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.

Abagail here. I love paper. The smell of fresh ink on a hot sheet of paper makes me feel giddy. This shouldn’t be such a surprising phenomenon considering my background in design, but I have a confession to make.

I’ve broken up with paper.

Gone are the days of endless stacks of Post-it notes, forgetting which notebook contained what set of notes from which meeting, and constantly worrying that I would forget (or even lose) my to-do list.

We are firm believers in waiting to invest until the time is right. That said, we never imagined how much we could benefit from using a free product. In fact, how much more money we would make — we’re talking over $125k in 9 months.

Holy moly guacamole. Are you ready for this? Now, some of you might have already heard the breakdown of our Strategy Academy launch, but this gives you a good picture of what else happened in the month of June. Also, it’s nice to see what we actually made, even though we had a $97k launch. #Perspective

Alright, friends, gather round. It's time for a story and it's one you absolutely want to hear today.

When I was a younger woman, I thought to myself, "Gee Golly. Wouldn't it be nice to turn my hobby into a business?"  Wearing rose tinted glasses, I spent many days and nights planning out what I wanted to do, eager to create this business that would leave me feeling productive and satisfied. In fact, I had this crazy vision of what working for myself would look like. You know you want to hear about it.

All good things take time. And time we took. May was not only profitable, but it was a time for us to prepare for our largest launch to date in June. We spent weeks behind the scenes working with our current students, preparing bonuses and other awesome new materials and even working on some alternative ways to bring in more cash. See how May shaped up today.

Ever feel like you need to hide that your business is small?

Early on in my handbag business when I had no one working for me, I would use phrases like, "Thank you for calling us. A customer service representative will contact you within one business day."

I used my first and middle names as my business name to give the company a big "designer" image. And I'd do everything I could to hide that I was 18 years old for fear that I wouldn't be taken seriously.

A couple of years in, I had a big realization.

Launching can be very stressful. You know it and I know it (and I actually loooooove launching). You may have learned the secrets to writing a great sales page or even emails that can help you persuade like a boss, but what I don’t often see is people crafting a holistic launch plan.

A good launch is done from “open cart” to “close cart” alone, but a great launch is started weeks or months before you even give people the chance to buy. The best part is that if you take the time to be intentional before your launch, you take some stress out of the launch itself while also boosting your conversion rates. (Hallelujah!)

I totally believe in the power of a positive mental attitude, but I know that listening to a random recording is not going to cure the self-doubt and insecurity that can plague my own creative nature, or anyone else’s.

There is one thing that I’ve found to make a massive difference in how much I can do, and the quality of my work, though. It’s called confidence.