There’s a problem that we’re seeing in this space and it’s causing people to miss massive opportunities! You’re losing out on revenue and you’re losing out on tapping into familiar industry terms, and so much of this can be solved by simply re-labeling who you are to become well-known to the rest of the world. For years, small business owners, especially those in the creative space, have continued to label themselves as such. “I’m a small business owner”, “I run a small creative business”, “I’m a creative entrepreneur”, we’ve seen these terms run rampant.

But the thing that is missing right now in this space is that you are not utilizing terms that the rest of the world recognizes and already uses and, because of that, you’re missing out on business. If you have previously identified as a creative small business owner, especially those of you who are running a B2B service-based business helping other small businesses, we have an uplevel for you. We can change the game!

On the Strategy Hour Podcast today, we are joined by the wonderful and amazing Rachel Green! She is one of the first people we connected with when we were starting out in the online business world and she has been in business for the last seven years, helping hundreds of businesses grow and succeed. As a brand strategist, designer and educator, Rachel has generated over 5 million dollars in sales for her clients and her focus on empowering female business owners is truly inspiring!

In this episode, we are breaking down what a brand strategy is, why it is important to start there and the questions that you need to ask when figuring this all out. Rachel offers some great thoughts to work through in order to help you make sure your story and brand are pushing you forward. She is all about progression, not just pretty branding and logos! We really respect Rachel's perspective on the strategic part of branding and we know you will all find it very useful. So buckle up and let's get into some strategy!

Today, we are so excited to have this conversation, mostly because one of our favorite things in the world is to either learn, do something, or unlock a strategy, and then, in two seconds, turn around and start talking about it! We don’t like to let things fester for too long and want our listeners to take a peek behind the curtain as quickly as possible! Some of you might have seen on Emylee’s personal Instagram (@emyleesays) or our stories @bossproject, that she just did a rebrand! It’s so different in an amazing kind of way!

Part of why Abagail loves it is because for the first time in forever, she didn’t do it herself, so it turned out nothing like it would if she had done it. It’s modern, woo, and earthy! For the first time in forever, Emylee was the client, so today, she gives some behind the scenes insights into how her rebranding process went. She talks about how long it took, what she did herself as far as preparation, the relationship she had with her amazing designer, and a whole lot more!

Today our guest is Claire Diaz-Ortiz! Claire is an author, renowned speaker, and startup investor. She was an early employee at Twitter and has taken that essential expertise into her work as a consultant and authority on social media and online branding. Her books have been published in 12 countries and won many awards. She has been featured widely in both print and broadcast media. Today we are referring specifically to her latest book, Social Media Success for Every Brand and unpacking some of the lessons she has compiled in its pages. 

When we say Claire is a social media genius we really mean it! In our conversation, we unpack the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing and why you should not be targeting an immediate sale on social media platforms. Claire breaks down a few common mistakes made by brands and big businesses on the various social sites we all use and shares some very easy and quick strategies you can start implementing today to get things going!

On the Strategy Hour Podcast today, we are joined by the wonderful and amazing Rachel Green! She is one of the first people we connected with when we were starting out in the online business world. She has been in business for the last seven years, helping hundreds of businesses grow and succeed. As a brand strategist, designer and educator, Rachel has generated over 5 million dollars in sales for her clients and her focus on empowering female business owners is truly inspiring!

In this episode, we are breaking down what a brand strategy is, why it is important to start there and the questions that you need to ask when figuring this all out. Rachel offers some great thoughts to work through in order to help you make sure your story and brand are pushing you forward. She is all about progression, not just pretty branding and logos! We really respect Rachel's perspective on the strategic part of branding and we know you will all find it very useful. So buckle up and let's get into some strategy!

In the creative entrepreneur world, there are so many talents and you guys are doing great! But the one thing we’re seeing, and we’ve done the same thing, is that design work sometimes falls a little short. You might be a photographer, fine artist or wedding planner but do not necessarily have the expertise when it comes to your branding — that’s a set of skills entirely on its own. It could be an email header, a social media announcement or an infographic you need to whip up, and it’s not as easy as it looks. Graphic designers are trained to know what works and have a sharp eye to identify off-balance designs, but we regular folk don’t have that same skill. 

So, today Emylee gets to direct questions at Abagail who, as you all know, is a kick-ass designer. Wearing her designer hat, she will advise you about representing your brand in the most professional manner even though you lack professional skills. As much as we focus on teaching you guys about increasing profit, the way you show your brand to the world can be a make or break aspect. The bottom line is this: when you use the same styles, colors and fonts consistently, you become recognized as a brand, and that is your goal. 

This week on the Strategy Hour, we welcome a great friend of ours. Alexis Teichmiller is here on the show for the first time, which is kind of weird and surprising! We have known each other for over 3 years and we are super happy to have her, finally! Alexis is currently in Texas, although Illinois is definitely her home, and she works at ConvertKit where she creates, explores and inspires entrepreneurs through her position as the manager of ConvertKit's affiliate program. She loves building relationships with influential creators and got in the game as an online entrepreneur and blogger herself! So she knows the game and its frustrations. She wants to help bloggers find the right fit at ConvertKit and how they can be more human in the communication and branding!

In this episode, Alexis gives us some great tangible action steps. The script she offers can easily be used to do what she does and we guarantee you will see some great results! We can all improve our communication with all those who are close to us; this means partners, friends, family and those we work with. Alexis also shares two amazing tactics that ConvertKit has adopted as a company which are a bit scary but pretty revolutionary! There are a bunch of cool takeaways for your business, as well as some book and podcast recommendations that we know y'all are going to love! We are so excited to be talking about the human element to business and how you can show up as vulnerable, relatable, real and strong all at the same time!

Today we are joined by our great friend, Jordan Ellis, from Jordanené Clothing and she is here to talk about the importance of building a community in the success and longevity of your business. Jordan is also speaking at our upcoming event, The Product Powerhouse Summit, which we know you are not going to want to miss! It is going to be incredible with over 25 speakers in 3 days. So go sign up right now, it is free! Today’s chat is kind of like a trailer to that and she will be giving some insight into the idea of creating community in your business’ particular niche and the benefits that can come from this.

Jordan has been around our community since day zero and is part of our ride or die community, the exact thing that she wants to help you build. We will be talking about her journey with this and she even credits the TCC community with helping her learn the importance of connecting with people, her customers and peers! For Jordan, this means her mailing list, repeat customers, getting feedback, and much more. All these great tactics and strategies have helped her grow to where she is now with her product based business and you can even start to apply some of these ideas to your business, no matter if you are service based or are selling products. So come on, let’s get into it!

Hey all of you strategists and biz queens! If you haven’t heard yet, we have been going through a big rebrand! All of of our work will now fall under the Boss Project banner. That’s right, TCC is now a thing of the past and we are onto even bigger and better things! Since we have started this process we have been getting so many questions about the new photos we have been taking and sharing sporadically. We have to admit they look amazing and we are so proud of how they have come out. We look pretty good in the them, if we don’t say so ourselves!

So today we wanted to share some tips and tricks for organizing a great shoot! After this experience we have loads of opinions and ideas to give you. In the past we mostly went pretty DIY with the process with varying degrees of success and have learned many lessons, and this time we applied a bunch of that knowledge! This was the first occasion that we went full professional and the experience was so fluid and we were so prepared! In our discussion we get into these preparations, budgeting, roles, and things to to remember. So let’s get to it!