems & Automation Abagail Pumphrey

The BEST Tool to Help Land High-Paying Clients Consistently

The biggest struggles we’ve seen service providers face includes difficulty landing high-paying clients consistently. They may land just one or two clients per month at their highest package, but the rest always fall on the smaller scale. This can lead to just breaking even each month, which leads to feelings of discouragement, worry, and self doubt.

But before we say “Just raise your prices!”, we understand that there are other steps that go into that as well. Part of being able to offer a premium package is providing more value through your client experience. That may sound to you like you need to start holding your clients’ hands more or putting more of your time into how you take care of them, but that simply isn’t the case.

You can completely transform your business with one single tool that we’re going to share with you in this blog post!

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User

The Ultimate Guide to Canva Features + How to Use Them in 2021

Canva takes the cake as one of our all-time favorite graphic design tools. Its user-friendly interface makes it the perfect go-to for small business owners (really, anyone) to create graphics for all different aspects of their business. Instead of having to use a super robust software like Adobe, Canva gives you all the best features wrapped up in one platform that’s available on desktop or the mobile app.

Even though it’s designed with the average user in mind, you face a learning curve with any tool or software. So today, we want to give you a complete walkthrough of Canva features inside the builder, plus how to use them!

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Systems & Automation Abagail Pumphrey

The Ultimate Dubsado Set Up Checklist

So, you’re ready to get started with Dubsado as your CRM, but you’re unsure where the heck to start. We love Dubsado and would back it up with our lives, but we also know that, as with any software, it can be super intimidating to think about setting it all up. That’s where we come in!

We’re going to walk you through everything you need to know about getting your Dubsado account up and running in no time. When you break it all down, it really isn’t confusing or hard, there are just a lot of steps involved that can make it seem daunting.

So, save this post to come back to as you get to know Dubsado more and want to use it to its full potential! If you want, you can open up Dubsado in another tab now and read along as you set it up, but you definitely don’t have to complete all of this in one day.

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Optimize, Client Experience Guest User Optimize, Client Experience Guest User

Our Ultimate Guide to Client Onboarding + Crafting an Extraordinary Client Experience

Client onboarding is the most crucial beginning phase to starting a project with a new client. It sets the tone for the working relationship and can make or break your project depending on how you handle it. If handled poorly, it can lead to your client having a bad experience with you, and it’s the client experience that determines whether or not you’ll receive positive testimonials, repeat business, and future referrals. (No pressure!)

After working with clients during both our time as separate businesses and even after we first became business partners, we know a thing or two about client onboarding and making sure the client feels comfortable and taken care of before, during, and after the project.

With that said, let’s dive into our ultimate guide to client onboarding, plus crafting an extraordinary client experience!

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User

How to Streamline Projects and Tasks Using Dubsado

One thing about us is that we’re always looking for ways to improve our systems and processes to keep things streamlined and running smoothly. And a favorite system of ours that allows you to do this very thing with your client processes is Dubsado.

When we were a service-based business that dealt with one on one clients, Dubsado was our absolute favorite CRM, and that was back when they were fairly new and weren’t as robust as they are now. Since they’ve made total updates and added new features, they’ve become every business owners dream system.

So, today, we’re going to share with you different ways that you can use Dubsado to streamline your projects and tasks!

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User

Why Your Business Needs a Systems Audit (If You Want to See Growth)

Emylee here. Words like “systems”, “audits”, “workflows”, “processes” and “checklists” - they can either make the extreme Type A person rejoice and ask for more or they can make the whimsical creative clam up and cringe.

Here at Think Creative Collective, part of “thinking creative” is to put on the business hat every once in awhile so we can check in with our growth and sustainability. And that’s exactly what a systems audit does for you.

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Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User Optimize, Systems & Automation Guest User

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dubsado Proposals

Dubsado is an all-in-one CRM that allows you to do many many things right within the software. One of those things includes creating a variety of different forms, like proposals, contracts, questionnaires, and lead capture forms. Proposals are one of our favorite forms because when you send them, you have the option to make it an easy 3-step process for your clients where they can choose a package in your proposal, sign the contract, and pay the invoice all in three streamlined steps

Sending them is easy, and creating them can be even easier. Dubsado has a drag-and-drop form builder that makes building your proposal a breeze, which we’ll be diving into later. So, keep reading for our step-by-step guide to creating Dubsado proposals!

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Optimize, Marketing Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Marketing Abagail Pumphrey

10 Tips for Networking When You Hate Networking

Networking is one of those words that can either make the social butterfly beam with excitement or the introverted feel more stressed and anxious. It’s not everyone’s favorite thing to do but if you’re a business owner it’s important to put yourself out there.

Making connections can help your business in so many ways. It enables you to meet influential people, gather info that may be beneficial to your business, and/or even just attain some biz support with like minded people.

Businesses are built around relationships. It’s truly who you know in many instances. So here are our 10 tips for networking when you hate networking.

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Optimize, Services Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Services Abagail Pumphrey

How to Create a Signature Service for Your Virtual Assistant Business

As a Virtual Assistant, likely one of the best ways to describe your services is “flexible.” Especially as a General VA, flexibility is one thing that seemingly allows you to keep growing your business. Because you probably don’t specialize in one specific area, you’re able to keep adjusting and bending to your clients’ needs and adding more skills to your bucket.

However, another common theme within the VA world is one that we believe can become detrimental: hourly pricing. As you become more efficient in your work and take less time to complete things, this comes back to bite you in the rear.

The solution? Honing into a signature service that you can offer at a package rate. In this blog post, we’ll be diving into what a signature service is and how you can create one for your Virtual Assistant business!

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Optimize, Leadership Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Leadership Abagail Pumphrey

Which is Best for Your Business? Group Coaching or 1 on 1

We’ve heard it many times before and we’re sure it won’t be the last time. You want to burn your business to the ground and rebuild it into something new? We get it, building a business is not easy and sometimes plateaus are hit and building something new feels like the best answer.

We know there’s a ceiling that gets hit over and over again with 1:1 service providers.You’re cruising along and then one day you’ve hit an income ceiling and time ceiling and it seems like the only way out is to pivot. You’re convinced that your done-for-you service is the timesuck (and it is), but your solution is to pivot to serve more people, but less hands on. And it seems sexy at first, we get it! But we’re here to do what we do best and poke holes in your seemingly seamless shift so you can truly find the best solution for you.

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Optimize, Project Management Abagail Pumphrey Optimize, Project Management Abagail Pumphrey

When is the "Right" Time to Work on Your Business

You’re technically working “on your business” all the time, but what about the time you take out to learn from someone else? To get new insights and ideas, what to do differently, growth strategies and guidance? Your schedule is so full that you hardly even have time to do the things outside of work that you enjoy, much less focus on business education.

You know that you need outside help, but you continue to push it back because you’re waiting for the “right” time, for a moment where you feel like you have more time on your calendar to dedicate to it. The thing is, how many other things are you waiting until that calendar space opens up for you to get to it?

Keep reading to find out when is actually the right time to work on your business and the importance of actively prioritizing education, so you can start seeing drastic changes quickly.

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Welcome to My Blog

Hey, I’m Abagail Pumphrey!

You know when you are so deeply passionate about something you can’t help but share it? That’s how this blog has felt for the last decade. I’ve written about my latest strategies, tech how-tos, experience with scaling and so much more. I hope you find just what you’re looking for. We’re here to help!

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