business insights
I’m officially building my first Al app. No code. No hoodie-wearing co-founder. Just me, my idea, a no-code tool called Lovable.dev, and two years of quietly training an Al on everything I know about marketing, messaging, and digital products.
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100 Profitable Digital Product Ideas
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How Your Service Pricing Needs to Change When You Build a Team
What we often see in the service-based industry is after 6-figures have been reached (sometimes multiple 6-figures), service providers will try to replace their current offer with something completely brand new. We know this is super tempting, especially when you’ve reached the point where you’ve started to tap out of what you can personally do within your business.
However, pricing is one of your greatest opportunities for expansion, especially when you can work with fewer people and make more money. While many may acknowledge price shifts over time, they aren’t seeing premium pricing as an opportunity to grow their team.
How Service Providers Can Identify Their Result and Deliver a Profitable Offer
Looking back there is something magical about the beginning stages of business. It’s like we all had this young naive way of thinking at the beginning. You’re learning all the things, you’re hustling, you’re saying yes a lot (probably more than you should have) but you’re doing it. You’re building something that is yours.
And then you get to a point where you’re hitting 10K months consistently. You did the thing! You’ve become an established business owner BUT you’re still holding onto that “beginner” energy. Yeah, you might be making more money but you’re still feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and stretched thin.
Do This First When Moving to 1:1 Services
There are a lot of established business owners who are, to say the least, freaking out with the current marketing and lead generation climate. A lot of you are taking clients under the table or starting to offer agency or 1:1 services even though you’ve been building a 1:many business the last few years. While we don’t think this is a bad strategy at all (we actually love it and think you should continue doing it), there are some things to consider first.
More often than not, you’ve gotten used to the digital marketing world where quantity is better than quality; where going viral and getting all the leads, likes, follows, and shares is what’s going to help you get more eyeballs. In a not-so-distant past, that was true. Now, though, there are some mindset shifts that should happen.
And the reason we’re bringing this up now is because we’ve also seen a lot of established business owners (some 7-figure!) that are closing up shop because this is the part where ish gets hard.
Have you considered pivoting or adding on 1:1 services to your existing business?
3 Things You Can Do Before You Hire Your Next Freelancer or Employee
We know you can’t be an expert in every area of your business so there are some positions this tip doesn’t apply to. But let’s say you want to hire someone to be a salesperson to close client deals. The question you should be asking yourself is have you done those tasks in your business yet? Like do you have a process that you follow already for getting leads, sending out follow-up emails or DMs, what do you say, what has worked for you? This is important because knowing what that process looks like helps you decide who you need to hire and how to train them.
Or understanding this process gives you insight into what areas you can create systems and automate to free up more of your time. Cultivating sales is an important part of your business so if you can free up time in other areas then you can keep sales as a priority on your to-do list.
How to Create a Signature Service in 30 Days or Less
You started your service-based business because you had dreams you wanted to achieve and goals to accomplish. Unfortunately, you just haven’t quite been able to get there yet.
It seems like you keep signing low-ticket clients and doing triple the work than you actually have time for. Your personal life? Virtually non-existent at this point because of how deep you’re buried in client work, yet you have little to no income or growth to show for it.
There’s no secret to making all the problems in your business disappear, and that’s because we don’t want to keep signature services a secret! Creating a signature service is what will enable you to open so many doors in your business that you’ve barely been able to crack thus far.
In this blog post, we’ll be covering how to create a signature service in 30 days or less, so keep reading as we break it down by four tangible weeks!
The #1 Key to Reigniting Your Service-Based Business
Have you ever felt like this? It’s a weekday morning, you know you need to get out of bed and work on your business but you just do NOT have the energy or the brain power. You’ve lost the gumption you had when you first started your business and now you’re just feeling burnt out, and in a Cycle of Doom™.
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!
What is a Signature Service and Why You Need One in 2022
We’ve talked a lot about how to create a signature service here on the blog (like here, here, and also here). Creating a signature service is the best way to eliminate competition, stand out in your niche, and do exactly what you love for exactly who you love to work for. In fact, we help our clients refine their offer into a High-Touch Signature Service™ inside The Incubator. (Psst.. you can learn more and apply here.)
Before we dive into what this could look like for you, let’s get clear on what a signature service actually is!
What Subject Matter Experts Need to Know About Running a Profitable Business
By definition, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic. They’re knowledgeable about their topic, they focus on a very specific field, and they’re extremely sought after. If you’re a 1:1 service provider whose expertise lies in a specific niche, then you, our friend, are a Subject Matter Expert!
For example, a general Social Media Manager wouldn’t usually be classified as a SME, but an Instagram Strategy Consultant for veterinarians could be. You can fill in the blanks with your specific niche and ideal client. This isn’t to say one is better than the other, but we do want you to understand the difference between a generalist title versus a SME.
In this post, we’ll be covering 4 things that we think SMEs really need to be aware of about running a profitable business!
Honest Teachable Review - Why I’m Loyal After 8 Years
You’re ready to diversify your income by adding a digital product or course to your offer lineup? You’ve come to the right place. I’ve been in business 9 years, run a multi-7-figure online education business, and have built 388 digital products, 25 courses, 5 online summits, 3 group coaching programs, and 4 memberships. Nearly all of them in some variation or another have landed on Teachable.
Service Providers Earning Less than $5k Per Month: Essential Skills You Need to Have a Successful Business
There’s undoubtedly a flood of information and resources on the internet for service providers looking to grow their income to $5k+ months. Unfortunately, that also means that it can be difficult to know where to look, what to search for that’ll actually be helpful, and find reliable resources. When you’re a smaller business, your number one priority is essentially increasing your revenue, and there are a number of skills that are essential to have in order to make that happen.
In this post, we’ll be giving you our best resources to help you hone in on those skills so that you can finally break free of the feast or famine mode that so many small service-based businesses find it hard to come out of in the beginning stages of business.
How We Are Working With Clients in 2023
Sometimes, being in business since 2015, makes us feel a little prehistoric. Our company has certainly had its fair share of evolutions and pivots as not only we have grown, but our clients as well. We’ve had the privilege of working with folks from across the globe whether they tune in to our top-charting podcast, get sucked into our rabbit hole with our Trello for Business course, join our growing community of creatives, work with us in an intimate group setting or hang out with us 1:1 to tackle the big stuff. We thought it was time for us to update you on our suite of offerings and give you insight on how you can make magic happen with us.
Maximizing Your Potential: Understand the Relationship Between Capacity and Business Goals
One of the largest issues we see in the service industry, specifically related to CEOs and their time, is that they aren’t aware of what their capacity is or how to best split their time to focus on all of the areas that need their attention. Without the knowledge of what baseline their capacity should cover (i.e. 20% in this area and 10% in another), they also aren’t able to see the clear path forward to reaching their goals. In this post, we’ll be breaking down how your time should be spent as a CEO and how to understand your capacity and its effects on your business goals.
Success in Your Service Based Business: This is the Key Factor You Must Get Right
There is, without a doubt, one thing that can make or break your service-based business: capacity. This is something that has dramatic effects when not practiced carefully or correctly, and the people who are doing it wrong are often those who are overworked and underpaid. By not understanding your capacity in an in-depth and intimate way, you’re constantly sacrificing your mental health and wellbeing, you probably feel like everything is working against you, and you may not be making the progress you’d like to see in your goals.
In this post, we hope to leave you with tons more clarity on how capacity works, its cause-and-effect nature, and how to finally leave the path of burnout.
How to Know When You Should Pivot or Start Over in Your Business
There comes a point in every service-based business owner’s journey (especially in this market) where they hit what feels like a huge cement wall. Leads feel harder to come by, prospects feel harder to close, and it seems the only way to get through it is to either demolish the wall or change directions. In this case, that would mean pivoting your offer or scrapping everything you’ve built and starting over.
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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